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Russia plays down peace-talks progress, intensifies attacks in eastern Ukraine

Russia plays down peace-talks progress, intensifies attacks in eastern Ukraine

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moscow dampened hope that a breakthrough in the latest peace talks had been achieved and followed through on its advertised shift in war plans in Ukraine by redoubling its ground and air assaults in eastern portions of the country. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dispelled the idea that Tuesday’s talks in Turkey between Ukrainian and Russian delegates had represented a turning point. “No one said that the sides have made headway,” he said. “We…

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Putin misled by ‘yes men’ in military afraid to tell him the truth, White House and EU officials say

Putin misled by ‘yes men’ in military afraid to tell him the truth, White House and EU officials say

Reuters reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin was misled by advisers who were too scared to tell him how poorly the war in Ukraine is going and how damaging Western sanctions have been, White House and European officials said on Wednesday. Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of its southern neighbor has been halted on many fronts by stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces who have recaptured territory even as civilians are trapped in besieged cities. “We have information that Putin felt misled by…

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Sanctioned oligarch’s presence adds intrigue to Ukraine-Russia talks

Sanctioned oligarch’s presence adds intrigue to Ukraine-Russia talks

The New York Times reports: When diplomats from Russia and Ukraine met for talks in the 19th-century Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul on Tuesday, their host urged the antagonists to reach a cease-fire “to the benefit of everyone.” Those words from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey may have resonated in particular with a Russian oligarch in the room, mysteriously watching from a front-row seat. The oligarch, Roman Abramovich, the 55-year-old owner of Britain’s storied Chelsea Football Club soccer team, is…

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Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log

Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming…

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Trump’s Truth Social app plummets in traffic, sees 93% drop in signups since launch week

Trump’s Truth Social app plummets in traffic, sees 93% drop in signups since launch week

Yahoo reports: Former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social app is seeing a 93% drop in signups and similarly steep decline in traffic after a rocky rollout last month fraught with technical issues and an extensive waiting list for new signups to actually use the service. After going live on President’s Day, the Twitter-lookalike app saw installs decline by more than 800,000 since its launch week, according to Sensor Tower. Installs on the Apple app store this month have fallen to…

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Massive black holes shown to act like quantum particles

Massive black holes shown to act like quantum particles

Charlie Wood writes: When two black holes collide, the titanic crash ripples out through the very fabric of the cosmos. Physicists have used Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity to predict the rough contours of these gravitational waves as they pass through Earth, and wave after wave has been confirmed by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors. But physicists are starting to flounder as they attempt to use Einstein’s thorny equations to extract ultra-precise shapes of all possible reverberations. These currently…

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The clearest evidence yet of Donald Trump’s criminal intent on January 6

The clearest evidence yet of Donald Trump’s criminal intent on January 6

Dennis Aftergut writes: On Tuesday, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in the Washington Post that the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 has the White House presidential phone log, and it shows a seven-hour gap in the record of his communications that fateful day. The gap’s importance is difficult to exaggerate. The evidence of former President Donald Trump’s criminal intent with regard to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election is building, day by day, so relentlessly that at…

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Trump calls on Putin to release dirt on Hunter Biden

Trump calls on Putin to release dirt on Hunter Biden

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump in a new interview called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release information regarding alleged dealings between Eastern European oligarchs and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. Trump’s remarks, in an interview with discredited far-right journalist John Solomon, were published Tuesday by the “Just the News” television show on the Real America’s Voice network. In making his claims about Hunter Biden, Trump cited the findings of a controversial, highly politicized investigation by Senate Republicans…

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Russia backs Europe’s far right

Russia backs Europe’s far right

New Lines reports: Last November, during Matteo’s working visit to Moscow, my boss arranged a private meeting with him, renting a room on the same floor of the Lotte Hotel to prevent the Western press from catching wind of the meeting. So wrote Mikhail Yakushev, a Russian national, in a Microsoft Word document he emailed to himself on June 18, 2019. Yakushev is the director of Tsargrad, an organization in Russia that describes itself as a group of companies whose…

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Reports of sexual violence involving Russian soldiers are multiplying, Ukrainian officials say

Reports of sexual violence involving Russian soldiers are multiplying, Ukrainian officials say

The New York Times reports: The crime first came to light last week, when Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said in a Facebook post that a Russian soldier had killed an unarmed civilian and then repeatedly raped his wife. Days later, the White House said it was concerned about emerging reports of sexual violence in Ukraine. Then on Monday night, The Times of London published the woman’s chilling account. Using the pseudonym Natalya, she told a reporter she had been…

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Why Russia’s war is so devastating to climate science

Why Russia’s war is so devastating to climate science

Inside Climate News reports: In France, scientists working on an experimental fusion-power reactor, which could potentially revolutionize how humankind generates carbon-free electricity, had to put their research on hold due to key parts shipping in from Russia. A global consortium of permafrost scientists who were set to embark on a multi-year expedition in the Arctic to collect crucial data on global warming have also had to cancel their plans due to Russian sanctions and international uproar. And the Arctic Council,…

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Ecuador’s high court rules that wild animals have legal rights

Ecuador’s high court rules that wild animals have legal rights

Inside Climate News reports: Wild animals possess distinct legal rights, including to exist, to develop their innate instincts and to be free from disproportionate cruelty, fear and distress, Ecuador’s top court ruled in a landmark decision interpreting the country’s “rights of nature” constitutional laws. The 7-2 ruling handed down last month in Quito is believed to be the first time a court has applied the rights of nature—laws that recognize the legal rights of ecosystems to exist and regenerate—to an…

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How we got herd immunity wrong

How we got herd immunity wrong

David Robertson writes: Herd immunity was always our greatest asset for protecting vulnerable people, but public health failed to use it wisely. In March 2020, not long after Covid-19 was declared a global public health emergency, prominent experts predicted that the pandemic would eventually end via herd immunity. Infectious disease epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who advised President Biden, opined in the Washington Post that even without a vaccine, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, would eventually “burn itself out as the…

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Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

The New York Times reports: On a hilltop overlooking Paw Paw Creek, 15 miles south of the Pennsylvania border, looms a fortresslike structure with a single smokestack, the only viable business in a dying Appalachian town. The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now…

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