Inside Liz Cheney’s plan to take on former president Donald Trump

Inside Liz Cheney’s plan to take on former president Donald Trump

The Washington Post reports: Rep. Liz Cheney lost her House leadership position Wednesday, but she aims to become an even more influential political figure capable of weakening former president Trump’s hold on their party — and continuing to push for his purge. Rather than focusing on whipping votes to save her job as conference chair, the Wyoming Republican has drafted plans for increased travel and media appearances, such as an interview Wednesday on NBC’s “Today Show,” meant to drive home…

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How a small city in Brazil may reveal how fast vaccines can curb Covid

How a small city in Brazil may reveal how fast vaccines can curb Covid

Science News reports: The city of Serrana in Brazil is a living experiment. The picturesque place, surrounded by sugarcane fields, is nestled in the southeast of one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19. By the end of March, daily deaths in Brazil surged to 3,000 on average a day, a high in a pandemic that has claimed more than 405,000 lives there — the second worst death toll of any country in the world behind only the United States….

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Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal

Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal

The Guardian reports: Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed. The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found, and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications. The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the planet….

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It’s time to kick gas

It’s time to kick gas

Bill McKibben writes: We’re used to the idea that CO2—one carbon atom, two oxygen atoms—is a dangerous molecule. Indeed, driving down carbon-dioxide emissions has become the way that many leaders and journalists describe our task. But CH4—one carbon atom combined with four hydrogen atoms, otherwise known as methane—is carbon dioxide’s evil twin. It traps heat roughly eighty times more efficiently than carbon dioxide does, which explains why the fact that it’s spiking in the atmosphere scares scientists so much. Despite…

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The latest Israel-Palestine crisis isn’t a ‘real estate dispute.’ It’s ethnic cleansing

The latest Israel-Palestine crisis isn’t a ‘real estate dispute.’ It’s ethnic cleansing

Hayes Brown writes: As we’re watching what might well turn into a third intifada play out in Jerusalem, images of fires burning among the trees outside the Al-Aqsa mosque and reports of children being injured in a new volley of airstrikes in Gaza, I can’t get a line from the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry out of my head. “Regrettably, the PA” — the Palestinian Authority — “and Palestinian terror groups are presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties, as a…

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‘Civil war’ breaks out in central Israeli city as mayor calls for military

‘Civil war’ breaks out in central Israeli city as mayor calls for military

Agencies report: The mayor of Israel’s Lod city pointed to a “civil war out of control,” Israeli media reported late Tuesday, calling upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send military forces to handle the situation. The central Israeli city witnessed fierce clashes with police after a funeral procession of an Arab Israeli killed by an Israeli settler. Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth reported two Israeli police officers in the city of Lod were injured in the clashes, which also saw a…

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U.S. judge tosses NRA bankruptcy bid, letting New York seek dissolution

U.S. judge tosses NRA bankruptcy bid, letting New York seek dissolution

Reuters reports: A federal judge in Dallas ruled on Tuesday that the National Rifle Association cannot use bankruptcy to reorganize in gun-friendly Texas, dealing a serious blow to the influential gun rights group’s effort to avoid a lawsuit in New York seeking its dissolution. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale said the NRA did not file for Chapter 11 protection in good faith, but rather did so to avoid oversight by New York Attorney General Letitia James and gain an “unfair…

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CDC Covid messaging has persistently lagged behind scientific findings

CDC Covid messaging has persistently lagged behind scientific findings

STAT reports: Nearly a year ago, amid concerns about how to prevent transmission of the virus causing Covid-19, scientists were beginning to conclude that rigorous disinfection of surfaces — say, fogging them or deep-cleaning with bleach — was overkill. Academics were warning that the risk of so-called fomite transmission was wildly overblown. In the fall, research from Israel and Italy found that the virus couldn’t even be cultured from surfaces in hospital infectious disease units. By February of this year,…

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Biden administration approves nation’s first major offshore wind farm

Biden administration approves nation’s first major offshore wind farm

The New York Times reports: Construction on the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is expected to begin this summer, after the Biden administration gave final approval Tuesday to a project it hopes will herald a new era of wind energy across the United States. The Vineyard Wind project calls for up to 84 turbines to be installed in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Together, they could generate about 800 megawatts…

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Efforts to weed out extremists in law enforcement meet resistance

Efforts to weed out extremists in law enforcement meet resistance

The New York Times reports: In the battle to stamp out extremism from the ranks of the police, lawmakers from California to Minnesota have proposed solutions they thought were straightforward. Some laws would empower the police to do more robust background checks of recruits, letting them vet social media to make sure new officers were not members of hate groups. Other laws would make it easier for departments to fire officers with ties to extremists. But legislators working to get…

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Microbes are a missing piece in the biodiversity puzzle

Microbes are a missing piece in the biodiversity puzzle

Ian Morse writes: Scientists are clear: the number of plant and animal species on Earth is declining. The climate crisis, habitat loss, pollution and the illegal wildlife trade are all pushing species toward extinction. Researchers especially worry that losing too much biodiversity could push the earth past a tipping point into irreversible change, and on into a new paradigm in which humanity and other life can’t survive. Which partly explains humanity’s self-interest and urgency in understanding and maintaining global biodiversity….

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Critics urge Biden to step up as violence spreads in Israel

Critics urge Biden to step up as violence spreads in Israel

Politico reports: President Joe Biden and his aides have signaled that they believe stepping back from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to focus on more direct threats to America is in the U.S. national interest. But, as an outcry in Congress and beyond over an escalating, bloody crisis in Jerusalem shows, walking away may not be in Biden’s political interest. Weeks of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians over access to holy sites and the potential eviction of several Palestinian families from east…

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What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too

What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too

B. Michael writes: It’s happening once again, this time in Sheikh Jarrah. Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in West Jerusalem are slated to be evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem too. Why? Because the homes in which they’ve legally resided for 160 years or more were built on land that was once owned by Jews. On the face of it, it is merely a real estate dispute. But in actuality, it is an event that…

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Why Confederate lies live on

Why Confederate lies live on

Clint Smith writes: Most of the people who come to Blandford Cemetery, in Petersburg, Virginia, come for the windows—masterpieces of Tiffany glass in the cemetery’s deconsecrated church. One morning before the pandemic, I took a tour of the church along with two other visitors and our tour guide, Ken. When my eyes adjusted to the hazy darkness inside, I could see that in each window stood a saint, surrounded by dazzling bursts of blues and greens and violets. Below these…

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