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3 million people with nowhere to go as Assad’s forces are about to attack

3 million people with nowhere to go as Assad’s forces are about to attack

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Kareem Shaheen writes: The first thing that struck me when I saw Idlib, the rebel-held province in northwestern Syria, in April last year was how green the country was. Olive and cherry trees lined the pockmarked roads leading from the Turkish border down to the province’s towns. Smoke rose in the distance in the aftermath of an airstrike or an exploding shell, and the buildings in most towns were scarred by blows from the sky. I had traveled to Idlib…

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How the U.S. government misleads the public on Afghanistan

How the U.S. government misleads the public on Afghanistan

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The New York Times reports: Seventeen years into the war in Afghanistan, American officials routinely issue inflated assessments of progress that contradict what is actually happening there. More than 2,200 Americans have been killed in the Afghan conflict, and the United States has spent more than $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency and paying for relief and reconstruction. The war has become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan, which helped to rebuild Europe after World War II….

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In a ‘grotesque parody of justice,’ Egyptian court sentences 75 people to death

In a ‘grotesque parody of justice,’ Egyptian court sentences 75 people to death

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The New York Times reports: An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 75 people to death, including leaders of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, for their involvement in a 2013 sit-in protest in Cairo that spiraled into violence and resulted in the death of hundreds of demonstrators by security forces. Cairo Criminal Court was considering the case of 739 people facing charges ranging from killing police officers, incitement to violence and damaging property during the 2013 violence in Rabaa al-Adawiya, a square…

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A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

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The Guardian reports: Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds. The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic treehunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International. Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species…

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Google pulls Russian opposition leader’s YouTube advert ahead of vote

Google pulls Russian opposition leader’s YouTube advert ahead of vote

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Reuters reports: Google removed a YouTube advert by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after authorities complained that the videos would violate an election silence law before Sunday’s vote for regional governors, an aide to Navalny said on Saturday. The series of YouTube videos featured Navalny inviting Russians to join demonstrations on Sunday, when polls suggest President Vladimir Putin’s former chief-of-staff Sergei Sobyanin will be comfortably re-elected as the capital’s mayor. Navalny’s aide, Leonid Volkov, said in a social media post…

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Trump administration discussed coup plans with rebel Venezuelan officers

Trump administration discussed coup plans with rebel Venezuelan officers

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks. Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States…

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How Assad made truth a casualty of war

How Assad made truth a casualty of war

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Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: On February 22, 2012, when the British photojournalist Paul Conroy survived the artillery barrage that killed Marie Colvin, he was rushed to a place of greater danger. Bashar al-Assad’s war of repression has killed civilians indiscriminately, but its targeting of medical facilities has been systematic. Hospitals are the most endangered spaces in opposition-held areas. Of the 492 medical facilities destroyed in the war, Physicians for Human Rights attributes the destruction of 446 to Assad and his…

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Wisdom on free speech from Justice Brandeis and William F. Buckley

Wisdom on free speech from Justice Brandeis and William F. Buckley

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Cass R. Sunstein writes: Which ideas, if any, are beyond the pale? Is it a mistake to “normalize” some speakers? When? To get some guidance, we would do well to look to the example of William F. Buckley Jr., one of the most influential conservatives of the last 60 years. For decades, Buckley was the host of a television show called “Firing Line.” Buckley hosted plenty of conservatives. But he was more than willing to provide a forum for people…

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Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

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Joel Clement writes: This week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke heads the United States delegation to the Pacific Islands Forum Leader’s Session on the Island of Nauru on September 4, 2018, an annual gathering of dozens of Pacific Island leaders and partners. In the Interior Department press release, Zinke noted that the Pacific Islands are strategically important and he wants to discuss trade and the rule of law. He did not indicate any interest in discussing the impacts of climate change…

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Poll of members of Britain’s three largest trade unions show large majority support remaining in the EU

Poll of members of Britain’s three largest trade unions show large majority support remaining in the EU

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The Guardian reports: Members of Britain’s three biggest trade unions now support a new referendum on Brexit by a margin of more than two to one, according to a bombshell poll that will cause political shockwaves on the eve of the party conference season. The survey of more than 2,700 members of Unite, Unison and the GMB by YouGov, for the People’s Vote campaign, also finds that a clear majority of members of the three unions now back staying in…

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New York Times op-ed’s prose points to one person in particular: Jon Huntsman

New York Times op-ed’s prose points to one person in particular: Jon Huntsman

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William Saletan writes: Who wrote the anonymous op-ed against President Trump in Wednesday’s New York Times? All we know for certain is what the Times disclosed: that it’s a “senior official in the Trump administration.” But the most likely author, based on the op-ed’s content and style, is the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman. Huntsman is an obvious suspect for several reasons. The article’s themes are classic Huntsman: effusive about conservative policies, blunt about low character. In 2016, he…

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Obama delivers full-throated rebuke of Trump’s presidency

Obama delivers full-throated rebuke of Trump’s presidency

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Politico reports: The night before the 2016 election, Barack Obama said Donald Trump was “uniquely unqualified” on the economy, “temperamentally unfit” on foreign policy, couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes and had “utter contempt for the values that make this nation great.” Friday, the former president took the stage here in a University of Illinois auditorium and said it had been all that and worse. For all the unprecedented moments Trump’s presidency has brought, Obama’s speech, which kicked off…

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Trump cannot simply erase the Palestinian right of return

Trump cannot simply erase the Palestinian right of return

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James Zogby writes: First, the Trump Administration “took Jerusalem off the table.” Now, in an especially dangerous display of recklessness, it has announced its intention to do the same for the Palestinian “right of return.” The first indication that this was in the works came with the administration’s announcement that it would be suspending all U.S. assistance to UNWRA, the UN agency created to address the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes in…

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The Oslo Accords served only to advance, entrench and protect Israel’s occupation

The Oslo Accords served only to advance, entrench and protect Israel’s occupation

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Joseph Dana writes: Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, when then Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed an agreement outlining a timeframe for a lasting Middle Eastern peace process. In a now infamous photo, Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on September 13, 1993, on the lawns of the White House, overlooked by a congratulatory Bill Clinton. The accords saw Arafat, Rabin and Peres awarded the Nobel…

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Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

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Ed Yong writes: In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands. In the 1940s, the Wyoming…

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