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Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink

Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink

The Washington Post reports: The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years, and it’s as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing. The warnings are echoing through the drenched mountains of Vermont, where two months of rain just fell in only two days. India and Japan were deluged by extreme flooding. They’re blaring from the scorching streets of Texas, Florida, Spain and China, with a severe heat wave also building in Phoenix and the Southwest in…

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Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more

Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more

The Associated Press reports: The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers. Many were forced to wear overlarge Russian military uniforms that could make them a target, and a former city administrator trudged around in boots five sizes too big. By the end of the…

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The two faces of TikTokers promoting Syrian tourism

The two faces of TikTokers promoting Syrian tourism

Jessica Roy writes: “Get ready with me to go clubbing with this bitch!” commands a recent TikTok posted by an Arab International University student named Patricia. In the clip, two college-aged girls in one’s childhood bedroom apply bronzer, chat and listen to music as they prepare to go out to a party. Both wear the uniform of a 20-something in 2023 — denim and a going-out top — and one sports a tattoo along the blade of her collarbone. The…

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The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is bigger and more far-reaching than you think

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is bigger and more far-reaching than you think

Anthropocene reports: Landmark climate legislation passed in the United States in 2022 could nearly halve the U.S. economy’s overall emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2035, according to a new analysis. But on its own, it still won’t be sufficient to meet the country’s pledges under the Paris Agreement. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is possibly the most significant piece of U.S. climate legislation yet. Its provisions include tax credits for clean energy, energy storage, and carbon capture; measures to…

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Vermont floods show limits of America’s efforts to adapt to climate change

Vermont floods show limits of America’s efforts to adapt to climate change

The New York Times reports: This week’s flooding in Vermont, in which heavy rainfall caused destruction even miles from any river, is evidence of an especially dangerous climate threat: Catastrophic flooding can increasingly happen anywhere, with almost no warning. And the United States, experts warn, is nowhere close to ready for that threat. The idea that anywhere it can rain, it can flood, is not new. But rising temperatures make the problem worse: They allow the air to hold more…

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Joe Manchin to headline No Labels event amid third-party presidential speculation

Joe Manchin to headline No Labels event amid third-party presidential speculation

The Messenger reports: West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin will headline a town hall in New Hampshire next week hosted by No Labels, stoking speculation around the Democrat’s presidential ambitions and the group’s effort to mount a third-party bid in 2024. According to a No Labels spokesperson, Manchin will be joined by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, on Monday, July 17 as part of the group’s “Common Sense” town hall series. The event — held in New Hampshire, an…

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House Democrats demand probe of Comer’s indicted ‘missing’ Biden informant

House Democrats demand probe of Comer’s indicted ‘missing’ Biden informant

The Daily Beast reports: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee called for an investigation on Wednesday into whether the committee’s Republicans relied on falsehoods and misinformation provided by Gal Luft, a supposed “whistleblower” in the Biden family probe who has been charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for China and lying to investigators. In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D0MAD) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) brought up the laundry list…

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Ukraine needs NATO — and NATO needs Ukraine, too

Ukraine needs NATO — and NATO needs Ukraine, too

Garry Kasparov writes: Last week, an opinion article in Foreign Affairs argued for locking Ukraine out of NATO. The authors, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson of the Cato Institute, offered five claims to support their arguments. But as is typical of the genre, their article is long on opinion and short on facts. Because articles like this are so useful in Kremlin propagandists’ disinformation campaigns, it is worth refuting Logan and Shifrinson’s five claims one by one. Claim 1: Russia…

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Tax prep firms shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds

Tax prep firms shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds

CNN reports: Some of America’s largest tax-prep companies have spent years sharing Americans’ sensitive financial data with tech titans including Meta and Google in a potential violation of federal law — data that in some cases was misused for targeted advertising, according to a seven-month congressional investigation. The report highlights what legal experts described to CNN as a “five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy that could lead to government and private lawsuits, criminal penalties or perhaps even a “mortal blow” for…

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A year of cosmic wonder with the James Webb Space Telescope

A year of cosmic wonder with the James Webb Space Telescope

The New York Times reports: By now, perhaps, we should be getting used to unreal images of the cosmos made with the James Webb Space Telescope. But a year after NASA released the cosmic observatory’s first imagery, the space agency has dropped yet another breathtaking snapshot of our universe. Wednesday’s image was Rho Ophiuchi, the closest nursery of infant stars in our cosmic backyard. Located a mere 390 light years away from Earth, this cloud complex is chock-full of stellar…

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Trump lawyers seek indefinite postponement of documents trial

Trump lawyers seek indefinite postponement of documents trial

The New York Times reports: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided. The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the…

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Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books

The Associated Press reports: For colleges and libraries seeking a boldfaced name for a guest lecturer, few come bigger than Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court justice who rose from poverty in the Bronx to the nation’s highest court. She has benefited, too — from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years. Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that…

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What foreign-policy realists get wrong about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

What foreign-policy realists get wrong about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

Lawrence Freedman writes: The Russo-Ukrainian War is all about territory. Russia wants to complete its occupation of the oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson; Ukraine seeks to liberate all occupied territories, including Crimea. This is what the game theorists call a “zero-sum game” – what one wins the others must lose. This feature of the war explains why a negotiated outcome is so difficult to achieve, why the current battles matter so much, and why those commenting on the…

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Florida ocean temperatures at ‘downright shocking’ levels

Florida ocean temperatures at ‘downright shocking’ levels

The Washington Post reports: Not only is Florida sizzling in record-crushing heat, but the ocean waters that surround it are scorching, as well. The unprecedented ocean warmth around the state — connected to historically warm oceans worldwide — is further intensifying its heat wave and stressing coral reefs, with conditions that could end up strengthening hurricanes. Much of Florida is seeing its warmest year on record, with temperatures running 3 to 5 degrees above normal. While some locations have been…

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