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First human ‘pangenome’ aims to catalogue genetic diversity

First human ‘pangenome’ aims to catalogue genetic diversity

Nature reports: More than 20 years after the first draft genome from the landmark Human Genome Project was released, researchers have published a draft human ‘pangenome’ — a snapshot of what is poised to become a new reference for genetic research that captures more of human diversity than has been previously available. Geneticists have welcomed the milestone, while also highlighting key ethical considerations surrounding the effort to make genome research more inclusive. “This is like going from black-and-white television to…

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Quid pro quo: Clarence Thomas reversed position after gifts and family payments

Quid pro quo: Clarence Thomas reversed position after gifts and family payments

The Lever reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines after his wife reportedly accepted secret payments from a shadowy conservative network pushing for the change. Thomas’ shift also came while he was receiving lavish gifts from a billionaire linked to other groups criticizing the same doctrine — which is now headed back to the high court. The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that the executive branch — not the federal…

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Clarence Thomas must resign

Clarence Thomas must resign

In order to preserve the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas must resign. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington today sent a letter to Thomas calling on him to resign and outlining why his resignation is a necessity. “This is not something we do lightly,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said. “This is a place we never wanted to be, but it has become clear that Justice Thomas likely violated civil and criminal laws and has created the…

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Trump has finally been held accountable for lying

Trump has finally been held accountable for lying

RonNell Andersen Jones and Dahlia Lithwick write: [N]o one should lose sight of the fact that Carroll’s win actually represents a staggering turning point: Even under the most free-speech-protective standard imaginable, Trump is accountable for his lies about her. At its core, and understandably, the two-week Carroll trial homed in on the dominant harm Trump inflicted on the former columnist—a traumatizing and life-altering sexual attack in a dressing room of a department store near Trump Tower. (Disclosure: One of us…

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Terrible timing of Trump’s town hall on CNN has allies freaking out

Terrible timing of Trump’s town hall on CNN has allies freaking out

The Daily Beast reports: For Donald Trump, the initial plan seemed simple. By agreeing to an exclusive town hall in New Hampshire with his biggest cable news nemesis—CNN—the 2024 Republican frontrunner was poised for a made-for-primetime clash to delight his followers, set off his critics, and suck up the political oxygen in the critical early primary state. Just over 24 hours before Trump’s scheduled sit-down, however, whatever hopes he had to ambush CNN turned into what one of his former…

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The book-bans debate has finally reached a turning point

The book-bans debate has finally reached a turning point

Ronald Brownstein writes: Across multiple fronts, Democrats and their allies are stiffening their resistance to a surge of Republican-led book bans. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the past month have conspicuously escalated their denunciations of the book bans proliferating in schools across the country, explicitly linking them to restrictions on abortion and voting rights to make the case that “MAGA extremists” are threatening Americans’ “personal freedom,” as Biden said in the recent video announcing his campaign…

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The West must be ready for this moment of opportunity and risk in Ukraine

The West must be ready for this moment of opportunity and risk in Ukraine

Timothy Garton Ash writes: As you read this, thousands of young Ukrainian men and women are going through their last training drills, checking their weapons and waiting for D-day. In the big Ukrainian counteroffensive that may start any time now, some of them will be killed and many more will be wounded. None will emerge unchanged. We thought we had said goodbye to all that in 1945, but this is Europe in 2023. Nobody knows what will happen in this…

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Memories may be stored in the membranes of your neurons

Memories may be stored in the membranes of your neurons

Changes in the synapses between neurons is responsible for learning and memory. KTSDESIGN/Science Photo Library via Getty Images By John Katsaras, University of Tennessee; Charles Patrick Collier, University of Tennessee, and Dima Bolmatov, University of Tennessee Your brain is responsible for controlling most of your body’s activities. Its information processing capabilities are what allow you to learn, and it is the central repository of your memories. But how is memory formed, and where is it located in the brain? Although…

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What could turn Biden’s reelection upside down

What could turn Biden’s reelection upside down

David Frum writes: I argued recently that political fundamentals point to a strong Biden reelection in 2024: The economy is growing, employment is rising, and Republican culture-warring is alienating crucial groups of voters. But big trends can be punctuated by unexpected events—the X factors that bump history off its predicted course. The 2016 election cycle was dominated by two important last-minute shocks: Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood recording and FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that he was reopening an investigation into…

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Timothy McVeigh’s dreams are coming true

Timothy McVeigh’s dreams are coming true

Michelle Goldberg writes: Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, cared about one issue above all others: guns. To him, guns were synonymous with freedom, and any government attempt to regulate them meant incipient tyranny. “When it came to guns,” writes Jeffrey Toobin in “Homegrown,” his compelling new book about the Oklahoma City attack, “McVeigh did more than simply advocate for his own right to own and use firearms; he joined an…

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Harlan Crow sure isn’t paying for your kid’s school

Harlan Crow sure isn’t paying for your kid’s school

Dahlia Lithwick writes: In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned his seat at the Supreme Court for accepting $15,000 in exchange for a series of paid lectures at American University. Part of the Fortas scandal also involved news of him accepting a stipend for doing legal work for a very rich friend (money he had actually returned when the benefactor was indicted and before the outcry). None of Fortas’ colleagues defended him for this. No one blamed the press or even…

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William Burns, a CIA spymaster with unusual powers

William Burns, a CIA spymaster with unusual powers

The New York Times reports: To mark the 20th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, stood in the lobby of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and sought to exorcise the ghosts of the prewar intelligence failures that haunt the building to this day. Addressing some 100 C.I.A. officials on March 19, Mr. Burns acknowledged how the agency catastrophically blundered in its assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he noted,…

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FBI disrupts Russian hacking tool used to steal information from foreign governments

FBI disrupts Russian hacking tool used to steal information from foreign governments

CNN reports: The FBI announced Tuesday that it has disrupted a network of hacked computers that Russian spies have used for years to steal sensitive information from at least 50 countries, including NATO governments. The action appears to be a major blow to Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, which has allegedly used the sophisticated hacking tool to infiltrate US and Western diplomatic and military agencies for nearly two decades. It’s the latest move by the Justice Department to more…

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The U.S. silence on Israeli nuclear weapons and the right-wing Israeli government

The U.S. silence on Israeli nuclear weapons and the right-wing Israeli government

Victor Gilinsky writes: The Israeli protests against its new right-wing government have now touched on Israel’s nuclear weapons. To underline what is at stake, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak cast aside Israeli ambiguity over whether it possesses nuclear weapons to warn his compatriots that Western diplomats are worried that a Jewish messianic dictatorship could gain control over Israel’s nuclear weapons. One thing we can be sure of is that the United States was not officially represented among those Western…

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