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The mercenary lawyers defending the founder of Russia’s Wagner Group

The mercenary lawyers defending the founder of Russia’s Wagner Group

The Intercept reports: In September, a video surfaced online apparently showing Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman and close associate of Vladimir Putin, speaking to a group of incarcerated men in the yard of a Russian prison. Prigozhin was encouraging them to join the Wagner Group, the infamous mercenary organization he founded, and fight in Ukraine as a way out of prison. The video signaled Prigozhin’s first apparent confirmation that he does, in fact, control Wagner. While Prigozhin had been known…

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Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud numbers

Judge: Trump signed court document that knowingly included false voter fraud numbers

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew were false, a federal judge indicated on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion that emails from attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, needed to be turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee. Those emails, Carter wrote, “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud…

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Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the U.S. constitution

Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the U.S. constitution

The Guardian reports: Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist in the Trump White House who is at the forefront of the Republican march toward hard-right populism, is throwing his weight behind a movement to radically rewrite the US constitution. Bannon has devoted recent episodes of his online show the War Room to a well-funded operation which has stealthily gained ground over the past two years. Backed by billionaire donors and corporate interests, it aims to persuade state legislatures to call…

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John Durham failed because the anti-Trump ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy never happened

John Durham failed because the anti-Trump ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy never happened

Jonathan Chait writes: John Durham’s latest, and presumably final, humiliation is the capstone of his failed attempt to prove a conspiracy theory that has long been accepted as settled fact in the conservative universe. This theory holds that, in 2016, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or James Comey (or maybe all of them — the mastermind changes in different iterations) devised a plot to smear Donald Trump by ginning up an FBI investigation into his completely innocent and superficial connections to…

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Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Pandemics over the course of evolution have led to the integration of viruses into our genome. Westend61via Getty Images By Aidan Burn, Tufts University Remnants of ancient viral pandemics in the form of viral DNA sequences embedded in our genomes are still active in healthy people, according to new research my colleagues and I recently published. HERVs, or human endogenous retroviruses, make up around 8% of the human genome, left behind as a result of infections that humanity’s primate ancestors…

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Russia destroys power and water infrastructure across Ukraine

Russia destroys power and water infrastructure across Ukraine

Reuters reports: Ukraine said Russia had destroyed almost a third of its power stations over the past week as Moscow stepped up a pre-winter campaign to strike infrastructure, a move the West says is a calculated attempt to disrupt and demoralise. Missiles struck power generating facilities in a clutch of Ukrainian cities home to millions of people and several people were killed. Moscow acknowledged targeting energy plants, while Ukraine said water infrastructure had also been hit. “The situation is critical…

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Drones embody an Iran-Russia alliance built on hostility toward the U.S.

Drones embody an Iran-Russia alliance built on hostility toward the U.S.

The New York Times reports: The Iranian-made drones that Russia sent on Monday to divebomb Ukraine’s capital delivered the most emphatic proof yet that Tehran has become a rare, increasingly close ally to the Kremlin, offering both weapons and international support that Russia sorely lacks. There is no deep love between Russia, newly a pariah for attacking another country, and Iran, for decades one of the most strategically isolated nations in the world. But the two authoritarian governments, both chafing…

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German cybersecurity chief sacked following reports of Russia ties

German cybersecurity chief sacked following reports of Russia ties

The Guardian reports: Germany’s interior minister has sacked the country’s cybersecurity chief, after allegations he had turned a blind eye to a firm with links to Russian security circles. Arne Schönbohm, the president of the German Federal Office for Information Security, was released from his duties with immediate effect on Tuesday, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing security sources. A spokesperson for the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, confirmed that Schönbohm would be barred from his office, as “necessary public…

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Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

The Washington Post reports: More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel — including scores of generals and admirals — have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression, according to a Washington Post investigation. In Saudi Arabia, for example, 15 retired U.S. generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for the Defense Ministry since 2016. The ministry is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s…

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Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Josh Rogin writes: The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. Many dictatorships unjustly imprison Americans. But while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure…

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Climate change and the threat to civilization

Climate change and the threat to civilization

Daniel Steel, C. Tyler DesRoches, and Kian Mintz-Woo write: In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster”. Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that…

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Are ‘core memories’ real? The science behind five common myths

Are ‘core memories’ real? The science behind five common myths

Jakob Owen / Unsplash By Penny Van Bergen, University of Wollongong and Celia Harris, Western Sydney University What are your core memories from childhood? Can you lock in a core memory by choice? What do your core memories say about you? The notion of “core memories” has become well known in popular culture. First seen in the 2015 movie Inside Out, core memories are thought to be your five or so most important memories. The idea is that some specific…

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Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin’

Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin’

Politico‘s Maura Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing? Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and…

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White House calls Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic

White House calls Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic

The Washington Post reports: The White House on Monday called Donald Trump’s attack on American Jews antisemitic after the former president wrote online that American Jews need to “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel “before it is too late.” Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday, said, “Donald Trump has aligned with extremist and antisemitic figures” and that comments like the ones he made Sunday on his social media…

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