U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path

U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path

The Washington Post reports: By the time a Chinese spy balloon crossed into American airspace late last month, U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, watching as it lifted off from its home base on Hainan Island near China’s south coast. U.S. monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over the U.S. territory of Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took…

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Warming seas are carving into glacier that could trigger major sea level rise

Warming seas are carving into glacier that could trigger major sea level rise

The Washington Post reports: Rapidly warming oceans are cutting into the underside of the Earth’s widest glacier, startling new data and images show, leaving the ice more prone to fracturing and ultimately heightening the risk for major sea level rise. Using an underwater robot at Thwaites Glacier, researchers have determined that warm water is getting channeled into crevasses in what the researchers called “terraces” — essentially, upside-down trenches — and carving out gaps under the ice. As the ice then…

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Gene expression in neurons solves a brain evolution puzzle

Gene expression in neurons solves a brain evolution puzzle

Allison Whitten writes: The neocortex stands out as a stunning achievement of biological evolution. All mammals have this swath of tissue covering their brain, and the six layers of densely packed neurons within it handle the sophisticated computations and associations that produce cognitive prowess. Since no animals other than mammals have a neocortex, scientists have wondered how such a complex brain region evolved. The brains of reptiles seemed to offer a clue. Not only are reptiles the closest living relatives…

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Punished by despotic regimes for nothing more than speaking out on social media

Punished by despotic regimes for nothing more than speaking out on social media

An editorial in the Washington Post says: On Feb. 27, 2022, Danuta Perednya, a 21-year old university student, reposted a message on the social media app Telegram criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the war in Ukraine. On Dec. 28, 2020, a young Saudi woman, Salma al-Shehab, tweeted an appeal to release Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who was in prison for seeking the right of women to drive in the kingdom. In October, a 19-year-old…

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Snowden and Hersh: Useful idiots, posing as political dissidents, promote disinformation for Russia

Snowden and Hersh: Useful idiots, posing as political dissidents, promote disinformation for Russia

TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, reports: The situation around three unidentified flying objects that were shot down over North America is designed to distract reporters’ attention from the investigation into the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, former NSA (National Security Agency) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden said on Monday. “I wish it were aliens, but it’s not aliens,” Snowden wrote on Twitter on Monday, commenting on the downing of balloons and UFOs in the United States and…

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Republic of fear: Trump considers televised firing squads, group executions, and use of the guillotine if re-elected

Republic of fear: Trump considers televised firing squads, group executions, and use of the guillotine if re-elected

Rolling Stone reports: “What do you think of firing squads?” That’s the question Donald Trump repeatedly asked some close associates in the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, three people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone. It’s not an idle inquiry: The former president, if re-elected, is still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution, the sources say. He has even, one of the sources recounts, mused about televising…

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How Russian invaders unleashed violence on small-town residents

How Russian invaders unleashed violence on small-town residents

Anne Applebaum and Nataliya Gumenyuk write: On the night of February 24, 2022, the sound of missiles jolted Viktor Marunyak awake. He saw flashes in the sky and billowing black smoke; then he got dressed and went to work. Marunyak is the mayor of Stara Zburjivka, a village just across the Dnipro River from Kherson, and he headed immediately to an emergency meeting with leaders of other nearby villages to discuss their options. They quickly realized that they were already…

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Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism

Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism

Jason Stanley writes: A wave of Republican enthusiasm for banning concepts, authors and books is sweeping across the United States. Forty-four states have proposed bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, and 18 states have passed them. Florida’s Stop Woke Act bans the teaching of eight categories of concepts, including concepts that suggest that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms…

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Three downed unidentified airborne objects may have been commercial or benign, says White House

Three downed unidentified airborne objects may have been commercial or benign, says White House

NBC News reports: The White House said Tuesday that the U.S. intelligence community is considering that the three most recent unidentified objects shot down over North America were being used for commercial or benign purposes. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the evaluation is based on what the U.S. knows from images of the three objects and cautioned that the assessment is preliminary because no debris from any of them has been recovered. “One thing we have to…

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How tensions with Russia are jeopardizing key Arctic research

How tensions with Russia are jeopardizing key Arctic research

Ed Struzik writes: Biologist Eric Regehr and his colleagues at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began studying polar bears from the American side of the Chukchi Sea, which stretches from Alaska to Russia, in 2008. But as the region warmed, and the increasingly thin spring sea ice off the Alaskan Coast made helicopter landings unsafe, he knew he would need to find another base from which to survey the health and size of the population. Russia’s remote Wrangel Island…

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U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war

U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in war

The Washington Post reports: As the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears, U.S. officials are telling Ukrainian leaders they face a critical moment to change the trajectory of the war, raising the pressure on Kyiv to make significant gains on the battlefield while weapons and aid from the United States and its allies are surging. Despite promises to back Ukraine “as long as it takes,” Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress and America’s allies represent Kyiv’s…

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Russian prisoners of war recount ‘gigantic’ loses

Russian prisoners of war recount ‘gigantic’ loses

The New York Times reports: Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire. His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei. One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!” the private said, though no help arrived. Eight…

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Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus; U.S. tells its citizens to leave Russia immediately

Russians abandon wartime Russia in historic exodus; U.S. tells its citizens to leave Russia immediately

The Washington Post reports: As Russian troops stormed into Ukraine last February, sending millions of Ukrainians fleeing for their lives, thousands of Russians also raced to pack their bags and leave home, fearing the Kremlin would shut the borders and impose martial law. Some had long opposed rising authoritarianism, and the invasion was a last straw. Others were driven by economic interest, to preserve livelihoods or escape the bite of sanctions. Then, last autumn, a military mobilization spurred hundreds of…

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Moldova’s President outlines Russian ‘plan’ to topple her government

Moldova’s President outlines Russian ‘plan’ to topple her government

The Associated Press reports: Moldova’s President outlined Monday what she described as a plot by Moscow to use external saboteurs to overthrow her country’s government, put the nation “at the disposal of Russia” and derail its aspirations to one day join the European Union. President Maia Sandu’s briefing comes a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova, claims that were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials. “The plan…

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