Articles by The Washington Post
We found 182 results.
The Money War: How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe
Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2024
25 Jul 2024 – The US imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country, targeting a third of all nations with financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. Sanctions have emerged as the key instrument of U.S. foreign policy.
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Palestinian Paramedics Said Israel Gave Them Safe Passage to Save a 6-Year-Old Girl in Gaza. They Were All Killed.
Meg Kelly, et al. | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2024
16 Apr 2024 -For 3½ long hours on Jan. 29, the cellphone in 6-year-old Hind Rajab’s hands was the closest thing she had to a lifeline. Alone in the back seat of a car outside a Gaza City gas station, she was drifting in and out of consciousness. Paramedics were on their way, the dispatchers kept telling her: Hold on. The paramedics were driving to their deaths.
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Bayer Ordered to Pay $2.25 Billion after Jury Links Herbicide Roundup to Cancer
Frances Vinall | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Feb 2024
27 Jan 2024 – A jury handed down the verdict, including $2 billion in punitive damages, against agrochemical giant Monsanto-Bayer, to a man who developed cancer from the company’s weed killer, Roundup.
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In the West Bank, I Saw How Peace Will Require Confrontation with Israel
David Ignatius | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jan 2024
16 Dec 2023 – For three days this past week, I traveled the West Bank from Hebron in the south to Nablus in the north. What I saw was a pattern of Israeli abuse that makes daily life a humiliation for many Palestinians — and could obstruct the peaceful future that Israelis and Palestinians both say they want.
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Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Dies at 92
Harrison Smith and Patricia Sullivan | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jun 2023
16 Jun 2023 – Leaker of the top-secret history of the Vietnam War that enraged the Nixon administration–serving as the catalyst for White House-directed burglaries and “dirty tricks” that snowballed into the Watergate scandal–died today in California. He was 92. Rest in Peace Daniel Ellsberg.
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To Meet EV Demand, Industry Turns to Technology Long Deemed Hazardous
Rebecca Tan, Dera Menra Sijabat and Joshua Irwandi | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 May 2023
10 May 2023 – Indonesia is richly endowed with nickel, but refining this crucial mineral poses a daunting environmental challenge.
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The Scale of El Salvador’s New Prison Is Difficult to Comprehend
León Krauze | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Mar 2023
26 Feb 2023 – Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, unveiled his latest project: a massive, “first-world” prison, the largest penitentiary in the world, with a capacity for 40,000 inmates.
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Barbara Walters (25 Sep 1929 – 30 Dec 2022), TV’s Tireless Pursuer of the Newsmaker ‘Get,’ Dies at 93
Laurence I. Barrett | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jan 2023
30 Dec 2022 – Wielding a bemused and intimate style, she became one of television’s premier interrogators of the newsworthy.
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‘Zombie’ Viruses Are Thawing in Melting Permafrost Because of Climate Change
Michael Birnbaum and Ellen Francis | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Dec 2022
2 Dec 2022 – Ancient viruses are locked in Russia’s permafrost. We may soon get a peek.
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What Do North Americans Care About? Not a Cold War with Russia and China
Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2022
20 Sep 2022 – US Citizens’ top security concerns include safety at home and protecting jobs. The US Congress is about to add tens of billions of dollars to the military budget.
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The Amazon Undone: Deforesters Are Plundering the Amazon and Brazil Is Letting Them Get away with It
Terrence McCoy | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Sep 2022
30 Aug 2022 – A Failure of Enforcement: series revealing how crime, corruption and greed are speeding the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest.
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We Need a Real Debate about the Ukraine War
Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2022
24 May 2022 – Bringing the war in Ukraine to an end will demand new thinking and challenges to the orthodoxies of this time.
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Ice Shelf Bigger than New York City Breaks Off Eastern Antarctica
Jason Samenow | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2022
26 Mar 2022 – The first major shelf to collapse in more than four decades of satellite observations. The Conger Ice Shelf, spanning about 460 square miles, shattered off the continent on March 15. Its disintegration has alarmed scientists, who have long considered ice in eastern Antarctica as relatively stable.
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The Amazon, Undone: Death in the Forest
Terrence McCoy | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2022
17 Mar 2022 – The groups, which dominate this stretch of the forest, had unleashed a wave of fire and destruction that was transforming much of southern Amazonas state into smoldering pastureland. The way they solve problems is with violence.
→ read full articleThe Exit from the Ukraine Crisis That’s Hiding in Plain Sight
Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2022
1 Feb 2022 – Is there any way out of this exceedingly dangerous crisis? Perhaps the only hope is the Minsk II agreement, forged in February 2015 between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by Germany and France, and endorsed by the European Union and the United Nations. The agreement essentially called for a recognition of reality in law.
