A Neanderthal tooth discovered in Serbia reveals human migration history

A Neanderthal tooth discovered in Serbia reveals human migration history

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A 3D recreation of a recently discovered Neanderthal tooth. Joshua Lindal, Author provided By Mirjana Roksandic, University of Winnipeg and Joshua Allan Lindal, University of Winnipeg In 2015, our Serbian-Canadian archaeological research team was working at a cave site named Pešturina, in Eastern Serbia, where we had found thousands of stone tools and animal bones. One day, an excited Serbian undergrad brought us a fossil they had uncovered: a small molar tooth, which we immediately recognized as human. A single…

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Earth Day founder thinks we’re close to political breakthrough on climate

Earth Day founder thinks we’re close to political breakthrough on climate

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Joe Romm writes: Denis Hayes, the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day, in April 1970, said on Monday that the upcoming 50th anniversary next year will be “the largest, most diverse action in human history.” The goal is to engage three billion people around the world with a focus on climate change. Thanks to a resurgence in youth-led climate activism, Hayes told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that “2020 will be for climate what…

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We’re losing the war on climate change

We’re losing the war on climate change

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John D. Sutter writes: For years now, people like environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben have been screaming from the treetops that we need a World War II-scale mobilization to fight the scourge of climate change. They’re right, of course. And on Earth Day — that 24-hour sliver of the calendar when we talk about the fact that humans exist on, and because of, a living planet — it’s clear not only that we are losing this war but that we…

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Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

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The New York Times reports: Climate change creates winners and losers. Norway is among the winners; Nigeria among the losers. Those are the stark findings of a peer-reviewed paper by two Stanford University professors who have tried to quantify the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions on global inequality. It was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Global temperatures have risen nearly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the industrial age,…

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Sri Lanka’s pain is going to spread

Sri Lanka’s pain is going to spread

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Mihir Sharma writes: In Sri Lanka, memories of war and terrorism are very much alive. The decades-long civil war between the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was brutal by any standards, and it ended a decade ago with a climactic battle near the Indian Ocean that took thousands of civilian lives. But Sri Lanka, beautiful and multicultural, has never had just the one fault line. On Easter morning, when hundreds of Christians and hotel…

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How Stephen Miller made immigration personal

How Stephen Miller made immigration personal

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Politico reports: In the summer of 2017, a group of White House aides were in Paris, enjoying some rare downtime during Donald Trump’s first trip to France as president. As the Trump officials soaked up a July evening along the banks of the Seine, one stepped away to take a phone call from the U.S. It was Stephen Miller, the president’s then-31-year-old chief policy adviser, speechwriter and hard-line immigration policy advocate. As the other officials looked on, Miller spent several…

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Mueller makes it clear: Trump was worse than a ‘useful idiot’

Mueller makes it clear: Trump was worse than a ‘useful idiot’

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Garrett M Graff writes: Back in January, approximately 1,000 Robert Mueller news cycles ago, I argued that given the arc of the special counsel Russia probe, it’d be embarrassing for Donald Trump if he weren’t an agent of the Russian intelligence: “We’ve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left,” I wrote at the time. “Either the president is compromised by the Russian government and has been working covertly to cooperate with Vladimir Putin…

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Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich

Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich

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The Washington Post reports: One of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School, home to the next generation of Fortune 500 executives, was a class on “reimagining capitalism.” Seven years ago, the elective started with 28 students. Now there were nearly 300 taking it. During that period the students had grown increasingly cynical about corporations and the government, said Rebecca Henderson, the Harvard economist who teaches the course. “What the trust surveys say is what I see,” she said….

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Our zero-emission future

Our zero-emission future

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Jeffrey D. Sachs writes: The solution to human-induced climate change is finally in clear view. Thanks to rapid advances in zero-carbon energy technologies, and in sustainable food systems, the world can realistically end greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century at little or no incremental cost, and with decisive benefits for safety and health. The main obstacle is inertia: politicians continue to favor the fossil-fuel industry and traditional agriculture mainly because they don’t know better or are on the take. Most global warming,…

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Time to talk about impeachment

Time to talk about impeachment

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Laurence Tribe writes: Despite Attorney General William Barr’s assurances and President Donald Trump’s boasts, the Mueller report doesn’t come close to exonerating the president of wrongdoing. Instead, it invites Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings. It’s time for Congress to heed that invitation. In its extensive discussion of the constitutional issues implicated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation, the report asserts that Congress has the authority to apply law “to all persons – including the President.” Specifically, Congress may “protect…

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How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump

How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump

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The New York Times reports: Michael D. Cohen was at a breaking point. He told friends he was suicidal. He insisted to lawyers he would never go to jail. Most of all, he feared that President Trump, his longtime boss, had forsaken him. “Basically he needs a little loving and respect booster,” one of Mr. Cohen’s legal advisers at the time, Robert J. Costello, wrote in a text message to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lead lawyer. “He is not…

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2014 comet may be first known interstellar visitor to have come close to Earth

2014 comet may be first known interstellar visitor to have come close to Earth

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Science News reports: Earth may already have been visited by an object from outside our solar system — a meteor that burned up in the planet’s atmosphere in 2014, astronomers claim. If confirmed, it would be the first known interstellar object to have entered the atmosphere. The first interstellar visitor known to have come close to Earth was the roughly 400-meter-wide asteroid named ‘Oumuamua.’ It swooped within about 24 million kilometers of the planet in October 2017. Its sharp-angled approach…

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Open to the unexpected: Why jazz musicians are more creative than classical musicians

Open to the unexpected: Why jazz musicians are more creative than classical musicians

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PsyPost reports: Scientists at Wesleyan University have used electroencephalography to uncover differences in how the brains of Classical and Jazz musicians react to an unexpected chord progression. Their new study, published in the journal Brain and Cognition, sheds new light on the nature of the creative process. “I have been a classical musician for many years, and have always been inspired by the great jazz masters who can improvise beautiful performances on the spot,” explained study author Psyche Loui. “Whenever…

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