India and Pakistan are already at war on truth

India and Pakistan are already at war on truth

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Pankaj Mishra writes: In the predawn hours on Feb. 26, India launched an aerial attack — unprecedented in peacetime — on neighboring Pakistan, in retaliation for a suicide bombing 12 days earlier that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in the disputed valley of Kashmir. Pakistan predictably responded the next morning with its own air strike into Indian-controlled Kashmir. The confrontation could spiral out of control quickly. But fortunately, apart from a wounded Indian pilot and a Pakistani villager…

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Netanyahu to be indicted on corruption charges

Netanyahu to be indicted on corruption charges

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NBC News reports: Israel’s attorney general announced Thursday that his office plans to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges after a two-year investigation. The prime minister faces one count of bribery and three counts of breach of trust. “The Attorney General, Avihai Mandelblit, has informed the Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, through his attorney, that he is considering indicting him on several criminal charges,” according to a statement by Ministry of Justice spokesman Adi Livni. Prosecutors would have…

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A Danish word the world needs to combat stress: Pyt

A Danish word the world needs to combat stress: Pyt

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Instead of overreacting to minor slights, it’s healthier to just say, ‘pyt.’ Ezume Images/Shutterstock.com By Marie Helweg-Larsen, Dickinson College Danes are some of the happiest people in the world, and they also happen to have a lot of cool words for ways to be happy. You may have heard about “hygge,” which has been the subject of countless books, articles and commercials. Often mistranslated to mean “cozy,” it really describes the process of creating intimacy. But another word “pyt” –…

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The ocean is running out of oxygen, scientists warn

The ocean is running out of oxygen, scientists warn

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Laura Poppick writes: Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal. In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of…

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As House Republicans attacked Cohen, none defended Trump

As House Republicans attacked Cohen, none defended Trump

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David Frum writes: Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee was uncontradicted. The former personal attorney of the president of the United States today accused him of a litany of crimes, improprieties, immoralities, and betrayals of national security. And not one Republican member of the committee breathed one word in defense of the leader of their party. Those Republicans have learned the hard way never to trust President Donald Trump’s denials. Read: Eight striking moments from Michael Cohen’s testimony…

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The real North Korea summit is inside the Trump administration

The real North Korea summit is inside the Trump administration

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Jeffrey Lewis writes: The summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi this week is a sideshow to the titanic struggle underway for the Trump administration’s North Korea policy. On one side appears to be U.S. envoy Stephen Biegun and, perhaps, the president himself. They are willing to toss aside decades of U.S. policy to engage with North Korea along the lines of the so-called Sunshine Policy, the approach embraced by progressive South…

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A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be creative

A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be creative

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Sean Dorrance Kelly writes: Advances in artificial intelligence have led many to speculate that human beings will soon be replaced by machines in every domain, including that of creativity. Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, predicts that by 2029 we will have produced an AI that can pass for an average educated human being. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, is more circumspect. He does not give a date but suggests that philosophers and mathematicians defer work on fundamental questions to “superintelligent” successors,…

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Frans de Waal embraces animal emotions in ‘Mama’s Last Hug’

Frans de Waal embraces animal emotions in ‘Mama’s Last Hug’

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Sy Montgomery writes: The two old friends hadn’t seen each other lately. Now one of them was on her deathbed, crippled with arthritis, refusing food and drink, dying of old age. Her friend had come to say goodbye. At first she didn’t seem to notice him. But when she realized he was there, her reaction was unmistakable: Her face broke into an ecstatic grin. She cried out in delight. She reached for her visitor’s head and stroked his hair. As…

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Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. We need to tax it, now

Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. We need to tax it, now

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John Vidal writes: Cement, the key component of concrete and one of the most widely used manmade materials, is now the cornerstone of global construction. It has shaped the modern environment, but its production has a massive footprint that neither the industry nor governments have been willing to address. Because of the heat needed to decompose rock and the natural chemical processes involved in making cement, every tonne made releases one tonne of C02, the main greenhouse warming gas. Including…

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No marine ecosystems left that are unaffected by plastic waste, study suggests

No marine ecosystems left that are unaffected by plastic waste, study suggests

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The Guardian reports: The world’s deepest ocean trenches are becoming “the ultimate sink” for plastic waste, according to a study that reveals contamination of animals even in these dark, remote regions of the planet. For the first time, scientists found microplastic ingestion by organisms in the Mariana trench and five other areas with a depth of more than 6,000 metres, prompting them to conclude “it is highly likely there are no marine ecosystems left that are not impacted by plastic…

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Putin has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries

Putin has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries

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John Sipher writes: According to this year’s National Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment and Senate testimony by top-ranked intelligence officials, Americans can expect Vladimir Putin’s Russia to continue its efforts to aggravate social, political and racial tensions in the United States and among its allies. So, to best prepare for future Russian assaults, we should look to the past and study the mind-set of the Cold War K.G.B. — the intelligence service in which President Putin spent his formative years. The…

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Calls grow for Labor Secretary Acosta to resign as Epstein’s sex abuse victims demand justice

Calls grow for Labor Secretary Acosta to resign as Epstein’s sex abuse victims demand justice

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The Miami Herald reports: Lawyers for victims who were sexually abused as minors by multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein have formally demanded that the government vacate Epstein’s plea deal, void his federal immunity and reopen his sex trafficking investigation, the Miami Herald has learned. Lawyers Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent two of Epstein’s victims, sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida making the request in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling last…

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U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms

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The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free. The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with…

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