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‘Hate Crime’ Attacks by Israeli Settlers on Palestinians Spike in the West Bank
Steve Hendrix | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Dec 2021
29 Nov 2021 – Israeli settlers have dramatically increased their attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank over recent months, with violent incidents up about 150 percent in the past two years, according to data presented by the Israeli military at a defense ministry meeting this month.
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Who Has the Most Delegates at the COP26 Summit? The Fossil Fuel Industry
Karla Adam and Harry Stevens | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
8 Nov 2021 – But while top oil executives are feeling unwelcome, many in the industry are in Glasgow to talk about carbon trading.
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A Dog’s Life
Gene Weingarten | The Washington Post Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Nov 2021
8 Nov 2021 – Why are so many people so cruel to their dogs? My search to understand a hidden scourge.
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Huge Hack Reveals Embarrassing Details of Who’s Behind Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Websites
Drew Harwell, Craig Timberg and Hannah Allam | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Sep 2021
21 Sep 2021 – Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years.
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UN Chief: World Is at `Pivotal Moment’ and Must Avert Crises
Edith M. Lederer | The Washington Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Sep 2021
12 Sep 2021 – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dire warning that the world is moving in the wrong direction and faces “a pivotal moment” where continuing business as usual could lead to a breakdown of global order and a future of perpetual crisis. The U.N. chief said the world’s nations and people must reverse today’s dangerous trends and choose “the breakthrough scenario.”
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Facebook Silences the People Who Know Its Operations Best
Yael Eisenstat | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2021
3 Aug 2021 – Tech giants use nondisparagement clauses to keep former employees from discussing the companies.
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USA: More Than a Year into the Pandemic, We’re Still Figuring out What Risks We’re Willing to Take
Joel Achenbach | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 May 2021
3 May 2021 – Risk analysis is not something humans are necessarily good at. We rely on anecdotes more than scientific data. The questions we ask rarely have a simple yes or no answer. Risk tends to be on a sliding scale. Outside of self-isolation, there is no obvious way to drive the risk of viral transmission to zero, nor is risky behavior guaranteed to result in a dire outcome. We have no choice but to live probabilistically.
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Ramsey Clark, Attorney General Who Became a Critic of U.S. Policies, Dies at 93
Emma Brown | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Apr 2021
Ramsey Clark, the U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson who redefined himself as a relentless critic of American foreign policy and as a courtroom defender of figures such as former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, died April 9 at his home in New York City. He was 93.
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Our Four Nations Are Committed to a Free, Open, Secure and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region
Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Scott Morrison and Yoshihide Suga | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Mar 2021
13 Mar 2021 – Joe Biden is president of the United States. Narendra Modi is prime minister of India. Scott Morrison is prime minister of Australia. Yoshihide Suga is prime minister of Japan.
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Trump’s Deal on Morocco’s Western Sahara Annexation Risks More Global Conflict
Stephen Zunes | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2021
15 Dec 2021 – Last week, President Trump formally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara as part of a deal to get Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed an act of self-determination. This is why no country had formally recognized Morocco’s takeover — until now.
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Three Years since Their Genocide Began, the Rohingya Remain Desperate for Help
Editorial Board | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Sep 2020
13 Aug 2020 – The Rohingya Muslims three years after 750,000 of them were terrorized and torched out of their homes by Myanmar’s security forces and forced into miserable camps in Bangladesh. Using the word ‘genocide’ won’t bring the Rohingya home. But it will serve as a reminder to [Nobel Peace laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi – and to the world – of what happened.
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Scientists Urge WHO to Address Airborne Spread of Coronavirus
James McAuley and Emily Rauhala | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2020
6 Jul 2020 – In a forthcoming paper titled “It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Covid-19,” 239 scientists from over 30 countries are urging the World Health Organization to take more seriously the possibility of the airborne spread of the novel coronavirus. They cite growing evidence that the virus can spread indoors through aerosols that linger in the air.
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This Coronavirus Mutation Has Taken Over the World. Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why.
Sarah Kaplan and Joel Achenbach | The Washington Post - Reader Supported News,
6 Jul 2020
29 Jun 2020 – The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.
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Hottest Arctic Temperature Record Probably Set with 100-Degree Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) Reading in Siberia
Andrew Freedman | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jun 2020
23 June 2020 – Record-Shattering Reading Continues Siberia’s Hot Streak, Foreshadows More Heat Elsewhere – A northeastern Siberian town is likely to have set a record for the highest temperature documented in the Arctic Circle, with a reading of 100.4 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded Saturday in Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle and about 3,000 miles east of Moscow.
