Kingdom of Evil

Abdulaziz has claimed in a lawsuit that his communications were probably intercepted by Saudi Arabia – an allegation the kingdom has denied. But Abdulaziz fears his messages to Khashoggi could have given insights to the people who would later kill him.

"Prince Mohammed is emboldened - he has already ousted any threats to his rise, and jailed or murdered critics of his regime without any repercussion,"

The young prince silenced debates inside the kingdom and pursued his critics abroad. The brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was the final stroke in shattering his international reputation, while his decision to pursue a disastrous war in Yemen has embarrassed his western allies, which continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.

But his propaganda abroad and deployment of thinktanks that promote his interests abroad and launder his reputation among a western political elite, ensured that he remained the preferred candidate of Donald 

China is world’s leading jailor of journalists

“For the fourth consecutive year, at least 250 journalists are imprisoned globally as authoritarians like Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi show no signs of letting up on the critical media,” the report read.

The Drums of Cyberwar

Georgia was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that took down media outlets and military command centers. With the government struggling to communicate with its citizens and the outside world, Russia commandeered the airwaves, broadcasting its own version of events. The hackers themselves were freelancers, recruited from social media sites, which gave Russia plausible deniability, making retaliation that much harder. When Russian troops invaded the country about a month later, the hackers had prepared the battleground. It was the first time cyberwarfare was used to initiate an armed conflict,

Amnesty says more than 300 killed in Iran protest crackdown

At least 304 people were killed and thousands more injured during a three-day crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran in mid-November, Amnesty International said Monday.

Tibet has a history dating back over 2,000 years

A good starting point in analyzing the country's status is the period referred to as Tibet's "imperial age," when the entire country was first united under one ruler. There is no serious dispute over the existence of Tibet as an independent state during this period. Even China's own historical records and the treaties Tibet and China concluded during that period refer to Tibet as a strong state with whom China was forced to deal on a footing of equality.

'It Has Been the Same Shit for Years'

Rui Pinto, the face of Football Leaks, has spent the last nine months in prison. For the first time, he is now speaking out about the 147 charges against him and his time spent in pre-trial detention.

Huawei, whose name can be translated as “China is able”, is one of the country’s most important success stories

the five arrests show the extent of Huawei’s “relationships with the government, the police and the courts”. “In China, all three can be manipulated. As long as Huawei says this person has done something, the police will arrest them.”

Christina Ramberg: Hair Candy #2 (1972–73)

Sea of Shadows

When Mexican drug cartels and Chinese traffickers join forces to poach the rare totoaba fish in the Sea of Cortez, their deadly methods threaten to destroy virtually all marine life in the region, including the most elusive and endangered whale species on Earth, the vaquita porpoise.

For the first time in its 150-year history the Vienna State Opera is staging an opera by a woman

Olga Neuwirth says "it feels a little bit strange" to be the first female composer to have a work staged at the Vienna State Opera.

Coronal Features

Jailed physicist released following corruption protest

A Croatian theoretical physicist has been released from prison after he was jailed in August following a two-month sit-in at the science ministry in Zagreb.

Family members and close associates of Mihajlo Perenčević, a wealthy Croatian businessman with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, received millions of dollars from Russia under the guise of fictitious real estate purchases.

“Al-Bab, the Nightmare” / “Jarablus, the Nightmare”

Rape is a crime of war that Syrian rebel groups have largely refrained from committing, but reports of rapes perpetrated by SNA fighters circulate among local Kurds and Kurdish media outlets. Disturbingly, two SNA members, Qassem and Mohsin, confirmed to me the incidence of such cases and could name specific Kurdish and Yazidi women they know who were raped by SNA fighters in Efrîn.

Two more Tibetans arrested from Zachukha for demanding Tibet’s independence

Zaha Hadid Architects Designs Futuristic Transit Hub That Doubles as a Public Bridge

Conductor Mariss Jansons dies aged 76

Born in Rīga into the musical family of conductor Arvīds Jansons and singer Iraīda Jansone, Mariss moved to what was then Leningrad in 1956 with his parents, where his father worked as a conductor at the Leningrad Philharmonic. Mariss Jansons studied violin, piano and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory. 

