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.

Powering the 21st century by wind energy

The rotor diameter of offshore turbines in 2030 will reach an average of approximately 240 m and 160 m onshore. For adapting a turbine to the general wind conditions at the site, manufacturers equipped machines of one rotor size with electrical generators of different capacities

The notion of using wind power dates back centuries — Jay Lehr and Jack Keeley note in the Alternative Energy and Shale Gas Encyclopedia that the Egyptians were using wind to transport goods 5,000 years ago. Windmills used by the Babylonians in 700 BCE helped with irrigation, one of the first times they were used to replace human and animal labor. At the turn of the 20th century, windmills were being used to generate electricity locally. The first megawatt-class electrical wind turbine was added to a Vermont utility grid in 1941.

Milky Way’s twisted spiral revealed in 3D

Beatrice could power the future of energy

Supernova’s messy birth casts doubt on reliability of astronomical yardstick

The exploding stars known as type Ia supernovae are so consistently bright that astronomers refer to them as standard candles — beacons that are used to measure vast cosmological distances. But these cosmic mileposts may not be so uniform. A new study finds evidence that the supernovae can arise by two different processes, adding to lingering suspicions that standard candles aren't so standard after all.

1,800 firefighters battle wildfires in central Portugal

In recent years, the country has witnessed some of its deadliest fires on record, with 106 people killed in 2017. 

Concerns have been raised across all levels of society as it emerged that January was one of the worst months on record for domestic violence murders in Portugal.

How it is possible?!

Videos of children showing their exposed buttocks, underwear and genitals are racking up millions of views on YouTube – with the site displaying advertising from major cosmetics and car brands alongside the content.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity tested by star orbiting a black hole

Underwater surface of glacier is melting up to 100 times faster than previously thought

The submarine surface of Alaska’s LeConte glacier could be melting around 100 times faster than previously thought, direct observations have revealed.

Kepler clue to supernova puzzle

BBC Says We Only Have 18 Months To Save The Planet From Climate Change

Humanity has only 18 months left to take decisive political steps to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change, according to a report Wednesday by the BBC.

The Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period and the Little Ice Age are some of the better known excursions from global mean temperatures that have occurred in the last two millennia. 

This paper reviews a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation options that can support increased production, production efficiency and greater food security for 9 billion people by 2050

The 17 Most Bizarre and Completely Outlandish Art Restoration Fails of All Time

Archaeologists Believe They Have Identified the Unlikely Secret Ingredient Used to Build Stonehenge

The modern world had long marveled over the ancient site of Stonehenge, unable to figure out how prehistoric people erected the ring of monolithic standing stones. Now, archaeologists have finally solved the mystery of the Neolithic monument’s construction: the massive slabs may have been moved into place with the aid of lard.

Counting the Panama Papers money: how we reached $1.28 billion

More than $1.28 billion has been clawed back by governments around the world after the Panama Papers investigation in 2016.

Hong Kong outcry after masked thugs launch attack

Video footage showed dozens of men, most in masks, storming a mass transit station in Yuen Long, chasing passengers and beating them with rods. Among those hurt in the attack were demonstrators returning from a large anti-government rally, as well as a pregnant woman and a woman holding an infant, according to witnesses.

At the center of the public's fury is a proposed law that would allow China to extradite people from Hong Kong to the mainland. The bill has come to symbolize growing fear that the region, long-viewed as a separate entity from mainland China, is losing its autonomy under Beijing’s encroaching authoritarianism. They have reason to be concerned.

Marisa Merz, Key Arte Povera Figure and Relentlessly Inventive Sculptor, Is Dead at 93

Building assemblages from materials like unfired clay, tin, lead, and stone, or carefully stitching together wire, fabric, and thread, Merz made rough-hewn art that can look at once tough and precarious, vital and vulnerable. Her sculptures are as multivalent and complicated as people, as life.

Karina Canellakis makes Proms history with stirring First Night

The US musician led the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and BBC Singers in a stirring and dramatic programme culminating in Leos Janáček's utterly unique Glagolitic Mass.

Shooting for the Moon

Fifty years ago, on 20 July 1969, the first humans landed on the surface of another world, when the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down on the Moon. A few hours later, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps onto an alien surface while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the command module.

Two businessmen have become millionaires through a Lithuanian lottery — without buying a single ticket

Antanas Muraska and Donatas Kazlauskas, the two directors of the Olifeja lottery, have diverted millions of euros into their own pockets, according to an investigation by OCCRP‘s Lithuanian member center, 15min.lt.

"Buddhist", "teacher", predator: dark secrets of the Triratna guru

Lingwood encouraged heterosexual followers to experiment with homosexuality as a means of expanding their minds; he was deeply critical of the nuclear family and of mixed-sex communities in general; he encouraged young men to break away from their families.

...

One Triratna retreat, in Norfolk, where Lingwood was resident for much of the 80s, was described by the member as “more reminiscent of a San Francisco gay bath-house than a Buddhist retreat”.

UNODC Warns of Rising Role of Organized Crime in Southeast Asia

study conducted by the UN Office On Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that the methamphetamine market in the region has exploded in size and value, and is now estimated to be worth between roughly US$30 billion and $60 billion. 

