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Water, water, nowhere — except for the places that are flooding

Water, water, nowhere — except for the places that are flooding

Bill McKibben writes: China is enduring a truly remarkable heatwave—by some accounts “the worst heatwave known in world climatic history.” (Its main competitor for the title may be last year’s insane ‘heat dome’ that ran Canadian temperatures up to 121 Fahrenheit). The heat just never lets up over some of the most densely populated land on planet earth: It hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Chongqing Thursday, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country outside of desert Xinjiang. It hit…

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Electric fish genomes reveal how evolution repeats itself

Electric fish genomes reveal how evolution repeats itself

Joanna Thompson writes: Along the murky bottom of the Amazon River, serpentine fish called electric eels scour the gloom for unwary frogs or other small prey. When one swims by, the fish unleash two 600-volt pulses of electricity to stun or kill it. This high-voltage hunting tactic is distinctive, but a handful of other fish species also use electricity: They generate and sense weaker voltages when navigating through muddy, slow-moving waters and when communicating with others of their species through…

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Jupiter glows in pictures from Webb telescope

Jupiter glows in pictures from Webb telescope

Live Science reports: Jupiter glows with polar lights and shimmering clouds in new imagery from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). NASA released the sharp new pictures Monday (Aug. 22). The images are composites from several different wavelengths of light. In some of the new images, two of the planet’s moons, Amalthea and Adrastea, sparkle in the gas giant’s orbit, and Jupiter’s faint rings glow like a halo. At the planet’s North and South poles, the northern and southern lights…

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There is a huge divide among Democrats over how hard to campaign for democracy

There is a huge divide among Democrats over how hard to campaign for democracy

David Siders writes: One Sunday afternoon in November, several of President Jimmy Carter’s former aides and advisers met on Zoom for a private call. Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of State, made an appearance, along with Dick Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader. Les Francis, a former deputy White House chief of staff in the Carter administration, was watching the waiting room for late arrivals while, from his log house in the foothills outside of Denver, Gary Hart, the former…

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Ousted Republican sees party tilting toward fascism

Ousted Republican sees party tilting toward fascism

The Guardian reports: Rusty Bowers is headed for the exit. After 18 years as an Arizona lawmaker, the past four as speaker of the state’s house of representatives, he has been unceremoniously shown the door by his own Republican party. Last month he lost his bid to stay in the Arizona legislature in a primary contest in which his opponent was endorsed by Donald Trump. The rival, David Farnsworth, made an unusual pitch to voters: the 2020 presidential election had…

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Trump treated my family like disposable pawns and tore us apart, says daughter of convicted Jan. 6 rioter

Trump treated my family like disposable pawns and tore us apart, says daughter of convicted Jan. 6 rioter

Insider reports: For Peyton Reffitt, 18, what began as debates around the dinner table ended with her family falling apart and her father receiving the longest jail sentence yet for his involvement in the Trump-inspired Capitol riot. American family life in the age of Trump has taken on a toxic dimension, the young woman from Texas said. Peyton said her family’s disintegration started as angry shouting matches between father and children and was completed when her brother, Jackson Reffitt, then…

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As attacks mount in Crimea, Kremlin faces rising domestic pressures

As attacks mount in Crimea, Kremlin faces rising domestic pressures

The New York Times reports: Nearly six months into the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still refers to its invasion as a “special military operation” while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy at home. But a series of Ukrainian attacks in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, is puncturing that narrative. And as Ukrainian attacks mount in the strategically and symbolically important territory, the damage is beginning to put…

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Darya Dugina: Daughter of Putin ally killed in Moscow blast

Darya Dugina: Daughter of Putin ally killed in Moscow blast

BBC News reports: The daughter of a close ally of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been killed in a suspected car bombing. Darya Dugina, 29, died after an explosion on a road outside Moscow, Russia’s investigative committee said. It is thought her father, the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who is known as “Putin’s brain”, may have been the intended target of the attack. Mr Dugin is a prominent ultra-nationalist ideologue who is believed to be close to the Russian president….

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Millions in East Africa face starvation due to drought

Millions in East Africa face starvation due to drought

Yahoo News reports: The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that millions of people in East Africa face the threat of starvation. Speaking at a media briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that drought, climate change, rising prices and an ongoing civil war in northern Ethiopia are all contributing to worsening food insecurity. Over 50 million people in East Africa will face acute food insecurity this year, a study from late July by the World Food Programme…

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China plans cloud seeding to protect grain crop from drought

China plans cloud seeding to protect grain crop from drought

The Associated Press reports: China says it will try to protect its grain harvest from record-setting drought by using chemicals to generate rain, while factories in the southwest waited Sunday to see whether they would be shut down for another week due to shortages of water to generate hydropower. The hottest, driest summer since the government began recording rainfall and temperature 61 years ago has wilted crops and left reservoirs at half their normal water level. Factories in Sichuan province…

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The Anthropocene demands a massive realignment of priorities

The Anthropocene demands a massive realignment of priorities

Martin Rees and Charles F. Kennel write: Our Earth has existed for 45 million centuries; and humans for a few thousand. But this century is the first when our species is so numerous—and so demanding of energy and natural resources—that we risk collectively despoiling our planet. It’s surely an ethical imperative that we should not deny future generations the wonders and beauty of the natural world. Policy must, in the words of the Brundtland Commission, “meet the needs of the…

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Why the Trump classified-files scandal is so dangerous

Why the Trump classified-files scandal is so dangerous

Quinta Jurecic writes: The iron law of scandals involving Donald Trump is that they will always be stupid, and there will always be more of them. Trump scandals—the Russia investigation; Trump’s first impeachment, over his efforts to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the insurrection on January 6—have something else in common: All these catastrophes result from Trump’s refusal to divorce the office of the presidency and the good of the country from his personal desires. Now Trump’s apparent squirreling away…

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The chaos Trump created inside the White House

The chaos Trump created inside the White House

The New York Times reports: Four days before the end of the Trump presidency, a White House aide peered into the Oval Office and was startled, if not exactly surprised, to see all of the president’s personal photos still arrayed behind the Resolute Desk as if nothing had changed — guaranteeing the final hours would be a frantic dash mirroring the prior four years. In the area known as the outer Oval Office, boxes had been brought in to pack…

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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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