Has ISIS been defeated in Syria, as Trump claims?

Has ISIS been defeated in Syria, as Trump claims?

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The New York Times reports: President Trump has ordered a rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 United States ground troops from Syria within 30 days, declaring the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. He offered no details on his plans for the military mission, nor a larger strategy,…

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As Facebook appeared to raise a privacy wall, it secretly carved an opening for tech giants

As Facebook appeared to raise a privacy wall, it secretly carved an opening for tech giants

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The New York Times reports: For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews. The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet…

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Trump’s hostility towards immigrants is making Americans become increasingly immigrant-friendly

Trump’s hostility towards immigrants is making Americans become increasingly immigrant-friendly

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Francis Wilkinson writes: President Donald Trump may ultimately be a unifying force on one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics: immigration. That’s not Trump’s intent, of course. Having launched his presidential campaign in 2015 with a demagogic assault on immigrants, Trump has been a reliable fount of calumny ever since. His policies, from brutalizing children at the border — a 7-year-old girl died in U.S. custody last week — to terminating Temporary Protected Status for refugees, appear designed…

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Note to Michael Flynn: Federal court is not Twitter

Note to Michael Flynn: Federal court is not Twitter

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Ken White writes: Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Tuesday got an unpleasant lesson on the difference between politically effective arguments and legally astute ones. Backed by an array of well-wishers including President Trump, and buoyed by widespread conservative arguments that the FBI had violated his rights, Flynn walked into a federal courtroom in Washington hoping for the probationary sentence that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had recommended. Instead he was threatened with jail by a furious United States District…

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U.S. added to list of most dangerous countries for journalists for first time

U.S. added to list of most dangerous countries for journalists for first time

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Reuters reports: The murder of the Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi — in a year when more than half of all journalists who were killed around the world were targeted deliberately — reflects a hatred of the media in many areas of society, a free-press advocacy group said Tuesday. At least 63 professional journalists were killed doing their jobs in 2018, a 15 percent increase over last year, said the group, Reporters Without Borders. The number of deaths rises to 80…

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The discovery of vast populations of subsurface microbial beings is shaking up what we think we know about life

The discovery of vast populations of subsurface microbial beings is shaking up what we think we know about life

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JoAnna Klein writes: At the surface, boiling water kills off most life. But Geogemma barossii is a living thing from another world, deep within our very own. Boiling water — 212 degrees Fahrenheit — would be practically freezing for this creature, which thrives at temperatures around 250 degrees Fahrenheit. No other organism on the planet is known to be able to live at such extreme heat. But it’s just one of many mysterious microbes living in a massive subterranean habitat…

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What we now know about Russian disinformation

What we now know about Russian disinformation

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Renée DiResta writes: The Russian disinformation operations that affected the 2016 United States presidential election are by no means over. Indeed, as two new reports produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee make clear, Russian interference through social media — contrary to the suggestion of many prominent tech executives — is a chronic, widespread and identifiable condition that we must now aggressively manage. The Senate committee asked two research teams, one of which I led, to investigate the full scope of…

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Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable

Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable

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In an editorial, the Washington Post says: Two reports prepared for the Senate on Russian disinformation unfold a now-indisputable narrative: The Kremlin engaged in a coordinated campaign to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency, and this country’s technology companies were central to its strategy. The Russia operation is staggering in its scale, precision and deceptiveness. Pages generated by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency elicited nearly 40 million likes and more than 30 million shares on Facebook alone, reeling in susceptible…

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Trump’s fake charity is dissolved, but lawsuit alleging fraud continues

Trump’s fake charity is dissolved, but lawsuit alleging fraud continues

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Timothy L. O’Brien writes: The Trump Foundation, a tiny New York outfit masquerading as a philanthropy but operating, essentially, as a personal piggy bank for the president of the United States, is no more. Barbara Underwood, the New York state attorney general, announced on Tuesday that her office and the foundation signed a stipulation agreeing to dissolve Donald Trump’s long-standing but chronically underfunded gesture toward charitable giving. Trump launched his foundation in 1988 as a vehicle, he claimed, for distributing…

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Britain should downgrade its ties to the U.S. because of Trump’s policies, say peers

Britain should downgrade its ties to the U.S. because of Trump’s policies, say peers

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The Guardian reports: Britain must downgrade its “bedrock” reliance on the US and recognise that the Trump administration is seeking to undermine British efforts to tackle the most critical challenges facing the world, a committee of peers has said. The Lords international relations committee said the Trump administration’s actions on issues including the Paris climate change deal, the Iran nuclear accord and steel tariffs had been “contrary to the interests of the UK”. After taking evidence over the past year…

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Russian disinformation campaign targets Syria’s beleaguered rescue workers

Russian disinformation campaign targets Syria’s beleaguered rescue workers

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The Washington Post reports: A Russian disinformation campaign has pushed Syria’s best-known civilian rescue group into the crosshairs of President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces, turning its volunteers into hunted prey, according to a team of open-source researchers and the organization itself. With the help of Western funding, the Syrian Civil Defense group — more commonly known as the White Helmets — has rescued tens of thousands of civilians from the rubble of Syrian and Russian airstrikes. More than 250 volunteers…

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In Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, no refuge on land or sea

In Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, no refuge on land or sea

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The New York Times reports: The first sign of trouble was the helicopter that hovered over the small Yemeni fishing trawler as it cut across the Red Sea. Then a warship appeared, its guns pointed at the boat. Bullets thumped into the water around the boat, the Afaq, then rippled through its flimsy wooden hull. One fishermen was shot in the eye, another in the head. The engine caught fire. Crew members leapt overboard, including Bashar Qasim, 11. Moments earlier,…

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The oil industry’s covert campaign to rewrite American car emissions rules

The oil industry’s covert campaign to rewrite American car emissions rules

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The New York Times reports: When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them. But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation’s oil industry. In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest…

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The Southwest may be deep into a climate-changed mega-drought

The Southwest may be deep into a climate-changed mega-drought

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Robinson Meyer reports: Every so often, the American West seems to lurch into something called a “mega-drought.” The rains falter, the rivers wither, and the forests become tinder boxes waiting for a spark. Mega-droughts are notoriously hard to study—the last one happened in the 16th century—but what we do know is worrisome. In the 1540s, a few wet years in the middle of a mega-drought may have triggered one of the worst disease epidemics ever recorded. According to research unveiled…

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