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Giant cracks in the ground emerging across U.S. Southwest, scientists warn

Giant cracks in the ground emerging across U.S. Southwest, scientists warn

Science Alert reports: The United States has been pumping so much groundwater that the ground is beginning to split open across southwestern parts of the country for miles on end. These giant cracks, aka fissures, have been spotted in states including Arizona, Utah, and California. Groundwater is one of the main sources of freshwater on Earth – it provides almost half of all drinking water, and about 40% of global irrigation. But humans are pumping groundwater faster than Earth can…

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Trump faces another 14th Amendment candidacy challenge, this time in Minnesota

Trump faces another 14th Amendment candidacy challenge, this time in Minnesota

CNN reports: A liberal group filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot in Minnesota, the second major lawsuit in two weeks that hopes to invoke the 14th Amendment’s arcane “insurrectionist ban.” The cases are seen as legal long shots. Trump denies wrongdoing and has vowed to fight to remain on the presidential ballot. The new Minnesota lawsuit was filed in state court by Free Speech For People, one week after another group…

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What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán understand about your brain

What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán understand about your brain

Marcel Danesi writes: Why do people believe some politicians’ lies even when they have been proven false? And why do so many of the same people peddle conspiracy theories? Lying and conspiratorial thinking might seem to be two different problems, but they turn out to be related. I study political rhetoric and have tried to understand how populist politicians use language to develop a cult-like following, divide nations, create culture wars and instill hatred. This pattern goes back to antiquity…

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How Trump’s DOJ gave Biden a major assist in the coming impeachment probe

How Trump’s DOJ gave Biden a major assist in the coming impeachment probe

Politico reports: Joe Biden has a literal Trump card to play against the House’s new impeachment inquiry. In January 2020, the Donald Trump-led Justice Department formally declared that impeachment inquiries by the House are invalid unless the chamber takes formal votes to authorize them. That opinion — issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — came in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump without initially holding a vote for it….

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The real aim of McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

The real aim of McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden

Molly Olmstead writes: Republicans have threatened to impeach President Joe Biden so many times that it’s become natural to tune out every new attempt. The calls started before his presidency even began, when right-wingers put credence behind the false narrative that Biden had “stolen” the 2020 election. Since then, Republicans have called for a Biden impeachment over—among other things—immigration policies; military decisions; COVID-related restrictions and measures; classified documents; and accusations of abusing the FBI and other agencies for Biden’s own…

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Biden impeachment inquiry gives White House a fight it’s ready for

Biden impeachment inquiry gives White House a fight it’s ready for

CNBC reports: The White House’s oversight and investigations war room finally got the battle on Tuesday that they’d been arming themselves for. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that he has directed GOP led House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden was the long anticipated retribution that White House aides had been waiting for, after House Democrats twice impeached Donald Trump during his one term in office. Ever since Republicans retook the House majority last year, the…

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Coming together as things fall apart

Coming together as things fall apart

Astra Taylor writes: Since 2020, the richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all new wealth globally — almost twice as much money as the rest of the world’s population. At the beginning of last year, it was estimated that 10 billionaire men possessed six times as much wealth as the poorest three billion people on Earth. In the United States, the richest 10 percent of households own more than 70 percent of the country’s assets. Such statistics are…

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Iran’s researchers increasingly isolated as government prepares to wall off internet

Iran’s researchers increasingly isolated as government prepares to wall off internet

Science reports: Last year, a machine learning expert in Silicon Valley embarked on a long-distance partnership with two neuroscientists in Tehran, Iran. They planned to gather data on how neurons respond to visual cues, hoping to develop a marker for early detection of Parkinson’s disease. “I’d handle the modeling and analysis, and we’d co-author papers,” says the U.S.-based computer scientist, who asked to remain anonymous because he has family in Iran. Then, on 16 September 2022, Mahsa Jina Amini, a…

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These concerned Colorado citizens want to stop Trump using the 14th Amendment

These concerned Colorado citizens want to stop Trump using the 14th Amendment

Noah Bookbinder and Donald K. Sherman write: Donald Trump currently faces four criminal prosecutions, a momentous and historic fact that can hardly be overstated. But a civil suit brought this week by six courageous residents of Colorado is another important step in the quest to preserve the viability of our democracy. The suit, filed on Sept. 6 in Colorado District Court by Republican and unaffiliated voters, seeks to compel Colorado’s secretary of state to bar Trump from the state’s ballot,…

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Trump seeks recusal of Judge Tanya Chutkan in federal elections case

Trump seeks recusal of Judge Tanya Chutkan in federal elections case

The New York Times reports: In a motion filed in Federal District Court in Washington, John F. Lauro, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, cited statements Judge Chutkan had made about the former president at hearings for two defendants facing sentencing for crimes they committed at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. At one of the hearings, in October 2022, Judge Chutkan told the defendant, Christine Priola, a former occupational therapist in the Cleveland school system, that the people who “mobbed”…

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Democrats inch toward House majority with recent court wins

Democrats inch toward House majority with recent court wins

Politico reports: The fundamentals of the 2024 campaign are still taking shape, but one thing is already clear: A flurry of court actions might cost Republicans the House majority. In the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps — and helped Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio — kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year. All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be…

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What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk

What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk

Anne Applebaum writes: One evening in September 2022, a group of Ukrainian sea drones sped out into the Black Sea, heading for Russian-occupied Crimea. Their designers—engineers who had been doing other things until the current war began—had carefully targeted the fast, remote-controlled, explosive-packed vessels to hit ships anchored in Sebastopol, the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. But the drones ran into a problem: Starlink, the satellite-communications system that Ukraine had been using since Russia invaded early last year, unexpectedly…

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Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

The Washington Post reports: Instagram’s text-based social platform Threads last week rolled out its new search function, a crucial step toward the platform’s expansion and one that would give it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter. Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter. Not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy. When users went to Threads to search for content related to “covid” and “long covid,” they were…

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Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Helen Branswell writes: Among people who are still paying attention to Covid-19, there’s been a recent surge — not just in viral activity but in the concern once again being paid to Covid. Headlines announce that transmission is surging and hospitalizations for Covid are rising by alarming percentages. There’s debate in some places about whether or not to resume wearing masks. People are worrying about whether the latest subvariant, BA.2.86, spells bad news for our fall and winter, and whether…

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