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Category: Politics

Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Jonathan Isham and Lee Smithey write: Sometimes it’s the students who teach. This week, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg arrived in New York City in a zero-emissions yacht, en route to the United Nations climate change summit. The purpose of the trip? Let’s call it a teachable moment. Over the past year, Greta and more than 2 million teens around the world have led school strikes for climate justice, demanding that their leaders end the age of fossil fuels. Now these young…

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A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

Politico reports: World leaders and major companies intent on dealing with climate change have settled on a strategy for handling President Donald Trump: snub him. When Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed withdrawing Obama-era rules to limit emissions of methane from oil and gas wells or pipelines, major oil companies said they wanted the rules to remain. Some of the world’s largest automakers are ignoring the administration’s attempt to do away with rising fuel efficiency mandates. And when Trump…

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How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

The Washington Post reports: President Trump was preparing for the Group of Seven summit in France when he learned that one of his most ardent suitors was trying to reach him. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro needed a favor, and Trump told aides to patch the call through. Bolsonaro got right to the point: The powerful G-7 countries, including France and Canada, were unfairly ganging up on Brazil over their criticism of his government’s response to massive fires ravaging the Amazon…

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Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

The Guardian reports: The fires in the Amazon are “extraordinarily concerning” for the planet’s natural life support systems, the head of the UN’s top biodiversity body has said in a call for countries, companies and consumers to build a new relationship with nature. Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach was needed to stabilise the climate and prevent…

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Trump administration limits scientific input on recommendations for healthy diet

Trump administration limits scientific input on recommendations for healthy diet

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is limiting scientific input to the 2020 dietary guidelines, raising concerns among nutrition advocates and independent experts about industry influence over healthy eating recommendations for all Americans. For the first time, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, which oversee the committee giving recommendations for the guidelines, have predetermined the topics that will be addressed. They have narrowed the research that can be used only to studies vetted…

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Trump’s G7 performance suggests he’s either a ‘Russian asset’ or a ‘useful idiot’ for Putin, say U.S. spies

Trump’s G7 performance suggests he’s either a ‘Russian asset’ or a ‘useful idiot’ for Putin, say U.S. spies

Business Insider reports: “It’s hard to see the bar anymore since it’s been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump’s behavior over the weekend was a new low.” That was the assessment an FBI agent who works in counterintelligence gave Insider of President Donald Trump’s performance at this year’s G7 summit in Biarritz, France. The agent requested anonymity because they feared that speaking publicly on the matter would jeopardize their job. Trump’s attendance at the G7…

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Bolton sidelined from Afghanistan policy as his standing with Trump falters

Bolton sidelined from Afghanistan policy as his standing with Trump falters

The Washington Post reports: As the president’s top aides prepared for a high-stakes meeting on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month, one senior official was not on the original invite list: national security adviser John Bolton. The attendance of the top security aide would normally be critical, but the omission was no mistake, senior U.S. officials said. Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace…

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Former Tory prime minister to join legal fight to stop Boris Johnson suspending parliament

Former Tory prime minister to join legal fight to stop Boris Johnson suspending parliament

The Guardian reports: John Major has said he will seek the high court’s permission to join a legal fight to prevent the government from suspending parliament before the Brexit deadline, in an unprecedented legal battle that could pit a former prime minister against the incumbent. The Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, also said they were seeking to join the case brought by the anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller aiming to prevent Boris Johnson from…

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EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency, in its proposed rule, aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It will also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. even has the legal authority to regulate methane…

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Trump pushes for new logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

Trump pushes for new logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest

The Washington Post reports: President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago, according to three people briefed on the issue, after privately discussing the matter with the state’s governor aboard Air Force One. The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known…

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How did the U.S. go from being the most egalitarian country in the West to being one of the most unequal?

How did the U.S. go from being the most egalitarian country in the West to being one of the most unequal?

Liaquat Ahamed writes: In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, at the age of twenty-five, was sent by France’s Ministry of Justice to study the American penal system. He spent ten months in the United States, dutifully visiting prisons and meeting hundreds of people, including President Andrew Jackson and his predecessor, John Quincy Adams. On his return to France, he wrote a book about his observations, “Democracy in America,” the first volume of which was published in 1835. Many of the observations…

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The search for China’s missing million Uyghurs

The search for China’s missing million Uyghurs

Morgan Meaker writes: When Aiziheer Ainiwaer talks about his father, Ainiwa Niyazi, he paints him as a comedian and the joker of his friendship group. He describes how the 57-year-old teacher always had the room in stitches with his impersonations of famous pop stars. But at home, the father-of-two would be more serious. “My father constantly used to tell us we should study and be well educated,” says Aiziheer. Throughout Aiziheer’s childhood, that mantra resulted in regular trips to the…

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Barr feathers Trump’s nest with $30,000 hotel booking for holiday party

Barr feathers Trump’s nest with $30,000 hotel booking for holiday party

The Washington Post reports: Attorney General William P. Barr is planning a holiday treat for his boss. Last month, Barr booked President Trump’s D.C. hotel for a 200-person holiday party in December that is likely to deliver Trump’s business more than $30,000 in revenue. Barr signed a contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, for a “Family Holiday Party” in the hotel’s Presidential Ballroom Dec. 8. The party will feature a buffet and a four-hour open…

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Boris Johnson’s parliament shutdown is unconstitutional

Boris Johnson’s parliament shutdown is unconstitutional

Shami Chakrabarti writes: One of the gravest dangers to any society is “outrage fatigue”. The symptom of this condition is when so many people have been so angry for so long that terrible abuses of power now seem almost normal. Over a decade since the financial crash, after nine years of crippling public spending and tax cuts, and three years on from the bitterly fought EU referendum, poor leadership leaves our country in a state of polarised peril. This is…

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Boris Johnson’s move to prorogue parliament ‘a constitutional outrage’, says Speaker

Boris Johnson’s move to prorogue parliament ‘a constitutional outrage’, says Speaker

The Guardian reports: The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, issued a stinging criticism of Boris Johnson’s intention to prorogue parliament, describing it as a constitutional outrage aimed at preventing MPs from debating Brexit. In a furious statement he said he had not been consulted by the prime minister, who he said risked undermining his democratic credentials. Bercow is expected to ensure the Commons has a chance to discuss the move, and table legislation to combat no deal, as soon as it…

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Trump wants a wall so badly, he’s encouraging subordinates to break the law if that will speed construction

Trump wants a wall so badly, he’s encouraging subordinates to break the law if that will speed construction

The Washington Post reports: President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project. He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers…

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