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Neanderthals were smart, sophisticated, creative — and misunderstood

Neanderthals were smart, sophisticated, creative — and misunderstood

Newsweek reports: Nearly 40,000 years after disappearing from the planet, Neanderthals are having a moment. In recent years, tantalizing new evidence suggests that our primitive, heavy-browed cousins were chefs, jewelry-makers and painters. And what we are learning from the genetic clues they left behind—and the promise of what those clues will tell us about ourselves in the years ahead—won Swedish paleo-geneticist Svante Pääbo the 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology this fall. The most recent discoveries, un-earthed in a…

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China’s health care system buckles under the strain of a spiraling Covid crisis

China’s health care system buckles under the strain of a spiraling Covid crisis

The New York Times reports: Slumped in wheelchairs and lying on gurneys, the sickened patients crowd every nook and cranny of the emergency department at the hospital in northern China. They cram into the narrow spaces between elevator doors. They surround an idle walk-through metal detector. And they line the walls of a corridor ringing with the sounds of coughing. China’s hospitals were already overcrowded, underfunded and inadequately staffed in the best of times. But now with Covid spreading freely…

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With record military incursions, China warns Taiwan and the U.S.

With record military incursions, China warns Taiwan and the U.S.

The New York Times reports: China sent a record number of military aircraft to menace self-ruled Taiwan in a large show of force to the Biden administration, signaling that Beijing wants to maintain pressure on Taiwan even as some tensions between the superpowers are easing. The swarm of Chinese fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and drones that buzzed the airspace near Taiwan in the 24-hour period leading to Monday morning demonstrated Beijing’s appetite for confrontation with the United States over…

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Ukraine: A battle over the future of Europe

Ukraine: A battle over the future of Europe

Andrew A. Michta writes: Today, Europe is at an inflection point because it remains wedded to “institutional thinking” that is increasingly divorced from hard-power realities on the ground. At the same time, the Continent’s political leaders sense that what happens in Ukraine — and, ultimately, where it ends up on Europe’s political map — will define the course of Europe’s evolution and, by extension, transatlantic relations. No matter what, one thing is certain, though: There will be real and enduring…

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Russia bans sales of oil to countries imposing price cap

Russia bans sales of oil to countries imposing price cap

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia on Tuesday banned the sale of its oil and petroleum products to countries that put a cap on their sales price, in a move that threatened more uncertainty ahead for global energy markets. The Kremlin’s action is an attempt to undermine a plan by the U.S. and its allies to bar the shipping, financing or insuring of seaborne Russian crude unless it is sold for $60 a barrel or less—a sanction leveled in response…

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Republicans see little resistance from the business lobby after ‘anti-woke’ attacks

Republicans see little resistance from the business lobby after ‘anti-woke’ attacks

Politico reports: Republican lawmakers are vowing to crack down on big investment managers pushing climate and social agendas. But the Wall Street giants are finding they have few defenders in Washington to help fend off the assault. The multitrillion-dollar asset managers — primarily BlackRock and its outspoken CEO Larry Fink, Vanguard and State Street — aren’t getting cover from major business trade groups whose members are divided on the issue. And they have no Republican allies, according to interviews with…

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GOP leadership remains silent over George Santos’s lies

GOP leadership remains silent over George Santos’s lies

The New York Times reports: House Republican leaders were silent on Tuesday after Representative-elect George Santos admitted to a laundry list of falsehoods about his background but still vowed to be seated in Congress. Mr. Santos acknowledged in a series of interviews on Monday that he lied about graduating from college and made misleading claims that he worked for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. He also acknowledged owing thousands of dollars in unpaid rent and denied committing a crime anywhere in…

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Self-described ‘proud American Jew,’ George Santos, now says he’s merely claimed to be ‘Jew-ish’

Self-described ‘proud American Jew,’ George Santos, now says he’s merely claimed to be ‘Jew-ish’

The Forward reports: Congressman-elect George Santos, a Republican from New York who reportedly lied about his Jewish heritage and has admitted he fabricated key details of his resume, said in an interview Monday evening that he never claimed to be Jewish. “I said I was ‘Jew-ish,’” Santos told The New York Post. However, in a position paper shared with Jewish and pro-Israel leaders during the campaign and obtained by the Forward, Santos called himself “a proud American Jew.” In the…

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‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy

‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy

Politico reports: After decades of U.S. efforts to engage China with the prospect of greater development through trade, the era of cooperation is coming to a screeching halt. The White House and Congress are quietly reshaping the American economic relationship with the world’s second-largest economic power, enacting a strategy to limit China’s technological development that breaks with decades of federal policy and represents the most aggressive American action yet to curtail Beijing’s economic and military rise. The new federal rules,…

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Democrats, feeling new strength, plan to go on offense on voting rights

Democrats, feeling new strength, plan to go on offense on voting rights

The New York Times reports: For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections. Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating…

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George Santos admits to lying about college and work history

George Santos admits to lying about college and work history

The New York Times reports: Representative-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to misleading voters about his professional experience and educational history, confirming some of the key findings of a New York Times investigation that found he likely misrepresented his background to voters. Mr. Santos, a Republican who was elected in November to represent parts of northern Long Island and northeast Queens, ended a week of near silence, giving interviews to two conservative-owned media outlets, The New York Post and WABC-AM…

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Elon Musk claims he’s not worried about the FTC, but he should be

Elon Musk claims he’s not worried about the FTC, but he should be

Mike Masnick writes: Soon after Elon took over Twitter and fired everyone, we wondered (somewhat jokingly) if there was anyone left at the company who was aware of the FTC’s consent decree with the company, signed originally in 2011, but which runs for 30 years, and which was updated back in May of 2022. These documents have some fairly strict requirements for the company around protecting the privacy of its users, and also limiting employees access to certain data. A…

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Putin wants fealty, and he’s found it in Africa

Putin wants fealty, and he’s found it in Africa

The New York Times reports: In early March, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its third week, a Russian diplomat nearly 3,000 miles away in the Central African Republic paid an unusual visit to the head of this country’s top court. His message was blunt: The country’s pro-Kremlin president must remain in office, indefinitely. To do this, the diplomat, Yevgeny Migunov, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, argued that the court should abolish the constitutional restriction limiting a president…

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How citizen spies foiled Putin’s grand plan for one Ukrainian city

How citizen spies foiled Putin’s grand plan for one Ukrainian city

The New York Times reports: On a foggy morning a few months ago, Valentyn Dmytrovych Yermolenko, an aging Ukrainian fisherman with a bad back and horrible knees, puttered down a narrow channel off the Dnipro River, his inflatable dinghy cutting through the mist. His city, Kherson, had been taken over by the Russian Army, and on the floor of his boat, concealed under a fishing net in a black plastic tub, Mr. Yermolenko had hidden three disassembled automatic rifles. As…

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