Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal did not really win approval

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal did not really win approval

Politico reports: MPs dealt a fresh blow to Boris Johnson as they voted against his breakneck timetable to pass Brexit legislation. The House of Commons voted by 308 to 322 to reject his plan to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which turns Johnson’s Brexit deal agreed with Brussels into U.K. law, in just three days, despite a majority voting to support the deal as a whole just moments before. Too many thought three days was not enough time to scrutinize…

Read More Read More

U.S.-China trade war threatens renewable energy

U.S.-China trade war threatens renewable energy

The Financial Times (via Inside Climate News) reports: Leaders of the wind power industry are warning that the global trade war could endanger progress on renewable energy, as slowing growth in clean energy projects puts the goals of the Paris climate accord at risk. “Trade wars do real damages to business by inflating prices,” said Henrik Andersen, chief executive of Denmark-based Vestas, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer. “When tariffs impact new technologies like renewable energy, it makes them less…

Read More Read More

New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate change for Earth

New evidence that an extraterrestrial collision 12,800 years ago triggered an abrupt climate change for Earth

The muck that’s been accumulating at the bottom of this lake for 20,000 years is like a climate time capsule. Christopher R. Moore, CC BY-ND By Christopher R. Moore, University of South Carolina What kicked off the Earth’s rapid cooling 12,800 years ago? In the space of just a couple of years, average temperatures abruptly dropped, resulting in temperatures as much as 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooler in some regions of the Northern Hemisphere. If a drop like that happened today,…

Read More Read More

Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal

Ocean acidification can cause mass extinctions, fossils reveal

The Guardian reports: Ocean acidification can cause the mass extinction of marine life, fossil evidence from 66m years ago has revealed. A key impact of today’s climate crisis is that seas are again getting more acidic, as they absorb carbon emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists said the latest research is a warning that humanity is risking potential “ecological collapse” in the oceans, which produce half the oxygen we breathe. The researchers analysed small seashells in…

Read More Read More

John Roberts won’t let Mitch McConnell derail a Trump impeachment trial

John Roberts won’t let Mitch McConnell derail a Trump impeachment trial

Bruce Ackerman writes: On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported on a closed-door session among Senate Republicans discussing the way they should conduct a trial if President Donald Trump is impeached by the House. According to at least one senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated that he is aiming for a rapid process that might start around Thanksgiving and end by Christmas. There are many reasons, though, to think that such a rush to judgment will fail. The Constitution explicitly…

Read More Read More

The prospect that Congress might impeach Trump is no longer just a fantasy

The prospect that Congress might impeach Trump is no longer just a fantasy

Jonathan Chait writes: Throughout Trump’s presidency, I’ve dismissed the possibility that he could be removed from office. In all likelihood, the Senate will come nowhere close to mustering the 67 votes needed to do so. But over the past few weeks, the outline of a removal scenario has begun to take shape. The prospect is no longer a fantasy. The Republican Establishment has largely submitted to Trump, and its acquiescence has come to seem like an immutable fact of this…

Read More Read More

Weak and defenseless, Trump bows down in the face of ‘Crazed and Irrational Hostility’

Weak and defenseless, Trump bows down in the face of ‘Crazed and Irrational Hostility’

Like most other angry old trolls, it’s easy to tell when Donald Trump gets really mad: a twitchy shift-key lets loose with a rapid fire of upper-case letters. ….Therefore, based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020. We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David, immediately. Thank you! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October…

Read More Read More

‘Like rats, America is running away’

‘Like rats, America is running away’

Stones and rotten fruit for the withdrawing US force. What a farce this has been. pic.twitter.com/PN82C6I18a — Adam Harvey (@adharves) October 21, 2019 The Associated Press reports: Residents have pelted apparently retreating US troops with food as they drove through a Kurdish-dominated city in Syria. A video by a Kurdish news agency, posted on Monday, shows a convoy of US armoured vehicles driving through Qamishli. Angry residents pelted the vehicles, shouting “No America” and “America liar” in English. “Like rats,…

Read More Read More

Russian hackers disguised as Iranian spies attacked 35 countries

Russian hackers disguised as Iranian spies attacked 35 countries

Kate O’Flaherty reports: Russian cyber actors disguised themselves as Iranian spies so they could stealthily orchestrate attacks on countries across the world, the U.S. and U.K. said today (21 October) in a joint statement. The so called Turla group, which is also known as Snake or Uroburos, hid in plain sight by acquiring Iranian tools and infrastructure to perform their attacks, the U.K.’s Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and U.S. National Security Agency said. In total, 35 countries were attacked, including…

Read More Read More

China overtakes U.S. in rankings of world’s richest people

China overtakes U.S. in rankings of world’s richest people

The Guardian reports: The number of wealthy Chinese people has overtaken the number of rich Americans for the first time, according to a report by Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank’s annual wealth survey found there were 100m Chinese people among the world’s top 10% of richest people, compared with 99m in the United States. The report says the “rapid transformation of China from an emerging nation in transition to a fully fledged market economy” helped create a record number of…

Read More Read More

Trump campaign floods Web with ads, raking in cash as Democrats struggle

Trump campaign floods Web with ads, raking in cash as Democrats struggle

The New York Times reports: On any given day, the Trump campaign is plastering ads all over Facebook, YouTube and the millions of sites served by Google, hitting the kind of incendiary themes — immigrant invaders, the corrupt media — that play best on platforms where algorithms favor outrage and political campaigns are free to disregard facts. Even seemingly ominous developments for Mr. Trump become fodder for his campaign. When news broke last month that congressional Democrats were opening an…

Read More Read More

Trump’s relentless effort to promote his personal business interests while conducting U.S. foreign relations

Trump’s relentless effort to promote his personal business interests while conducting U.S. foreign relations

Politico reports: President Donald Trump was sitting beside Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office in March when he fondly recalled his luxury golf resort on Ireland’s west coast. He gushed about his two tony Scottish resorts months later while standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron in France. And in August, while meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he first suggested that he just might bring the G-7 summit of world leaders to one of his own…

Read More Read More

Commentators in Moscow are starting to wonder whether Trump ‘really is a Russian agent’

Commentators in Moscow are starting to wonder whether Trump ‘really is a Russian agent’

Julia Davis reports: President Trump has boasted he’s “getting a lot of praise” for his abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops out of northern Syria, abandoning the Kurds—America’s longstanding allies—to Turkey’s incursion. On the home front, the controversial move has been met with criticism on both sides of the political aisle, but the reaction in Moscow was far from mixed. As Trump uncorked chaos in the Middle East, champagne tops were likely popping at the Kremlin. “Putin won the lottery!…

Read More Read More

How Hillary Clinton boosted Tulsi Gabbard

How Hillary Clinton boosted Tulsi Gabbard

Tom Nichols writes: What was Hillary Clinton thinking? The 2016 Democratic nominee, for some reason, felt the need to insert herself into the 2020 race with an attack on Tulsi Gabbard, an oddball Democratic presidential contender who barely registered in polls. The congresswoman from Hawaii is a completely discreditable candidate—more on that in a moment—but Clinton’s accusation that Gabbard is a tool of the Russians was so blunt and clumsy that it has added new life to a primary bid…

Read More Read More