Scientific American
The Ocean Is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn
Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal.
In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says.
It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the dip calls for urgent attention, Oschlies says. Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by a startling 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped more subtly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.
Why Do We Crave Sweets When We’re Stressed?
A brain researcher explains our desire for chocolate and other carbs during tough times.
Although our brain accounts for just 2 percent of our body weight, the organ consumes half of our daily carbohydrate requirements—and glucose is its most important fuel. Under acute stress the brain requires some 12 percent more energy, leading many to reach for sugary snacks.
Carbohydrates provide the body with the quickest source of energy. In fact, in cognitive tests subjects who were stressed performed poorly prior to eating. Their performance, however, went back to normal after consuming food.
The Daily Beast
House Intel Will Call Trump Org Moneyman Allen Weisselberg To Testify
The House Intelligence Committee intends to call the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer to testify, The Daily Beast has learned.
Allen Weisselberg received renewed congressional attention after disgraced Trump fixer Michael Cohen on Wednesday repeatedly mentioned the Trump Org CFO as crucial to various aspects of dubiously legal practices by President Donald Trump, from the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments to potential insurance fraud.
“The committee anticipates bringing in Mr. Weisselberg,” a Democratic committee aide told The Daily Beast.
Russian Trolls’ Lawsuit Against Facebook Hits a Wall
A California judge is tapping the brakes on a lawsuit defending the free speech rights of Russian trolls. U.S. sanctions are preventing the American lawyers behind the suit representing their Russian client in court, the judge says.
Lawyers from two different firms are representing the Federal Agency of News, or FAN, in a suit accusing Facebook of wrongly discriminating against the St. Petersburg-based propagandists, who were banned from the site last April. The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages and an injunction forcing Facebook to reinstate FAN’s accounts.
“In fact, Facebook, while claiming to protect the public from ‘fake news’ is actually engaging in censorship and denying FAN subscribers of access to a legitimate news organization,” the complaint argues.
The Los Angeles Times
Trump says he still trusts Kim, but needed to 'walk away' from a bad nuclear deal
The collapse of … Trump’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un left confusion in its wake Thursday, with each side blaming the other and no clear path forward in the nuclear standoff.
As Trump flew home from Hanoi, site of the abbreviated gathering, a growing outcry erupted in the United States over Trump’s defense of Kim in the 2017 death of American college student Otto Warmbier, whose family said he suffered brutal torture while imprisoned in North Korea.
But despite the president returning empty-handed, Trump’s political allies praised what they called his acumen in walking away rather than accepting a bad deal, and some analysts cited early signs that North Korea still wanted to keep open the lines of communication.
Acting Pentagon chief to certify emergency to help build wall — and win Trump’s favor
It’s an anxious loyalty test for acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, whose future at the Pentagon is anything but certain.
Sometime in the next few days, Shanahan plans to endorse … Trump’s declaration of a national emergency along the southern border, according to people familiar with his thinking. That will free up $3.6 billion in the Pentagon budget for building new sections of border wall and other projects.
It likely will also prove costly to Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who hopes Trump will nominate him as a permanent replacement for former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who quit in December.
In Kamala Harris, a sequel to Ronald Reagan?
In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan was elected the nation’s 40th president. Blondie topped the music charts, the sequel to “Star Wars” packed movie theaters and Kamala Harris was a 16-year-old finishing high school.
Nearly four decades later, Harris is a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, the front-runner in California’s March 3 primary and, as U.S. senator, the state’s most serious White House contender since Reagan entered the Oval Office.
The differences are stark. […]
Together, they bookend 40 years of dramatic political and demographic transformation in their home state. (Along with five more “Star Wars” sequels.) In their own way, Reagan and Harris each embody the California of their time and, more broadly, changes across America.
