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Category: Politics

Africa’s Covid crisis deepens, but vaccines are still far off

Africa’s Covid crisis deepens, but vaccines are still far off

The New York Times reports: Africa is now in the deadliest stage of its pandemic, and there is little prospect of relief in sight. The Delta variant is sweeping across the continent. Namibia and Tunisia are reporting more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals across the continent are filling up, oxygen supplies and medical workers are stretched thin and recorded deaths jumped 40 percent last week alone. But only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated….

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In parts of America, the pandemic is now the worst it’s ever been

In parts of America, the pandemic is now the worst it’s ever been

Ed Yong writes: The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past the worst of the pandemic. Intensive-care units that once overflowed had emptied. Vaccinations were rising. Health-care workers who had been fighting the coronavirus for months felt relieved—perhaps even hopeful. Then, in late May, cases started ticking up again. By July, the surge was so pronounced that “it took the wind out of everyone,” Erik Frederick, the chief administrative…

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EU Commission President: ‘Our current fossil-fuel economy has reached its limit’

EU Commission President: ‘Our current fossil-fuel economy has reached its limit’

The Wall Street Journal reports: The European Union and China presented sweeping plans to limit greenhouse-gas emissions that will increase costs for industry and consumers, though they drew criticism from environmentalists as not going far enough to slow climate change. The moves, while both long discussed and still months or years from full implementation, show a new urgency to regulate emissions in two of the world’s biggest economies. They come as the Biden administration promises its own bold initiatives but…

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General Mark Milley’s fight to prevent Trump starting a war with Iran

General Mark Milley’s fight to prevent Trump starting a war with Iran

Susan Glasser writes: The last time that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with President Donald Trump was on January 3, 2021. The subject of the Sunday-afternoon meeting, at the White House, was Iran’s nuclear program. For the past several months, Milley had been engaged in an alarmed effort to insure that Trump did not embark on a military conflict with Iran as part of his quixotic campaign to overturn the results of the…

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Witness directly implicates Trump in tax scheme

Witness directly implicates Trump in tax scheme

The Daily Beast reports: A witness in the New York investigation against the Trump Organization has told prosecutors that Donald Trump personally guaranteed he would cover school costs for the family members of two employees in lieu of a raise—directly implicating the former president in an ongoing criminal tax fraud case. The explosive claims come from Jennifer Weisselberg, the ex-wife of a longtime company employee, during a teleconference call with investigators on Friday, June 25, according to two sources who…

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Trump isn’t such a crowd puller when the audience has to pay. They’d rather see Bad Bunny

Trump isn’t such a crowd puller when the audience has to pay. They’d rather see Bad Bunny

Politico reports: Donald Trump is having trouble selling advance tickets for his upcoming speaking tour with conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly, according to interviews with ticketing officials for the venues. Early last month, Trump and O’Reilly, the one-time top Fox News host, announced a joint “History Tour” featuring four stops in December. O’Reilly said his conversations with Trump “will not be boring,” while the former president promised “fun, fun, fun for everyone who attends.” Tickets went on sale for the events…

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It’s time to name anti-Palestinian bigotry

It’s time to name anti-Palestinian bigotry

Peter Beinart writes: In June, three Republicans in the House of Representatives—Michael Waltz, Jim Banks and Claudia Tenney—introduced a resolution censuring Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for, among other things, “inciting anti-Semitic attacks across the United States.” House Democrats accused their colleagues of Jew-hatred as well, just less explicitly. Rep. Ted Deutch did not mention his colleagues by name, but characterized their accusations of apartheid, and Tlaib’s opposition to a Jewish state, as “[a]ttacks . ….

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Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents. The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present. They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives,…

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Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election

Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election

CNN reports: The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN. The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley…

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Why the history of the vast early America matters today

Why the history of the vast early America matters today

Karin Wulf writes: Nations need history; it is a key genre for explaining the status quo. Modern nations and modern historical practices in the West developed over the same centuries, so the effort to harness the latter to the former is no surprise. Yet whether about the removal of statues, the veracity of journalism and public history projects, or the appropriateness of school curricula and course materials, questions about just how history serves the national interest have been fodder for…

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Brazil’s Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals

Brazil’s Amazon is now a carbon source, unprecedented study reveals

Mongabay reports: The Amazon has long done its part to balance the global carbon budget, but new evidence suggests the climate scales are tipping in the world’s largest rainforest. Now, according to a study published July 14 in Nature, the Amazon is emitting more carbon than it captures. “The Amazon is a carbon source. No doubt,” Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and lead author of the study, told Mongabay. “By now we can…

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Immunized but banned: EU says not all Covid vaccines equal

Immunized but banned: EU says not all Covid vaccines equal

The Associated Press reports: After Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor and his wife received two doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in Nigeria, they assumed they would be free to travel this summer to a European destination of their choice. They were wrong. The couple — and millions of other people vaccinated through a U.N.-backed effort — could find themselves barred from entering many European and other countries because those nations don’t recognize the Indian-made version of the vaccine for travel. Although AstraZeneca…

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Facebook staffers felt like ‘we were part of a cover-up’

Facebook staffers felt like ‘we were part of a cover-up’

Business Insider reports: Early drafts of a 2017 Facebook white paper on security concerns included mentions about Russia’s role before company executives decided it was “politically unwise” and told them to remove it, a new book says. The first draft of the white paper from Facebook’s then-chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and his team had “an entire section devoted to activity by state-backed Russian hackers,” according to an advance copy of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination that…

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Top U.S. general said Trump preached ‘gospel of the Führer’

Top U.S. general said Trump preached ‘gospel of the Führer’

New York Magazine reports: General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, likened Donald Trump’s effort to hold on to power after the 2020 election to Adolf Hitler, saying the president was preaching “the gospel of the Führer” with his lies about the election being stolen, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters. As chronicled in I Alone Can Fix It, by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, the Pentagon’s top general said shortly before…

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Why Facebook really, really doesn’t want to discourage extremism

Why Facebook really, really doesn’t want to discourage extremism

Steve Rathje, Jay Van Bavel and Sander van der Linden write: Our findings may reflect the fact that, more and more, political identities are driven by hating the opposition more than loving one’s own party. Out-party hate has been increasing steadily over the past few decades, researchers find, and is at the highest level seen in 40 years. Out-group hate is also more strongly related to whom we vote for than in-party love. In much the same way, who we…

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What Arizona’s 2010 ban on ethnic studies could mean for the fight over critical race theory

What Arizona’s 2010 ban on ethnic studies could mean for the fight over critical race theory

Hank Stephenson writes: Despite a few pockets of wealth, Tucson Unified School District is a largely poor district that serves a majority-Latino population. White students make up only about 20 percent of the district, and the vast majority of students qualify for free and reduced-priced lunches. TUSD’s students fall behind their peers around the state in standardized testing, and students of color fall even further behind their white peers. [Augustine] Romero and other Mexican American studies founders hoped that by…

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