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Bitter Rift Deepens as Russia Rejects Findings on Syria’s Use of Chlorine Bombs

Russia on Thursday rejected the findings of a chemical weapons investigation led by the United Nations that found Syrian forces had used chlorine bombs at least three times in the past two years.

The response intensified the bitter rift between Western nations and Russia over the Syria war.

Migrant crisis: EU meeting seeks to heal growing rifts

Ministers from EU and Balkan nations are meeting in Brussels to try to heal rifts over migrants that have plunged common policy into chaos.

More than 100,000 migrants have entered the EU illegally this year.

Before pepper spray, Tasers, expandable batons and portable radios, New York police officers facing resistance from a criminal suspect had another option: the chokehold. By 1993, though, the New York Police Department had joined departments in other large cities by banning the chokehold with an order that amounted to, in the words of former Chief of Department John F. Timoney: “Stay the hell away from the neck.”

The public anger that followed a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer fueled demonstrations across the country, and in New York, the protests laid bare a rift between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police.

On Monday, the newly created city inspector general for the Police Department said, in its first report, that in several cases reviewed, police officers went to the move as a “first act of physical force” when facing “mere verbal confrontation.”

Voters in Omaha, Nebraska, will pick a new mayor Tuesday in a local election that has become the epicenter of a divisive national Democratic fight over abortion

While it's unclear if the row will have any long-term consequences, it underscores the difficulty the Democratic party has in speaking with one voice right now, despite its professed unity in battling the common enemy of President Donald Trump.

Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, one of OpenAI’s independent board members, told Forbes in January that there was “no outcome where this organization is one of the big five technology companies.”

“My hope is that we can do a lot more good for the world than just become another corporation that gets that big,” D’Angelo said in the interview. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Two of the board members who voted Altman out worked for think tanks backed by Open Philanthropy, a tech billionaire-backed foundation that supports projects preventing AI from causing catastrophic risk to humanity

The need for change in museums was pointed out in the 2022 Burns Halperin Report, published by Artnet News in December, that analyzed more than a decade of data from over 30 cultural institutions. It found that just 11 percent of acquisitions at U.S. museums were by female artists and only 2.2 percent were by Black American artists

Julia Halperin, one of the study’s organizers, who recently left her position as Artnet’s executive editor, said that the industry has an asymmetric approach to diversity. “The pool of artists is diversifying somewhat, but the pool of staff critics has not,” she said.

the matter of diversity in criticism is compounded by the fact that opportunities for all critics have been diminished.

In a new study published today in the journal Science, researchers say they have confirmed that eruptions large enough to bury the U.S. under 300 feet (91 meters) of lava occurred at the same time that vast numbers of plant and animal species disappeared from the fossil record. About 201 million years ago, tectonic forces started ripping the supercontinent known as Pangaea apart, said Terrence Blackburn, a geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and lead author of the study. The underlying mantle rock melted, generating these large eruptions, he added. The rift, which eventually created the Atlantic Ocean basin, happened between sections of Pangaea that would go on to become North America and Africa. (Read about how Pangaea formed.)

by using a rare mineral called zircon, found in igneous rocks like basalts, the researchers were able to narrow down their margin of error to 20,000 to 30,000 years—pegging the initial eruptions to just before the mass extinction event. “Zircon is a perfect time capsule for dating those rocks,” said Blackburn. When the mineral crystallizes, it incorporates uranium, which decays over a known time with respect to the element lead. By measuring the ratio of uranium to lead in our samples, we can determine the age of those crystals, he explained.

There is evidence that the initial volcanic eruptions doubled the amount of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which led to increased global temperatures and ocean acidification, he noted. This happened quickly, which probably didn’t give organisms at the time much of a chance to adjust to the changes.

A half-century ago in his famous "Two Cultures" speech, C.P. Snow defined the growing rift between the world of scientists (including, increasingly, the commercial world) and that of literary intellectuals (including, increasingly, the humanities).

