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Category: Politics

Israel’s internal security service warns of Jan. 6-style mob violence ahead of Netanyahu’s exit

Israel’s internal security service warns of Jan. 6-style mob violence ahead of Netanyahu’s exit

The Washington Post reports: The head of Israel’s internal security service said that “extremely violent and inciting discourse” targeting the lawmakers who are seeking to end Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as prime minister could take a potentially lethal form — a grim echo of the warnings ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Shin Bet chief Nadav Argeman said Saturday that the spike in vitriol targeting Netanyahu’s opponents online and in public demonstrations “may be interpreted by…

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If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

If we can vaccinate the world, we can beat the climate crisis

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write: It would only cost $50bn to ensure 40% of the world’s population is vaccinated by the end of the year, and 60% by the first half of 2022. This is a recent estimate from the IMF, the latest institution to join a chorus of voices calling for a global vaccination programme to bring Covid-19 under control. The IMF has highlighted the economic benefits of global vaccines, which would be huge. But there is another…

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Secret legal battle to obtain emails ‘profoundly undermines press freedom’

Secret legal battle to obtain emails ‘profoundly undermines press freedom’

The New York Times reports: In the last weeks of the Trump administration and continuing under President Biden, the Justice Department fought a secret legal battle to obtain the email logs of four New York Times reporters in a hunt for their sources, a top lawyer for the newspaper said Friday night. While the Trump administration never informed The Times about the effort, the Biden administration continued waging the fight this year, telling a handful of top Times executives about…

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Meadows pressed Justice Dept. to investigate election fraud claims

Meadows pressed Justice Dept. to investigate election fraud claims

The New York Times reports: In Donald J. Trump’s final weeks in office, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, according to newly uncovered emails provided to Congress, portions of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In five emails sent during the last week of December and early January, Mr. Meadows asked Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to examine debunked claims…

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Facebook’s responses in the Trump case are better than a kick in the teeth, but not much

Facebook’s responses in the Trump case are better than a kick in the teeth, but not much

Evelyn Douek writes: One of the many ways that the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) is different from many courts of law, let alone the Supreme Court, is that except on the narrowest of issues (the fate of the individual piece of content or account in a case) it doesn’t have the last word. The bulk and most consequential parts of the FOB’s decisions are non-binding policy recommendations; Facebook need not abide by them but does have an obligation to respond…

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Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban

Anish Kapoor writes: At the heart of New Delhi, the capital of India, sits a Mughal-inspired monument that houses the seat of the Indian parliament. Built by the British architect Edwin Lutyens between 1911 and 1931, the parliament buildings and their grand roadways and water channels follow the form established by the Islamic rulers of Iran and elaborated by the Islamic sultanate of Samarkand and the Mughal rulers of India. Lutyens designed perhaps the most important Islamic-inspired edifice of modern…

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Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab researchers

Fauci calls on China to release medical records of Wuhan lab researchers

The Financial Times reports that President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak. He told the FT that the records could help resolve the debate over the origins of a disease that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide. The records concern three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of…

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Attacks on Fauci grow more intense, personal and conspiratorial

Attacks on Fauci grow more intense, personal and conspiratorial

Politico reports: For over a year, Anthony Fauci has been a bogeyman for conservatives, who have questioned his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and accused him of quietly undermining then-President Donald Trump. But those attacks took on a whole new level of vitriol this week, to the point that one social media analysis described it as highly misleading and at least one platform pulled down some posts, citing false content. It all stemmed from a tranche of Fauci’s emails that…

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Republicans are accidentally suppressing their own voters

Republicans are accidentally suppressing their own voters

Timothy Noah writes: An unnamed Democratic congressional aide told The Washington Post this week that the mood in his party is “panic.” The cause of that panic is a raft of legislation in various Republican-controlled states that’s designed to limit voters’ access to the polls. These laws are genuine cause for concern, but their most common component—restrictions on mail-in balloting—will likely harm Republican candidates more than Democratic ones. It’s counterintuitive that partisan efforts to undermine democratic governance should hinder rather…

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Watchdog: Syria has likely used chemical weapons 17 times

Watchdog: Syria has likely used chemical weapons 17 times

The Associated Press reports: The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog told the U.N. Security Council that its experts have investigated 77 allegations against Syria, and concluded that in 17 cases chemical weapons were likely or definitely used. Fernando Arias called it “a disturbing reality” that eight years after Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the production or use of such weapons, many questions remain about its initial declaration of its weapons, stockpiles and precursors and its…

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The lab-leak theory: Inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

The lab-leak theory: Inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins

Katherine Eban writes: Gilles Demaneuf is a data scientist with the Bank of New Zealand in Auckland. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome ten years ago, and believes it gives him a professional advantage. “I’m very good at finding patterns in data, when other people see nothing,” he says. Early last spring, as cities worldwide were shutting down to halt the spread of COVID-19, Demaneuf, 52, began reading up on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease….

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The necessity for global vaccine equity

The necessity for global vaccine equity

Sue Halpern writes: A race to vaccinate the world is not an effort to achieve herd immunity. At least in this country, that goal was a kind of marketing device, a way of inspiring people to abide by masking and social-distancing rules while waiting for a vaccine, and then to encourage everyone to do their part by getting immunized once vaccines were available. In the beginning, public-health officials, including Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and…

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In states where Republicans control the legislature, American life is rapidly changing

In states where Republicans control the legislature, American life is rapidly changing

Ronald Brownstein writes: It’s not just voting rights. Though this year’s proliferation of bills restricting ballot access in red states has commanded national attention, it represents just one stream in a torrent of conservative legislation poised to remake the country. GOP-controlled states—including Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, and Montana—have advanced their most conservative agenda in years, and one that reflects Donald Trump’s present stamp on the Republican Party. Across these states and others, Republican legislators and governors have operated…

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How urban planning and housing policy helped create ‘food apartheid’ in U.S. cities

How urban planning and housing policy helped create ‘food apartheid’ in U.S. cities

Black neighborhoods have a higher density of fast-food outlets than in white districts. David McNew/Getty Images By Julian Agyeman, Tufts University Hunger is not evenly spread across the U.S., nor within its cities. Even in the the richest parts of urban America there are pockets of deep food insecurity, and more often than not it is Black and Latino communities that are hit hardest. As an urban planning academic who teaches a course on food justice, I’m aware that this…

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Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate U.S. military

Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate U.S. military

The Associated Press reports: For Stephanie Davis, who grew up with little, the military was a path to the American dream, a realm where everyone would receive equal treatment. She joined the service in 1988 after finishing high school in Thomasville, Georgia, a small town said to be named for a soldier who fought in the War of 1812. Over the course of decades, she steadily advanced, becoming a flight surgeon, commander of flight medicine at Fairchild Air Force Base…

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Charges after U.S. Capitol insurrection roil far-right groups

Charges after U.S. Capitol insurrection roil far-right groups

The Associated Press reports: Former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election united right-wing supporters, conspiracy theorists and militants on Jan. 6, but the aftermath of the insurrection is roiling two of the most prominent far-right extremist groups at the U.S. Capitol that day. More than three dozen members and associates across both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been charged with crimes. Some local chapters cut ties with national leadership in the weeks after the…

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