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Loss of Steele dossier source damaged national security, FBI agent testifies

Loss of Steele dossier source damaged national security, FBI agent testifies

The New York Times reports: A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent testified on Thursday that the Trump Justice Department’s decision in 2020 to release sensitive documents about a bureau informant to a Senate committee examining the bureau’s Russia investigation had damaged national security. The agent told jurors at the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about matters related to the anti-Trump Steele dossier, that Mr. Danchenko, a Russia analyst, had provided extraordinary…

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How two teenage girls became the new faces of Iran’s protests

How two teenage girls became the new faces of Iran’s protests

The New York Times reports: As unrest erupted across Iran calling for an end to the Islamic Republic’s rule last month, with young women in big cities and small towns tossing their headscarves onto bonfires to chants of “Women, Life, Freedom,” two teenage girls left their homes to join the protesters. It was the last time their relatives would see them alive. One family searched frantically for their daughter for 10 days, posting desperate appeals for information on social media;…

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The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

Matt Simon writes: If you stand on the coast of Israel and gaze out across the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll spy deep-blue, calm waters that have sustained humans for millennia. Beneath the surface, though, something odd is unfolding: A process called stratification is messing with the way the sea processes carbon dioxide. Think of this part of the Mediterranean as a cake made of liquid, essentially. Fierce sunlight heats the top layer of water that sits on cooler, deeper layers below….

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Putin might lose the war. What would that look like for Russia, Ukraine and the world?

Putin might lose the war. What would that look like for Russia, Ukraine and the world?

John McLaughlin writes: In October 1989, I was in what was then West Germany. It was one month before the Berlin Wall was breached — a stunning moment that would lead in short order to the collapse of communist East Germany and the reunification of the German state less than a year later. In hindsight, the discussions I had in West Germany that fall were almost as remarkable as the globe-changing events that followed; every German leader I met with…

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Ukraine’s path to victory

Ukraine’s path to victory

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, former defense minister of Ukraine, writes: For too long, the global democratic coalition supporting Kyiv has focused on what it should not do in the invasion of Ukraine. Its main aims include not letting Ukraine lose and not letting Russian President Vladimir Putin win—but also not allowing the war to escalate to a point where Russia attacks a NATO country or conducts a nuclear strike. These, however, are less goals than vague intentions, and they reflect the West’s…

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Western nations rush air-defense systems to Ukraine to counter Russian missiles

Western nations rush air-defense systems to Ukraine to counter Russian missiles

The New York Times reports: In just two days this week, Russian forces fired more than 100 cruise missiles and dozens of exploding drones at cities across Ukraine, far more than the nation’s aging air defenses were ever expected to encounter. And yet fewer than half made it to their targets, Ukrainian officials say. Ukraine’s success in knocking down those projectiles, and the death and destruction caused wherever missiles slipped through, has reinvigorated calls by officials in Kyiv for Western…

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How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

The Associated Press reports: Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement in circles like a trapped animal. For more than a week, the Ukrainian mother had heard nothing from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol, and she was going out of her mind with worry. The kids had spent their vacation at a resort in the port city, as usual. But this time war with Russia had broken out, and her little ones — always terrified of the dark —…

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Trump threatened to expose confidential sources from Russia investigation

Trump threatened to expose confidential sources from Russia investigation

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump in the final days of his presidency repeatedly threatened to out government sources involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, an anti-Deep State revenge fantasy he still obsesses over to this day, according to two former senior Trump aides and another person familiar with the matter. One of these sources tells Rolling Stone that in the days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the then-president, sometimes while brandishing pieces of paper, would loudly complain that none of…

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More than half of U.S. bird populations are shrinking

More than half of U.S. bird populations are shrinking

Smithsonian Magazine reports: Interest in birds and birdwatching surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, with legions of birders, new and old, recording the details of their feathered sightings with apps such as eBird. In the process, these citizen scientists delivered a glut of high-resolution data that has been a boon to American ornithologists looking to better understand bird populations. Combined with decades of traditional biological surveys, this trove of data tells a story, and not a happy one. A new report…

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Long Covid plagues 1 in 20 people more than six months after infection

Long Covid plagues 1 in 20 people more than six months after infection

The Washington Post reports: A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus. The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42 percent reported partial recovery. There were some reassuring aspects to the results: People with asymptomatic infections are unlikely to suffer long-term effects, and vaccination appears to…

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How far would a Republican majority go?

How far would a Republican majority go?

Norm Ornstein writes: In 2011, the new House Republican majority, egged on by Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and led by radical Tea Party rightists such as Jason Chaffetz, brought the U.S. to the brink of a default. The disaster was headed off by a last-minute compromise between Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and President Barack Obama. A breach of the debt ceiling, meaning the loss of the full faith and credit of the United States, would…

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How to direct America toward fascism

How to direct America toward fascism

Jonathan Chait writes: In mid-September, I attended the National Conservatism Conference in Miami, where Republican politicians, right-wing thought leaders, and various party apparatchiks had gathered to articulate their vision of the conservative movement’s future. The National Conservatives are only one faction vying to define the Republican agenda, but in a short period of time, they have sharpened their focus and expanded their influence, and the conference gave them a forum to display the dominant position their ideas have achieved on…

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Leonard Leo pushed the courts right. Now he’s aiming at American society

Leonard Leo pushed the courts right. Now he’s aiming at American society

The New York Times reports: Millions of dollars in television advertisements blasting schools for teaching critical race theory and assailing corporations like BlackRock, Uber and American Airlines for catering to “woke politicians.” A lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. Complaints against President Biden for violating election law and against school districts that allow information to be withheld from parents about children’s gender identities. These initiatives were advanced in the past year or…

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Trump, was warned of violence on January 6, then sought to stoke it

Trump, was warned of violence on January 6, then sought to stoke it

The Washington Post reports: The probably final public hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is expected to highlight newly obtained Secret Service records showing how President Donald Trump was repeatedly alerted to brewing violence that day, and he still sought to stoke the conflict, according to three people briefed on the records. The committee plans to share in Thursday’s hearing new video footage and internal Secret Service emails that appear to…

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