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Trump gives Netanyahu part of Syria to boost Israeli leader’s flagging reelection campaign

Trump gives Netanyahu part of Syria to boost Israeli leader’s flagging reelection campaign

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Robert Mackey writes: With a tweet posted on Thursday, President Donald Trump dismissed five decades of international consensus on the status of the Golan Heights, Syrian territory seized by Israel in 1967 during a preemptive war, declaring that the United States would recognize Israel’s annexation of the region. Offered without explanation, the move looked to many Israeli, Palestinian and American observers like a transparent attempt to boost the reelection prospects of Trump’s embattled ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces…

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James Comey: What I want from the Mueller report

James Comey: What I want from the Mueller report

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James Comey writes: The country is eagerly awaiting the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Many people know what they want it to say — what they feel it simply must say — namely, that Donald Trump is a criminal who should be removed from office. Or that he is completely innocent of all wrongdoing. But not everyone knows what it “must” say. Even though I believe Mr. Trump is morally unfit to be president of the United States, I’m not…

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A new age of warfare: How Internet mercenaries do battle for authoritarian governments

A new age of warfare: How Internet mercenaries do battle for authoritarian governments

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The New York Times reports: The man in charge of Saudi Arabia’s ruthless campaign to stifle dissent went searching for ways to spy on people he saw as threats to the kingdom. He knew where to go: a secretive Israeli company offering technology developed by former intelligence operatives. It was late 2017 and Saud al-Qahtani — then a top adviser to Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince — was tracking Saudi dissidents around the world, part of his extensive surveillance efforts…

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Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump use private accounts for official business, their lawyer says

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump use private accounts for official business, their lawyer says

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The New York Times reports: The chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee revealed information on Thursday that he said showed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner used private messaging services for official White House business in a way that may have violated federal records laws. The chairman, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, said that a lawyer for Ms. Trump, President Trump’s daughter, and Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, told the committee late last year that…

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Teens have less face time with their friends – and are lonelier than ever

Teens have less face time with their friends – and are lonelier than ever

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Teens aren’t necessarily less social, but the contours of their social lives have changed. pxhere By Jean Twenge, San Diego State University Ask a teen today how she communicates with her friends, and she’ll probably hold up her smartphone. Not that she actually calls her friends; it’s more likely that she texts them or messages them on social media. Today’s teens – the generation I call “iGen” that’s also called Gen Z – are constantly connected with their friends via…

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Pro-social religions didn’t kick-start complex social systems

Pro-social religions didn’t kick-start complex social systems

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Scientific American reports: About 12,000 years ago human societies went big; tribes and villages grew into vast cities, kingdoms and empires within just a few millennia. For such large and complex societies to take root, people needed to maintain social cohesion and cooperation, even among complete strangers. What enabled this, many researchers have argued, was religion. Such a religion, the idea goes, would work particularly well if it established standards of morality and behavior—and enforced them with the threat of…

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The EU should not ignore the voices of Britain’s Europeans

The EU should not ignore the voices of Britain’s Europeans

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Timothy Garton Ash writes: Hundreds of thousands of us will be on the streets of London this Saturday, as some 700,000 of us were last October, demonstrating that we are not merely Europeans, but Europeans strongly in favour of the EU. Last autumn’s People’s Vote march was already the biggest pro-European demonstration in recent European history. Will European leaders simply ignore us? Next to individual citizens there are the peoples of these islands. Britain is a nation comprised of three…

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‘Reduced consumption is going to have to be a part of the equation’ for climate action, J.P. Morgan executive warns

‘Reduced consumption is going to have to be a part of the equation’ for climate action, J.P. Morgan executive warns

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Bloomberg reports: The world isn’t cutting carbon emissions anywhere near quickly enough, a senior executive at J.P. Morgan Asset Management told clients this week — and changing that will require far harder choices than most people realize. In his annual “Energy Outlook” report, Michael Cembalest, chairman of market investment and strategy for the asset management group, wrote that the U.S. needs to reduce its use of carbon much faster — a view he shares with the authors of the Green…

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Federal judge demands Trump administration reveal how its drilling plans will fuel climate change

Federal judge demands Trump administration reveal how its drilling plans will fuel climate change

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The Washington Post reports: A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing in the West. The decision by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington could force the Trump administration to account for the full climate impact of its energy-dominance agenda, and it could signal trouble for the president’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded…

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How social media’s business model helped the New Zealand massacre go viral

How social media’s business model helped the New Zealand massacre go viral

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The Washington Post reports: The ability of Internet users to spread a video of Friday’s slaughter in New Zealand marked a triumph — however appalling — of human ingenuity over computerized systems designed to block troubling images of violence and hate. People celebrating the mosque attacks that left 50 people dead were able to keep posting and reposting videos on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter despite the websites’ use of largely automated systems powered by artificial intelligence to block them. Clips…

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The rise of farming altered our bite and changed how people talk

The rise of farming altered our bite and changed how people talk

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Science News reports: Humankind’s gift of gab is not set in stone, and farming could help to explain why. Over the last 6,000 years or so, farming societies increasingly have substituted processed dairy and grain products for tougher-to-chew game meat and wild plants common in hunter-gatherer diets. Switching to those diets of softer, processed foods altered people’s jaw structure over time, rendering certain sounds like “f” and “v” easier to utter, and changing languages worldwide, scientists contend. People who regularly…

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Descartes was wrong. ‘A person is a person through other persons’

Descartes was wrong. ‘A person is a person through other persons’

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By Abeba Birhane According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without ‘ena’, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the ‘self’/‘other’ distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it in African Religions and Philosophy (1975): ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.’…

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Protecting indigenous lands protects the environment. Trump and Bolsonaro threaten both

Protecting indigenous lands protects the environment. Trump and Bolsonaro threaten both

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Deb Haaland and Joênia Wapichana write: On Tuesday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will meet with President Trump at the White House. Both administrations are pushing a host of policies that are detrimental to the rights of indigenous people. As two of the first female indigenous members of Congress in the United States and Brazil, respectively, we are concerned about these policies and the mounting threats facing our communities. We must stand up against toxic rhetoric and brutal attacks on the…

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