Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Reuters reports: Weeks of protest in Iran entered a more violent phase on Sunday as students defied an ultimatum by the Revolutionary Guards and were met with tear gas, beatings and gunfire from riot police and militia, social media videos showed. The confrontations at dozens of universities prompted a threat of a tougher crackdown in the seventh week of demonstrations since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after she was arrested by the morality police for attire deemed inappropriate. Iranians from all…

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Iranian drones in Ukraine project Tehran’s power beyond Mideast, testing U.S. and Europe

Iranian drones in Ukraine project Tehran’s power beyond Mideast, testing U.S. and Europe

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia’s expanding use of Iranian drones in Ukraine poses an increasing threat for the U.S. and its European allies as Tehran attempts to project military power beyond the Middle East. In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials say, Russia has launched more than 300 Iranian drones that have targeted military units, power plants and civilian buildings in the capital, Kyiv. The Ukrainian military said it has shot down more than 70% of the drones, but Ukrainian officials are asking the…

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How Google’s ad business funds disinformation around the world

How Google’s ad business funds disinformation around the world

By Craig Silverman, Ruth Talbot, Jeff Kao and Anna Klühspies Google is funneling revenue to some of the web’s most prolific purveyors of false information in Europe, Latin America and Africa, a ProPublica investigation has found. The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such…

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Should we really be messing with asteroid orbits?

Should we really be messing with asteroid orbits?

Caleb Scharf writes: Things go bump in the cosmic night all the time. Rocky objects collide in planetary systems across our galaxy, providing astute astronomers with telltale signatures of warmly glowing dust from these grinding impacts. Stellar remnants like neutron stars can crash together unleashing bursts of searing gamma-rays, and even black holes can collide and coalesce in events marked by the gargantuan ringing of spacetime as energy ripples outward in gravitational waves. On Sept. 26, 2022, another particularly novel…

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When the Republican Party lost its mind

When the Republican Party lost its mind

Robert Draper writes: In March of 2020, I sat in a federal courtroom in Utah and watched a man stand before the judge and murmur through sobs, “This wasn’t me. This wasn’t me.” The defendant, a 55-year-old health-insurance salesman named Scott Brian Haven, wasn’t protesting his innocence. He openly acknowledged that over the two-year period before his arrest in the summer of 2019, he had placed 3,950 calls to the Washington offices of various Democratic members of Congress, spewing profanities…

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Rising political violence is not surprising when people are told they face existential threats

Rising political violence is not surprising when people are told they face existential threats

Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes: “We fight like hell,” then-President Donald Trump told supporters Jan. 6, 2021. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Recent warnings of political violence during the upcoming midterm elections look more prescient by the day. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was assaulted in a targeted attack. (The suspect reportedly shouted, “Where’s Nancy?” before striking Paul Pelosi with a hammer.) Meanwhile, armed men watch ballot drop…

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Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

The Washington Post reports: In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker. Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel. And…

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Twitter roils with hate speech as trolls test Musk’s self-described free speech absolutism

Twitter roils with hate speech as trolls test Musk’s self-described free speech absolutism

Bloomberg reports: In the wake of Elon Musk buying Twitter Inc., a tide of slurs and racist memes swelled on the platform, sparking concern that the site is entering an era of hateful speech. Twitter has long wrestled with how to enforce content policies fairly on its platform in order to appease the advertisers, users and powerful world leaders that use its service. But as Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” took over ownership of the company, some conservative officials,…

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American Jews start to think the unthinkable

American Jews start to think the unthinkable

Dana Milbank writes: [U]ntil the American experiment, Jews in the diaspora were marginalized, ghettoized, persecuted and eventually converted, exiled or killed. “As Jews, we know at some point the music stops,” [the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan] Greenblatt said. “This is burned into the collective consciousness of every Jewish person.” The United States has until now been different because of our constitutional protections of minority rights: our bedrock principles of equal treatment under law, free expression and free exercise of religion. Now,…

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Leadership during crisis: A conversation with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

Leadership during crisis: A conversation with Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki

  Poland, which shares over 300 miles of its borders with Russia, has provided massive military support to Ukraine and refuge to millions of Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s aggression. On Tuesday, October 25, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius talked to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki about the current course of the war, fears of a growing energy crisis this winter and his country’s relationship with the European Union.

COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

By Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, and Jeff Kao, ProPublica “A Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom” Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages — one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination…

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World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

The Guardian reports: The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe. Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high. He said the world was coming “very, very close…

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Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Inside Climate News reports: It hasn’t been a great year for democracy. In February, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ironfisted leader, shocked the world by invading Ukraine, which sparked a global energy crisis and left Western democracies scrambling to respond. Weeks later in April, strongman politician Viktor Orbán was reelected as the president of Hungary, despite being accused of rigging the election and using his power to jail and intimidate journalists. Soon after, far-right leaders with neo-facist roots were also elected into…

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As temperatures fall, Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine’s vulnerable power grid

As temperatures fall, Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine’s vulnerable power grid

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Large parts of the Ukrainian capital have been experiencing rolling blackouts in recent weeks, after increased Russian attacks over the past month that have destroyed an estimated 30% of Ukraine’s power and heating generation capacity. Kyiv has accused Russia, which continues to suffer a string of embarrassing setbacks on the battlefield, of pursuing a determined strategy of targeting such facilities in order both to increase Ukrainian refugee flows into Europe and to freeze the…

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