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Georgia election officials have a duty to certify results, judge rules

Georgia election officials have a duty to certify results, judge rules

Democracy Docket reports: A Georgia judge ruled Monday that certifying election results is a mandatory duty for county election officials. In his opinion, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney stated that “certifying election results…is mandatory” and “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration (BRE), filed the lawsuit…

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U.S. suggests military aid to Israel is at risk in letter demanding more aid for Gaza

U.S. suggests military aid to Israel is at risk in letter demanding more aid for Gaza

CNN reports: The Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding it act to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy. The Sunday letter, jointly written by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is addressed to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. It marks…

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Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’ – Palestinian lawyer

Gaza at risk of becoming ‘graveyard of international law’ – Palestinian lawyer

The Guardian reports: A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”. Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a…

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The Atlantic Ocean’s currents are on the verge of collapse. This is what it means for the planet

The Atlantic Ocean’s currents are on the verge of collapse. This is what it means for the planet

David Thornalley writes: Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks, and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there’s ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around… The world has been upended. What’s going on? While these scenes sound like something from a Hollywood disaster movie, a new scientific study investigating a key element of Earth’s…

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How reported threats in North Carolina trace to Trump-fueled misinformation

How reported threats in North Carolina trace to Trump-fueled misinformation

Aaron Blake writes: For weeks, misinformation about the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Hurricane Helene response has spread far and wide on social media platforms — with more than a helpful nudge from Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the relaxed moderation policies of Musk’s platform, X. The real consequences of that have begun to show. The Washington Post reported late Sunday that federal emergency responders were ordered evacuated from Rutherford County, N.C., on Saturday due to a reported threat…

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Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets, officials say

Netanyahu tells U.S. that Israel will strike Iranian military, not nuclear or oil, targets, officials say

The Washington Post reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter, suggesting a more limited counterstrike aimed at preventing a full-scale war. In the two weeks since Iran’s latest missile barrage on Israel, its second direct attack in six months, the Middle East has braced for Israel’s promised response, fearing the two countries’ decades-long shadow…

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Internal polling memo has warning signs for Senate Republicans

Internal polling memo has warning signs for Senate Republicans

Politico reports: The top GOP super PAC charged with flipping the Senate has found that most of its candidates are trailing their Democratic opponents, according to an internal polling memo obtained by POLITICO. The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states, a pattern that could sharply limit their ability to build a sizable majority unless they can force a change in the final weeks…

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NRA chief involved in gruesome cat killing as college fraternity member

NRA chief involved in gruesome cat killing as college fraternity member

The Guardian reports: Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time. Hamlin pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty brought against him and four of his fraternity brothers in 1980, when he was an undergraduate student at…

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Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?

Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?

The Guardian reports: It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year. This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together,…

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Researchers parse the future of plankton in an ever-warmer world

Researchers parse the future of plankton in an ever-warmer world

Nicola Jones writes: Across the world’s oceans, an invisible army of tiny organisms has a supersized impact on the planet. Plankton are at the base of the ocean food chain, feeding fish that feed billions of people. They are responsible for half of the world’s oxygen supply and half of our planet’s annual carbon sink. Miniscule but powerful, their presence can help or hinder ecosystems — by soaking up greenhouse gas, for example, or by spewing toxins. Where plankton live,…

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Navigation strategies studied in a lab may not replicate in real life

Navigation strategies studied in a lab may not replicate in real life

Sujata Gupta writes: On a trip to Siberia in 2019, cognitive scientist Pablo Fernandez Velasco attended a raffle drawing with the region’s Evenki reindeer herders. Prizes included a soccer ball, tea, a portable radio, a GPS unit and other knickknacks. A herder in Velasco’s group won the GPS. “I thought [that] was one of the fancier prizes,” says Velasco, of the University of York in England. “He was crestfallen.” The herder, who had been eyeing the radio, had no use…

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Liz Cheney issues dire warning about ‘fundamentally cruel’ Trump, agrees he’s a ‘fascist’

Liz Cheney issues dire warning about ‘fundamentally cruel’ Trump, agrees he’s a ‘fascist’

NBC News reports: Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday issued a series of dire warnings about a potential future Trump administration, telling NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that people ought to “carefully” consider what another Trump presidency would look like. “Donald Trump believes he will be immune for anything he does once he’s in office,” Cheney, a fierce Trump critic, told moderator Kristen Welker. The former Wyoming congresswoman, who has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and has campaigned with…

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Trump wants the military to target his political opponents

Trump wants the military to target his political opponents

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump has proposed a fascist plan to deploy military forces against U.S. citizens who oppose him on election day. “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” the former president told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo when she asked if he expects “chaos on election day” from immigrants. “We have some very bad people, some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really…

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Trump escalates rhetoric on outlawing political dissent and criticism

Trump escalates rhetoric on outlawing political dissent and criticism

NBC News reports: Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power. In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. “She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found…

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