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Trump White House bid has hardly any Senate GOP support

Trump White House bid has hardly any Senate GOP support

The Hill reports: Only one Republican senator has announced publicly that he will support former-President Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, a sign of the uphill battle Trump faces in his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination and a second term in the White House. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters this week that he will support Trump’s candidacy for president and praised his track record in the Oval Office. The rest of the Senate GOP conference is holding back, skeptical…

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Republicans keep telling Trump to stay away from Georgia

Republicans keep telling Trump to stay away from Georgia

Rolling Stone reports: As Republicans pour party resources into the Georgia Senate runoff, Donald Trump is getting irritated at the idea that virtually no one of importance in the GOP wants him to campaign in Georgia. In the lead-up to the contest between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Trump-endorsed challenger Herschel Walker, several GOP figures and Trump allies have already implored him not to hold a Georgia rally ahead of the runoff, according to two people familiar with the matter…

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How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

CNN reports: A trickle of people passes through a normally busy border crossing in the mountains of northern Iraq. “It’s a big prison over there,” one Iranian woman says, gesturing to the hulking gate that marks the border with Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been convulsed by protest for over two months. A portrait of the founder of Iran’s clerical regime, Ruhollah Khomeini, looms against a backdrop of rolling hills studded with streetlights. Snatches of travelers’ muted conversations punctuate an…

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How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

Fred Pierce writes: Pity the tiny band of lynx in the Polish half of Europe’s most ancient forest. In June, their home, the Białowieża Forest, was cut in half when the Polish government completed construction of a wall on its border with Belarus. The aim was to repel refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere being channeled to the border by the Belarus government. But the 115-mile wall — which towers 18 feet above the forest floor, stretching almost into…

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Why doesn’t physics help us understand the flow of time?

Why doesn’t physics help us understand the flow of time?

Gene Tracy writes: I have a memory, a vivid one, of watching my elderly grandfather wave goodbye to me from the steps of a hospital. This is almost certainly the memory of a dream. In my parent’s photo album of the time, we have snapshots of the extended family – aunts, uncles, and cousins who had all travelled to our upstate New York farm to celebrate my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. I am in some of the photos along with…

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Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Robin Maril writes: This latest shooting, in which at least five people in Colorado were killed late Saturday night when a gunman once again opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, follows six years in which far-right leaders have led American politics down a fearful blame spiral fueled by homophobia, xenophobia and racism. This past election, Republican candidates ran on a platform that characterized queer and transgender people as “groomers.” They targeted the families that support them as criminals. And many…

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How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

The New York Times reports: Bitter over the end of a long relationship, estranged from his children and working carpentry jobs to keep a roof over his head after a time living on the streets, David DePape retreated into isolation, spending hours each day in the online worlds of gaming and chat rooms. Mr. DePape, the suspect in the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, had an obsession with video games as a boy, and at some point in…

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Trump snubs Twitter after Musk announces reactivation of ex-president’s account

Trump snubs Twitter after Musk announces reactivation of ex-president’s account

Reuters reports: Donald Trump on Saturday said he had no interest in returning to Twitter even as a slim majority voted in favor of reinstating the former U.S. president, who was banned from the social media service for inciting violence, in a poll organized by new owner Elon Musk. Slightly over 15 million Twitter users voted in the poll with 51.8% voting in favor of reinstatement. “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted. Trump’s Twitter account, which…

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Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Deglobalization is a threat to climate action

Raghuram G. Rajan writes: The deliberations at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) suggest that while policymakers realize the urgency of combating climate change, they are unlikely to reach a comprehensive collective agreement to address it. But there is still a way for the world to improve the chances of more effective action in the future: hit the brakes on deglobalization. Otherwise, the possibilities for climate action will be set back by the shrinkage of cross-border trade and…

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Ukraine confronts tougher fight in push to extend battlefield wins

Ukraine confronts tougher fight in push to extend battlefield wins

The Washington Post reports: Not far from this village on the east bank of the Oskil River, Ukrainian forces have hit a wall of Russian resistance as they try to extend a counteroffensive that just two months ago was sweeping across nearby lands at a stunning clip. Andriy, a soldier with Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade, was not sure what to say on a recent day, when a group of Ukrainian intelligence officers showed up and asked about his unit’s push…

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Why this universe is more likely than any other

Why this universe is more likely than any other

Charlie Wood writes: Cosmologists have spent decades striving to understand why our universe is so stunningly vanilla. Not only is it smooth and flat as far as we can see, but it’s also expanding at an ever-so-slowly increasing pace, when naïve calculations suggest that — coming out of the Big Bang — space should have become crumpled up by gravity and blasted apart by repulsive dark energy. To explain the cosmos’s flatness, physicists have added a dramatic opening chapter to…

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Carvings on Australia’s boab trees reveal a generation’s lost history

Carvings on Australia’s boab trees reveal a generation’s lost history

Freda Kreier writes: Brenda Garstone is on the hunt for her heritage. Parts of her cultural inheritance are scattered across the Tanami desert in northwestern Australia, where dozens of ancient boab trees are engraved with Aboriginal designs. These tree carvings — called dendroglyphs — could be hundreds or even thousands of years old, yet have received almost no attention from western researchers. That is slowly starting to change. In the winter of 2021, Garstone — who is Jaru, an Aboriginal…

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Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

The New York Times reports: Three months into a nationwide uprising, Iranian protesters have turned their fury against the founder of the Islamic revolution and of the country’s theocracy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Protesters set ablaze the museum of childhood home of Mr. Khomeini, who died in 1989, in his hometown, Khomein, on Thursday night, videos showed. Crowds of men smashed and stomped on a street sign bearing his name in the town of Khash, according to a video posted online….

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How should we think about the end of the world as we know it?

How should we think about the end of the world as we know it?

Kiley Bense writes: In the 14th century, the Italian poet Petrarch wrote a letter to a friend in Avignon, describing his sense of “foreboding” after an earthquake shook the foundations of Rome’s churches. “What should I do first, lament or be frightened?” he asked. “Everywhere there is cause for fear, everywhere reason for grief.” The earthquake was only one in a series of calamities endured in the poet’s lifetime to that point: floods, storms, fires, wars and finally, “the plague…

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