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Bees may understand zero, a concept that took humans millennia to grasp

Bees may understand zero, a concept that took humans millennia to grasp

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Kate Keller writes: As a mathematical concept, the idea of zero is relatively new in human society—and indisputably revolutionary. It’s allowed humans to develop algebra, calculus and Cartesian coordinates; questions about its properties continue to incite mathematical debate today. So it may sound unlikely that bees—complex and community-based insects to be sure, but insects nonetheless—seem to have mastered their own numerical concept of nothingness. Despite their sesame-seed-sized brains, honey bees have proven themselves the prodigies of the insect world. Researcher…

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Music: Jon Hassell — ‘Dream Theory’

Music: Jon Hassell — ‘Dream Theory’

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  Jon Hassell: “Dream Theory in Malaya is titled after a paper by a visionary anthropologist, Kilton Stewart, who in 1935 visited a remarkable highland tribe of Malayan aborigines, the Senoi, whose happiness and well-being were linked to their morning custom of family dream-telling—where a child’s fearful dream of falling was praised as a gift to learn to fly the next night and where a dream-song or dance was taught to a neighboring tribe to create a common bond beyond…

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As Trump threatens U.S. allies, Russia and China solidify their ties

As Trump threatens U.S. allies, Russia and China solidify their ties

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South China Morning Post reports: China and Russia pledged to support each other on key global issues during a summit in Beijing on Friday, as the two sides hailed an “all-time high” in bilateral ties amid strained relations with the US. The two countries also signed a raft of deals, including for nuclear cooperation projects totalling 20 billion yuan (US$3.13 billion) and a US$1 billion industrial investment fund. Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin ahead of…

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For Kim Jong Un, meeting Trump is about cementing power at home

For Kim Jong Un, meeting Trump is about cementing power at home

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Anna Fifield reports: “This unprecedented meeting with the U.S. president will make Kim Jong Un feel very proud, having achieved something his father and grandfather didn’t,” said Joo Seong-ha, who escaped from North Korea and now writes about the country for South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. And although “maximum pressure” may have helped bring Kim to the negotiating table, the other reality is that he is coming to the summit from a position of relative strength, said Kenneth Dekleva, a…

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Arron Banks ‘met with Russian officials multiple times before Brexit vote’

Arron Banks ‘met with Russian officials multiple times before Brexit vote’

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The Observer reports: Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest. Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign. The Observer has seen documents which a senior…

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Climate change can be stopped by turning carbon dioxide pollution into gasoline

Climate change can be stopped by turning carbon dioxide pollution into gasoline

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The Atlantic reports: A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere. If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change. It could give people a decisive new tool in the race against a warming planet, but could also unsettle the issue’s delicate politics, making it…

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Under Trump, ‘America First’ really is turning out to be America alone

Under Trump, ‘America First’ really is turning out to be America alone

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Susan B. Glasser writes: The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was less than forty-eight hours away from hosting the biggest diplomatic gathering of his career when I spoke with one of his top advisers on Wednesday afternoon. Trudeau’s team was searching for strategies to salvage the annual G-7 summit with the American President, Donald Trump, and leaders of five of the world’s other large democratic economies—all of them close allies of the United States, and all of them furious with…

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Evangelical minister warns about dangerous alliance between American evangelicals and the Republican Party

Evangelical minister warns about dangerous alliance between American evangelicals and the Republican Party

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Mother Jones reports: The past four decades have seen an ever-tightening alliance between American evangelicals and the Republican Party, and few have played as pivotal a role in fostering that coupling as Reverend Rob Schenck. The evangelical minister from Buffalo, New York, gained national notoriety in the 1990s as a fervent anti-abortion activist who orchestrated shocking stunts to promote his cause, including one in which an aborted fetus was thrust in the face of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. His keen…

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IKEA unveils ambitious climate goals

