Attention to the Unseen

NBC News reports: Nearly three months after deeming Russia in violation of a chemical weapons law, the Trump administration has yet to impose tough new sanctions on Moscow required by the law and triggered by the poisoning last year of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. Even as the European Union moves ahead, punishing four Russian officials this week in connection with the poisoning, the U.S. has not moved forward with its own penalties. The delay comes as the Trump administration…

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Kevin Poulsen writes: Russian oligarchs and Kremlin apparatchiks may find the tables turned on them later this week when a new leak site unleashes a compilation of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails and gigabytes of leaked documents. Think of it as WikiLeaks, but without Julian Assange’s aversion to posting Russian secrets. The site, Distributed Denial of Secrets, was founded last month by transparency activists. Co-founder Emma Best said the Russian leaks, slated for release Friday, will bring into one…

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The Washington Post reports: The White House’s top economist on Wednesday said the economy could completely stall in the first three months of 2019 if the government shutdown does not end, drawing a sharp contrast with the rosy economic picture President Trump has tried to paint during the month-long funding lapse. White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett, in a CNN interview, was asked whether the economy’s growth rate for the first quarter of the year could fall…

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The New York Times reports: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela scrapped all diplomatic ties with the United States on Wednesday and gave American diplomats 72 hours to leave, ordering them out with a derisive “be gone!” and accusing the Trump administration of plotting to overthrow him. Mr. Maduro’s actions came as he faced the most direct challenge yet to his hold on power in Venezuela, a once-prosperous country that has been devastated by years of political repression, economic mismanagement and…

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The Guardian reports: A fireball outside a courthouse. Hijackings and bomb alerts. Sealed-off streets, evacuations and arrests. Speculation about the next attack. It can seem as if Derry has stepped into a time machine. Television pictures in the past few days have shown images redolent of the Troubles, an era supposedly consigned to the city’s museums and murals. Ice and snow blanketed the scorch marks outside the Bishop Street courthouse on Tuesday as police with body armour and rifles patrolled…

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The New York Times reports: Joseph R. Biden Jr. swept into Benton Harbor, Mich., three weeks before the November elections, in the midst of his quest to reclaim the Midwest for Democrats. He took the stage at Lake Michigan College as Representative Fred Upton, a long-serving Republican from the area, faced the toughest race of his career. But Mr. Biden was not there to denounce Mr. Upton. Instead, he was collecting $200,000 from the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan to…

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BuzzFeed reports: The plan was dazzling: a glass skyscraper that would stretch higher than any other building in Europe, offering ultra-luxury residences and hotel rooms and bearing a famous name. Trump Tower Moscow, conceived as a partnership between Donald Trump’s company and a Russian real estate developer, looked likely to yield profits in excess of $300 million. The tower was never built, but it has become a focal point of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s relationship…

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Laura Wagner writes: Two days ago, video was posted online that pretty much everyone who saw immediately recognized for what it was—footage of white teens taunting and harassing a Native American elder named Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. What was happening was clear and unmistakable, not just resonant but immediately recognizable as iconic. If you wanted to compress the history of relations between the powerful and the powerless in America, or the dynamics of the current…

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Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington have become symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be. They have captivated the attention of the world, and I know they will use it for the good – maybe even to bring people together. It started off unpleasant, but can end in a dream! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2019 The New York Times reports: The school last faced negative scrutiny a month ago, when a 2018 graduate…

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John Harris writes: Some support for no deal closely echoes the specious stuff repeatedly uttered by leading Brexiteers, about the EU needing Britain more than we need them, a country set free from Brussels diktats and trading again with its former colonies. But the most fascinating element of popular no-dealism is altogether more complicated, and built on a defiant rejection of all the warnings about falling off a cliff edge, so passionate that the refusal of advice feels more relevant…

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The Guardian reports: The EU has confirmed it will enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, despite the risk it would pose to peace. In comments that will be highly uncomfortable for Dublin, Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief spokesman told reporters it was “pretty obvious” that border infrastructure would be necessary if the UK were to leave without deal. Both the Irish and British governments have been wary about speculating on the repercussions…

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