Scientists have recently, for the first time, extracted full nuclear genome data from ancient Egyptian mummies
Credit: bpk/Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, SMB/Sandra Steiss)

For the first time, scientists have extracted full nuclear genome data from ancient Egyptian mummies. The results offer exciting insights into how different ancient civilizations intermingled and also establishes a breakthrough precedent in our ability to study ancient DNA.

U.S. Mayors Conference
Credit: U.S. Mayors

The nation’s mayors sent a strong message to the Trump administration: If the federal government won’t take the lead on fighting climate change, they will.

At their annual summit that concluded Monday, the bipartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents more than 1,400 mayors nationwide, passed several resolutions pushing back against President Donald Trump’s policies on climate change. It included a call to Congress and the president to commit to environmental initiatives such as the Paris climate agreementand the Clean Power Plan. The country’s largest coalition of cities also passed a landmark resolution supporting cities’ transitions to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. The resolution was passed unanimously, the Guardian reported.

“If the federal government doesn’t act, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a national policy; the federal government doesn’t occupy the only place on this,” conference president and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the New York Times on Monday. […]

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If money amplifies the voices of wealthy Americans in politics, Seattle is trying something that aims to give low-income and middle-class voters a signal boost.

The city’s new “Democracy Voucher” program, the first of its kind in the US, provides every eligible Seattle resident with $100 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to donate to the candidates of their choice. The goal is to incentivize candidates to take heed of a broad range of residents – homeless people, minimum-wage workers, seniors on fixed incomes – as well as the big-dollar donors who often dictate the political conversation.

This August’s primary is the trial run for the program. But before Seattle can crow about having re-enfranchised long-overlooked voters, it must contend with conservative opposition.

The experiment comes at a time of seemingly new possibilities for campaign financing. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that small donors can float a campaign, with 99% of his donations coming from individual donors, 59% of which were considered small donations.

Last fall, South Dakota voters approved a program similar to Seattle’s, joining more than a dozen other states with some form of public financing, usually a matching fund for small campaign donations. Cities such as Portland, […]

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Pastor and Trump supporter Frank Amedia

Frank Amedia, who was a volunteer “Christian policy liaison” for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign before launching a project with fellow “prophets” to create a “POTUS Shield” around Trump’s presidency, visited televangelist Jim Bakker’s program this week to discuss various prophecies he has received around Trump.

Amedia told Bakker that he had heard from God that God had given Trump a “breaker anointing” that had allowed him to break up the Republican and Democratic parties and the news media, so North Korea had better watch out.

“So, you know, North Korea, you’d better be on your toes because you’re up against a breaker anointing of God,” he said. “This isn’t about politics, this isn’t government as usual, this isn’t even militaristic, God has raised up…a breaker anointing. Anything that God opposes him against, he breaks up. He broke up the Republican Party…he broke up the Democratic Party, he broke up the news media. Everything that comes against him, he has a hammer against. So, I’m telling you, […]

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