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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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CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

The Washington Post reports: Trump appointees oversaw a concerted effort to restrict immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border during the pandemic, change scientific reports and muzzle top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to emails, text messages and interviews gathered by a congressional panel probing the pandemic response. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly “bullied” staff, tried to rewrite their publications…

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DOJ recommends 6-month jail term for Bannon

DOJ recommends 6-month jail term for Bannon

Politico reports: The Justice Department is recommending a six-month jail sentence and $200,000 fine for Steve Bannon, the longtime adviser to Donald Trump who defied a subpoena to the Jan. 6 select committee. Prosecutors said Bannon, from the moment he received the select committee subpoena on Sept. 2021, “has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt.” A jury found Bannon guilty in July on two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify and provide documents to…

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How Marjorie Taylor Greene took a GOP leadership position without being given one

How Marjorie Taylor Greene took a GOP leadership position without being given one

Robert Draper writes: “There’s going to be a lot of investigations,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said, describing what she anticipates if the Republicans regain the House majority this November. “I’ve talked with a lot of members about this.” It was early September, two months before the midterm elections, and Greene, the first-term congresswoman from Georgia, was sitting in a restaurant in Alpharetta, an affluent suburb of greater metropolitan Atlanta. Among the fellow Republicans with whom Greene said she had been speaking…

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From Italy to Brazil to the U.S., political leaders increasingly echo Putin’s far-right authoritarianism

From Italy to Brazil to the U.S., political leaders increasingly echo Putin’s far-right authoritarianism

The Washington Post reports: In a flurry of elections, some of the world’s major democracies have been leaning toward or outright embracing far-right authoritarian leaders, who have echoed one another by promising to crack down on loose morals, open borders and power-hungry elites. Voters in Italy last month elected a nationalist leader whose party proposes a U-turn from the effects of globalization. In Brazil, right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro injected doubt into the results of his reelection bid by speculating that…

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Ancient humans were apex predators for two million years, study finds

Ancient humans were apex predators for two million years, study finds

Science Alert reports: Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens and their ancestors ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain. It’s not quite the balanced diet of berries, grains, and steak we might picture when we think of ‘paleo’ food. But according to a study last year by anthropologists from…

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Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine

Russia is grabbing men off the street to fight in Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability. “I have no idea why they took him,” said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office…

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A tale of three generals — how the Ukrainian military turned the tide

A tale of three generals — how the Ukrainian military turned the tide

Mick Ryan writes: Since the beginning of their invasion, Russia’s military has been forced by the Ukrainians to continually re-assess their strategic objectives. This is not unusual in warfare. While political objectives shape how war is conducted and what battles are fought, so too do battles reshape political objectives. The Ukrainian resistance, and their defeat of the Russians in the north of the country early in the war, have unhinged the Russian overall campaign for Ukraine. This has been the…

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Russian troops kill Ukrainian musician for refusing role in Kherson concert

Russian troops kill Ukrainian musician for refusing role in Kherson concert

The Guardian reports: Russian soldiers have shot dead a Ukrainian musician in his home after he refused to take part in a concert in occupied Kherson, according to the culture ministry in Kyiv. Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page. The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra,…

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The global economy is in chaos. Nobody’s coming to the rescue

The global economy is in chaos. Nobody’s coming to the rescue

Politico reports: America is driving the West’s response to the war in Ukraine. But U.S. officials are struggling to project a global response to a worldwide economic slowdown. A sense of dread surrounded meetings of finance ministers and central bankers in Washington this week, amid one of the most foreboding moments for the world economy in years. The list of worries was alarmingly long: stubbornly persistent inflation, crippling interest rates, panic around the worsening energy supply crisis, manic markets and…

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Whistleblower, Will Wilkerson, reveals the turmoil inside Trump’s start-up media company

Whistleblower, Will Wilkerson, reveals the turmoil inside Trump’s start-up media company

The Washington Post reports: Will Wilkerson, then an executive at former president Donald Trump’s start-up Trump Media & Technology Group, was at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., coffee shop with company co-founder Andy Litinsky last October when Trump called Litinsky with a question: Would he give up some of his shares to Trump’s wife, Melania? Trump Media, the owner of the fledgling social network Truth Social, had just been boosted by a huge merger agreement and a flood of investment that…

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