Music: Bremer/McCoy — ‘Daggry’
IDF moves closer to Rafah offensive despite ‘bloodbath’ warning
The Guardian reports: Israel has moved closer to a full-scale ground offensive against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, as Benjamin Netayahu ordered military leaders to present a plan to evacuate civilians from the area. Despite warnings from a senior aid official that an assault on Rafah – where about 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering – would lead to a “bloodbath”, and the UN urging against forced mass displacement, Israel appeared determined to push ahead. “It is impossible to…
UNRWA staff accused by Israel sacked without evidence, chief admits
The Guardian reports: The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said he followed “reverse due process” in sacking nine staff members accused by Israel of being involved in Hamas’s 7 October attacks. Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said he did not probe Israel’s claims against the employees before dismissing them and launching an investigation. At a press conference in Jerusalem, Lazzarini was asked if he had looked into whether there was any evidence against the employees and…
Age isn’t just a number. It’s a profound and growing problem for Biden
Politico reports: Special counsel Robert Hur jolted the presidential campaign Thursday with a withering assessment of Joe Biden’s mental acuity, drawing the president’s biggest political liability firmly into the public conversation. While Biden’s age is a major concern for voters in polling, top Democrats have danced around the issue, keeping their concerns mostly private. But Hur’s description of Biden, 81, in an official report as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” may force a new reckoning for the…
Tucker Carlson — Putin’s useful idiot or his co-conspirator?
Oliver Darcy writes: It’s evident now why Vladimir Putin granted an interview to Tucker Carlson. Over the course of the more than two-hour sit-down, the former Fox News host turned online commentator largely refrained from challenging the Russian authoritarian, whose brutal war on Ukraine has led to the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Those expecting a hard-hitting face-off will have surely walked away sorely disappointed by the long-winded and rambling interview, in which Tucker himself at times…
Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists
CNN reports: A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others. Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as…
Climatologist Michael Mann wins defamation case. What this means for scientists
Nature reports: US climate scientist Michael Mann has prevailed in a lawsuit that accused two conservative commentators of defamation for challenging his research and comparing him to a convicted child molester. A jury awarded Mann, who is based at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, more than US$1 million in a landmark case that legal observers see as a warning to those who attack scientists working in controversial fields, including climate science and public health. “It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize…
Stone tool discovery challenges ‘revolution’ theory of human evolution
Discover magazine reports: Using tools seems like second nature for humans today, but our prehistoric ancestors didn’t acquire this practical skill set overnight. The timeline of stone tool development by humans has been rearranged by new research, shaking up traditional views about the evolution of ancient human ingenuity. The study, published in Nature Communications, suggests that humans went through a period of gradual cultural change after they started moving throughout Eurasia 50,000 years to 40,000 years ago. This new perspective…
Music: Gui Duvignau with Bill Frisell — ‘Canto de Ossanha’
Israel escalates Rafah bombardment as U.S. warns of a ‘disaster’
Al Jazeera reports: Israeli forces bombed areas in the southern border city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s internally displaced population is sheltering, as the United States warned that a military push into the city could be a “disaster”. Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel follows through on its threat to enter Rafah, where people are desperate for shelter and one of the last remaining areas of the Gaza Strip into which its troops…
UNRWA donors suspended funding without seeing any evidence supporting Israel’s claims
CBC reports: The government of Canada did not see any evidence backing up Israel’s claim that staff employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) colluded with Hamas before suspending funding to the agency, CBC News has learned. Government sources tell CBC that Israel still has not shared evidence with Canada to substantiate its claim that 12 employees of UNRWA were involved in some capacity in the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the affiliated group…
Israel’s cultural genocide is destroying Gaza’s very memory
Ahmad Ibsais writes: Growing up in the diaspora, I clung to the stories of Palestine I heard from my parents and grandparents. They gave me the undying belief that Palestinians would one day be free because we are a people rooted in resilience, culture, language, and one another. Part of resisting the 76 years of brutal Israeli occupation is passing on these stories. Some were told by my mother when making dishes like maklouba, which was always served with “Sahtain!,”…
Palestinian groups accuse UN adviser of failing to warn about potential genocide
The Guardian reports: Leading Palestinian human rights groups have accused the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide of failing to fulfil her mandate after she issued only one statement on the war in Gaza – largely supportive of Israel – that has claimed 26,000 Palestinian lives. In a statement issued in October, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, a Kenyan, omitted any criticism of Israel. In a letter sent to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Wednesday, 16 Palestinian groups,…
Biden, an ‘elderly man with a poor memory,’ recounts speaking to dead European leaders
NBC News reports: President Joe Biden on Wednesday twice referred to the late German chancellor Helmut Kohl instead of former Chancellor Angela Merkel while detailing a 2021 conversation at campaign events. It was the second time this week that Biden had recalled speaking with a European leader who had died years earlier. Biden’s gaffes Wednesday came at a series of fundraisers in New York as he described conversations he said he had with European leaders at a meeting of the…
Earth breached a feared level of warming over the past year. Are we doomed?
The Washington Post reports: It’s official:For the past 12 months, the Earth was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than in preindustrial times, scientists said Thursday, crossing a critical barrier into temperatures never experienced by human civilizations. According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the past 12 months clocked in at a scorching 1.52 degrees Celsius (2.74 degrees Fahrenheit) higher on average compared with between 1850 and 1900. At some level, that’s not surprising — the past 12 months have…
Invasive ants disrupt lions’ hunting behavior in Kenya
GrrlScientist writes: In a remarkable, but accidental, real-life experiment demonstrating the ecological connections between all life regardless of how great or small, a study recently came out that documents how a tiny ant is affecting the mighty lion on the savannahs of Kenya. This ant is invasive and it’s far from home. It probably arrived from the island of Mauritius, located in the Indian Ocean, early during the last century, and began establishing itself in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in…