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Category: Politics

U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

The Guardian reports: The US and the EU made a joint pledge on Friday to cut global methane emissions by almost a third in the next decade, in what climate experts hailed as one of the most significant steps yet towards fulfilling the Paris climate agreement. The pledge came as the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned of a “high risk of failure” at the vital UN climate talks, Cop26, set for Glasgow this November. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas,…

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Peter Thiel’s ideology dominates Silicon Valley

Peter Thiel’s ideology dominates Silicon Valley

Max Chafkin writes: Other Silicon Valley personas may be better known to the general public, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and even a few who don’t regularly launch rockets into space. But [Peter] Thiel is the Valley’s true idol — the single person whom tech’s young aspirants and millennial moguls most seek to flatter and to emulate, the cult leader of the cult of disruption. The blitzscaling strategy he and his employees pioneered at PayPal created the growth playbook for…

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Xi Jinping aims to rein in Chinese capitalism, hew to Mao’s socialist vision

Xi Jinping aims to rein in Chinese capitalism, hew to Mao’s socialist vision

The Wall Street Journal reports: Xi Jinping’s campaign against private enterprise, it is increasingly clear, is far more ambitious than meets the eye. The Chinese President is not just trying to rein in a few big tech and other companies and show who is boss in China. He is trying to roll back China’s decadeslong evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions with party…

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Biden’s climate legislation to be shaped by fossil fuel industry’s favorite senator, Joe Manchin

Biden’s climate legislation to be shaped by fossil fuel industry’s favorite senator, Joe Manchin

The New York Times reports: Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe. Mr. Manchin has already emerged as the crucial…

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Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Mark Hertsgaard writes: Fossil fuel companies bear as much responsibility as governments do for humanity’s climate predicament – and for finding a way out. Our planetary house is on fire, and these companies have literally supplied the fuel. Worse, they lied about it for decades to blunt public awareness and policy reform. There’s no better time for ExxonMobil and other petroleum giants to be held accountable than at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November. The Glasgow summit is…

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Georgia is how American Democracy falls apart

Georgia is how American Democracy falls apart

Travis Waldron reports: David Dreyer just needed a nap. The morning of Jan. 6, Dreyer, a Georgia state representative, had spent most of the last 24 hours in the Georgia World Congress Center watching local officials tally absentee ballots in the two runoff elections that had taken place the day before. The outcome would determine majority control of the U.S. Senate. Overnight, The Associated Press had projected both Democratic candidates, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, as the winners….

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‘Justice for J6’ rally: 600 Capitol riot arrestees draw support from barely 100 protesters

‘Justice for J6’ rally: 600 Capitol riot arrestees draw support from barely 100 protesters

New York Magazine reports: About 100 people showed up on Saturday for a protest on the National Mall in support of people arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol during the pro-Trump insurrection on January 6. Considering the widespread media coverage and extensive security preparations ahead of the event, and the fact that journalists and police far outnumbered attendees, the so-called “Justice for J6” rally undoubtedly attracted more attention than it deserved. Indeed, the rally’s “D-list” organizer claimed on Friday that…

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Why Biden bet it all on vaccine mandates

Why Biden bet it all on vaccine mandates

Peter Nicholas writes: When president Joe Biden rolled out his plan requiring vaccinations on a mass scale, he sounded a bit like a gambler at a point of desperation. Biden’s presidency, and much of his legacy, hinges on defeating the prolonged pandemic. During a dismal summer of rising infections and deaths due to vaccine holdouts and the Delta variant, the pandemic seemed to have defeated him. Under the new rules, Biden hopes to pressure about 80 million more Americans to…

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Pentagon’s ‘righteous strike’ turned out to be a ‘tragic mistake’ killing 10 civilians in Kabul

Pentagon’s ‘righteous strike’ turned out to be a ‘tragic mistake’ killing 10 civilians in Kabul

