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Russia challenges Trump’s claims about Russian involvement during Baghdadi raid

Russia challenges Trump’s claims about Russian involvement during Baghdadi raid

Julia Davis reports: At the White House Sunday morning, President Trump profusely thanked Russia for its alleged involvement in the killing of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Trump said: “[The Russians] were very cooperative, they really were good… Russia treated us great. They opened up, we had to fly over certain Russia areas, Russia-held areas. Russia was great.” Russia didn’t seem to see it the same way. The Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, refuted President Trump’s…

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‘Blood for oil’ is official U.S. policy under Trump

‘Blood for oil’ is official U.S. policy under Trump

Adam Weinstein writes: In between playing five hours of golf on Saturday and getting booed at a baseball game on Sunday, President Donald Trump caught up on his other favorite sport: playing military. American service members in Syria cornered and killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the titular leader of ISIS, as Trump spectated; the following morning, in advance of the Sunday talk shows, he gave a triumphant press conference about the operation. Skeptical reporters came away from Trump’s endzone dance with…

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Employee dissent erupts at Facebook over Zuckerberg’s hands-off stance on political ads

Employee dissent erupts at Facebook over Zuckerberg’s hands-off stance on political ads

The New York Times reports: The letter was aimed at Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his top lieutenants. It decried the social network’s recent decision to let politicians post any claims they wanted — even false ones — in ads on the site. It asked Facebook’s leaders to rethink the stance. The message was written by Facebook’s own employees. Facebook’s position on political advertising is “a threat to what FB stands for,” the employees wrote in the letter, which…

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The devastating environmental impact of technological progress

The devastating environmental impact of technological progress

Wired reports: For decades, David Maisel has been photographing places where humans are changing the environment so dramatically that the impact can be seen from the sky. For his latest project, Desolation Desert, the San Francisco-based visual artist spent two weeks in and around South America’s Atacama desert, where humankind’s insatiable demand for copper, lithium and rare-earth metals to fuel the consumer electronics and electric vehicle industries is reshaping the landscape of a fragile ecosystem. The Atacama, in northern Chile,…

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Stanford study casts doubt on carbon capture

Stanford study casts doubt on carbon capture

Stanford News Service reports: One proposed method for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere – and reducing the risk of climate change – is to capture carbon from the air or prevent it from getting there in the first place. However, research from Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford University, published in Energy and Environmental Science, suggests that carbon capture technologies can cause more harm than good. “All sorts of scenarios have been developed under the assumption that carbon…

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Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria disrupted carefully planned Baghdadi raid

Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria disrupted carefully planned Baghdadi raid

The New York Times reports: The surprising information about the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s general location — in a village deep inside a part of northwestern Syria controlled by rival Qaeda groups — came following the arrest and interrogation of one of Mr. al-Baghdadi’s wives and a courier this past summer, two American officials said. Armed with that initial tip, the C.I.A. worked closely with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials in Iraq and Syria to identify Mr. al-Baghdadi’s…

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Trump notified Russians of Baghdadi raid before telling congressional leaders

Trump notified Russians of Baghdadi raid before telling congressional leaders

The Washington Post reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday called on the White House to brief lawmakers on the raid that targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, noting that President Trump had informed the Russians of the military operation before telling congressional leadership. The statement from Pelosi (D-Calif.) came after Trump told reporters at a lengthy news conference that he did not inform the House speaker of the raid because he “wanted to make sure this kept secret.” U.S. presidents typically…

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Trust is becoming the principal casualty of Britain’s raging political war

Trust is becoming the principal casualty of Britain’s raging political war

Nick Cohen writes: Britain is in a revolutionary crisis. Its economy, constitution, place in the international order and sense of who it is and what it can become will be battlefields at the next election. The high stakes alone will ensure that a red mist descends. To heighten the rage, the wilful failure of the Conservative government to prevent the corruptions of the electoral process brought by the age of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will sharpen every grievance. Put…

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How Elizabeth Warren went from wonky blogger to Democratic frontrunner

How Elizabeth Warren went from wonky blogger to Democratic frontrunner

Sam Stein writes: A 70-year-old, twice-elected Senator from Massachusetts might not sound like the biography of a transformative presidential candidate. But Elizabeth Warren is not your traditional White House aspirant, and her ascension in the Democratic primary represents, for better or worse, a tectonic shift within the Democratic Party. Those who have run for the party’s nomination in the past have largely hailed from one of two perches: insurgents or establishment types. Warren’s candidacy is a synthesis of the two….

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Online shopping brings gridlock to New York City streets

Online shopping brings gridlock to New York City streets

The New York Times reports: An Amazon order starts with a tap of a finger. Two days later — or even in a matter of hours — the package arrives. It seems simple enough. But to deliver Amazon orders and countless others from businesses that sell over the internet, the very fabric of major urban areas around the world is being transformed. And New York City, where more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, shows the impact that this…

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Pope Francis, the revolutionary, takes on the traditionalists

Pope Francis, the revolutionary, takes on the traditionalists

Rachel Donadio writes: Pope Francis has helped open the door to allowing married men to become priests, albeit in just one region of the Amazon for now. He has made environmentalism a major focus of his papacy. Yesterday he gave a shout-out to Greta Thunberg and thanked journalists for doing their jobs, rather than calling them enemies of the people. He’s decried income inequality and nationalism and spoken out on behalf of gay people, Muslims, immigrants, and the poor. This…

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The meaning to life? A Darwinian existentialist has his answers

The meaning to life? A Darwinian existentialist has his answers

By Michael Ruse I was raised as a Quaker, but around the age of 20 my faith faded. It would be easiest to say that this was because I took up philosophy – my lifelong occupation as a teacher and scholar. This is not true. More accurately, I joke that having had one headmaster in this life, I’ll be damned if I want another in the next. I was convinced back then that, by the age of 70, I would…

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About 41% of the global population are under 24 — and they’re angry

About 41% of the global population are under 24 — and they’re angry

Simon Tisdall writes: A spate of large-scale street protests around the world, from Chile and Hong Kong to Lebanon and Barcelona, is fuelling a search for common denominators and collective causes. Are we entering a new age of global revolution? Or is it foolish to try to link anger in India over the price of onions to pro-democracy demonstrations in Russia? Each country’s protests differ in detail. But recent upheavals do appear to share one key factor: youth. In most…

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A new era of global unrest

A new era of global unrest

Max Fisher and Amanda Taub write: It’s not your imagination, and the last few months are not an outlier: Mass protests are on the rise globally. They’ve been growing more common, year over year, since the end of World War II, now reaching an unprecedented level of frequency. And if it might seem difficult to find a common thread — anti-corruption rallies in Lebanon, separatist demonstrations in Spain, pro-democracy marches in Hong Kong, protests against inequality in Chile and over…

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