Burying wood in ‘vaults’ could help fight global warming

Burying wood in ‘vaults’ could help fight global warming

Science reports: The discovery of an eastern red cedar log, buried in eastern Canada for millennia and nearly perfectly preserved, illustrates the potential of a new kind of carbon storage scheme in the fight against climate change: wood “vaults.” The log shows how burying wood—rather than letting it decay on the surface—could keep billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, advocates say. The unusual conditions that preserved the log, described today in a paper in…

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In a new manifesto, OpenAI’s Sam Altman envisions an AI utopia – and reveals glaring blind spots

In a new manifesto, OpenAI’s Sam Altman envisions an AI utopia – and reveals glaring blind spots

Ryan Carter Images / Shutterstock By Hallam Stevens, James Cook University By now, many of us are probably familiar with artificial intelligence hype. AI will make artists redundant! AI can do lab experiments! AI will end grief! Even by these standards, the latest proclamation from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, published on his personal website this week, seems remarkably hyperbolic. We are on the verge of “The Intelligence Age”, he declares, powered by a “superintelligence” that may just be a…

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Republicans lay legal groundwork for election challenges

Republicans lay legal groundwork for election challenges

Reuters reports: In Arizona, one of seven competitive U.S. states that are expected to decide the 2024 presidential election, an advocacy group founded by Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller is advancing a bold legal theory: that judges can throw out election results over “failures or irregularities” by local officials. The lawsuit by the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, says the court in such cases should be able to toss the election results and order new rounds of…

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How Hurricane Helene could have widespread consequences for homeowners

How Hurricane Helene could have widespread consequences for homeowners

The Washington Post reports: When Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida on Thursday night, it made landfall in the state’s sparsely populated Big Bend, far from the glittering cities with expensive waterfront property to the south. But that didn’t stop Helene from becoming another multibillion-dollar superstorm. The hurricane’s massive size and record-breaking storm surge left an equally massive footprint of destruction across the Southeast, from Florida’s Tampa Bay region to Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. The storm likely caused $15 billion…

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Elon Musk, now one of illegal immigration’s harshest critics, was once of questionable immigration status

Elon Musk, now one of illegal immigration’s harshest critics, was once of questionable immigration status

  CNN reports: The world’s richest man stood steps away from the US-Mexico border, adjusting the brim of his black cowboy hat. “As an immigrant to the United States, I am extremely pro-immigrant,” Elon Musk said, “and I believe that we need a greatly expanded legal immigration system, and that we should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States.” But in the September 2023 video from Eagle Pass,…

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Israel’s vision of no Palestinians ‘from the river to the sea’

Israel’s vision of no Palestinians ‘from the river to the sea’

Sahar Aziz writes: Words matter. That is the purported principle behind a national campaign by pro-Israel organizations to censor, punish and even criminalize protests on American college campuses demanding a cease-fire to Israel’s unrestrained assault on 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza. University administrators have obliged with draconian restrictions that effectively deny their own students the ability to speak out against what the International Court of Justice has described as Israel’s “plausible” violations of the Genocide Convention in Gaza. Pro-Israel advocates often point…

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How Beirut is responding to Nasrallah’s death

How Beirut is responding to Nasrallah’s death

Robert F Worth writes: As word spread on Saturday that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in his underground Beirut bunker by an Israeli airstrike, people began quietly reckoning with the possibility that Lebanon’s political architecture might be about to shift for the first time in more than three decades. And that, in turn, raised the prospect that locked doors might soon open across the Middle East. Those who have fought against Hezbollah—not just Israelis but also Lebanese from…

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Far-right Freedom party finishes first in Austrian election, latest results suggest

Far-right Freedom party finishes first in Austrian election, latest results suggest

The Guardian reports: The far right won the most votes in an Austrian election for the first time since the Nazi era on Sunday, as the Freedom party (FPÖ) rode a tide of public anger over migration and the cost of living to beat the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP). The pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam FPÖ won 28.8% of votes, beating the ruling ÖVP of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, into second place on 26.3%, according to near-complete results. The opposition Social Democratic party…

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Scores of papers by Eliezer Masliah, prominent neuroscientist and top NIH official, fall under suspicion

Scores of papers by Eliezer Masliah, prominent neuroscientist and top NIH official, fall under suspicion

Science reports: In 2016, when the U.S. Congress unleashed a flood of new funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) tapped veteran brain researcher Eliezer Masliah as a key leader for the effort. He took the helm at the agency’s Division of Neuroscience, whose budget—$2.6 billion in the last fiscal year—dwarfs the rest of NIA combined. As a leading federal ambassador to the research community and a chief adviser to NIA Director Richard Hodes, Masliah would…

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What Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination spells for the Middle East

What Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination spells for the Middle East

Hassan Hassan and Kareem Shaheen write: The killing of Hassan Nasrallah in Israeli strikes on Friday surpasses in significance those of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 and other towering figures who have shaped the region’s violent modern history. With Nasrallah’s demise, we are witnessing the fall of a figure whose influence extends well beyond Hezbollah, Iran and the “Axis of Resistance.” For both foes and followers, Nasrallah was larger than life, occupying…

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Is the killing of Hassan Nasrallah a game changer?

Is the killing of Hassan Nasrallah a game changer?

  He led Hezbollah for more than three decades and made it into a military and political force to be reckoned with, in the long-running conflict in the Middle East. Hassan Nasrallah’s killing in a massive Israeli air attack in a southern suburb of Beirut is sure to open a new page in the ongoing war. Israel is on high alert and says it is prepared for all options after it announced his death. But will Hezbollah respond – and…

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Israel must end the war and start building a real democracy

Israel must end the war and start building a real democracy

Dahlia Scheindlin writes: Since the war in Gaza began, there have been proliferating signs that Israel’s institutions of state are under severe stress. Netanyahu has ignored repeated warnings from Israel’s attorney general that his government’s actions have violated the law; in response, government ministers have called for the attorney general’s dismissal. Israel’s legal system is in disarray. For over a year, the government held up dozens of judicial appointments, including on Israel’s Supreme Court; and in September, Netanyahu’s justice minister…

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Moody’s lowers Israel’s credit rating for 2nd time this year, amid Hezbollah escalation

Moody’s lowers Israel’s credit rating for 2nd time this year, amid Hezbollah escalation

The Times of Israel reports: US rating agency Moody’s downgraded Israel’s credit rating for a second time this year on Friday, doing so this time by two notches, while citing the increased intensity of the fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group and the lack of an Israeli “exit strategy.” The prominent credit rating agency cut Israel’s score from A2 to Baa1, raising concerns that domestic political risks have increased alongside geopolitical ones “with material negative consequences for the country’s creditworthiness…

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Timothy Snyder: ‘The moment you believe freedom is given, it is gone.’

Timothy Snyder: ‘The moment you believe freedom is given, it is gone.’

Seven years ago, Timothy Snyder wrote the best-selling book “On Tyranny.” His new book “On Freedom” is a rumination of what it truly means to be free, especially during a time when authoritarianism has been making strides around the world. “Being against things is just the beginning; you have to know what you’re for,” Snyder tells Ali Velshi. “Being angry is not the right first step. Being joyous is the right first step.” He adds, “We have to be rebels…

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