This Bird Went Extinct and Then Evolved Into Existence Again
The Aldabra white-throated rail, a flightless bird that lives on its namesake atoll in the Indian Ocean, doesn’t look like anything special at first glance. But the small bird has big bragging rights, because it has effectively evolved into existence twice after first going extinct some 136,000 years ago.
According to a study published Wednesday in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, the rail is an example of a rarely observed phenomenon called iterative evolution, in which the same ancestral lineage produces parallel offshoot species at different points in time. This means that near-identical species can pop up multiple times in different eras and locations, even if past iterations have gone extinct.
Fossils of the flightless bird were found both before and after Albadra was submerged by an “inundation event” that occurred around 136,000 years ago, said study authors Julian Hume, an avian paleontologist at Natural History Museum in London, and David Martill, a paleobiologist at the University of Portsmouth.
Bernie and AOC Just Teamed Up to Take On Credit Card Companies
Wall Street’s two worst nightmares are teaming up to take on the credit card and banking industries with a new bill.
Progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 2020 candidate for president, just jointly introducing legislation that caps interest rates on consumer loans at 15%, which would effectively eliminate payday lenders. The bill, called the Loan Shark Prevention Act, is Ocasio-Cortez’s first big piece of legislation as a congresswoman. It applies to all consumer loans, including credit cards.
“Today we’re telling Wall Street and the payday lenders that enough is enough,” Sanders said alongside Ocasio-Cortez in an announcement Thursday. “Your grotesque and disgusting behavior is not acceptable in America.”
CNN
Secrets of Anglo-Saxon tomb found behind Aldi supermarket revealed
Road-widening isn't normally the kind of thing to set pulses racing, but one such project in the UK uncovered a hugely significant archaeological site.
Now research published Thursday sheds light on a collection of incredible artifacts discovered on a fateful dig in 2003. That day, workers unearthed an Anglo-Saxon princely burial chamber in Prittlewell, Essex, between a main road and a railway line, with an Aldi supermarket and the Saxon King pub just nearby.
It's a somewhat incongruous location for what experts are calling one of the most significant Anglo-Saxon discoveries ever made in the UK. The haul includes previously unseen artifacts, according to Sue Hirst, Anglo-Saxon specialist at MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), which led the project.
Gliding dinosaur with bat-like wings discovered in China
A new species of dinosaur with bat-like wings has been discovered in China, shedding light on the origin of flight and how dinosaurs evolved into birds.
The dinosaur's fossilized remains were found in Liaoning, in northeast China, in 2017 and at first they confused Min Wang, a Chinese paleontologist and lead author of a study published this week describing the new dinosaur. It's called Ambopteryx longibrachium.
"It was nothing like a bird. Nothing like a dinosaur," Wang said. But further study showed that it was in fact a tiny therapod dinosaur with unique forelimbs and membranous wings.
China overplayed its hand with Trump on trade, and it could cost them dearly
China and the United States were moving towards an agreement to end a months-long trade war when, suddenly, it all fell apart this week.
Now as negotiators scramble to resurrect the deal, revelations are emerging that indicate both sides appeared to think they had the other over a barrel. As a result, they pushed for more, setting the stage for a rapid escalation in tensions which undid session after session of hard-fought negotiations.
Bloomberg
China Is Armed With Powerful Market Weapons in Duel With Trump
China has a powerful financial-market arsenal for its trade tussle with America, including a hoard of Treasuries and its currency. But using those weapons is not without cost.
Beijing has vowed to retaliate should … Donald Trump follow through with his threat to raise tariffs Friday on $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25% from 10% percent. But simply responding with its own tit-for-tat tariffs isn’t China’s most likely move, said Brad Setser, a former Treasury official who’s now a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Matching the U.S. dollar-for-dollar on the U.S. tariffs would imply raising a 25% tariff on all U.S. imports, including those that go into China’s exports,” Setser said. “China certainly could do that, but it would in many cases damage China directly.”
Trade Brawl Unmasks the Stock Market's Many Warts
Don’t look too close and you’ll be fine. That’s been the mantra in markets for four months, as blemishes grew on a stock rally that has propelled the S&P 500 to its best start in 32 years. If equities were doing well, it was despite falling earnings, stretched valuations and underwhelming growth. Many big investors have wanted no part of it.
