Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

From the Jenin raid to settlements, Biden is giving Israel’s far-right government a green light

From the Jenin raid to settlements, Biden is giving Israel’s far-right government a green light

Mairav Zonszein writes: On Monday July 3, while Israeli forces were raiding the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, in a ground and aerial assault that forced thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes, U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Fourth of July event in Jerusalem. They talked about the close bond between the United States and Israel, and smiled for the cameras. During the Israeli military’s two-day raid—the largest in…

Read More Read More

Joe Biden should embrace all seven of his grandchildren

Joe Biden should embrace all seven of his grandchildren

Maureen Dowd writes: Even my Republican sister is not immune to Joe Biden’s gregarious Irish charm. She met him at media holiday parties over the years and was so impressed that she got seduced to the other side for a time, voting for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and writing in Biden’s name for president in 2012. She sent out a Christmas card one year with a picture of herself cheek to cheek with Biden — and some of her…

Read More Read More

Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine war misinformation

Twitter Blue accounts fuel Ukraine war misinformation

BBC News reports: False and misleading posts about the Ukraine conflict continue to go viral on major social media platforms, as Russia’s invasion of the country extends beyond 500 days. Some of the most widely shared examples can be found on Twitter, posted by subscribers with a blue tick, who pay for their content to be promoted to other users. Many misleading posts have been shared online about the recent riots in France, but one viral post last week focused…

Read More Read More

What history reveals about the biggest new power player in U.S. politics: Moms for Liberty

What history reveals about the biggest new power player in U.S. politics: Moms for Liberty

Nicole Hemmer writes: When Moms for Liberty met in Philadelphia last week, they attracted the kind of attention, and controversy, that they have become accustomed to courting. Founded two years ago in the wake of President Joe Biden’s election, the organization attracted the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. They also drew a crowd of protesters and activists who oppose the group’s reactionary political projects, such as book bans…

Read More Read More

Abducted Princeton student’s friends warn ‘lies’ could get her killed

Abducted Princeton student’s friends warn ‘lies’ could get her killed

The Daily Beast reports: Friends and colleagues of Elizabeth Tsurkov, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was kidnapped by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq earlier this year, are slamming what they describe as dangerous lies spreading online about the Princeton doctoral student. Tsurkov, 36, went missing in March after traveling to Iraq on a research trip for her dissertation, Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement this week, adding that she was abducted by Kataib Hezbollah, a notorious militia group…

Read More Read More

The U.S. and China must work together to combat climate change, says Yellen

The U.S. and China must work together to combat climate change, says Yellen

Reuters reports: The United States and China, as the world’s two largest economies, must work together to combat the “existential threat” of climate change, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Chinese government officials and climate experts on Saturday. During a visit to Beijing, Yellen said previous cooperation on climate change between the U.S. and China had made possible global breakthroughs such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, adding that both governments wanted to support emerging markets and developing countries as they…

Read More Read More

Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here’s how we know

Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years. Here’s how we know

The Washington Post reports: Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising. In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000…

Read More Read More

There have been an average of almost two mass shootings every day in the U.S. so far this year

There have been an average of almost two mass shootings every day in the U.S. so far this year

ABC News reports: The United States has faced at least 351 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This averages out to almost two mass shootings a day. Mass shootings are defined as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed, according to the archive. Though mass shootings don’t make up the majority of gun violence incidents in America, their impact on communities and victims is evident. Incidents like the mass…

Read More Read More

‘Sound of Freedom’: Box office triumph for QAnon believers

‘Sound of Freedom’: Box office triumph for QAnon believers

Miles Klee writes: “Based on a true story,” I heard from somewhere across the theater. The familiar words had appeared on screen, and an elderly man had taken it upon himself to read them aloud, to the rest of a sizable audience seated for a matinee showing of the anti-child-trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel. For the seasoned moviegoer, this phrase is a joke — we know that cinema will stretch almost any “truth” to the breaking point — and the rank…

Read More Read More

Measurement of electron’s ‘shape’ dims hopes for discovery of new particles

Measurement of electron’s ‘shape’ dims hopes for discovery of new particles

Science reports: A measurement of the humble electron has dimmed particle physicists’ long-held hopes of discovering exotic new particles. The finding, reported today in Science, confirms to greater precision than ever before that the distribution of electric charge in the electron is essentially round. The result implies that any new fundamental particles lurking undiscovered in the vacuum might be too massive for even the world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to produce. “It’s a fantastic result,” says…

Read More Read More

How nationalist movements paved Ukraine’s way to freedom

How nationalist movements paved Ukraine’s way to freedom

Alexander Query writes: When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many in the West, and in the Kremlin too, expected the Ukrainian state to crumble in weeks, if not days. The government would flee, the state would be carved up – some lands absorbed by Russia, the rest perhaps being made into a Moscow-dominated puppet state. The war might continue, but it would be an insurgency in an occupied country, so the experts said. They were wrong, and part…

Read More Read More

Turkey’s Erdogan says Ukraine deserves NATO membership

Turkey’s Erdogan says Ukraine deserves NATO membership

CNN reports: Ukraine deserves to have NATO membership, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a joint press conference in Istanbul alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the press conference Erdogan also said he hoped the Black Sea grain deal, which Turkey helped broker with Russia, will be extended. The deal, seen as vital for world food security, is expiring in just ten days. The Turkish president went on to say he will support the rebuilding of Ukraine and that…

Read More Read More

Biden approves cluster munition supply to Ukraine

Biden approves cluster munition supply to Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: President Biden has approved the provision of U.S. cluster munitions for Ukraine, with drawdown of the weapons from Defense Department stocks due to be announced Friday. The move, which will bypass U.S. law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent, comes amid concerns about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive against entrenched Russian troops and dwindling Western stocks of conventional artillery. It follows months of internal administration debate…

Read More Read More

The world just broke a stunning slew of heat records. Why right now?

The world just broke a stunning slew of heat records. Why right now?

Bob Henson writes: Mid-2023 seems destined to go down as a pivotal period in climate change history — a time when planet Earth seemed to go from a simmer to a full rolling boil in a matter of weeks. What’s jumping out isn’t a single heat wave, but a one-after-another series of global and regional heat records astounding in both scope and persistence. The world just had the hottest June on record, with unprecedented sea surface temperatures and record-low Antarctic…

Read More Read More