IKEA unveils ambitious climate goals

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GreenBiz reports: Swedish furniture giant IKEA has promised to outlaw single-use plastic products across its entire product range and in-store eateries by 2020 and ensure zero emission home deliveries as standard by 2025, as part of a sweeping set of new sustainability goals. The firm also promised to design all its products in line with circular principles and using renewable and recycled materials, and reduce the climate footprint of its wares by an average of 70 percent per product by…

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At 81, Jon Hassell is still a pioneer expanding the frontiers of music

At 81, Jon Hassell is still a pioneer expanding the frontiers of music

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  John Lewis writes: In the late 70s, long before terms such as “world music” or “cultural appropriation” were in common usage, the trumpeter and composer Jon Hassell devised the term “Fourth World” to describe his music. It explored what he called “primitive futurism”, where shantytown squalor coexisted with hi-tech western studio technology, fusing Hassell’s early minimalist work with Terry Riley and La Monte Young with his studies of Indian, African and Indonesian music. Brian Eno was an early adopter…

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Putin sees an opening in Europe’s fury with Trump

Putin sees an opening in Europe’s fury with Trump

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The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Austria on Tuesday sensing an opportunity almost unimaginable just months ago: to overhaul frosty relations with a European Union infuriated by President Trump on a host of issues, from climate and Iran to, most recently, tariffs and trade. Never mind that Mr. Putin was until recently virtually a pariah in Europe after his military interventions in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria; after meddling in European elections and working…

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With Mueller closing in, Manafort’s allies abandon him

With Mueller closing in, Manafort’s allies abandon him

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The New York Times reports: The special counsel’s accusation this week that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, tried to tamper with potential witnesses originated with two veteran journalists who turned on Mr. Manafort after working closely with him to prop up the former Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, interviews and documents show. The two journalists, who helped lead a project to which prosecutors say Mr. Manafort funneled more than $2 million from overseas accounts, are the latest in a…

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Cambridge Analytica director ‘met Assange to discuss U.S. election’

Cambridge Analytica director ‘met Assange to discuss U.S. election’

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The Guardian reports: A Cambridge Analytica director apparently visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during the US election, the Guardian has learned. Brittany Kaiser, a director at the firm until earlier this year, also claimed to have channelled cryptocurrency payments and donations to WikiLeaks. This information has been passed to congressional and parliamentary inquiries in the UK and US. Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks are already subjects of special counsel Robert…

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David Miliband: World must step up support for Rohingya refugees

David Miliband: World must step up support for Rohingya refugees

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The Guardian reports: David Miliband has called on the international community to step up its support of Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh before the monsoon. During a visit to the refugee camps, the former UK foreign secretary said the issue must be discussed at the G7 meeting in Quebec, Canada this week, saying there was “real fear” among the refugees about the rainy season. Miliband, the chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, said the positioning of the refugee camp…

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Wave of arrests in Egypt sends alarming message at start of Sisi’s second term

Wave of arrests in Egypt sends alarming message at start of Sisi’s second term

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Al Monitor reports: Dozens of politicians, writers and human rights activists were attacked June 5 by unknown assailants at the iftar dinner party for the breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan organized by the Civil Democratic Movement. The assailants crashed the iftar at the Swiss Club in Cairo and overturned the dinner tables while chanting “Traitors! Spies!” The head of the Constitution Party, Khaled Dawoud, who attended the dinner, said in a Facebook post on the day of the…

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What enabled animal life to get more complex and diverse during the Cambrian explosion?

What enabled animal life to get more complex and diverse during the Cambrian explosion?

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Jordana Cepelewicz writes: When Emma Hammarlund of Lund University in Sweden first reached out to her colleague Sven Påhlman for help with her research, he was skeptical he’d have much insight to offer. He was a tumor biologist, after all, and she was a geobiologist, someone who studied the interplay between living organisms and their environment. Påhlman didn’t see how his work could possibly inform her search for answers about the rapid proliferation and diversification of animal life that, half…

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