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Trump has backed himself into a corner

Trump has backed himself into a corner

Hussein Banai writes: When President Donald Trump takes to the airwaves to threaten to bomb a nation of 90 million people “back to the Stone Ages” and follows that threat — in less than 48 hours — with strikes on civilian infrastructure, the destruction of a major bridge between two populous cities and a warning, in an expletive-laden post (on Easter Sunday, no less), that the assault on the targeted country’s power grid has “not even started,” it is worth…

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Hegseth’s claims about Iran war contradict reality, officials say

Hegseth’s claims about Iran war contradict reality, officials say

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump has continued to describe the war against Iran as an unqualified success, saying as recently as Monday that the United States was doing “unbelievably well,” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tehran had been “embarrassed and humiliated” by U.S. forces. But Iran’s downing of an F-15E fighter jet and the high-risk rescue operation that ensued showed that Tehran retains the ability to threaten the United States’ military personnel and cast doubt on the…

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A new economic superpower could spark a global retreat from fossil fuels

A new economic superpower could spark a global retreat from fossil fuels

Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope write: The Iran war is also a climate war. Beyond its terrible human costs, the war’s disruptions of oil, gas, fertilizer and other shipments is another reminder of the risks inherent in basing the world economy on fossil fuels. The war’s jets, missiles and aircraft carriers, and the tankers, refineries and buildings they blow up, represent millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions that further imperil a climate system that is already “very close” to…

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If Viktor Orbán loses Hungary’s election, it will dispel the air of invincibility around strongmen

If Viktor Orbán loses Hungary’s election, it will dispel the air of invincibility around strongmen

Laszlo Gendler writes: There is an irony buried in Hungarian political history. Fidesz—the Viktor Orbán-led party that has ruled with a supermajority for the last 16 years, reshaping Hungary’s constitution, packing its courts, weakening its free press, and gradually hollowing out most institutions that might check its power—is an acronym in Hungarian for “the Alliance of Young Democrats.” Founded in 1988 by students who gathered in clandestine groups to resist a communist government, Fidesz was initially conceived as a direct…

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Bumble bees show a surprising knack for rhythm

Bumble bees show a surprising knack for rhythm

Science reports: Bumble bees are hardly nature’s most graceful creatures, and their name reflects it. But it turns out these bees show a surprising knack for rhythm. The fuzzy insects can not only recognize a rhythm but also identify the same pattern when scientists change the tempo, according to research published on 2 April in Science—the first time this ability has been documented outside of a few mammals and birds. “That’s an unexpected, beautiful finding,” says Henkjan Honing, a music…

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How unhinged and dangerous is Trump becoming?

How unhinged and dangerous is Trump becoming?

Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses the increasing “desperation” of U.S. strategy, Iran’s long-term economic control over the Strait of Hormuz and growing “hawkishness,” and the dangerous possibility of nuclear warfare:   Garrett Graff writes: Are we really this inured to unhinged comments that “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” doesn’t even warrant a full 24-hour news-cycle? In a sentence that would have surprised the…

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Trump and Netanyahu’s war is turning Iran into a major world power

Trump and Netanyahu’s war is turning Iran into a major world power

Robert A. Pape writes: In recent years, the conventional geopolitical wisdom has been that the world order was moving toward three centers of power: the United States, China and Russia. That view assumed that power derived primarily from economic scale and military capability. That assumption no longer holds. A fourth center of global power is quickly emerging — Iran — that does not rival those three nations economically or militarily. Instead, its newfound power derives from its control over the…

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John Mearsheimer: Israel is the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East

John Mearsheimer: Israel is the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East

  The greatest threat to stability in the Middle East is not Iran, but “the US working closely together with Israel”, argues United States political scientist John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer tells host Steve Clemons that the notion that the US and Israel are making a safer, more stable Middle East is “ludicrous”. And the idea that Iran is “the great destabiliser” in the region is “a myth that the US and Israel purvey”. After US President Donald Trump insisted that “We…

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How China can survive without the Strait of Hormuz

How China can survive without the Strait of Hormuz

Reuters reports: The world’s largest importer of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is, paradoxically, also one of the best placed to weather the waterway’s closure. China consumes oceans of oil from the Gulf and imports roughly as much from the region as India, Japan and South Korea combined. In response to the closure of the Strait, officials across Asia are asking citizens to take shorter showers or work from home to save energy. In China, the ruling Communist Party’s…

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War-driven energy crisis gives China a boost for its renewable exports

War-driven energy crisis gives China a boost for its renewable exports

The Washington Post reports: As the oil and gas crisis set off by the war in Iran drives governments to accelerate their transitions to renewable energy, one country above all stands to benefit. China dominates renewable energy supply chains, producing a vast majority of the world’s solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. Exports of these technologies were already climbing to new heights in the first two months of 2026. Now volatility in the supply of fossil fuels is…

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Why Sam Altman can’t be trusted

Why Sam Altman can’t be trusted

Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz write: In the fall of 2023, Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, sent secret memos to three fellow-members of the organization’s board of directors. For weeks, they’d been having furtive discussions about whether Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O., and Greg Brockman, his second-in-command, were fit to run the company. Sutskever had once counted both men as friends. In 2019, he’d officiated Brockman’s wedding, in a ceremony at OpenAI’s offices that included a ring bearer in the form…

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We are all collections of errors

We are all collections of errors

Jerome Groopman writes: As I am writing this, my DNA is changing. And, as you read this, so is yours. People tend to assume that the genes we inherit from our parents are a fixed blueprint for our growth and development, immutable throughout our lives, and that the DNA in each cell of our body is the same as in every other cell. In fact, changes in our DNA, known as mutations, occur from the time we are in the…

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As Trump threatens to commit war crimes in Iran, his ‘own morality’ is nowhere to be found

As Trump threatens to commit war crimes in Iran, his ‘own morality’ is nowhere to be found

Edward Wong writes: Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people — and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law. Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” as…

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Pope Leo: ‘Let those who have weapons lay them down!’

Pope Leo: ‘Let those who have weapons lay them down!’

The Washington Post reports: Pope Leo XIV used his first Easter speech Sunday to deliver a resounding call for peace in times of renewed war, declaring, “Let those who have weapons lay them down!” “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!” Leo said. “Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them! We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent….

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