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Are Asymptomatic People Spreading the Coronavirus? A WHO Official’s Words Spark Confusion, Debate
William Wan and Miriam Berger | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2020
9 Jun 2020 -The World Health Organization moved Today to clarify its position on whether people without symptoms are widely spreading the new coronavirus, saying much remains unknown about asymptomatic transmission. A comment by a WHO official yesterday — calling such asymptomatic transmissions “very rare” — touched off a furious scientific debate over the unresolved question and attracted widespread criticism of the organization.
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The Real Scandal Isn’t What China Did to Us — It’s What We Did to Ourselves
Fareed Zakaria | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 May 2020
7 May 2020 – The Trump administration is trying to whip the country into an anti-Chinese frenzy because the novel coronavirus might have been accidentally transmitted from a laboratory rather than a wet market. The real scandal is not what China did to us, but what we together are doing to the planet — and what only we together can stop.
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Read the Services Agreement between the Venezuelan Opposition and Silvercorp against Maduro
The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 May 2020
7 May 2020 – This document was provided by Venezuelan opposition officials on the condition that one of the attachments be redacted.
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Edward Snowden: Trump Has Created a Global Playbook to Attack Those Revealing Uncomfortable Truths
Edward Snowden – The Washington Post,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – On Tuesday [21 Jan], Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government. The public importance of these stories was staggering… The most essential journalism of every era is precisely that which a government attempts to silence. These prosecutions demonstrate that they are ready to stop the presses — if they can.
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Why Myanmar’s Genocide Denial Will Come Back to Haunt It
Maung Zarni | Free Rohingya Coalition/The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
17 Jan 2020 – As the International Criminal Court proceeds with its own separate investigation into Myanmar’s crimes against the Rohingya, it is imperative that the prosecutor name Aung San Suu Kyi, along with the generals, as partners in crime. The international community must stand firm in holding her to account.
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The Afghanistan Papers–>A Secret History of the War: At War with the Truth
Craig Whitlock – The Washington Post,
16 Dec 2019
9 Dec 2019 – U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found. A confidential trove of government documents reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.
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The World Bank Is Rewarding Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar
Azeem Ibrahim – The Washington Post,
3 Jun 2019
30 May 2019 – This month, the World Bank published a proposal for a $100 million development project in Rakhine state, the region of western Myanmar that recently saw the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim community. This funding project also attaches no conditions on Myanmar. To spell it out: The World Bank is funding a state that has carried out ethnic cleansing in just the past 24 months, with no strings attached.
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The U.S. Put Nuclear Waste under a Dome on a Pacific Island–Now It’s Cracking Open
Kyle Swenson – The Washington Post,
27 May 2019
20 May 2019 – Radioactive material was transported to Runit Island, where a 328-foot crater remained from a May 1958 test explosion. Locals took to calling it “The Tomb.” In 1980, a massive concrete dome — 18 inches thick and shaped like a flying saucer — was placed over the fallout debris. Although the $218 million project was supposed to be temporary, no further plans were hatched. Cracks have reportedly started to appear in the dome. Part of the threat is that the crater was never properly lined, meaning that rising seawater could breach the structural integrity.
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WikiLeaks’ Assange Arrested in London, Accused by U.S. of Conspiring in 2010 Computer Hacking Attempt
William Booth, Ellen Nakashima, James McAuley and Matt Zapotosky - The Washington Post,
15 Apr 2019
11 April 2019 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadoran Embassy here today and arrested on a U.S. hacking charge — maneuvers that initiated a potentially years-long legal battle over his extradition and reignited debates about press freedom.
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Enough Is Enough – End the War in Yemen
Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace Laureate – The Washington Post,
26 Nov 2018
21 Nov 2018 – Today, the Yemeni people are suffering from the actions of outsiders. Regional powers have turned the country into an arena for proxy conflicts that have little to do with the actual interests of the Yemeni nation. Large parts of the country have been devastated, including much of its vital infrastructure. Millions are threatened by starvation and disease.
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Facebook Must Do More to Prevent 21st-Century Genocide
Editorial Board – The Washington Post,
5 Nov 2018
28 Oct 201 – In Myanmar, Facebook is more than a website. For many residents, it is the entire Internet. So when the nation’s military used the site as a conduit for a campaign against Muslims, there were no guardrails to stop the hatred from spreading — except the company itself. The grim reality on the ground in Myanmar, from which more than 700,000 members of the Rohingya minority have now fled, shows Facebook failed.
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U.S. Militia Groups Head to Border, Stirred by Trump’s Call to Arms
Mary Lee Grant and Nick Miroff - The Washington Post,
5 Nov 2018
3 Nov 2018 — Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.
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Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab World Needs Most Is Free Expression
Jamal Khashoggi – The Washington Post,
22 Oct 2018
17 Oct 2018 – A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor: I received this column the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for.
