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Category: Politics

Signs that we are nearing a point of no return in the Amazon rainforest

Signs that we are nearing a point of no return in the Amazon rainforest

Reuters reports: Gertrudes Freire and her family came to the great forest in search of land and rain. They found both in abundance on that day half a century ago, but the green wilds of the southwestern Amazon would prove tough to tame. When they reached the settlement of Ouro Preto do Oeste in 1971, it was little more than a lonely rubber-tapper outpost hugging the single main road that ran through the jungle like a red dust scar. Sitting…

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Trump’s Truth Social media platform plans to go public via SPAC

Trump’s Truth Social media platform plans to go public via SPAC

The Wall Street Journal reports: Former President Donald Trump unveiled a new digital-media venture Wednesday and said it would go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company. Also called a blank-check firm, a SPAC is a shell company that lists on a stock exchange with the sole intent of merging with a private firm to take it public. The private company then gets the SPAC’s place in the stock market. SPAC mergers have exploded in popularity in the past…

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Calling Sinema an obstacle to progress, five veterans quit her advisory council

Calling Sinema an obstacle to progress, five veterans quit her advisory council

The New York Times reports: Five veterans tapped to advise Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, resigned from their posts on Thursday, publicly accusing her of “hanging your constituents out to dry” in the latest sign of growing hostility toward a centrist who has emerged as a key holdout on President Biden’s agenda. In a scathing letter obtained by The New York Times, the veterans took Ms. Sinema to task for her refusal to abolish the filibuster and her opposition…

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What Lebanon, Hong Kong, and Afghanistan have lost

What Lebanon, Hong Kong, and Afghanistan have lost

Kim Ghattas writes: From my home in Beirut, I think of Hong Kong all the time. Even though I’ve never been and have no real ties to it, I feel as though I have a stake in its future. I stare at news headlines that read, “Hong Kong Families, Fearing a Reign of Terror, Prepare to Flee the City,” and feel a strange, visceral sense of familiarity. I’ve become obsessed with trying to understand—to feel—Hong Kongers’ angst as their city…

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The world’s second-largest rainforest is key to limiting climate change — it needs urgent study and protection

The world’s second-largest rainforest is key to limiting climate change — it needs urgent study and protection

Lee J. T. White et al write: Earth’s second-largest expanse of tropical forest lies in central Africa, in the Congo Basin. The region supports the livelihoods of 80 million people. The rainfall that the forest generates as far away as the Sahel and the Ethiopian highlands supports a further 300 million rural Africans. These forests are crucial to regulating Earth’s climate, and are home to forest elephants, gorillas and humans’ closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Such services to people and…

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Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coal

Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coal

The Guardian reports: In the tumult of negotiations over the most consequential climate legislation ever proposed in the US, there is growing scrutiny of the fossil fuel industry connections of the man poised to tear down the core of the bill – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, has objected to key provisions of a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill that would slash planet-heating emissions and help the US, and the world, to avert catastrophic climate breakdown. In…

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How Joe Manchin and Republicans could destroy the world

How Joe Manchin and Republicans could destroy the world

Brian Kahn writes: The United Nations climate conference happening in Glasgow in less than two weeks will essentially chart a course for humanity for generations to come. That’s because this decade is one where the world must start cutting carbon emissions by nearly 8% per year or blow past a key climate guardrail. The U.S. was slated to be a big player, showing up to the meeting known as COP26 with a major new tool to reduce carbon pollution from…

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How chemical companies avoid paying for pollution

How chemical companies avoid paying for pollution

The New York Times reports: One humid day this summer, Brian Long, a senior executive at the chemical company Chemours, took a reporter on a tour of the Fayetteville Works factory. Mr. Long showed off the plant’s new antipollution technologies, designed to stop a chemical called GenX from pouring into the Cape Fear River, escaping into the air and seeping into the ground water. There was a new high-tech filtration system. And a new thermal oxidizer, which heats waste to…

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Trump organization, already under indictment, faces new criminal inquiry

Trump organization, already under indictment, faces new criminal inquiry

The New York Times reports: Former President Donald J. Trump’s family business, which is already under indictment in Manhattan, is facing a criminal investigation by another prosecutor’s office that has begun to examine financial dealings at a golf course the company owns, according to people with knowledge of the matter. In recent months, the district attorney’s office in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., has subpoenaed records from the course, Trump National Golf Club Westchester, and the town of Ossining, which sets…

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Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo

Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo

Phil Torres writes: [O]ver the past two decades, a small group of theorists mostly based in Oxford have been busy working out the details of a new moral worldview called longtermism, which emphasizes how our actions affect the very long-term future of the universe – thousands, millions, billions, and even trillions of years from now. This has roots in the work of Nick Bostrom, who founded the grandiosely named Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) in 2005, and Nick Beckstead, a…

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Democrats scramble for climate Plan C as Manchin dashes their dreams

Democrats scramble for climate Plan C as Manchin dashes their dreams

Politico reports: Joe Manchin is hearing a dire pitch from his colleagues: Don’t blow our chance to save the world. After Manchin rejected a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s climate plan and rebuffed a separate carbon tax Tuesday, Senate Democrats are urgently pressing their West Virginia colleague for an alternative. Biden and Democrats are trying to clinch a deal on Biden’s larger social spending bill, but the climate plank has become a serious question mark due to Manchin. And some…

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Brazilian leader’s pandemic handling draws explosive allegation: mass homicide

Brazilian leader’s pandemic handling draws explosive allegation: mass homicide

The New York Times reports: A Brazilian congressional panel is set to recommend mass homicide charges against President Jair Bolsonaro, asserting that he intentionally let the coronavirus rip through the country and kill hundreds of thousands in a failed bid to achieve herd immunity and revive Latin America’s largest economy. A report from the congressional panel’s investigation, excerpts from which were viewed by The New York Times ahead of its scheduled release this week, also recommends criminal charges against 69…

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The Trump administration used its food aid program for political gain, congressional investigators find

The Trump administration used its food aid program for political gain, congressional investigators find

ProPublica reports: A $6 billion federal program created to provide fresh produce to families affected by the pandemic was mismanaged and used by the Trump administration for political gain, a new congressional report has found. As a ProPublica investigation revealed last spring and as the new report further details, the Farmers to Families Food Box program gave contracts to companies that had no relevant experience and often lacked necessary licenses. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, which released…

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Biden bets his agenda on the inside game

Biden bets his agenda on the inside game

Politico reports: Before Joe Biden can fully pitch the public on his solutions to a lingering pandemic and economic rockiness, he’s got to finish the sale to his own party’s lawmakers. As Democrats on Capitol Hill brace in anticipation of a brutal midterm, Biden is spending an extraordinary amount of time and political capital behind the scenes to convince them to rally around a common framework for social and climate spending. His congressional huddles have accelerated, from phone calls on…

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Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show

Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show

Reuters reports: Amazon.com Inc has been repeatedly accused of knocking off products it sells on its website and of exploiting its vast trove of internal data to promote its own merchandise at the expense of other sellers. The company has denied the accusations. But thousands of pages of internal Amazon documents examined by Reuters – including emails, strategy papers and business plans – show the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its…

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The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own a record 89% of all U.S. stocks

CNBC reports: The wealthiest 10% of Americans now own 89% of all U.S. stocks held by households, a record high that highlights the stock market’s role in increasing wealth inequality. The top 1% gained more than $6.5 trillion in corporate equities and mutual fund wealth during the Covid-19 pandemic, while the bottom 90% added $1.2 trillion, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. The share of corporate equities and mutual funds owned by the top 10% reached the…

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