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Trump ignores intelligence and continues peddling disinformation

Trump ignores intelligence and continues peddling disinformation

Politico reports: [During a nearly hour-long interview] Trump repeated his claims, which had been debunked less than 24 hours earlier by no less than his former top Russia adviser, that Ukraine is harboring the servers of the Democratic National Committee that the FBI determined had been hacked by Russia in the lead-up to the 2016 election. “It is very interesting, it is very interesting, they have the server, right? From the DNC,” Trump said. “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade…

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In Iran, ‘rage is escalating’ as economic stress reaches new level

In Iran, ‘rage is escalating’ as economic stress reaches new level

The Washington Post reports: A sudden move to raise fuel prices in Iran has sparked nationwide protests over the past week and, in turn, drawn a fierce crackdown by security forces, marking some of the worst violence in the country in years. Scores have been reported killed. The protests have flared in many of the same areas that experienced unrest two years ago, when demonstrators protested a similar proposal to slash state subsidies. Then, as now, lower-income Iranians rose up…

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The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity

The collapse of the information ecosystem poses profound risks for humanity

Lydia Polgreen writes: For the last few years, scientists have argued that we’re living through a distinctly new geological age. They call it the Anthropocene: a new age characterized by humanity’s profound impact on Earth itself as evidenced by pollution, mass extinction and climate change. We are currently facing a new systemic collapse, one that has built far more swiftly but poses potent risks for all of humanity: the collapse of the information ecosystem. We see it play out every…

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First Amendment rights prevent bigoted professor being fired, but university says no student need attend his classes

First Amendment rights prevent bigoted professor being fired, but university says no student need attend his classes

CNN reports: Indiana University has received hundreds of requests calling for a controversial professor to be fired, and a provost has called his views “racist, sexist and homophobic.” But the school says that, while the professor does not represent its values, he is protected by the First Amendment. Eric Rasmusen is a professor of business economics and public policy at Indiana University, where he’s been teaching since 1992. He recently came under fire after he tweeted an article from Unz.com…

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Fiona Hill shreds the Republicans’ false narrative about Ukraine

Fiona Hill shreds the Republicans’ false narrative about Ukraine

  A Washington Post editorial says: A pillar of the Republican defense of President Trump during the impeachment inquiry has been that he had good reason to believe that Ukraine intervened against him during the 2016 presidential election — and that he therefore was justified in demanding that the new Ukrainian government investigate. That made the testimony Thursday of Fiona Hill, who served Mr. Trump as the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia for more than two…

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Netanyahu to stand trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust

Netanyahu to stand trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust

The Times of Israel reports: In a decision that drastically shakes up Israeli politics amid already ongoing chaos, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be charged with criminal wrongdoing in three separate cases against him, including bribery in the far-reaching Bezeq corruption probe. The decision marks the first time in Israel’s history that a serving prime minister faces criminal charges, casting a heavy shadow over Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and his ongoing attempts…

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Former Fox News executive divides Americans using Russian tactics

Former Fox News executive divides Americans using Russian tactics

The New York Times reports: At first glance, the websites Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News have only one thing in common: Both have been carefully curated to inflame America’s culture wars. Conservative Edition News is a repository of stories guaranteed to infuriate the American right. Its recent headlines include “Austin sex-ed curriculum teaches kids how to obtain an abortion” and “HuffPost writer considers Christianity ‘dangerous.’” On Liberal Edition News, readers are fed a steady diet of content guaranteed…

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Secret Service spent $254,000 at Trump’s properties in first five months of his term

Secret Service spent $254,000 at Trump’s properties in first five months of his term

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. Secret Service paid more than $250,000 to President Trump’s private businesses in just the first five months of his presidency — paying Trump’s company an average of nearly $2,000 per day, according to Secret Service records. Those records, obtained by the group Property of the People after an open-records lawsuit, detail some of the revenue that Trump derives from U.S. taxpayers. The president has set up an extraordinary arrangement: He kept ownership of his…

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The real story behind the Steele dossier

The real story behind the Steele dossier

Peter Nicholas writes: For a reporter, it’s a heart-stopping moment. You’re in an interview and suddenly a source offers up something you never expected anyone to unearth: video evidence of the president’s perverse pleasures. “You were going to ask about the pee tape?” Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, which commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, asks me. “We’re going to screen it for you right now.” He motions to a TV on the wall of his…

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San Francisco’s quest to make landfills obsolete

San Francisco’s quest to make landfills obsolete

Politico reports: The U.S. produces more than 250 million tons of waste per year—30 percent of the world’s waste, though it makes up only 4 percent of the Earth’s population. Sixty-five percent of that waste ends up in landfills or incinerators. Appalled by floating trash zones like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch off California, the public says it wants to stop plastics from polluting the oceans. People say they don’t want to burn garbage if it creates toxic air pollutants,…

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The scammy world of DNA test startups

The scammy world of DNA test startups

Futurism reports: In the spring of 2017, a college student named Mary spit into a tube and sent it to the DNA testing company Ancestry, which analyzed it and sent back a breakdown of her family history. But Mary wanted to know more. The human genome contains, in theory, an extraordinary wealth of pre-programmed information about who we are and who we might become: whether she was at risk for the same types of cancer that killed her parents, for…

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The climate science is clear: it’s now or never to avert catastrophe

The climate science is clear: it’s now or never to avert catastrophe

Bill McKibben writes: The one thing never to forget about global warming is that it’s a timed test. It’s ignoble and dangerous to delay progress on any important issue, of course – if, in 2020, America continues to ignore the healthcare needs of many of its citizens, those people will sicken, die, go bankrupt. The damage will be very real. But that damage won’t make it harder, come 2021 or 2025 or 2030, to do the right thing about healthcare….

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The planet is burning

The planet is burning

Stephen J Pyne writes: From the Arctic to the Amazon, from California to Gran Canaria, from Borneo to India to Angola to Australia – the fires seem everywhere. Their smoke obscures subcontinents by day; their lights dapple continents at night, like a Milky Way of flame-stars. Rather than catalogue what is burning, one might more aptly ask: what isn’t? Where flames are not visible, the lights of cities and of gas flares are: combustion via the transubstantiation of coal and…

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World’s current fossil fuel plans will shatter Paris climate limits, UN warns

World’s current fossil fuel plans will shatter Paris climate limits, UN warns

Inside Climate News reports: The world’s top fossil fuel-producing nations are on track to extract enough oil, gas and coal to send global temperatures soaring past the goals of the Paris climate agreement, according to a United Nations report published Wednesday. If countries follow through on their current plans, they will produce about 50 percent more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be compatible with the international goal of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, the report said. They…

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