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Hundreds of Palestinian doctors disappeared into Israeli detention

Hundreds of Palestinian doctors disappeared into Israeli detention

The Intercept reports: It’s been two months since Osaid Alser has heard from his cousin, Khaled Al Serr, a surgeon at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis. Before late March, they had been in regular contact — or as regular as the shredded communication infrastructure would allow. Al Serr had created a telemedicine WhatsApp group where he and Osaid, a surgical resident in the U.S., recruited doctors from stateside, the U.K., and Europe to give…

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Putin wants Ukraine ceasefire on current frontlines

Putin wants Ukraine ceasefire on current frontlines

Reuters reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond. Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian…

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Texas’s pardon of the killer of a Black Lives Matter protester sends a chilling message

Texas’s pardon of the killer of a Black Lives Matter protester sends a chilling message

Tayo Bero writes: This month, the Texas state parole board unanimously recommended the pardon and release of convicted killer and former US army sergeant Daniel Perry, along with the restoration of his firearm rights. Perry had been working as an Uber driver in July 2020 when he shot and killed Garrett Foster, a white man who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with his Black fiancee. Perry was later indicted for murder, tried, convicted and sentenced to 25 years…

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Animals self-medicate with plants − behavior people have observed and emulated for millennia

Animals self-medicate with plants − behavior people have observed and emulated for millennia

A goat with an arrow wound nibbles the medicinal herb dittany. O. Dapper, CC BY By Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University When a wild orangutan in Sumatra recently suffered a facial wound, apparently after fighting with another male, he did something that caught the attention of the scientists observing him. The animal chewed the leaves of a liana vine – a plant not normally eaten by apes. Over several days, the orangutan carefully applied the juice to its wound, then covered…

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‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, look at what U.S. weapons have done’

‘It’s Bisan from Gaza, look at what U.S. weapons have done’

  As Israel orders the evacuation of Rafah, many Palestinians are returning to their destroyed homes in Khan Younis after Israeli forces left the city on April 7. Bisan returns to Gaza’s second-largest city, which once had a population of around 400,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering in Khan Younis were forced to flee in February when Israeli forces besieged the city for months. Now, as Israel bombs Rafah, many Palestinians are being forced to evacuate back to…

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Biden should oppose U.S. sanctions on ICC, human rights groups say

Biden should oppose U.S. sanctions on ICC, human rights groups say

Human Rights Watch: US President Joe Biden should oppose threats and calls for punitive actions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), 121 human rights and civil society groups said today in a letter to President Biden. On May 20, 2024, the court’s prosecutor announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for three leaders of Hamas and two senior Israeli officials. Some members of the US Congress have threatened to retaliate against the ICC, including by imposing sanctions against court officers,…

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Crypto’s ‘huge moment’ scrambling U.S. politics

Crypto’s ‘huge moment’ scrambling U.S. politics

Politico reports: Cryptocurrency is used by a fraction of the American electorate. But it’s starting to have an outsize impact on U.S. politics and policy. The crypto industry won several eye-catching victories this month that showcased its growing influence on the levers of power in Washington — something that’s poised to expand as it prepares to spend more than $80 million on the 2024 elections. The wins come as the Federal Reserve said this week that only 7 percent of…

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Critics say seditious Alito flags expose his ‘Christian nationalism’

Critics say seditious Alito flags expose his ‘Christian nationalism’

Charles R Davis writes: When Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was caught raising an upside down American flag outside his Virginia home, the conservative jurist found a woman to blame: his wife. It was she who decided to wave the chosen banner of election deniers in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, he said, after she became righteously furious at an allegedly profane display of anti-Trump sentiment in her neighborhood. Alito, innocent, just happened to live there — with…

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Far-right ID group expels Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Far-right ID group expels Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Politico reports: Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has been expelled from its pan-European group Identity and Democracy in the European Parliament following a series of scandals that have damaged its popularity and made it something of a pariah. Long-simmering tensions between European far-right parties came to a boil this week when Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate for the European election, told an Italian newspaper that members of the Nazi SS were not necessarily criminals. Following those comments,…

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Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought, report finds

Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought, report finds

The Guardian reports: The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found. A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C…

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Bizarre bacteria defy textbooks by writing new genes

Bizarre bacteria defy textbooks by writing new genes

Nature reports: Genetic information usually travels down a one-way street: genes written in DNA serve as the template for making RNA molecules, which are then translated into proteins. That tidy textbook story got a bit complicated in 1970 when scientists discovered that some viruses have enzymes called reverse transcriptases, which scribe RNA into DNA — the reverse of the usual traffic flow. Now, scientists have discovered an even weirder twist. A bacterial version of reverse transcriptase reads RNA as a…

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Norway, Ireland and Spain will join 140 other countries recognizing Palestine, deepening Israel’s isolation

Norway, Ireland and Spain will join 140 other countries recognizing Palestine, deepening Israel’s isolation

US & several Western countries remain the only ones who don’t recognise Palestine as a state https://t.co/ckuYENm1Jw — convencia (@convencia) May 22, 2024 The Associated Press reports: Norway, Ireland and Spain said Wednesday they would recognize a Palestinian state, a historic but largely symbolic move that further deepens Israel’s isolation more than seven months into its grinding war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel immediately denounced the decisions and recalled its ambassadors to the three countries. Palestinians welcomed the announcements as…

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The theatrics of genocidal impunity

The theatrics of genocidal impunity

Farhan Mujahid Chak writes: On May 1, a draft resolution was submitted to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to declare July 11 a day of remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. The document was put forward by Germany and Rwanda and co-sponsored by the United States and other countries. It will be debated and voted on during a UNGA session on May 23. The actions the draft resolution lays out – including condemnation of genocide denial and prohibiting glorification…

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U.S. sees Israel’s military strategy in Gaza as strengthening Hamas

U.S. sees Israel’s military strategy in Gaza as strengthening Hamas

Politico reports: The Biden administration fears Israel is disastrously squandering its opportunity for victory against Hamas, losing its best chance to eliminate the group’s hold on Gaza and threat to the Israeli people. Top officials are publicly calling Israel’s strategy in Gaza self-defeating and likely to open the door to Hamas’ return — a level of criticism of the Middle East ally not seen since the war began in October. The officials say Israel’s government has failed to hold parts…

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