How rape became by far the easiest violent crime to get away with across America

How rape became by far the easiest violent crime to get away with across America

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Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes: Robert Spada walked into the decrepit warehouse in Detroit and surveyed the chaos: Thousands of cardboard boxes and large plastic bags were piled haphazardly throughout the cavernous space. The air inside was hot and musty. Spada, an assistant prosecutor, saw that some of the windows were open, others broken, exposing the room to the summer heat. Above the boxes, birds glided in slow, swooping circles. It was August 17, 2009, and this brick fortress of a…

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William Barr’s donations to Senate Republicans spiked just before they confirmed him as attorney general

William Barr’s donations to Senate Republicans spiked just before they confirmed him as attorney general

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Quartz reports: In between stints as US attorney general for George HW Bush in the early 90s and now for Donald Trump, while making millions as an executive at Verizon and a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, William Barr sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to various Republicans and their causes. Most of those donations made between 1993 and 2019 were occasional at best. But in the lead up to his Senate confirmation hearings for attorney general earlier this year,…

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Viruses, the most abundant form of life on Earth, may be essential to the functioning of diverse ecosystems

Viruses, the most abundant form of life on Earth, may be essential to the functioning of diverse ecosystems

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Arizona State University: The community of viruses is staggeringly vast. Occupying every conceivable biological niche, from searing undersea vents to frigid tundra, these enigmatic invaders, hovering between inert matter and life, circumnavigate the globe in the hundreds of trillions. They are the most abundant life forms on earth. Viruses are justly feared as ingenious pathogens, causing diseases in everything they invade, including virtually all bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. Recent advances in the field of virology, however, suggest that viruses…

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White supremacism is at the core of Trump’s political strategy for 2020

White supremacism is at the core of Trump’s political strategy for 2020

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The New York Times reports: With three days of attacks on four liberal, minority first-term congresswomen, President Trump and the Republicans have sent the clearest signal yet that their approach to 2020 will be a racially divisive reprise of the strategy that helped Mr. Trump narrowly capture the White House in 2016. It is the kind of fight that the president relishes. He has told aides, in fact, that he is pleased with the Democratic reaction to his attacks, boasting…

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Bullies told me to go back to my country. At first it silenced me, now it spurs me on

Bullies told me to go back to my country. At first it silenced me, now it spurs me on

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Elizabeth Cuna writes: I was a young teenager when it first happened. My little brother and I were outside the bus stop on the way to school. We were laughing and talking about kid stuff. All of a sudden, a group of older teen boys rolled up on their bikes. They circled us, made fun of how we looked and our accents, then they yelled at us to go back to a country they assumed we were from. My little…

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Ex-Ecuadorian president confirms Assange meddled in U.S. election from London embassy

Ex-Ecuadorian president confirms Assange meddled in U.S. election from London embassy

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CNN reports: Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said Tuesday his country was aware that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from the safety of Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he lived under political asylum until this year. “We did notice that he was interfering in the elections and we do not allow that because we have principles, very clear values, as we would not like anyone to interfere in our elections,” he said. “We…

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‘Culture of fear, censorship, and suppression’ in Trump administration is undermining science

‘Culture of fear, censorship, and suppression’ in Trump administration is undermining science

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Think Progress reports: There is a “culture of fear, censorship, and suppression” within the Trump administration that is impeding government scientists from doing their best work, former Interior Department policy director and scientist turned whistleblower Joel Clement warned on Wednesday. Speaking to lawmakers on the House Science Committee, scientific experts spoke about the need for stronger rules to support the integrity of their research and ensure that political agendas don’t dictate or interfere with the data. “There is not Democratic…

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Steven Pinker’s aid in Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense

Steven Pinker’s aid in Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense

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Inside Higher Ed reports: That convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had help in avoiding federal or state prison is unsurprising: money and power often buy what they shouldn’t. But the recent revelation that Epstein found aid from star psychologist Steven Pinker in the form of a 2007 legal document surprised both Pinker’s fans and critics. At least at first. Then came the analysis: to supporters of Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, his ties to Epstein are…

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Moon landing: What Armstrong and Aldrin saw

Moon landing: What Armstrong and Aldrin saw

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Arizona State University: As the Apollo 11 Lunar Module approached the moon’s surface for the first manned landing, commander Neil Armstrong switched off the auto-targeting feature of the LM’s computer and flew the spacecraft manually to a landing. A new video, created at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, shows what Armstrong saw out his window as the lander descended — and you’ll see for yourself why he took over control.  

The terrifying sound of a human voice

The terrifying sound of a human voice

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Ed Yong writes: In the summer of 2017, the mountain lions, bobcats, and other residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains were treated to the dulcet tones of the ecologist Justin Suraci and his friends, reading poetry. Some of the animals became jittery. Others stopped eating. A few fled in fear. Suraci, who’s based at the University of California at Santa Cruz, wasn’t there to see their reactions. He and his colleagues had strung up a set of speakers that would…

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India’s terrifying water crisis

India’s terrifying water crisis

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Meera Subramanian writes: India’s water crisis offers a striking reminder of how climate change is rapidly morphing into a climate emergency. Piped water has run dry in Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and 21 other Indian cities are also facing the specter of “Day Zero,” when municipal water sources are unable to meet demand. Chennai, a city of eight million on the Bay of Bengal, depends on the fall monsoon to provide half of the…

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America’s long shameful history of separating children from their parents

America’s long shameful history of separating children from their parents

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Karen Heller writes: As a child, he believed the camp to be a magical oasis, where mythical dinosaurs prowled the woods at night. A native of Los Angeles, he marveled at the “flying exotica” of dragonflies, the treasures of rural life and, that first winter, the “pure magic” of snow. George Takei spent ages 5 to almost 9 imprisoned by the U.S. government in Japanese American internment camps. A relentless optimist, he believed the shameful legacy of incarcerating an estimated…

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George Conway confronts Trump’s racism while Kellyanne Conway tries to cover it up

George Conway confronts Trump’s racism while Kellyanne Conway tries to cover it up

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George Conway writes: [H]ow naive an adult could be. The birther imaginings about Barack Obama? Just a silly conspiracy theory, latched onto by an attention seeker who has a peculiar penchant for them. The “Mexican” Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel incident? Asinine, inappropriate, a terrible attack on the judiciary by an egocentric man who imagined that the judge didn’t like him. The white supremacists’ march in Charlottesville? The president’s comments were absolutely idiotic, but he couldn’t possibly have been referring to…

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Trump’s undiluted racism is met with fading resistance from Republican and corporate leaders

Trump’s undiluted racism is met with fading resistance from Republican and corporate leaders

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The Washington Post reports: When Donald Trump assailed Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals during his 2015 presidential campaign launch, companies including Macy’s and NBC rushed to cut their business ties with him. When a tape surfaced in 2016 of Trump boasting about grabbing women’s genitals, top Republican officials briefly pulled their endorsements, disinvited him from events and even sought to remove him from the ticket. When, as president, Trump equivocated on condemning white supremacists in a deadly Virginia rally,…

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