The Washington Post
Congress says it’s not done with Michael Cohen yet
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen is due back to Capitol Hill next week to continue what has been a dramatic series of public and private hearings, as he apologizes for lying to lawmakers and divulges what he says Trump knew about financial infractions and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Cohen on Thursday spent almost eight hours behind closed doors with members of the House Intelligence Committee. One point of interest was the subject of pardons, according to people familiar with the interview. They were not authorized to disclose their knowledge of the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
While it is not clear what precisely was discussed, Trump’s pardon power — and how he has attempted to wield it — has been an area of interest for lawmakers and investigators exploring obstruction-of-justice allegations involving the president. During his public hearing earlier this week, Cohen said he had never asked for nor would he accept a pardon.
House Democrats explode in recriminations as liberals lash out at moderates
House Democrats exploded in recriminations Thursday over moderates bucking the party, with liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threatening to put those voting with Republicans “on a list” for a primary challenge.
In a closed-door session, a frustrated Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lashed out at about two dozen moderates and pressured them to get on board. “We are either a team or we’re not, and we have to make that decision,” Pelosi said, according to two people present but not authorized to discuss the remarks publicly.
But Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class, upped the ante, admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal activists unseat them in the 2020 election. […]
Triggering the blowup were Wednesday’s votes on a bill to expand federal background checks for gun purchases. Twenty-six moderate Democrats joined Republicans in amending the legislation, adding a provision requiring that ICE be notified if an illegal immigrant seeks to purchase a gun.
The trouble with Kashmir
In 1947, India won independence from Britain, and Pakistan was created in the partition of British India. The partition was a bloody one — at least half a million were killed, and millions more were displaced.
Since that year, the issue of the sovereignty of Kashmir has remained unresolved. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir, but each controls only a part. The two portions are divided mostly by the Line of Control, a heavily militarized unofficial border. India controls the largest portion, known as the state of Jammu and Kashmir, while Pakistan controls what it calls Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. (China, meanwhile, controls Aksai Chin in the east.)
Pulwama is a district in Jammu and Kashmir and the location of the Feb. 14 bombing claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammad that left 40 dead. The airstrike carried out Tuesday by Indian fighter jets was the first time India had sent aircraft across the Line of Control since 1971. Pakistan said that its retaliatory strikes were carried out from its side of the line.
Bloomberg
Russia, China Veto UN Resolution Seeking Venezuela Elections
Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution Thursday calling for a “peaceful political process” leading to free elections in Venezuela.
Nine council members voted in favor, while South Africa joined Russia and China in voting no, and three abstained. To pass, a resolution needs nine votes in support and no vetoes by the five permanent members, which include Russia and China. Both countries back the the authoritarian regime of President Nicolas Maduro.
“If this resolution were to be adopted, it would be the first time in history the Security Council would decide to appoint a president and dismiss another one,” Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzya told the council. He said the U.S. policy is a “smokescreen” for regime change.
America’s Cities Are Running on Software From the ’80s
The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it’s the 1980s is the city assessor’s office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk. City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on a dead programming language and can’t be used with a mouse. Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen. The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses. To put it mildly, the setup “doesn’t reflect business needs now,” says the city’s assessor, Carmen Chu.
San Francisco rarely conjures images of creaky, decades-old technology, but that’s what’s running a key swath of its government, as well as those of cities across the U.S. Politicians can often score relatively easy wins with constituents by borrowing money to pay for new roads and bridges, but the digital equivalents of such infrastructure projects generally don’t draw the same enthusiasm. “Modernizing technology is not a top issue that typically comes to mind when you talk to taxpayers and constituents on the street,” Chu says. It took her office almost four years to secure $36 million for updated assessors’ hardware and software that can, among other things, give priority to cases in which delays may prove costly. The design requirements are due to be finalized this summer.
For local officials throughout the country, the shift from old-school servers to rented cloud storage has made it tougher than ever to fund upgrades. They can budget physical equipment as capital expenses, meaning they could issue bonds to pay for them. But cloud computing is a service, as the people selling it love to say, which means officials have to pay for it with operating funds—the same pool of money that goes toward addressing more tangible demands, such as parks and cops.
