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War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Church service in 2011. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool By Melani McAlister, George Washington University In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all…

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The Democratic Party has rarely, if ever, been on such shaky ground with young voters

The Democratic Party has rarely, if ever, been on such shaky ground with young voters

Politico reports: Democratic senators had two charts waiting at their chairs when they arrived at a caucus luncheon in February. They showed youth participation in national elections since the 1980s, with two impossible-to-miss spikes: 2018 and 2020, when huge turnout among 18- to 30-year-olds propelled Democrats into power in Washington. Those graphs led off pollster John Della Volpe’s myth-busting tour on young people and politics across the top levels of the Democratic Party. Young people do vote, he told the…

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A biomass power plant reignites concerns over clean energy and environmental justice

A biomass power plant reignites concerns over clean energy and environmental justice

Inside Climate News reports: A North Carolina power plant that generates electricity from poultry waste and wood chips has touched off a controversy over an operating permit that, if granted, would imperil public health and wellbeing, residents and environmental advocates in the surrounding community say. Since it started operating in Robeson County in 2015, North Carolina Renewable Power’s South Lumberton plant has repeatedly exceeded allowable emissions for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, known as PM2.5, and methane–a…

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Indigenous myths carry warning signals about natural disasters

Indigenous myths carry warning signals about natural disasters

Carrie Arnold writes: Shortly before 8am on 26 December 2004, the cicadas fell silent and the ground shook in dismay. The Moken, an isolated tribe on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, knew that the Laboon, the ‘wave that eats people’, had stirred from his ocean lair. The Moken also knew what was next: a towering wall of water washing over their island, cleansing it of all that was evil and impure. To heed the Laboon’s warning signs, elders…

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Spurred by Putin, Russians turn on one another over the war on Ukraine

Spurred by Putin, Russians turn on one another over the war on Ukraine

The New York Times reports: Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.” After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views. “Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them. “No longer,” one of the girls…

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Why the battle for Donbas will be very different from the assault on Kyiv

Why the battle for Donbas will be very different from the assault on Kyiv

The Observer reports: The tragedy discovered amid the rubble of Bucha and Borodianka overshadowed any jubilation that Kyiv had defeated Russian forces that had spent a month trying to envelop the capital and snuff out the Ukrainian nation. Nevertheless, the defeat of Russian forces in the north marks a turning point in the war. For the medium term, Ukraine will now survive. But for its soldiers there is no respite, for having had its first objective denied Moscow has turned…

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Are the sanctions against Russia working or not?

Are the sanctions against Russia working or not?

Kevin T. Dugan writes: Six weeks after the U.S. and the G7 countries weaponized the global financial system to impose their harshest-ever sanctions on Russia, the fissures are becoming apparent. The ruble strengthened to its prewar value against the dollar by Thursday, a sign that the capital controls set by the country’s central bank were working. As the currency continued its rise on Friday, the Central Bank of Russia surprised the world by cutting its interest rates 3 percentage points…

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In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

In Sweden and Finland, even the skeptics are coming round to NATO bids

Politico reports: The prospects of Sweden and Finland joining NATO will ultimately be decided by how many people feel the same way as Peter Gustavsson. A long-time Social Democrat lawmaker in the Swedish city of Uppsala who now edits a party newsletter in Stockholm, Gustavsson says Moscow’s decision to attack Ukraine has scrambled the security picture facing Russia’s neighbors and it is now time for Sweden to join the defense alliance. “It is a whole new chapter,” Gustavsson said. “We…

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Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Russia’s grotesque intervention in Syria

Kareem Shaheen writes: One of the most fascinating and deplorable subplots of the Syrian war (which entered its 12th year last month) has been the proclivity of the anti-imperialist left to justify Russia’s intervention in the war on the side of Bashar al-Assad and to excuse the myriad war crimes that Moscow engaged in or abetted, such as bombing hospitals and civilians, carrying out starvation sieges or protecting a regime that deployed chemical weapons on its own people. The central…

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‘Unparalleled’ book banning across 26 U.S. states

‘Unparalleled’ book banning across 26 U.S. states

CNN reports: More than a 1,000 books have been banned in 86 school districts in 26 states across the United States, a new PEN America analysis shows. PEN America, a literary and free expression advocacy organization, released a detailed analysis on Thursday of challenges to and bans on school library books and class curriculums. The group said it documented media reports, consulted school district websites, and spoke with librarians, authors and teachers from July 31, 2021, to March 31, 2022….

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First known interstellar object on Earth, scientists say

First known interstellar object on Earth, scientists say

Motherboard reports: An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo. The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor—and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system—which was…

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How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

How the West’s desire for agreement at any cost has created chaos

Jasmin Mujanović writes: In the months leading up to the resumption of open Russian aggression in Ukraine, another European country consistently made international headlines concerning renewed threats of conflict: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Beginning last summer, Serb nationalist authorities in the country’s Republika Srpska entity (RS) — one of the two administrative regions within Bosnia created after the conclusion of the Bosnian War (1992-95) — launched a renewed secessionist bid following the imposition of an anti-genocide denial law. By January, the…

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Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

Fears genocidal language in Russian media may prompt more war crimes

The Guardian reports: Two days after Russia began its war in Ukraine, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency accidentally published an article celebrating the country’s lightning-quick victory over Kyiv, crowing that the “period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end”. After a bloody month of war, after the discovery of evidence of war crimes in cities like Bucha and Borodyanka, the language in that same publication has grown even more extreme, containing calls for societal…

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The White House fears Putin’s next big win could be in Paris

The White House fears Putin’s next big win could be in Paris

Politico reports: The White House has begun to harbor fears that Vladimir Putin could soon notch his biggest victory of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — in Paris. There is growing concern within President Joe Biden’s administration about the narrowing polls in the French presidential election that show a tight race between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. A possible victory by Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, could destabilize the Western coalition against Moscow, upending France’s role as…

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