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Fate of 2,500 Ukrainian POWs from Mariupol steel plant stirs concern

Fate of 2,500 Ukrainian POWs from Mariupol steel plant stirs concern

Politico reports: With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the besieged Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate as a Moscow-backed separatist leader vowed they would face tribunals. Russia has declared its full control of the Azovstal steel plant, which for weeks was the last holdout in Mariupol and a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity in the strategic port city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 residents feared dead. The seizure gives Russian President…

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The Russian Orthodox leader at the core of Putin’s ambitions

The Russian Orthodox leader at the core of Putin’s ambitions

The New York Times reports: As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded, Patriarch Kirill I, the leader of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, had an awkward Zoom meeting with Pope Francis. The two religious leaders had previously worked together to bridge a 1,000-year-old schism between the Christian churches of the East and West. But the meeting, in March, found them on opposing sides of a chasm. Kirill spent 20 minutes reading prepared remarks, echoing the arguments of President Vladimir V. Putin…

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Australian voters deliver strong message by placing climate crisis first

Australian voters deliver strong message by placing climate crisis first

CNN reports: Australian voters have delivered a sharp rebuke to the center-right government, ending nine years of conservative rule, in favor of the center-left opposition that promised stronger action on climate change. Australian Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese claimed victory Saturday, though it was unclear as counting continued if his party would have the 76 seats required to form a majority. Early counting showed a strong swing towards Greens candidates and Independents who demanded emissions cuts far above the commitments…

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How Trump’s 2020 election lies have gripped state legislatures

How Trump’s 2020 election lies have gripped state legislatures

The New York Times reports: At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times. The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the…

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Millions rushed to leave Ukraine, but now the queue to return home stretches for miles

Millions rushed to leave Ukraine, but now the queue to return home stretches for miles

NPR reports: Medyka, Poland is a quiet and idyllic farming village near the southeastern border with Ukraine. But in recent months, it has become the busiest border crossing for Ukrainian refugees since the war with Russia began in late February. In February and March, refugees waited for hours or days there to cross into Poland. Now, the flow has reversed. The long lines are on the Polish side of the border filled with people waiting to cross into Ukraine. Anna…

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The U.S. is more dangerously divided than any other wealthy democracy

The U.S. is more dangerously divided than any other wealthy democracy

Yascha Mounk writes: Until a few decades ago, most Democrats did not hate Republicans, and most Republicans did not hate Democrats. Very few Americans thought the policies of the other side were a threat to the country or worried about their child marrying a spouse who belonged to a different political party. All of that has changed. A 2016 survey found that 60 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans would now balk at their child’s marrying a supporter…

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Structural racism killed Black people in east Buffalo, then a gunman killed the survivors

Structural racism killed Black people in east Buffalo, then a gunman killed the survivors

Ibram X. Kendi writes: I loved strawberry shortcake as a child in New York City. The sliced strawberries, the juice, the softest of cake, that whipped cream. I loved it all individually. And together? Pure bliss. Celestine Chaney loved strawberry shortcake too. A 65-year-old mother and grandmother of six, Chaney took strawberry-shortcake making to another level. She’d buy “those little cake cups,” her son, Wayne Jones, told The Buffalo News. “You cut the strawberries up, sprinkle sugar over them, and…

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Could Google’s carbon emissions have effectively doubled overnight?

Could Google’s carbon emissions have effectively doubled overnight?

Bill McKibben writes: The temperature in parts of the Antarctic was seventy degrees Fahrenheit above normal in mid-March. Pakistan and India saw their hottest March and April in more than half a century, and the temperature in areas of the subcontinent is above a hundred and twenty degrees this week. Temperatures in Chicago last week topped those in Death Valley. But, on Tuesday, three nonprofit environmental groups jointly released a report containing a different set of numbers that appear to…

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We need to take back our privacy

We need to take back our privacy

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Over 130 years ago, a young lawyer saw an amazing new gadget and had a revolutionary vision — technology can threaten our privacy. “Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person,” wrote the lawyer, Louis Brandeis, warning that laws needed to keep up with technology and new means of surveillance, or Americans would lose their “right to be let alone.” Decades later, the right…

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How Islam settled Roe v. Wade centuries ago

How Islam settled Roe v. Wade centuries ago

Rashad Ali and Anna Lekas Miller write: As soon as the news broke that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, familiar — and troubling — Islamophobic tropes began to emerge in the discourse. “America’s Taliban really hates women and minorities,” wrote Daily Beast editor Naveed Jamali on Twitter, harkening back to late September when dozens of commentators, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, started referring to Texas lawmakers as the “American Taliban” — a trope that…

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As monkeypox goes global, scientists are on high alert

As monkeypox goes global, scientists are on high alert

Nature reports: More than 120 confirmed or suspected cases of monkeypox, a rare viral disease seldom detected outside of Africa, have been reported in at least 11 non-African countries in the past week. The emergence of the virus in separate populations across the world where it doesn’t usually appear has alarmed scientists — and sent them racing for answers. “It’s eye-opening to see this kind of spread,” says Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, who…

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Ukraine will fight until all Russian forces have been expelled, military intelligence chief says

Ukraine will fight until all Russian forces have been expelled, military intelligence chief says

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine’s military intelligence chief said the country would keep fighting until it evicts Russian forces from all of its territory—including Crimea and other areas effectively seized by Moscow in 2014—and called for deliveries of longer-range heavy weapons and warplanes from the West to help. “I don’t know any borders except the borders of 1991,” Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said, referring to the year of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. “Who can force Ukraine to…

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For Finland, the Cold War never ended. That’s why it’s ready to join NATO

For Finland, the Cold War never ended. That’s why it’s ready to join NATO

Paul R.S. Gebhard writes: Since its founding, NATO’s key challenge has been ensuring that its members have the military means to fulfill their political commitments to each other. With Finland, which filed its application along with Sweden this week, the Alliance can rest easy: The Nordic nation not only meets the threshold criteria of defense capability for membership, but exceeds it. The country’s experience since it secured independence from Russia in 1918 has forged a national policy of defense and…

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The banks collapsed in 2008. Our food system is about to do the same

The banks collapsed in 2008. Our food system is about to do the same

George Monbiot writes: For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008. While financial collapse would have been devastating to human welfare, food system collapse doesn’t bear thinking about. Yet the evidence that something is going badly wrong has been escalating rapidly. The current surge in food prices looks like the latest sign of…

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