Senegal’s Offshore Oil Reserves a Pricey Pawn in Covert Deal

A Romanian-Australian businessman with a history of fraud, corruption, and misleading investors appears to have received at least $650 million from a West African oil and gas deal carried out with the help of well-positioned relatives of two consecutive Senegalese presidents.

Indian/Portuguese names

the high court in Goa overturned a previous ruling, convicting Samson D’Souza of culpable homicide, criminal assault and outraging a woman’s modesty, providing narcotics to a person with knowledge that it could cause serious harm or death, and destruction of evidence.

He was also convicted under the Goa children’s code for not providing a safe environment for a child, according to MacKeown’s lawyer, Vikram Varma. A second man, Placido Carvalho, accused of abetting a crime, had his acquittal upheld

Europeans remember the 1980s

when the United States and Russia quickly built up a combined arsenal of nearly 3,500 nuclear-armed medium-range missiles, all aimed at Europe.

Portugal is the least compliant European country against corruption

Portugal ranks behind Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Belgium, and Croatia, with the Council of Europe criticising the Portuguese State for lacking measures against particularly serious crime.

Moscow braces for renewed protests after opposition politicians excluded from city elections

almost all of the independent candidates standing for election had been told they would not be allowed to run. In contrast, the vast majority of the 216 given the green light were supporters of Vladimir Putin. 

Facebook to be fined $5bn for Cambridge Analytica privacy violations

The (US) Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve fining Facebook roughly $5bn to settle an investigation into the company’s privacy violations

Tajikistan is one of the world’s most repressive countries

at least three occasions, Tajikistani dissidents have met terrible fates while working with Nikolaev — in two cases, very shortly after their last meetings with him. Several prominent members of the diaspora now accuse him of selling them out.

In mid February 2019, raw from torture, weary from sleep deprivation, and more alone than he’d ever been, Sharofiddin Gadoev waited in the dank basement of a government office in Dushanbe, the capital of his native Tajikistan. Just two weeks earlier he’d thought himself safe, well away from the dangerous politics of his homeland, living in the Netherlands and visiting Moscow

The Pentagon Looks to Virtual Reality to Prepare Troops for Nuclear War

In February, Microsoft employees wrote a letter to executives demanding the company pull out of the contract, saying they “refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression.” 

Horrendous crimes are not to be forgotten

Teresa Costa Macedo, a senior government official, said she informed the country's then president, General Ramalho Eanes, and provided photographic evidence. But the photographs were "lost" by police and Mrs Macedo said she was also intimidated by phone calls from anonymous callers

The Casa Pia affair, which has shaken the very foundations of the Portuguese state, finally goes to trial on Thursday. Former presidents have been accused of turning a blind eye to complaints about systematic abuse over more than a decade, while prosecutors have denied that President Jorge Sampaio was under investigation.

Following the shame of the nation’s Casa Pia child sex abuse scandal which involved all manner of previously respected figures and personalities, stories of institutional child abuse are becoming commonplace in Portugal.

Figures released show that more than 36,000 children have been the victims of child abuse and neglect since 2008.

Twilight II

Ursula von der Leyen set for EU's top job

She studied economics at the universities of Göttingen and Münster before attending the London School of Economics where she used the pseudonym Rose Ladson because she was seen as a potential target for West German leftwing extremists.

Von der Leyen then read for a medical degree, becoming a gynaecologist, and only entered politics at 42. A mother of seven, she has held government positions as labour and family affairs minister, driving forward key policies on gender quotas for company boards and improved maternity and paternity pay and rights.

Rampant deforestation of Amazon driven by global greed for meat

Investigation exposes how Brazil’s huge beef sector continues to threaten health of world’s largest rainforest

Journalists Killed or Silenced for Environmental Reporting

OCCRP and Forbidden Stories – a consortium of 40 journalists in 15 countries – takes a look at examples from three continents, in Guatemala, Tanzania, and India.

Farmers must change to feed world up to 2050

Last summer Europe was abnormally hot, with temperatures topping 30°C in the Arctic Circle

Even the unrealistic best-case scenario of 1.5°C of warming by 2100 will see extreme temperatures in many regions and leave disadvantaged populations with food insecurity, lost incomes, and worse health. 

Poem from Princess Nunakawa to Okuninusho

Come in the dark, 

When the sun has disappeared

And the night emerges

Behind the green hills.

Come smiling, like the morning sun

In all its glory,

And take in your embrace

My arms white as 

Ropes of Taku fiber,

My breasts, young and soft,

In 1920, The Hogarth Press, founded by Virginia Woolf and her husband, published Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees

it seems an unlikely coincidence that one of the most striking lines of Paris refers to “The wicked April moon” and that Eliot’s Wasteland should commence in the “cruellest” month of April.

The Tibetan Buddhist Canon

The Tibetan canon is divided into two parts, called the Kangyur and the Tengyur. 

The Poetess

Apart from her fascination with the theme of love, Sappho contributed in other ways to the conventions of the lyric genre. Her emphasis on emotion, on subjective experience, and on the individual marks a stark contrast between her work and the epic, liturgical, or dramatic poetry of the period.

"The stars are sinking; the watch goes by; I lie alone."

Ruth Padel, prizewinning poet and former chair of the UK Poetry Society, chooses her favourite poets who happen to be women.