Music: Fœhn Trio — ‘Camera Obscura’
Biden’s vanishing red line: White House silent as top UN court orders Israel to halt Rafah attack
The Independent reports: Joe Biden said months ago that a major Israeli offensive in the city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have been sheltering from the war, would be a “red line” that would force him to reconsider US support for the longtime ally. Since then, more than 800,000 have fled Israeli bombardment in the southern Gaza city and aid agencies have compared the situation there to “hell on earth”. And yet, the president has shown…
This Holocaust survivor (an American-Israeli lawyer and judge) recommended arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders
The Forward reports: By the age of 14, he had survived the Holocaust; by 44, he was an Israeli diplomat; now, at the age of 94, Theodor Meron recommended the International Criminal Court seek arrest warrants of Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meron, a New York University professor emeritus who has served as legal counsel for both the U.S. and Israeli governments, was one of eight legal and academic experts who were convened in…
EU’s Borrell says some European countries are trying to intimidate ICC judges, while Israel slams Germany
Reuters reports: European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday some European countries were trying to intimidate International Criminal Court judges over a case against Israeli leaders, and must stop “meddling” and respect the court. ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced on Monday that he had filed for arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders. “The prosecutor has done nothing more than make an accusation and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Music: Fœhn Trio — ‘Wolves’
‘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…
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,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…