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China’s Xi calls Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, after weeks of intensifying pressure to do so

China’s Xi calls Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, after weeks of intensifying pressure to do so

NPR reports: Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, over a month after Xi’s summit in Moscow with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin. Xi made the call to Zelenskyy after weeks of intensifying pressure from Western leaders to use his influence with Putin to broker a deal toward ending the war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s invasion in late February 2022. It was the first call between Xi and Zelenskyy since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government said….

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The analyst who saw through 2022’s red mirage has a prediction for Biden 2024

The analyst who saw through 2022’s red mirage has a prediction for Biden 2024

Greg Sargent writes: Throughout the 2022 elections, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg offered up a counterintuitive diagnosis: Confident GOP predictions of a “red wave” weren’t just wrong, they were designed to deenergize Democratic voters with “negative sentiment.” He insisted Democrats would ignore this script and that MAGA extremism would alienate the mainstream. Rosenberg was vindicated when Democrats vastly overperformed expectations last year. Abortion rights fired up Democratic voters, and MAGA’s hostility toward democracy and embrace of Donald Trump drove swing voters away from the GOP, puncturing the red-wave fantasy….

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Democrats relish Trump-Biden rematch

Democrats relish Trump-Biden rematch

Politico reports: Democrats see former President Donald Trump’s post-indictment political resurgence as alarming for the country … and great for Joe Biden’s reelection hopes. Take it from Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat had front row seats to the former president’s shocking win in her state in 2016, and then to his loss to Biden four years later. She thinks a 2024 rematch would look more like the 2020 outcome. “Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very…

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Trump is losing the E. Jean Carroll rape case even before it starts

Trump is losing the E. Jean Carroll rape case even before it starts

The Daily Beast reports: With the rape trial of former President Donald Trump just days away, his effort to prevent jurors from hearing about another incident—when Trump allegedly forced himself on a different journalist—fell flat Monday. The federal judge overseeing the case ruled that Trump’s legal team made their appeal too late. And now jurors are poised to hear about a separate incident that could show a pattern of sexual assault from the former president. It’s the latest sign that…

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Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s leadership is viewed negatively by the majority of the global public

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s leadership is viewed negatively by the majority of the global public

VOA reports: In the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year, global attitudes toward Russia’s leadership have shifted dramatically, with large majorities of the population in dozens of countries reporting disapproval of the Kremlin. Data compiled from surveys of thousands of people in 137 countries and regions showed a marked decline in approval of the Kremlin, according to a report released by the Gallup organization on Tuesday. Globally, 57% of respondents reported that they disapprove of…

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Kremlin propagandists outraged that ‘our favorite, Tucker Carlson,’ got fired

Kremlin propagandists outraged that ‘our favorite, Tucker Carlson,’ got fired

Julia Davis reports: The explosive news of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News came as a surprise to many, including some of his biggest fans: propagandists who are shilling for the Kremlin on Russian state TV. During Monday’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, state TV propagandists discussed the best ways for Russia to attack America on its own turf, citing internal divisions and conflicts as an opening that should be continually probed and exploited. This conversation naturally led…

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Harry Belafonte: ‘This country reveals its moral decay every day of its existence’

Harry Belafonte: ‘This country reveals its moral decay every day of its existence’

  Following Harry Belafonte’s death at age 96, Rolling Stone‘s obituary recounts: Born in 1927 in Harlem, Harold Bellanfanti was the son of immigrants from Jamaica. His first creative love was the theater. He and Poitier got into acting together, which spun off into Belafonte’s music career. Before he became known, he was once backed by a band including Charlier Parker and Miles Davis; a switch to Caribbean music followed as Belafonte became entranced by the folk music of his…

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Why fusion power won’t avert climate catastrophe

Why fusion power won’t avert climate catastrophe

Philip Ball writes: One look at your energy bills this winter might have convinced you that the 1950s idea that electricity would, in the near future, become “too cheap to meter” was not so much a false promise as a sick joke. That over-excited claim was prompted by hopes that nuclear fusion – the process triggered in an uncontrolled manner in hydrogen bombs – would soon be harnessed for power generation. In the type of nuclear power we have today,…

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Vivek Ramaswamy: Tucker would be ‘good addition’ to GOP presidential field

Vivek Ramaswamy: Tucker would be ‘good addition’ to GOP presidential field

Politico reports: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Monday that Tucker Carlson should get into the Republican primary. “I think he’d be a good addition to the race,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with POLITICO, when asked whether he thinks the former Fox News host should mount his own presidential campaign. “I think someone should only do this if they feel called to do it, but I think it’d be good for the country if he got in, to be…

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Tucker Carlson, fired by Fox, gets Moscow job offer from Putin’s lead propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov

Tucker Carlson, fired by Fox, gets Moscow job offer from Putin’s lead propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov

Gabriel Sherman reports: The media world was blindsided by the news that Tucker Carlson and Fox News would be parting ways. So was Carlson. On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off. According to a source briefed on the conversation, Carlson was stunned by his sudden ouster from his 8 p.m. show, the most watched program in cable news…

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At U.S. behest, Ukraine held off anniversary attacks on Russia

At U.S. behest, Ukraine held off anniversary attacks on Russia

The Washington Post reports: In February, with the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine days away, officials in Kyiv were busy making plans to attack Moscow. Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the country’s military intelligence directorate, the HUR, instructed one of his officers “to get ready for mass strikes on 24 February … with everything the HUR had,” according to a classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency. Officials even mused about a sea-based strike using…

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World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges

World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports: The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender. US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 per cent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender. The 0.7 per cent real-terms increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981. ‘The…

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A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections

Yale Climate Connections reports: Nothing has a bigger influence on year-to-year variations in the global climate than the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, commonly called ENSO. And the tropical waters at the heart of ENSO aren’t behaving exactly as climate scientists expected they would in a warming world, with potentially major implications for Atlantic hurricane seasons, droughts in the U.S. Southwest and the Horn of Africa, and other weather phenomena around the world. ENSO is a recurring ocean-and-atmosphere pattern that warms and…

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More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

Science reports: The U.S. submarine fleet’s biggest adversary lately hasn’t been Red October. In 2005, the nuclear-powered USS San Francisco collided with an underwater volcano, or seamount, at top speed, killing a crew member and injuring most aboard. It happened again in 2021 when the USS Connecticut struck a seamount in the South China Sea, damaging its sonar array. With only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped with sonar, it is impossible to know how many seamounts exist. But radar…

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