Into that mix has exploded an international trade tempest that is threatening to make all those "despites" harder to ignore. The S&P 500 is down four straight days. Wall Street prognosticators are suddenly falling over each other to predict how bad it will get, with one shop seeing the whole rally at risk.
“We did a year’s worth of gains in four months,” said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at Newbridge Securities Corp. “All of a sudden when you have all of these monkey wrenches being thrown into it, ‘Oh yeah, gee whiz, maybe we pushed things higher than they should’ve been.”’
New York to Kill Its Last Coal Plants With Emissions Rule
New York has adopted a rule that will eventually kill off its last coal-fired power plants standing.
The state’s environmental regulator said Thursday that it had passed regulations requiring all power generators to meet new carbon-dioxide emissions limits that coal plants can’t meet. In doing so, the agency said, Governor Andrew Cuomo will fulfill his goal of banning the use of coal at New York power plants by the end of 2020.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minnesota man born in U.S. files legal challenge to passport denial
Raised in a small southern Minnesota town, Mark Esqueda grew to love his country.
“I just wanted to give something back to her,” he said.
He served about eight years in the military, obtaining high-level security clearance and fighting in combat zones. The gunfire deprived him of part of his hearing.
Des Moines Register
What's on Iowans' minds going into 2020 caucuses? A look at 300 questions they asked candidates in April
Iowans, granted unparalleled access to presidential candidates, take their role in vetting the would-be leaders of the nation very seriously. They pepper candidates with questions in high school gymnasiums, coffee shops and living rooms across the state. […]
Health care, climate change and education were asked about most and accounted for roughly a quarter of all questions asked in April.
Cable news staple topics, like Russia and presidential impeachment, rarely were brought up — just a couple of times.
'That's what girls do': Elizabeth Warren tells young Iowa girls why she's running for president, with a pinky promise
Elizabeth Duncan, wearing a black shirt reading "Nevertheless, she persisted" and her hair in pigtails, stood patiently in a long, winding line.
Like others before her, the 12-year-old from Ames was waiting to shake the hand of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and take a photo next to her.
The highly organized photo line is a trademark piece of Warren's campaign events in Iowa. But the girl's encounter with the Democratic presidential candidate would be different.
Sure, there was a photo, a handshake and a smile. But then Warren looked her in the eye and said: "My name is Elizabeth and I'm running for president, because that's what girls do."
The senator then locked Elizabeth's pinky with her own and asked that she'd promise to remember.
Quad City Times
Davenport, Iowa business group’s high-level estimate says economic impact of flood is $2.5 million per month
As the region seeks financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, local business group Downtown Davenport Partnership says the economic toll of the historic flood that crippled the city last week could be as high as $2.5 million per month.
The economic impact estimate, which does not include property damage, is part of an application sent to state and federal officials for assistance. Factors taken into account include sales statistics, lost wages and diminished business activity because of inaccessibility, Downtown Davenport Partnership Director Kyle Carter said.
Carter cautioned the number, which adds up to nearly $30 million over the course of a year, is a “high-level estimate” that is based on an “inexact science.”
Denver Post
Renewable energy lab in Golden strikes $100M agreement with oil giant ExxonMobil
The nation’s leading federal laboratory in research and development of renewable energy has struck a $100 million agreement with oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil to pursue new breakthroughs in low-emission energy technologies.
The investment, announced this week, is the largest from an external partner in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s history. About 80 percent of the Golden-based lab’s funding comes from the Department of Energy, which owns it.
Bill Farris, NREL’s associate lab director, said Thursday that the agreement with ExxonMobil and the National Energy Technology Laboratory caps several months of discussions about building on their partnership. He said scientists from all the entities will tackle the dual challenge of providing energy for a growing global population while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Psychedelic mushrooms will not be legal in Denver, but here’s what will change
[…] Initiative 301 says personal use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms by people 21 years old and over will become “the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.” It prohibits the city of Denver “from spending resources to impose criminal penalties” for the personal use of psychedelic mushrooms by people 21 and older.
Denver police are still learning what, exactly, that means. Sgt. John White, a spokesman for the department, said they expect the law to take effect May 16. Beyond that, they’re unsure.
“We are working closely with the City Attorney’s Office to get an interpretation of what that law is going to mean for us in law enforcement,” he said. “Once we receive that feedback, we’ll use that information to determine what training our Denver officers need moving forward.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Marriage age raised to 17 in Georgia
A new Georgia law requires couples to be at least 17 years old before they can get married.
