Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Russia refuses to blame ISIS for concert hall attack despite growing evidence

Russia refuses to blame ISIS for concert hall attack despite growing evidence

The Guardian reports: The Kremlin has declined to comment on growing evidence that the Afghan branch of Islamic State (IS), known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), masterminded the terrorist attack on the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow that left 137 people dead. Asked by reporters whether the Kremlin recognised IS was behind the attack, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said: “You ask a question related to the progress of the investigation. We do not comment on that in any…

Read More Read More

How is abortion shaping 2024? Look at Arizona

How is abortion shaping 2024? Look at Arizona

Politico reports: Democrats are counting on abortion rights to carry them to victory this fall in races across the country. But nowhere more so than in Arizona. Abortion-rights activists are gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures to put a measure on the ballot enshrining protections in the state’s constitution. Doing so, Democrats believe, will juice turnout on the left, giving them a chance to break the GOP’s narrow majority in the state legislature, win a pivotal Senate seat and deliver…

Read More Read More

Why Chuck Todd’s scorcher against NBC matters

Why Chuck Todd’s scorcher against NBC matters

Jack Shafer writes:As if responding to an alarm setting on a cosmic, biological clock, the press and its minders set to ringing and clanging bloody murder over the weekend as NBC News moved Ronna McDaniel — the recently sacked Republican National Committee chair — to a paid gig in its studio. The hottest criticism took place on NBC News’ own Sunday edition of Meet the Press after McDaniel made her first appearance, when Chuck Todd, Meet the Press’ former host,…

Read More Read More

Individual neurons tune to complex speech sounds and cues

Individual neurons tune to complex speech sounds and cues

The Transmitter reports: Individual neurons in the cerebral cortex are finely tuned to the sounds of human speech—beyond just picking out consonants and vowels, two new independent studies show. The cells encode small sounds called phonemes that are said in a similar way; the order in which syllables are spoken; the beginning of sentences; vocal pitch; and word stress, among other features of speech. The studies were able to reveal this new level of detail by using Neuropixels probes, which…

Read More Read More

The UN Security Council is set to vote on a resolution demanding a Ramadan ceasefire

The UN Security Council is set to vote on a resolution demanding a Ramadan ceasefire

The Associated Press reports: The U.N. Security Council is set to vote on a resolution demanding a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but the United States warned the measure could hurt negotiations to halt Israeli-Hamas hostilities. The resolution, put forward by the 10 elected council members, is backed by Russia and China, who vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Friday that supported “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The 22-nation Arab…

Read More Read More

Does Israel need to be forced by the U.S. to end the war in Gaza?

Does Israel need to be forced by the U.S. to end the war in Gaza?

  All of Israel’s modern wars have ended with US intervention, but the current war in Gaza has gone on for half a year because “Biden is a slow learner”, argues University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick. Israel needs an outside power to blame when it cannot achieve its aims. “That’s because the war aims are fundamentally political, and the military cannot achieve them,” says Lustick. Lustick and Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti talk to host Steve Clemons about the…

Read More Read More

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops calls for ceasefire ahead of Easter

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops calls for ceasefire ahead of Easter

Middle East Eye reports: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has called for a ceasefire in Gaza ahead of the Christian Easter holidays. “Thousands of innocent people have died in this conflict, and thousands more have been displaced and face tremendous suffering. This must stop,” the group said in a statement. “To move forward, a cease fire and a permanent cessation of war and violence is absolutely necessary. To move forward, those held hostage must be released and civilians must…

Read More Read More

Hundreds more rabbis demand ceasefire as call gains mainstream traction

Hundreds more rabbis demand ceasefire as call gains mainstream traction

The Forward reports: More than 450 rabbis called on President Joe Biden Friday to end the war in Gaza, adding momentum to growing calls for a ceasefire among liberal American Jews who have become deeply uncomfortable with Israel’s military operation. “There is no military solution to this conflict,” the rabbis, including leaders of large synagogues, stated in a letter organized by T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights group. “A ceasefire is the only reliable, proven means for securing the release of…

Read More Read More

Biden is building a ‘superstructure’ to stop Trump from stealing the election

Biden is building a ‘superstructure’ to stop Trump from stealing the election

Rolling Stone reports: For years, Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election, he is willing to cheat and steal it. Since President Joe Biden’s inaugural address, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, Biden and his inner circle have been drawing up meticulous plans and creating a large legal network focused on wargaming a close election finish, in which the former president and Republican Party launch a scorched-earth, Big…

Read More Read More

Crows are too smart to be domesticated

Crows are too smart to be domesticated

Ben Crair writes: At around 9 a.m. every weekday, a crow caws in the Jardin des Plantes, the oldest botanical garden in Paris. The sound is a warning to every other crow: Frédéric Jiguet, a tall ornithologist whose dark hair is graying around the ears, has shown up for work. As Jiguet walks to his office at the French National Museum of Natural History, which is on the garden’s grounds, dozens of the black vandals take to the trees and…

Read More Read More

Timbre can affect what harmony is music to our ears

Timbre can affect what harmony is music to our ears

Science News reports: The mathematical rules for creating musical harmony may be more malleable than thought. Western music theory traditionally holds that chords sound most pleasant when they contain notes separated by certain intervals. Namely, intervals where the notes’ frequencies have simple ratios — like 2:1 (an octave) or 3:2 (a fifth). But new research reveals that people’s actual preferred harmonies depend on the timbre of the notes. Timbre is the distinct flavor of sound produced by specific instruments —…

Read More Read More

‘Biden dramatically misread the Israeli political dynamic.’ Daniel Levy on how Biden hitched himself to Netanyahu

‘Biden dramatically misread the Israeli political dynamic.’ Daniel Levy on how Biden hitched himself to Netanyahu

Omid Memarian writes: In the 1990s and again in the early 2000s, Daniel Levy worked as a peace negotiator in Israel’s talks with the Palestinians, under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. He saw firsthand the promise of the Oslo peace process—and its ultimate failure, “eventually just becoming another way of managing the occupation,” he tells Democracy in Exile. With the Biden administration reviving vague talk of a two-state solution—even as it has vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions…

Read More Read More

How Putin’s police state leaves Russia vulnerable to terrorist attacks

How Putin’s police state leaves Russia vulnerable to terrorist attacks

Steve Gutterman writes: A week after the last Russian presidential election, in 2018, a fire at a crowded mall in Siberia killed more than 60 people, many of them children. Five days after the conclusion of this year’s voting, camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire at a concert hall just outside Moscow, killing at least 115 people in an attack claimed by the militant group Islamic State. The Kremlin casts President Vladimir Putin as something close to a savior, a strong leader…

Read More Read More