Iran and China sign 25-year cooperation agreement

Iran and China sign 25-year cooperation agreement

Reuters reports: China and Iran, both subject to U.S. sanctions, signed a 25-year cooperation agreement on Saturday to strengthen their long-standing economic and political alliance. “Relations between the two countries have now reached the level of strategic partnership and China seeks to comprehensively improve relations with Iran,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was quoted by Iran’s state media as telling his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif. “Our relations with Iran will not be affected by the current situation, but will…

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The vast majority of America’s Covid deaths could have been prevented, says Birx

The vast majority of America’s Covid deaths could have been prevented, says Birx

CNN reports: The US may finally be getting a handle on the coronavirus pandemic, but for so many Americans, it’s too late, and that disconnect is raising fresh questions about why the US couldn’t have done more earlier. Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator under the Trump administration, reveals her chilling conclusion in a new CNN documentary that the number of coronavirus deaths could have been “decreased substantially” if cities and states across the…

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A collapse foretold: How Brazil’s Covid-19 outbreak overwhelmed hospitals

A collapse foretold: How Brazil’s Covid-19 outbreak overwhelmed hospitals

The New York Times reports: The patients began arriving at hospitals in Porto Alegre far sicker and younger than before. Funeral homes were experiencing a steady uptick in business, while exhausted doctors and nurses pleaded in February for a lockdown to save lives. But Sebastião Melo, Porto Alegre’s mayor, argued there was a greater imperative. “Put your life on the line so that we can save the economy,” Mr. Melo appealed to his constituents in late February. Now Porto Alegre,…

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Rev. Rick Joyner calls on Christians to arm themselves for civil war. His children would be on the other side

Rev. Rick Joyner calls on Christians to arm themselves for civil war. His children would be on the other side

Nicholas Kristof writes: The Rev. Rick Joyner is a famous evangelical leader who has called on Christians to arm themselves for an inevitable civil war against liberals, whom he suggests are allies of the devil. But this is the awkward part: His five children would be on the other side of that civil war, as he and his kids all acknowledge. Just as America is torn asunder by politics and polarization, so is the Joyner family. The Joyners love each…

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Note to Mitch McConnell: The Senate’s longest filibuster was definitely racist

Note to Mitch McConnell: The Senate’s longest filibuster was definitely racist

Gillian Brockell writes: At his first White House news conference Thursday, President Biden said he agreed with former president Barack Obama that the filibuster is “a relic of the Jim Crow era.” This follows a Tuesday statement by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the filibuster “has no racial history at all. None. There’s no dispute among historians about that.” Actually, there is, and McConnell’s office later walked back that dubious statement, saying the minority leader was referring only…

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The extremists that the Pentagon is trying to keep out of the military

The extremists that the Pentagon is trying to keep out of the military

Politico reports: Flags from the left-wing Antifa movement. Depictions of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon character that’s been misappropriated by racist groups. Iconography from the far-right Proud Boys, including the phrase “stand back and stand by” from former President Donald Trump. They are all signs that extremists could be infiltrating the military, according to internal training materials that offer a more detailed view into the array of radical groups and ideologies the Pentagon is trying to keep out of the…

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Trump helped the GOP raise $2 billion. Now former aides and allies are jockeying to tap into his fundraising power

Trump helped the GOP raise $2 billion. Now former aides and allies are jockeying to tap into his fundraising power

The Washington Post reports: One day before the Republican Party’s elite donors are slated to gather for their April retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., a nonprofit group aligned with onetime aides to former president Donald Trump is hosting an “investors meeting” a few miles away for major GOP contributors. The keynote speaker is Trump himself, and his gilded Mar-a-Lago Club is hosting the event. The group, the Conservative Partnership Institute, now has former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows…

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Syria and the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools

Syria and the ‘anti-imperialism’ of fools

An open letter from a group of Syrian writers and intellectuals and others who stand in solidarity with them, says: Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising ten years ago, and especially since Russia intervened in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, there has been a curious and malign development: the emergence of pro-Assad allegiances in the name of “anti-imperialism” among some who otherwise generally identify as progressive or “left,” and the consequent spread of manipulative disinformation that routinely deflects…

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The ‘green energy’ that poses a climate threat

The ‘green energy’ that poses a climate threat

Michael Grunwald writes: Here’s a multibillion-dollar question that could help determine the fate of the global climate: If a tree falls in a forest—and then it’s driven to a mill, where it’s chopped and chipped and compressed into wood pellets, which are then driven to a port and shipped across the ocean to be burned for electricity in European power plants—does it warm the planet? Most scientists and environmentalists say yes: By definition, clear-cutting trees and combusting their carbon emits…

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A Biden administration strategy: Send in the scientists

A Biden administration strategy: Send in the scientists

The New York Times reports: More than a decade ago, a woman at a bar near the Columbia University campus turned to Gavin Schmidt and asked if he knew the main component of air. “Yes, nitrogen,” he replied. His answer lost her a bet about whether the average stranger at the bar would know anything about atmospheric chemistry. Two years later, they were married. Sometimes the nerds win. Today Dr. Schmidt is one of the most prominent scientists warning the…

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Georgia’s governor signed voting restrictions into law in front of a slave plantation painting

Georgia’s governor signed voting restrictions into law in front of a slave plantation painting

BuzzFeed News reports: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed into law a series of controversial voting restrictions decried by Democrats as “Jim Crow 2.0” — and he did so alongside a group of white men and in front of a painting of a plantation where Black people were once enslaved. In a Twitter thread Friday, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch pointed out that Kemp signed the bill under the image “of a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County, GA.”…

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Elizabeth Warren’s push to diversify federal judges is finally catching on

Elizabeth Warren’s push to diversify federal judges is finally catching on

HuffPost reports: For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships. “We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been…

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Africa’s forest elephants are just a step from extinction

Africa’s forest elephants are just a step from extinction

The New York Times reports: While some African elephants parade across the savanna and thrill tourists on safari, others are more discreet. They stay hidden in the forests, eating fruit. “You feel pretty lucky when you catch sight of them,” said Kathleen Gobush, a Seattle-based conservation biologist and member of the African Elephant Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or I.U.C.N. The threat of extinction has diminished the odds of spotting one of these wood-dwelling elephants…

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The UK professor and the fake Russian agent

The UK professor and the fake Russian agent

A British professor corresponded for months with a man called only “Ivan”, seeking assistance to discredit an organisation that helps bring Syrian war criminals to justice. He also asked “Ivan” to investigate other British academics and journalists. The email exchange, seen by the BBC, reveals how, a decade on from the start of the Syrian conflict, a battle is still being waged in the field of information and misinformation. Chloe Hadjimatheou writes: One chilly December morning there was a ping…

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