Gov. Brian Kemp signed the measure into law Monday, raising the state's minimum marriage age from 16 to 17. Legislators said increasing the marriage age will help protect teenagers from marrying before they're ready.
Young women in particular are vulnerable to exploitation and abusive relationships, said state Rep. Andy Welch, a Republican from McDonough, before the General Assembly voted to approve House Bill 228.
The ‘heartbeat’ law revives a culture war that the GOP could lose
On Tuesday, before he put his signature on House Bill 481, Gov. Brian Kemp uttered one sentence with which the women protesting outside the state Capitol could agree.
“Remember, today is just the beginning, folks,” Kemp said… The governor was alluding to the next items on the religious conservative to-do list, from changes to the state foster care system to sex trafficking.
But Kemp had already acknowledged that his signing of the anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill — now the “heartbeat” law — would also tee up an intense courtroom battle over the constitutionality of a measure that now bans most abortions after six weeks. That’s before many women know they're pregnant.
Dallas Morning News
Texas would never have an income tax, main school property tax would end under two House measures
The House narrowly agreed Thursday to change the Texas Constitution to prohibit a personal income tax, as urged by a Plano lawmaker.
The move came just hours after the chamber passed a bill calling for elimination of the main school property tax in about 2 ½ years.
A study commission studded with legislators would study how to raise consumption taxes to make up for school districts' lost revenue from their maintenance and operation, or M&O, levy.
A last-minute change sought to assure educators and parents that public schools would receive the same amount of funding they do now.
Dallas LGBTQ lawmaker torpedoes 'Save Chick-fil-A' bill
A Dallas-area lawmaker has successfully killed a bill that LGBTQ rights advocates said would have perpetuated anti-gay discrimination.
Hours before a key deadline, Rep. Julie Johnson used a legislative maneuver known as a "point of order" to bump the bill from the debate calendar. It's now effectively dead, unless conservative lawmakers can find a way to resurrect it before a critical legislative deadline at midnight Thursday. […]
House Bill 3172 has alternately been called the "Save Chick-fil-A" bill and the "most extreme anti-LGBT" legislation this year. Authored by Fort Worth GOP Rep. Matt Krause, it would have prohibited the government from taking any "adverse action" against someone for their "membership in, affiliation with, or contribution, donation or other support" to a religious organization.
The Washington Post
Decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. sets off a Republican firefight
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. has ignited an internal Republican firefight over the fate of the committee’s Russia probe, as the panel’s GOP chairman showed no signs of backing down despite fierce criticism from many of his colleagues that it was time to move on.
The sudden infighting threatened to undermine support for the Senate’s Russia investigation, which is the sole bipartisan probe in Congress into Russian interference in the 2016 election and has been widely praised as operating with little public drama.
Much of the backlash against the decision by Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.) to subpoena … Trump’s eldest son came from GOP senators who are up for reelection next year and from those closely aligned with the president. The outrage was partially fueled by Trump Jr. and his own allies.
U.S. authorities seize North Korean coal ship, accuse Pyongyang of violating international sanctions
U.S. authorities have seized a North Korean ship allegedly used to sell coal in violation of international sanctions, the first such move by Justice Department officials as they ratchet up enforcement efforts against the regime in Pyongyang.
Justice Department officials Thursday confirmed that the vessel, the Wise Honest, was approaching U.S. territorial waters in American Samoa, in coordination with the U.S. Marshals Service and the Coast Guard.
“This sanctions-busting ship is now out of service,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said in announcing the seizure.
Trump says John Kerry ‘should be prosecuted’ for meetings with Iranian officials
Trump on Thursday said former secretary of state John F. Kerry should be prosecuted for discussing the Iran nuclear deal with officials from that country after leaving office.
The president raised the issue during a freewheeling exchange with reporters after an event on health care at the White House, accusing Kerry of telling Iranian officials not to speak with members of the Trump administration.
“I’d like to see — with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” Trump said. “You know, John Kerry speaks to them a lot. John Kerry tells them not to call. That’s a violation of the Logan Act. And frankly, he should be prosecuted on that. But my people don’t want to do anything that’s — only the Democrats do that kind of stuff, you know? If it were the opposite way, they’d prosecute him under the Logan Act.”
