Highest-ranking person in Copper Age Spain was a woman, not a man, genetic analysis shows

Highest-ranking person in Copper Age Spain was a woman, not a man, genetic analysis shows

Live Science reports: Since its discovery in 2008, the skeleton of a high-ranking individual buried inside a tomb in the Iberian Peninsula between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago was thought to be the remains of a man. However, a new analysis reveals that this person was actually a woman. Archaeologists in Spain dubbed the woman the “Ivory Lady” based on the bounty of grave goods found alongside her skeleton, including an ivory tusk surrounding her skull, flint, an ostrich eggshell,…

Read More Read More

Ukraine warns Russia might attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. How worried should we be?

Ukraine warns Russia might attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. How worried should we be?

CNN reports: Russian troops have placed “objects resembling explosives” on roofs at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address Tuesday that instantly sparked concerns around the world. “Perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant. Perhaps they have some other scenario,” Zelensky speculated. But on one point, he was unequivocal: “In any case, the world sees – can’t but see – that the only source of danger to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power…

Read More Read More

Wagner rebellion raises doubts about stability of Russia’s nuclear arsenal

Wagner rebellion raises doubts about stability of Russia’s nuclear arsenal

The Washington Post reports: The rebellion in Russia by Wagner mercenaries confronted Western officials with one of their gravest fears: the possibility of political chaos and instability in the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Anxiety over who might gain control of Russia’s weapons of mass destruction has long tempered Western hopes that President Vladimir Putin might be ousted from power. But months of nuclear posturing by Putin and other senior Russian officials, and a new debate among Moscow…

Read More Read More

Kremlin ‘can’t confirm’ China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine

Kremlin ‘can’t confirm’ China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine

The Guardian reports: The Kremlin has denied a report that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had personally warned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “No, I can’t confirm it,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday when asked about a Financial Times report that said Xi delivered the message when he visited Moscow in March. Peskov said the two countries had issued statements at the time on the content of their talks, calling all…

Read More Read More

Kidnapped scholar Elizabeth Tsurkov deserves America’s every effort to bring her to safety

Kidnapped scholar Elizabeth Tsurkov deserves America’s every effort to bring her to safety

New Lines magazine reports: Our last contact with Elizabeth Tsurkov was on March 19. She told us she’d had enough of doing field research in the Middle East and wanted to return to Princeton University to write her doctoral dissertation. “No more fieldwork,” she said. We were relieved. We did not want her to stay in an Iraq that was increasingly dominated by pro-Iranian militias. Just over a week later we learned from our sources that a pro-Iranian militia had…

Read More Read More

How the far right rose – and found Trump

How the far right rose – and found Trump

Charles Kaiser writes: Rightwing extremism has always been a feature of American life, from the diehard supporters of slavery in the 19th century to the 20,000 fascists who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 and the violent opponents of integration who beat and killed civil rights workers and leaders throughout the 1960s. Today, this ugly tradition of hatred is perpetuated by dozens of vile groups, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to the Family Research Council and a…

Read More Read More

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure

Meltwater is hydro-fracking Greenland’s ice sheet through millions of hairline cracks – destabilizing its internal structure

Richard Bates and Alun Hubbard kayak a meltwater stream on Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, towing an ice radar that reveals it’s riddled with fractures. Nick Cobbing. Alun Hubbard, University of Tromsø I’m striding along the steep bank of a raging white-water torrent, and even though the canyon is only about the width of a highway, the river’s flow is greater than that of London’s Thames. The deafening roar and rumble of the cascading water is incredible – a humbling reminder of…

Read More Read More

Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Politico reports: European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change. But now, many of those jobs will be going to the United States instead. The clean energy subsidies that undergird President Joe Biden’s climate agenda have just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million factory that will produce the equipment…

Read More Read More

June extremes suggest parts of the climate system are reaching tipping points

June extremes suggest parts of the climate system are reaching tipping points

Inside Climate News reports: June 2023 may be remembered as the start of a big change in the climate system, with many key global indicators flashing red warning lights amid signs that some systems are tipping toward a new state from which they may not recover. Earth’s critical reflective polar ice caps are at their lowest extent on record in the satellite era, with the sea ice around Antarctica at a record-low extent by far, spurring worried scientists to share…

Read More Read More

Seeing the erosion of our freedoms makes it hard to celebrate this Fourth of July

Seeing the erosion of our freedoms makes it hard to celebrate this Fourth of July

Jill Lawrence writes: Despite the promises of America’s founding documents, on Independence Day 2023, justice, the “general welfare,” “equal protection of the laws” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are all at risk. The Supreme Court, conservative governors and gerrymandered state legislatures are racing to shrink fundamental rights and freedoms, enabled and empowered by structural inequities built into the Constitution. The result is that tens of millions of Americans are being deprived of rights that other Americans have. The scale of the disparity is frightening and growing, taking…

Read More Read More

Migrant workers flee Florida as new immigration law takes effect

Migrant workers flee Florida as new immigration law takes effect

The Wall Street Journal reports: Florida’s agricultural and construction industries say they are experiencing a labor shortage because a new immigration law that took effect July 1 is leading migrant workers to leave the state. The law, signed in May by Florida Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, seeks to further criminalize undocumented immigration in the state. It makes it a third-degree felony for unauthorized people to knowingly use a false identification to obtain employment. Businesses that knowingly employ…

Read More Read More

Federal judge halts new Florida law he calls ‘latest assault’ on voting

Federal judge halts new Florida law he calls ‘latest assault’ on voting

Politico reports: A federal judge on Monday blocked a new Florida election law pushed by Republicans that puts restrictions on voter registration groups, calling it “Florida’s latest assault on the right to vote.” U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Walker granted a preliminary injunction against the law just days after it went into effect. Walker is an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has repeatedly ruled against the state in past legal challenges to election measures put in place by…

Read More Read More

Can John Roberts disarm Democratic threats to overhaul the Supreme Court?

Can John Roberts disarm Democratic threats to overhaul the Supreme Court?

Jonathan Chait writes: The Republican Party has been in desperate need of a pragmatic leader who can gauge public opinion, shrewdly husband political capital, and advance the party’s agenda in sustainable ways. That leader has materialized in the form of John Roberts. The chief justice of the United States is attempting to navigate the disjuncture between voters, who on the whole are sharply divided but have slightly favored Democrats, and the power Republicans have accumulated through the Supreme Court, which is quasi-permanent…

Read More Read More

Biden nominates Iran-Contra convict, Elliott Abrams, to Public Diplomacy Commission

Biden nominates Iran-Contra convict, Elliott Abrams, to Public Diplomacy Commission

CNN reports: President Joe Biden announced Monday his intention to nominate a former appointee under former President Donald Trump with a controversial past in Latin America to the bipartisan United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations, most recently acted as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Iran and Venezuela where he was tasked at the time with directing the campaign to replace Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. The Republican insider’s long history…

Read More Read More