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The World Decries Myanmar’s Rohingya Abuses – Myanmar’s Reply: Denial, Defiance and Propaganda
Shibani Mahtani – The Washington Post,
15 Oct 2018
9 Oct 2018 — The Myanmar government and military has held firm to the explanation that their operation in Rakhine state was provoked by Rohingya militant attacks on police posts, but reports from both the United Nations and State Department indicate a degree of premeditation and coordination.
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Map: The Risk of Genocide around the World
Ishaan Tharoor – The Washington Post,
24 Sep 2018
The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide launched a tool aimed at forecasting the risk of state-led mass killings. The Early Warning Project tracks the apparent signs of a potential pogrom or assault on minorities within a state.
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Mark Zuckerberg: Protecting Democracy Is an Arms Race – Here’s How Facebook Can Help
Mark Zuckerberg – The Washington Post,
10 Sep 2018
4 Sep 2018 – As we’ve seen from previous elections, misinformation is a real challenge. A big part of the solution is getting rid of fake accounts. And where posts are flagged as potentially false, we pass them to independent fact-checkers — such as the Associated Press and the Weekly Standard — to review. We look proactively for potentially harmful election-related content, such as pages registered to a foreign entity that post divisive content to sow mistrust and drive people apart.
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Judges Rule ICC Has Jurisdiction over Rohingya Deportations
Mike Corder | AP – The Washington Post,
10 Sep 2018
6 Sep 2018 — Judges at the International Criminal Court ruled today that the court has jurisdiction to investigate Myanmar forces that have driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from their homes. The decision opens up the possibility of Myanmar being prosecuted at the Hague-based court even without being a member.
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Pence Details Plan for Creation of Space Force in What Would Be the Sixth Branch of the Military
Christian Davenport and Dan Lamothe - The Washington Post,
13 Aug 2018
9 Aug 2018 – Vice President Pence laid out an ambitious plan today to create a military command dedicated to space and establish a “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the U.S. military as soon as 2020. Pence warned of the advancements that potential adversaries are making and issued what amounted to a call to arms to preserve the military’s dominance in space.
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Contentious Nation-State Law Declaring Israel the Jewish Homeland Approved by Lawmakers
Ruth Eglash – The Washington Post,
23 Jul 2018
19 Jul 2018 — Legislation declaring Israel a national homeland for the Jewish people and putting a priority on Jewish-only communities was voted into law today. The laws could have far-reaching implications for Israel’s non-Jewish minority, weakening the rights of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and delegitimizing those in Israel who defend them.
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These Whales Will Be Extinct in 25 Years, Scientists Say — Unless We Act Now to Save Them
Sarah Kaplan – The Washington Post,
23 Apr 2018
20 Apr 2018 — A century ago, humans had slaughtered nearly every right whale in the Atlantic. Now climate change seems to be shifting the animals’ food source. Their habitat has been polluted with sewage and made noisy by construction and seismic tests. Speeding ships and tangles of hard-to-break fishing rope pose deadly threats.
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Too Many Are Looking Away from Burma’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign
Editorial – The Washington Post,
16 Apr 2018
7 Apr 2018 – The situation is deteriorating. Burma has been razing the Rohingya villages, leaving the population stranded in Bangladesh. The coming monsoon season threatens the displaced Rohingya with even more misery in refugee camps. The question must be asked of everyone concerned: What did you do when faced with the horrors of ethnic cleansing in 2018? Too many are looking away.
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Plastic within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is ‘Increasing Exponentially,’ Scientists Find
Chris Mooney – The Washington Post,
2 Apr 2018
22 Mar 2018 – Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported today. The amount of plastic found in this area, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is “increasing exponentially.”
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Africa’s Big New Free Trade Agreement, Explained
Landry Signé – The Washington Post,
2 Apr 2018
29 Mar 2018 – There is a new global trade player, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). On 21 March, 44 African heads of state met in Rwanda to sign the framework of this initiative of the African Union. What is the AfCFTA and how did it come about?
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North Korea’s List of U.S. Human Rights Abuses Includes Inequality, Racism and Marijuana Use
Adam Taylor – The Washington Post,
5 Feb 2018
31 Jan 2018 – Shortly before President Trump used his State of the Union speech to criticize North Korean human rights abuses, Pyongyang released its own criticism of the United States as a “gross violator of human rights.” A summary of a report titled “White Paper on Human Rights Violations in the U.S. in 2017″ was released by the Korean Central News Agency today.
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In 2017, the World Let another ‘Genocide’ Unfold
Ishaan Tharoor | The Washington Post – Chicago Tribune,
25 Dec 2017
18 Dec 2017 – The volume of utterly horrifying stories emerging from Myanmar can feel overwhelming. Since late August, more than 626,000 ethnic Rohingya have fled a systematic campaign of attacks by the Burmese military and local militias— the most rapid exodus of a community since the Rwandan genocide.
