Climate change is making it harder for forests to recover from wildfires

Climate change is making it harder for forests to recover from wildfires

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Pacific Standard reports: After consuming more than 153,000 acres, including nearly 14,000 residences, and accounting for 88 fatalities, the Camp Fire has finally been contained. But while communities can now commit fully to recovering from the catastrophic blaze, the landscape itself may have a harder time doing so. Blame climate change. A growing body of research suggests that, thanks to various environmental symptoms of climate change, America’s forests are increasingly at a disadvantage when it comes to recovering from devastating…

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How a future Trump Cabinet member gave serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, the deal of a lifetime

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, the deal of a lifetime

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The Miami Herald reports: On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz. It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush. Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in…

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Senate defies White House on Saudi support in Yemen

Senate defies White House on Saudi support in Yemen

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Politico reports: The Senate delivered a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration on Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to advance a measure yanking U.S. support for Saudi-backed forces at war in Yemen. The 63-37 vote, in which 14 Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to move forward on the bipartisan Saudi resolution, came hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis failed to sway key undecided senators with an appeal to hold off lest they upset progress of…

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Time to regulate social media

Time to regulate social media

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In an editorial, The Guardian says: When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress this spring he insisted he was not running a media company. But it is getting easier to say why he does. Facebook, the site Mr Zuckerberg founded almost 15 years ago, hosts and produces content. It sells advertising against content. It employs thousands of moderators who help patrol the content it “surfaces”. Two months after he gave his testimony Facebook, without irony, announced plans to launch…

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Remembering Raed Fares, who believed that Syria would be saved by its people

Remembering Raed Fares, who believed that Syria would be saved by its people

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Iyad el-Baghdadi writes: On Friday, Raed Fares — a Syrian revolutionary, citizen journalist and civil society leader — was assassinated in northern Syria by masked gunmen suspected of being affiliated with al-Qaeda. He was 46 years old. Hammoud Jneed, Raed’s friend and photographer, was also killed. The news came as a gut punch to me and many activists around the world: Raed was a friend, an inspiration, and a teacher. If I am to speak about what he taught me,…

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Should evolution treat our microbes as part of us?

Should evolution treat our microbes as part of us?

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Jonathan Lambert writes: Twilight falls on the Tanzanian plain. As the sky turns a deeper purple, a solitary spotted hyena awakens. She trots along the border of her clan’s territory, marking the boundary with a sour paste from under her tail. She sniffs a passing breeze for hints of itinerant males interested in mating, giving little attention to her stomach’s rumbling over the remnants of the previous night’s hunt or the itch on her flank. The lone hyena chooses what…

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The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

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David Ignatius writes: Behind the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi lies a power struggle within the Saudi royal family that helped feed the paranoia and recklessness of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Eventually, this rage in the royal court led to the death and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist. The opening scenes of this family feud took place in January 2015 in a VIP hospital suite in Riyadh, as King Abdullah lay on his deathbed. According to a Saudi…

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Russia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West

Russia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West

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Anne Applebaum writes: On Saturday evening, three small Ukrainian naval vessels left the Ukrainian port of Odessa and headed for the Ukrainian port of Mariupol. Along the way, they had to pass through the Kerch Strait, a sliver of water that lies between the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Russian mainland. The Ukrainian ships were well within their rights to be there — a similar group of ships went through the strait just a month ago, and a 2003 treaty…

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Manafort deal collapses: What it means for Mueller

Manafort deal collapses: What it means for Mueller

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Elie Honig writes: Special counsel Robert Mueller informed a federal judge on Monday that Paul Manafort’s cooperation deal has imploded because of Manafort’s seemingly congenital inability to tell the truth. On the surface, Manafort’s failed cooperation appears to be a setback for Mueller and a bullet dodged for President Donald Trump and administration insiders. But Mueller’s ability to see through Manafort’s lies and rip up the cooperation agreement bespeaks a deeper strength. By Monday’s court filing, Mueller effectively declared: I…

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How Donald Trump is committing a crime against humanity

How Donald Trump is committing a crime against humanity

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In all seriousness, the willful denial and obfuscation by Trump on climate change is a crime against humanity. Billions of people will bear incalculable harm for generations to come. Much, much, much worse than possibly colluding to steal an election.https://t.co/IFZzlbRwfz — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) November 26, 2018 The New York Times reports: President Trump had a clear message Monday when asked about the core conclusion of a scientific report issued by his own administration: that climate change will batter the…

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‘Why is Donald Trump so afraid of us?’

‘Why is Donald Trump so afraid of us?’

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Bryan Mealer reports from the migrant caravan: María Cáceres’s son Javier, who is 15, has Down’s syndrome. He’s a tall, chunky kid, with short dark hair, a missing front tooth, and eyes that are permanently crossed. María tells me how they fled San Pedro Sula after gang members constantly harassed her family for bribes and “taxes”. When they couldn’t pay, some men burned down their house, then murdered her two brothers. María had just finished burying them when – on…

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‘These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas.’

‘These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas.’

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The Washington Post reports: A little girl from Honduras stares into the camera, her young features contorted in anguish. She’s barefoot, dusty, and clad only in a diaper and T-shirt. And she’s just had to run from clouds of choking tear gas fired across the border by U.S. agents. A second photograph, which also circulated widely and rapidly on social media, shows an equally anguished woman frantically trying to drag the same child and a second toddler away from the…

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The chaos behind Trump’s policy of family separation at the border

The chaos behind Trump’s policy of family separation at the border

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60 Minutes reports: This past week, a federal judge struck down the president’s latest immigration order. It’s been a chaotic two years on the border as the administration imposed barriers with little consideration of their legality or consequences. The 2017 ban on travelers from Muslim countries was so abrupt it surprised the officers who had to enforce it. Before the midterm elections, President Trump ordered thousands of troops to Texas to stop what he called “an assault” by a caravan…

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Behind Ukraine-Russia naval tensions, a more brutal economic war

Behind Ukraine-Russia naval tensions, a more brutal economic war

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Christian Science Monitor reports: Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is back in the headlines after Russia seized three Ukrainian military vessels and their crews near Crimea, triggering a declaration of martial law in Ukraine and a fresh escalation of tensions between the two formerly friendly neighbors. But very little attention has been paid to the economic slugfest between the two, which has caused far more destruction than Russia’s sanctions war with the West over the past five years, and will leave…

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The Syrian conflict’s next front

The Syrian conflict’s next front

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Sara Kayyali writes: As hostilities in Syria wind down, the war is moving to another front – homecoming for refugees, property rights, and reconstruction. While less violent, it will determine the future for millions of Syrians. The Russian government has been leading a concerted effort to lobby European and other countries to support returning refugees with reconstruction funding. And the Syrian government is calling for refugees to come home and passing reconstruction laws to provide legal framework for funding that…

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