The Hill
Harris demands Barr clarify if Trump has asked him to investigate anyone
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is asking Attorney General William Barr to clarify if … Trump or White House staff have asked him to investigate anyone after the president floated prosecuting former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Harris, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who is running for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination, sent Barr a letter on Thursday asking him to "supplement" his testimony to the Judiciary Committee last week, when Harris asked him if he had been pressured to open investigations.
"In order for the American people to retain trust in the Department of Justice, the public must have confidence that the women and men who enforce our laws act with fairness and impartiality. Your failure to categorically respond to my question in the negative undermines that confidence," Harris wrote in her letter.
She added that she was seeking answers to her follow-up questions in light of Trump saying he believed Kerry should be prosecuted under the Logan Act for speaking with Iranian officials and criticizing Trump's policies in Iran.
Reuters
Americans' support for impeaching Trump rises: Reuters/Ipsos poll
The number of Americans who said … Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points to 45 percent since mid-April, while more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered with important government business, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.
The opinion poll, conducted on Monday, did not make clear whether investigation-fatigued Americans wanted House of Representatives Democrats to pull back on their probes or press forward aggressively and just get impeachment over with.
The question is an urgent one for senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, who are wrestling with whether to launch impeachment proceedings, despite likely insurmountable opposition to it in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Unique genetic adaptation lets deep-sea fish see color in the darkness
While people and other vertebrates are color blind in dim light, some deep-sea fish may possess keen color vision to thrive in the near total darkness of their extreme environment thanks to a unique genetic adaptation, scientists said on Thursday.
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 101 fish species and found that three lineages of deep-sea fish, living up to about a mile (1,500 meters) below the surface, boast a specialized visual system to allow for color vision in inky blackness.
Having acute vision could provide tremendous advantages to these fish as they search for food and mates and try to avoid becoming another creature’s dinner in the exotic dark world of the ocean depths, the planet’s largest habitat.
Trump picks ex-Boeing executive Shanahan as defense secretary
Trump plans to nominate Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing Co executive, as his defense secretary, the White House said on Thursday, breaking with tradition by choosing someone who made a career at a top defense company as Pentagon chief.
Shanahan had been under investigation by the Pentagon inspector general for allegedly seeking preferential treatment of Boeing while at the Defense Department but he was cleared of wrongdoing in April. He has been acting defense secretary since January, the longest in Pentagon history. […]
Ties between Boeing and the Trump administration run deep, with Trump using the company’s products and sites as a backdrop for major announcements.
Time
'I Have a Plan for That.' Elizabeth Warren Is Betting That Americans Are Ready for Her Big Ideas
Voters encountering Elizabeth Warren on the presidential campaign trail these days often seem surprised. After a packed gathering at an elementary school in Concord, N.H., in April, a 40-something woman told me she had expected Warren to be more like Hillary Clinton but found them miles apart.
A college student who caught Warren’s speech in Hanover said he was perplexed to learn that a woman once described by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political director as a “threat to free enterprise” in fact believes in entrepreneurship and markets. And at an event in a Portsmouth high school cafeteria, a retired teacher told me he’d heard Warren was a “Ted Cruz–like partisan” but instead found her charming. “She seems like a real doll,” he shrugged. “Can I say that?” […]
“O.K., O.K., I can answer this,” she said.
Which might as well be a motto for Warren’s presidential campaign. She has set herself apart in a Democratic field of more than 20 candidates by offering more than a dozen complex policy proposals designed to address an array of problems, from unaffordable housing and child care to the overwhelming burden of student debt. Her anticorruption initiative would target the Washington swamp, and her antitrust measures would transform Silicon Valley. On May 8 she unveiled a $100 billion plan to fight the opioid crisis. This flurry of white papers, often rendered in fine detail, appears to suggest a technocratic approach to governing. But in fact, her vision, taken as a whole, is closer to a populist political revolution.
The Guardian
Ex-NSA official charged with leaking classified drone documents
A former National Security Agency (NSA) official has been charged with giving classified documents on drone warfare to a journalist, amid a crackdown on government leaks by Donald Trump’s administration.
Daniel Hale is accused of leaking top secret files that were published by an online news outlet. The outlet was not identified by prosecutors, but the files described appear to match those published in a series by the Intercept.
