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Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking

Consciousness begins with feeling, not thinking

Antonio Damasio and Hanna Damasio write: Please pause for a moment and notice what you are feeling now. Perhaps you notice a growing snarl of hunger in your stomach or a hum of stress in your chest. Perhaps you have a feeling of ease and expansiveness, or the tingling anticipation of a pleasure soon to come. Or perhaps you simply have a sense that you exist. Hunger and thirst, pain, pleasure and distress, along with the unadorned but relentless feelings…

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Fox News’s settlement in the Dominion case is big news, except on Fox News

Fox News’s settlement in the Dominion case is big news, except on Fox News

The New York Times reports: Fox News’s last-minute settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday earned banner coverage on every television news network but one: Fox News. The $787.5 million settlement was covered only three times by Fox News in about four hours after the settlement became public, amounting to about six minutes of coverage. For most of the day, including during the network’s prime-time shows, hosts appeared to be focusing on other issues, like illegal immigration and Covid-19’s possible…

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Fox can claim tax writeoff for defamation settlement

Fox can claim tax writeoff for defamation settlement

The Lever reports: Fox’s massive settlement with private equity-backed voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems didn’t just spare the conservative news organization from a lengthy public defamation trial or a full public reckoning for its election lies — it could also mean a tax break as large as $213 million, according to a Lever review. On Tuesday, Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation agreed to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion, the largest-known media defamation payout in U.S. history, concluding two years of litigation over…

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Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC

Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC

The Washington Post reports: A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post. Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave…

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With a heavy weight on his shoulders, Evan Gershkovich is standing tall

With a heavy weight on his shoulders, Evan Gershkovich is standing tall

Jason Rezaian writes: As Evan Gershkovich appeared in a Moscow courtroom, everything about the stage-managed proceedings was designed to elicit a specific response. He was placed in a glass cage where cameras flashed around him. Local Russian journalists covering the appearance yelled words of encouragement to him. Courtroom security guards admonished them for doing so. And the judge presiding over Gershkovich’s case rejected his appeal to be released on bail. In short, everyone played their part. Everyone, that is, except…

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World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Nino returns

World could face record temperatures in 2023 as El Nino returns

Reuters reports: The world could breach a new average temperature record in 2023 or 2024, fuelled by climate change and the anticipated return of the El Nino weather phenomenon, climate scientists say. Climate models suggest that after three years of the La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which generally lowers global temperatures slightly, the world will experience a return to El Nino, the warmer counterpart, later this year. During El Nino, winds blowing west along the equator slow…

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Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action

Yale Climate Connections reports: While recent federal bills have advanced climate solutions through the lenses of infrastructure, electricity production, and transportation, policymakers are now turning their attention to another major source of planet-heating emissions: the food system. In its March 2023 report on U.S. biotechnology and biomanufacturing innovation, the White House emphasized a coming focus on climate-centric agriculture. In February, a group of House representatives launched a task force to ensure that the 2023 farm bill contains strong climate provisions….

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Why the brain’s connections to the body are crisscrossed

Why the brain’s connections to the body are crisscrossed

R. Douglas Fields writes: Dazzling intricacies of brain structure are revealed every day, but one of the most obvious aspects of brain wiring eludes neuroscientists. The nervous system is cross-wired, so that the left side of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa. Every doctor relies upon this fact in performing neurological exams, but when I asked my doctor last week why this should be, all I got was a shrug. So I asked Catherine…

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Russian ships accused of planning North Sea sabotage

Russian ships accused of planning North Sea sabotage

BBC News reports: Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations. The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea. They carry underwater surveillance equipment and are mapping key sites for possible sabotage. The BBC understands that UK officials are aware of Russian…

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Tunisia arrests opposition leader as crackdown escalates

Tunisia arrests opposition leader as crackdown escalates

The Washington Post reports: Tunisian security forces arrested the leader of the main opposition party Monday night and shuttered its headquarters, escalating a crackdown on the president’s critics in this formerly authoritarian North African country, which is veering again toward one-man rule. About 100 plainclothes police officers raided the home of Rachid Ghannouchi, the 81-year-old head of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, on Monday evening, as he was sitting down with family to break the Ramadan fast, his daughter Yusra…

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China is on track to become a nuclear superpower

China is on track to become a nuclear superpower

The New York Times reports: On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs. The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant…

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For Rupert Murdoch, $787.5 million is just the price of doing business

For Rupert Murdoch, $787.5 million is just the price of doing business

Jack Shafer writes: If it seems fairly daft to congratulate Rupert Murdoch on settling the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case at a cost of $787.5 million, you probably need to be brought up to speed on how the tycoon excises malignancies when they threaten his core businesses. Murdoch’s company paid $100 million to celebrities and crime victims in his tabloid phone-hacking scandal in Britain, according to the Washington Post. Another $50 million went one year to women at Fox News who alleged sexual harassment…

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Fox investors seek records in possible step toward suing directors

Fox investors seek records in possible step toward suing directors

Reuters reports: Fox Corp shareholders are demanding company records that may show whether directors and executives properly oversaw Fox News’ coverage of former President Donald Trump’s election-rigging claims, sources told Reuters, in what could be a prelude to lawsuits seeking to make directors liable for costs. Investors are using provisions in Delaware corporate law to demand internal Fox records to investigate how Fox’s leaders acted as its Fox News network aired segments on Trump’s false claims that he lost the…

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Dominon, like Fox, places its business interests above public interest

Dominon, like Fox, places its business interests above public interest

Erik Wemple writes: In its statement, Fox News demonstrated that not even a court record bulging with evidence of perfidy is enough to shame the organization into genuine contrition. “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.” (Boldface added to highlight the network’s minimization of the fact that the…

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