Republicans descend into foreign policy factionalism over Russia-Ukraine standoff

Republicans descend into foreign policy factionalism over Russia-Ukraine standoff

Politico reports: While Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine this week stress-tests the Biden administration, it’s also forcing Republicans to confront their own divisions. The GOP is all over the map politically, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw his own boundaries. Former President Donald Trump privately has signaled a split with more isolationist voices from the MAGA wing of the party who have excused Russia’s aggression, who themselves are at odds with more establishment Republicans over how to confront Russian…

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How an obscure far-right website with three employees dominates Facebook in 2022

How an obscure far-right website with three employees dominates Facebook in 2022

Judd Legum reports: Most people have probably never heard of the website Conservative Brief. It employs just three writers and it does not produce any original reporting. Nearly all of its articles are aggregations of Tweets, YouTube videos, or other media websites, presented with a far-right spin. Recent headlines include “More Damning Evidence Surfaces Against Hillary Clinton in Durham Probe,” and “Trump Gives Love To Mike Lindell, Showers Him With Praise For The Good He Has Done.” Conservative Brief has…

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North Carolina officials reject Cawthorn claim that Constitution’s insurrectionist ban no longer applies

North Carolina officials reject Cawthorn claim that Constitution’s insurrectionist ban no longer applies

Politico reports: The North Carolina attorney general’s office says a constitutional prohibition on insurrectionists seeking federal office could be applied to GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn if a state board determines he aided or encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In a late Monday court filing, state attorneys said a provision of the 14th Amendment — disqualifying insurrectionists from holding federal office — is not a defunct Civil War-era relic meant to apply only to former Confederates but…

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Altruism in birds? Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

Altruism in birds? Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices

Shutterstock By Dominique Potvin, University of the Sunshine Coast When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds. Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable devices. Instead, the birds outsmarted us. As our new research paper explains, the magpies began showing evidence…

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Likelihood of war escalates as Putin promises to support proxy Ukraine states

Likelihood of war escalates as Putin promises to support proxy Ukraine states

The Guardian reports: Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will support the territorial claims of its proxy states in east Ukraine, dramatically increasing the likelihood of a larger war in the near future in what Joe Biden denounced as an attempt to carve out “a big chunk” of the country. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries?” Biden said, announcing new sanctions on two Russian banks and sweeping measures to…

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Oligarchs represent a potential Achilles’ heel for Putin

Oligarchs represent a potential Achilles’ heel for Putin

The Guardian reports: Biden thought he would be remembered as the pandemic president, but finds himself commanding the arsenal of democracy in what could become the biggest military assault in Europe since the second world war. The crisis escalated on Monday after Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent entities, an apparent pretext for invasion. “Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged…

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The Taliban confront the realities of power

The Taliban confront the realities of power

Jon Lee Anderson writes: For fifteen years, Zabihullah Mujahid was the Tokyo Rose of the Taliban: a clandestine operative who called reporters to claim responsibility for his fighters’ attacks and to exult in their victories. Sometimes the victims were American soldiers or their coalition allies. Sometimes they were Afghan government troops. Often, civilians were killed. For reporters, Mujahid was a kind of phantom, a disembodied voice on the phone. No one ever saw his face, and, when one journalist claimed…

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Researchers say science skewed by racism is increasing the threat of global warming to people of color

Researchers say science skewed by racism is increasing the threat of global warming to people of color

Inside Climate News reports: Black, Brown and Indigenous people have been systematically excluded from earth sciences, magnifying their exposure to the most severe impacts of climate change, said Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, lead author of a recent commentary in the journal Nature Geosciences. That adds to the burden of global warming that people of color already bear more heavily than other populations because the world for centuries has been “geographically delineated based on racism, and resultant slavery and colonialism,” Berhe said….

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‘This should terrify the nation’: Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections

‘This should terrify the nation’: Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections

Ed Pilkington reports: Last September, Donald Trump released a statement through his Save America website. “It is my great honor to endorse a true warrior,” he proclaimed, “a patriot who has fought for our country, who was willing to say what few others had the courage to say, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement.” Former US presidents usually reserve their most gushing praise – replete with Capital Letters – for global allies or people they are promoting for high…

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Got a Covid booster? You probably won’t need another for a long time

Got a Covid booster? You probably won’t need another for a long time

The New York Times reports: As people across the world grapple with the prospect of living with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future, one question looms large: How soon before they need yet another shot? Not for many months, and perhaps not for years, according to a flurry of new studies. Three doses of a Covid vaccine — or even just two — are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, the studies…

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A billion years before sex, ancient cells were equipped for it

A billion years before sex, ancient cells were equipped for it

Jake Buehler writes: Most complex organisms engage in a strange bit of genomic math at some point in their lives: To multiply, they subtract and then add. That is, to reproduce through the process of meiosis they create specialized sex cells, or gametes, with half the usual number of chromosomes; they then merge pairs of those gametes to create new individuals with a full, unique genome. Sexual reproduction is nearly ubiquitous among eukaryotes — organisms from kelp to koalas that…

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Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign

Putin’s absurd, angry spectacle will be a turning point in his long reign

Shaun Walker reports: Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion. He was met with silence. A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state television to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right…

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Putin’s hall of mirrors

Putin’s hall of mirrors

Timothy Snyder writes: Vladimir Putin likes to associate today’s Russian Federation with the old Russian empire, and in one sense he is right. The Russian empire was the most repressive state of its era, with the most refined state police: the Okhrana. Russian revolutionaries, the men and women who would establish the Soviet state, were educated by its methods. It did not simply hunt them down; it ensnared them, often without their knowledge, in a complicated dance of incriminating their…

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Why Putin cannot restore the Soviet Union

Why Putin cannot restore the Soviet Union

Lesia Dubenko writes: Russia’s ultimatum toward the U.S. and NATO alongside its military build-up at the Ukrainian border reignited the talk of Russia wanting to restore the Soviet Union. As proof, multiple journalists and political observers point to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2005 remark that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century, and his essay from last year on the so-called historical unity of the Ukrainian and Russian nations. Although this reasoning seems substantiated,…

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