Music: Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft — ‘Birds’
U.S. intelligence report states Netanyahu’s viability to lead Israel is in jeopardy
CNN reports: The US intelligence community assesses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” to be “in jeopardy,” according to its annual report on the national security threats facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday. “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections,” according to the report. “A different, more…
Israeli human rights groups accuse country of failing to abide by ICJ’s Gaza aid ruling
The Guardian reports: Twelve of Israel’s most prominent human rights organisations have signed an open letter accusing the country of failing to comply with the international court of justice’s (ICJ) provisional ruling that it should facilitate access of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The court in The Hague made a number of legal requirements of Israel when it issued a provisional ruling in late January in response to South Africa’s complaint accusing the state of committing genocide in its military campaign…
Biden’s Armageddon moment: When nuclear detonation seemed possible in Ukraine
The New York Times reports: President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years. It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from…
Claremont Institute’s links to extremist fraternal order
The Guardian reports: The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy. The revelations emerge from documents gathered in public records requests, including emails between several senior members of SACR: Claremont president Ryan P…
Donald Trump won’t give ‘a penny’ to Ukraine if elected, Orbán says
Politico reports: Donald Trump will totally stop funding Ukraine if he wins the U.S. election in November, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said following a meeting between the right-wing figureheads. “He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told Hungarian state media Sunday. “Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.” The longtime allies met last Friday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, a summit which was…
Bloodbath at RNC: Trump team slashes staff at committee
Politico reports: Donald Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the Republican National Committee on Monday began the process of pushing out dozens of officials, according to two people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC. All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally,…
We aren’t the only apes who can playfully tease each other, study finds
Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species: https://t.co/MhRhkoFPOs @RossanoFederico @IsabelleLaumer @ScienceSquil #ProcB #ethology pic.twitter.com/pzuMbBdTGf — Royal Society Publishing (@RSocPublishing) March 11, 2024 Mongabay reports: Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s socially acceptable, being spontaneous, predicting how others may react, and playfully violating some social expectations. Until now, research on the complex cognitive abilities that underpin…
Music: Bugge Wesseltoft & Sidsel Endresen — ‘You Might Say’
Netanyahu vows to defy Biden’s ‘red line’ and invade Rafah. He also denies Palestinians are starving
Politico reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of U.S. President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a “red line.” Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians…
Israeli rabbi calls for killing all Palestinians in Gaza
He’s not just head of a yeshiva; he’s head of a hesder yeshiva. Many yeshiva students do not serve in the military, but hesder yeshivas combine Torah study with military service. So young military recruits are being taught that genocide is a religious duty. https://t.co/gpzBny5pkv — Barnett R. Rubin (@BRRubin) March 10, 2024 They are proud to murder a 73-year-old deaf man. That's the type of savagery we are facing in Gaza https://t.co/VRxeW1DYTh — Khalil Sayegh (@KhalilJeries) March 9,…
Chief Sephardic rabbi says ultra-Orthodox will leave Israel if forced into army
The Times of Israel reports: Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef warned Saturday that ultra-Orthodox Jews will leave Israel en masse if the government ends exemptions of mandatory military enlistment enjoyed by the community. “If they force us to go to the army, we’ll all move abroad,” Yosef said during a weekly lecture. “We’ll buy a ticket… We’ll go there.” “The [biblical] tribe of Levi was exempted from the army,” he noted by way of comparison, referring to the biblical tribe…
Major U.S. corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle’
The Guardian reports: Upset by the surge in union drives, several of the best-known corporations in the US are seeking to cripple the country’s top labor watchdog, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), by having it declared unconstitutional. Some labor experts warn that if those efforts succeed, US labor relations might return to “the law of the jungle”. In recent weeks, Elon Musk’s SpaceX as well as Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have filed legal papers that advance novel arguments…
No Labels will launch presidential campaign with no candidate
Politico reports: The centrist political organization No Labels voted on Friday to move forward with its presidential ticket, according to a virtual meeting the group held with its delegates. But an official with the group acknowledged during the gathering, a recording of which was shared with POLITICO, that they currently do not have a candidate and may not find one. The decision by No Labels marks a potentially major turning point in the course of the 2024 campaign, with the…
‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started
The Washington Post reports: A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself. Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a…
Scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth
The Scripps Research Institute: Roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth was developing conditions suitable for life. Origin-of-life scientists often wonder if the type of chemistry found on the early Earth was similar to what life requires today. They know that spherical collections of fats, called protocells, were the precursor to cells during this emergence of life. But how did simple protocells first arise and diversify to eventually lead to life on Earth? Now, Scripps Research scientists have discovered one plausible…