After the SVB collapse, Republicans once again hide behind manufactured cultural conflict

After the SVB collapse, Republicans once again hide behind manufactured cultural conflict

Jamelle Bouie writes: As soon as it was clear that Silicon Valley Bank would not survive the weekend, conservative influencers and Republican politicians had a culprit in sight. Wokeness. “They were one of the most woke banks,” Representative James Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said during a segment on Fox News. The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, also spoke to Fox News about the collapse of the bank, and he also blamed the bank’s diversity programs….

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Back-to-back bank collapses came after 2018 deregulatory push

Back-to-back bank collapses came after 2018 deregulatory push

The New York Times reports: In the spring of 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed a law that watered down the landmark regulatory reform act that his predecessor had enacted following the global financial crisis. The changes won a surprising supporter: the liberal former congressman Barney Frank. Mr. Frank was a primary architect of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, better known as Dodd-Frank. But since his retirement in 2013, he had repeatedly voiced support for softening one…

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Why East Antarctica is a ‘sleeping giant’ of sea level rise

Why East Antarctica is a ‘sleeping giant’ of sea level rise

BBC Future reports: Jan Lieser had just started going through the dozens of satellite images he looks at every day when he realised something was missing. As a glaciologist at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, he knew the shape of every ice shelf sticking out from the coast of East Antarctica. And on 17 March 2022, there was a gap where most of the Conger glacier’s ice shelf had broken off into an iceberg the…

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As bank failures dominate news, Biden administration approves huge Alaska oil project

As bank failures dominate news, Biden administration approves huge Alaska oil project

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration gave formal approval Monday for a huge oil drilling project in Alaska known as Willow, despite widespread opposition because of its likely environmental and climate impacts. The president is also expected to announce sweeping restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and across Alaska’s North Slope in an apparent effort to temper criticism over the Willow decision and, as one administration official put it, to form a “firewall” to limit…

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Elizabeth Warren: We can prevent more bank failures

Elizabeth Warren: We can prevent more bank failures

Elizabeth Warren writes: No one should be mistaken about what unfolded over the past few days in the U.S. banking system: These recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to protect consumers and ensure that big banks could never again take down the economy and destroy millions of lives. Wall Street chief executives and their armies of lawyers and…

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The incredible tantrum venture capitalists threw over Silicon Valley Bank

The incredible tantrum venture capitalists threw over Silicon Valley Bank

Edward Ongweso Jr. writes: If the technological innovation coming out of Silicon Valley is as important as venture capitalists insist, the past few days suggest they haven’t been very responsible stewards of it. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank late last week may have resulted from a perfect storm of ugly events. But it was also emblematic of a startup ecosystem and venture-capital apparatus that are too unstable, too risky, and too unmoored from reality to be left in charge…

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For Russian elite, Dubai becomes a wartime safe harbor

For Russian elite, Dubai becomes a wartime safe harbor

The New York Times reports: On an artificial island on the edge of the Persian Gulf, Dima Tutkov feels safe. There are none of the anti-Russian attitudes that he hears about in Europe. He has noticed no potholes or homelessness, unlike what he saw in Los Angeles. And even as his ad agency turns big profits back in Russia, he does not have to worry about being drafted to fight in Ukraine. “Dubai is much more free — in every…

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International Criminal Court to open war crimes cases against Russia but trial looks unlikely

International Criminal Court to open war crimes cases against Russia but trial looks unlikely

The New York Times reports: The International Criminal Court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will seek arrest warrants for several people, according to current and former officials with knowledge of the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly. The cases represent the first international charges to be brought forward since the start of the conflict and come after months of work by special investigation teams. They allege that Russia…

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Climate is changing too quickly for the Sierra Nevada’s ‘zombie forests’

Climate is changing too quickly for the Sierra Nevada’s ‘zombie forests’

NPR reports: Some of the tall, stately trees that have grown up in California’s Sierra Nevada are no longer compatible with the climate they live in, new research has shown. Hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change in the mountain range have made certain regions once hospitable to conifers — such as sequoia, ponderosa pine and Douglas fir — an environmental mismatch for the cone-bearing trees. “They were exactly where we expected them to be, kind of along the lower-elevation,…

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How Stalin enlisted the Orthodox Church to help control Ukraine

How Stalin enlisted the Orthodox Church to help control Ukraine

Kathryn David writes: In September 1943, as the tide of the Second World War was turning in the Soviet Union’s favour, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin called a meeting at the Kremlin. Alongside the foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the head of the secret police Vsevolod Merkulov were three men in Stalin’s office for the first time: Metropolitan Sergius, Metropolitan Aleksey, and Metropolitan Nikolay, three of the few Orthodox Church hierarchs left in the Soviet Union. The fact of such…

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The U.S.-Ukraine war unity is slowly cracking apart

The U.S.-Ukraine war unity is slowly cracking apart

Poltico reports: The United States and Ukraine have largely been in lockstep since President Joe Biden’s administration pledged support for “as long as it takes” in resisting Moscow’s relentless invasion. But more than a year into the war, there are growing differences behind the scenes between Washington and Kyiv on war aims, and potential flashpoints loom on how, and when, the conflict will end. “The administration doesn’t have a clear policy objective and a clear goal. Is it to drag…

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Saudi Arabia’s golf case threatens to spill kingdom secrets

Saudi Arabia’s golf case threatens to spill kingdom secrets

The Associated Press reports: Officials who oversee Saudi Arabia’s tens of billions of dollars in U.S. investments haven’t been shy about flaunting their ties with top American business and political figures, down to wearing MAGA caps as they swing golf clubs alongside former President Donald Trump. But they’ve been silent about many of the details of these relationships. That’s changing as a result of a federal lawsuit in California pitting the Saudi-owned golf tour upstart LIV against the PGA Tour….

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China plans new Middle East summit as diplomatic role takes shape

China plans new Middle East summit as diplomatic role takes shape

The Wall Street Journal reports: When Arab leaders met Xi Jinping at a regional summit in Riyadh last December, the Chinese head of state pitched an unprecedented idea: a high-level gathering of Gulf Arab monarchs and Iranian officials in Beijing in 2023, people familiar with the plan said. Days later, Tehran signed on as well. By Friday, China had brokered a deal to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which had gone seven years without ties. The broader summit…

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Half a million Israelis join latest protest against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, organizers say

Half a million Israelis join latest protest against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, organizers say

CNN reports: Half a million Israelis took to the streets in the tenth consecutive week of protests against plans by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to overhaul the country’s judicial system, organizers claimed. Israel has a population of just over 9 million, so if organizers’ estimates are correct, about 5% of Israelis came out to voice their opposition to the proposed reforms. Nearly half of the protesters – about 240,000 – gathered in Tel Aviv, the organizers said. In Jerusalem,…

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