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As American forces retreat, the Taliban advances across Afghanistan

As American forces retreat, the Taliban advances across Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: Ammunition was depleted inside the bedraggled outposts in Laghman Province. Food was scarce. Some police officers hadn’t been paid in five months. Then, just as American troops began leaving the country in early May, Taliban fighters besieged seven rural Afghan military outposts across the wheat fields and onion patches of the province, in eastern Afghanistan. The insurgents enlisted village elders to visit the outposts bearing a message: Surrender or die. By mid-month, security forces had…

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The Wuhan lab leak question: A disused Chinese mine takes center stage

The Wuhan lab leak question: A disused Chinese mine takes center stage

The Wall Street Journal reports: On the outskirts of a village deep in the mountains of southwest China, a lone surveillance camera peers down toward a disused copper mine smothered in dense bamboo. As night approaches, bats swoop overhead. This is the subterranean home of the closest known virus on Earth to the one that causes Covid-19. It is also now a touchpoint for escalating calls for a more thorough probe into whether the pandemic could have stemmed from a…

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Biden: Intelligence community split on Covid-19 origin

Biden: Intelligence community split on Covid-19 origin

Politico reports: President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the U.S intelligence community is split between two origin theories for the Covid-19 pandemic. In a statement Wednesday, Biden notably did not detail the two theories between which the intelligence community is split. The president’s statement did note that he had ordered a review of the pandemic’s origins, “including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” but did not say whether either of those…

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How do we know that Covid isn’t a bioweapon?

How do we know that Covid isn’t a bioweapon?

Since the revival of the lab-leak theory will once again enliven conspiracy theorists, it’s worth being reminded why it’s wildly implausible that SARS-CoV-2 was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a biological weapon. (Also keep in mind that the possibility that the virus accidentally leaked from the lab does not contradict the still widely held view that it originated in the wild.) Last July, Ruby Prosser Scully wrote: [C]reating this virus in a lab and knowing that it…

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Trump teams up with Gingrich to put a contract on America

Trump teams up with Gingrich to put a contract on America

Politico reports: With an eye toward winning back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party. His template is the 1994 “Contract with America,” a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term. And, as a cherry on top, he’s teaming up with its main architect — Gingrich — to do it. In…

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Israeli police round up Palestinian protesters outside global spotlight

Israeli police round up Palestinian protesters outside global spotlight

The Intercept reports: Palestinian activists urged the world not to look away from their struggle for freedom and equality following the ceasefire in Gaza, as Israeli police began rounding up Palestinian citizens of Israel who took part in demonstrations described as riots by the authorities. At least 74 Palestinians were detained by Monday afternoon, in the first hours of what Israel’s police force is calling “Operation Law and Order.” Palestinian rights groups called the planned arrest of up to 500…

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Lukashenko’s bogus ‘Hamas’ email

Lukashenko’s bogus ‘Hamas’ email

Michael Weiss reports: Newlines, in collaboration with the Dossier Center, has exclusively obtained the original bomb threat email Alexander Lukashenko now claims was sent by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, allegedly prompting his order to land a Ryanair jet carrying a dissident journalist in Minsk. But timestamps show that the email was sent 24 minutes after Belarusian authorities told the pilot and crew that they were transporting an explosive device as well as passengers. “Allahu Akbar” runs the subject line…

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Shell ordered to deepen carbon cuts in landmark Dutch climate case

Shell ordered to deepen carbon cuts in landmark Dutch climate case

Reuters reports: A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to drastically deepen planned greenhouse gas emission cuts on Wednesday, in a landmark ruling that could trigger legal action against energy companies around the world. Shell said it was “disappointed” and plans to appeal the ruling, which comes amid rising pressure on energy companies from investors, activists and governments to shift away from fossil fuels and rapidly ramp up investment in renewables. Judge Larisa Alwin read out a ruling at a…

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Former RNC chairman: Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP is a death trap for American democracy

Former RNC chairman: Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP is a death trap for American democracy

Michael Steele writes: Addressing a reunion of Civil War soldiers in 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant predicted that the dividing line in the nation’s next great conflict “will not be Mason’s or Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” A century and a half later, a once proud Republican Party is convulsing with conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election while desperately trying to recast the insurrection of Jan….

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The crisis of anti-Semitic violence

The crisis of anti-Semitic violence

Michelle Goldberg writes: Violence between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East is often accompanied by spikes in anti-Semitic activity in the United States, but what’s happened over the last week or so has been different. As Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, put it to me, Jewish organizations are somewhat inured to, say, pro-Palestinian graffiti on a synagogue following a protest. What’s new, and more reminiscent of the sort of anti-Semitic aggression common in Europe, is…

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Five days later: House Republican leaders condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Holocaust comparison

Five days later: House Republican leaders condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Holocaust comparison

CNN reports: House Republican leaders have condemned incendiary remarks from GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene five days after she first publicly compared Capitol Hill mask rules to the Holocaust, amid a wave of criticism from Republican and conservative critics as well as Jewish groups aimed at the Georgia congresswoman and the party leaders’ silence. “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said in…

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Boycotts and sanctions helped rid South Africa of apartheid – is Israel next in line?

Boycotts and sanctions helped rid South Africa of apartheid – is Israel next in line?

Chris McGreal writes: Twenty-seven years after the end of white rule, some see the boycott campaign against South Africa as a guide to mobilising popular support against what is increasingly condemned as Israel’s own brand of apartheid. As South Africa showed, building popular support for action takes years – and those who back the campaign face a far more effective opponent in the Israeli state. For all that, significant shifts in attitudes toward Israel, particularly in the US and within…

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Support for Israel among young U.S. evangelical Christians drops sharply

Support for Israel among young U.S. evangelical Christians drops sharply

The Times of Israel reports: A new survey points to a growing divide in the US between young evangelical Christians and their elders, particularly in their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, indicating Israel could see a significant drop in support in coming years. While the religious group has long been a bulwark of support for Israel in the US, the Barna Group-administered poll commissioned by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke indicates a sharp drop in support…

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How the ‘culture war’ could break American democracy

How the ‘culture war’ could break American democracy

Zack Stanton interviews sociologist James Davison Hunter, the author of Culture Wars (1991): [T]here can be a tendency, especially on the political left, to talk about “culture war” issues as being “distractions” that are raised in order to divide people who might otherwise find common cause around, say, shared economic interests. What do you make of that view? We are constituted as human beings by the stories we tell about ourselves. The very nature of meaning and purpose in life…

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