Hale, 31, was indicted by a grand jury on five charges relating to the alleged leak. Each charge carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. The US justice department said Hale was arrested on Thursday morning and would appear in court later in the day.
Mike Pompeo rejects Canada's claims to Northwest Passage as 'illegitimate'
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has rejected Canada’s claims to the Northwest Passage as “illegitimate”, in a high-profile foreign policy speech that prompted frustration and surprise among experts and government officials.
Delegates from Arctic nations – Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US – had gathered in Finland to discuss balancing climate change with resource development in the region.
“No one denies Russia has significant Arctic interests,” Pompeo told delegates of the Arctic Council on Monday. “We recognize that Russia is not the only nation making illegitimate claims: the US has a long contested feud with Canada over sovereign claims through the Northwest Passage.”
Politico
Climate Change Suddenly Matters in the 2020 Race. Are the Candidates Ready?
For three decades in American politics, climate change has been the issue that wasn’t. Even as the temperature steadily rose, and evidence mounted that it was human behavior—and human policies—that were driving this change, candidates mostly deflected. And it wasn’t hard: During the 2016 general election, no journalist even asked the presidential candidates a debate question on the topic.
But that’s not the case this time. Climate change matters for Democratic voters: A Monmouth University poll last month showed the issue as the second most important to Iowa caucus-goers after health care, and a CNN national poll found that 82 percent of Democratic respondents said it’s “very important” that their party’s nominee for president supports taking “aggressive action” to slow the effects of climate change, the highest support among several items on the progressive wish list. Most of the candidates seem convinced it’s a key weakness for Trump, and the front-runners have all embraced the issue. (The latest to weigh in, Beto O’Rourke, chose climate as the subject of his first comprehensive policy plan: a $5 trillion proposal for clean-energy infrastructure.) The question is not whether the candidates are going to talk about global warming, but how.
As the race takes shape, two key questions are materializing: What do climate-motivated voters really want? And how is the issue likely to change the race?
Gizmodo
RIP Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, 1974-2019
The last remaining reactor in operation at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant—the site of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history in 1979—is set to close by Sept. 30, 2019, NPR reported on Wednesday.
Generating Station Unit 1, which was not involved in the infamous partial meltdown of reactor number 2 and a subsequent radiation leak 40 years ago, is still up and running and licensed to operate until 2034. However, the plant’s operator Exelon said in a statement on Wednesday that the money-losing facility is no longer tenable following a failure to obtain subsidies from the Pennsylvania legislature. Those subsidies, NPR reported earlier this year, were touted by the company as a way to preserve a source of carbon-free power in the age of climate change.
Ars Technica
Hackers breached 3 US antivirus companies, researchers reveal
In a report published Thursday, researchers at the threat-research company Advanced Intelligence (AdvIntel) revealed that a collective of Russian and English-speaking hackers are actively marketing the spoils of data breaches at three US-based antivirus software vendors. The collective, calling itself “Fxmsp,” is selling both source code and network access to the companies for $300,000 and is providing samples that show strong evidence of the validity of its claims.
Yelisey Boguslavskiy, director of research at AdvIntel, told Ars that his company notified “the potential victim entities” of the breach through partner organizations; it also provided the details to US law enforcement. In March, Fxmsp offered the data “through a private conversation,” Boguslavskiy said. “However, they claimed that their proxy sellers will announce the sale on forums.”
Fxmsp has a well-known reputation in the security community for selling access to breaches, focusing on large, global companies and government organizations.
Drones used missiles with knife warhead to take out single terrorist targets
Drone strikes have been the go-to approach by both the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency to take out terrorists and insurgent leaders over the past decade, and the main weapon in those strikes has been the Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire II missile—a laser-guided weapon originally developed for use by Army helicopters as a “tank buster.” But as concerns about collateral damage from drone strikes mounted, the DOD and CIA apparently pushed for development of a new Hellfire that takes the term “surgical strike” to a new level, with a version that could be used to take out a single individual. […]
Designated the Hellfire R9X, the missile has no explosive warhead—instead, its payload is more than 100 pounds of metal, including long blades that deploy from the body of the missile just before impact.
“To the targeted person, it is as if a speeding anvil fell from the sky,” according to the WSJ. Some officials referred to the weapon as "the flying Ginsu," because the blades can cut through concrete, sheet metal, and other materials surrounding a target.