Climate Change Isn’t Only Changing the Course of History, It’s Making History Itself Harder to Study
The Farasan Islands in the Red Sea some 30 miles offshore from Saudi Arabia. Eric LAFFORGUE/Gamma-Rapho/Getty This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you like clams, you’re not alone. For the past 164,000 years, people have used shellfish as a food source. We know this thanks to shell…
Trump Confronts Iran—Without Allies, a Defense Secretary, or a Coherent Policy
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Early Thursday morning, the United States military accused Iran of an “unprovoked attack” on a Navy drone flying over international waters, spurring President Donald Trump to tweet that the Islamic Republic had “made a very big mistake.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard acknowledged the attack but said the drone had been positioned over Iran, an…
Israel’s Prime Minister Just Renamed a Controversial Settlement After Donald Trump
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveil the sign to inaugurate a new settlement named after President Donald Trump in the Golan Heights on Sunday, June 16, 2019.Ariel Schalit/AP On Sunday, Israel officially named a settlement in the disputed Golan Heights after President Donald Trump. At the ceremony to…
How US Government Funds Meant to Stop Poaching May Have Ended up Funding Torture
This story was originally published by HuffPost and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The House Natural Resources Committee has launched a bipartisan investigation into whether federal conservation grants support organizations linked to alleged human rights abuses overseas. The probe follows a BuzzFeed News investigation in March that found the World Wide Fund for Nature,…
The Suspicious Twitter Network Trolling for Regime Change in Iran
National Security Advisor John Bolton and a little-understood Twitter network have both boosted MEK, an armed Iranian opposition group.Douglas Christian/ZUMA As the Trump administration has ramped up economic sanctions against Iran and aimed increasingly threatening rhetoric at the country, an influence network has popped up on Twitter pushing similar messages. Networks comprising over four hundred…
Controversial State Department Program Backing Trump’s Iran Policy Draws Congressional Scrutiny
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at a closed briefing for House members on Iran on May 21, 2019.Alex Wong/Getty Images House Democrats are investigating the State Department’s use of a program originally set up to counter terrorist disinformation so the Trump administration could fund attacks on critics of the president’s Iran policy. News broke…