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Pakistan’s devastating floodwaters could take six months to recede

Pakistan’s devastating floodwaters could take six months to recede

HuffPost reports: Catastrophic floods in Pakistan have submerged large swaths of farmland, swallowed whole villages and turned some communities into islands ― and the water likely won’t be gone anytime soon. Floodwaters will take an estimated three to six months to fully recede, Sindh province’s chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in a statement, according to CNN. As of late August, the southern province had already gotten almost six times as much rainfall as its 30-year annual average. Those…

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Chaos researchers can now predict perilous points of no return

Chaos researchers can now predict perilous points of no return

Ben Brubaker writes: Predicting complex systems like the weather is famously difficult. But at least the weather’s governing equations don’t change from one day to the next. In contrast, certain complex systems can undergo “tipping point” transitions, suddenly changing their behavior dramatically and perhaps irreversibly, with little warning and potentially catastrophic consequences. On long enough timescales, most real-world systems are like this. Consider the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, which transports warm equatorial water northward as part of an…

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Putin is banking on his friends in the Balkans to help sustain his bloody war in Ukraine

Putin is banking on his friends in the Balkans to help sustain his bloody war in Ukraine

Michael Colborne writes: I work at the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, where I lead our project using open-source research methods to monitor the far right across central and eastern Europe. In the Balkans, we’re seeing how Serbia’s far-right fringes are bolstering Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine. These groups aren’t just helping fan the flames in support of Russia’s war; they’re also receiving Russian help to push their own dangerous agenda in an already fractious part of Europe. As Russia’s war…

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Ostracized by the West, Russia finds a partner in Saudi Arabia

Ostracized by the West, Russia finds a partner in Saudi Arabia

The New York Times reports: As Russia massed troops on its border with Ukraine and invaded the country at the start of the year, Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company quietly invested more than $600 million in Russia’s three dominant energy companies. Then, over the summer, as the United States, Canada and several European countries cut oil imports from Russia, Saudi Arabia doubled the amount of fuel oil it was buying from Russia for its power plants, freeing up its own…

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DeSantis tries and fails to prove liberals hate immigrants as much as he does

DeSantis tries and fails to prove liberals hate immigrants as much as he does

Jonathan Chait writes: Sunday night, I sat in the ballroom of a Miami resort and watched Florida governor Ron DeSantis tell the crowd about how Texas governor Greg Abbott had been sending busloads of illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. His envy was undisguised. Stunts like this, which use humans as props for a set piece about owning the libs, are the trademark of his own governing style. (He has done this with ex-felons, splashily arresting 20 and charging them with…

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Trump’s latest attorney required $3 million advance payment to avoid getting shafted

Trump’s latest attorney required $3 million advance payment to avoid getting shafted

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Florida lawyer brought on to defend former President Donald Trump against potential government prosecution over sensitive documents stored at Mar-a-Lago secured an upfront payment of $3 million, according to people familiar with the terms. The deal reached by Chris Kise, who had been a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, reflects the high-profile, unprecedented nature of the investigation and Mr. Trump’s reputation for not paying some legal bills. The money is being paid out…

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Trump said to have proposed ‘great deal’ to Jordan’s King Abdullah II: Control of the West Bank

Trump said to have proposed ‘great deal’ to Jordan’s King Abdullah II: Control of the West Bank

The Times of Israel reports: Former US president Donald Trump offered control of the West Bank to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a shocking proposal that led the monarch to think he was having a heart attack, according to a new book. Trump offered the “great deal” to the king in January 2018, according to The Washington Post’s excerpts of an upcoming book. The report said that Trump seemed unaware that the move could have a potential destabilizing effect on the…

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For Donald Trump, information has always offered power

For Donald Trump, information has always offered power

By Andrea Bernstein, September 14, 2022 This story was originally published by ProPublica. Ever since the FBI came out of Mar-a-Lago last month with box after box of documents, some of them highly sensitive and classified, questions have wafted over the criminal investigation: Why did former President Donald Trump sneak off with the stash to begin with? Why did he keep it when he was asked to return it? And what, if anything, did he plan to do with it?…

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Humans may have started tending animals almost 13,000 years ago

Humans may have started tending animals almost 13,000 years ago

Science News reports: Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Ancient plant samples extracted from present-day Syria show hints of charred dung, indicating that people were burning animal droppings by the end of the Old Stone Age, researchers report September 14 in PLOS One. The findings suggest humans were using the dung as fuel and may have started animal tending during…

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As war began, Putin rejected a Ukraine peace deal recommended by aide

As war began, Putin rejected a Ukraine peace deal recommended by aide

Reuters reports: Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy on Ukraine told the Russian leader as the war began that he had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would satisfy Russia’s demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and pressed ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership. The Ukrainian-born envoy, Dmitry Kozak, told Putin that he believed the deal he had hammered out removed the need for Russia to pursue a…

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Chomsky, Greenwald, and left-wing apologists for Putin are looking very foolish right now

Chomsky, Greenwald, and left-wing apologists for Putin are looking very foolish right now

Noah Berlatsky and Aaron Rupar write: Ukraine’s successes have made right wing Putin apologists look like fools, bounders, and quislings. Tucker Carlson, all-purpose fascist shill, has constantly insisted that Putin’s victory is inevitable — refusing to change his line even after the most recent defeat. Tucker: By any actual reality based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war in Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/8uBlud3az4 — Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2022 Former Trump aide and fascist…

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‘Filtration’ and the crime of forcibly transferring Ukrainian civilians to Russia

‘Filtration’ and the crime of forcibly transferring Ukrainian civilians to Russia

Human Rights Watch: Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian and Russian-affiliated officials have forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians, including those fleeing hostilities, to areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia or to the Russian Federation, a serious violation of the laws of war amounting to a war crime and a potential crime against humanity. Many of those forcibly transferred were fleeing the besieged port city of Mariupol. Russian and Russian-affiliated authorities also subjected thousands of these Ukrainian…

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Kagan repeats warning that Supreme Court is damaging its legitimacy

Kagan repeats warning that Supreme Court is damaging its legitimacy

Politico reports: Justice Elena Kagan warned again on Wednesday that unsound reasoning and politically convenient conclusions have infected the Supreme Court’s recent opinions and are doing damage to the court’s standing with the American public. “When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem — and that’s when…

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Trump lied about Secret Service concerns to throw off New York AG

Trump lied about Secret Service concerns to throw off New York AG

The Daily Beast reports:In confidential court documents, former President Donald Trump tried to squirm his way out of taking a trip to the New York Attorney General’s office last month, telling a judge that the Secret Service had security concerns about the AG’s office, according to two sources familiar with the matter. In the days before his Aug. 10 deposition, according to those two sources and a third person familiar with the discussions, Trump’s legal team asked that the contentious…

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