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Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs are behind blasts at Russian military sites, Ukrainian official says

Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs are behind blasts at Russian military sites, Ukrainian official says

NBC News reports: Pro-Ukrainian saboteurs were involved in the recent spate of explosions at Russian military sites in Crimea, a Ukrainian government official told NBC News. The series of blasts hit military depots and airbases in the annexed peninsula over the past week, hinting at a growing ability by Ukraine’s military or its backers to strike deep behind enemy lines, a development that could shift the dynamics of the war. Kyiv has stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the…

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The other Ukrainian army

The other Ukrainian army

Anne Applebaum writes: History has turning points, moments when events shift and the future seems suddenly clear. But history also has in-between points, days and weeks when everything seems impermanent and nobody knows what will happen next. Odesa in the summer of 2022 is like that—a city suspended between great events. The panic that swept the city in February, when it seemed the Russian invaders might win quickly, already feels like a long time ago. Now the city is hot,…

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The legacy of James Lovelock

The legacy of James Lovelock

John Gribbin writes: Jim Lovelock (never ‘James’) is remembered as the father of the Gaia hypothesis: the idea that Earth is a self-regulating living organism. Few accepted his argument that this should be elevated to the status of a theory, even though it generated predictions about environmental changes that were borne out by subsequent observations. As a heuristic model, however, Gaia profoundly influenced thinking about the environment and how we interact with it, giving rise to the field of Earth-system…

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Desertification in an Iraqi bread basket

Desertification in an Iraqi bread basket

Tessa Fox reports: Palm branches whip back as Hussein Ibrahim walks through his densely planted land in Al Fao, the very last village in Iraq’s south as it reaches the Persian Gulf. Affectionately known as Abu Yusuf in reference to his eldest son, Ibrahim explains that farming is his culture. “I’ve inherited this land from my grandfather and even the father of my grandfather had it. We were all farmers; we were born to be farmers,” says the father of…

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Odesa is defiant. It also remains Putin’s obsession

Odesa is defiant. It also remains Putin’s obsession

Roger Cohen reports: The Odesa Fine Arts Museum, a colonnaded early-19th-century palace, stands almost empty. Early in Russia’s war on Ukraine, its staff removed more than 12,000 works for safe keeping. One large portrait remained, depicting Catherine the Great, the Russian empress and founder of Odesa, as a just and victorious goddess. Seen from below in Dmitry Levitzky’s painting, the empress is a towering figure in a pale gown with a golden train. The ships behind her symbolize Russia’s victory…

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Ukraine’s southern forces wage a slow campaign to wear the Russians down

Ukraine’s southern forces wage a slow campaign to wear the Russians down

The Wall Street Journal reports: Until recently, Russian artillery pounded Ukrainian forces on the front lines of the war in the south. But today, just 3 miles from the Russian line, incoming shells have become far less frequent since Ukrainian forces started taking out Russian ammunition depots and bridges in the Kherson region and Crimea. “There’s about half as much incoming as three or four weeks ago,” says Yevhen, a Ukrainian infantry squad commander, who hasn’t fired his rifle in…

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The Republican Party is the Trump party

The Republican Party is the Trump party

Vox reports: The bad news for Never Trump Republicans this week wasn’t just that Liz Cheney lost the primary for her Wyoming congressional seat on Tuesday. It wasn’t even that she lost by such an overwhelming margin. It was that her loss fit a pattern in which the GOP’s voters have roundly rejected Republican after Republican who voted to impeach Trump. Only two of the 10 House Republicans who did so will even be on the ballot in November —…

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Can farmers fight climate change? New U.S. law gives them billions to try

Can farmers fight climate change? New U.S. law gives them billions to try

Science reports: When settlers plowed the North American prairie, they uncovered some of the most fertile soil in the world. But tilling those deep-rooted grasslands released massive amounts of underground carbon into the atmosphere. More greenhouse gases wafted into the skies when wetlands were drained and forests cleared for fields. Land conversion continues today, and synthetic fertilizer, diesel-hungry farm machinery, and methane-belching livestock add to the climate effects; all told, farming generates 10% of climate-affecting emissions from the United States…

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Memory of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses grows hazy

Memory of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses grows hazy

Khaled Diab writes: When it comes to revenge, there is no statute of limitations. This is what Salman Rushdie discovered last week. After evading injustice for so many years, the acclaimed-despised, celebrated-hated, subversive-subverted British-Kashmiri author had finally let down his guard, only for the long arm of the lawless to catch up with him. Decades after the release of “The Satanic Verses,” Rushdie remains one of the most wildly and widely misunderstood contemporary writers in the English language. As a…

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A psychologist plumbs the cultural roots of emotion

A psychologist plumbs the cultural roots of emotion

By Emily Cataneo, August 19, 2022 When the Australian anthropologist Christine Dureau traveled to the Solomon Islands for research, she brought her toddler along, at first imagining that the universal experience of maternal love would help her relate to the Simbo women living in this foreign culture. But it soon became clear that maternal love for an Australian was different than maternal love for a Simbo woman: She learned that maternal taru, the Simbo word for love, could often be…

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The Five-Million-Year Odyssey reveals how migration shaped humankind

The Five-Million-Year Odyssey reveals how migration shaped humankind

Bruce Bower writes: Archaeologist Peter Bellwood’s academic odyssey wended from England to teaching posts halfway around the world, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. For more than 50 years, he has studied how humans settled islands from Southeast Asia to Polynesia. So it’s fitting that his new book, a plain-English summary of what’s known and what’s not about the evolution of humans and our ancestors, emphasizes movement. In The Five-Million-Year Odyssey, Bellwood examines a parade of species in…

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Trump supporters’ threats to judge spur concerns for the viability of democracy

Trump supporters’ threats to judge spur concerns for the viability of democracy

The Associated Press reports: Hundreds of federal judges face the same task every day: review an affidavit submitted by federal agents and approve requests for a search warrant. But for U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the fallout from his decision to approve a search warrant has been far from routine. He has faced a storm of death threats since his signature earlier this month cleared the way for the FBI to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part…

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Trump rakes in millions off FBI search at Mar-a-Lago

Trump rakes in millions off FBI search at Mar-a-Lago

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump bombarded his supporters with more than 100 emails asking for money based on the FBI’s search of the Mar-a-Lago Club for classified materials last week. They paid off. Contributions to Trump’s political action committee topped $1 million on at least two days after the Aug. 8 search of his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, according to two people familiar with the figures. The daily hauls jumped from a level of $200,000 to $300,000…

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‘I don’t see justice in this war’: Russian soldier exposes rot at core of Ukraine invasion

‘I don’t see justice in this war’: Russian soldier exposes rot at core of Ukraine invasion

The Guardian reports: Pavel Filatyev knew the consequences of what he was saying. The ex-paratrooper understood he was risking prison, that he would be called a traitor and would be shunned by his former comrades-in-arms. His own mother had urged him to flee Russia while he still could. He said it anyway. “I don’t see justice in this war. I don’t see truth here,” he said over a tucked-away cafe table in the Moscow financial district. It was his first…

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