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Who is Matt Duss, and can he take on Washington’s ‘blob’?

Who is Matt Duss, and can he take on Washington’s ‘blob’?

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David Klion writes: Forty-five years after Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over Richard Nixon’s veto, the Senate finally invoked its power to end a war. This past December, 56 senators voted to cut off all US support for Saudi Arabia’s horrific military campaign in Yemen, which began in the final years of the Obama administration, sharply escalated under Donald Trump, and has led to the deaths of an estimated 85,000 children due to starvation. The morning of the vote,…

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Could ‘ideophones’ unlock the secrets of humans’ first utterances?

Could ‘ideophones’ unlock the secrets of humans’ first utterances?

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David Robson writes: If you don’t speak Japanese but would like, momentarily, to feel like a linguistic genius, take a look at the following words. Try to guess their meaning from the two available options: 1. nurunuru (a) dry or (b) slimy? 2. pikapika (a) bright or (b) dark? 3. wakuwaku (a) excited or (b) bored? 4. iraira (a) happy or (b) angry? 5. guzuguzu (a) moving quickly or (b) moving slowly? 6. kurukuru (a) spinning around or (b) moving…

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Secret files show how Trump Moscow talks unfolded while Trump heaped praise on Putin

Secret files show how Trump Moscow talks unfolded while Trump heaped praise on Putin

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BuzzFeed reports: As a candidate, Donald Trump had a lot of praise for Vladimir Putin — and no business, he kept insisting, in Russia. These documents tell a different story. When Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and longtime fixer, testifies before Congress this week, one topic that is likely to be front and center is his work on Trump Moscow, the over-the-top luxury real estate venture he helped spearhead leading up to the election. The development, which was never…

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A lobbyist at the Trump Tower meeting received $500,000 in suspicious payments

A lobbyist at the Trump Tower meeting received $500,000 in suspicious payments

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BuzzFeed reports: A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter. Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton. The lobbyist also received a large…

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U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia, transferred to Al Qaeda

U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia, transferred to Al Qaeda

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CNN reports: Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found. The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other…

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Iraqi president says Trump did not ask permission to ‘watch Iran’

Iraqi president says Trump did not ask permission to ‘watch Iran’

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Reuters reports: Iraqi President Barham Salih said on Monday that President Donald Trump did not ask Iraq’s permission for U.S. troops stationed there to “watch Iran.” Speaking at a forum in Baghdad, Salih was responding to a question about Trump’s comments to CBS about how he would ask troops stationed in Iraq to “watch” Iran. U.S. troops in Iraq are there as part of an agreement between the two countries with a specific mission of combating terrorism, Salih said, and…

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‘Unprecedented’ floods in Australia

‘Unprecedented’ floods in Australia

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The New York Times reports: After weeks of unrelenting heat and bushfires across the continent, torrential rain and flooding in northern Australia have forced hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes in what weather officials describe as an “unprecedented” event. Between Jan. 26 and the morning of Feb. 4, there was close to four feet of rain in Townsville, a coastal city in the state of Queensland, eclipsing records set in 1998 during a flood known as the “Night of…

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Plankton that are both plant-like and animal-like are redefining marine ecology

Plankton that are both plant-like and animal-like are redefining marine ecology

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Knowable magazine reports: Their color gave them away. Ecologist Diane Stoecker was looking at plankton in samples of ocean water from the dock in Woods Hole Harbor in Massachusetts some 40 years ago when she spotted something strange. Under the microscope, she recognized Laboea strobila, shaped like an ice-cream cone — “yellowish green and very beautiful,” she recalls — and the smaller, more spherical Strombidium species — also oddly greenish. Stoecker knew that these single-celled critters, named ciliates for the…

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Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

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Science magazine reports: Of all the many ways the teeming ecosystem of microbes in a person’s gut and other tissues might affect health, its potential influences on the brain may be the most provocative. Now, a study of two large groups of Europeans has found several species of gut bacteria are missing in people with depression. The researchers can’t say whether the absence is a cause or an effect of the illness, but they showed that many gut bacteria could…

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Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

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The New York Times reports: Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world’s tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region’s glaciers by the end of the century even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to…

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Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

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The New York Times reports: The Thwaites Glacier on Antarctica’s western coast has long been considered one of the most unstable on the continent. Now, scientists are worried about the discovery of an enormous underwater cavity that will probably speed up the glacier’s decay. The cavity is about two-thirds the area of Manhattan and nearly 1,000 feet tall, according to a study released Wednesday by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The hulking chamber is large enough to have contained about 14…

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Tasmania is burning

Tasmania is burning

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Richard Flanagan writes: As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne…

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Fool Britannia

Fool Britannia

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Hari Kunzru writes: From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Negotiations have revealed the pitiful intellectual limitations of a succession of blustering cabinet ministers, the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition…

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Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

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Jamelle Bouie writes: In American politics, lawmakers can get a pass for almost anything short of open allegiance to racist ideologies or the explicit use of racist imagery. There is a logic to this dynamic, even as it produces absurd results, like forceful condemnations of racism from a Virginia Republican Party that fielded an unapologetic neo-Confederate for Senate just over three months ago or calls for Northam’s resignation from a Republican National Committee that otherwise stands firmly behind President Trump….

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