Every 20 minutes, there is a rape in India

"[Indian] judiciary is interested in regulating women's sexuality and judging them rather than offering them justice," 

Central Tibetan Administration “Tibetans ‘minoritized’ by China face imposition of Mandarin”

“Tibetans are deprived of learning their own language on their own land; Tibetans are deprived of teaching their own language on their own land- if this is not human rights violations then what is.”

440 High Heels Installed on Giant Wall to Honor Female Victims of Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is the crime that causes the highest number of deaths in Portugal

Domestic violence is the crime against people that causes the highest number of deaths in Portugal. It is widely known that the vast majority of domestic violence victims are women,

Four girls are raped every hour in Brazil

In Brazil, four girls under 13 are raped every hour and every two minutes police receive a report of violence against women

What is domestic violence and abuse?

When people think of domestic abuse, they often focus on domestic violence. But domestic abuse includes any attempt by one person in an intimate relationship or marriage to dominate and control the other. 

Women’s Business

When Moaveni asks her subjects why they went to Syria despite reports of cruel punishments and repression of women, they say they didn’t believe what they heard. Nour, the Tunisian, provides some of the most detailed testimony. Suspended from school for wearing a hijab, she is drawn to an extremist mosque and becomes close to young men who seem to respect her and who provide her with a theological justification for ISIS ideology. When the Islamist political party she favors is banned, the obvious answer is to go to Syria, where she and her husband hope they can live by their religious beliefs. To her, “the crucifixions and sex slave markets were the fanciful propaganda of the group’s opponents.” According to Moaveni, Nour regarded the media as the tool of an oppressively secular Tunisian state, while Islamist women in the West filtered out information from news sources that they saw as anti-Muslim—in other words, most media. Like those Americans who discount everything from sources deemed “fake news,” they simply dismissed information that contradicted what they wanted to believe.

Deliberate policy to injure protesters points to responsibility of those in command

The intention of the Chilean security forces is clear: to injure demonstrators in order to discourage protest, even to the extent of using torture and sexual violence against protesters.

The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes

Vija Celmins: ‘I Just Look, and Paint’

Celmins offers artworks with no focal point, no hierarchy, no instruction about this bit being more important than that bit.

Daphne murder: 17 Black owner Yorgen Fenech arrested

17 Black was identified in a leaked e-mail as one of two sources of income for the Panama companies Hearnville and Tillgate, which were set up by Office of the Prime Minister consultants Nexia BT for Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Riccardo Chailly: a conductor should know all the forms of composition

I did study a course of composition in Perugia and then later in Milan – it’s unavoidable that a conductor should know all the forms of composition. But I always had a fascination with the sound of a symphony orchestra, since my youth because of the idea of the magic that can be produced by this enormous human instrument with so many different sources of sound.

There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram

If this depiction of space is correct, then like any computer, there is an inherent limit to the universe’s data storage and processing capacity.

A Letter to Flower and Crown (Parwana Fayyaz)

with a hope that someone will help on the other side,
offering them shelter to rest for the night.
I first heard the story about the women fleeing
and losing their ways in crossing the valleys –

"A black sun rises in the West of me" (Toby Martinez de las Rivas)

city where the lamb lights hís terrible

mercy in to worldis of worldis, forever & ever

& hís government will never fail, for no glory

is allowed but hís glory, no bone

gouvernance but hís bone gouvernance,

no prison camp but hís prison camp,

hís plantations, hís will & techne, hís punishment

beatings, hís censorship, hís textual criticism,

Why Space Radiation Matters

White Phosphorous Use in Northern Syria

The Times of London implied that the OPCW chose not to investigate the use of White Phosphorus (WP) due to political expediency: “The suspicion is that the OPCW’s reluctance to investigate reflects western hesitancy to embarrass a Nato member at a time when relations with Turkey are strained.” 

Lisbon Web Summit shocks with €850 sweater and €780 jumper

People are confused as to why Web Summit, an annual technology conference in Lisbon, is charging hundreds of euros for its clothing.

Scientists create 'artificial leaf' that turns carbon dioxide into fuel

Scientists have created an “artificial leaf” to fight climate change by inexpensively converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into a useful alternative fuel.