Today, the "two cultures" not only rarely speak to one another, but also increasingly, as their languages and world views diverge, are unable to do so.

Science merely nods and says, "I see your Jane Austen monographs and deconstructions of 'The Tempest' and raise you stem-cell research and the iPhone"

n 2016, bitter and unyielding contests have placed the state at the center of national debates about race, civil rights, violence, and elections. In the span of a year, an anti-transgender bathroom bill sparked rallies and a fierce debate over civil rights, flames licked the streets of a resegregated Charlotte during protests over a police shooting, a local GOP office was firebombed, and a collection of new laws have been enacted—and promptly challenged in court. But the most contentious and sustained rift has been in the arena of voting rights, and it is there where White’s words resound most loudly.

Inserts in the hymnals boasted of the church’s commitment to racial, sexual, and gender inclusivity and advertised a training for sensitivity to transgender and gender non-conforming folks.

The latent difficulty of registering to vote compounds with some other obstacles for minorities to depress turnout even in the absence of Jim Crow laws.

In 2016, bitter and unyielding contests have placed the state at the center of national debates about race, civil rights, violence, and elections. In the span of a year, an anti-transgender bathroom bill sparked rallies and a fierce debate over civil rights, flames licked the streets of a resegregated Charlotte during protests over a police shooting, a local GOP office was firebombed, and a collection of new laws have been enacted—and promptly challenged in court. But the most contentious and sustained rift has been in the arena of voting rights, and it is there where White’s words resound most loudly.

Russia on Thursday rejected the findings of a chemical weapons investigation led by the United Nations that found Syrian forces had used chlorine bombs at least three times in the past two years.

The chemical weapons dispute over accountability added to frictions between Russia and the West, already aggravated by the relentless bombings in northern Syria in recent weeks carried out by Syrian and Russian warplanes against rebel groups.

“I said yesterday that Russia was defending the indefensible,”

some friends noticed a marked change in his personality and religious devotion after what they believed was a trip to Afghanistan,

traveled to Pakistan, for three months in 2011

had a fractious relationship with neighbors and the police in Elizabeth, N.J.

Kremlin counts days to Trump's inauguration, blasts Obama

Exulted by Donald Trump's victory in the U.S., the Kremlin is counting the days to his inauguration and venting its anger at Barack Obama's outgoing administration, no holds barred.

Trump's open admiration of Putin has brought wide expectations of improved Moscow-Washington relations, but Trump has not articulated a clear Russia policy.

One of Germany’s most influential politicians issued stern warnings about the dangers posed by protectionist economic policies and an assertive Russia seeking to undermine Western democracies, underscoring the risk of a rift between incoming U.S. President Donald Trump and an important ally.

America’s new president, who is to take the oath of office on Friday, told Germany’s Bild and London’s Times newspapers that he would start out trusting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin in equal measure.

The German finance minister pointed to an instance in which Russian television falsely reported last year that a Russian girl in Berlin had been raped by migrants, prompting protests against Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy by Russian-speaking Germans across the country.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan finds himself in the middle of yet another Republican civil war as the battle over LGBT rights has come to Congress, threatening to divide an already fractured GOP.

Democrats won an opening salvo late Wednesday night, when the House approved on a vote of 223 to 195, a measure by Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.) to deny payment to federal contractors who discriminate against LGBT employees.

Maloney’s victory does not mean that House conservatives — angry over what they view as overreaching by President Obama — will not continue to wage the fight.

How Race and Gender Shaped the Senate Race in Maryland

Race and gender are front and center in the Maryland U.S. Senate primary race between Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards. Van Hollen, a white man, and Edwards, a black woman, are both Democratic members of Congress from Maryland competing to replace the state’s retiring senator, Barbara Mikulski.

No matter who wins, the contest has exposed a rift among Democrats over the relative importance of identity and the extent to which it should be emphasized in politics.