Music: Avishai Cohen — ‘Smash’
Migrants face hypothermia and broken bones in freezing forests as Poland-Belarus crisis deepens
CNN reports: Migrants trapped on the border between Poland and Belarus have made hundreds of attempts to breach the frontier, but were repelled by 15,000 Polish soldiers deployed to stop them, according to Polish authorities. The thousands of stranded people are caught at the center of an intensifying geopolitical dispute in which the European Union, the United States and NATO have accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of manufacturing a migrant crisis on the EU’s eastern frontier to destabilize the bloc…
China and U.S., at odds on many issues, agree on a surprise climate deal
The New York Times reports: China’s top climate change envoy, Xie Zhenhua, apologized as he entered late for a weekend meeting at the United Nations climate summit. “We have quite busy schedules,” Mr. Xie said, according to two people who were present for the exchange. “Especially for me, I have to meet with John Kerry almost every day.” In an unexpected development, the United States and China on Wednesday announced in a joint statement that they will both do more…
Why Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ reminds me of my years in a Syrian prison
Omar Alshogre writes: A lot of people I know have been watching the Netflix show “Squid Game,” the dystopian drama in which players participate in surreal versions of traditional Korean children’s games. The losers are punished by death — until only one is left alive. My friends see “Squid Game” as a kind of horror movie, a grotesque commentary on the gap between rich and poor in today’s capitalist societies. To them, it’s a fantasy, a frightening fable. But I’m…
Young people, not college graduates, drive wokeness
Olga Khazan writes: Overeducated people are ruining political discourse by embracing “woke” language. If you pay attention to modern fights about language and social justice, you’ve probably heard some version of this complaint. The Democratic patriarch James Carville has bemoaned the idea of “people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges” coming up with “a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses.” John McWhorter, the linguist, Atlantic contributor, and author of Woke Racism, has asserted that “everybody is afraid of…
$76 billion a day: How Binance became the world’s biggest crypto exchange
The Wall Street Journal reports: The world’s fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn’t answer questions about his location. Started just four years ago, Binance is the exchange giant that towers over the digital currency world, a crypto equivalent of the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges combined. After a burst of growth, Binance processes more trades for…
Largest psilocybin trial finds the psychedelic is effective in treating serious depression
STAT reports: Eagerly awaited results of the largest-ever study of psilocybin were announced Tuesday, with Compass Pathways revealing the psychedelic drug was highly efficacious as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. Still, the company’s stock price dropped 16.4% by the close of trading, perhaps because of safety concerns among investors. The Phase 2b study is the largest randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms. The company said it found that patients who were given the highest…
Music: Jimmy Dludlu — ‘Matue Tue’
Earth’s first continents may have appeared three-quarters of a billion years earlier than previously thought
Inside Science reports: Earth’s first continents may have emerged from the oceans roughly 750 million years earlier than previously thought, rising from the seas in a manner completely unlike modern continents. These early masses of solid rock may have floated buoyantly atop magma welling up from below, a new study finds. Unlike any other known planet, Earth possesses both continents and oceans on its surface. The emergence of land from sea greatly influenced Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, climate and proliferation of…
Why white voters with racist views often still support Black Republicans
Hakeem Jefferson and Michael Tesler write: Can white voters who back a Black candidate still hold racist beliefs and views? That question has come to the fore in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in the blueish state of Virginia. Conservatives were quick to counter claims that Youngkin’s win represented the effectiveness of stoking racial fears with results from Virginia’s down-ballot election for lieutenant governor — a contest where the Republican candidate, Winsome Sears, made history by becoming the…
Swift ruling tests Trump’s tactic of running out the clock
Charlie Savage writes: On the surface, a judge’s ruling on Tuesday night that Congress can obtain Trump White House files related to the Jan. 6 riot seemed to echo another high-profile ruling in November 2019. In the earlier matter, a judge said a former White House counsel must testify about then-President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation. In both cases, Democratic-controlled House oversight committees issued subpoenas, Mr. Trump sought to stonewall those efforts by invoking constitutional secrecy…
Domestic extremists pushing violence against Congress, school and health officials, DHS bulletin says
NBC News reports: Domestic extremists continue to exploit false narratives to promote violence online, calling for attacks on members of Congress, public health and school officials, even as they share information about how to build bombs, according to a new intelligence bulletin by the Department of Homeland Security that paints a picture of persistent danger. The new National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin is expected to be released Wednesday afternoon, according to officials familiar with it. It replaces an existing bulletin…
GOP recruitment struggles give Democrats hope in 2022 Senate fight
NBC News reports: They lost the governor’s race in Virginia. They had a bad scare in New Jersey. They’re the clear underdogs in the battle for the U.S. House. But Democrats saw glimmers of hope in the fight for the Senate on Tuesday when a top Republican prospect decided not to run. In New Hampshire, popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu shocked party leaders when he announced that he wouldn’t launch a bid for a Democratic-held seat, preferring instead to seek…
Migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border
The Guardian reports: For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: “Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings.” The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries. According to Poland, Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, is deliberately provoking a new refugee crisis in Europe by organising the movement of…
Will China really invade Taiwan?
Fred Kaplan writes: In March, Adm. Philip Davidson, the outgoing commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, told a Senate panel that China posed a “manifest” threat of invading Taiwan “in the next six years.” No senior official had ever issued such a specific or urgent warning about the fate of the tiny democratic island 100 miles off of China’s eastern coast. But since Davidson’s testimony, boatloads of military officers, active and retired, have sounded similar alarm bells. Some…
Music: Jimmy Dludlu — ‘Zavala’