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"The United States was one of the countries that supported the resolution to hold the special session," the WHO said Monday in response to an NPR inquiry. "That is not to say it has committed to support the treaty yet, as the process of moving forward was only confirmed today."

"The safety of the world's people cannot rely solely on the goodwill of governments."

A treaty would make countries more accountable to one another, he said.

The lack of sharing — of information, technology, resources and data — is the COVID-19 pandemic's defining characteristic, the WHO leader said.

"a monumental error for any country to think the danger has passed."

Tedros' remarks echoed the frustrations he raised last year, when he said the pandemic was presenting humanity with a test — one that we are failing.

"Are we unable to distinguish or identify the common enemy?"

the leaders agreed to provide an additional 200 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund to help increase a “firewall” of money in European bailout funds to help cover Italy and Spain. He also said a permanent 500 billion euro European Stability Mechanism would be put into effect a year early, by July 2012, and for a year, would run alongside the existing and temporary 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility, thus also increasing funds for the firewall. The leaders also agreed that private-sector lenders to euro zone nations would not automatically face losses, as had been the plan in the event of another future bailout. When Greece’s debt was finally restructured, the private sector suffered, making investors more anxious about other vulnerable economies.

The company’s president, Chris Lewicki, compared the bill to the Homestead Act, which distributed public land to Americans heading west and helped reshape the United States. “The Homestead Act of 1862 advocated for the search for gold and timber, and today, HR 2262 fuels a new economy,” Lewicki said in a statement. “This off-planet economy will forever change our lives for the better here on Earth.”

obstacle to space mining is an 1967 international treaty known as the Outer Space Treaty, to which the US is a signatory. The treaty holds that no “celestial body” is subject to “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”.

careful to add in their bill that they grant rights only to citizens who act under the law, “including the international obligations of the United States”.

added a “disclaimer of extraterritorial sovereignty”, saying the US does not thereby assert ownership, exclusive rights or jurisdiction “of any celestial body”.

bill asserts certain rights for US citizens, it disavows any national claim – sending a mixed message on asteroid rights

“They’re trying to dance around the issue. I tend to think it doesn’t create any rights because it conflicts with international law. The bottom line is before you can give somebody the right to harvest a resource you have to have ownership.”

Asteroids vary in their makeup, but some are rich in platinum and other valuable metals. Nasa has run missions to explore the possibilities of mining asteroids

solidifies America’s leading role in the commercial space sector

Historically, U.S. officials, often encouraged by public opinion, have wanted Cherokees to adopt U.S. legal and cultural practices. When not attempting to terminate the tribe, U.S. officials have sided with freedmen whenever tribal citizenship disputes reach U.S. courts. U.S. politicians have also repeatedly threatened to withhold federal money should the Cherokee Nation not grant freedmen citizenship.

Colonists, later U.S. citizens, wanted to acquire Cherokee land and to make Cherokees more like whites in terms of their religious, government and economic practices. That meant that Cherokees would have to abandon their practice of holding land communally, which made land difficult for U.S. settlers to acquire because they could not deal with individuals.

After the war, the U.S. forced the Cherokee Nation to sign the Treaty of 1866. The tribe’s 1839 Constitution, affirming previous laws, had stated that Cherokee citizens must be descended from Cherokees, not their Black slaves. But in this peace treaty, Cherokees agreed to make their former slaves full tribal citizens.

“There are a few reasons that explain conservatives who were Never-Trumpers during the election, and who remain anti-Trump today. [...] They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake.

“That means praise him when he’s right, and find the most plausible possible defense when he’s wrong.”

“The conservative reaction to Trump’s Paris decision really drove home how this is all — and I do mean all — about waging culture war against the left.”

Rather than seeing the science in “pragmatic terms,” the president and the G.O.P. have made the issue into a “tribal struggle.” The cost of the right’s “desire to piss off lefty tree-huggers,” however, is an uncertain future for our grandchildren.

“A man who wished to become the most powerful man in the world [...] was granted his wish. Surely he must have imagined that more power meant more flattery, a grander image, a greater hall of mirrors reflecting back his magnificence. But he misunderstood power and prominence.”

“When it comes to decisions about strangers, the easiest, most accessible shortcut is our first impression. Unknowledgeable voters go for this shortcut.”

he writes about his work on first impressions and their effect on political outcomes. When we don’t have a lot of information, he explains, our brains rely on “shortcuts”; low-information voters tend to rely on appearance to guide their decisions.

I understand from your statements that you do not trust this man. You point out correctly that he's been part of the regime for a long time - President Rouhani. At the same time, I was in Iran at the time of their election, and he was elected by a substantial majority of the Iranian people on a platform where he explicitly said I want to improve relations with the world.

