Fred Kaplan writes: President Joe Biden delivered his first address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday morning, a speech of fine words but discordant resonances. He hailed “the noble mission of this institution” and reaffirmed the central role of “partners and allies,” declaring that “our own success is bound up with others succeeding as… Read More »
Climate Change News reports: China will end its support for new coal power projects overseas, president Xi Jinping told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. For years, China has been the biggest public financer of foreign coal, particularly in rapidly-growing Asian economies, but has slowed down recently. President Xi’s speech was translated as: “China… Read More »
Ars Technica reports: If you’ve looked into the controversy regarding the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19, chances are you’ve come across links to a site called c19ivermectin.com (or one of its many relatives) that claims to host a regularly updated aggregation of all the latest studies into a single meta-analysis of the effects of… Read More »
Politico reports: Pfizer’s CEO sent a video message to company employees urging them to fight proposed government drug price negotiations and expressing frustration with Congress, which is considering using the projected savings to help pay for a $3.5 trillion social spending package. Albert Bourla said he was “particularly disappointed” that a House Democratic leadership-backed drug… Read More »
Russell Berman writes: On the afternoon of July 23, an Army veteran named Kyle Vinson is sitting on a curb in Aurora, Colorado, when two police officers confront him. “Stay down! Roll over on your face,” one of the officers yells. He has his gun drawn. The officer shoves Vinson to the ground and holds… Read More »
The Wall Street Journal reports: After attending the funeral of a fellow United Airlines pilot who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Daoud Sultanzoy decided to return to his native Afghanistan and help build its post-Taliban government. These days, the 66-year-old mayor of Kabul is the most prominent official from the fallen Afghan… Read More »
Science reports: The peopling of Polynesia was a stunning achievement: Beginning around 800 C.E., audacious Polynesian navigators in double-hulled sailing canoes used the stars and their knowledge of the waves to discover specks of land separated by thousands of kilometers of open ocean. Within just a few centuries, they had populated most of the Pacific… Read More »
Politico reports: Internal Democratic discord has wounded President Joe Biden’s massive social spending plan, raising the prospect that the package could stall out, shrink dramatically — or even fail altogether. Myriad problems have arisen. Moderate Senate Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) continue to be a major headache for party leadership’s $3.5 trillion… Read More »
Bill McKibben writes: So far in the global warming era, we’ve caught precious few breaks. Certainly not from physics: the temperature has increased at the alarming pace that scientists predicted thirty years ago, and the effects of that warming have increased even faster than expected. (“Faster Than Expected” is probably the right title for a… Read More »
The New York Times reports: Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election… Read More »
Human Rights Watch: The US deployment of border agents on horseback against Haitian migrants on September 19, 2021, stems from abusive and racially discriminatory immigration policies by the administration of President Joe Biden, Human Rights Watch said today. The previous day, the Department of Homeland Security announced a six-step “strategy to address the increase of… Read More »
Faisal Devji writes: When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Gandhi apparently responded that he thought it would be a good idea. While this celebrated statement is taken to be an ironic dismissal, Gandhi had in fact given the matter of Western civilisation much thought. In his manifesto of 1909 called Hind Swaraj or… Read More »
Kim Tingley writes: It’s simple, we are often told: All you have to do to maintain a healthy weight is ensure that the number of calories you ingest stays the same as the number of calories you expend. If you take in more calories, or energy, than you use, you gain weight; if the output… Read More »
Orit Peleg writes: In the still of the Tennessee night, my colleagues and I are watching thousands of dim little orbs of light, moving peacefully in the forest around us. We try to guess where the next flash will appear, but the movements seem erratic, even ephemeral. This summer, as we set up our cameras… Read More »