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Category: Politics

Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability

Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability

The Washington Post reports: For the past 15 years, the most important clues about Iran’s nuclear program have lain deep underground, in a factory built inside a mountain on the edge of Iran’s Great Salt Desert. The facility, known as Fordow, is the heavily protected inner sanctum of Iran’s nuclear complex and a frequent destination for international inspectors whose visits are meant to ensure against any secret effort by Iran to make nuclear bombs. The inspectors’ latest trek, in February,…

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America fell for guns recently — and for reasons you will not guess

America fell for guns recently — and for reasons you will not guess

Megan Kang writes: Of all the potential explanations we tested, we discovered that the post-Second World War economic boom and relaxed federal gun regulations most drove the surge in demand for guns. As unemployment rates decreased and incomes increased, firearms – once deemed a luxury or practical necessity – grew within reach for more and more Americans. Simultaneously, cultural attitudes surrounding gun ownership may have shifted, as multiple generations of Americans returning from the Second World War, the Korean War…

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Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war

Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war

Palestinians look for survivors after a Israeli strike in Gaza on Oct. 31, 2023. AP Photo/Doaa AlBaz By Dima Nazzal, Georgia Institute of Technology Over a decade ago, a United Nations report described the Gaza Strip as virtually unlivable, adding that it would require “Herculean efforts” to change that. Today, after six months of bombardment, mass displacement and siege by Israel, the task of rebuilding Gaza seems practically unimaginable. I’m a scholar and a systems engineer who, as research director…

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Gaza: Israel’s imposed starvation deadly for children

Gaza: Israel’s imposed starvation deadly for children

Human Rights Watch: Children in Gaza have been dying from starvation-related complications since the Israeli government began using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Doctors and families in Gaza described children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration, and hospitals ill-equipped to treat them. Concerned governments should impose targeted sanctions and suspend arms transfers to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid and…

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Arizona’s zombie abortion ban is back. It’s every state’s future if Trump wins

Arizona’s zombie abortion ban is back. It’s every state’s future if Trump wins

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that its total abortion ban, a seemingly dead law dating back to 1864, is once again enforceable, despite more recent legislation that seemed to supercede it. The zombie ban makes virtually all abortions a felony, imposing a prison sentence of two to five years for any provider. There is no exception for rape or incest. The law was enacted before women could vote, and was long…

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Inside the election denial groups planning to disrupt November

Inside the election denial groups planning to disrupt November

Wired reports: As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it. All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have…

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European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction

European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction

BBC News reports: A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate. It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming. Swedish campaigner Greta…

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Leaders of Jordan, France and Egypt: Cease fire now in Gaza

Leaders of Jordan, France and Egypt: Cease fire now in Gaza

King Abdullah II, Emmanuel Macron and Abdel Fatah El-Sisi writes: The war in Gaza and the catastrophic humanitarian suffering it is causing must end now. Violence, terror and war cannot bring peace to the Middle East. The two-state solution will. It is the only credible path to guaranteeing peace and security for all, and ensuring that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis ever have to relive the horrors that have befallen them since the Oct. 7 attack. On March 25,…

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Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

Germany is accused of complicity in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza

  Germany has been accused of aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, in a case before the UN’s top court. It was brought by Nicaragua and calls for emergency measures to stop Germany from selling weapons to Israel. It also wants Berlin to restore funding to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Nicaragua’s lawyer had harsh words for the dual role Germany’s playing in what the ICJ’s already ruled to be a plausible case of genocide. Al Jazeera’s senior…

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Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Elizabeth Warren says she believes Israel’s war in Gaza will legally be considered a genocide

Politico reports: Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes international officials could find that Israel’s assault on Gaza legally constitutes a genocide, she said during an event at a local mosque last week. “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday while taking audience questions during an event at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland, Massachusetts. A video…

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IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

IRC President on delivering aid to Gaza: ‘We need a paradigm shift’

  This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen envoy an ‘inflection point’. President of the International Rescue Committee David Miliband tells Ali Velshi that what is really needed is a ‘paradigm shift’ to get more aid into Gaza. ‘Aid workers have a legal right to go about their business without being killed. This couldn’t be more serious.’

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The disappeared of Gaza: tens of thousands missing in territory since start of war

The Guardian reports: Late one night in March, Ahmed Abu Jalala rose quietly, trying hard not to wake his family, sleeping around him on the floor of a UN-run school in northern Gaza. The 54-year-old father knew his six children needed food, but after months of war there was none. Little aid reached Jabaliya, where they had been staying since fleeing their small home in the early weeks of the conflict, and his children had been reduced to eating wild…

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Trump’s RNC takeover triggers strife and staff exits as purge partly backfires

Trump’s RNC takeover triggers strife and staff exits as purge partly backfires

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s allies installed to run the Republican National Committee have faced a tumultuous first month in charge, buffeted by staffing problems and operational headaches as they attempt to bring the party apparatus under the control of the Trump campaign before the 2024 election. The internal strife at the RNC has prompted the Trump campaign to privately admonish its new leaders in recent weeks. And the move to orchestrate a purge may have partly backfired with far-reaching…

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‘The war in Gaza is over, but the state of war is not,’ says retired general Israel Ziv

‘The war in Gaza is over, but the state of war is not,’ says retired general Israel Ziv

David Horovitz writes: Is this how the war ends? Not with a bang, or even a whimper, but with the IDF pulling its ground forces out of Khan Younis, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asserting, in defiance of reality, that Hamas has “stopped functioning as a military organization throughout the Gaza Strip,” contradicting himself in the next breath, and clarifying a few hours later? As Israel on Sunday marked six months since the October 7 massacre, the two prime declared…

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‘Unprecedented in modern history’: U.S. aid experts warn Gaza likely already experiencing famine

‘Unprecedented in modern history’: U.S. aid experts warn Gaza likely already experiencing famine

HuffPost reports: A group of U.S. government humanitarian experts on Tuesday privately warned fellow officials that the spread of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza amid the U.S.-backed Israeli offensive is “unprecedented in modern history,” famine is likely already occurring in parts of the Gaza Strip and the pace of hunger-releated deaths will “accelerate in the weeks ahead.” The striking assessment was shared in a cable drafted by officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development and sent to the White…

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José Andrés frustrated it took foreign aid workers’ deaths to spark international outrage over Gaza

José Andrés frustrated it took foreign aid workers’ deaths to spark international outrage over Gaza

HuffPost reports: “There’s way too many cases now of humanitarians dying ― many civilians, women, children that the only thing they did was trying to get close by, to somewhere that they were giving them flour or bread,” Andrés told Martha Raddatz on Sunday during ABC’s “This Week.” "This doesn't seem a war against terror. This doesn't seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it's a war against humanity itself," José Andrés tells @MarthaRaddatz…

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