Poorly planned Amazon dam project 'poses serious threat to life'

Environmentalists and scientists warned this would devastate one of the world’s most unique biodiversity hotspots. Economists questioned the viability of a scheme paid for with pension funds and tax revenues, but which is designed to run at only 40% of its 11,200MW capacity. Prosecutors involved in the Car Wash corruption investigation found Belo Monte contractors were paid inflated fees in return for kickbacks to political parties.

Ghost Gear

there is one particular type of plastic pollution that is especially deadly because it is specifically designed to catch and kill marine wildlife: Abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, or so-called ‘ghost gear’.

Green Skull (Sherrie Levine)

“New paths for the Church and for the integral Ecology”

women do everything that the priest does, except consecration of the bread and wine. Why not allow them this mission as well?

Student makes history by writing thesis in the Incas’ language

Roxana Quispe Collantes received top marks from Lima’s San Marcos university, the oldest in the Americas, for her study on Peruvian and Latin American literature, which focused on poetry written in Quechua.

Scholars say it is the first time in the university’s 468-year history that a student has written and defended a thesis (answering questions from examiners) entirely in the native language – even though it is the most widely spoken indigenous tongue in South America, used by about 8 million people, half of them in Peru.

Yayoi Kusama with Pumpkin

16 People Have Been Sentenced To Death For The Murder of Nusrat Jahan Rafi

The 16 people sentenced Thursday included the madrasa's principal Siraj Ud Doula, two other teachers, some of Rafi's classmates, and local political leaders from Bangladesh's ruling Awami League party.

Note: more than justice is the world's liberation of a bunch of criminals. Should be applied everywhere.

Ablutions, 1972 (Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Sandra Orgel, Aviva Rahmani)

The Great Biomass Boondoggle

Much of the EU’s forest industry operates under strictures, with the result that, as demand for “energy wood” increased, so has harvesting in less regulated forests, especially in the southern US and Canada. There, the wood-pellet industry has grown exponentially, but it has also expanded in the less scrutinized corners of Europe, such as the boreal bog forests of Estonia and the ancient forests of the Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania, home to the lynx, bears, and wolves of old European folktales. 

What is culture?

Sperm whales are matrilineal, which means that females stay with their mothers, forming groups called social units. These social units are comprised of one or two families and are stable over their entire lives. They travel together, socialize together, forage together and learn from each other. Beyond social units, sperm whale societies are also organized at a higher tier called vocal clans. Vocal clans include thousands of individuals and can be recognized acoustically.

Fascist Spain gives harsh sentences for Catalonia's politicians

"The art world is a cesspool of corruption"

In cold dark matter cosmology

dark matter halos merge under hierarchical growth that results in the merger of the halos’ baryonic counterparts 

“An anthropological rupture"

France’s national academy of medicine called the practice “an anthropological rupture,” using terminology straight out of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of kinship, in which he posited that one of the central human bonds is that between a husband and wife.

A Middle East One Step Closer to Its “1914 Moment”

What is certain is that a series of aerial attacks on oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, both in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and operated by the state oil firm Aramco, shut off around 50 per cent of the kingdom’s oil production. Yemen’s Huthi movement, which has been locked in a war with Yemeni opponents and their Saudi-led backers since 2015, immediately claimed responsibility. The U.S. promptly dismissed Huthi claims as unfounded and pointed the finger at Tehran

Humanity as Homo Faber

Work thus creates a world distinct from anything given in nature, a world distinguished by its durability, its semi-permanence and relative independence from the individual actors and acts which call it into being. Humanity in this mode of its activity Arendt names homo faber; he/she is the builder of walls (both physical and cultural) which divide the human realm from that of nature and provide a stable context (a "common world") of spaces and institutions within which human life can unfold

The International Migration Report 2017

In 2017, two thirds of all international migrants were living in just twenty countries, and half of all international migrants were residing in just ten countries. The largest number of international migrants (49.8 million, or 19% of the global total) reside in the United States. Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Russian Federation host the second, third and fourth largest numbers of migrants worldwide (around 12 million each), followed by the United Kingdom (nearly 9 million).

