Manhattan DA takes on Trump in perilous legal fight

Manhattan DA takes on Trump in perilous legal fight

Politico reports: As an indictment looms for Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is poised to become the first prosecutor ever to bring criminal charges against a former American president. It’s a distinction that puts him in a high-profile but perilous spot. Having occupied the district attorney’s office for only 15 months, Bragg has already endured a firestorm sparked by a progressive overhaul of criminal justice policies and a public rebuke from two prominent prosecutors who resigned during the…

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How Europe’s first wild river national park saw off the dams

How Europe’s first wild river national park saw off the dams

The Guardian reports: The fast-moving Vjosa River in Albania curves and braids, sweeping our raft away from the floodplain towards the opposite bank, and back again. The islands that split the waterway in two are temporary, forming, growing, then dissipating so that this truly wild river, one of the last in Europe, never looks the same. “There’s a saying, ‘you can’t step in the same river twice’,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, the head of Riverwatch, a Vienna-based NGO for river protection,…

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Why are most of us stuck with a belief in the soul?

Why are most of us stuck with a belief in the soul?

David P Barash writes: Few ideas are as unsupported, ridiculous and even downright harmful as that of the ‘human soul’. And yet, few ideas are as widespread and as deeply held. What gives? Why has such a bad idea had such a tenacious hold on so many people? Although there is a large literature on the costs and benefits – psychological and economic – of traditional religion, there is a dearth of comparable research on religion’s near-universal handmaiden, the soul….

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Putin kowtows to Xi as Russia submits to its role as China’s junior partner

Putin kowtows to Xi as Russia submits to its role as China’s junior partner

The Associated Press reports: Like a salesman buttering up his best customer, President Vladimir Putin gushed about China’s economic success as he welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the Kremlin. “We even feel a bit envious,” Putin said Monday as Xi grinned. That was more than idle flattery. China isn’t just Moscow’s diplomatic partner in opposing what they see as U.S. domination of global affairs. Its thriving economy is the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas exports, pumping billions…

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Why Ukraine is finally getting new fighter jets from NATO

Why Ukraine is finally getting new fighter jets from NATO

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Ukraine is now getting warplanes, although not the coveted U.S.-made F-16s it has been pushing for. In what counts as another milestone in the West’s willingness to increase security assistance to the war-ravaged nation, Poland and Slovakia, both NATO members, announced last week they will jointly be donating their entire inventory of Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine. Speaking alongside newly elected Czech President Petr Pavel in a press conference in Warsaw on Thursday, Polish President…

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Make no mistake, the investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels scheme is serious

Make no mistake, the investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels scheme is serious

Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann write: Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant. Prosecutors are trained to consider whether a case…

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Inside the 3 months that could cost Fox $1.6 billion

Inside the 3 months that could cost Fox $1.6 billion

The New York Times reports: Since 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip. That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before. There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled…

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The FBI raided a notable journalist’s home. Rolling Stone failed to tell readers why

The FBI raided a notable journalist’s home. Rolling Stone failed to tell readers why

NPR reports: Last Oct. 18, Rolling Stone served up a foreboding scoop: The FBI had raided the home of a renowned journalist at the top of his game months earlier, and he had disappeared from public view. It should have been a coup. Instead, acrimony inside the newsroom over how that scoop was edited led to accusations that the magazine’s brash leader pulled punches in overseeing coverage of someone he knew. The reporter who wrote the story, enraged, accepted a position at…

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Seabirds that swallow ocean plastic waste have scarring in their stomachs – scientists have named this disease ‘plasticosis’

Seabirds that swallow ocean plastic waste have scarring in their stomachs – scientists have named this disease ‘plasticosis’

Scientists have identified a condition they call plasticosis, caused by ingesting plastic waste, in flesh-footed shearwaters. Patrick Kavanagh/Wikipedia, CC BY By Matthew Savoca, Stanford University As a conservation biologist who studies plastic ingestion by marine wildlife, I can count on the same question whenever I present research: “How does plastic affect the animals that eat it?” This is one of the biggest questions in this field, and the verdict is still out. However, a recent study from the Adrift Lab,…

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Are world happiness rankings culturally biased?

Are world happiness rankings culturally biased?

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas writes: Every year, the World Happiness Report ranks 146 countries around the globe by their average level of happiness. Scandinavian countries usually top the list, the U.S. falls someplace in the mid-teens, and war-torn and deeply impoverished countries are at the bottom. The happiness scores come from a survey of life satisfaction, which goes something like this: Considering your life as a whole and using the mental image of a ladder, with the best possible life as…

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Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: Act now or it’s too late

Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: Act now or it’s too late

The Guardian reports: Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday. The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to…

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As Xi visits Russia, Putin sees his anti-U.S. world order taking shape

As Xi visits Russia, Putin sees his anti-U.S. world order taking shape

The Washington Post reports: For Vladimir Putin, the state visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which begins on Monday, provides a giant morale boost and a chance to showcase the much-vaunted new world order that the Russian leader believes he is forging through his war on Ukraine — in which the United States and NATO can no longer dictate anything to anyone. Xi’s visit to Russia, just after cementing his precedent-breaking third term in power, brings together two…

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At the China-Russia border, the Xi-Putin partnership shows signs of fraying

At the China-Russia border, the Xi-Putin partnership shows signs of fraying

The Wall Street Journal reports: Years of investment in cities along the China-Russia border were intended to open the door to mutual prosperity and close partnership between the two global powers. The potholed streets, stray dogs and empty storefronts of Heihe, on the border in China’s far north, are more reminiscent of a declining U.S. Rust-Belt city. The city’s International Trade Center, a three-story shopping complex, was once popular with Russian shoppers looking for furs, leather coats and shoes. Now,…

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Ben & Jerry’s founder is ‘top donor’ of ‘antiwar’ group campaigning against U.S. military support for Ukraine

Ben & Jerry’s founder is ‘top donor’ of ‘antiwar’ group campaigning against U.S. military support for Ukraine

The Daily Beast reports: A group funded by Ben & Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen is running a media campaign against U.S. military support for Ukraine. The organization—Eisenhower Media Network (EMN)—has been reaching out to reporters to push claims that the U.S. is spending too much money trying to help Ukraine fight off Vladimir Putin’s invasion. EMN is a project run by the People’s Power Initiative, a group that counts Cohen as its president and a major backer. The ice-cream mogul…

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