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Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

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The New York Times reports: Climate change creates winners and losers. Norway is among the winners; Nigeria among the losers. Those are the stark findings of a peer-reviewed paper by two Stanford University professors who have tried to quantify the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions on global inequality. It was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Global temperatures have risen nearly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the industrial age,…

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Sri Lanka’s pain is going to spread

Sri Lanka’s pain is going to spread

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Mihir Sharma writes: In Sri Lanka, memories of war and terrorism are very much alive. The decades-long civil war between the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was brutal by any standards, and it ended a decade ago with a climactic battle near the Indian Ocean that took thousands of civilian lives. But Sri Lanka, beautiful and multicultural, has never had just the one fault line. On Easter morning, when hundreds of Christians and hotel…

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How Stephen Miller made immigration personal

How Stephen Miller made immigration personal

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Politico reports: In the summer of 2017, a group of White House aides were in Paris, enjoying some rare downtime during Donald Trump’s first trip to France as president. As the Trump officials soaked up a July evening along the banks of the Seine, one stepped away to take a phone call from the U.S. It was Stephen Miller, the president’s then-31-year-old chief policy adviser, speechwriter and hard-line immigration policy advocate. As the other officials looked on, Miller spent several…

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Mueller makes it clear: Trump was worse than a ‘useful idiot’

Mueller makes it clear: Trump was worse than a ‘useful idiot’

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Garrett M Graff writes: Back in January, approximately 1,000 Robert Mueller news cycles ago, I argued that given the arc of the special counsel Russia probe, it’d be embarrassing for Donald Trump if he weren’t an agent of the Russian intelligence: “We’ve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left,” I wrote at the time. “Either the president is compromised by the Russian government and has been working covertly to cooperate with Vladimir Putin…

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Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich

Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich

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The Washington Post reports: One of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, home to the next generation of Fortune 500 executives, was a class on “reimagining capitalism.” Seven years ago, the elective started with 28 students. Now there were nearly 300 taking it. During that period the students had grown increasingly cynical about corporations and the government, said Rebecca Henderson, the Harvard economist who teaches the course. “What the trust surveys say is what I see,” she said….

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Our zero-emission future

Our zero-emission future

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Jeffrey D. Sachs writes: The solution to human-induced climate change is finally in clear view. Thanks to rapid advances in zero-carbon energy technologies, and in sustainable food systems, the world can realistically end greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century at little or no incremental cost, and with decisive benefits for safety and health. The main obstacle is inertia: politicians continue to favor the fossil-fuel industry and traditional agriculture mainly because they don’t know better or are on the take. Most global warming,…

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Time to talk about impeachment

Time to talk about impeachment

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Laurence Tribe writes: Despite Attorney General William Barr’s assurances and President Donald Trump’s boasts, the Mueller report doesn’t come close to exonerating the president of wrongdoing. Instead, it invites Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings. It’s time for Congress to heed that invitation. In its extensive discussion of the constitutional issues implicated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation, the report asserts that Congress has the authority to apply law “to all persons – including the President.” Specifically, Congress may “protect…

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How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump

How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump

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The New York Times reports: Michael D. Cohen was at a breaking point. He told friends he was suicidal. He insisted to lawyers he would never go to jail. Most of all, he feared that President Trump, his longtime boss, had forsaken him. “Basically he needs a little loving and respect booster,” one of Mr. Cohen’s legal advisers at the time, Robert J. Costello, wrote in a text message to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer. “He is not…

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2014 comet may be first known interstellar visitor to have come close to Earth

2014 comet may be first known interstellar visitor to have come close to Earth

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Science News reports: Earth may already have been visited by an object from outside our solar system — a meteor that burned up in the planet’s atmosphere in 2014, astronomers claim. If confirmed, it would be the first known interstellar object to have entered the atmosphere. The first interstellar visitor known to have come close to Earth was the roughly 400-meter-wide asteroid named ‘Oumuamua.’ It swooped within about 24 million kilometers of the planet in October 2017. Its sharp-angled approach…

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Open to the unexpected: Why jazz musicians are more creative than classical musicians

Open to the unexpected: Why jazz musicians are more creative than classical musicians

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PsyPost reports: Scientists at Wesleyan University have used electroencephalography to uncover differences in how the brains of Classical and Jazz musicians react to an unexpected chord progression. Their new study, published in the journal Brain and Cognition, sheds new light on the nature of the creative process. “I have been a classical musician for many years, and have always been inspired by the great jazz masters who can improvise beautiful performances on the spot,” explained study author Psyche Loui. “Whenever…

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The Mueller report demands an impeachment inquiry

The Mueller report demands an impeachment inquiry

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Susan Hennessey and Quinta Jurecic write: Here is, as Bill Barr might call it, “the bottom line”: The Mueller Report describes, in excruciating detail and with relatively few redactions, a candidate and a campaign aware of the existence of a plot by a hostile foreign government to criminally interfere in the U.S. election for the purpose of supporting that candidate’s side. It describes a candidate and a campaign who welcomed the efforts and delighted in the assistance. It describes a…

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Questions about Trump’s ties to Russia that the Mueller report does not answer

Questions about Trump’s ties to Russia that the Mueller report does not answer

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Anne Applebaum writes: There is a lot inside the Mueller report, and it will all take many weeks to digest. But two things remain unexplained. One is the question of messaging. Why was Trump, all through the latter part of the 2016 campaign, repeating and using slogans that were conceived on Russian state media? Obama “founded ISIS” and Hillary Clinton will cause World War III : These were slogans first used by Sputnik and other Russian sources. We still don’t…

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Flight attendants know the real job killer isn’t the Green New Deal. It’s climate change

Flight attendants know the real job killer isn’t the Green New Deal. It’s climate change

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Sara Nelson writes: “Pretty much everyone on the plane threw up” is not a sentence most travelers want to hear. But that’s a direct quote from the pilots’ report after United Express Flight 3833 operated by Air Wisconsin hit extreme turbulence on approach to Washington, DC, in 2018. Extreme turbulence is on the rise around the world. It isn’t just nauseating or scary — it’s dangerous. In June 2017, nine passengers and a crew member were hospitalized after extreme turbulence…

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Lyra McKee killing: ‘new breed of terrorism’ in Northern Ireland, say police

Lyra McKee killing: ‘new breed of terrorism’ in Northern Ireland, say police

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The Guardian reports: A new breed of terrorist is coming through the ranks in Northern Ireland, the detective leading the hunt for Lyra McKee’s killers said. Police have arrested two teenagers in connection with the murder of the journalist in Londonderry. Officers suspect they are members of the dissident republican New IRA. The suspects, aged 18 and 19, were detained under anti-terrorism legislation and taken to a police station in Belfast for questioning, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said…

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