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Biden wants ‘calm’ in the Mideast. So much for peace

Biden wants ‘calm’ in the Mideast. So much for peace

Politico reports: The Biden administration would like Israelis and Palestinians to “calm” down. Ideally, a “sustainable calm” that comes because the two sides “deescalate tensions” and bring a “halt to the violence.” In speeches, interviews, tweets and call readouts, President Joe Biden and his aides have used some version of the above terms more than 40 times during the past week. But what about “peace,” “peace talks,” or even “cease-fire”? Not so much. As the body count rises in the…

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I live in Sheikh Jarrah. For Palestinians, this is not a ‘real estate dispute’

I live in Sheikh Jarrah. For Palestinians, this is not a ‘real estate dispute’

Lucy Garbett writes: Sheikh Jarrah today smells of dirty socks and rotting flesh. Israeli police vehicles, known as “skunk trucks”, have been spraying Palestinian homes, shops, restaurants, public spaces and cultural institutions with putrid water at high pressure. The water causes vomiting, stomach pain and skin irritation, and was originally developed by an Israeli company to repel protesters. The stench lasts for days on clothes, skin and homes, leading Palestinians to joke that Jerusalem all smells like shit. Protesters are…

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The once dismissed lab-leak theory is becoming increasingly plausible

The once dismissed lab-leak theory is becoming increasingly plausible

Donald G. McNeil Jr. writes: In early spring 2020, I reported an article for The New York Times on which I put the tentative headline: “New Coronavirus Is ‘Clearly Not a Lab Leak,’ Scientists Say.” It never ran. For two reasons. The chief one was that inside the Times, we were sharply divided. My colleagues who cover national security were being assured by their Trump administration sources — albeit anonymously and with no hard evidence — that it was a…

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China works for Apple as Apple works for China

China works for Apple as Apple works for China

The New York Times reports: On the outskirts of this city in a poor, mountainous province in southwestern China, men in hard hats recently put the finishing touches on a white building a quarter-mile long with few windows and a tall surrounding wall. There was little sign of its purpose, apart from the flags of Apple and China flying out front, side by side. Inside, Apple was preparing to store the personal data of its Chinese customers on computer servers…

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Chinese businessman with links to Steve Bannon is driving force for a sprawling disinformation network

Chinese businessman with links to Steve Bannon is driving force for a sprawling disinformation network

The Washington Post reports: A sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United States, attacking the safety of coronavirus vaccines, promoting false election-fraud claims and spreading baseless QAnon conspiracies, according to research published Monday by the network analysis company Graphika. The report, provided in advance to The Washington Post, details a network that Graphika says amplifies the views of Guo, a Chinese real estate developer whose association with former…

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How climate change is erasing the world’s oldest rock art

How climate change is erasing the world’s oldest rock art

This Warty Pig is part of a panel dated to more than 45,500 years in age. Basran Burhan/Griffith University, Author provided By Jillian Huntley, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Griffith University; Basran Burhan, Griffith University, and Maxime Aubert, Griffith University In caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, ancient peoples marked the walls with red and mulberry hand stencils, and painted images of large native mammals or imaginary human-animal creatures. These are the oldest cave art sites…

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Biden faces an angry rift in his own party over Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Biden faces an angry rift in his own party over Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Zachary B. Wolf writes: So much attention has been focused on the rift in the GOP over former President Donald Trump’s antidemocratic lies about the 2020 election. But Democrats have their own brewing disagreement over how the US should react to violence between Israelis and Palestinians, leading Democrats to question President Joe Biden’s commitment to human rights and demanding he do more to pressure Israel. It’s an awkward public fight for a party that has made its commitment to social…

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Human waste spills on to Gaza’s blacked-out streets as crisis looms

Human waste spills on to Gaza’s blacked-out streets as crisis looms

The Guardian reports: A week of relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has destroyed power lines, smashed water pipes beneath roads and left human waste spilling out of the ground. With 188 Palestinians having been killed, and families trapped under rubble, fears are mounting of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the enclave, where 2 million people live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade in place for 14 years. Six of Gaza’s 10 electricity lines are down and supply has been more…

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Biden feels political ground shift as Israel-Gaza conflict rages on

Biden feels political ground shift as Israel-Gaza conflict rages on

Julian Borger writes: In his staunch defence of Israel, Joe Biden is sticking to a course set decades ago as a young senator, and so far he has not given ground on the issue to the progressive wing of his party or many Jewish Democrats urging a tougher line towards Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden has even been prepared to face isolation at the UN security council, at the potential cost of his own credibility on multilateralism and human rights. But analysts…

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The CDC’s mask guidance is a mess. Biden needs to clean it up

The CDC’s mask guidance is a mess. Biden needs to clean it up

Leana S. Wen writes: Last Thursday’s abruptly announced guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has devolved into a giant mess. Governors and mayors were caught by surprise, leading to a flurry of rapid changes and a patchwork of disparate regulations across the country. Businesses found themselves scrambling without the tools they need to relax restrictions for the vaccinated while protecting the ­unvaccinated. While many people happily shed their masks and celebrated the apparent end of the pandemic,…

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The 60-year-old scientific screwup that helped Covid kill

The 60-year-old scientific screwup that helped Covid kill

Megan Molteni writes: Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives…

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Deep beneath the Earth’s surface life is weird and wonderful

Deep beneath the Earth’s surface life is weird and wonderful

Gaetan Borgonie and Maggie Lau write: The living landscape all around us is just a thin veneer atop the vast, little-understood bulk of the Earth’s interior. A widespread misconception about the deep subsurface is that this realm consists of a continuous mass of uniform compressed solid rock. Few are aware that this mass of rock is heavily fractured, and water runs in many of these fractures and faults, down to depths of many kilometres. The deep Earth supports an entire…

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Israel faces threats that missiles can’t defend against

Israel faces threats that missiles can’t defend against

Pankaj Mishra writes: Israel and Hamas have taken to open warfare yet again. The sense of déjà vu, as the militant group’s rocket attacks on Israeli territory are met by retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza, is compounded by Western politicians repeating an old formula: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” That’s undoubtedly true. And yet it’s equally clear that Israeli actions are unlikely to deter Hamas. Nor will re-establishing military superiority over a technologically primitive enemy obscure Israel’s new and…

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Israel deceives then bombs the media

Israel deceives then bombs the media

NPR reports: In the latest in a series of attacks, an Israeli airstrike Saturday leveled a high-rise building after the military ordered occupants to evacuate. Inside were the offices of several media outlets — including The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera— and residential apartments. An AP statement said all employees and freelancers safely evacuated the building. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the company is looking to the Israeli government for answers. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli…

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