This is a test of the Constitution itself

This is a test of the Constitution itself

Maya Wiley writes: The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump has begun. Senators now face the monumental question of whether to remove the president from office—and yet, something bigger is at stake here. The Constitution’s fundamental design is on trial too. This is clear from the articles of impeachment themselves. Start with the first article, which charges that the president abused his power by holding support for an ally foreign government hostage to better his chances at reelection, rather…

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Investing in humanity: British Medical Journal launches campaign for fossil fuel divestment

Investing in humanity: British Medical Journal launches campaign for fossil fuel divestment

A BMJ editorial says: How do we restore hope for humanity? Many of us feel despair at a disintegrating political consensus to save our planet from fire, flood, disease, and conflict. We feel trapped in our high carbon lives and disempowered by commercial influence of companies whose products damage the planet and people’s wellbeing. Evidence for the effects of the politico-commercial complex is clear and alarming. On our current trajectory we will miss carbon emission targets and sustainable development goals,…

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Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on

Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism 75 years on

The Associated Press reports: Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp prayed and wept as they marked the 75th anniversary of its liberation, returning Monday to the place where they lost entire families and warning about the ominous growth of anti-Semitism and hatred in the world. “We have with us the last living survivors, the last among those who saw the Holocaust with their own eyes,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told those at the commemoration, which included the German president as…

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How smart were our ancestors? Turns out the answer isn’t in brain size, but blood flow

How smart were our ancestors? Turns out the answer isn’t in brain size, but blood flow

Skulls hold clues to intelligence. (Clockwise from left: Australopithecus, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee) Roger Seymour, Author provided By Roger S. Seymour, University of Adelaide How did human intelligence evolve? Anthropologists have studied this question for decades by looking at tools found in archaeological digs, evidence of the use of fire and so on, and changes in brain size measured from fossil skulls. However, working with colleagues at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, we…

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How does a nation adapt to its own murder?

How does a nation adapt to its own murder?

Richard Flanagan writes: The name of the future is Australia. These words come from it, and they may be your tomorrow: P2 masks, evacuation orders, climate refugees, ocher skies, warning sirens, ember storms, blood suns, fear, air purifiers and communities reduced to third-world camps. Billions of dead animals and birds bloating and rotting. Hundreds of Indigenous cultural and spiritual sites damaged or destroyed by bush fires, so many black Notre Dames — the physical expression of Indigenous Australians’ spiritual connection…

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The climate crisis is reshaping the world of finance

The climate crisis is reshaping the world of finance

Bill McKibben, Alec Connon and Elana Sulakshana write: Historians should mark the date. On Jan 14, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, with more than $7.4 trillion under management, announced that the climate crisis has now grown so severe that it has become a force that will “fundamentally reshape” the world of finance. In his annual letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock and one of the most powerful corporate executives in America, warned that BlackRock now expects to…

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Inequality makes climate crisis much harder to tackle

Inequality makes climate crisis much harder to tackle

Larry Elliot writes: Almost 15 years ago, Nick Stern, then head of the Government Economic Service, produced a report on the economics of climate change in which he called the failure to deal with a heating planet the greatest market failure of all time, and argued that the benefits of early action outweighed the costs. Last week, Professor Stern, now chair of both the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change…

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Mobster talk: Trump says Schiff ‘has not paid the price’ for impeachment

Mobster talk: Trump says Schiff ‘has not paid the price’ for impeachment

The Washington Post reports: President Trump escalated his attacks on Rep. Adam B. Schiff on Sunday, issuing what appears to be a veiled threat against the California Democrat one day before Trump’s team is expected to deliver the crux of its defense in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done…

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Understanding the events of 1979 is crucial for finding a better future for today’s Middle East

Understanding the events of 1979 is crucial for finding a better future for today’s Middle East

Kim Ghattas writes: What happened to us? The question haunts us in the Arab and Muslim world. We repeat it like a mantra. You will hear it from Iran to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, and in my own country, Lebanon. For us, the past is a different country, one not mired in the horrors of sectarian killings. It is a more vibrant place, without the crushing intolerance of religious zealots and seemingly endless, amorphous wars. Though the past…

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How Iran covered up the shooting down of an airliner

How Iran covered up the shooting down of an airliner

The New York Times reports: When the Revolutionary Guards officer spotted what he thought was an unidentified aircraft near Tehran’s international airport, he had seconds to decide whether to pull the trigger. Iran had just fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at American forces, the country was on high alert for an American counterattack, and the Iranian military was warning of incoming cruise missiles. The officer tried to reach the command center for authorization to shoot but couldn’t get through….

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Tech giants led by Amazon, Facebook and Google spent nearly half a billion on lobbying over the past decade

Tech giants led by Amazon, Facebook and Google spent nearly half a billion on lobbying over the past decade

The Washington Post reports: Ten years ago, Google executives rarely spoke to Congress. Amazon employed just two of its own registered lobbyists in Washington. And Facebook had only recently graduated to a real office after running its D.C. operation out of an employee’s living room. Since then, though, these technology companies have evolved into some of the most potent political forces in the nation’s capital, a Washington Post analysis of new federal records reveals, with just seven tech giants accounting…

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Unhinged Pompeo cursed NPR reporter because she questioned him about Ukraine

Unhinged Pompeo cursed NPR reporter because she questioned him about Ukraine

USA Today reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the “F-word” and other expletives after a testy interview with a National Public Radio host on Friday, the news outlet said. Pompeo unloaded on NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly after an interview in which she questioned him on Ukraine and Iran, among other issues. He grew extremely irritated by Kelly’s Ukraine questions, according to NPR. “‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’” Pompeo apparently shouted at Kelly after the interview. On Saturday,…

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U.S. diplomats view Pompeo’s failure to defend foreign service officers as ‘beyond reprehensible’

U.S. diplomats view Pompeo’s failure to defend foreign service officers as ‘beyond reprehensible’

Nik Steinberg writes: The lack of accountability for what they see as the administration’s foreign-policy malpractice, several diplomats told me, has undermined already-low morale at the department, which has seen a striking number of resignations under Trump; seen more ambassadorships go to political appointees, as opposed to career diplomats, than at any time since the Franklin Roosevelt administration; and whose experts have been smeared repeatedly by the president and his inner circle experts as “Obama holdovers” or part of the…

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