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In 2017, No One Has Fallen Further Than [Nobel Peace Laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi
Christian Caryl – The Washington Post,
25 Dec 2017
20 Dec 2017 – Commentators have faulted her for her silence on what many are calling a deliberate act of genocide. But that’s not quite right. She has actively defended the military’s actions, writing off eyewitness accounts of its crimes — in a chillingly Trumpian flourish — as “fake news. Last month she rejected foreign criticism of the army’s actions by saying that “no one can fully understand the situation of our country the way we do.”
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Supreme Court Allows Full Enforcement of Trump Travel Ban while Legal Challenges Continue
Robert Barnes – The Washington Post,
11 Dec 2017
4 Dec 2017 – The Supreme Court today granted President Trump’s request to fully enforce his revised order banning travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.
→ read full articleOne of the World’s Poorest Countries Confronts Ethnic Cleansing on Its Doorstep
Omar Waraich – The Washington Post,
13 Nov 2017
6 Nov 2017 — Over the past two months, more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed the border from Burma, also known as Myanmar, to seek shelter in Bangladesh. Not since the Rwandan genocide has a humanitarian crisis unfolded so fast and on such a scale. If one counts the hundreds of thousands who were already based here, driven out by earlier waves of violence in Rakhine state, there are now more than a million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
→ read full articleSee It, Say It: Climate Change
Editorial Board - The Washington Post,
23 Oct 2017
14 Oct 2017 – No single fire can be specifically linked to climate change, and certainly other factors, such as increased development or logging and grazing activities, are involved. But scientists say there is a clear connection between global warming and the increase in recent years in the severity and frequency of wildfires in the West.
→ read full articleMikhail Gorbachev: My Plea to the Presidents of Russia and the United States
Mikhail Gorbachev – The Washington Post,
16 Oct 2017
11 Oct 2017 – I am making an appeal to the presidents of Russia and the United States. Relations between the two nations are in a severe crisis. A way out must be sought, and there is one well-tested means available for accomplishing this: a dialogue based on mutual respect.
→ read full articleUnder Siege in Their Villages, Rohingya Still In Burma Say They’re Trapped
Max Bearak – The Washington Post,
9 Oct 2017
2 Oct 2017 — Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s de facto leader, recently claimed that an unprecedented exodus of half a million Rohingya Muslims from her country in just five weeks “has quieted down” and that people are “carrying on as normal.” But there is another way to assess the ground reality for Rohingya in Burma: calling them on their cellphones. Testimony gathered last week from more than a dozen such conversations suggests that Burma’s leaders are either misinformed about events in Rakhine or intentionally misrepresenting them.
→ read full articleJimmy Carter: What I’ve Learned from North Korea’s Leaders
Pres. Jimmy Carter – The Washington post,
9 Oct 2017
4 Oct 2017 – Over more than 20 years, I have spent many hours in discussions with top North Korean officials and private citizens during visits to Pyongyang and to the countryside. I found Kim Il Sung, Kim Yong Nam and other leaders to be both completely rational and dedicated to the preservation of their regime… The next step should be for the USA to offer to send a high-level delegation to Pyongyang for peace talks or to support an international conference including North and South Korea, the United States and China, at a mutually acceptable site.
→ read full articleBurma Covers Up Its Systematic Abuse of the Rohingya Minority Group
Editorial Board - The Washington Post,
21 Aug 2017
It is becoming increasingly clear that Burma’s partially democratic government bears many similarities to its autocratic predecessor: It is overly sensitive to criticism, repressive toward minorities and willing to go to great lengths to protect the military.
→ read full articleThis Palestinian Village Had Solar Power — Until Israeli Soldiers Took It Away
Anne-Marie O'Connor – The Washington Post,
17 Jul 2017
7 Jul 2017 — The residents of this dirt-poor Palestinian village waited decades for electricity. But in November, a Dutch-funded solar project finally gave them round-the-clock power. That ended last week when Israeli military sent soldiers with assault rifles and a team of workers to shut down the $400,000 project, ripping out its electrical components and driving away with 96 solar panels.
→ read full articleThe NRA Recruitment Video That Is Even Upsetting Gun Owners
Peter Holley – The Washington Post,
3 Jul 2017
29 Jun 2017 – It may sound like an excerpt from North Korean state television railing against the evil Americans and their corrupt democracy on the far side of the Pacific. But these are the opening lines of a new recruitment video by the National Rifle Association of America that is headlined by conservative television host Dana Loesch.
