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CIA chief says China has doubts about its ability to invade Taiwan

CIA chief says China has doubts about its ability to invade Taiwan

The Associated Press reports: U.S. intelligence shows that China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan though he may be currently harboring doubts about his ability to do so given Russia’s experience in its war with Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns said. Burns, in a television interview that aired Sunday, stressed that the United States must take “very seriously” Xi’s desire to ultimately control Taiwan even if military conflict is not…

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Murdoch acknowledges Fox News hosts endorsed election fraud falsehoods

Murdoch acknowledges Fox News hosts endorsed election fraud falsehoods

The New York Times reports: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, court documents released on Monday showed. “They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, a legal filing by Dominion Voting…

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Night skies are getting 9.6% brighter every year as light pollution erases stars for everyone

Night skies are getting 9.6% brighter every year as light pollution erases stars for everyone

All human development, from large cities to small towns, shines light into the night sky. Benny Ang/Flickr, CC BY By Chris Impey, University of Arizona and Connie Walker, National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory CC BY-ND For most of human history, the stars blazed in an otherwise dark night sky. But starting around the Industrial Revolution, as artificial light increasingly lit cities and towns at night, the stars began to disappear. We are two astronomers who depend on dark night skies…

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Putin’s existential fear

Putin’s existential fear

Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people – and said he was forced to take into account NATO’s nuclear capabilities. A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history – and saying that he believes the very future of Russia and its people is in peril. “They…

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Iranian women defiantly assert, ‘the era of the forced hijab is over’

Iranian women defiantly assert, ‘the era of the forced hijab is over’

The New York Times reports: An engineer strode onstage at an event in Tehran, wearing tight pants and a stylish shirt, and clutching a microphone in one hand. Her long brown hair, tied in a ponytail, swung freely behind her, uncovered, in open defiance of Iran’s strict hijab law. “I am Zeinab Kazempour,” she told the convention of Iran’s professional association of engineers. She condemned the group for supporting the hijab rules, and then she marched offstage, removing a scarf…

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Accidental lab leak more likely than other possible causes of Covid pandemic, Energy Department now says

Accidental lab leak more likely than other possible causes of Covid pandemic, Energy Department now says

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office. The new report highlights how different parts of the…

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Elon Musk defends Scott Adams’ racism

Elon Musk defends Scott Adams’ racism

The Washington Post reports: Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk defended Scott Adams, the under-fire creator of “Dilbert,” in a series of tweets Sunday, blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip after Adams said that White people should “get the hell away from Black people.” Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is “racist against whites & Asians.” He offered no criticism of Adams’s comments, in which the cartoonist called Black people…

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In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power

In rural America, right-to-repair laws are the leading edge of a pushback against growing corporate power

Waiting for repairs can cost farmers time and money. VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images By Leland Glenna, Penn State As tractors became more sophisticated over the past two decades, the big manufacturers allowed farmers fewer options for repairs. Rather than hiring independent repair shops, farmers have increasingly had to wait for company-authorized dealers to arrive. Getting repairs could take days, often leading to lost time and high costs. A new memorandum of understanding between the country’s largest farm…

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All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

Science Alert reports: Every animal on Earth may house the molecular machinery to sense magnetic fields, even those organisms that don’t navigate or migrate using this mysterious ‘sixth sense’. Scientists working on fruit flies have now identified a ubiquitous molecule in all living cells that can respond to magnetic sensitivity if it is present in high enough amounts or if other molecules assist it. The new findings suggest that magnetoreception could be much more common in the animal kingdom than…

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Fossils upend conventional wisdom about evolution of human bipedalism

Fossils upend conventional wisdom about evolution of human bipedalism

Jeremy DeSilva writes: Long before our ancestors evolved large brains and language, even before they tamed fire or made stone tools, they started doing something no mammal had done before: walking on two legs. Skeletal adaptations for traveling upright are evident in fossils of the very oldest hominins—members of the human family—which date to between seven million and five million years ago. Moving on two legs rather than four set the stage for subsequent evolutionary changes in our lineage. It…

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Ukraine is the West’s war now

Ukraine is the West’s war now

Yaroslav Trofimov writes: Two days before the Russian invasion of his country, on Feb. 22, 2022, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was welcomed to the White House. As he greeted President Biden and senior administration officials, Mr. Kuleba later recalled, he felt like a patient surrounded by doctors presenting him with a diagnosis of stage-four cancer. The consensus among the U.S. and its European allies was that there was nothing they could do to prevent the inevitable. Their intelligence services…

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My year of living under constant attack in Kyiv

My year of living under constant attack in Kyiv

Mariia Shuvalova writes: At 5 a.m. on February 24, 2022, my husband woke me up in our Kyiv apartment. He had heard explosions. In complete darkness, I tried to dress and pack documents, a laptop, and cash into a backpack. Immediately I started experiencing nausea, diarrhea, and pain in the bottom of my stomach. My period began three weeks earlier than it normally would (something that also happened to many Ukrainian women with whom I’ve spoken). And I also had…

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China considers sending Russia artillery shells, U.S. officials say

China considers sending Russia artillery shells, U.S. officials say

The Washington Post reports: China is considering sending Russia lethal military aid in the form of artillery shells as President Vladimir Putin’s army rapidly depletes its supply of ammunition a year into his invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials said, a prospect that has alarmed those in the Biden administration who believe Beijing has the ability to transform the war’s trajectory. There is no evidence that any weapons transfers have occurred, these officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to…

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Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Rebecca Solnit writes: As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance. Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now…

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