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How former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, earned millions as Putin’s man in Germany

How former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, earned millions as Putin’s man in Germany

The New York Times reports: On the evening of Dec. 9, 2005, 17 days after Gerhard Schröder left office as chancellor of Germany, he got a call on his cellphone. It was his friend President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Putin was pressing Mr. Schröder to accept an offer to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream, the Russian-controlled company in charge of building the first undersea gas pipeline directly connecting Russia and Germany. “Are you afraid to work…

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Back in the USSR: Lenin statues and Soviet flags reappear in Russian-controlled cities

Back in the USSR: Lenin statues and Soviet flags reappear in Russian-controlled cities

The Observer reports: Last week a familiar figure returned to the main square of the seaside town of Henichesk. Dressed in a three-piece suit, and sporting his familiar goatee and moustache, Vladimir Lenin was back on his pedestal. A statue of the Bolshevik leader had been erected outside the town’s main council building. Flying from the roof were the Russian and Soviet flags. All in time for Lenin’s 152nd birthday on Friday. Henichesk, however, is not in Russia. It is…

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Changes at CNN and New York Times signal less advocacy, more journalism

Changes at CNN and New York Times signal less advocacy, more journalism

The Guardian reports: The highest echelons of the US media were once again in the spotlight this week, after CNN this week abandoned a newly launched streaming service and the New York Times appointed a prominent Bostonian to lead it. CNN+ will shut down on 30 April, about a month after it was launched with a $300m investment. The new owner of the network, Warner Bros Discovery – itself the product of a $43bn merger between AT&T and the Discovery…

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How trance states forged human society through transcendence

How trance states forged human society through transcendence

Mark Vernon writes: A change has come over the public discussion of religion in recent years. In the decade of the New Atheists, religion was the root of all evil. Nowadays, however, it tends to be thought of as a good, even necessary, part of society. In his recent book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019), the agnostic historian Tom Holland argues that Christianity underpins our civilisation; and the atheist philosopher John Gray has repeatedly stressed that atheism…

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In a creative play on three different languages, Ukrainians identify an enemy: ‘ruscism’

In a creative play on three different languages, Ukrainians identify an enemy: ‘ruscism’

Timothy Snyder writes: The City Council of Mariupol, Ukraine, was trying to make a point about mass death. Their city had been hit hardest by the Russian invasion, and thousands of corpses lay amid the rubble after weeks of urban warfare. After the revelation of Russian atrocities in Bucha and other cities in northern Ukraine, the elected representatives of the port city wished to remind the world that the scale of killing in the south was still higher. In dry…

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Russian general reveals a secret plan to invade another country and seize Ukraine’s entire coastline

Russian general reveals a secret plan to invade another country and seize Ukraine’s entire coastline

The Daily Beast reports: As Russian troops tighten their grip on the strategic port town of Mariupol, their strategy is finally becoming clear. Russian military commander Rustam Minnekaev now says the second phase of President Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” is focused on establishing a “land corridor” from the Donbas all the way to Moldova, which would cut off the rest of Ukraine from the sea. “One of the tasks of the Russian army is to establish full control over the…

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Marine Le Pen’s far-right French party to pay nearly $13 million to Russian military contractor

Marine Le Pen’s far-right French party to pay nearly $13 million to Russian military contractor

The Wall Street Journal reports: The far-right party of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has begun paying a settlement of 12 million euros—equivalent to $12.94 million—to a Russian military contractor under U.S. sanctions, part of a debt restructuring that granted her party more time to repay a loan it took from a Russian bank, according to Russian and French government records. Aviazapchast JSC—a Moscow-based company that supplies Russian military aircraft and parts across the Middle East, Africa and Asia—took…

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New EU law takes aim at social media’s harms

New EU law takes aim at social media’s harms

The New York Times reports: The European Union reached a deal on Saturday on landmark legislation that would force Facebook, YouTube and other internet services to combat misinformation, disclose how their services amplify divisive content and stop targeting online ads based on a person’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The law, called the Digital Services Act, is intended to address social media’s societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of…

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Twitter bans ‘misleading’ ads about climate change

Twitter bans ‘misleading’ ads about climate change

The Verge reports: Twitter levied a new ban today on “misleading” advertisements “that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.” “We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company said in a blog post today. Its decisions about what’s legit content in regard to climate change will be guided by “authoritative sources,” it says, including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)….

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GOP gives up on the free market and puts its faith in vindictive governance

GOP gives up on the free market and puts its faith in vindictive governance

Robert Schlesinger writes: “The market is rational and government is dumb,” Dick Armey, one of the leaders of the 1994 Republican Revolution, liked to say. That used to be a cornerstone of conservatism. Today, it’s increasingly the reverse. While they still mouth free-market platitudes, Republicans fulminate against corporate America for taking political positions that they oppose—without any apparent awareness, or a refusal to recognize, that such decisions reveal the free market in action: Conservatives’ culture-war positions are broadly toxic to…

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Ten practical ways to improve happiness

Ten practical ways to improve happiness

Arthur C. Brooks writes: Here’s some very bad happiness advice based on very solid happiness research: Feel important. Be happily married. Be Danish. Depending on how happiness is measured, all of these things really are associated with a happier life. But they’re unhelpful because they are not actionable in any practical way. Very few people slap their foreheads and say, “It all makes sense now—I thought a tense, angry marriage was the secret to happiness, but it isn’t!” This is…

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Democrats, you can’t ignore the culture wars any longer

Democrats, you can’t ignore the culture wars any longer

Jamelle Bouie writes: Almost 60 years ago, the historian Richard Hofstadter described what he saw as the true goal of McCarthyism. “The real function of the Great Inquisition of the 1950’s was not anything so simply rational as to turn up spies or prevent espionage,” he wrote, “or even to expose actual Communists, but to discharge resentments and frustrations, to punish, to satisfy enmities whose roots lay elsewhere than in the Communist issue itself.” Likewise, in a much more recent…

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Russian forces accused of secret burials of Mariupol civilians in mass graves

Russian forces accused of secret burials of Mariupol civilians in mass graves

The Guardian reports: Russia has been hiding evidence of its “barbaric” war crimes in Mariupol by burying the bodies of civilians killed by shelling in a new mass grave, the city’s mayor said on Thursday, as a US satellite imagery company released photos that appeared to match the site. The mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said Russian trucks had collected corpses from the streets of the port city and had transported them to the nearby village of Manhush. They were then secretly…

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The battle for Donbas: Why the weapons the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine are so critical

The battle for Donbas: Why the weapons the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine are so critical

ABC News reports: As Russia’s military gears up for what it hopes will be a decisive victory over Ukraine in the eastern part of the country, the U.S. is rushing to send weapons and equipment needed to hold off the larger invading force in the rural and open Donbas terrain — a far different battlefield from the urban fighting where Ukrainian forces held an advantage. What could make all the difference now is the new $800 million military aid package…

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