→ read full articleNo One Is Paying Attention to the Worst Humanitarian Crisis since World War II
Jackson Diehl – The Washington Post,
3 Jul 2017
It’s shocking that so little heed is being paid to what the United Nations says is the worst humanitarian crisis since 1945: the danger that about 20 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria will suffer famine in the coming months, and that hundreds of thousands of children will starve to death. Not heard of this? That’s the problem.
→ read full articleWhy International Justice Still Faces Roadblocks
Richard Dicker – The Washington Post,
26 Jun 2017
22 Jun 2017 – The prospects for justice for crimes against humanity and war crimes are more daunting today than at any time in the past two decades. The Rome Statute’s upcoming 20th anniversary – July 17, 2018 — may provide just such a rallying point. The ICC’s founding document, while imperfect, represents a major historical achievement when impunity, and not accountability, has for too long been the norm.
→ read full articleMeet the Militant Monk Spreading Islamophobia in India
Nilanjana Bhowmick – The Washington Post,
27 Mar 2017
On Monday [20 Mar], Amnesty International released an unusual statement asking the new chief minister of India’s largest state to publicly retract his anti-Muslim statements. Amnesty’s statement came after hard-line Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath took power last week in Uttar Pradesh, a state with a population of 200 million. (For reference, Brazil’s population is 200.4 million).
→ read full articleTom Hayden, Preeminent 1960s Political Radical and Antiwar Protester, Dies at 76
Elaine Woo – The Washington Post,
31 Oct 2016
Tom Hayden, the preeminent 1960s radical who roused a generation of alienated young Americans, became a symbol of militancy by leading riotous protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and added Hollywood glamour to his mystique with an activist partnership and marriage to film star Jane Fonda, died Oct. 23 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 76.
→ read full articleThe Improbable Story of the Man Who Won History’s ‘Biggest Murder Trial’ at Nuremberg
Karen Heller – The Washington Post,
5 Sep 2016
The last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor still longs for a peaceful world. Ben Ferencz, 96, pops a cough drop into his mouth, “to loosen my ancient throat.” Where to begin his improbable story?
→ read full articlePowerful NSA Hacking Tools Have Been Revealed Online
Ellen Nakashima – The Washington Post,
22 Aug 2016
16 Aug 2016 – Possibly Stolen NSA Spy Tools May Be Auctioned Off to Any Bidder Soon – Some of the most powerful espionage tools created by the National Security Agency’s elite group of hackers have been revealed in recent days, a development that could pose severe consequences for the spy agency’s operations.
→ read full articleWhat We’re Doing to the Environment May Be Costing Us Our Drinking Water
Chelsea Harvey - The Washington Post,
1 Aug 2016
28 July 2016 – The human footprint on the environment may have affected one of the Earth’s most precious resources — our drinking water — in a major way throughout the last century, according to new research.
→ read full articleIsrael and U.S. Are Close to a Deal on the Biggest Military Aid Package Ever
Carol Morello and Ruth Eglash – The Washington Post,
1 Aug 2016
29 Jul 2016 – A senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office. One major obstacle to finalizing an agreement is a dispute over where the funds can be spent.
→ read full articleThe Movement to Free Hens from Cages May Be Going Global
Karin Brulliard – The Washington Post,
1 Aug 2016
On Monday [25 Jul], one of the world’s largest food service suppliers, Paris-based Sodexo, upped the ante, saying it would switch to cage-free eggs in all its global operations by 2025. The announcement by a major international company is a sign that the rapid shift to cage-free eggs, led by consumers but long championed by animal rights activists, is going more global.
→ read full articleMap: The World of Coups Since 1950
Adam Taylor – The Washington Post,
25 Jul 2016
There have been around 475 coup attempts since 1950. That’s according to a dataset compiled by Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne, two assistant professors who work in the political science departments of the University of Central Florida and the University of Kentucky respectively.
→ read full articleHow a Modest Contract for ‘Applied Research’ Morphed into the CIA’s Brutal Interrogation Program
Greg Miller – The Washington Post,
18 Jul 2016
In fact, the CIA already had a specific consultant in mind, and the agreement to pay $1,000 a day to psychologist James E. Mitchell subsequently expanded into an $81 million arrangement to oversee the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other harrowing techniques against al-Qaeda suspects in secret agency prisons overseas.
→ read full articleNewly Released CIA Files Expose Grim Details of Agency Interrogation Program
Greg Miller, Karen DeYoung and Julie Tate – The Washington Post,
20 Jun 2016
14 Jun 2016 – The files include granular descriptions of the inner workings of the CIA’s “black site” prisons, messages sent to CIA headquarters from field officers who expressed deep misgivings with how detainees were being treated and secret memos raising objections to the roles played by doctors and psychologists in the administration of treatment later condemned as torture.
