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June was hottest ever recorded on Earth, European satellite agency announces

June was hottest ever recorded on Earth, European satellite agency announces

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The Independent reports: Last month was the hottest June ever recorded, the EU’s satellite agency has announced. Data provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the EU, showed that the global-average temperature for June 2019 was the highest on record for the month. The data showed European-average ​temperatures for June 2019 were more than 2C above normal and temperatures were 6-10C above normal over most of France,…

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Trump raises $105 million, much of it in small donations

Trump raises $105 million, much of it in small donations

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The New York Times reports: President Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee on Tuesday said they had raised $105 million in the second quarter of this year, outraising President Barack Obama in the equivalent period during his re-election campaign in 2012 and signaling that Mr. Trump will have vastly more resources than he did in 2016. The campaign and the R.N.C. said they had a combined $100 million in cash on hand, and that they had raised more…

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As lawmakers describe living conditions unfit for humans at Border Patrol facilities, Trump supporters hurl insults

As lawmakers describe living conditions unfit for humans at Border Patrol facilities, Trump supporters hurl insults

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These are concentration camps. According to concentration camp experts, people begin to die due to overcrowding, neglect, and shortage of resources. We saw all three of those signs on our trip yesterday. Another person died yesterday. And those are the deaths we know about. https://t.co/MhujNAYohJ — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 2, 2019 The New York Times reports: [Representative Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet that Customs and Border Protection “did a lot of ‘cleaning up’ before we arrived.” She said…

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John Bolton’s banishment

John Bolton’s banishment

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Fred Kaplan writes: Hats off to whoever thought of sending John Bolton to Mongolia while President Donald Trump flew to the G-20 in Japan and met shortly after with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. If the dispatcher is as witty as I think he or she might be, it’s a clear sign that Bolton’s days as national security adviser are numbered. Surely Bolton, who knows history, gets the reference. He no doubt recalls that, in 1957, as part of his…

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China forces tourists to install text-stealing malware at its border

China forces tourists to install text-stealing malware at its border

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Motherboard reports: Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found. The Android malware, which…

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The power of seeing what is not there

The power of seeing what is not there

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In a review of Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s, Out of Our Minds: A History of What We Think and How We Think, Philip Marsden writes: Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if we are going to live the lives of human beings’. Coleridge described its role a little more vigorously: ‘The living Power and prime Agent of all human perception… a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal…

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‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed

‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed

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The Guardian reports: The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic. The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline….

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Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 U.S. election polls

Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 U.S. election polls

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Trump’s poll numbers went up after high levels of Russian troll activity, though Clinton’s didn’t go down. AP/Mary Altaffer, Chuck Burton By Damian Ruck, University of Bristol When Robert Mueller completed his long-awaited investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, he left many questions unanswered. But one conclusion was unequivocal: Russia unleashed an extensive campaign of fake news and disinformation on social media with the aim of distorting U.S. public opinion, sowing discord and swinging the election in…

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Trump allies promote ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory to undermine Mueller investigation

Trump allies promote ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory to undermine Mueller investigation

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The Washington Post reports: Shortly after Joseph Mifsud’s efforts to help connect a Trump adviser with the Kremlin were detailed in court filings, an Italian reporter found him at a university in Rome, where he was serving as a visiting professor. “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear,” Mifsud told La Repubblica. “I am not a secret agent.” Then Mifsud disappeared. The Maltese-born academic has not surfaced publicly since that October 2017 interview, days after…

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The Republican Party’s ongoing effort to cripple democracy

The Republican Party’s ongoing effort to cripple democracy

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Michael Tomasky writes: A number of observers, myself included, have written pieces in recent years arguing that the Republican Party is no longer simply trying to compete with and defeat the Democratic Party on a level playing field. Today, rather than simply playing the game, the Republicans are simultaneously trying to rig the game’s rules so that they never lose. The aggressive gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court just declared to be a matter beyond its purview; the voter suppression schemes;…

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In secret Border Patrol Facebook group, agents joke about migrant deaths and post sexist memes

In secret Border Patrol Facebook group, agents joke about migrant deaths and post sexist memes

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ProPublica reports: Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings. In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old…

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In new talks, U.S. may seek nuclear freeze by North Korea, according to someone

In new talks, U.S. may seek nuclear freeze by North Korea, according to someone

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The New York Times reports: From a seemingly fanciful tweet to a historic step into North Korean territory, President Trump’s largely improvised third meeting on Sunday with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, was a masterpiece of drama, the kind of made-for-TV spectacle that Mr. Trump treasures. But for weeks before the meeting, which started as a Twitter offer by the president for Mr. Kim to drop by at the Demilitarized Zone and “say hello,” a real idea has been…

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San Francisco: City of the rich and the destitute

San Francisco: City of the rich and the destitute

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Julia Carrie Wong writes: The tale of how tech destroyed the city that gave us the Summer of Love has been told so many times that in 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle produced a satirical cheat sheet for out-of-town reporters parachuting in for taste of avocado toast and class warfare. (Amid a bumper crop of new elegies to San Francisco in recent months, web publication HmmDaily updated the form with an “AI Algorithm-generated” version.) But what’s striking about the current…

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Trump’s dictator envy isn’t funny anymore

Trump’s dictator envy isn’t funny anymore

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Fred Kaplan writes: It is tempting to chortle over the string of inanities that President Donald Trump unfurled at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, this weekend. Asked about the status of “Western liberalism,” which Russian President Vladimir Putin had just pronounced dead in an interview with the Financial Times, Trump ranted about liberal Democrats in California, apparently thinking that’s what the term was referring to. Asked for his views about bussing, which had been a hot topic at the…

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