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Fearful of Trump’s attacks, Justice Dept. lawyers worry Barr will leave them exposed to political meddling

Fearful of Trump’s attacks, Justice Dept. lawyers worry Barr will leave them exposed to political meddling

The New York Times reports: In an email a few days ago to the 270 lawyers he oversees, Nicola T. Hanna, the United States attorney in Los Angeles, offered a message of reassurance: I am proud of the work you do, he wrote. Other U.S. attorneys in the Justice Department’s far-flung 93 field offices relayed similar messages of encouragement after President Trump’s efforts to influence a politically fraught case provoked the kind of consternation the department has rarely seen since…

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State Department keeps quiet as Pompeo reports to Lavrov in Munich

State Department keeps quiet as Pompeo reports to Lavrov in Munich

Poltico reports: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter the American side apparently wanted to keep under wraps. The State Department made no announcement of the meeting, which took place in Lavrov’s own dedicated meeting room at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the major annual conference of politicians, policymakers and security experts is held. Pompeo’s aides also did not provide any readout…

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The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

The demise of bees will lead to ours too unless we change the way we grow food

Alison Benjamin writes: The oldest love affair in history is between the bee and the flower. It began more than 100m years ago, when nature devised a more efficient way than winds for plants to procreate. About 80% of plant species now use animals or insects to carry pollen grains from the male part of the plant to the female part. The plants developed flowers. Their perfumed scent, colourful displays and sweet nectar are all designed to woo pollinators. Over…

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The climate crisis is a threat to mental health, especially for young people

The climate crisis is a threat to mental health, especially for young people

The Guardian reports: Over the past few weeks Clover Hogan has found herself crying during the day and waking up at night gripped by panic. The 20-year-old, who now lives in London, grew up in Queensland, Australia, cheekbyjowl with the country’s wildlife, fishing frogs out of the toilet and dodging snakes hanging from the ceiling. The bushfires ravaging her homeland over the past few weeks have taken their toll. “I’ve found myself bursting into tears … just seeing the absolutely…

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Wall Street fears the rise of Bernie Sanders. The rest of America has less to worry about

Wall Street fears the rise of Bernie Sanders. The rest of America has less to worry about

Annie Lowrey writes: Earlier this week, Lloyd Blankfein, the former head of Goldman Sachs, waded into the presidential race. “If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US,” he wrote on Twitter. “Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military. If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.” Gaining an anti-endorsement from one of…

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What happened to Elizabeth Warren?

What happened to Elizabeth Warren?

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Certain Presidential campaigns have the texture of money—of organization, of talent, of intentionality. It’s an obvious kind of quality: the difference between shopping at a Whole Foods and a Pathmark. For the past year, in the Democratic primary, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has had that texture. Some of this quality was expressed in obvious ways: Warren’s landmark nighttime speech in New York’s Washington Square Park in September, set against the lit white arch before a crowd estimated at…

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Sally Yates: Trump thinks the Justice Department is his personal grudge squad

Sally Yates: Trump thinks the Justice Department is his personal grudge squad

The former deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, writes: The imperative of Justice Department independence from political influence has deep roots. After the Watergate scandal, Attorney General Griffin Bell sought to reestablish Justice’s independence and ensure that the department would be “recognized by all citizens as a neutral zone, in which neither favor nor pressure nor politics is permitted to influence the administration of the law.” The nation had lost faith in the Justice Department and the rule of law, so…

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Barr sends outside prosecutors to review politically sensitive cases

Barr sends outside prosecutors to review politically sensitive cases

The New York Times reports: Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter. The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors. Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive…

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U.S. readied sanctions on Russian oligarch’s associates — then mysteriously backed off

U.S. readied sanctions on Russian oligarch’s associates — then mysteriously backed off

The Daily Beast reports: Something strange happened in mid-December involving Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch. Late last year, the U.S. government signaled that it was about to level a new round of sanctions targeting people and entities linked to Deripaska, according to two Western officials with knowledge of the communication. Back in April 2018, the U.S. sanctioned the oligarch, who once lent millions of dollars to convicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort as part of a decades-long relationship between the…

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The biology of love

The biology of love

Ruth Feldman writes: After decades following thousands of mother-infant dyads, hundreds from birth to young adulthood, my lab has mapped the ‘neurobiology of affiliation’ – the emerging scientific field that describes the neural, endocrine and behavioural systems sustaining our capacity to love. The foci of our research – the oxytocin system (based on the neurohormone of bonding); the affiliative, or social, brain; and biological synchrony between mother and child – are all marked by great plasticity, and sculpted throughout animal…

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Can we describe the brain?

Can we describe the brain?

Grigori Guitchounts writes: A complete human connectome [charting the entirety of the connections among neurons in the brain] will be a monumental technical achievement. A complete wiring diagram for a mouse brain alone would take up two exabytes. That’s 2 billion gigabytes; by comparison, estimates of the data footprint of all books ever written come out to less than 100 terabytes, or 0.005 percent of a mouse brain. But [Jeff] Lichtman is not daunted. He is determined to map whole…

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Bloomberg and a moral double standard on human rights and legal equality

Bloomberg and a moral double standard on human rights and legal equality

Peter Beinart writes: The critics who think Bernie Sanders isn’t Jewish enough—or isn’t Jewish in the right way—now have a clear alternative in the Democratic presidential race: Michael Bloomberg. Not only is the former New York mayor rising in the polls; he’s also contrasting his Jewish identity with that of the senator from Vermont. Late last month, Bloomberg sprinkled a speech at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in South Florida with the kind of religious references (the Ten Plagues, Moses…

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Barr’s rebuke of Trump is a distraction from blatant political interference in the administration of justice

Barr’s rebuke of Trump is a distraction from blatant political interference in the administration of justice

Aaron Blake writes: Attorney General William P. Barr offered his first public comments Thursday after a controversy erupted at the Justice Department this week. And while he offered a significant rebuke of President Trump, Barr’s comments seem as much geared toward creating a veneer of independence as addressing the root of the controversy. Barr told ABC News that Trump’s tweets about ongoing criminal matters — in this case, Roger Stone’s — “make it impossible for me to do my job.”…

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Trump lashes out at Judge Amy Berman Jackson ahead of her sentencing his felon friend, Roger Stone

Trump lashes out at Judge Amy Berman Jackson ahead of her sentencing his felon friend, Roger Stone

The Washington Post reports: First he went after the prosecutors who recommended a multiyear sentence for his friend Roger Stone. Then President Trump turned his Twitter ire to the “witch hunt disgrace” of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, which led to Stone’s indictment. But perhaps most surprising was Trump’s decision to target U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who will determine Stone’s fate when he appears in her courtroom next Thursday. It was not the first time…

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