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Netanyahu won’t commit to abiding by ruling if Israel’s Supreme Court blocks controversial law

Netanyahu won’t commit to abiding by ruling if Israel’s Supreme Court blocks controversial law

CNN reports: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to say if he would abide by any potential Supreme Court ruling striking down his controversial judicial reform law, as Israelis agonize over a looming showdown between their government and the court. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Netanyhu warned that the country could enter “uncharted territory” if the Supreme Court overturned the law, which strips the court of its power to block government actions. “What you’re talking about is…

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Let the tragedy in my homeland be a lesson

Let the tragedy in my homeland be a lesson

Tahir Hamut Izgil writes: About seven years ago, people around me started disappearing. It began slowly, quietly. The editors of a well-known literature textbook were suddenly nowhere to be found. A friend of mine left for work and never came home. My family and I are Uyghurs, and at the time we were living in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. The political situation in our region had been growing gradually more tense for…

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What makes the debilitating fatigue in many chronic illnesses so different from everyday tiredness

What makes the debilitating fatigue in many chronic illnesses so different from everyday tiredness

Ed Yong writes: Alexis Misko’s health has improved enough that, once a month, she can leave her house for a few hours. First, she needs to build up her energy by lying in a dark room for the better part of two days, doing little more than listening to audiobooks. Then she needs a driver, a quiet destination where she can lie down, and days of rest to recover afterward. The brief outdoor joy “never quite feels like enough,” she…

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Modern ‘sixth mass extinction’ event will be worse than first predicted, says report

Modern ‘sixth mass extinction’ event will be worse than first predicted, says report

GrrlScientist writes: Tragically, the global mass extinction event that we find ourselves in the midst of will be even worse than originally predicted, according to a recent study (ref). The international team of scientists came to their conclusion after analyzing population trends data for more than 71,000 animal species — including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects — from around the world to see how their numbers have changed since record-keeping first began. Generally, scientists agree that an extinction…

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Trump faces major new charges in documents case

Trump faces major new charges in documents case

The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Thursday added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, saying he told a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted. The new accusations were revealed in a superseding indictment that named the maintenance worker, Carlos De Oliveira, as a new defendant in the case. The revised indictment also added three serious charges against…

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Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue

Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue

The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump considered another White House run last year, his company’s finances were at risk of spiraling into crisis. The former president’s longtime lender and several banks with his deposits had cut ties in the days around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, at a time when Trump had hundreds of millions in loans coming due. In February 2022, the accounting firm that had worked for him for two decades dropped…

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Moms, a target of the right, lean heavily left

Moms, a target of the right, lean heavily left

Philip Bump writes: To hear prominent Republicans tell it, theirs is the party of parents. This is somewhere downstream from Donald Trump’s eagerness to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which intertwined with parents’ frustration about their kids not being in school. After President Biden was inaugurated, the party and its media allies elevated and stoked parental discontent about how race was taught and gender addressed in schools. Stephen K. Bannon advocated that conservatives run for local…

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Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints

Reuters reports: In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery. He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect. “We’re…

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U.S. intel report details increasing importance of Chinese technology to Russia’s war in Ukraine

U.S. intel report details increasing importance of Chinese technology to Russia’s war in Ukraine

CNN reports: China is providing technology and equipment to Russia that is increasingly important to Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a newly released report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report, titled “Support Provided by the People’s Republic of China to Russia” and dated 2023, is unclassified and largely cites open-source data and western press reporting to support its claims. But it includes the US intelligence community assessment that China “has become an increasingly…

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U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says

U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says

NPR reports: Three military veterans testified in Congress’ highly anticipated hearing on UFOs Wednesday, including a former Air Force intelligence officer who claimed the U.S. government has operated a secret “multi-decade” reverse engineering program of recovered vessels. He also said the U.S. has recovered non-human “biologics” from alleged crash sites. But while the topic of “little green men” did come up, much of the discussion centered on improving processes for reporting unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — the military’s term…

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A return to the White House offers Trump his best opportunity to avoid legal accountability

A return to the White House offers Trump his best opportunity to avoid legal accountability

Paul Rosenzweig writes: If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a referendum on several crucial issues: the prospect of authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant democracy, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance. It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil…

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The myth of the effective dictator

The myth of the effective dictator

Brian Klaas writes: Last week, at a Fox News town hall (where else?), former President Donald Trump called China’s despot, Xi Jinping, a “brilliant” guy who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Lest anyone doubt his admiration, Trump added that Xi is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.” Trump is not alone. Many in the United States and around the globe see the allure of a dictator who gets things done and makes…

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Rising number of Americans say political violence is justified

Rising number of Americans say political violence is justified

The Guardian reports: The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months, researchers found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups support acting on…

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Russians see Ukrainian progress where others don’t

Russians see Ukrainian progress where others don’t

Michael Weiss and James Rushton write: One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is. Sixteen months ago, it was hard to find many people in prominent Washington think tanks or at major broadsheets who did not think Kyiv would fall in three days. When it didn’t, those wedded to the notion that Russia…

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