Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

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Greta Thunberg and 46 youth activists write: Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school. We don’t feel like we have a…

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I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

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Do fungi like this Penicillium mold, which produces the the antibiotic penicillin, trace their origins to an ancestor that lived a billion years ago? Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock.com By Antonis Rokas, Vanderbilt University Biologists don’t call them “the hidden kingdom” for nothing. With an estimated 5 million species, only a mere 100,000 fungi are known to scientists. This kingdom, which includes molds, yeasts, rusts and mushrooms, receives far less attention than plants or animals. This is particularly true for fossils of fungi,…

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Why some Palestinians are backing Trump’s peace push

Why some Palestinians are backing Trump’s peace push

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Politico reports: Some prominent Palestinian activists and politicians are quietly rooting for Jared Kushner as he prepares to unveil the first part of his Middle East peace plan next month. That’s not because they think the plan will resolve their decadeslong conflict with Israel. It’s because they hope it will hasten the onset of a “one-state” solution they are coming to support. The push for one state with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis has gained steam in recent years…

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How China uses high-tech surveillance to subdue minorities

How China uses high-tech surveillance to subdue minorities

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The New York Times reports: A God’s-eye view of Kashgar, an ancient city in western China, flashed onto a wall-size screen, with colorful icons marking police stations, checkpoints and the locations of recent security incidents. At the click of a mouse, a technician explained, the police can pull up live video from any surveillance camera or take a closer look at anyone passing through one of the thousands of checkpoints in the city. To demonstrate, she showed how the system…

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Amazon developing wearable device to detect your emotions

Amazon developing wearable device to detect your emotions

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Bloomberg reports: Amazon.com Inc. is developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions. The wrist-worn gadget is described as a health and wellness product in internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It’s a collaboration between Lab126, the hardware development group behind Amazon’s Fire phone and Echo smart speaker, and the Alexa voice software team. Designed to work with a smartphone app, the device has microphones paired with software that can discern the wearer’s emotional state from the sound of…

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Civilisational collapse has a bright past — but a dark future

Civilisational collapse has a bright past — but a dark future

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By Luke Kemp Is the collapse of a civilisation necessarily calamitous? The failure of the Egyptian Old Kingdom towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE was accompanied by riots, tomb-raids and even cannibalism. ‘The whole of Upper Egypt died of hunger and each individual had reached such a state of hunger that he ate his own children,’ runs an account from 2120 BCE about the life of Ankhtifi, a southern provincial governor of Ancient Egypt.  Many of us are…

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Nevada poised to become 15th state to ditch Electoral College

Nevada poised to become 15th state to ditch Electoral College

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NPR reports: President Hillary Clinton? That would have been the result of the 2016 presidential election — if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact were in effect. With a state Senate vote Tuesday, Nevada is close to becoming the latest state to sidestep the Electoral College when it comes to electing presidents. According to the National Popular Vote organization, which oversees efforts to persuade states to join the compact, 14 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to pledge…

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Lax regulations expose Americans to 1,300 chemicals banned by Europe

Lax regulations expose Americans to 1,300 chemicals banned by Europe

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The Guardian reports: A brief but telling piece of legislation was put forward in Connecticut in January. Just three lines in length, the bill calls for any cosmetics in the state to “meet the chemical safety standards established by the European Union”. The move, unlikely to be made law, is the latest signal of mounting anguish over the enfeebled regulation of everyday products in the US compared with European countries. Across a span of cosmetics, including makeup, toothpaste and shampoo,…

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Federal judge says Deutsche Bank, Capital One can give Trump financial records to Congress

Federal judge says Deutsche Bank, Capital One can give Trump financial records to Congress

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CNBC reports: A federal judge in New York City on Wednesday said Deutsche Bank and Capitol One can turn over financial documents related to President Donald Trump and his businesses in response to subpoenas from House Democrats. Judge Edgardo Ramos’s ruling came after a hearing at which lawyers for Trump, his three older children, Donald Jr. Eric and Ivanka, and the Trump Organization argued that the subpoenas to the two banks should be quashed. Ramos, an appointee of President Barack…

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New York passes bill giving Congress a way to get Trump’s state tax returns

New York passes bill giving Congress a way to get Trump’s state tax returns

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The New York Times reports: Even before he was elected president, Donald J. Trump had steadfastly refused to release his federal tax returns, bucking years of tradition among presidential candidates. His intransigence deepened once he entered the White House, defying a congressional subpoena for the tax records. Now, however, a nine-page workaround by the New York State Legislature may serve as a way for Congress to get its hands on a trove of Mr. Trump’s tax information. On Wednesday, the…

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Senators slam Trump plan to pardon vets accused or convicted of war crimes

Senators slam Trump plan to pardon vets accused or convicted of war crimes

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HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump’s reported plans to pardon several U.S. servicemen accused or convicted of war crimes elicited bipartisan criticism in the Senate on Tuesday. “I think it’s a terrible idea to pardon someone who is legitimately convicted of committing war crimes. It’s unthinkable,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told HuffPost when asked about the New York Times report. According to the Times, the White House over the weekend requested the necessary paperwork to issue a pardon for a Navy…

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‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

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The Guardian reports: Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows. The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in…

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Nudges to get a bit greener undermine support for effective economic policies tackling climate crisis

Nudges to get a bit greener undermine support for effective economic policies tackling climate crisis

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Policies that aim to nudge us into better choices actually decrease support for policies with far greater impact, research finds. For example, many households across the United States receive energy bills comparing their use to that of similar neighbors to remind them to use less energy. And most companies automatically enroll employees in 401(k) plans unless they choose to opt-out, helping employees easily save for retirement. Such policies aim to “nudge” people toward making better choices, both for their future…

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