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Hungary’s election, a dismal day for democracy

Hungary’s election, a dismal day for democracy

In an editorial, The Guardian says: What now for the European Union’s most challenged and compromised democracy? The scale of Viktor Orbán’s fourth consecutive election victory in Hungary was crushing, comprehensive and unexpected. Faced for the first time with a united opposition alliance that put internal differences aside, predictions of a close race – or at least a competitive one – were confounded. On a high turnout, Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party actually won a greater number of seats than it…

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Is Trump criminal referral by January 6 panel actually necessary?

Is Trump criminal referral by January 6 panel actually necessary?

Politico reports: Should the Jan. 6 committee ask the Justice Department to pursue a criminal case against Donald Trump? It’s a question with political heft but no practical effect — and some panel members are increasingly skeptical. After all, as multiple lawmakers on the select committee noted in recent interviews, the Justice Department is aware of the volume of evidence pointing to violations of the law by Trump. That evidence got underscored emphatically last week, when a federal judge ruled…

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The post-liberal intellectuals who are reshaping conservatism

The post-liberal intellectuals who are reshaping conservatism

Gabby Birenbaum and Phillip Longman write: On February 22, as tensions that would soon spill into war mounted on the Ukrainian border, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson opened his show—the most popular cable news program in the country—with a searing monologue ripping into the U.S. foreign policy establishment. At the center of it was a sinister question: Why should Americans hate Vladimir Putin? In a series of rhetorical questions, Carlson asked: Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened…

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Truth Social loses it ‘brains’ and Trump loses interest

Truth Social loses it ‘brains’ and Trump loses interest

Reuters reports: The two Southern tech entrepreneurs had the two qualities that Donald Trump’s Truth Social startup needed: tech-industry expertise and a politically conservative worldview aligned with the former president, a rare combination in the liberal-leaning industry centered in San Francisco. Josh Adams and Billy Boozer – the company’s chiefs of technology and product development – joined the venture last year and quickly became central players in its bid to build a social-media empire, backed by Trump’s powerful brand, to…

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Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

ABC News (AU) reports: Up until the mid-1980s, human babies didn’t feel pain. Of course that’s not actually true, but due to research conducted in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was an attitude that still lingered among a small minority of scientists and medical professionals. So much so that some infant surgery was still conducted without, or with very little, anaesthesia in the US into the ’80s. Today, the question of physical and emotional experience has moved beyond…

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New reports of war crimes in Ukraine emerge as Russians retreat from Kyiv area

New reports of war crimes in Ukraine emerge as Russians retreat from Kyiv area

The Wall Street Journal reports: Nearly 300 civilians have been buried in mass graves by local authorities in this small suburb of Kyiv after Russian troops withdrew last week, one of several regions where Ukrainian officials and independent rights watchdogs say they are uncovering evidence of war crimes perpetrated by occupation forces. Footage taken by the Ukrainian military shortly after Russian forces abandoned Bucha showed streets littered with bodies of civilians, some of them with their hands tied. Human Rights…

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U.S. aims to hold Western alliance together during what might become a protracted war

U.S. aims to hold Western alliance together during what might become a protracted war

Politico reports: More than a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House is preparing for the possibility of a brutal, violent quagmire that could last several months or more and test the West’s resolve. Western military and intelligence assessments that had believed Russia would quickly topple Kyiv and seize control of much of Ukraine were proven incorrect, as Ukrainian forces, backed by NATO weaponry, have shown surprising resistance. Russia’s military has suffered extraordinary losses in troops and equipment…

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Putin’s 20-year advance to war in Ukraine — and how the West mishandled it

Putin’s 20-year advance to war in Ukraine — and how the West mishandled it

The Wall Street Journal reports: In Ukraine, President Yushchenko was struggling to fulfill the hopes of the Orange Revolution that the country could become a prosperous Western-style democracy. Fractious politics, endemic corruption and economic stagnation sapped his popularity. Mr. Yushchenko sought to anchor Ukraine’s place in the West. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2008, he met with Ms. Rice, by then the U.S. Secretary of State, and implored her for a path to enter NATO. The…

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Permafrost is thawing under the sea, burping up planet-warming gases

Permafrost is thawing under the sea, burping up planet-warming gases

Wired reports: Around 20,000 years ago, the world was so frigid that massive glaciers sucked up enough water to lower sea levels by 400 feet. As the sea pulled back, newly exposed land froze to form permafrost, a mixture of earth and ice that today sprawls across the far north. But as the world warmed into the climate we enjoy today (for the time being), sea levels rose again, submerging the coastal edges of that permafrost, which remain frozen below…

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How Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer beat Amazon

How Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer beat Amazon

The New York Times reports: In the first dark days of the pandemic, as an Amazon worker named Christian Smalls planned a small, panicked walkout over safety conditions at the retailer’s only fulfillment center in New York City, the company quietly mobilized. Amazon formed a reaction team involving 10 departments, including its Global Intelligence Program, a security group staffed by many military veterans. The company named an “incident commander” and relied on a “Protest Response Playbook” and “Labor Activity Playbook”…

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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

James Livingston writes: Work means everything to us Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labour, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning, purpose and structure to our everyday lives – at any rate, we’re pretty sure that it…

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Scientists sequence the complete human genome for the first time

Scientists sequence the complete human genome for the first time

CNN reports: In 2003, the Human Genome Project made history when it sequenced 92% of the human genome. But for nearly two decades since, scientists have struggled to decipher the remaining 8%. Now, a team of nearly 100 scientists from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium has unveiled the complete human genome — the first time it’s been sequenced in its entirety, the researchers say. “Having this complete information will allow us to better understand how we form as an individual organism…

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Putin is making the same mistakes that doomed Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union

Putin is making the same mistakes that doomed Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union

John Blake writes: Russian President Vladimir Putin often evokes the Soviet Union’s epic defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II to justify his country’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet Putin is committing some of the same blunders that doomed Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR — while using “Hitler-like tricks and tactics” to justify his brutality, military historians and scholars say. This is the savage irony behind Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine that’s become clear as the war enters its…

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Many Russians now accept the Kremlin’s assertion that their country is under siege from the West

Many Russians now accept the Kremlin’s assertion that their country is under siege from the West

The New York Times reports: The stream of antiwar letters to a St. Petersburg lawmaker has dried up. Some Russians who had criticized the Kremlin have turned into cheerleaders for the war. Those who publicly oppose it have found the word “traitor” scrawled on their apartment door. Five weeks into President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there are signs that the Russian public’s initial shock has given way to a mix of support for their troops and anger at…

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