Music: Rahat Fateh Ali Khan & Amjad Sabri — ‘Rang’
Chinese companies are shipping rifles, body armor to Russia
Politico reports: Chinese companies, including one connected to the government in Beijing, have sent Russian entities 1,000 assault rifles and other equipment that could be used for military purposes, including drone parts and body armor, according to trade and customs data obtained by POLITICO. The shipments took place between June and December 2022, according to the data provided by ImportGenius, a customs data aggregator. China North Industries Group Corporation Limited, one of the country’s largest state-owned defense contractors, sent the…
Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine
Politico reports: Poland will deliver four Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine “in the next few days,” President Andrzej Duda said Thursday. Poland is the first country to formally commit to sending combat planes to Ukraine, which Kyiv says it urgently needs to repel the Russian invasion, which has become a brutal war of attrition in the eastern Donbas region. “We will be handing over four fully operational planes,” Duda said at a joint press conference with Czech President Petr…
Pentagon analyst kept intel job after joining January 6 mob, planned to kidnap Jewish leaders
James Risen reports: In 2018, a newly hired software engineer at a defense and intelligence contractor in the Washington, D.C., suburbs was assigned to a team led by a senior developer named Hatchet Speed. At first, the new engineer, Richard Ngo, got along well with Speed. They sometimes went out to lunch together and socialized away from the office. “Speed was my mentor at Novetta as the software lead,” Ngo later said in court testimony. “We worked together every day.”…
More than a quarter of Republicans approve of Capitol attack, poll shows
The Guardian reports: More than a quarter of Republicans approve of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to a new poll. More than half think the deadly riot was a form of legitimate political discourse. The Economist and YouGov survey said 27% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat approved of the riot on 6 January 2021, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, have been linked…
New analysis of genetic samples from China appears to link the pandemic’s origin to raccoon dogs
Katherine J. Wu writes: For three years now, the debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has ping-ponged between two big ideas: that SARS-CoV-2 spilled into human populations directly from a wild-animal source, and that the pathogen leaked from a lab. Through a swirl of data obfuscation by Chinese authorities and politicalization within the United States, and rampant speculation from all corners of the world, many scientists have stood by the notion that this outbreak—like most others—had purely natural…
Global microbiome study gives new view of shared health risks
Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Our bodies consist of about 30 trillion human cells, but they also host about 39 trillion microbial cells. These teeming communities of bacteria, viruses, protozoa and fungi in our guts, in our mouths, on our skin and elsewhere — collectively called the human microbiome — don’t only consist of freeloaders and lurking pathogens. Instead, as scientists increasingly appreciate, these microbes form ecosystems essential to our health. A growing body of research aims to understand how disruptions of…
The multiverse: Our universe is suspiciously unlikely to exist – unless it is one of many
Do universes pop up as bubbles from a multiverse? arda savasciogullari/Shutterstock By Martin Rees, University of Cambridge It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organised complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for decades. But it is proving difficult. Although we…
Music: Abida Parveen & Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — ‘Chaap Tilak’
The Ukraine untruths of disingenuous DeSantis
William Saletan writes: Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, bills himself as an enforcer. Speaking in Iowa last Friday as he prepared to run for president, DeSantis bragged about capturing Haitian migrants and sending the National Guard to control “BLM riots.” “There’s a new sheriff in town,” he told an audience in Des Moines. He boasted that Sheriff DeSantis was finally taking on one of America’s worst villains: the Walt Disney Company. He proudly informed the crowd that he was…
Trump’s nomination would blow up Republican support for Ukraine, says former NATO chief
Politico reports: Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, packs his prognosis for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign into one loaded word. “I think President Trump will be a loser,” he tells me. It is a notoriously triggering term for the former president, evoking deep humiliation. Rasmussen uses it casually. “His baggage is too heavy, too controversial,” says Rasmussen, 70, who was Denmark’s prime minister for most of this century’s first decade. Yet Rasmussen, a right-of-center politician who is now…
Tucker Carlson parroting Vladimir Putin
HuffPost reports: A conservative group has highlighted Tucker Carlson’s affinity for spreading Russian propaganda in a new video. The Fox News host has made a habit of leaning into Kremlin talking points and conspiracy theories since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Days before the war began, Carlson infamously defended Putin and said that Ukraine was “not a democracy.” Carlson’s mimicry has been so on point that on multiple occasions excerpts from his broadcasts have ended up on Russian state-sponsored TV. The Republican Accountability Project put Carlson on blast…
The Republican ‘civil war’ on foreign policy
The Washington Post reports: When Ronald Reagan addressed a brand new organization of upstart conservatives nearly five decades ago, he cast U.S. entanglements abroad as part of the nation’s destiny to take on “leadership of the free world” and to serve as a shining “city on the hill” that inspired other countries, sparking thunderous applause. At a dinner named after the former president at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering earlier this month, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari…
Russia’s secret document for destabilizing Moldova
Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: On Friday, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, made a surprise announcement at a White House press briefing. U.S. intelligence, he said, had determined that the Kremlin was plotting to topple another European democracy. “Russian actors, some with current ties to Russian intelligence, are seeking to stage and use protests in Moldova as a basis to foment a manufactured insurrection against the Moldovan government,” Kirby declared. As if on schedule, Moldova…
The death of Rasheem Carter. ‘What we have is a Mississippi lynching’
The Washington Post reports: The family of a Black man is calling for a federal investigation into his death after local authorities in Mississippi said they did not suspect foul play after the man’s body was found dismembered. Police say his wounds may have been caused by an animal. Rasheem Carter, 25, called his mother for help in early October, telling her that a group of White men in three trucks were chasing him and yelling racial slurs at him…
Orwell and Camus’ loyalty to truth
William Fear writes: A war still raged in Europe, but the enemy were firmly in retreat. The occupation of Paris had been broken, and France was free, and so were the cafés of the Boulevard St Germain. No longer did the waiters have to serve coffee to SS officers. One afternoon in April 1945, a dishevelled Englishman walked into one such café. He was a war correspondent for the Observer — fond of shag-tobacco and Indian tea. His pen-name was…