  When journalism forces government to admit mistakes. The @nytimes Visual Investigation team once against defy official stories and prove unnecessary targeting of civilians. Outstanding work from @heytherehaIey ,@trbrtc ,@whitney_hurst ,@ckoettl and othershttps://t.co/ffSt1mPVUm — Rasha Al Aqeedi (@RashaAlAqeedi) September 18, 2021 Almost everything senior defence officials said publicly in the hours, days and weeks after the August 29 drone strike turned out to be false. The car posed no threat at all. https://t.co/MHie1f8EbT — Louisa Loveluck (@leloveluck) September 18, 2021…

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Obama, Bush and Clinton join forces to help Afghan evacuees. Taliban ban girls from secondary education

Obama, Bush and Clinton join forces to help Afghan evacuees. Taliban ban girls from secondary education

CBS News reports: Three of the nation’s four most recent former presidents are coming together to offer their support to a new organization that aims to assist Afghan evacuees who are resettling in the United States after fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as former first ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, are joining Welcome.US as honorary co-chairs “to lift up everyone else involved and remind us that this…

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Secret talks and a hidden agenda: Behind the U.S.–Australian defense deal that France calls a ‘betrayal’

Secret talks and a hidden agenda: Behind the U.S.–Australian defense deal that France calls a ‘betrayal’

The New York Times reports: The United States and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling France’s largest defense contract and so enraging President Emmanuel Macron that on Friday he ordered the withdrawal of France’s ambassadors to both nations. Mr. Macron’s decision was a stunning and unexpected escalation of the breach between Washington and Paris, on a day that the two countries had planned to…

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The AUKUS pact, born in secrecy, will have huge implications for Australia and the region

The AUKUS pact, born in secrecy, will have huge implications for Australia and the region

By Patricia A. O’Brien, Georgetown University It has been announced the US, Australia and the UK are forming a new security partnership to be known as AUKUS. This alliance, announced by the leaders of the three countries, throws an entirely different light on the recent 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty and indeed key defence relationships of the past seven decades. Dubbed by some as ANZUS 2.0, AUKUS is a trilateral agreement, but one that notably excludes New Zealand. With…

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Harness the world’s aquatic ‘blue’ food systems to help end hunger

Harness the world’s aquatic ‘blue’ food systems to help end hunger

An editorial in Nature, says: Next week, world leaders will gather for the United Nations Food Systems Summit. The event will be hosted by UN secretary-general António Guterres, with the aim of giving a much-needed boost to efforts to get the agency’s flagship Sustainable Development Goals back on track. One of these goals is to end hunger by 2030. Nearly 700 million people (almost 9% of the world’s population) go hungry; of those, 250 million are potentially on the brink…

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Will Biden’s Anglo anti-China alliance increase the risk of war?

Will Biden’s Anglo anti-China alliance increase the risk of war?

Tom McTague writes: A new world is beginning to take shape, even if it remains disguised in the clothes of the old. The United States, Britain, and Australia have announced what is in effect a new “Anglo” military alliance. The basics are these: In 2016, Australia struck a deal with France to buy a fleet of diesel-powered submarines, rejecting an Anglo-American alternative for nuclear-powered vessels. In March this year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (or, “that fellow down under,” as…

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The most important statistic of the Biden presidency

The most important statistic of the Biden presidency

Susan Glasser writes: President Biden is moving on. His “summer of freedom” from Covid didn’t work out. His politically popular end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan resulted in the return of the Taliban to power and a chaotic U.S. withdrawal that left behind tens of thousands of Afghan allies, whose lives are now in danger. His poll numbers have dropped so low that, as Politico’s Playbook noted, on Thursday morning, his approval rating now hovers at that of Gerald…

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China’s biggest movie star was erased from the Internet, and the mystery is why

China’s biggest movie star was erased from the Internet, and the mystery is why

The Wall Street Journal reports: Zhao Wei spent the past two decades as China’s equivalent of Reese Witherspoon, a beloved actress turned business mogul. She directed award-winning films, sold millions of records as a pop singer and built a large following on social media, amassing 86 million fans on Weibo, China’s Twitter -like microblogging site. She also made a fortune as an investor in Chinese technology and entertainment companies. Today, the 45-year-old star has been erased from the Chinese internet….

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