Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

The New York Times reports: When President Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping welcomed him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City culminating in a performance by the Peking Opera. Eight years, a pandemic and two trade wars later, Mr. Trump is returning to Beijing, where the theme of future dominance, not ancient majesty, has filled domestic and international headlines with articles about dancing robots, drone swarms and…

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Ukrainian long-range drones are turning Russia’s size into a weakness

Ukrainian long-range drones are turning Russia’s size into a weakness

Peter Dickinson writes: For centuries, Russia’s colossal size has been widely regarded as the country’s greatest asset. From Charles XII of Sweden to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, a long line of would-be conquerors have invaded Russia only for their armies to swallowed up by the vastness of the country. Ukraine is now attempting to turn this military logic on its head with a strategic bombing campaign that aims to exploit Russia’s immensity and transform it from a key strength…

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U.S. and Iran are locked in a stalemate that’s neither peace nor war

U.S. and Iran are locked in a stalemate that’s neither peace nor war

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. and Iran are locked in a diplomatic stalemate over issues that have bedeviled the two sides for years, as the conflict settles into a gray zone that is neither war nor peace. The cease-fire is entering its second month and, despite sporadic violence, has now lasted almost as long as the fighting which preceded it. There is little to indicate that either the U.S. or Iran is ready to compromise, but neither wants…

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Saudi Arabia launched covert attacks on Iran as regional war widened, sources say

Saudi Arabia launched covert attacks on Iran as regional war widened, sources say

Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia launched numerous, unpublicized strikes on Iran in retaliation for attacks carried out in the kingdom during the Middle East war, two Western officials briefed on the matter and two Iranian officials said. The Saudi attacks, not previously reported, mark the first time that the ​kingdom is known to have directly carried out military action on Iranian soil and show it is becoming much bolder in defending itself against its main regional rival. The attacks, launched by…

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Political violence serves an authoritarian agenda

Political violence serves an authoritarian agenda

Adam Serwer writes: People keep trying to kill the president. The closest call came in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, when Donald Trump (then a candidate) had his head grazed by a bullet. Other apparent attempts include an incident at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, and possibly another that resulted in a Secret Service shooting at Mar-a-Lago in 2026. The latest would-be executioner, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, was stopped long before he got anywhere near…

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What happens when a language goes extinct?

What happens when a language goes extinct?

Sophia Smith Galer writes: We are lucky to know anything at all about the Ubykh language. In the 1800s, tens of thousands of people spoke it on the Black Sea coast. When Russia conquered the region, the Ubykhs resisted until they were forced into exile in the Ottoman empire. Transported thousands of miles by a traumatised community now scattered across Turkey, Ubykh survived until 1992 when its last fluent speaker died. It was one of at least 244 languages that…

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Putin can no longer hide the war’s consequences from the Russian public

Putin can no longer hide the war’s consequences from the Russian public

Anne Applebaum writes: Four years ago, President Vladimir Putin offered Moscow and its business elite a de facto deal: Support my war in Ukraine, and in exchange you won’t have to think about it. In the past week, that deal was broken. Not that Moscow was ever fully immune: As long ago as May 3, 2023, the first two Ukrainian drones to reach Moscow exploded over the Kremlin, doing no damage but revealing that the capital’s air defenses weren’t as…

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UAE has been secretly carrying out attacks on Iran

UAE has been secretly carrying out attacks on Iran

The Wall Street Journal reports: The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran, people familiar with the matter said, casting the Gulf monarchy as an active combatant in a war in which it has been Iran’s biggest target. Its military is well-equipped with Western-made jet fighters and surveillance networks. And the attacks suggest the country is now more willing to use them to protect its economic power and growing influence across the Middle East. The strikes, which…

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The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians by Israelis

The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians by Israelis

Nicholas Kristof writes: It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape. Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.” And yet in wrenching…

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Virginia officials ask Supreme Court to restore voting map drawn by Democrats

Virginia officials ask Supreme Court to restore voting map drawn by Democrats

The New York Times reports: Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April. In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce…

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Starmer: More than 60 Labour MPs call for PM to resign

Starmer: More than 60 Labour MPs call for PM to resign

  Polly Toynbee writes: Calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe: the lexicon ran out of words for Labour’s plight. Keir Starmer’s career-saving “reset” needed to be monumental. It was … OK-ish. But it didn’t dispel the sense of a country with no overall control. As ever, his tacking neither right or left, as he wrote in the Guardian, sends many Labour people into paroxysms of despair, when last week it lost most votes leftwards. Britain at the heart of Europe was absolutely the…

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U.S. intelligence-gathering flights are surging off Cuba

U.S. intelligence-gathering flights are surging off Cuba

CNN reports: US military intelligence-gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba, a CNN analysis of publicly available aviation data shows. Since February 4, the US Navy and Air Force have conducted at least 25 such flights using manned aircraft and drones, most of them near the country’s two biggest cities, Havana and Santiago de Cuba, and some coming within 40 miles of the coast, according to FlightRadar24. Most of the flights were by P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft,…

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The oldest river in the world ran through Pangea

The oldest river in the world ran through Pangea

ZME Science reports: Rivers are poor archivists of their own past. They don’t sit still like fossils, or record a single birthdate like volcanic rock. Instead, they wander across floodplains, cut into rock and often move around or even abandon their channels. A river can spend millions of years destroying the very evidence that would prove how long it’s been there. That makes the question of the world’s oldest river surprisingly difficult. When geologists ask which river is the oldest…

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