Satellite images verify that large-scale demolitions have levelled almost half of Yarchen Gar

Following the removal, the 70 nuns were forced back to their native Jomda County, nearly 300 kilometers away. Furthermore, they were detained for two to three months and forced to undergo patriotic re-education. Patriotic re-education is a strategy enforced by the CCP that involves detainees being compelled to praise the People’s Republic of China and denounce Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The Third Pole

Tibet, known as the Third Pole because it holds the third largest store of glacial freshwater, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Glacial melt from the plateau is disrupting water supplies, threatening sustainable livelihoods and putting more than one billion downstream peoples at risk. Since occupying Tibet, China's policies have brought region-wide famine, desertification on the grasslands, acute flooding from clear-cutting Tibet's forests, and environmental destruction through unregulated mining. China's solution is to build more dams, which will deny downstream users a stable supply of water. In turn, China blames Tibet's nomads, not its own policies, for threatening China's precious water resources.

China's "celebrations" on the PRC's 70th birthday can't hide the dark underbelly of its continued occupation of Tibet

the elevation of Xi Jinping and China’s 5th generation leaders in 2012 brought no positive changes in human rights, rather the reverse. During the past two years the Chinese government has been increasingly hostile towards human rights defenders, unleashing a harsh crackdown on civil society, especially in Tibet. In July 2015, these policies resulted in the prison death of prominent Tibetan buddhist leader, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, who had been persecuted and incarcerated for life on trumped up criminal charges

Jessye Norman: born September 15, 1945 – died September 30, 2019

Jessye Norman has died in New York at the age of 74. The soprano was proud of her African-American heritage, while admitting that racism in classical music, and in society in general, was still prevalent. ‘It’s one thing to have a set of laws,’ she said, ‘and quite another to change the hearts and minds of men. That takes longer.’

ASASSN-19bt

Brazil: mutant offspring are the opposite of what researchers intended

Luxembourg Falls Further Behind EU AML Rules As Companies Fail To Disclose Ownership

“We have stringent anti-money laundering rules at EU level, but we need all Member States to implement these rules on the ground. We don’t want any weak point in the EU that criminals could exploit.”

Choices made now are critical for the future of our ocean and cryosphere

Global warming has already reached 1°C above the pre-industrial level, due to past and current greenhouse gas emissions. There is overwhelming evidence that this is resulting in profound consequences for ecosystems and people. The ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe.

While the document makes some striking statements, it is actually relatively conservative with its conclusions – perhaps because it had to be approved by the 195 nations that ratify the IPCC’s reports. Right now, I would expect that sea level rise and ice melt will occur faster than the report predicts. 

Deliberate drowning of Brazil's rainforest is worsening climate change

It isn't just Bolsonaro and the fires. Hydroelectric dams in the Amazon are submerging millions of trees, transforming huge carbon sinks into sources of planet-warming gases 

The forest is often burned to make way for cattle ranches, and much of the meat they produce is sold in other countries – Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter of beef. 

Humans Just Held Another Funeral For a Glacier

Something is killing galaxies

CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

China is now the largest emitter, followed by (in order) the US, EU-28, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, Canada and Mexico. 

Although for humid regions a general increase in annual rainfall is likely, the team found, heavier extreme precipitation events in arid regions do not necessarily imply more rain overall. If arid and semi-arid areas receive the same annual rainfall but with a greater fraction falling in more intense bursts, the consequences could be severe.

Just 11 percent of all museum acquisitions over the past decade have been of work by women

Just 11 percent of all acquisitions and 14 percent of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists. According to a joint investigation by artnet News and In Other Words, a total of 260,470 works of art have entered the museums’ permanent collections since 2008. Only 29,247 were by women.  

the researchers found that as the seniority of awards and positions increased, the proportion of successful women dropped. For example, women received between 38% and 91% of student prizes, but just 13–46% of early-career awards and only 6–32% of late-career awards. 