This Is What Peak Car Looks Like
After one too many snowstorms, Boston tech executive Larry Kim had had it with shoveling out his car and struggling to find parking. So in 2014 he ditched his Infiniti luxury sedan and began commuting by Uber and Lyft—at an annual cost of as much as $20,000. “I would never go back to owning a car,” says Kim, chief executive officer of MobileMonkey Inc., a Facebook Messenger marketing platform, who says he’s recovered an hour a day by not driving. “Your time is not free, right? Your time is worth more than $20 an hour. So in my case, why not spend $15,000 to $20,000 a year to get all of that time saved?”
The automobile—once both a badge of success and the most convenient conveyance between points A and B—is falling out of favor in cities around the world as ride-hailing and other new transportation options proliferate and concerns over gridlock and pollution spark a reevaluation of privately owned wheels. Auto sales in the U.S., after four record or near-record years, are declining this year, and analysts say they may never again reach those heights. Worldwide, residents are migrating to megacities—expected to be home to two-thirds of the global population by midcentury—where an automobile can be an expensive inconvenience. Young people continue to turn away from cars, with only 26 percent of U.S. 16-year-olds earning a driver’s license in 2017, a rite of passage that almost half that cohort would have obtained just 36 years ago, according to Sivak Applied Research. Likewise, the annual number of 17-year-olds taking driving tests in the U.K. has fallen 28 percent in the past decade.
Reuters
Israeli attorney-general plans to charge Netanyahu in corruption cases
Israel’s attorney-general announced on Thursday he intends to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges, a decision coming just six weeks before a closely contested national election.
It was the first time a serving Israeli prime minister has been put on official notice of planned prosecution, and deepened uncertainty over how Netanyahu, a veteran right-wing leader, will fare against a coalition of upstart centrist rivals.
An actual filing of the charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust would depend on the outcome of a required hearing, the Justice Ministry said. That could take months to complete.
India welcomes Pakistan's return of captured pilot, as powers urge de-escalation
Indian military officials said on Thursday they welcomed Pakistan’s planned return of a captured pilot, but refused to confirm they would de-escalate a conflict between the two nuclear powers.
The pilot, identified as Wing Commander Abhinandan, became the human face of the flare-up over the contested region of Kashmir following the release of videos showing him being captured and later held in custody.
“We are happy our pilot is being released,” said Air Vice Marshal RGK Kapoor, at a joint news conference of India’s three armed forces on Thursday evening.
U.S. wins WTO ruling on Chinese grains; decision may also affect India
The United States won a World Trade Organization ruling on China’s price support for grains, successfully challenging a calculation methodology that is also used by India.
A WTO adjudication panel agreed on Thursday with the U.S. complaint that China had paid farmers too much for wheat, Indica rice and Japonica rice in 2012-2015. A disputed corn subsidy had already expired.
“China’s excessive support limits opportunities for U.S. farmers to export their world-class products to China,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement. “We expect China to quickly come into compliance with its WTO obligations.
Deutsche Welle
NATO steps up naval presence on the Black Sea
Odessa has welcomed the Donald Cook. The US Navy destroyer, which is equipped with a missile defense system and is usually stationed in Spain, is often in the Black Sea these days. In January, it was in Batumi for exercises with the Georgian coast guard. Now it's arrived at the Ukrainian port of Odessa. On February 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met United States Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker on board the ship. Poroshenko described this meeting as "symbolic," and the presence of the destroyer in Odessa as "an important signal to the Kremlin" that "Crimea is Ukrainian," and that "freedom of navigation in the region is assured."
NATO is reinforcing its presence in the Black Sea. Although it's not parading the fact, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is keeping a very close eye on developments. As well as the USS Donald Cook, the Standing NATO Response Force Mine Countermeasures Group 2 (SNMCMG 2), led by the German ship FSG Werra, is also in the region. In January, the landing ship USS Fort McHenry was in the Black Sea, and before that, in December, the British reconnaissance ship HMS Echo was in Odessa.
Nazi-era mass grave discovered on building site in Belarus
The remains of over 700 people have been unearthed at the site of a former Jewish ghetto in Belarus.
Construction workers made the chance discovery when laying down foundations for a new apartment block in the southern city of Brest last month, which led locals to call for an end to building activities.
