Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Skull Fossil Adds Insight Into the Story of Human Evolution - NYTimes.com

Skull Fossil Adds Insight Into the Story of Human Evolution - NYTimes.com:



 "Anthropologists exploring a cave in Israel have uncovered a rare 55,000-year-old skull fossil that they say has a story to tell of a reverberating transition in human evolution, in the time and place when some early humans were moving out of Africa and apparently interbreeding with Neanderthals."



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Alexis Tsipras, Greek Premier, Says He’ll Move Quickly to Negotiate Debt Relief - NYTimes.com

Alexis Tsipras, Greek Premier, Says He’ll Move Quickly to Negotiate Debt Relief - NYTimes.com:



"ATHENS — Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece told his new cabinet on Wednesday that he would move swiftly to negotiate debt relief with Greece’s creditors, but would not engage in a confrontation that would jeopardize a more just solution for the country."



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Sunday, January 25, 2015

How Auschwitz Is Misunderstood - NYTimes.com

How Auschwitz Is Misunderstood - NYTimes.com:



"AUSCHWITZ was liberated 70 years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, and news of its existence shocked the world. With its principal killing center at one of its main camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, becoming fully operational in 1942, it was Germany’s largest and the most notorious extermination site. There the Germans slaughtered approximately 1.1 million people, a million of whom were Jews. Its mention evokes notions of evil and instant horror. Auschwitz was a death factory, an oxymoron that would have made no sense before the Holocaust, but that now is effortlessly comprehensible."



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Monday, January 19, 2015

Ready to Move Past Hardship, Obama Resets Goals - NYTimes.com

Ready to Move Past Hardship, Obama Resets Goals - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — With the American job market surging to life, President Obama plans to use his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to effectively declare victory over the economic hard times that dominated his first six years in office and advocate using the nation’s healthier finances to tackle long-deferred issues like education and income inequality."



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Saturday, January 17, 2015

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari review – taking on the war on drugs | Books | The Guardian

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari review – taking on the war on drugs | Books | The Guardian:



"Around halfway through Johann Hari’s new book, he recalls visiting a conference in Sweden organised by the World Federation Against Drugs – as its own blurb puts it, “a multilateral community of non-governmental organisations and individuals” which rather optimistically claims to “work for a drug-free world”. The WFAD’s position on the so-called “war on drugs” is the opposite of Hari’s: he favours liberalisation and decriminalisation, the Federation support prohibition. In that sense, his visit to Stockholm is a behind-enemy-lines exercise that you would have thought would produce no end of anecdotes."



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How Mexicans Became Americans - NYTimes.com

How Mexicans Became Americans - NYTimes.com:



 "SOUTH GATE, Calif. — A FEW weeks ago, the City Council in this suburb southeast of Los Angeles appointed a Mexican immigrant to its advisory council. Jesus Miranda is from Michoacán and owns a taco restaurant here. He’ll advise the council on housing development and other issues."



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Seeking Legal Immigration Status, Longtime New Yorker Can’t Return to U.S. - NYTimes.com

Seeking Legal Immigration Status, Longtime New Yorker Can’t Return to U.S. - NYTimes.com:



 "Had everything gone according to plan, Angelo Cabrera would have been back in the United States by now, and this time on the right side of the law."



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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

We Need Another Giant Protest - NYTimes.com

We Need Another Giant Protest - NYTimes.com:



"President Obama was criticized for failing to attend, or send a proper surrogate to, the giant antiterrorism march in Paris on Sunday. That criticism was right. But it is typical of American politics today that we focus on this and not what would have really made the world feel the jihadist threat was finally being seriously confronted. And that would not be a march that our president helps to lead, but one in which he’s not involved at all. That would be a million-person march against the jihadists across the Arab-Muslim world, organized by Arabs and Muslims for Arabs and Muslims, without anyone in the West asking for it — not just because of what happened in Paris but because of the scores of Muslims recently murdered by jihadists in Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria and Syria."



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Kamala Harris Makes Bid for Barbara Boxer’s Old Seat - NYTimes.com

Kamala Harris Makes Bid for Barbara Boxer’s Old Seat - NYTimes.com:



 "LOS ANGELES — No exploratory committees here: Kamala D. Harris, the California attorney general, announced on Tuesday she was running for the Senate seat that is opening up with Barbara Boxer’s retirement at the end of the year."



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Monday, January 12, 2015

James Risen, New York Times Reporter, Will Not Be Called to Testify in Leak Case - NYTimes.com

James Risen, New York Times Reporter, Will Not Be Called to Testify in Leak Case - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — James Risen, a New York Times reporter, will not be called to testify at a leak trial, lawyers said Monday, ending a seven-year legal fight over whether he could be forced to identify his confidential sources."



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Thursday, January 8, 2015

French Premier Says ‘Several’ Have Been Detained Over Charlie Hebdo Attack - NYTimes.com

French Premier Says ‘Several’ Have Been Detained Over Charlie Hebdo Attack - NYTimes.com:



"PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France said on Thursday that “several” people had been interrogated and detained overnight in connection with the terrorist attack on the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris that left 12 people dead."



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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Time for a Pause - NYTimes.com

Time for a Pause - NYTimes.com:



"You could easily write a book, or, better yet, make a movie about the drama that engulfed Sony Pictures and “The Interview,” Sony’s own movie about the fictionalized assassination of North Korea’s real-life dictator. The whole saga reflects so many of the changes that are roiling and reshaping today’s world before we’ve learned to adjust to them."



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Mexico’s Leader, Peña Nieto, Praises Obama on Immigration - NYTimes.com

Mexico’s Leader, Peña Nieto, Praises Obama on Immigration - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, on Tuesday praised President Obama’s actions to shield millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation, describing them as “an act of justice” after meeting with Mr. Obama at the White House."



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Saturday, January 3, 2015

Science Fuels the Writing, and Faith, of a Nicaraguan Poet - NYTimes.com

Science Fuels the Writing, and Faith, of a Nicaraguan Poet - NYTimes.com:



"MEXICO CITY — ERNESTO CARDENAL is a poet and a priest, a revolutionary and a mystic. His poetry speaks of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Darwin, of Spanish conquistadors and pre-Columbian gods. Science saturates his writing."



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