Music: Maati Baani — ‘Rang Rangiya’ ft. Komal Rizvi
‘The Republicans are the problem’
John Harwood writes: The essay described congressional extremists, their rejection of truth, a party turning into authoritarians or “an apocalyptic cult.” It bore a striking headline: “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” It didn’t mention Marjorie Taylor Greene, the deadly January 6 insurrection or Donald Trump’s Big Lie. In fact, the words “Donald Trump” did not appear at all. Published in 2012, that Washington Post piece demonstrates more than the foresight of its political scientist authors, Tom…
Facebook calls links to depression inconclusive. These researchers disagree
NPR reports: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic. It’s social media. And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason. At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO…
QAnon is spreading amongst evangelicals. These pastors are trying to stop it
CNN reports: When Pastor James Kendall stepped on to the stage of his small church in Madera, California he knew that day’s sermon was going to take him in a direction unlike most. He had seen some troubling Facebook posts from members of his congregation. God, he says, was telling him speak out and warn his flock. “I don’t like to get off track and off the Bible,” Kendall said during a sermon on March 7. “But as a pastor…
Intelligence on sick staff at Wuhan lab fuels debate on Covid-19 origin
The Wall Street Journal reports: Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory. The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers…
Belarus carries out ‘state hijacking’ to seize dissident from European airliner
The New York Times reports: The strongman president of Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner traveling through the country’s airspace on Sunday and ordered the plane to land in the capital, Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard was then seized, provoking international outrage. The stunning gambit by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and erratic leader who has clung to power despite huge protests against his government last year, was condemned by European officials, who compared…
Solar storms are back, threatening chaos around the world
The Associated Press reports: A few days ago, millions of tons of super-heated gas shot off from the surface of the sun and hurtled 90 million miles toward Earth. The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, wasn’t particularly powerful on the space-weather scale, but when it hit the Earth’s magnetic field it triggered the strongest geomagnetic storm seen for years. There wasn’t much disruption this time — few people probably even knew it happened — but it served as a…
The ‘dark matter’ inside your gut
Jonathan Jarry writes: There is a kind of dark matter inside our intestinal tract. “Dark matter” is the phrase coined for the matter that is implied to be present in the universe based on physicists’ calculations but that cannot be seen yet. Scientists who study tiny living things are facing their own type of dark matter: invisible microbes that are indirectly detected. They call it “microbial dark matter.” Much has been written about the bacteria that live inside our gut….
Music: Maati Baani — ‘Boondan Boondan’
In Washington, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is coming to be understood as a human rights issue
Yasmeen Serhan writes: In a conflict where words matter (so much so that even using the word conflict invites disagreement), it’s notable when the words used begin to change. And when it comes to discussing Israel and Palestine in the United States, the words have changed. The first, most obvious shift has come from Congress, where more and more (predominantly progressive) voices have criticized Israel’s human-rights abuses, as well as the U.S. government’s role in sustaining a status quo that…
Jewish Americans are at a turning point with Israel
Arielle Angel writes: On Nakba Day, 15 May, amid the outbreak of war in Israel/Palestine, I attended a rally in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the new Israeli state in 1948, and to protest against the oppression of the Palestinian people in the land between the river and the sea. From the signs I saw as part of that crowd – “This Jew will not stand by” or “Another Jew for…
Antisemitic incidents heightened across U.S. amid Israel-Gaza fighting; mosques were damaged, too
NBC News reports: Rabbi Shaoul Hamaoui’s synagogue, the Persian Hebrew Congregation in suburban Chicago, had never been defaced while he’s served as spiritual leader for more than a decade. But that changed Sunday afternoon when a window was shattered and surveillance video captured two people, one carrying a stick and another holding a “Freedom for Palestine” sign. No one was at the synagogue at the time, and police in Skokie, Illinois, said they are investigating the vandalism as a hate…
World’s worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visits a hospital for COVID-19 patients, unmasked, in Minsk on Nov. 27, 2020. Andrei Stasevich\TASS via Getty Images By Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University; Dorothy Chin, University of California, Los Angeles; Elizabeth J King, University of Michigan; Elize Massard da Fonseca, Fundação Getulio Vargas; Salvador Vázquez del Mercado, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan COVID-19 is notoriously hard to control, and political leaders are only part of the calculus when…
Republicans move to restrict a grass-roots American tradition of direct democracy
The Wall Street Journal reports: In 2008, deep-blue California banned same-sex marriage. In 2018, steadfastly conservative Arkansas and Missouri increased their minimum wage. And last year, Republican-controlled Arizona and Montana legalized recreational marijuana. These moves were all the product of ballot initiatives, a century-old fixture of American democracy that allows voters to bypass their legislatures to enact new laws, often with results that defy the desires of the state’s elected representatives. While they have been a tool of both parties…
Green finance goes mainstream, lining up trillions behind global energy transition
The Wall Street Journal reports: Some of the world’s biggest companies and deepest-pocketed investors are lining up trillions of dollars to finance a shift away from fossil fuels. Assets in investment funds focused partly on the environment reached almost $2 trillion globally in the first quarter, more than tripling in three years. Investors are putting $3 billion a day into these funds. More than $5 billion worth of bonds and loans designed to fund green initiatives are now issued every…
Antarctica is headed for a climate tipping point by 2060, with catastrophic melting if carbon emissions aren’t cut quickly
The big wildcard for sea level rise is Antarctica. James Eades/Unsplash By Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Andrea Dutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet. New research shows it is Antarctica that may force a reckoning between the choices countries make today about greenhouse…