One of Jupiter’s biggest moons has the potential to harbour life in a subsurface sea. The nature of its core will provide information about that ocean.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE (February 5, 2025): Today, about 20 percent of southeastern Ukraine is under Russian occupation, including Crimea and large parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has painted the war in Ukraine as a nationalist campaign to repel Western advances and reclaim territory that, in his view, rightfully belongs to Russia. But conquest has another motivation: economic gain. If Russia maintains military control over these regions, it may be hoping to reap that benefit. At this stage, however, it is hardly clear that they would become economic assets for Moscow; supporting the war-torn territories could just as easily become a drain on its coffers.
The human costs of this war are enormous. Russian forces are ruling occupied Ukraine with an iron fist, engaging in a ruthless campaign of torture, kidnapping, violence, and arbitrary killing. Any assessment of the war’s economic consequences should not minimize its awful depravity or the immense suffering it has inflicted. But its economic outcome will affect future judgments of Putin’s decision to invade in February 2022. If Russia benefits economically from the occupation of Ukraine, the war may be remembered as a strategic success, albeit a coldblooded one. If Russia instead suffers economically, the invasion will be seen as a self-defeating, barbaric blunder.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (February 5, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Turbulent Priest’ – Pope Francis’s autobiography; Richard Flanagan in the atomic age; Poetry from Gaza; Richard Ayoade’sdoppelganger and Eimear McBride on repeat…
This week’s @TheTLS, featuring A. N. Wilson on Pope Francis; @funesdamemorius on Richard Ayoade; @lindseyhilsum on writing from Gaza; Adam Mars-Jones on The Brutalist; Damon Galgut on Eimear McBride; Beejay Silcox on Richard Flanagan – and more pic.twitter.com/Ks0liMNF0k
MONOCLE RADIO (February 5, 2025): As Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s transitional president, meets Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, we ask: what role is Turkey seeking to play when it comes to regional security?
Then we discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the White House to see Donald Trump. Plus, a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, former Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg makes a comeback in Norwegian politics and press freedom in Czechia.
The billionaire is creating major upheaval as his team sweeps through agencies, in what has been an extraordinary flexing of power by a private individual.
The billionaire has used the social media site to boast of victories, lash out at enemies and conduct polls for the initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.
After a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products took effect on Tuesday, China announced retaliatory measures, including tariffs and an investigation of Google.
Senate Panel Pushes Through Kennedy’s Nomination Along Party Lines
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican torn between his concerns as a doctor and supporting President Trump, voted to send Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as health secretary to the full Senate.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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