The “extremity of choice”

making a monument to what he calls the “extremity of choice” faced by the people who jumped. He worked nine months on the larger-than-life bronze he called Tumbling Woman, and as he transformed a woman tumbling on the floor into a woman tumbling through eternity, he succeeded in transfiguring the very local horror of the jumpers into something universal

Miroslava: The Journalist Who Refused to be Complicit

On March 4, 2016, Miroslava Breach and her colleague Patricia Mayorga from Proceso magazine simultaneously published an article claiming that mayoral candidates in eight municipalities (seven from the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI and one more from the National Action Party or PAN) had connections to drug traffickers

Warmer oceans fuel more extreme storms; rising sea levels bolster storm surges and lead to worse floods

Because warm air can hold more moisture, climate change has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, leading to wetter hurricanes that unleash more extreme rainfall.

11 of today’s best women conductors

Some of today’s greatest orchestral leaders are dynamic, inspiring and innovative women

Decade After His Death, Magnitsky Beats Russia in European Court

The European Court ruled on Tuesday that the Russian government violated several articles in the European Convention on Human Rights over the course of its 11-month pre-trial detention and posthumous criminal conviction of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax auditor and government corruption whistleblower, who was found dead on the floor of his small jail cell in northeastern Moscow ten years ago. 

Russia decriminalized certain forms of domestic violence in 2017, a decision that top lawmakers have said was a mistake two years later. Activists say the absence of a domestic violence law leaves women vulnerable to abuse at the hands of their partners, which official estimates say happens to one in five women.


Authorities in the coal-mining Siberian region of Kemerovo have reportedly covered up snow with white paint to hide evidence of soot and ash pollution.

About 10,000 light years away, in the constellation Centaurus, is a planetary nebula called NGC 5307

Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function

We propose that the brain processes stimuli by forming increasingly complex functional cliques and cavities.

Some exoplanets may have greater variety of life than exists on Earth

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, and currently more than 4000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. The nearest know exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.25 light years away. Currently much of the search for life on exoplanets focuses on those in the habitable zone, which is the range of distances from a star where a planet's temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth.

The climate is warming faster than it has in the last 2,000 years

in a supplementary publication in Nature Geoscience, the team shows that there is no evidence that there were uniform warm and cold periods across the globe over the last 2,000 years.

Paavo Berglund, the Finnish conductor who enhanced the structure and spiritual strength of Sibelius's music

Berglund corrected the scores and, where he considered it necessary, was not averse to retouching the orchestration to ensure better balance.

How Assad Played the U.S., Committed Brutal War Crimes, and Won the Syrian Civil War

when Assad dropped sarin gas on a suburb of Damascus the following year, Obama did not send war planes or troops. To this day, U.S. officials who were in charge of formulating the United States’ response to those atrocities are divided over what the course of action should have been.

The Amazon Is Burning at a Record Rate, And The Devastation Can Be Seen From Space

The deforestation is directly linked to fires in the Amazon, since farmers sometimes set the forest ablaze to make room for livestock pastures and crop fields. These purposeful burns can then get out of control.

Nancy Reddin Kienholz has died at 75

Eve Remembering (Toni Morrison)

I tore from a limb fruit that had lost its green.

My hands were warmed by the heat of an apple

Fire red and humming.

Shiva Ahmadi: Carnage

Hypatia

She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for whom such claim can be made. She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans.

Hawaii's Space Telescope Controversy Is Reopening Old Wounds

the TMT group appears committed to making the TMT happen at the Mauna Kea site, despite the unwavering opposition from native Hawaiian activists — and despite the existence of a workable alternative.

The ALMA data show that the disk’s rotation speed rises from 1 million kilometers per hour at its outer edge, about 500 light-years from the black hole, to well over 3 million kilometers per hour near the disk’s center at a distance of just 65 light-years from the black hole.

Lee Krasner: “Desert Moon”

Hanne Darboven: destruction becomes construction

I built up something by having disturbed something: destruction becomes construction. Action interrupts contemplation, as the means of accepting something among many given alternatives, for accepting nothing becomes chaos. A system became necessary: how else could I in a concentrated way find something of interest which lends itself to continuation? My systems are numerical concepts, which work in terms of progressions and/or reductions akin to musical themes with variations. In my work I try to expand and contract as far as possible between limits known and unknown. Generally, I couldn’t talk about limits I know. I only can say at times I feel closer to them, particularly while doing or after having done some conceptual series…. The most simple means for setting down my ideas and conceptions, numbers and words, are paper and pencil. I like the least pretentious and most humble means, for my ideas depend on themselves and not upon material; it is the very nature of ideas to be non-materialistic. Many variations exist in my work. There is consistent flexibility and changeability, evidencing the relentless flux of events.