→ read full articlePornography Is More Than Just Sexual Fantasy: It’s Cultural Violence
Julia Long – The Washington Post,
6 Jun 2016
Pornography does not simply function as an arena in which direct violence is sanctioned and routinized. It also functions as a form of what sociologist Johan Galtung terms ”cultural violence.” As he says, “Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look, even feel, right — or at least not wrong.”
→ read full articleIt’s Not Just Hiroshima: The Many Other Things America Hasn’t Apologized For
Adam Taylor – The Washington Post,
30 May 2016
26 May 2016 – This week, President Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that the United States nearly destroyed with a nuclear bomb in 1945. It’s reasonable to ask, after more than 70 years, why not apologize for Hiroshoma? But what else has America not apologized for? Here are a few ideas.
→ read full articleThe Battle over the Word ‘Rohingya’ [in Burma aka Myanmar]
Adam Taylor – The Washington Post,
2 May 2016
Hundreds of people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, Burma, on Thursday [28 Apr] with a demand: The United States must stop using the word “Rohingya.” To most of the world, the Rohingya are a Bengali-speaking Muslim minority in Buddhist-majority Burma, also known as Myanmar. More than 1 million Rohingya are thought to live in Burma, the majority of them in Rakhine state. Despite the size and long-standing presence of this community, the government does not consider its members Burmese citizens.
→ read full articleThe New Gilded Age: Close to Half of All Super-PAC Money Comes from 50 Donors
Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy – The Washington Post,
25 Apr 2016
15 Apr 2016 – A small core of super-rich individuals is responsible for the record sums cascading into the coffers of super PACs for the 2016 elections, a dynamic that harks back to the financing of presidential campaigns in the Gilded Age.
→ read full articleWe Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong about the Planet’s Future
Chris Mooney – The Washington Post,
28 Mar 2016
22 Mar 2016 – An influential group of scientists led by James Hansen, the former NASA scientist often credited with having drawn the first major attention to climate change in 1988 congressional testimony, has published a dire climate study that suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned.
→ read full articleTim Cook: U.S. Government Wants ‘Something We Consider Too Dangerous to Create’
J. Freedom du Lac and Ellen Nakashima – The Washington Post,
22 Feb 2016
The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.
→ read full articleBy 2050, There Will Be More Plastic than Fish in the World’s Oceans, Study Says
Sarah Kaplan – The Washington Post,
25 Jan 2016
About a third of all plastics produced escape collection systems, only to wind up in the stomach of some unsuspecting bird. That amounts to about 8 million metric tons a year — or, as Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia put it to The Washington Post, “Five bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.”
→ read full articleWhy Sean Penn’s El Chapo Meeting Was an ‘Epic Insult’ to Imperiled Mexican Journalists
Peter Holley – The Washington Post,
18 Jan 2016
For many Mexican journalists, the problem with the American actor’s controversial first-person account of meeting with the notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán–published Saturday [9 Jan] by Rolling Stone and submitted for Guzmán’s approval before it was made public–is evidence of the inherent conflict between journalism and entertainment.
→ read full articleDon’t Eat That Shrimp
Roberto A. Ferdman – The Washington Post,
4 Jan 2016
Indentured and Enslaved Workers Fuel the Thai Shrimp Industry – Burmese men, women and children are being sold to factories in Thailand and forced to peel shrimp that ends up in global supply chains.
→ read full articleWind, Solar Power Soaring in Spite of Bargain Prices for Fossil Fuels
Joby Warrick – The Washington Post,
4 Jan 2016
1 Jan 2016 – Wind and solar power appear set for a record-breaking year in 2016 as a clean-energy construction boom gains momentum in spite of a global glut of cheap fossil fuels.
→ read full articleNew Infrared Video Reveals Growing Environmental Disaster in L.A. Gas Leak
Joby Warrick – The Washington Post,
28 Dec 2015
24 Dec 2015 – A runaway natural gas leak from a storage facility in the hills above Los Angeles is shaping up as a significant ecological disaster with more than 150 million pounds of methane pouring into the atmosphere in last two months. The impact has been the equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions from six coal-fired power plants or 7 million automobiles, environmentalists say.
→ read full articleAung San Suu Kyi: ‘I’m going to be the one who is managing the government’ in Burma/Myanmar
Lally Weymouth – The Washington Post,
23 Nov 2015
The woman who endured house arrest for the better part of 20 years heads the party that won a landslide election victory this month over the very generals who held her captive. In her office she talked about launching a democracy, ending ethnic violence, sharing power with the military and changing the constitution so that she can become president. Edited excerpts follow.
