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New study more than triples estimated costs of climate change damages

New study more than triples estimated costs of climate change damages

Yale Climate Connections reports: A peer-reviewed analysis by two dozen experts more than triples – from $51 per ton of carbon dioxide to $185 per ton – the federal government’s estimate of the “social cost of carbon” (SCC). The climate science, economics, and statistics experts’ paper in the prestigious journal Nature updates the best estimate of how much each ton of carbon dioxide costs society as a result of climate change damages. Their conservative best estimate is 3.6 times higher…

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Nick Lane is asking — and answering — vital questions about life

Nick Lane is asking — and answering — vital questions about life

Philip Ball writes: “There is a black hole at the heart of biology,” Nick Lane writes at the start of his 2015 book The Vital Question. “Bluntly put, we do not know why life is the way it is.” It takes some chutzpah to lay down the gauntlet to the life sciences so starkly—to suggest they are engaged more in documenting life than in explaining it. Lane, a professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London, doesn’t seem the kind…

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As Russians retreat, Putin is criticized by bloggers who trumpeted his war

As Russians retreat, Putin is criticized by bloggers who trumpeted his war

The New York Times reports: As Russian forces hastily retreated in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday in one of their most embarrassing setbacks of the war, President Vladimir V. Putin was at a park in Moscow, presiding over the grand opening of a Ferris wheel. “It’s very important for people to be able to relax with friends and family,” Mr. Putin intoned. The split-screen contrast was stunning, even for some of Mr. Putin’s loudest backers. And it underscored a growing rift…

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Moscow municipal lawmakers demand Putin’s resignation

Moscow municipal lawmakers demand Putin’s resignation

RFE/RL reports: Municipal deputies in the Moscow district of Lomonosovsky have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to resign, saying “everything went wrong” since the start of his second term and they believe a change of power is necessary for the sake of the country. The deputies posted their protocol decision on the Lomonosovsky district’s website, including a 30-minute video of their meeting on September 8. In their appeal, the deputies emphasize that the aggressive rhetoric of Putin and his…

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How Trump supporters came to hate law enforcement

How Trump supporters came to hate law enforcement

Luke Mogelson writes: In early August, after agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, allies of the former President were quick to villainize the F.B.I. Although the raid had recovered more than a hundred classified documents, at least eighteen of which were labelled “Top Secret,” Republican pundits and politicians questioned its legitimacy and denounced the federal agency as a “gang of dangerous criminals,” “wolves,” the “Gestapo,” “the K.G.B.,” and “the enemy within.”…

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For millions upon millions of Black and brown people, the queen was the symbol of historic oppression

For millions upon millions of Black and brown people, the queen was the symbol of historic oppression

Nayyera Haq writes: My mother, now a New Yorker, grew up speaking the Queen’s English. Her father was an Anglophile who excelled as a lawyer in a British legal system. He dressed in tweed jackets, drank tea with milk and smoked a pipe. He also supported the resistance movement, leaving everything behind in Jallander (now India) to migrate to Lyallpur (now Pakistan) when dissolution of the British Raj created new political boundaries and national identities. With the death of Queen…

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With the queen’s death, Britain must let go of its imperial delusions

With the queen’s death, Britain must let go of its imperial delusions

Hari Kunzru writes: The queen bridged the colonial and post-colonial eras. But for those of us who have a complicated relationship to Britain’s imperial past, the continuity represented by Elizabeth was not an unmitigated good. My father’s side of our family was made up of staunch Indian nationalists who worked for the end of imperial rule in 1947. Like many other people around the world whose families fought the British Empire, I reject its mythology of benevolence and enlightenment, and…

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On 9/11, blind luck decided who lived or died

On 9/11, blind luck decided who lived or died

Garrett M. Graff writes: Joseph Lott, a sales representative for Compaq computers, survived one of the deadliest days in modern American history because he had a penchant for “art ties,” neckties featuring famous masterpieces. “It began many years earlier, in the ’90s,” he said in an oral history with StoryCorps. “I love Impressionist paintings, and I use them as a way to make points with my kids. I’d put on an art tie, and then I would ask my kids—I…

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New York’s failing Hasidic Jewish religious schools have benefited from $1 billion in government funding

New York’s failing Hasidic Jewish religious schools have benefited from $1 billion in government funding

The New York Times reports: The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York’s largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring. But in 2019, the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. Every one of them failed. Students at nearly a dozen other schools run by the Hasidic community recorded similarly dismal outcomes that…

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Ukraine’s southern offensive ‘was designed to trick Russia’

Ukraine’s southern offensive ‘was designed to trick Russia’

The Guardian reports: The much-publicised Ukrainian southern offensive was a disinformation campaign to distract Russia from the real one being prepared in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s special forces have said. Ukrainian forces are continuing to make unexpected, rapid advances in the north-east of the country, retaking more than a third of the occupied Kharkiv region in three days. Much of Ukraine’s territorial gains were confirmed by Russia’s defence ministry on Saturday. “[It] was a big special disinformation operation,” said Taras…

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In major advance, Ukraine drives Russians out of key eastern city

In major advance, Ukraine drives Russians out of key eastern city

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian forces seized most of a strategically vital city in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, cutting the main supply line to thousands of Russian troops near the eastern city of Izyum and marking the biggest strategic gain Ukraine has made since the start of an offensive this week. Photos from Russian and Ukrainian channels on Telegram showed Ukrainian soldiers holding the country’s flag in front of the city hall in Kupyansk, and Kremlin-loyal Russian military correspondents…

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Justice Department and Trump legal team clash over special master candidates

Justice Department and Trump legal team clash over special master candidates

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department and lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump failed to agree on Friday on who could serve as an independent arbiter to sift through documents the F.B.I. seized from Mr. Trump’s Florida club and residence last month. In an eight-page joint filing that listed far more points of disagreement than of consensus, the two sides exhibited sharply divergent visions for what the arbiter, known as a special master, would do, and put…

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Stephen Miller among latest Trump aides to be subpoenaed in January 6 case

Stephen Miller among latest Trump aides to be subpoenaed in January 6 case

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department has subpoenaed two former top White House political advisers under President Donald J. Trump as part of a widening investigation related to Mr. Trump’s post-election fund-raising and plans for so-called fake electors, according to people briefed on the matter. Brian Jack, the final White House political director under Mr. Trump, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top speechwriter and a senior policy adviser, were among more than a dozen people connected to the…

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How many grand juries does it take to indict Trump?

How many grand juries does it take to indict Trump?

Susan B. Glasser writes: Outrage has steadily lost its power in American politics throughout the past few years. Among Donald Trump’s many political weapons, his ability to brazen his way through scandals that would derail other politicians has long been perhaps his strongest asset. His signature move is to displace talk of one mind-blowing violation by committing yet another mind-blowing violation—a habit that has now produced numerous investigations of him and once again led the former President to dominate our…

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