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Poisoning America: Trump removes pollution controls on streams and wetlands

Poisoning America: Trump removes pollution controls on streams and wetlands

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies, handing a victory to farmers, fossil fuel producers and real estate developers who said Obama-era rules had shackled them with onerous and unnecessary burdens. From Day 1 of his administration, President Trump vowed to repeal President Barack Obama’s “Waters of the United States” regulation, which had frustrated rural landowners. His new rule, which will…

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The Saudi connection: Inside the 9/11 case that divided the FBI

The Saudi connection: Inside the 9/11 case that divided the FBI

The New York Times reports: On the morning of Sept. 11 last year, about two dozen family members of those killed in the terror attacks filed into the White House to visit with President Trump. It was a choreographed, somewhat stiff encounter, in which each family walked to the center of the Blue Room to share a moment of conversation with Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, before having a photograph taken with the first couple. Still, it was…

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U.S.’s top intelligence official fails to turn over report, required by law, on Jamal Khashoggi’s killing

U.S.’s top intelligence official fails to turn over report, required by law, on Jamal Khashoggi’s killing

BuzzFeed reports: The country’s top intelligence official has failed to turn over to Congress a report on the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, sources said, flouting a law passed last month. In December, lawmakers passed a sweeping defense bill that included a provision ordering the director of national intelligence to send Congress an unclassified report identifying those responsible for Khashoggi’s death at a Saudi Arabian consulate in 2018. The legislation set the deadline for the report at 30…

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George Soros rips Trump and Xi, says the ‘fate of the world’ is at stake in 2020

George Soros rips Trump and Xi, says the ‘fate of the world’ is at stake in 2020

CNBC reports: Liberal billionaire George Soros took aim at President Donald Trump and China on Thursday at his annual dinner amid the World Economic Forum. Chinese President Xi Jinping is “trying to exploit Trump’s weaknesses,” Soros told the gathering. He also accused Xi of using “artificial intelligence to have total control of his people.” And while Soros did not discuss the Democratic presidential primary, in which he has yet to make an endorsement, he said the 2020 election will not…

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Is apartheid the inevitable outcome of Zionism?

Is apartheid the inevitable outcome of Zionism?

Henry Siegman writes: The threat of a new war with Iran that might have replicated what has been the worst disaster in the history of America’s international misadventures — George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq based on fabricated lies — sucked the air out of all other international diplomatic activity, not least of what used to be called the Middle East peace process. Yet the failure of the peace process has not been the consequence of recent mindless and destructive…

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Native people did not use fire to shape New England’s landscape

Native people did not use fire to shape New England’s landscape

Old-growth forests prevailed in New England for thousands of years. David Foster, CC BY-ND By Wyatt Oswald, Emerson College; David R. Foster, Harvard University, and Elizabeth Chilton, Binghamton University, State University of New York An interpretive sign stands at the edge of the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area, a 1,500-acre state conservation property in central Massachusetts. It explains the site’s open land vegetation has been shaped by “millennia of fire” – and that the recent exclusion of fire has led…

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How far is it to the edge of the Universe?

How far is it to the edge of the Universe?

Ethan Siegel writes: If you were to go as far out into space as you can imagine, what would you encounter? Would there be a limit to how far you could go, or could you travel a limitless distance? Would you eventually return to your starting point, or would you continue to traverse space that you had never encountered before? In other words, does the Universe have an edge, and if so, where is it? Believe it or not, there…

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Barr previously contradicted Trump’s claim that abuse of power is not impeachable

Barr previously contradicted Trump’s claim that abuse of power is not impeachable

The New York Times reports: Scholars have roundly rejected a central argument of President Trump’s lawyers that abuse of power is not by itself an impeachable offense. But it turns out that another important legal figure has contradicted that idea: Mr. Trump’s attorney general and close ally, William P. Barr. In summer 2018, when he was still in private practice, Mr. Barr wrote a confidential memo for the Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s legal team to help the president get…

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Where the Trump defense goes too far

Where the Trump defense goes too far

Jonathan Turley writes: In my December testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, I raised objections to the House rushing the impeachment forward on an incomplete and inferential case. There are ample defenses to be raised on both articles without claiming, implausibly, that this was handled perfectly. This is probably why presidents and professors run in different circles. Where professors see this trial as a teachable moment, Trump sees it as a television moment. Trump knows television and may know his…

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Trump minimizes traumatic brain injuries in Iraq attack as merely ‘headaches’

Trump minimizes traumatic brain injuries in Iraq attack as merely ‘headaches’

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump appeared to brush off the traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and concussion-like injuries sustained by U.S. service members after Iran’s missile strike on a military base in Iraq, saying he did not consider them to be “very serious injuries.” “I heard that they had headaches. And a couple of other things,” Trump said Wednesday at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “But I would say and I can report it is not very serious.” Trump’s…

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U.S. drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought

U.S. drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought

Reuters reports: The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said a report on Wednesday by an environmental watchdog group. The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems. The findings here by the Environmental Working Group…

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Saudi crown prince appeared to taunt Jeff Bezos over secret affair before Enquirer exposé

Saudi crown prince appeared to taunt Jeff Bezos over secret affair before Enquirer exposé

The Daily Beast reports: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent Jeff Bezos a photograph of a woman loosely resembling the one he was having an affair with months before the National Enquirer published a report exposing the liaison, according to a United Nations investigation. Two United Nations special rapporteurs released a statement Wednesday detailing forensic evidence linking MBS to the Bezos hack, which suggests the future king of Saudi Arabia may have been threatening the owner of The Washington Post…

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Glenn Greenwald on Brazil’s charges against him

Glenn Greenwald on Brazil’s charges against him

Isaac Chotiner writes: On Tuesday, Brazilian prosecutors charged the journalist Glenn Greenwald with “cybercrimes” as part of what the government claims was his role in a “criminal organization.” They allege that Greenwald—who reported on wrongdoing in Brazil’s judicial establishment last year for the Intercept, the Web site he co-founded—participated in the hacking of cell phones, the content of which was later used in his stories. But the reporting itself is the reason much of the Brazilian government is furious with…

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How Margaret Mead became a hate figure for conservatives

How Margaret Mead became a hate figure for conservatives

Sam Dresser writes: The explosively curious and acerbic Margaret Mead was born in 1901 and brought up by a tough academic family in Pennsylvania. After a childhood dotted with melancholy, her purpose in life – anthropology – emerged in her undergraduate years at Barnard College in New York City. As a graduate student at Columbia University in the 1920s, she fell under the sway of Franz Boas. The moustachioed polymath was born in Germany and defined American anthropology. It was…

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