→ read full articleHard-Line Buddhist Monks Threaten Burma’s Hopes for Democracy
Annie Gowen – The Washington Post,
9 Nov 2015
The event, held last month in Burma’s commercial capital, was a dramatic display of a rising force in Burma’s political landscape — a group of ultra-nationalist Buddhists called the Ma Ba Tha, whom analysts say could pose a threat to the country’s shaky hopes for democracy.
→ read full articleThe Life-Saving Pill ‘Pharma Bro’ Increased to $750 Now Has a $1 Competitor
Elahe Izadi – The Washington Post,
26 Oct 2015
Daraprim, which treats a life-threatening infection in patients with HIV/AIDS and other immune problems, was increased from $13.50 to $750 a pill, a move resoundingly decried, even by presidential candidates. Now, another company will offer a Daraprim alternative, at just $1 a pill.
→ read full articleU.S.-Trained Fighters in Syria Gave Equipment to Al-Qaeda Affiliate
Karen DeYoung – The Washington Post,
28 Sep 2015
In a statement correcting earlier assertions that reports of the turnover were a “lie” and a militant propaganda ploy, the command said it was subsequently notified that the Syrian unit had “surrendered” some of its equipment — including six pickup trucks and a portion of its ammunition — to Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s arm in Syria.
→ read full articleMap: The Risk of Genocide around the World
Ishaan Tharoor – The Washington Post,
21 Sep 2015
On Monday [21 Sep 2015], the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide launched a tool aimed at forecasting the risk of state-led mass killings. The Early Warning Project tracks the apparent signs of a potential pogrom or assault on minorities within a state.
→ read full articleRupert Murdoch and Fox Take Control of National Geographic for a $725 Million Price Tag
Emily Steel, The New York Times -- Paul Farhi, The Washington Post,
14 Sep 2015
Murdoch is a notorious climate change denier, and his family’s Fox media empire is the world’s primary source of global warming misinformation. One of the missions of the National Geographic Society is to give grants to scientists. The group has supported pursuits as diverse as the underwater explorations of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Jane Goodall’s study of chimpanzees in Tanzania. What now?
→ read full articleBurma’s Half-Hearted Commitment to Democracy
Editorial Board – The Washington Post,
31 Aug 2015
The regime of generals and former generals who began the transition away from military rule still exert a heavy hand on the political process. Burma’s regime is aggravating and exploiting ethnic conflicts in the Southeast Asian nation of 56 million people also known as Myanmar. Most egregious has been its treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority that has long been persecuted and that increasingly has been subject to violence and denied citizenship.
→ read full articleWhy Greece Should Leave the Euro Zone
Michael R. Strain – The Washington Post,
20 Jul 2015
Sure, there would be short-term pain. But in the long term, the euro is an economic mistake. And leave today Greece should, beginning the painful work of rebuilding an economy and crafting public policies over which it has primary control, hopefully achieving more success than it has in the past.
→ read full articleDo-Gooders, Do No Harm: What Are the Best–and Worst–Ways to Help Those Mired in International Conflicts?
Laura Seay and Alex de Waal – The Washington Post,
20 Jul 2015
Since the end of the Cold War, numerous international advocacy efforts concerning global conflict sprung out of good intentions. Yet the results of these movements are often, at best, mixed, and in some cases actually made a crisis or the plight of innocent civilians worse.
→ read full articleTalking to Terrorists Is the Only Way to Defeat Them
Fareed Zakaria – The Washington Post,
13 Jul 2015
A delegation from the Afghan government met with members of the Taliban this past Tuesday [7 Jul] — with Pakistani, Chinese and U.S. officials present as observers. Previous efforts like this one have foundered, and this might go nowhere as well. But the war in Afghanistan is going to end in a forum like this and not on the battlefield.
→ read full articleShooters of Color Are Called ‘Terrorists’ and ‘Thugs’ – Why Are White Shooters Called ‘Mentally Ill’?
Anthea Butler – The Washington Post,
22 Jun 2015
This racist media narrative around mass violence falls apart with the Charleston church shooting.
→ read full articleWhy Hardly Anyone Dies from a Drug Overdose in Portugal
Christopher Ingraham – The Washington Post,
8 Jun 2015
5 Jun 2015 – Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it — possession and use of small quantities of these drugs are a public health issue, not a criminal one.
→ read full articleHundreds Gather in Arizona for Armed Anti-Muslim Protest
Evan Wyloge – The Washington Post,
1 Jun 2015
30 May 2015 – About 250 mostly armed anti-Muslim demonstrators — many wearing T-shirts bearing a profanity-laced message denouncing Islam — faced-off against a crowd of roughly the same size defending the faith in front of a Phoenix mosque Friday [29 May] night.
→ read full article