Soldiers took over the operation, uncovering 730 bodies so far, as well as items such as leather shoes. Unit leader Dmitry Kaminsky said some of the skulls had bullet holes, suggesting the people had been executed by a shot to the back of the head.
EU's Barnier: UK needs to resolve Brexit, not delay
Any delay to the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union "must serve not to put off the problem but to resolve the problem" in the British parliament, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said Thursday.
"Today, above all we need decisions, much more than extra time," he added.
After a meeting with Barnier in Vienna, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he would also like to see Brexit resolved before European elections in May. It would "seem more than absurd" for a country wanting to leave the bloc to be able to vote for its legislature, he said.
The Guardian
Trump ordered officials to give Kushner top-secret security clearance – report
Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff in May to grant his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
Senior administration officials were troubled by the decision, which prompted the then White House chief of staff, John Kelly, to write an internal memo about how he had been ordered to give Kushner the top-secret clearance, according to the report.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald McGahn, also wrote an internal memo outlining concerns raised about Kushner and how McGahn had recommended against the decision.
Trump's interior chief 'violated ethics pledge' by cutting animal protections
Several years before becoming acting US interior secretary, David Bernhardt was a lobbyist for one of California’s largest water districts, where he sought to win more water for farmers, even if it came at the expense of imperiled fish that also needed it.
But despite joining the interior department in 2017, a new complaint alleges, he has continued to pursue policies that favor his old clients. According to the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, he has taken steps to weaken protections for endangered fish, such as the diminutive delta smelt, in California and make more irrigation water available for prominent agricultural interests in the state.
“It is difficult to discern where Mr Bernhardt’s private-sector lobbying activities end and where his public service begins,” the CLC writes in its complaint. “Mr Bernhardt’s participation in these particular matters appears to violate his ethics pledge and, at a minimum, violates his obligation to avoid the appearance that he is using his public office for the private gain of his former lobbying client.”
Explained: the case that could bring down Canada's Justin Trudeau
What is going on in Canada?
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is facing the biggest political scandal of his administration. The affair centres around allegations that his former attorney general, Jody-Wilson Raybould, was improperly pressured by some of his closest advisers to prevent the prosecution of a large Canadian engineering firm over accusations of fraud and bribery. Thus far, the scandal has been politically costly; Gerald Butts, a longtime friend of Trudeau’s, and his closest adviser, resigned two weeks ago. Wilson-Raybould has resigned, too. A handful of polls are showing the scandal is politically unpopular for the governing Liberals – which is worrying for them, given there is a federal election in October.
What is the company accused of?
SNC-Lavalin, based in Montreal, is accused of paying C$48m worth of bribes in Libya to Muammar Gaddafi’s family, in order to secure lucrative contracts. The bribery is alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2011. If found guilty, the company would be barred from bidding on federal projects for a decade. SNC-Lavalin employs nearly 50,000 people worldwide, with 3,400 in Quebec.
Vox
The Senate just confirmed a former coal lobbyist to lead the EPA
The Senate has officially confirmed former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler for the role of EPA administrator, a position he had taken over in an acting capacity following Scott Pruitt’s resignation last July.
Wheeler, who was confirmed for the EPA deputy administrator role in April 2018, appears to be cut from much of the same cloth as his former boss when it comes to rolling back environmental regulations. Here are three key facts to know about the person who will continue overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency…
Wheeler is a former lobbyist who represented Murray Energy, a massive mining company, as one of his chief clients. Murray Energy was among the companies Wheeler listed on his financial disclosures while he was being considered for the deputy administrator position. Others included Xcel Energy and General Mills.
CPAC 2019 reveals a base in thrall to Trump
Some of the conservative movement’s biggest names are gathering this week in National Harbor, Maryland, for the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC... Trump, fresh off his trip to Vietnam to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, will speak. So will Sebastian Gorka, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, and the star of the History Channel show Pawn Stars.
But in 2019, some on the right think that CPAC doesn’t seem to have the same energy in years past. […]
But maybe nothing has really changed. In years past, CPAC was a place where conservatives, even those outside the Republican Party, made their priorities known to the world. And perhaps it still is — if Trump and a very particular brand of Trumpism are those priorities.
