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Category: Politics

With Lula back, can Brazil turn the tide on Amazon destruction?

With Lula back, can Brazil turn the tide on Amazon destruction?

Jonathan Watts writes: The month before Brazil’s October 30 presidential election was the most brutal of Jair Bolsonaro’s term as president. Landowners rushed to illegally clear forest while they could rely on the impunity that had been a characteristic of the Bolsonaro era. From my home in Altamira, I could see flames on the other side of the Xingu River from a blaze large enough to generate its own lightning. Most other days in September and October, my asthmatic lungs…

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Lawyers press international court to investigate a ‘network’ committing crimes against humanity in Brazil’s Amazon

Lawyers press international court to investigate a ‘network’ committing crimes against humanity in Brazil’s Amazon

Inside Climate News reports: Even as environmentalists cheer the ouster of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a turning point for the Amazon rainforest, new information filed Wednesday with the International Criminal Court suggest that the battle to protect the region and its inhabitants is far from over. In the filing, human rights and environmental lawyers acting on behalf of rural land users are requesting an investigation into a colossal “network” of politicians, business officials, industry lobbyists and criminal gangs for…

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Russia’s heavy casualties in Ukraine spark outcry and rare official response

Russia’s heavy casualties in Ukraine spark outcry and rare official response

The Washington Post reports: Steep Russian casualties in key battles in eastern Ukraine have prompted an unusual public outcry — and sharp criticism of military commanders — by surviving soldiers and family members of recently conscripted fighters, who say their units were led to slaughter in poorly planned operations. The uproar over battlefield losses near Vuhledar in the Donetsk region prompted an official statement from the Russian Defense Ministry, which sought to play down the reportedly high death toll among…

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Ukraine’s Zelensky sets conditions for ‘genuine’ peace talks with Russia

Ukraine’s Zelensky sets conditions for ‘genuine’ peace talks with Russia

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was open to negotiations with Russia if they are focused on safeguarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, compensating Kyiv and bringing to justice perpetrators of war crimes. Speaking ahead of his address to a global climate summit in Egypt on Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky said late Monday: “Anyone who treats seriously the climate agenda should just as seriously treat the necessity of immediately stopping Russian aggression, resuming our territorial integrity and forcing…

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‘We were completely exposed’: Russian conscripts say hundreds killed in attack

‘We were completely exposed’: Russian conscripts say hundreds killed in attack

The Guardian reports: Hours after Aleksei Agafonov arrived in the Luhansk region on 1 November as part of a battalion of new conscripts, his unit were handed shovels and ordered to dig trenches throughout the night. Their digging, which they took turns to do because of the lack of available shovels, was abruptly interrupted in the early hours of the next day as Ukrainian artillery lit up the sky and shells started raining down on Agafonov and his unit. “A…

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The world is falling short of its climate goals. Four big emitters show why

The world is falling short of its climate goals. Four big emitters show why

The New York Times reports: Seven years after the Paris Agreement, in which leaders pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world is still not on track to meet those goals. New data published by Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, ahead of this week’s United Nations climate summit reveals the gap. None of the world’s biggest emitters — China, the United States, the European Union and India —…

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Trump keeps musing about journalists being raped in prison — he’s not joking

Trump keeps musing about journalists being raped in prison — he’s not joking

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump ended his pre-midterm rally blitz in disgusting fashion, calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “an animal,” championing the death penalty, and giddily imagining the prison rape of the journalist who reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. “The leaking from the Supreme Court is unbelievable,” the former president said Monday night at a rally in Ohio. “But you get the information very easily. You tell the reporter who is it … and…

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Meet the ‘Black Robe Regiment’ of extremist pastors spreading Christian nationalism

Meet the ‘Black Robe Regiment’ of extremist pastors spreading Christian nationalism

Vice News reports: Days before the midterm elections, Pastor David MacLellan was ready to preach far-right politics through Bible verses to his small congregation. MacLellan, a hulking man with a long, grizzled black beard, isn’t an ordinary pastor. He proudly identifies himself as a far-right, extremist pastor and a Christian nationalist, someone who believes American politics should reflect fundamentalist Christian values. And he’s part of a growing national religious political movement called the Black Robe Regiment, a modern-day group inspired…

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Climate change threatening ‘things Americans value most,’ U.S. report says

Climate change threatening ‘things Americans value most,’ U.S. report says

The Washington Post reports: Climate change is unleashing “far-reaching and worsening” calamities in every region of the United States, and the economic and human toll will only increase unless humans move faster to slow the planet’s warming, according to a sprawling new federal report released Monday. “The things Americans value most are at risk,” write the National Climate Assessment authors, who represent a broad range of federal agencies. “Many of the harmful impacts that people across the country are already…

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A technologically advanced society is choosing to destroy itself. It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch

A technologically advanced society is choosing to destroy itself. It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch

Landon Parenteau/Unsplash, CC BY By Christopher Wright, University of Sydney; Daniel Nyberg, University of Newcastle, and Vanessa Bowden, University of Newcastle As world leaders assemble for the United Nations climate change conference (COP27) in Egypt, it’s hard to be optimistic the talks will generate any radical departure from the inexorable rise in global carbon emissions over the past two centuries. After all, before last year’s Glasgow talks, experts warned the summit was the world’s last chance to limit global warming…

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How a GOP Congress could roll back freedoms nationwide

How a GOP Congress could roll back freedoms nationwide

Ronald Brownstein writes: If Republicans win control of one or both congressional chambers this week, they will likely begin a project that could reshape the nation’s political and legal landscape: imposing on blue states the rollback of civil rights and liberties that has rapidly advanced through red states since 2021. Over the past two years, the 23 states where Republicans hold unified control of the governorship and state legislature have approved the most aggressive wave of socially conservative legislation in…

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Putin ally and mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, brags about Russia meddling in U.S. midterm elections

Putin ally and mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, brags about Russia meddling in U.S. midterm elections

The New York Times reports: With alarm over foreign manipulation of the U.S. midterm elections swirling ahead of Tuesday’s vote, an influential Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin sardonically boasted on Monday that Russia was interfering in the election. “Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will interfere,” the businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s Chef,” said in a statement posted by his catering company in response to a question from a Russian…

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U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia

U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, according to people familiar with the discussions. The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of…

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Trump’s Twitter clone has turned into his albatross

Trump’s Twitter clone has turned into his albatross

The Washington Post reports: The co-founders of former president Donald Trump’s post-presidential start-up, Trump Media & Technology Group, had a name for June 11, 2021: “meltdown day.” Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, former contestants on Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” had a week earlier traveled with an 11-person entourage to Trump’s palatial golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to show off what they’d worked for months to build: a web of conservative-aimed business ventures, including the Twitter clone Truth Social, that…

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Russia reactivates its trolls and bots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections

Russia reactivates its trolls and bots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections

The New York Times reports: The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol. The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine’s president as a caricature straight…

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Arizona election workers face threats of violence

Arizona election workers face threats of violence

Reuters reports: Election workers in Arizona’s most fiercely contested county faced more than 100 violent threats and intimidating communications in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterms, most of them based on election conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies. The harassment in Maricopa County included menacing emails and social media posts, threats to circulate personal information online and photographing employees arriving at work, according to nearly 1,600 pages of documents obtained by Reuters through a public records…

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