Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

EU asks all members to set Russia oil-price cap at $60

EU asks all members to set Russia oil-price cap at $60

The Wall Street Journal reports: The European Commission has asked the bloc’s 27 member states to approve a price cap on Russian oil of $60 a barrel, according to people familiar with the matter. The cap by the European Union’s executive body would set Russian crude prices significantly below the international benchmark, called Brent, which traded at about $88 a barrel Thursday. If the EU agrees on the level, the Group of Seven nations need to sign off on it….

Read More Read More

Where Mearsheimer’s Realpolitik went wrong

Where Mearsheimer’s Realpolitik went wrong

Fred Kaplan writes: It may be a sign of decline in John Mearsheimer’s mental acuity that, nine months after coming off quite badly in one Q&A by the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, he agreed to strap himself in for another round of grilling and emerged more battered still. Professors of political science don’t generally cause a stir, but intellectual self-immolation is a rare spectacle. And Chotiner’s one-two torching of Mearsheimer is a barn-burner. In the past year, to a degree…

Read More Read More

How an early oil industry study became key in climate lawsuits

How an early oil industry study became key in climate lawsuits

Beth Gardiner writes: Carroll Muffett began wondering in 2008 when the world’s biggest oil companies had first understood the science of climate change and their product’s role in causing it. A lawyer then working as a consultant to environmental groups, he started researching the question at night and on weekends, ordering decades-old reports, books, and magazines off Amazon and eBay, or from academic libraries. It became a years-long quest, and as he pressed on, Muffett noticed one report kept coming…

Read More Read More

‘Forever chemicals’ may pose a bigger risk to our health than scientists thought

‘Forever chemicals’ may pose a bigger risk to our health than scientists thought

Science News reports: For decades, chemicals that make life easier — your eggs slide out of the frying pan, stains don’t stick to your sofa, rain bounces off your jackets and boots — have been touted as game changers for our busy modern lives. “Better things for better living … through chemistry,” was the optimistic slogan coined by DuPont, the company that invented the widely used chemical coating Teflon. But this better living has come at a cost that is getting…

Read More Read More

Fossil overturns more than a century of knowledge about the origin of modern birds

Fossil overturns more than a century of knowledge about the origin of modern birds

Science Daily reports: Fossilised fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht found that one of the key skull features that characterises 99% of modern birds — a mobile beak — evolved before the mass extinction event that killed all large dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. This finding also suggests…

Read More Read More

Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Mark Leibovich writes: Governor Ron DeSantis has a growing store of admirers. This includes many who have watched the cantankerous Floridian only from afar. They have heard glowing things. He was the biggest winner of an otherwise dark election cycle for Republicans. He has impeccable bona fides as a Donald Trump disciple—without being Trump himself, whom many see as the biggest loser of said dark election cycle. This has made DeSantis the GOP’s hottest molecule. He is full MAGA without…

Read More Read More

Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Eric Levitz writes: For months, the world’s largest economy has been teetering on the brink of collapse because America’s latter-day robber barons can’t comprehend that workers sometimes get sick. Or so the behavior of major U.S. rail companies seems to suggest. Since last winter, railroad unions and the managers of America’s seven dominant freight-rail carriers have been struggling to come to an agreement on a new contract. The key points of contention in those talks have been scheduling in general…

Read More Read More

Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

The Intercept reports: Elon Musk claims to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform. Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike…

Read More Read More

Twitter not safer under Elon Musk, says former head of trust and safety

Twitter not safer under Elon Musk, says former head of trust and safety

Reuters reports: Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth on Tuesday said the social media company was not safer under new owner Elon Musk, warning in his first interview since resigning this month that the company no longer had enough staff for safety work. Roth had tweeted after Musk’s takeover that by some measures, Twitter safety had improved under the billionaire’s ownership. Asked in an interview at the Knight Foundation conference on Tuesday whether he still felt that…

Read More Read More

U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

CNN reports: The Biden administration is considering a dramatic expansion in the training the US military provides to Ukrainian forces, including instructing as many as 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers a month at a US base in Germany, according to multiple US officials. If adopted, the proposal would mark a significant increase not just in the number of Ukrainians the US trains but also in the type of training they receive. Since the start of the conflict in February, the US has…

Read More Read More

Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

The New York Times reports: In one video, a man sarcastically sings a patriotic song. In another, a group of protesters hold up blank pieces of paper and chant in unison. In a third clip, a group of mourners light candles around a vigil to those who died in a fire while in lockdown in western China. Signs of organized dissent are relatively rare in China; so is their survival in the country’s digital space. China’s censorship apparatus — the…

Read More Read More

Ant milk — it does a colony good

Ant milk — it does a colony good

The New York Times reports: Orli Snir, a biologist at the Rockefeller University in New York, couldn’t keep her ants alive. She had plucked pupae from a colony of clonal raider ants, where the sesame seed-size offspring that looked like puffed rice cereal were being fussed over by both younger larvae and older adult ants. Then she had isolated each pupa into a tiny, dry test tube. And every time, they drowned. More specifically, each pupa was leaking so much…

Read More Read More

Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Politico reports: A jury has convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes of masterminding a plot to violently subvert the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, finding that he entered into a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government. The jury also convicted Rhodes ally Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida Oath Keepers, of seditious conspiracy. But the jury acquitted three co-defendants — Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — of joining Rhodes in that conspiracy. All five,…

Read More Read More

Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

The Texas Tribune reports: As other kids in Austin recovered from trick-or-treating on Halloween last year, Sarah Adelman worried about white supremacists, her mom and their synagogue. After a series of antisemitic incidents around Central Texas, someone set fire to Congregation Beth Israel, where Sarah’s mother, Lori, is a leader. “It made me sad and really scared,” 10-year-old Sarah said last week. “It made me nervous for my mom.” The arson was part of an ongoing wave of antisemitic incidents…

Read More Read More