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America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

The Washington Post reports: The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had an urgent message last winter for his colleagues, brandishing data that life expectancy in the United States had fallen again — the biggest two-year decline in a century. Robert Califf’s warning, summarized by three people with knowledge of the conversations, boiled down to this: Americans’ life expectancy is going the wrong way. We’re the top health officials in the country. If we don’t fix this, who will?…

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes

Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes

Hafiz Rashid writes: As 2023 comes to a close, grim numbers in Gaza are piling up, where Israel’s bombardment and invasion have thus far killed more than 20,000 people, including 8,200 children and 6,200 women. Those dire statistics lay alongside the grievous outcome of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed—including 36 children—and nearly 250 Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas, again, including about 30 children. But beyond the dismal casualty statistics, we’re ending…

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Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Haaretz reports: The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality on Thursday summoned Yael Ayalon, the principal of the city’s Ironi Yud Daled High School, to a hearing before suspension, after she posted a Haaretz article criticizing the lack of Israeli media coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on her Facebook page about a week ago. Following Ayalon’s Facebook post, a group of students opened a protest strike on Wednesday which escalated into a physical altercation, during which the head of the school’s…

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Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election

Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election

CNN reports: Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail. So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress,…

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A fake Trump elector in Michigan told prosecutors of regret, anger

A fake Trump elector in Michigan told prosecutors of regret, anger

The New York Times reports: One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times. The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against…

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Ex-GOP student leader’s links to Jan. 6 Capitol riot and a neo-Nazi web site

Ex-GOP student leader’s links to Jan. 6 Capitol riot and a neo-Nazi web site

USA Today reports: The young man is seen running with the crowd of Trump supporters toward the U.S. Capitol early in the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. He wears a thigh-length dark blue coat, his face almost fully covered with a mask. The bill of an off-white baseball cap pokes out of the hood of his gray sweatshirt. At 2:35 p.m. and 20 seconds, a security camera inside the Capitol captures the man as he steps across the threshold of…

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Musical synchronization emerges spontaneously and enhances social connectedness

Musical synchronization emerges spontaneously and enhances social connectedness

PsyPost reports: Researchers have discovered a significant link between musical synchronization and social connectedness. Analyzing the behavior of university students engaged in impromptu music-making, the study found that individuals who synchronized their musical rhythms felt a stronger sense of connection with their peers, highlighting music’s unique role in fostering social cohesion. The findings have been published in Psychology of Music. Previous studies have indicated that music can establish and maintain social bonds, but the mechanics of how this happens were…

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We were born to groove

We were born to groove

Henkjan Honing writes: In 2009, my research group found that newborns possess the ability to discern a regular pulse— the beat—in music. It’s a skill that might seem trivial to most of us but that’s fundamental to the creation and appreciation of music. The discovery sparked a profound curiosity in me, leading to an exploration of the biological underpinnings of our innate capacity for music, commonly referred to as “musicality.” In a nutshell, the experiment involved playing drum rhythms, occasionally…

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Israel widens offensive in central Gaza as Netanyahu refuses to discuss postwar plan

Israel widens offensive in central Gaza as Netanyahu refuses to discuss postwar plan

The Guardian reports: The Israeli military expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was reported to have refused requests from security officials to make plans for control of Gaza after the war with Hamas ends. Over the last few days, three requests to the prime minister’s office were conveyed on behalf of the directors of the Mossad, the Shin…

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Who is funding Canary Mission? Inside the doxxing operation targeting anti-Zionist students and professors

Who is funding Canary Mission? Inside the doxxing operation targeting anti-Zionist students and professors

James Bamford writes: It was a scene reminiscent of the Red Scare days, of grainy black-and-white television images of political witch hunts by the old House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But rather than hunting for disloyal communist sympathizers, committee members at early December’s hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce were instead hunting for university presidents disloyal to Israel. “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?” quipped New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. “You…

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Intel will build $25 billion chip factory 16 miles from Gaza in Israel’s ‘largest investment ever’

Intel will build $25 billion chip factory 16 miles from Gaza in Israel’s ‘largest investment ever’

CNN reports: The Israeli government and Intel confirmed plans to build a $25 billion chipmaking factory in the south of the country, an investment Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as the biggest in Israel’s history. The American tech giant already employs 11,700 people in Israel and has invested more than $50 billion in the country over the last 50 years. Intel now wants to expand its existing chipmaking factory at Kiryat Gat — about 16 miles northeast of Gaza…

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2023 has been the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank

2023 has been the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank

Sky News reports: Subhi Shaledeh and his extended family had around 500 acres of prime grazing land in the Occupied West Bank, in the village of Janoub. They owned olive trees and hundreds of sheep. The land had been in the family for decades. But overnight they lost their livelihood and their and land. Subhi says on 9 October, two days after the 7 October attack by Hamas, settlers from an Israeli outpost, which is classed as illegal under both…

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Trump is not the only reason to fix this uniquely dangerous law

Trump is not the only reason to fix this uniquely dangerous law

Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write: The Insurrection Act is a dangerous centuries-old federal statute that authorizes the president, with few restraints, to deploy the U.S. military inside the United States to suppress threats the president perceives to the constitutional order. Commentators have recently proposed tightening the law following reports that former President Donald Trump and his advisers are planning to use it aggressively for law enforcement and to quell domestic disturbances if Mr. Trump is once more elected. This…

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The Biden administration is quietly shifting its strategy in Ukraine

The Biden administration is quietly shifting its strategy in Ukraine

Michael Hirsh writes: With U.S. and European aid to Ukraine now in serious jeopardy, the Biden administration and European officials are quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war, according to a Biden administration official and a European diplomat based in Washington. Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia. The White House and Pentagon publicly insist there…

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