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January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

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Eric Holthaus writes: January 2019 was the third-warmest January in the history of global weather record-keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The only warmer global Januarys in the instrumental record, which dates back to the 1880s, were 2016 and 2017, and there’s evidence that the planet hasn’t been this warm in a very long time. The last time January global temperatures were below average was in 1976 — before millennials were even a thing. So here’s the…

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Our large brains evolved thanks to an ancient ‘arms race’ for resources and mates

Our large brains evolved thanks to an ancient ‘arms race’ for resources and mates

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JuliusKielaitis / shutterstock By Mark Maslin, UCL Human society rewards individuals who can handle complex social interactions and control large groups of people. Extreme examples of this power are comedians who can fill stadiums entertaining 70,000 people, or politicians who, through their rhetoric and charm, convince millions of us to vote for them so they can run our lives. Intelligence, humour, and charisma are used to co-opt a greater share of resources for themselves and their family. In fact, many…

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Surge in U.S. economists’ support for carbon tax to tackle climate change

Surge in U.S. economists’ support for carbon tax to tackle climate change

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The Financial Times reports: US economists led by former US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen are uniting in record numbers to back the idea of a carbon tax as the most effective and immediate way of tackling climate change. At a time when Democrats including New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing a sweeping “Green New Deal” programme to reduce greenhouse emissions, climate change is shaping up to be a major 2020 election issue. The US is the world’s second-biggest…

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The migrant caravan: Made in USA

The migrant caravan: Made in USA

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Roberto Saviano writes: The migrant caravan that left Honduras and headed north toward the US last October is the largest flight from drug trafficking in history. Though the phenomenon of Central American caravans isn’t new, never before have thousands of people decided to flee from criminal organizations in such numbers. It is, in a sense, the biggest anti-mafia march the world has ever seen. The migrants departed from San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras and its economic center,…

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Why are so many Guatemalans migrating to the U.S.?

Why are so many Guatemalans migrating to the U.S.?

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By Emily Yates-Doerr, Sapiens, October 25, 2018 On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed into Texas from Mexico, and she was unarmed. In an article published soon after her death, her mother, who still lives in Guatemala, described her as “naughty and cuddly and playful,” adding that “she loved to draw and sing.” Gómez González grew up in the…

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Sorry, y’all, but climate change ain’t the first existential threat

Sorry, y’all, but climate change ain’t the first existential threat

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Mary Annaïse Heglar writes: Dear Climate Movement: I’m with you when you say that climate change is the most important issue facing mankind. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s the most important one ever. But, when I hear folks say — and I have heard it — that the environmental movement is the first in history to stare down an existential threat, I have to get off the train. This game of what I call “existential exceptionalism” is a losing one….

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Trump is right, UK must take back ISIS fighters says ex-British army chief

Trump is right, UK must take back ISIS fighters says ex-British army chief

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The Guardian reports: A former head of the British army has said Donald Trump is right to say British Islamic State fighters held in Syria should be brought back to the UK because they are the UK’s responsibility. Gen Lord Dannatt said it was important they are seen to be treated fairly to help prevent others being radicalised and to set an example to the rest of the world. He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “Usually I disagree with…

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Facebook described as ‘digital gangsters’ in British parliamentary report

Facebook described as ‘digital gangsters’ in British parliamentary report

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The Guardian reports: Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as “digital gangsters”. The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. “Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of…

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Technological change is not an inexorable, impersonal force

Technological change is not an inexorable, impersonal force

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Steven Poole writes: When is the future no longer the future? Only a decade ago, air travel seemed to be moving ineluctably towards giant planes, or “superjumbos”. But last week Airbus announced it will cease manufacturing its A380, the world’s fattest passenger jet, as current trends favour smaller and more fuel-efficient craft. Progress changed course. A more vivid reminder of lost dreams will come in a few weeks: 2 March marks the 50th anniversary of the maiden flight of Concorde….

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Nature needs legal rights

Nature needs legal rights

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The New York Times reports: The failing health of Lake Erie, the world’s 11th largest lake, is at the heart of one of the most unusual questions to appear on an American ballot: Should a body of water be given rights normally associated with those granted to a person? Voters in Toledo, Ohio, will be asked this month to decide whether Lake Erie, which supports the economies of four states, one Canadian province and the cities of Toledo, Cleveland and…

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The necessary idealism of the Green New Deal

The necessary idealism of the Green New Deal

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Michelle Goldberg writes: Amid the unceasing awfulness of the Trump administration, I’ve lately found comfort in the Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek’s concept of “political time,” which has in turn informed my thinking about the almost utopian ambitions of the Green New Deal. Surveying the American presidency, Skowronek sees politics unfolding in cycles. Every so often, insurgent coalitions bring an agenda-setting president to power who sweeps away the verities of the old regime, fundamentally restructuring our politics. These “reconstructive presidents,”…

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Trump pleases Russia as rift between Europe and the U.S. widens

Trump pleases Russia as rift between Europe and the U.S. widens

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The New York Times reports: European leaders have long been alarmed that President Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades. They had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain. But in the last few days of a prestigious annual security conference in Munich, the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete, diplomats and analysts say. A senior German official,…

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Trump is trying to hollow out the constitutional system of checks and balances

Trump is trying to hollow out the constitutional system of checks and balances

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Peter M Shane writes: When President Donald J. Trump publishes his declaration of a national emergency requiring the construction of a wall on our southern border, that document will bear the formal signs of normal governance. The order will recite findings or at least assertions of fact. It will cite statutes—the act that authorizes its issuance and the statutes the president is triggering by signing his declaration. The same will be true of the complaints and legal briefs inevitably to…

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There’s a ‘crisis of credibility’ at the U.S. Supreme Court

There’s a ‘crisis of credibility’ at the U.S. Supreme Court

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse writes: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Chief Justice John Roberts declared last fall in response to President Trump’s jab at an “Obama judge.” In spite of my distaste for Trump’s attacks on our judiciary, on this one, the facts are with Trump. As a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, I have spent my share of time in the courtroom before state and federal judges whose commitment…

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