James Murdoch slams Fox News and News Corp over climate-change denial

James Murdoch slams Fox News and News Corp over climate-change denial

The Daily Beast reports: In a long-simmering rift between factions of the Murdoch family over climate change, Rupert’s younger son, James, and his activist wife, Kathryn, are attacking the climate denialism promoted by News Corporation, the global media group, and also by the Fox News Channel overseen by James’ older brother, Lachlan. “Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known,”…

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The ocean plastic we can’t see

The ocean plastic we can’t see

The Guardian reports: Every year, 8m tons of plastic enters the ocean. Images of common household waste swirling in vast garbage patches in the open sea, or tangled up with whales and seabirds, have turned plastic pollution into one of the most popular environmental issues in the world. But for at least a decade, the biggest question among scientists who study marine plastic hasn’t been why plastic in the ocean is so abundant, but why it isn’t. What scientists can…

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He thought his U.S. passport and letters to Trump would save him from dying in an Egyptian prison. He was wrong

He thought his U.S. passport and letters to Trump would save him from dying in an Egyptian prison. He was wrong

The Washington Post reports: As an American imprisoned in Egypt, Mustafa Kassem thought his government would rescue him from what he saw as his unjust incarceration. The 54-year-old auto parts dealer viewed his blue U.S. passport as a bulletproof vest that made him untouchable, especially in the hands of a government that receives billions in American aid, his relatives have said. By the time he died Monday of apparent heart failure, after more than six years in jail with negligent…

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Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates

Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates

The Guardian reports: The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet. The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities. The new analysis shows the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the…

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Trump says ‘it doesn’t really matter’ if Iranian general posed an imminent threat

Trump says ‘it doesn’t really matter’ if Iranian general posed an imminent threat

The Washington Post reports: President Trump added to the controversy over his administration’s justification for the killing of an Iranian general, saying Monday that “it doesn’t really matter” whether it was in response to an imminent threat to the United States. In a tweet, Trump criticized Democrats for trying to determine whether Iranian attacks the administration has said were planned by Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani against U.S. targets were imminent. “It doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past,” Trump…

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With a new weapon in Trump’s hands, the Iran crisis risks going nuclear

With a new weapon in Trump’s hands, the Iran crisis risks going nuclear

William Arkin writes: Ten days before Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, the United States nuked Iran. The occasion: a nuclear war exercise held every year in late October. In the war game, after Iran sank an American aircraft carrier and employed chemical weapons against a Marine Corps force, the Middle East commander requested a nuclear strike, and a pair of B-2 stealth bombers, each loaded with a single nuclear bomb, stood by while the president deliberated. “Testing…

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How Soleimani exploited the power of Middle Eastern militias

How Soleimani exploited the power of Middle Eastern militias

Hassan Hassan writes: The Iranian general Qassem Suleimani is dead, and tensions with Iran appear to be simmering down. But the landscape he helped build is still very much a problem for the United States. Since his killing in a U.S. drone strike last week, experts have been rushing to explain just why Soleimani mattered so much to Iran’s ambitions—and what consequences his death really holds for the region. One simple way to think about it: He was the one…

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William Barr’s mission to maximize executive power and protect Trump

William Barr’s mission to maximize executive power and protect Trump

David Rohde writes: Last October, Attorney General William Barr appeared at Notre Dame Law School to make a case for ideological warfare. Before an assembly of students and faculty, Barr claimed that the “organized destruction” of religion was under way in the United States. “Secularists, and their allies among the ‘progressives,’ have marshalled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values,” he said. Barr, a conservative…

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Sanders surges as progressives flock to him over Warren

Sanders surges as progressives flock to him over Warren

Politico reports: Something’s happening with Bernie Sanders that looked unlikely to many a few months ago: Progressive leaders and organizations are lining up behind him, not Elizabeth Warren, in the lead-up to voting. Two groups run by young people — the Sunrise Movement, which seeks to combat climate change, and Dream Defenders, which advocates for people of color — endorsed him last week. He’s also won the backing of People’s Action and the Center for Popular Democracy, which together claim…

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New evidence suggests, the default condition in plants is immortality

New evidence suggests, the default condition in plants is immortality

Erin Malsbury writes: Long-lived humans having nothing on trees. Some, like the Ginkgo biloba, can live more than 3000 years. Now, in the most comprehensive plant aging study to date, researchers have revealed the molecular mechanisms that allow the ginkgo—and perhaps other trees—to survive so long. The new study provides the first real genetic evidence for something scientists have long suspected: “The default condition in plants is immortality,” says Howard Thomas, a plant biologist from Aberystwyth University who was not…

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Want to do something about climate change? Follow the money

Want to do something about climate change? Follow the money

Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Bill McKibben write: If you asked us why a dozen people sat on the floor next to the A.T.M. in a Chase Bank branch on Friday, waiting for the police to arrest us for this small act of civil disobedience, we would come up with the same answer as the famous robber Willie Sutton: “Because that’s where the money is.” We don’t want to empty the vaults. Instead, we want people to understand that the money…

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Trump’s Iran problem

Trump’s Iran problem

Robin Wright writes: On September 19, 1983, during Lebanon’s long civil war, the Reagan Administration ordered Marine peacekeepers in Beirut to open fire on Muslim militias in the mountains overlooking the city. The marines had been deployed for more than a year, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to help hold together one of the world’s most fractured states. Colonel Tim Geraghty, their commander, warned that an attack would cost the United States its neutrality and its mission; nevertheless, U.S….

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Iran deploys riot police as anti-government backlash grows

Iran deploys riot police as anti-government backlash grows

The Guardian reports: Riot police have been deployed in parts of Tehran the morning after tear gas was used to clear the streets of protesters angry at the government’s having mistakenly shot down a passenger jet killing all 176 people on board. Images of dozens of demonstrators taking to the streets in the capital and other cities including Esfahan were circulating on social media on Sunday morning and activists were calling for mass mourning rallies, raising the possibility of fresh…

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Esper says he didn’t see specific evidence Iran planned to attack 4 embassies

Esper says he didn’t see specific evidence Iran planned to attack 4 embassies

The New York Times reports: Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on Sunday that he never saw any specific piece of evidence that Iran was planning an attack on four American embassies, as President Trump had claimed last week as a justification for the strike on an Iranian general that sent the United States and Iran to the brink of war. “I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Mr. Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he…

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