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Diverging views about what constitutes victory in Ukraine

Diverging views about what constitutes victory in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: Three months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America and its allies are quietly debating the inevitable question: How does this end? In recent days, presidents and prime ministers as well as the Democratic and Republican Party leaders in the United States have called for victory in Ukraine. But just beneath the surface are real divisions about what that would look like — and whether “victory” has the same definition in the United States, in Europe…

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U.S. praised for ‘sublime form’ of partnership management in NATO

U.S. praised for ‘sublime form’ of partnership management in NATO

David Ignatius writes: The first instruction that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got from President Biden was to “reset” America’s alliances and partnerships abroad so that the United States could deal with the challenges ahead. That strategy would prove decisive in combating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Blinken and other officials gave me new details this week, describing a series of behind-the-scenes meetings over the past year that helped forge the U.S.-led coalition to support Ukraine. His narrative validates President Dwight…

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Department of Commerce decision puts fate of U.S. solar industry in jeopardy

Department of Commerce decision puts fate of U.S. solar industry in jeopardy

George Strobel writes: On March 28, in a decision that would put the U.S. solar industry on hold, the U.S. Department of Commerce initiated an anti-dumping investigation into imports of solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam in response to a petition from a small California solar panel manufacturer, Auxin Solar. The investigation could result in tariffs of up to 250% on imports from these four countries, which account for more than 80% of all U.S. solar…

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How an organized Republican effort punishes companies for climate action

How an organized Republican effort punishes companies for climate action

The New York Times reports: In West Virginia, the state treasurer has pulled money from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, because the Wall Street firm has flagged climate change as an economic risk. In Texas, a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says are boycotting fossil fuels. Conservative lawmakers in 15 other states are promoting similar legislation. And officials in Utah and Idaho have assailed a major…

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Wild animals are evolving faster than anybody thought

Wild animals are evolving faster than anybody thought

Shutterstock By Timothée Bonnet, Australian National University How fast is evolution? In adaptive evolution, natural selection causes genetic changes in traits that favour the survival and reproduction of individual organisms. Although Charles Darwin thought the process occurred over geological timescales, we have seen examples of dramatic adaptive evolution over only a handful of generations. The peppered moth changed colour in response to air pollution, poaching has driven some elephants to lose their tusks and fish have evolved resistance to toxic…

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What we have at stake in Ukraine

What we have at stake in Ukraine

Paul Starr writes: What stake do we have in the Russia-Ukraine War? I would put it this way: This is a war to prevent the realities of the 20th century from becoming our future in the 21st century. Russia today is an Orwellian nightmare, a dictatorship directly descended from the Soviet KGB that takes brutal retribution against its critics and hardly bothers to conceal it, the better to instill fear in others. It commits war crimes with the same moral…

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Why Ukraine’s ports are vital for global food prices

Why Ukraine’s ports are vital for global food prices

Laura Wellesley writes: The blockade of Ukraine’s ports is choking critical supplies of crops to the world and risks tipping vulnerable populations in developing countries closer to famine. Before the invasion, Ukraine and Russia were together supplying 100 per cent of Somalia’s wheat imports, 80 per cent of Egypt’s and 75 per cent of Sudan’s. Global food prices have reached all-time highs since Russia’s invasion and households in countries across the world are suffering the consequences. Humanitarian agencies are struggling…

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Activists from Kyiv and around world join state forces in fight against totalitarianism

Activists from Kyiv and around world join state forces in fight against totalitarianism

The Guardian reports: In an unnamed basement bar in central Kyiv, Ukrainian anarchists have created a headquarters where they gather supplies to send to their peers on the frontlines and welcome anarchists from abroad who have come to fight. It is unusual to see anarchists supporting state structures, but they say taking action against Russia is necessary for their survival. “We are fighting to protect the more or less free society that exists in Ukraine,” said an activist, Dmytro. “Without…

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Finland and NATO: When push came to shove

Finland and NATO: When push came to shove

Henri Vanhanen writes: For many, Finland’s decision has represented a sudden change of heart regarding military alignment. While NATO membership certainly did not seem likely in the early months of this year, Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine left Finland with no other option. Yet, applying for NATO membership was also something Finland was ready to do if push came to shove, and this was enabled by three factors. Firstly, since 2004, Finland had formally practised a ‘NATO option policy’, meaning…

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The real reason America doesn’t have gun control

The real reason America doesn’t have gun control

Ronald Brownstein writes: After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the outraged demands for action are inevitably derailed in Congress, disappointed gun-control advocates, and perplexed ordinary citizens, point their fingers at the influence of the National Rifle Association or the intransigent opposition of congressional Republicans. Those are both legitimate factors, but the stalemate over gun-control legislation since Bill Clinton’s first presidential term…

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Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways

Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways

STAT reports: For nearly two years, as the Covid pandemic disrupted life around the globe, other infectious diseases were in retreat. Now, as the world rapidly dismantles the measures put in place to slow spread of Covid, the viral and bacterial nuisances that were on hiatus are returning — and behaving in unexpected ways. Consider what we’ve been seeing of late. The past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record, but flu hospitalizations have picked up in…

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Physicists rewrite the fundamental law that leads to disorder

Physicists rewrite the fundamental law that leads to disorder

Philip Ball writes: In all of physical law, there’s arguably no principle more sacrosanct than the second law of thermodynamics — the notion that entropy, a measure of disorder, will always stay the same or increase. “If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations,” wrote the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington in his 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World….

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George Soros: Open societies are in a struggle for survival

George Soros: Open societies are in a struggle for survival

George Soros writes: Since the last Davos meeting, the course of history has changed dramatically. Russia invaded Ukraine. This has shaken Europe to its core. The European Union was established to prevent such a thing from happening. Even when the fighting stops, as it eventually must, the situation will never revert to the status quo ante. Indeed, the Russian invasion may turn out to be the beginning of World War III, and our civilization may not survive it.1 The invasion…

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Russia benefits from the global food crisis it helped create

Russia benefits from the global food crisis it helped create

Bloomberg reports: Russia’s war against Ukraine, while deepening a global food crisis, has made the invader among the biggest winners of the mess it helped create. The war has blocked Ukraine’s grain exports by sea, cutting off vital supplies for countries from Somalia to Egypt. The disruption, topped by hot weather and droughts that are hurting wheat crops in other parts of the world, has sent prices of the grain to near-record highs and is threatening hunger in parts of…

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