Signs of the times.

Harvard scientists plan to launch a balloon this summer to test the equipment needed for the first geoengineering experiments in the stratosphere. by James Temple archive page February 19, 2021 Trapped inside a long glass tube in a ground-floor lab at Harvard University is a miniature copy of the stratosphere. When I visited Frank Keutsch in the fall of 2019, he walked me down to the lab, where the tube, wrapped in gray insulation, ran the length of a bench in the back corner. By filling it with the right combination of gases, at particular temperatures and pressures, Keutsch and his colleagues had simulated the conditions some 20 kilometers above Earth’s surface. In testing how various chemicals react in this rarefied air, the team hoped to conduct a crude test of a controversial scheme known as solar geoengineering, which aims to counter climate change by spraying tiny particles into the stratosphere to reflect more of the sun’s heat back into space. But is what’s in that tube ...

  By Jerome Taylor and  Tara John , CNN Updated 6:51 AM EDT, Sat June 24, 2023 CNN —  The armed insurrection launched by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the bombastic chief of private paramilitary group Wagner, appeared to end as abruptly it started Saturday when the Kremlin said the mercenary agreed to leave Russia for Belarus in a deal apparently brokered by the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko. The crisis began when Prigozhin unleashed a new  tirade against the Russian military  Friday before taking control of military facilities in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, plunging Russia into renewed uncertainty as President Vladimir Putin faces the biggest threat to his authority in decades. Putin called Wagner’s actions “treason” and has vowed to crush those behind the “armed uprising.” Some of Prigozhin’s forces began marching towards Moscow on Saturday before he published an audio recording claiming he was turning them aroun...

George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist who frequently uses his wealth to advance progressive causes, is handing over his business interests to his “more political” son Alexander. The Hungarian-American made the announcement in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Soros, 92, said that his son Alexander, 37, will take the reins of his Open Society Foundation (OSF), as well as the rest of his estimated $25 billion in wealth and other interests. Soros also said of Alexander, who was elected OSF chairman in December, replacing his father, that he has “earned” the new role. Speaking to the same publication, Alexander Soros said that he intends to continue his father’s legacy of funding progressive issues – but that he intends to support various causes like voting rights, abortion rights, and gender equality. “I’m more political,” Alexander Soros said, comparing himself to his father. The younger Soros was shown in visitor logs to have visi...

  A new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies points to the harms of rising consolidated wealth, and ways to make the rich shoulder their fair share of the tax burden. By Anisha Kohli , July 6, 2021  The view north to Rockefeller Center, Billionaires’ Row, Central Park, and One Vanderbilt as seen from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building on December 15, 2020, in New York City. An analysis of the 50 richest families in the U.S. highlights tactics used to guard growing “dynastic wealth” in the country, and points to ideas for curbing and effectively taxing consolidated wealth. The Institute for Policy Studies tracked American families from Forbes’ list across nearly four decades and found that their assets grew by 1007% since 1983, outpacing the average American’s by a factor of 10. The list of American “dynasties” includes household names such as the S.C. Johnson, Rockefeller and Marriott families. IPS, a think tank focused on foreign and domestic policy, h...