Music: Svaneborg Kardyb — ‘Op’
One in five households in Gaza go whole days without food, draft UN report says
The Guardian reports: More than half of households in Gaza have had to sell or swap their clothes to be able to buy food, the UN is to report, as a high risk of famine remains across the whole of the territory after a new round of violence in recent weeks. The latest “Special Snapshot” of Gaza from the UN’s hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), that will be published on Tuesday also says that one…
Jamaal Bowman vs. AIPAC — for the many, not the money
Tuesday is the culmination of the most expensive primary race in U.S. history in New York’s 16th Congressional District. Democratic Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, a former Bronx middle school principal and one of the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in October, is being challenged by a former corporate executive, George Latimer, who was encouraged to run by the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Outside spending in the race has topped $23 million, much of it from pro-Israel…
Israel’s top court rules ultra-Orthodox Jews must be drafted into military, in blow to Netanyahu
CNN reports: Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, delivering a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has the potential to unravel his ruling coalition. The court also ordered the government to withdraw funding from any religious schools, or yeshivas, whose students do not comply with draft notices. “The government wanted to distinguish at the level of law enforcement between individuals based on their group affiliation,” the court said in its…
Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans
The Associated Press reports: From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparations for a new White House. Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security….
Kremlin mouthpieces celebrate Julian Assange victory vs. the U.S. ‘deep state’
The Daily Beast reports: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s release from a British prison could not have made Russia’s top propagandists happier. RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan led the pack early Tuesday with a statement on Telegram paying tribute to the “best journalist of our time.” Noting that she was “awfully happy” to finally see Assange win his freedom, she recalled a one-on-one covert chat she said she had with him once in the “woods outside London.” After asking him why he…
What it’s like living through a 121 degree day
NPR reports: If you ask Ansar Khan, he will tell you that the heat killed his baby daughter Ina. She didn’t wake up from her afternoon nap in late May, on the dusty scrap of land she knew as home, with only a blue plastic sheet to shade her. It was the hottest day he’d ever experienced, and a hot wind blew. It was 121 degrees in New Delhi that day. “She was crying a bit, so we gave her…
Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species, says study
The Guardian reports: Protecting just 1.2% of the Earth’s surface for nature would be enough to prevent the extinction of the world’s most threatened species, according to a new study. Analysis published in the journal Frontiers in Science has found that the targeted expansion of protected areas on land would be enough to prevent the loss of thousands of the mammals, birds, amphibians and plants that are closest to disappearing. From Argentina to Papua New Guinea, the team of researchers…
Music: Maanu & Annural Khalid — ‘Jhol’
Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape U.S. discourse around Gaza war
The Guardian reports: Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli. Chikli…
Netanyahu says he won’t agree to a deal that ends the war in Gaza, testing the latest truce proposal
The Associated Press reports: The viability of a U.S.-backed proposal to wind down the 8-month-long war in Gaza has been cast into doubt after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would only be willing to agree to a “partial” cease-fire deal that would not end the war, comments that sparked an uproar from families of hostages held by Hamas. In an interview broadcast late Sunday on Israeli Channel 14, a conservative, pro-Netanyahu station, the Israeli leader said he was…
Israeli far-right minister speaks of effort to annex West Bank
The Guardian reports: Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described in explicit terms his active effort to annex the West Bank to Israel, days after the Guardian revealed how the pro-settlement politician and his allies had quietly gained significant new legal powers to that end. Speaking at a meeting of his Religious Zionism party, Smotrich told colleagues that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the occupied West…
Meet the ‘double haters’ who could decide the election
The Washington Post reports: [V]oters opposed to both candidates are not monolithic. Some mildly dislike both candidates, but have made peace with voting for the one they prefer. Others deeply disdain Biden and Trump, and seem incredulous that they find themselves choosing between “the lesser of two evils” — a phrase more than a half-dozen voters used in describing their Election Day calculus. And others plan to not vote or to opt for a third-party candidate, be it independent Robert…
Inside the $100 million plan to restore abortion rights in America
Politico reports: A new coalition of abortion-rights groups is marking the second anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade with a pledge to spend $100 million to restore federal protections for the procedure and make it more accessible than ever before. In plans shared first with POLITICO, groups including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Reproductive Freedom for All are banding together to form Abortion Access Now — a national, 10-year campaign that will both prepare policies for the next…
Texas ‘pro-life’ abortion ban linked to stark rise in infant deaths
HuffPost reports: Texas’ six-week abortion ban, a 2021 law whose GOP backers claimed would “protect innocent human life,” is linked to a staggering rise in infant deaths, a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found. The study, published on the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, found that the Texas ban was “associated with unexpected increases in infant and neonatal mortality in 2022,” suggesting that despite Republican sermonizing on…
What worked for British tabloids won’t work for The Washington Post
Anne Applebaum writes: In March of 2002, Milly Dowler, age 13, left her home in Walton-on-Thames for the last time. After she disappeared, her parents called the police. A search began. Blanket news coverage followed. In those days, probably a dozen British tabloids and half a dozen higher-brow broadsheets all chased the same stories. In an effort to beat his newspaper’s rivals, an investigator employed by News of the World, one of those tabloids, hacked into Dowler’s cellphone. He was…