To improve memory, tune it like an orchestra

To improve memory, tune it like an orchestra

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Benedict Carey writes: Anyone above a certain age who has drawn a blank on the name of a favorite uncle, a friend’s phone number or the location of a house key understands how fragile memory is. Its speed and accuracy begin to slip in one’s 20s and keep slipping. This is particularly true for working memory, the mental sketch pad that holds numbers, names and other facts temporarily in mind, allowing decisions to be made throughout the day. On Monday,…

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When did Donald Trump become an environmentalist?

When did Donald Trump become an environmentalist?

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Well before he became a presidential candidate, Donald Trump professed a deep concern about the welfare of birds endangered by wind turbines: “[Wind power] kills all the birds,” Trump told 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on the latter’s radio show Tuesday. “Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California — they’ve killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill]…

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The forces driving migration from Guatemala: climate change

The forces driving migration from Guatemala: climate change

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Jonathan Blitzer writes: In the center of Climentoro, in the western highlands of Guatemala, a dozen large white houses rise above the village’s traditional wooden huts like giant monuments. The structures are made of concrete and fashioned with archways, colonnaded porches, and elaborate moldings. “Most of them are empty,” Feliciano Pérez, a local farmer, told me. Their owners, who live in the U.S., had sent money home to build American-inspired houses for when they returned, but they never did. Pérez…

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The forces driving migration from Guatemala: debt

The forces driving migration from Guatemala: debt

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Jonathan Blitzer writes: When Elias López decided to leave his home in the western highlands of Guatemala for the United States, in 2014, the going rate to hire a smuggler was ninety thousand quetzales, or about twelve thousand dollars. López, who was eighteen, worked two jobs at the time, one in construction and the other as a day laborer harvesting vegetables, and the combined pay was barely enough to cover his living expenses. A lending coöperative, essentially a small local…

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The forces driving migration from Guatemala: poverty and dreams

The forces driving migration from Guatemala: poverty and dreams

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Jonathan Blitzer writes: [N]early every aspect of life in Guatemala depends on money coming from the United States. Last year, nine billion dollars were sent back to the country in the form of remittances [from relatives working in the U.S.]—an amount that is roughly double the total from a decade ago and accounted for more than eleven per cent of Guatemala’s gross domestic product. Donald Trump has announced that he will be cutting all aid to Central America, complaining that…

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It may take 2 years to identify thousands of separated families, government says

It may take 2 years to identify thousands of separated families, government says

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CNN reports: It could take up to two years for the government to identify potentially thousands of additional immigrant families US authorities separated at the southern border, officials said in a court filing. The government’s proposed plan, detailed for the first time in documents filed late Friday night, outlines a strategy for piecing together exactly who might have been separated by combing through thousands of records using a mix of data analysis and manual review. The court filing comes a…

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Yemen cannot afford to wait

Yemen cannot afford to wait

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Robert Malley and Stephen Pomper write: For an American who had a hand in shaping U.S. Mideast policy during the Barack Obama years, coming to Yemen has the unpleasant feel of visiting the scene of a tragedy one helped co-write. It is a scene whose most heartrending aspects are not easily accessible to a visitor. It is still possible to travel north, to the war-battered capital, Sanaa, now controlled by the Houthi insurgent group, or up the Red Sea coast,…

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Most U.S. coal power plants would save money by switching to wind or solar

Most U.S. coal power plants would save money by switching to wind or solar

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Fast Company reports: As wind and solar power keep getting cheaper, coal power–which was the cheapest source of electricity for decades–is no longer economical in much of the U.S. A new analysis looked at every coal plant in the country and compared the cost of running those plants to the cost of operating a new wind or solar plant. As of 2018, 74% of existing coal plants cost more to operate than new local wind or solar. “Our hypothesis was…

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Coral reproduction on the Great Barrier Reef falls 89% after repeated bleaching

Coral reproduction on the Great Barrier Reef falls 89% after repeated bleaching

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By Morgan Pratchett, James Cook University The severe and repeated bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef has not only damaged corals, it has reduced the reef’s ability to recover. Our research, published today in Nature, found far fewer baby corals are being produced than are needed to replace the large number of adult corals that have died. The rate at which baby corals are settling on the Great Barrier Reef has fallen by nearly 90% since 2016. While coral does…

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In Venezuela, the search for water is a daily struggle

In Venezuela, the search for water is a daily struggle

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The Washington Post reports: Jakeline Moncada had faith that her household reserves would hold out until Venezuela’s water service was restored. But two nationwide blackouts and now the rationing of electricity have kept the water from flowing to a large swath of this South American country, including at Moncada’s home. After 15 days without a drip from the faucet, the 43-year-old mother of three found herself alongside a creek in eastern Caracas this week, watching her teenage son maneuver clumsily…

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In new documents, Cohen says Trump ‘instructed’ him to lie

In new documents, Cohen says Trump ‘instructed’ him to lie

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BuzzFeed reports: Attorneys for Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former fixer, submitted documents to lawmakers Thursday night accusing Trump and his team of lawyers of instructing Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations ended to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. In a 12-page memo sent to top House Democrats, Cohen’s attorneys said Trump “encouraged Cohen to lie and say all Moscow Tower project contacts ended as of January 31, 2016 using ‘code’ language — telling Cohen during various…

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The Secret Service’s conflicting missions, to keep Trump safe and to keep his customers happy

The Secret Service’s conflicting missions, to keep Trump safe and to keep his customers happy

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The Washington Post reports: Presidents used to vacation in seclusion — at a ranch in Texas or a beach house in Hawaii. Screening their visitors was relatively simple: The only people who came were friends and staff. President Trump has added vast new complications by choosing to spend his weekends with his customers. Trump stays at the Mar-a-Lago Club, a busy beachfront resort where his quarters are a short distance from the pool, the ballroom, and the “six star” seafood…

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Vladimir Nabokov, literary refugee

Vladimir Nabokov, literary refugee

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Stacy Schiff writes: In February 1917 riots had delivered a revolution. The czar abdicated, replaced by a liberal government, swept into power on a tide of popular support. Nabokov’s father, Vladimir Dmitrievich, played a prominent role in that administration. Months afterward Lenin returned from exile, disembarking at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station. Within the year, what had begun as an idealistic, progressive uprising would end — like Iran’s, like Egypt’s — in totalitarianism. With Lenin arrived another 20th-century staple: a one-party…

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Muslims and Jews face a common threat from white supremacists. We must fight it together

Muslims and Jews face a common threat from white supremacists. We must fight it together

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Jonathan Freedland and Mehdi Hasan write: The two of us have been having the exact same conversation for the past decade. About antisemitism and Islamophobia. One of us a Muslim, the other a Jew, we have conducted it in public and in private, on Twitter and on TV. We’ve agreed; we’ve argued; we’ve even wandered off topic to trade tips on how to get through a fast. Now we’ve come together because of the urgent and common threat that we…

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