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With Ratcliffe, another Trump nominee withdraws with a damaged reputation

With Ratcliffe, another Trump nominee withdraws with a damaged reputation

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Michael Warren writes: Five of the worst words to hear in Washington these days: “The President has nominated you…” Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump’s short-lived nominee for director of national intelligence, is the latest would-be official to get the bad news. Up until he was tapped for the country’s top intelligence job on July 28, Ratcliffe was practically unknown around Washington. Five days later, after Trump announced on Twitter that he had withdrawn from consideration, Ratcliffe has a…

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U.S. preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in initial deal with Taliban

U.S. preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in initial deal with Taliban

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war, U.S. officials say. The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between…

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Can the president of Brazil jail Glenn Greenwald for publishing leaks?

Can the president of Brazil jail Glenn Greenwald for publishing leaks?

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Adriana Carranca writes: On June 9, The Intercept began publishing a series of investigative stories that sent shocks through Brazil. The pieces appeared to supply evidence that Sergio Moro, Brazil’s Justice Minister and the former top judge in a major corruption investigation, colluded with federal prosecutors to convict prominent political figures—among them, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had been leading 2018 election polls and was rendered ineligible to run. Drawing from private chats leaked to Glenn Greenwald—the Intercept’s…

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Metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes

Metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes

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James Hamblin writes: The relationship between microbes and weight gain has long been overlooked in humans, but people have known about similar effects in animals for decades. After World War II, antibiotics became affordable and abundant for the first time. Farmers began giving the drugs to their livestock—for example, to treat a milk cow’s infected udder—and noticed that animals who got antibiotics grew larger and more quickly. This led to a flood of patent applications for antibiotic-laden foods for all…

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The conservative nationalists’ contempt for America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character

The conservative nationalists’ contempt for America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character

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Will Wilkinson writes: The Republican Party under Donald Trump has devolved into a populist cult of personality. But Mr. Trump won’t be president forever. Can the cult persist without its personality? Does Trumpist nationalism contain a kernel of coherent ideology that can outlast the Trump presidency? At a recent conference in Washington, a group of conservatives did their level best to promote Trumpism without Trump (rebranded as “national conservatism”) as a cure for all that ails our frayed and faltering…

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U.S. ends Cold War missile treaty, with aim of countering China

U.S. ends Cold War missile treaty, with aim of countering China

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The New York Times reports: The United States on Friday terminates a major treaty of the Cold War, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, and it is already planning to start testing a new class of missiles later this summer. But the new missiles are unlikely to be deployed to counter the treaty’s other nuclear power, Russia, which the United States has said for years was in violation of the accord. Instead, the first deployments are likely to be intended to…

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The world has turned its back on the carnage of Idlib

The world has turned its back on the carnage of Idlib

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Kareem Shaheen writes: Close to half a million people in Syria have been displaced from their homes in the past three months, refugees in the making, who would have sought safety with their neighbours across the border if the doors hadn’t been shut in their faces. Let that number sink in for a moment. Half a million rendered homeless, running for their lives. They fled rebel-held areas in the provinces of Idlib and Hama between April and July, trying to…

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Irish unity is now being championed by moderate politicians

Irish unity is now being championed by moderate politicians

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Finn McRedmond writes: In March this year at a St Patrick’s Day parade, Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Féin in the Republic of Ireland, marched behind a banner that read “England get out of Ireland”. The stunt garnered widespread criticism. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s deputy, Simon Coveney, didn’t mince his words when he called it “offensive, divisive and an embarrassment”. This incident was symptomatic of a party that has misread the room. Growing support for a united Ireland is clear:…

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How ‘dark patterns’ online manipulate shoppers

How ‘dark patterns’ online manipulate shoppers

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Sidney Fussell reports: Dark patterns are the often unseen web-design choices that trick users into handing over more time, money, or attention than they realize. A team of Princeton researchers is cataloging these deceptive techniques, using data pulled from 11,000 shopping sites, to identify 15 ways sites subtly game our cognition to control us. The research builds on the work of Harry Brignull, a London-based cognitive scientist who coined the term dark pattern in 2010, and the authors Richard Thaler…

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Most detailed ever 3D map of Milky Way shows ‘warped’ shape

Most detailed ever 3D map of Milky Way shows ‘warped’ shape

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The Guardian reports: The most detailed three-dimensional map yet of the Milky Way has been revealed, showing that our galaxy is not a flat disc but has a “warped” shape like a fascinator hat or a vinyl record that has been left in the sun. “The stars 60,000 light years away from the Milky Way’s centre are as far as 4,500 [light years] above or below the galactic plane – this is a big percentage,” said Dr Dorota Skowron of…

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July was the hottest month in human history — and our addiction to fossil fuels is only getting worse

July was the hottest month in human history — and our addiction to fossil fuels is only getting worse

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Eric Holthaus writes: July 2019 is now the hottest month in recorded history, the U.N. confirmed on Thursday. At a press conference in New York, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres announced that the month of July had reached 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a figure that “at least equaled if not surpassed the hottest month in recorded history,” according to data released by the World Meteorological Organization. Temperature information from July is still streaming in, but preliminary data show…

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BlackRock lost $90bn investing in fossil fuel companies, report finds

BlackRock lost $90bn investing in fossil fuel companies, report finds

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The Guardian reports: BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has lost an estimated $90bn over the last decade by ignoring the serious financial risk of investing in fossil fuel companies, according to economists. A report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found that BlackRock has eroded the value of its $6.5tn funds by betting on oil companies that were falling in value and by missing out on growth in clean energy investments. The report found that…

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How climate change could trigger the next global financial crisis

How climate change could trigger the next global financial crisis

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Robinson Meyer writes: A few years ago, Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs director who now leads the Bank of England, sounded a warning. Global warming, he said, could send the world economy spiraling into another 2008-like crisis. He called for central banks to act aggressively and immediately to reduce the risk of climate-related catastrophe, taking the warming planet as seriously as they would a cooling economy. Adam Tooze, a history professor at Columbia University, knows quite a bit about…

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Audiences are (finally) paying more attention to climate stories

Audiences are (finally) paying more attention to climate stories

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Andrew McCormick writes: For years, conventional wisdom has held that climate coverage is not especially good for business. The story always seemed too abstract, or too technical, to command attention. “It was pathetic,” David Gelber, who for decades was a producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes, says, reflecting on the consistent absence of environmental reporting in mainstream outlets. “It baffles me. This is such a dramatic story. When they write the history of journalism, this is going to be a very…

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