Hamburg, 1968, as quoted in “Artists on Their Art,” Art International 12, no.4 (20 April 1968): 55

Masked Police Detain Russian Opposition Leader Sobol

Russia’s environmental monitoring agency released data showing that gamma radiation in Severodvinsk had risen up to 16 times the expected levels for a period of two hours following the explosion.

A short-term spike in radiation levels has been recorded after a rocket engine exploded during a test in Russia, regional authorities said.

The botched production of a powerful neutrino source is the most likely cause of a radioactive cloud that enveloped much of Europe in the autumn of 2017.

Police in Moscow detained prominent opposition leader Lyubov Sobol on August 10 following a raid as she prepared to attend a sanctioned opposition rally

Who are the 12 Catalan leaders facing years in prison?

Most of the politicians to stand trial come from two political parties: the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and the centrist Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT).

‘One country, two systems’

Raab spoke to Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, and stressed the need for “meaningful political dialogue and a fully independent investigation into recent events as a way to build trust” in the territory, 

Clashes with police were particularly intense on Sunday night compared with previous days, as riot police fired teargas into a railway station to disperse crowds and were captured on film beating protesters with batons as they fled down an escalator in another station.

Satellite photos show what appear to be armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles belonging to the China’s paramilitary People’s Armed police parked in a sports stadium in the city of Shenzhen, 

Quantum teleportation moves into the third dimension

Saudi Arabia's "justice"

SCC judges are pressured by the government to hand down the strongest sentence possible. In Saudi Arabia this means beheading or even crucifixion. Last year six judges from the SCC were arrested and interrogated when the outcome of cases they presided over did not meet the attorney general’s expectations. In one case, a judge who exonerated the accused was subsequently held under arrest for many months.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince said he bears responsibility for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year by Saudi operatives "because it happened under my watch," according to a PBS documentary

Sunni Muslim militants, including the Taliban and the Islamic State group, have repeatedly targeted Shia Hazara minorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

How China is set to dominate the next Industrial Revolution

Operating in niche markets with limited transparency and often in politically unstable countries, Chinese firms have locked up supplies of these minerals and metals with a combination of state-directed investment and state-backed capital, making long-term strategic plays, sometimes at a loss. 

“Humans kill about 100 million sharks per year and in contrast about five humans are killed by sharks per year”

Healthy oceans need sharks. Their presence maintains the balance of ocean ecosystems because as top predators, they dictate the population numbers of other sea creatures in reef food chains. Without them there’s a fundamental change in the balance.

Microplastics ‘significantly contaminating the air’

Snow captures particles from the air as it falls and samples from ice floes on the ocean between Greenland and Svalbard contained an average of 1,760 microplastic particles per litre, the research found. Even more – 24,600 per litre on average – were found at European locations. 

Chávez Bodyguard Moves out of the Shadows and into the Good Life

even as the Chavista government made a noisy show of condemning capitalism, Aguilera spent his post-government life quietly amassing a fortune. He participated in businesses in Venezuela and abroad that tapped into lucrative government contracts, registered companies in tax havens, opened an account in a Swiss bank, and took frequent trips via chartered jet.

The Bride (Hyman Bloom)

Brazil destroying Amazonia

Energy or no energy, Vale would still need environmental approval to prospect for minerals in the region, whether the electricity costs $0 per megawatt or $150. Electric power doesn't override a mining companies need to get environmental permits to operate.  Nevertheless, an abundance of minerals coupled with government interest in expanding their power supply in those areas is ample enough reason to believe that industrial concerns are more important than environmental ones. To groups like Xingu River Vivo, or Amazon Watch, it is clear which way this debate over Amazon protection is tipping.

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of development.

Leak Reveals How Mauritius Siphons Tax From Poor Nations To Benefit Elites

Geldof’s investment firm won Mauritius government approval to take advantage of obscure international agreements that allow companies to pay rock-bottom tax rates on the island tax haven and less to the desperately poor African nations where the companies do business.