The United States Senate is poised to vote on legislation this week that, for the next two years at least, could dramatically expand the number of businesses that the US government can force to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.Some of the nation’s top legal experts on a controversial US spy program argue that the…
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US Infrastructure Is Broken. Here’s an $830 Million Plan to Fix It
There’s one word that will get any American fuming, regardless of their political inclination: infrastructure. Pothole-pocked roads, creaky bridges, and half-baked public transportation bind us nationally like little else can. And that was before climate change’s coastal flooding, extreme heat, and supercharged wildfires came around to make things even worse.US infrastructure was designed for the…
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They Experimented on Themselves in Secret. What They Discovered Helped Win a War
Not long ago, I let a colleague insert an IV line in my hand. He swished saline back and forth between two syringes to create bubbles, then he injected the foamy liquid into my vein. We wanted to know if a new gadget—a small Doppler ultrasound—could hear the bubbles in my bloodstream. We hoped the…
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The Paradox That’s Supercharging Climate Change
No good deed goes unpunished—and that includes trying to slow climate change. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, humanity will spew out fewer planet-cooling aerosols—small particles of pollution that act like tiny umbrellas to bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space.“Even more important than this direct reflection effect, they alter the properties of clouds,”…
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