Turkey’s Erdogan defies odds to win presidential election

Turkey’s Erdogan defies odds to win presidential election

The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Sunday’s runoff presidential election, establishing him as one of the great survivors in recent political history and securing his outsize role in global affairs for what could be years to come. The head of Turkey’s election board declared Erdogan the victor. Erdogan won 52.13% of the votes, with his challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, claiming 47.87% with more than 99% of ballot boxes opened. The president’s victory also opens a new phase of his…

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Our brain prefers positive vocal sounds that come from our left

Our brain prefers positive vocal sounds that come from our left

PsyPost reports: Researchers have shown that the brain’s primary auditory cortex is more responsive to human vocalizations associated with positive emotions and coming from our left side than to any other kind of sounds. This bias can be explained by the way our brain is organized, but its evolutionary significance is not yet known. Sounds that we hear around us are defined physically by their frequency and amplitude. But for us, sounds have a meaning beyond those parameters: we may…

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Lessons from the Laschamps Excursion 42,000 years ago

Lessons from the Laschamps Excursion 42,000 years ago

Dirk Schulze-Makuch writes: After studying the reversal of Earth’s magnetic pole known to have occurred 42,000 years ago, a science team led by Alan Cooper from the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, Australia concludes that the event had significant environmental repercussions, especially at lower and mid-latitudes. That time period, known as the Laschamps Excursion, had anomalously high radiocarbon concentrations in the atmosphere, which were linked to a higher influx of radiation. When the reversal occurred, within a span of about…

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‘The intensity is increasing’: Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun

‘The intensity is increasing’: Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun

The Observer reports: Preliminary operations have already begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said. “It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s an ongoing process of de-occupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines. “The intensity is…

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Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material

Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material

The Washington Post reports: Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution. The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon,…

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Drastic climate action is the best course for economic growth, study finds

Drastic climate action is the best course for economic growth, study finds

Yale Climate Connections reports: For decades, many economists’ analyses seemed to justify inaction on weaning the economy from fossil fuels, saying the astronomical cost of such rapid transformation would strangle economic growth. These experts were heeded over scientists who warned that acting too slowly would court climate catastrophe. But in recent years, more economists have begun to agree that the short-term costs of aggressive action are not as high as once thought, while the long-term costs of inaction are much…

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Create an IPCC-like body to harness benefits and combat harms of digital tech

Create an IPCC-like body to harness benefits and combat harms of digital tech

Joseph Bak-Coleman et al write: Search engines, online banking, social-media platforms and large-language models, such as ChatGPT, are among the many computational systems that offer (or could offer) tremendous benefits. They provide people with unprecedented access to information. They help to connect hundreds of millions of individuals. And they could make all sorts of tasks easier, from writing computer code to preparing scientific manuscripts. Such innovations also come with risks. The speed at which content can be generated and shared…

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Clarence Thomas’s newest opinion would literally bring back child labor

Clarence Thomas’s newest opinion would literally bring back child labor

Ian Millhiser writes: On Thursday, the Supreme Court imposed strict new limits on the Clean Water Act. The Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA is likely to do serious harm to the government’s ability to quell water pollution, including in major waterways such as the Mississippi River and the Chesapeake Bay. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that would so severely limit Congress’s power to legislate that he might as well have taken several volumes of the United…

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Study: At all levels of public office, threats now come with the job

Study: At all levels of public office, threats now come with the job

The Washington Post reports: Since taking office in 2021, Oakland City Council member Carroll Fife has received threats by phone, social media and in person, an extreme level of harassment she never imagined would come with serving her community. Fife said she has found animal parts strewn on her car, her tires flattened, and trash dumped at her doorstep. She tried in vain to get a restraining order against a man who said she would “feel the Second Amendment.” A…

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Some Neanderthals hunted bigger animals, across a larger range, than modern humans

Some Neanderthals hunted bigger animals, across a larger range, than modern humans

Neanderthals were evolutionary cousins to our species, Homo sapiens. Chettaprin.P / Shutterstock By Bethan Linscott, University of Oxford The region of Estremadura in Portugal was home to a band of Neanderthals – an ancient evolutionary relative of modern humans – about 95,000 years ago. They made use of the patchwork of limestone caves, crags and river valleys, leaving traces of their activities in the form of stone tools, butchered animal bones and the remnants of fireplaces. Now their teeth are…

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The far right is splintering

The far right is splintering

Juliette Kayyem writes: As Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Stewart Rhodes yesterday to 18 years in prison—the longest yet for a defendant involved in the January 6 insurrection—he explained why the leader of the far-right group the Oath Keepers needed to be behind bars for a long time. “You pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta told Rhodes. Mehta was right about that. At his sentencing, Rhodes was unrepentant. In a 20-minute…

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Florida mom sought to ban Amanda Gorman’s poem while also promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Florida mom sought to ban Amanda Gorman’s poem while also promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

JTA reports: [Miami-area mother, Daily] Salinas’ Facebook feed reflects the kinds of right-wing memes that continue to circulate widely, although she told JTA that she did not post everything on it herself. Miami Against Fascism also shared video of Salinas with the Proud Boys, a far-right group with ties to antisemitic activists, as well as a video of her attending a school board protest last year with Moms For Liberty, a “parents’ rights” group active in pushing for book removals…

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Are the anti-Trump GOP forces starting to implode?

Are the anti-Trump GOP forces starting to implode?

Jonathan Martin writes: Will this go down as the week that the grand plan to deny Donald Trump the nomination fell apart? For months, high-level Republican lawmakers, donors and strategists eager to block Trump have described, in separate conversations with me, an endgame to the presidential primary. When it becomes clear in the early state and national polling who is consolidating support, the most influential figures with ties to the lagging candidates will stage a sort of political intervention and…

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Russian public appears to be souring on war casualties, analysis shows

Russian public appears to be souring on war casualties, analysis shows

The New York Times reports: Public sentiment in Russia over war casualties has been turning more negative during the intense fighting in recent months in eastern Ukraine, according to a new analysis. U.S. officials have highlighted the huge numbers of Russian troops killed and wounded in Bakhmut, Ukraine, in recent months, which they estimate to be more than 100,000. The city has become the scene of the most intense urban combat in Europe since World War II. Those losses appear…

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