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Virginia officials ask Supreme Court to restore voting map drawn by Democrats

Virginia officials ask Supreme Court to restore voting map drawn by Democrats

The New York Times reports: Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April. In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce…

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Starmer: More than 60 Labour MPs call for PM to resign

Starmer: More than 60 Labour MPs call for PM to resign

  Polly Toynbee writes: Calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe: the lexicon ran out of words for Labour’s plight. Keir Starmer’s career-saving “reset” needed to be monumental. It was … OK-ish. But it didn’t dispel the sense of a country with no overall control. As ever, his tacking neither right or left, as he wrote in the Guardian, sends many Labour people into paroxysms of despair, when last week it lost most votes leftwards. Britain at the heart of Europe was absolutely the…

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U.S. intelligence-gathering flights are surging off Cuba

U.S. intelligence-gathering flights are surging off Cuba

CNN reports: US military intelligence-gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba, a CNN analysis of publicly available aviation data shows. Since February 4, the US Navy and Air Force have conducted at least 25 such flights using manned aircraft and drones, most of them near the country’s two biggest cities, Havana and Santiago de Cuba, and some coming within 40 miles of the coast, according to FlightRadar24. Most of the flights were by P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft,…

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The oldest river in the world ran through Pangea

The oldest river in the world ran through Pangea

ZME Science reports: Rivers are poor archivists of their own past. They don’t sit still like fossils, or record a single birthdate like volcanic rock. Instead, they wander across floodplains, cut into rock and often move around or even abandon their channels. A river can spend millions of years destroying the very evidence that would prove how long it’s been there. That makes the question of the world’s oldest river surprisingly difficult. When geologists ask which river is the oldest…

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The U.S. can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing the war against Iran

The U.S. can’t reverse or control the consequences of losing the war against Iran

Robert Kagan writes: It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the…

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Israel built and defended a secret Iran war base in Iraq

Israel built and defended a secret Iran war base in Iraq

The Wall Street Journal reports: Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war, people familiar with the matter including U.S. officials said. Israel built the installation, which housed special forces and served as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force, just before the war started with the knowledge of the U.S., the people said. Search-and-rescue…

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Putin’s forces barely inch along on a battlefield saturated with drones

Putin’s forces barely inch along on a battlefield saturated with drones

The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has sought to convince President Trump that his troops are marching toward inevitable victory in Ukraine, arguing that Kyiv should hand over the entire eastern Donbas region to avoid impending defeat. But the situation on the battlefield tells a different story. After making gains late last year, the Russian military has slowed to a crawl. In some parts of Ukraine, it has lost territory. At its average monthly rate…

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An erudite account of the foundation of Israel and its subsequent moral and political decline

An erudite account of the foundation of Israel and its subsequent moral and political decline

Avi Shlaim writes: Israel’s attack on Iran is only the most recent example of its degeneration in recent decades, coming on top of its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, genocide in Gaza, invasion of Syria and relentless bombardment of Lebanon. The fact that the US joined in this illegal war confirmed to many in the region what they have long suspected: that the country is an outpost of western imperialism in the Middle…

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Wanted Polish ex-minister in U.S. after Trump personally approved visa, media report

Wanted Polish ex-minister in U.S. after Trump personally approved visa, media report

TVP World reports: Ex-minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is facing multiple charges in Poland, confirmed he was in the US on Sunday night after media reported his visa was personally approved by President Donald Trump, despite opposition from senior US officials. Ziobro—a former justice minister who was one of the most influential figures in the previous administration led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party—admitted to travelling to the US during an interview with Polish private conservative broadcaster TV Republika…

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Lessons in resistance for the scientific community — a conversation with Timothy Snyder

Lessons in resistance for the scientific community — a conversation with Timothy Snyder

  H. Holden Thorp writes: Federal grant cancellations, restrictions on immigration for foreign scientists, and attempts to cut the budgets of science funding agencies by 60%—the past 18 months have been tumultuous for American science. Even after Congress restored the budgets, following the successful lobbying by leaders of the scientific community, universities are still hampered by the slow dispersal of the appropriated funds. Meanwhile, the continual attacks on science and the uncertainty brought on by the Trump administration have put…

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Are you as easily fooled as AI? Depends what you see in this image

Are you as easily fooled as AI? Depends what you see in this image

This optical illusion from the natural world is testing the limits of computer vision. Learn more: https://t.co/geC0qeRePT #ScienceMagArchives pic.twitter.com/RKajt7r1zk — Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) May 10, 2026 Science reports: If you see a curled leaf in the image above, you’ve fallen for the intricate camouflage of the green fruit-piercing moth (Eudocima salaminia)—a citrus-loving insect that uses the ruse to hide from predators. But don’t feel too bad: Even artificial intelligence (AI) is easily fooled, according to a study published today in…

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Iran war marks the end of American primacy as we know it

Iran war marks the end of American primacy as we know it

Trita Parsi writes: The war in Ukraine shattered a core assumption about great-power dominance: that size and military strength are enough to impose one’s will. Ukraine showed otherwise. With the right strategy, geography, and resolve, a weaker state can survive and blunt – and in key respects even defeat – a much stronger adversary. The United States now faces an uncomfortable parallel. The war with Iran is exposing similar limits to American power. For decades, U.S. grand strategy has rested…

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Russia has lost more than 350,000 soldiers in Ukraine war, new estimate finds

Russia has lost more than 350,000 soldiers in Ukraine war, new estimate finds

The New York Times reports: About 352,000 Russian soldiers had died in the war against Ukraine through the end of 2025, according to a new estimate, underscoring the high cost that President Vladimir V. Putin is willing to bear to pursue his battlefield aims. The figure was released on Saturday — the day of Russia’s annual May 9 parade celebrating victory over Germany in World War II — by the exiled Russian media outlets Meduza and Mediazona. The number raises…

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How much advantage are Republicans gaining through redistricting?

How much advantage are Republicans gaining through redistricting?

Nate Cohn writes: The redistricting wars heading into the November midterm elections had been in a stalemate, with each party’s tit-for-tat gerrymanders roughly canceling each other out. It’s not a stalemate anymore. Over just the last two weeks, new court rulings and new congressional maps have put Republicans on track to add more than a dozen districts that voted for President Trump. It would be enough for Republicans to obtain a significant structural advantage in the House of Representatives, giving…

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