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Flow of Russian gas and cash entangled German state in dependent web

Flow of Russian gas and cash entangled German state in dependent web

The Washington Post reports: When Matthias Warnig, chief executive of the company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, arrived for a meeting at the historic lakeside state chancellery building here, he carried a bright bouquet of flowers. It was August 2020 and Trump administration sanctions on the nearly constructed pipeline under the Baltic Sea had caused final work on the project to grind to a halt. Warnig, a former officer in the Stasi, East…

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Biden administration quietly approves huge oil export project despite climate action rhetoric

Biden administration quietly approves huge oil export project despite climate action rhetoric

Dylan Baddour reports: The Biden administration has approved plans to build the nation’s largest oil export terminal off the Gulf Coast of Texas, which would add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity. The approval by the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration was filed in the federal register on Monday without any public announcement, a day after the United Nation’s annual climate conference wrapped up in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit, spotted the filing…

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Trump’s legal problems all converged into one day of spectacular failures

Trump’s legal problems all converged into one day of spectacular failures

The Daily Beast reports: In a matter of hours Tuesday, former President Donald Trump suffered humiliating defeats in courtrooms across the country that put him on track to have his personal taxes exposed, see his company dismantled, face a trial for an alleged rape, and confront the unencumbered power of the Department of Justice. It was setback after setback for the former president, who would have struggled to keep up with all the bad news hour by hour—just as journalists…

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Twitter is becoming Elon

Twitter is becoming Elon

John Herrman writes: In government, there are numerous terms for rule-by-guy, most of which bring to mind repression, suffering, and cultishness — “I alone can fix it,” etc. But it’s a common enough way to run companies, which tend to be internally authoritarian. Plenty of businesses are clear and direct extensions of their founders’ or executives’ desires, whims, and flaws, although few operate at such a massive scale or under such a well-known figure. In a 2018 Wired investigation into…

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The chaotic effects of climate change on Pacific walruses

The chaotic effects of climate change on Pacific walruses

The New Yorker: In 2018, in the Siberian Arctic, the filmmakers Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev, who are sister and brother, arrived on a strange beach. “The sand was of dark colour, full of bones, and smelled terrible,” Arbugaeva recalled. Arbugaeva was working on a photography project about an Indigenous Chukchi community that practices subsistence hunting (whales, walruses, and seals, following the international quotas), and the siblings were on a hunt, at sea, when they landed on the beach. “In…

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Despite its brutal tactics, Iran’s regime fails to contain mass protests

Despite its brutal tactics, Iran’s regime fails to contain mass protests

Vox reports: On Monday, at the start of their first match in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, members of the Iran men’s national soccer team stood silently as their national anthem played. It was a highly visible reminder that dissatisfaction with the Iranian government remains strong, several months into ongoing protests in the country. #BREAKING: Iran national team players choose not to sing national anthem at World Cup match; some of the Iranian crowed booing their own national anthem pic.twitter.com/RYPvgHMNUi…

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Why fewer states than ever could pick the next president

Why fewer states than ever could pick the next president

Ronald Brownstein writes: The results of this month’s election point toward a 2024 presidential contest that will likely be decided by a tiny sliver of voters in a rapidly shrinking list of swing states realistically within reach for either party. With only a few exceptions, this year’s results showed each side further consolidating its hold over the states that already lean in its direction. And in 2024 that will likely leave control of the White House in the hands of…

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From Europe, Trump special counsel Jack Smith takes over Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes

From Europe, Trump special counsel Jack Smith takes over Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes

The Washington Post reports: Newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith continues to work remotely from Europe as he assembles a team, finds office space, and takes over two high-stakes investigations into former president Donald Trump — complex cases that officials insist will not be delayed by Smith’s appointment, even as they also said they do not know when he will return to the United States. Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, injured his…

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Rebelling against Trump is not the same as rebelling against Trumpism

Rebelling against Trump is not the same as rebelling against Trumpism

Adam Serwer writes: Republican elites are done with Donald Trump, and this time, they mean it. Since the conservative “red wave” splashed on shore like gentle foam at low tide, some Republican Party bigs have begun reconsidering the GOP’s relationship with Donald Trump. Republicans took back the House with a slim margin, but Democrats kept the Senate, a dismal result given President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the continued toll of inflation. The consensus among the right-wing intelligentsia is…

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Ukraine launches assault to oust Russia from key Black Sea peninsula

Ukraine launches assault to oust Russia from key Black Sea peninsula

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine’s military said it launched an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the country’s Black Sea coast, as Kyiv looks to open up its besieged ports and build on significant gains through the country’s south. Ukrainian forces have begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit, a strip of land jutting into the sea south of Mykolaiv, that has been occupied for months by Russian forces cutting off access to the port…

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Associated Press fires reporter behind retracted ‘Russian missiles’ story

Associated Press fires reporter behind retracted ‘Russian missiles’ story

The Daily Beast reports: The Associated Press scared much of the world last Tuesday when it alerted readers that “a senior U.S. intelligence official” said “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.” That report, which was widely cited across the internet and on cable news, was taken offline the following day and replaced with an editor’s note admitting the single source was wrong and that “subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired…

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Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

The New York Times reports: It’s one thing to hope for a better community online, and another, very different one, to build it. Just ask the users and administrators of journa.host, which was started by journalists concerned over the direction of Twitter. “Come on in, the water’s confusing but fine — and more swimmable,” the journalist Virginia Heffernan wrote on journa.host on Nov. 6. On Nov. 7 the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted: “I feel like a new kid in…

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Trump family’s newest partners: Middle Eastern governments

Trump family’s newest partners: Middle Eastern governments

The New York Times reports: When former President Donald J. Trump returned briefly last week to his office at Trump Tower in New York, he was joined by his son Eric Trump and the top executive of a Saudi Arabian real estate company to sign a deal that creates new conflict-of-interest questions for his just-launched presidential campaign. The deal is with a Saudi real estate company, which intends to build a Trump-branded hotel, villas and a golf course as part…

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Manhattan prosecutors move to jump-start criminal inquiry into Trump

Manhattan prosecutors move to jump-start criminal inquiry into Trump

The New York Times reports: The Manhattan district attorney’s office has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter, seeking to breathe new life into an inquiry that once seemed to have reached a dead end. Under the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, the prosecutors have returned to the long-running investigation’s original focus: a hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump….

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