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#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

#MeToo in the monastery: A Chinese abbot’s fall stirs questions on Buddhism’s path

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The New York Times reports: Over the past two decades, religion in China has boomed, and no faith has benefited more than Buddhism. The number of temples has tripled, monks and abbots have become well-known public figures, and China has used the faith to build ties around the world, sending out nuns and monks on good-will missions. The person most closely associated with this revival is the Venerable Xuecheng, a charismatic monk who was fast-tracked for success. He became abbot…

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Utility companies are at odds with public demand for 100% renewable energy

Utility companies are at odds with public demand for 100% renewable energy

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Vox reports: Renewable energy is hot. It has incredible momentum, not only in terms of deployment and costs but in terms of public opinion and cultural cachet. To put it simply: Everyone loves renewable energy. It’s cleaner, it’s high-tech, it’s new jobs, it’s the future. And so more and more big energy customers are demanding the full meal deal: 100 percent renewable energy. The Sierra Club notes that so far in the US, more than 80 cities, five counties, and…

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Kavanaugh’s accuser has proved she isn’t lying and now she’s sacrificed her right to privacy

Kavanaugh’s accuser has proved she isn’t lying and now she’s sacrificed her right to privacy

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The Washington Post reports: Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a nomination that just days ago seemed all…

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Hurricane Florence is a climate change triple threat

Hurricane Florence is a climate change triple threat

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Michael Mann writes: Just a year ago we were dealing with an historically devastating Atlantic hurricane season. It was marked by the strongest hurricane – Irma – ever observed in the open Atlantic, the near total devastation of Puerto Rico by a similarly powerful category 5 monster Maria, and Hurricane Harvey – the worst flooding event in US history. At the time, I commented here and elsewhere about the role climate change had played in amplifying the destructive characteristics of…

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1 in 3 children in UK live in poverty, study finds

1 in 3 children in UK live in poverty, study finds

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The Guardian reports: More than 14 million people, including 4.5 million children, are living below the breadline, with more than half trapped in poverty for years, according to a new measure aimed at providing the most sophisticated analysis yet of material disadvantage in the UK. The measure seeks to forge a fresh political consensus between left and right over how to define and track poverty, with the aim of encouraging better-targeted poverty interventions, and making it easier to hold politicians…

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Give Britain a new referendum on Brexit, says Mayor of London

Give Britain a new referendum on Brexit, says Mayor of London

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The Observer reports: The mayor of London has issued a dramatic call for another referendum on EU membership, insisting that the people must be given the chance to reject a Brexit deal that will be bad for the economy, jobs and the NHS. Writing in the Observer, Sadiq Khan says that, with so little time left to negotiate, there are now only two possible outcomes: a bad deal for the UK or “no deal” at all, which will be even…

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Russia’s brazen lies mock the world. How best to fight for the truth?

Russia’s brazen lies mock the world. How best to fight for the truth?

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"If you don't stop asking me if we are nearly there yet, I will turn this bus round; and none of you will get to see Salisbury cathedral. Do you hear me?" pic.twitter.com/Z1o2bZ4CVS — Walnut (@PaoloWalnuts) September 13, 2018 Jonathan Freedland writes: Comedy is now diplomacy by other means. A mighty nation has taken to conducting a grave international dispute by means of humour, expecting a similarly comic response in kind. How else are we to view the interview granted…

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Trump administration engages in ‘diplomatic malpractice’ by sabotaging Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation

Trump administration engages in ‘diplomatic malpractice’ by sabotaging Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation

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The New York Times reports: As part of its policy to end all aid for Palestinian civilians, the United States is blocking millions of dollars to programs that build relationships between Israelis and Palestinians, according to current and former American officials briefed on the change. The move to prevent Palestinians — including, in many cases, children — from benefiting from the funds squeezes shut the last remaining channel of American aid to Palestinian civilians. The money had already been budgeted…

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Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials

Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials

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Princeton University reports: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement…

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Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

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The Washington Post reports: The coastal and marine geologist once felt his state valued his work. North Carolina was a leader in coastal management, said Stanley Riggs, a distinguished professor of geology at East Carolina University. It heeded the advice of a “tremendous team of scientists” studying the origins and evolution of the Eastern Seaboard, of which the Tar Heel State has a particularly broad swath. As a result, lawmakers adopted policies in the 1970s and 1980s to safeguard the…

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The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

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Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, and Benjamin Wittes write: According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and…

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Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

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Sen. Patrick Leahy writes: Last week, I uncovered new evidence that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh misled the Senate during his earlier hearings for the D.C. Circuit Court by minimizing and even denying his involvement in Bush-era controversies. I gave him the opportunity to correct his testimony at his hearing last week; he chose instead to double down. I make no claim that Kavanaugh is a bad person. But when his prior confirmation to our nation’s “second highest court”…

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The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

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Daniel Levy writes: Twenty-five years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton presided over a famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the South Lawn of the White House as they signed the Oslo Accords. Those accords, initiated at secret Norwegian-hosted talks between Israeli academics and PLO officials, set an agenda and a five-year timetable for a full peace deal that would initially allow limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the occupied territories…

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How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

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Ishaan Tharoor writes: Historically, the United States has been the most welcoming nation on the planet for refugees. Since the adoption of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, it has taken in around 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees who have been resettled around the world. But President Trump has made the denigration of refugees a core theme of his presidency, and his administration has all but barred the gates to foreigners seeking refuge in America. According to…

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Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

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Zack Beauchamp writes: Over the course of his eight years in power, Prime Minister Orbán has chipped away at the foundations of Hungarian democracy. It has been replaced with an authoritarian regime that wields a cynical interpretation of the law as a weapon; the country is governed by rules like the border journalism permits, regulations that can seem reasonable on their face but actually serve to undermine essential democratic freedoms. Elections there are free, in the sense that the vote…

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Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

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The New York Times reports: Two Russian spies caught in the Netherlands and expelled had been plotting cyber sabotage of a Swiss defense laboratory analyzing the nerve agent used to poison a former Russian agent in Britain, Swiss officials said Friday. The story — first reported by the Dutch newspaper NRC and the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, and confirmed by Swiss officials — adds a new dimension to the charges by Western governments that the Kremlin is waging a sophisticated and…

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