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State Department officials warned Trump not to revoke protections for immigrants

State Department officials warned Trump not to revoke protections for immigrants

Vox reports: Senior State Department officials and career diplomats repeatedly warned the Trump administration that taking away legal protections for immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti would put national security, foreign relations, and the immigrants’ American-born children at risk, according to internal State Department documents. But Trump did it anyway — and concerns about the 2020 election appear to have helped determine the timeline for requiring immigrants to leave, according to the documents, which will be released in a…

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Paris accord pledges are ‘totally insufficient’ to meet critical climate targets, scientists warn

Paris accord pledges are ‘totally insufficient’ to meet critical climate targets, scientists warn

Inside Climate News reports: While nearly all of the world’s countries have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the reductions they’re planning in the short term—over the next 10 years—aren’t nearly enough, leading scientists warn in a new report. Nearly two-thirds of the pledges under the Paris climate agreement are “totally insufficient” to meet critical climate targets, the report by scientists who have been involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found. To keep global warming under…

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A judge said police can search the DNA of one million Americans without their consent. What’s next?

A judge said police can search the DNA of one million Americans without their consent. What’s next?

Science reports: For the first time, a state judge has forced a public genealogy site, GEDmatch, to allow police to search its entire database of DNA profiles. A detective wanted to find distant relatives of a serial rapist in hopes that their family trees could help him home in on a suspect—even though most of the 1.3 million people who have shared their DNA data with the site haven’t agreed to such a search. The search warrant, reported this week…

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Our fate turns on retiring our dualist view of nature

Our fate turns on retiring our dualist view of nature

Philip Goff writes: Since 1980, the temperature of the planet has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius, resulting in unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the acidification of oceans. In 2015, 175 million more people were exposed to heat waves compared with the average for 1986 to 2008, and the number of weather-related disasters from 2007 to 2016 was up by 46 percent compared with the average from 1990 to 1999. This is nothing in comparison to the horrors…

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The elephant-human relationship dates back into prehistory

The elephant-human relationship dates back into prehistory

Tim Flannery writes: In January 1962, on my sixth birthday, I was taken to Melbourne Zoo, where I rode an elephant. We children climbed a scaffold and perched on rough wooden benches atop the elephant’s back, where my fingers furtively reached for a feel of its wrinkled skin. A few months later, elephant rides were discontinued, for safety reasons, at most zoos in Australia, Europe, and the US. I was dimly aware of the danger involved in mounting such an…

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What we could learn from our cave-dwelling ancestors

What we could learn from our cave-dwelling ancestors

Barbara Ehrenreich writes: In 1940, four teenage boys stumbled, almost literally, from German-occupied France into the Paleolithic Age. As the story goes, and there are many versions of it, they had been taking a walk in the woods near the town of Montignac when the dog accompanying them suddenly disappeared. A quick search revealed that their animal companion had fallen into a hole in the ground, so—in the spirit of Tintin, with whom they were probably familiar—the boys made the…

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We are running out of unpolluted air

We are running out of unpolluted air

The Atlantic reports: Officials have implored the people of New Delhi to stay inside, indefinitely. Five million children in India’s capital have been handed face masks. Everyone is to keep windows closed. Contrary to the most fundamental medical advice, the city’s chief minister urged residents this week to “avoid outdoor physical activities.” News images seem cut from an apocalyptic outbreak film. One of India’s holiest rivers is covered in toxic foam that looks like white cotton candy. Midday visibility is…

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Brazil ignores dire climate impact in holding oil auction

Brazil ignores dire climate impact in holding oil auction

Reuters reports: Brazil is overlooking potentially dire climate change consequences by moving ahead with its biggest auction ever of oil exploration blocs that could release millions of tonnes of carbon emissions, according to environmental activists. The country’s oil regulator ANP estimates that the blocs up for sale on Wednesday in the offshore pre-salt oil area could contain up to 15 billion barrels of oil. Consuming that oil would release up to 8.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the standard…

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Following Rand Paul’s request, Russian media are naming Ukraine whistleblower

Following Rand Paul’s request, Russian media are naming Ukraine whistleblower

Julia Davis reports: Standing beside an approving Donald Trump at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded the media unmask the whistleblower whose report about the president’s alleged abuse of power dealing with Ukraine sparked impeachment proceedings. American news organizations resisted the pressure, but—in a 2019 re-play of “Russia, if you’re listening”—Kremlin-controlled state media promptly jumped on it. Shortly after Sen. Paul tweeted out an article that speculated in considerable detail about the identity of…

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Intel officials want CIA director to protect Ukraine whistleblower from Trump

Intel officials want CIA director to protect Ukraine whistleblower from Trump

NBC News reports: As President Donald Trump and his allies continue to denounce the CIA whistleblower whose complaint led to an impeachment investigation, pressure is building on the spy agency’s director, Gina Haspel, to take a stand on the matter, current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News. “It will be incumbent on her to protect the whistleblower — and by extension, the organization — moving forward,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a recently retired CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and…

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How Mike Pence’s office meddled in foreign aid to direct money to favored Christian groups

How Mike Pence’s office meddled in foreign aid to direct money to favored Christian groups

ProPublica reports: Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups. “Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve…

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Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics

Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia by digging into the accounts of kingdom critics

The Washington Post reports: The Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia in a case that raises concerns about the ability of Silicon Valley to protect the private information of dissidents and other users from repressive governments. The charges, unveiled Wednesday in San Francisco, came a day after the arrest of one of the former Twitter employees, Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen who is alleged to have spied on the accounts of three users…

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Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

The Guardian reports: The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. “We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.” There is no time to lose,…

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How Donald Trump betrayed America

How Donald Trump betrayed America

Rep. Adam Schiff writes: A little over one month has passed since the White House released the record of President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Americans read for themselves how President Zelensky sought more weapons critical to Ukraine’s defense, and how President Trump responded: “I would like you to do us a favor though” and laid bare his abuse of the power of the presidency. From the call record alone, we have stark evidence…

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