Music: Ulf Wakenius — ‘Vagabond’
Majority in U.S. now disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza
Gallup reports: After narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin. Fifty-five percent currently disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve. The latest results are from a March 1-20 survey. The Israel-Hamas war has continued for five months and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis. Major parts of Gaza have been destroyed, complicating efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians…
Ireland backs bid to include blocking of aid in definition of genocide
The Guardian reports: Ireland is to seek to widen the definition of genocide to include blocking humanitarian aid in a landmark international court of justice (ICJ) case against Israel. The Irish government will intervene in the case taken by South Africa and argue that restricting food and other essentials in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent, the foreign minister Micheál Martin said on Wednesday. “We believe there is a case, given how this war has been conducted,” Martin told the Guardian….
The children who lost limbs in Gaza
Eliza Griswold writes: Just off the acacia-lined highway to the Qatari capital of Doha is a three-story, whitewashed apartment complex built to host visitors at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Until recently, the gated compound was unoccupied. Yet in the past several months, as part of a deal Qatar struck with Israel, Hamas, and Egypt to evacuate as many as fifteen hundred wounded Gazans in urgent need of medical care, it has begun to fill. The new residents are eight…
Why I’m resigning from the State Department
Annelle Sheline, PhD, served for a year as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor: Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel is credibly accused of starving…
Climate change is changing how we keep time
Science News reports: Climate change may be making it harder to know exactly what time it is. The rapid melting of the ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica, as measured by satellite-based gravitational measurements, is shifting more mass toward Earth’s waistline. And that extra bulge is slowing the planet’s rotation, geophysicist Duncan Agnew reports online March 27 in Nature. That climate change–driven mass shift is throwing a new wrench into international timekeeping standards. The internationally agreed-upon coordinated universal time, or…
Common plastic additive, BPA, linked to autism and ADHD, scientists find
Science Alert reports: The number of people being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder ( ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD) has risen sharply in recent decades, and research continues to delve into the factors involved in these conditions. A study revealed there’s a difference in how children with autism or ADHD clear the common plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA), compared to neurotypical children. BPA is used in a lot of plastics and plastic production processes, and can also…
The cell is not a factory
Charudatta Navare writes: When you think about it, it is amazing that something as tiny as a living cell is capable of behaviour so complex. Consider the single-cell creature, the amoeba. It can sense its environment, move around, obtain its food, maintain its structure, and multiply. How does a cell know how to do all of this? Biology textbooks will tell you that each eukaryotic cell, which constitutes a range of organisms from humans to amoeba, contains a control centre…
Music: Andrii Pokaz & Sebastian Studnitzky — ‘Pastoral’
The interlocking political fates of Biden and Netanyahu
Lisa Goldman and Danny Postel writes: This week’s diplomatic contretemps between the Israeli and American governments is being described as the worst rupture in the “special relationship” in decades. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy remarked to Golda Meir (then Israel’s foreign minister) that America’s bond with the Jewish state was comparable only to the one the U.S. shared with Britain. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled the trip of a delegation of top officials that was set…
Genocide foreseen
An analysis Michael Barnett wrote in March 2023: At a conference hosted by Haaretz on Wednesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that “the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out. I think that the State of Israel needs to do that—not, God forbid, private individuals.” Hawara has been in the news lately because of an Israeli assault that claimed the lives of ten Palestinians and injured over one hundred. Although Smotrich prefers to see Hawara’s demise through public…
Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’: A brief history of the ideology guiding Benjamin Netanyahu
A view of Khan Yunis in Gaza on Feb. 2, 2024, after weeks of continuous Israeli bombardment and bulldozing. Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu via Getty Images By Eran Kaplan, San Francisco State University Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that Israel’s military will soon launch an invasion of Rafah, the city in the southern Gaza Strip. More than 1 million Palestinians, now on the verge of famine, have sought refuge there from their bombed-out cities farther north. Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s…
The Supreme Court is shaming itself
Andrew Weissmann and Ryan Goodman writes: Donald Trump is determined to avoid accountability before the general election, and, so far, the U.S. Supreme Court is helping him. Trump has no legal ground whatsoever to delay a ruling in his plea for presidential immunity. The reason Trump has nevertheless sought to slow down the immunity appeals process is obvious: to postpone the trial date, hopefully pushing it into a time when, as president, he would control the Department of Justice and…
Retired Justice Breyer has a stark warning for today’s Supreme Court
Ankush Khardori writes: When Justice Stephen Breyer stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2022, he left the court with a record of accomplishment — but a legal approach that has been battered. With former President Donald Trump’s three appointees on the bench, the court was firmly in the hands of conservative justices whose theories of constitutional and statutory interpretation differed fundamentally from that of the liberal Breyer. Their methods have already upended American law in recent years in a…
Jeff Yass just bought Trump. Here’s what he stands to gain
Ja’han Jones writes: Billionaire investor Jeff Yass is playing his Trump card. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that the right-wing megadonor and major TikTok investor is a part owner of the company that merged with Donald Trump’s media company, which owns Truth Social, the former president’s struggling social media platform. The head-scratching deal stands to add billions of dollars to Trump’s net worth. Yass’ name recently started popping up in news reports after Trump denounced legislation in Congress that could…
Trump’s Truth Social is now a public company. Experts warn its multibillion-dollar valuation defies logic
CNN reports: For the first time in almost 30 years, part of Donald Trump’s business empire has gone public. Trading started with a bang, but the frenzy eased considerably by the closing bell, with shares ending well off their highs of the day. Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of struggling social media platform Truth Social, began its long-delayed journey as a public company at Tuesday’s opening bell under the ticker symbol “DJT.” The stock surged about 56% at…