NPR News
U.S. Leadership Falls Further Behind China In Global Regard, Gallup Poll Finds
Worldwide approval of U.S. leadership remains low but relatively stable after a dramatic drop during President Trump's first year in office, while China's rating ticked up to its highest in almost a decade, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
The report, which measures how adults in 133 countries feel about the global leadership of the U.S., China, Germany and Russia, shows that U.S. leadership earned a median 31 percent approval rating in 2018, a slight uptick from 30 percent the year before.
Positive international perception of both Chinese and Russian leadership continues to strengthen, according to the report, while Germany, which leads in the rankings, fell just below a 40 percent approval rating for the first time in more than a decade.
Sweden Arrests Suspected Russian Spy
Authorities in Sweden have arrested a person on suspicion of being a Russian agent.
The individual, whose name has not been disclosed, was passing information to Russia since 2017, the Swedish Security Service says. He or she was working in a high-technology sector "on tasks known by our Service to be the type of intelligence sought after by foreign powers," the agency said.
Swedish police officers working with security service agents arrested the suspect on Tuesday evening, in the midst of a meeting in central Stockholm.
The New York Times
André Previn, Whose Music Knew No Boundaries, Dies at 89
André Previn, who blurred the boundaries between jazz, pop and classical music — and between composing, conducting and performing — in an extraordinarily eclectic, award-filled career, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Linda Petrikova.
Mr. Previn wrote or arranged the music for dozens of movies and received four Academy Awards, and was nominated for three Oscars in one year alone — 1961, for the scores for “Elmer Gantry” and “Bells Are Ringing” and the song “Faraway Part of Town” from the comedy “Pepe.”
Ars Technica
Searching for the ships Cortés burned before destroying the Aztecs
In 1519, at the very last moment, the Spanish governor of Cuba revoked the charter of an expedition to Mexico after a fierce argument with its leader. But the defiant Cortés set sail with 11 ships and 300 men anyway, and by July, he had worked his way along the Yucatan coast to Veracruz. There, eager to march inland to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Cortés destroyed 10 of his 11 ships, cutting off his men’s only hope of retreat and leaving them with no option but to head inland.
The expedition ultimately destroyed the Aztec Empire and began the long and often brutal process of colonizing Mexico. Almost no one gave the ships a second thought.
Five hundred years later, underwater archaeologist Roberto E. Junco Sánchez, of Mexico’s National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH), is giving them that second thought. With a team of colleagues, he’s crisscrossing the waters off Villa Rica with magnetometers and side-scan sonar, looking for Cortés’ abandoned ships. The team is scanning the sea floor for traces of metal that may be the remains of 500-year-old ships’ fittings.
PG&E: It’s likely our equipment was “ignition point” for deadly Camp Fire
In a statement on Thursday, California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) told investors that it would take a $10.5 billion charge related to the deadly Camp Fire that burned through Northern California in November of last year.
"Although the cause of the 2018 Camp Fire is still under investigation, based on the information currently known to the company and reported to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and other agencies, the company believes it is probable that its equipment will be determined to be an ignition point of the 2018 Camp Fire," PG&E told investors.
The utility goes on to state that its Caribou-Palermo 115 kilovolt (kV) transmission line deenergized approximately 15 minutes before a PG&E employee observed a fire in the vicinity of a tower on the line. In addition, "a suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an arm" on the tower in question.
The city of Angkor died a slow death
In the early Middle Ages, nearly one out of every thousand people in the world lived in Angkor, the sprawling capital of the Khmer Empire in present-day Cambodia. But by the 1500s, Angkor had been mostly abandoned—its temples, citadels, and complex irrigation network left to overgrowth and ruin. Recent studies have blamed a period of unstable climate in which heavy floods followed lengthy droughts, which broke down the infrastructure that moved water around the massive city.
But it turns out Angkor’s waterworks may have been vulnerable to these changes because there was no one left to maintain and repair them. A new study suggests that Khmer rulers, religious officials, and city administrators had been steadily flowing out of Angkor to other cities for at least a century before the end.