Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

The New York Times reports: Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee…

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Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: The Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said. It is the first major city to be overtaken by the insurgents since they began their sweeping military offensive in May, and it happened just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was also the third provincial capital to be overtaken by Taliban in three days, and a major blow to the Afghan government….

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Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal reports: Taliban fighters seized the capital of northern Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province Saturday, the second such provincial center to fall to the insurgency in two days, as the U.S. Embassy advised American citizens to leave the country immediately. The fall of the city of Sheberghan is particularly important because Jowzjan has long been the traditional stronghold of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the country’s main anti-Taliban leaders who served as Afghanistan’s vice president until…

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9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

NBC News reports: Nearly 1,800 Americans directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are opposing President Joe Biden’s participation in any memorial events this year unless he upholds his pledge to declassify U.S. government evidence that they believe may show a link between Saudi Arabian leaders and the attacks. The victims’ family members, first responders and survivors will release a statement Friday calling on Biden to skip 20th-anniversary events in New York and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the…

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What misspellings reveal about cultural evolution

What misspellings reveal about cultural evolution

Helena Miton writes: Something about me must remind people of a blind 17th-century poet. My last name, Miton, is French, yet people outside of France invariably misspell it as “Milton”—as in the famed English author, John Milton, of the epic poem Paradise Lost. It is not uncommon for people to misspell an unfamiliar name—yet 99 times out of 100 people misspell mine as “Milton.” That is the name that shows up on everything from my university gym card to emails…

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Russia’s vast wildfires could pump a record amount of climate-warming CO2 into the atmosphere

Russia’s vast wildfires could pump a record amount of climate-warming CO2 into the atmosphere

The Wall Street Journal reports: The smoke from the fires in Russia’s northeast is so thick it has blotted out the sun, plunging swaths of the region into darkness during the brief summer. A state of emergency has been declared in the city of Yakutsk, where freezing winter temperatures have given it the reputation of being the coldest constantly inhabited city on the planet. Residents have been told to stay indoors while volunteers and firefighters brave temperatures surpassing 100 degrees…

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The complexity of the biodiversity crisis

The complexity of the biodiversity crisis

Nature reports: Scientists say it’s clear that there’s a biodiversity crisis, but there are many questions about the details. Which species will lose? Will new communities be healthy and desirable? Will the rapidly changing ecosystems be able to deal with climate change? And where should conservation actions be targeted? To find answers, scientists need better data from field sites around the world, collected at regular intervals over long periods of time. Such data don’t exist for much of the world,…

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Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

The Guardian reports: Facebook failed to enforce its own rules to curb an oil and gas industry misinformation campaign over the climate crisis during last year’s presidential election, according to a new analysis released on Thursday. The report, by the London-based thinktank InfluenceMap, identified an increase in advertising on the social media site by ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies aimed at shaping the political debate about policies to address global heating. InfluenceMap said its research shows the fossil-fuel industry has…

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Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Dell Cameron writes: When the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for deceiving its users on privacy, it celebrated the fine as “record-breaking and history-making.” Two years and $200 billion in revenue later, Facebook has found a way to turn lemons into lemonade, deceiving its users once again and using a seemingly powerless FTC to do it. Facebook’s Tuesday night crackdown on research into the dangerous falsehoods perpetuated by its platform was predicated on the lie that the FTC…

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For GOP, passage of infrastructure bill could signal Trump’s diminishing influence

For GOP, passage of infrastructure bill could signal Trump’s diminishing influence

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump tried mightily to kill the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, hurling the kind of insult-laden statements and threats of primary challenges that for years sent a chill down Republican spines. But the reaction inside the Senate, where many members of his party once cowered from Mr. Trump’s angry tweets and calculated their votes to avoid his wrath, was mostly yawns. Now, the legislation appears on a glide path to pass the Senate with…

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Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

Trump’s repeat-donations ploy led to millions in refunds into 2021

The New York Times reports: The aggressive fund-raising tactics that former President Donald J. Trump deployed late in last year’s presidential campaign have continued to spur an avalanche of refunds into 2021, with Mr. Trump, the Republican Party and their shared accounts returning $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year, newly released federal records show. The refunds were some of the biggest outlays that Mr. Trump made in 2021 as he has built up his…

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Tucker Carlson paying homage to Viktor Orbán

Tucker Carlson paying homage to Viktor Orbán

Anne Applebaum writes: Orbán’s visitors serve the same end as Stalin’s. Soviet leaders wanted to prove to their compatriots that their system is better than Western democracy, and to provide an answer to foreign criticism. Orbán’s purpose is identical. When Carlson—or Rod Dreher, Christopher Caldwell, or any of the other American commentators who have made their pilgrimage to Budapest—sings the Hungarian leader’s praises, that helps bolster Orbán’s image at home. It also gives him ammunition against the growing chorus of…

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Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

The Guardian reports: Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown. Such an event would have catastrophic consequences…

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Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

Alarmed Louisiana residents turn to vaccines in ‘darkest days’ of pandemic

The New York Times reports: Officials in Louisiana have been willing to try just about anything to jolt the state’s lagging Covid-19 vaccination rates, from a $1 million cash giveaway to a public service announcement featuring the recent 14-year-old national spelling bee champion. But when Madeline LeBlanc relented and got her first vaccine dose this week, she was motivated by something entirely different: fear. After seeing news reports about the Delta variant raging across the state, Ms. LeBlanc, 24, had…

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