Music: Jan Bang — ‘Passport Control’
U.S. auto plants would shut down within a week if border closes, economist says
CNN reports: The entire US auto industry would shut down within a week if President Donald Trump goes through with his pledge to close the US-Mexican border, according to a leading expert on the industry. That’s because every automaker operating an auto plant in the United States depends on parts imported from Mexico, said Kristin Dziczek, the vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research. About 16% of all auto parts used in the United…
U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it
The Washington Post reports: Until last week, U.S. officials held up El Salvador as proof that foreign aid could help curb migration. The partnership between the two countries drew praise from diplomats, members of Congress and even America’s top border enforcement official. Then President Trump announced that he was withdrawing economic assistance to the Central American country and its neighbors Guatemala and Honduras. “They haven’t done a thing for us,” the president said Friday. The claim baffled development officials and…
Theresa May calls for Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn
The Guardian reports: Theresa May has offered to enter talks with Jeremy Corbyn to break the logjam over Brexit and let parliament decide a binding way forward if they fail to find a compromise. In a significant shift, May said she would request an extension to leaving the European Union and opened the door to accepting a softer Brexit, with No 10 not ruling out accepting either a customs union or a second referendum. The prime minister extended the offer…
An era of fidgety politics marked by the loss of belief in collective agency
John Harris writes: Forty years of post-Thatcher individualism have done their work, so that protest is now not a matter of collective agency (in other words, “we can stop this”), but the kind of atomised conscience-salving I first glimpsed at the time of the Iraq war, with the appearance of that deathly slogan “Not in my name”. Moreover, in a world as over-mediated as ours, each day brings a different spectacle – a march, a parliamentary vote, some or other…
Technology in deep time: How it evolves alongside us
Tom Chatfield writes: Plenty of creatures can communicate richly, comprehend one another’s intentions and put tools to intelligent and creative use: cetaceans, cephalopods, corvids. Some can even develop and pass on particular local practices: New Caledonian crows, for example, exhibit a “culture” of tool usage, creating distinct varieties of simple hooked tools from plants in order to help them feed. Only humans, however, have turned this craft into something unprecedented: a cumulative process of experiment and recombination that over mere…
Music: S. Pri Noir — ‘Chico’
While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it
CNN reports: “Upside down” are the only words Manush Albert Alben has to describe life after the powerful Cyclone Idai. Nearly two weeks since the powerful cyclone destroyed most of the city of Beira, Mozambique, it is a long way from normal. “There’s no money, no groceries,” Alben, a fisherman, said while sitting in his wooden pirogue on a local beach. “We are suffering but trying to hold on.” Known for its busy port and views of the Indian Ocean,…
Insects have ‘no place to hide’ from climate change, study warns
The Guardian reports: Insects have “no place to hide” from climate change, scientists have warned, following an analysis of 50 years of UK data. The study showed that woodlands, whose shade was expected to protect species from warming temperatures, are being just as affected by climate change as open grasslands. The research examined the first springtime flights of butterflies, moths and aphids and the first eggs of birds between 1965 and 2012. As average temperatures have risen, aphids are now…
Whistle-blower in White House informs Congress about serious breaches of national security at highest levels of Trump administration
The New York Times reports: A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees, the committee’s Democratic staff said Monday. The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a private interview last month that the 25 individuals included two current senior White House…
Trump’s threat to cut off much of America’s food supply
Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border would hit American consumers — in the gut. From avocado toast to margaritas, the United States is heavily reliant on Mexican imports of fruit, vegetables and alcohol to meet consumer demand. Nearly half of all imported U.S. vegetables and 40 percent of imported fruit are grown in Mexico, according to the latest data from the United States Department of Agriculture. Americans would run out of avocados in three…
Trump laid a trap on immigration — and only Beto is avoiding it
Peter Beinart writes: Beto O’Rourke isn’t known for his wonkish heft. But in his formal announcement for president on Sunday, the former Texas congressman offered one of the most important policy proposals of the nascent presidential campaign: He argued that to solve America’s problems at the border, America’s leaders must “help people in Central America where they are.” In so doing, he began laying a foundation to effectively rebut Donald Trump on his signature issue: immigration. Every major Democratic presidential…
Judge the attorney general by what he ultimately sends to Congress
Benjamin Wittes writes: Here’s a radical idea: For the next two weeks, let’s give Attorney General William Barr the benefit of the doubt. I understand why so many people are suspicious of Barr and are lining up to denounce him—and there may well come a day, and it might come soon, when I will get in line and join them. Barr’s initial letter summarizing the top-line conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation allowed President Donald Trump to claim exoneration…
Is methane in Mars’ atmosphere evidence of life?
The New York Times reports: Methane gas periodically wafts into the atmosphere of Mars; that notion, once considered implausible and perplexing, is now widely accepted by planetary scientists. Why the methane is there is still a bewildering mystery. It may even point to present-day Martian microbes living in the rocks below the surface. In Nature Geoscience on Monday, scientists working with the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter reported that in the summer of 2013, the spacecraft detected methane within…
Music: Maverick Sabre & Chronixx — ‘Her Grace’