It's true that his election reflected the tremendous disaffection of the Iranian people with this regime. But, you know, he was - you know what the regime did, what Khamenei did: He took 700 candidates, eliminated 99 percent, left 1 percent - some democracy. And out of that 1 percent, the Iranian people chose the least-bad that they could get, which was Rouhani.

But he is a servant of the regime

Would you meet Rouhani, if you had an opportunity to do that somewhere in the world? NETANYAHU: Yeah, I don't care about the meeting. I mean, I don't even - I don't have a problem with the diplomatic process. I have the problem - my question... INSKEEP: You're saying you would meet him? NETANYAHU: I haven't been offered, and I don't - you know, if I'm offered, I'll consider it. But it's not an issue, because I don't think - you know, if I meet with these people, I would stick this question in their face: Are you prepared to dismantle your program completely?

Why can't we have nuclear weapons, since Israel has them? What is a reasonable answer to that question? NETANYAHU: Well, I'm not going to say what Israel has or doesn't have. But I will say Israel has no designs to destroy anyone. We've not called for the destruction of a people, the annihilation of Iran or any other country. But that's exactly what Iran's doctrinaire, messianic apocalyptic regime - it's a terrorist regime.

NETANYAHU: Well, Israel - I think Israel is not the issue. And, in general, in the Middle East, the issue is not those who signed the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty... INSKEEP: People also asked why Israel hasn't signed Non-Proliferation... NETANYAHU: Well, you should look at those who signed it. See, the signing of it is meaningless, because Syria signed it. It was developing, you know, facilities for nuclear weapons. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, signed it. It was developing nuclear weapons - twice, actually - from the 1970s on. And Iran signed it, and it's developing these nuclear weapons,

American companies in China who refuse to toe the line on Chinese policy issues (such as the status of Taiwan and the treatment of Uighurs); the devastating results of COVID-19 in the U.S. originating from a virus that first started to spread in Wuhan; and the freedom of Taiwan to decide whether or not to eventually unify politically with China.

If such an incident occurred, perhaps in the Taiwan Straits adding in the additional factor of extreme Chinese pride and nationalism over their view of Taiwan as a sovereign part of China, it could easily spark a far larger military exchange than the warning shots and close approaches we have seen thus far.

Larger strikes from either side could follow, as could a far broader cyberattack, perhaps against critical infrastructure. Carrier strike groups on both sides could deploy head-to-head. With even more significant losses, the temptation to employ a tactical nuclear weapons – perhaps at sea, thinking it could never then escalate to a strategic exchange – might rise.

The chances of the U.S. and China stumbling into a war are real and increasing.

“Today’s action will allow us to review the matter and ensure the Interior Department is upholding its trust and treaty obligations in accordance with the law.”

Fossil fuel companies have begun using horizontal drilling techniques to access oil and gas resources below the river and Lake Sakakawea, a 200-mile-long reservoir created with the construction of Garrison Dam in the 1950s that permanently flooded one-quarter of the Fort Berthold Reservation and forced 90% of tribal members to relocate.

$100 billion in oil and gas royalties and future payments are waiting to be claimed, and the state has pushed for control of mineral rights on the reservation section of the river.

Worldwide fossil fuel emissions are expected to be up 0.6% in 2019 over 2018, according to projections from the Global Carbon Project. In the past decade, humans have put more than 350 metric gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes, according to calculations provided by the World Resources Institute.

Meanwhile, scientists are becoming even more concerned about tipping points in the climate system that could lead to rapid rise in sea levels, the deterioration of the Amazon and so on. One particularly frightening commentary last month in the journal Nature, by several notable climate scientists, says the odds we can avoid tipping points in the climate system "could already have shrunk towards zero." In non-science-speak: We're there now.

This was the decade when some people finally started to see the climate crisis as personal. Climate attribution science, which looks for human fingerprints on extreme weather events, made its way into the popular imagination. We're starting to realize there are no truly "natural" disasters anymore. We've warmed the climate, and we're already making storms riskier.

The news media is picking that up, using terms such as "climate emergency" and "climate crisis" instead of the blander "climate change." Increasingly, lots of people are making these critical connections, which should motivate the political, social and economic revolution necessary to fix things.

Only 52% of American adults say they are "very" or "extremely" sure global warming is happening, according to a report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, which is based on a 1,303 person survey conducted in November 2019. Yale's been asking that question for a while now. Go back a decade, to 2009, and the rate is about the same: 51%.

The bright spot -- and it truly is a bright one -- is that young people are waking up. They are shouting, loudly and with purpose. Witness Greta Thunberg, the dynamic teenager who started a one-girl protest outside the Swedish Parliament last year, demanding that adults take seriously this emergency, which threatens young people and future generations disproportionately.