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A Russian-backed offensive in Syria makes a mockery of Trump

A Russian-backed offensive in Syria makes a mockery of Trump

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Dexter Filkins reports: A humanitarian disaster is unfolding in southern Syria, where hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing heavy fighting and finding borders locked tight. More than three hundred thousand civilians are on the move—some on tractors, some on foot—trying to escape a Russian-backed Syrian Army offensive aimed at reconquering the city of Dara’a and the surrounding area, where the rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began seven years ago. The refugees are fleeing Dara’a in two waves:…

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Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati officials privately pushed for Trump to strike a ‘grand bargain’ with Putin

Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati officials privately pushed for Trump to strike a ‘grand bargain’ with Putin

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Adam Entous reports: During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Current and former U.S. officials said…

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Orcas of the Pacific Northwest are starving and disappearing

Orcas of the Pacific Northwest are starving and disappearing

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The New York Times reports: For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Normally four or five calves would be born each year among this fairly unique urban population of whales — pods named J, K and L. But most recently, the number of orcas here has dwindled to just 75, a 30-year-low in what seems to be…

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Landmark legal shift opens Pandora’s box for DIY guns

Landmark legal shift opens Pandora’s box for DIY guns

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Andy Greenberg writes: Five years ago, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun. When, to his relief, his plastic invention fired a .380-caliber bullet into a berm of dirt without jamming or exploding in his hands, he drove back to Austin and uploaded the blueprints for the pistol to his website, Defcad.com. He’d launched the site months earlier along with an anarchist video…

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Is Putin Trump’s counterpart or handler?

Is Putin Trump’s counterpart or handler?

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Jonathan Chait writes: In June 14, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Russian hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s files and gained access to its research on Donald Trump. A political world already numbed by Trump’s astonishing rise barely took notice. News reports quoted experts who suggested the Russians merely wanted more information about Trump to inform their foreign-policy dealings. By that point, Russia was already broadcasting its strong preference for Trump through the media. Yet when news…

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Who is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to replace Anthony Kennedy?

Who is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s pick to replace Anthony Kennedy?

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Ian Millhiser writes: If you could grow a judge in a vat, and design every moment of their life to appeal perfectly to the Republican establishment, the man who would emerge fully-formed from that vat would be Brett Kavanaugh. A two-time Yale graduate, Kavanaugh clerked for the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, worked for Bill Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr, and served as one of President George W. Bush’s top White House aides. Kavanaugh was a frequent opponent of President Barack Obama’s…

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Boris Johnson’s resignation can’t disguise the harsh reality of Brexit

Boris Johnson’s resignation can’t disguise the harsh reality of Brexit

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John Cassidy writes: In the two years since a narrow majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union, the planning of the country’s actual departure has often looked like a disaster unfolding in slow motion. In the past few days, as an anonymous public servant, displaying the sangfroid for which British mandarins used to be famous, put it, “we have at least now reached the kinetic phase of the car crash.” Prime Minister Theresa May—facing the thankless, and maybe…

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Pregnant women say they miscarried in immigration detention and didn’t get the care they needed

Pregnant women say they miscarried in immigration detention and didn’t get the care they needed

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BuzzFeed reports: Two weeks after arriving in the US seeking asylum, E, 23, found herself in a detention cell in San Luis, Arizona, bleeding profusely and begging for help from staff at the facility. She was four months pregnant and felt like she was losing her baby. She had come to the US from El Salvador after finding out she was pregnant, in the hopes of raising her son in a safer home. “An official arrived and they said it…

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Inside China’s dystopian dreams: AI, shame and lots of cameras

Inside China’s dystopian dreams: AI, shame and lots of cameras

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Paul Mozur writes: In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station. In Qingdao, a city famous for its German colonial heritage, cameras powered by artificial intelligence helped the police snatch two dozen criminal suspects in the midst of a big annual beer festival. In Wuhu, a fugitive murder suspect was identified by a camera as he bought food from a street vendor. With millions of cameras and…

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How Silicon Valley fuels an informal caste system

How Silicon Valley fuels an informal caste system

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Antonio García Martínez writes: California is the future of the United States, goes the oft-cited cliché. What the US is doing now, Europe will be doing in five years, goes another. Given those truthy maxims, let’s examine the socioeconomics of the “City by the Bay” as a harbinger of what’s to come. Data shows that technology and services make up a large fraction of citywide employment. It also shows that unemployment and housing prices follow the tech industry’s boom-and-bust cycle….

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Marcy Wheeler’s decision to out her source to the FBI

Marcy Wheeler’s decision to out her source to the FBI

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Margaret Sullivan writes: It’s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect your sources. Reporters have gone to jail to keep that covenant. But Marcy Wheeler, who writes a well-regarded national security blog, not only revealed a source — she did so to the FBI, eventually becoming a witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia. “On its face, I broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism, but what he was…

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Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times

Leave.EU campaign met Russian officials as many as 11 times

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The Guardian reports: Arron Banks’ Leave.EU campaign team met with Russian embassy officials as many as 11 times in the run-up to the EU referendum and in the two months beyond, documents seen by the Observer suggest – seven more times than Banks has admitted. The same documents suggest the Russian embassy extended a further four invitations to Brexit’s biggest funder, but it is not known if they were accepted. It is the third time the number of such meetings…

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How the remorseless rise of the Swedish far right could leave the country ungovernable

How the remorseless rise of the Swedish far right could leave the country ungovernable

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Richard Milne writes: Every July, Sweden provides one of the world’s great democratic displays. Politicians of all hues descend on the Baltic island of Gotland for the annual Almedalen festival (1-8 July), meeting voters and debating issues ranging from forestry and fake news to immigration and imams in schools. But in advance of the general election on 9 September, a spectre haunted this year’s Almedalen. Swedish politics is facing its most severe test for decades. The consensual, egalitarian model that…

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Families torn apart by Trump administration are difficult to unite

Families torn apart by Trump administration are difficult to unite

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The New York Times reports: Faced with a court-imposed deadline to reunite families separated at the southwest border, federal authorities are calling in volunteers to sort through records and resorting to DNA tests to match children with parents. And they acknowledged for the first time Thursday that of the nearly 3,000 children who are still in federal custody, about 100 are under the age of 5. The family separations, part of an aggressive effort by the Trump administration to deter…

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