Overlapping disasters expose harsh climate reality: The U.S. isn’t ready and it’s only going to get worse

Overlapping disasters expose harsh climate reality: The U.S. isn’t ready and it’s only going to get worse

The New York Times reports: In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly one million people lack electricity and drinking water after a hurricane obliterated power lines. In California, wildfire menaces Lake Tahoe, forcing tens of thousands to flee. In Tennessee, flash floods killed at least 20; hundreds more perished in a heat wave in the Northwest. And in New York City, 7 inches of rain fell in just hours Wednesday, drowning people in their basements. Disasters cascading across the country this summer…

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Another study promoting ivermectin has suspect data

Another study promoting ivermectin has suspect data

BuzzFeed News reports: For anti-vaccine activists, the clinical trial results couldn’t have been better. The drug ivermectin, scientists in Argentina announced last year, prevented 100% of COVID-19 infections. That glowing finding helped spark a craze for the decades-old medication, which is normally used to delouse people and deworm livestock, and drive the perception that it is a silver bullet against the pandemic. “If you take it, you will not get sick,” an ivermectin-boosting physician told a Senate committee in December,…

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‘We don’t have any money’: Suspension of foreign aid plunges Afghanistan into economic turmoil

‘We don’t have any money’: Suspension of foreign aid plunges Afghanistan into economic turmoil

RFE/RL reports: Hundreds of Afghans stand along dusty roadsides in the capital, Kabul, desperately trying to sell their meager possessions. Many offer used pots, plates, and cups that are piled up on bedsheets. Others sell tattered mattresses and old rugs or hope someone will buy their television or refrigerator. “There are no jobs and we don’t have any money,” says Haji Aziz, an unemployed cook who stands by a heap of kitchen utensils for sale along a busy road in…

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Stephen Miller pushed anti-refugee mentality resulting in slow-walking the entry of Afghan allies

Stephen Miller pushed anti-refugee mentality resulting in slow-walking the entry of Afghan allies

CNN reports: Stephen Miller seemed floored by the idea, raised during a fall Cabinet meeting in 2018, of  keeping open the doors for Afghan allies and other Middle East refugees to enter the US.  “What do you guys want?” Miller, then a top adviser to President Donald Trump, asked incredulously, according to one person in the room. “A bunch of Iraqs and ‘Stans across the country?” His words stunned many in the meeting, but they were no accident. Under Miller’s guidance, several…

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Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election, study says

Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election, study says

The Washington Post reports: A new study of user behavior on Facebook around the 2020 election is likely to bolster critics’ long-standing arguments that the company’s algorithms fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources. The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on…

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After 9/11, the FBI turned Islam into the enemy

After 9/11, the FBI turned Islam into the enemy

Janet Reitman writes: By the end of September 2001, [Robert] Mueller told President Bush that Al Qaeda had 331 potential “sleeper” operatives inside the United States. By the following October, intelligence officials were estimating that anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 Al Qaeda terrorists might be hiding within various Muslim communities across the United States. Virtually all of these supposed terrorists turned out to be nonentities — “ghost leads,” as they were called. The U.S. response to terrorism would eventually take…

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There are two real ways to answer the Texas abortion law

There are two real ways to answer the Texas abortion law

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Thinking about a nondecision that never came down via the so-called shadow docket in the middle of the night that allowed the second-largest state in the country to overturn a 50-year-old precedent without the Supreme Court writing a word is a bit like dancing between the raindrops. By doing nothing at all on Wednesday night, the Supreme Court largely evaded top-of-the-fold coverage or glaring headlines even as—for all intents and purposes—abortions after six weeks simply stopped in…

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Risk of breakthrough infections remains very rare, three studies find

Risk of breakthrough infections remains very rare, three studies find

NBC News reports: The Covid-19 vaccines continue to offer strong protection against severe illness and hospitalization, according to research on more than 1 million people published Wednesday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The findings come as the United States prepares to begin offering booster shots to all Americans later this month — a decision driven in part by data federal officials have said indicates the vaccines’ ability to curb infections may be waning. But protection against the most severe forms…

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Trump’s plot to steal Arizona was even wilder than we thought

Trump’s plot to steal Arizona was even wilder than we thought

Vice News reports: For months now, we all thought we knew that the bogus Arizona audit was a clown show. But a new data dump of more than 22,000 emails, texts, and documents show just how wild it really was. On Tuesday the Arizona Senate finally complied with a court order to hand over its private communications with the people involved in running the audit. The massive trove includes communications that suggest former President Trump wanted to fund it, that…

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The race to inherit Trump’s MAGA base is already on

The race to inherit Trump’s MAGA base is already on

Gabriel Sherman writes: On the evening of July 19, several dozen Republican donors gathered for dinner in a private room at the St. Regis Aspen to hear Nikki Haley deliver a speech. The former South Carolina governor had been invited by the Republican Governors Association, which was holding its typically drama-free summer meeting at the exclusive Rocky Mountain resort. It would be a prime platform for Haley to court 27 red-state governors as she lays the groundwork for a future…

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Banned from TV in China: Men who don’t look masculine enough

Banned from TV in China: Men who don’t look masculine enough

The Associated Press reports: China’s government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote “revolutionary culture,” broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality. President Xi Jinping has called for a “national rejuvenation,” with tighter Communist Party control of business, education, culture and religion. Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society. The party has reduced children’s access…

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Research reveals humans ventured out of Africa repeatedly as early as 400,000 years ago to visit Arabia

Research reveals humans ventured out of Africa repeatedly as early as 400,000 years ago to visit Arabia

Eleanor Scerri, Author provided By Julien Louys, Griffith University; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Huw Groucutt, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Michael Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History If you stood in the middle of the Nefud Desert in central Arabia today, you’d be confronted on all sides by enormous sand dunes, some rising more than 100 meters from the desert floor. The few scraggly bushes make poor browse for…

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Up to half of world’s wild tree species could be at risk of extinction

Up to half of world’s wild tree species could be at risk of extinction

The Guardian reports: Between a third and half of the world’s wild tree species are threatened with extinction, posing a risk of wider ecosystem collapse, the most comprehensive global stocktake to date warns. Forest clearance for farming is by far the biggest cause of the die-off, according to the State of the World’s Trees report, which was released on Wednesday along with a call for urgent action to reverse the decline. The five-year, international study found 17,510 species of trees…

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A hidden message in Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech

A hidden message in Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech

Jeff Greenfield writes: Much of the commentary on Biden’s speech today will focus on his defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal strategy — his celebration of the U.S. military’s mass evacuations and whether his promise to get those left behind has the ring of plausibility. But perhaps more significant for American politics is that Biden seems to be embracing a belief now shared across ideological lines: America’s international role has been an exercise in overreach. For more than a decade, in…

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