Browsed by
Category: Politics

A plurality of Americans are not affiliated with any religion

A plurality of Americans are not affiliated with any religion

NPR reports: When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’ A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%). Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew’s…

Read More Read More

U.S. states had an estimated 65,000 rape-related pregnancies after banning abortion

U.S. states had an estimated 65,000 rape-related pregnancies after banning abortion

NPR reports: As an abortion provider in Montana, Dr. Samuel Dickman has seen patients routinely who tell him they became pregnant after a rape. His sense was the patients who were telling him were only a fraction of the true number. “There are certainly far more survivors of rape who become pregnant as a result, who — for totally understandable reasons — don’t want to disclose that fact to a medical provider that they just met.” Dickman used to live…

Read More Read More

‘Showing the world what’s possible’: St Paul makes history with first all-female city council

‘Showing the world what’s possible’: St Paul makes history with first all-female city council

The Guardian reports: When Rebecca Noecker first decided to enter politics in 2016, she was a young mom with two kids and many questions. She had a background in education but no knowledge of how to run for office. “There were so many systems that I saw around me that just felt broken and people were in pain and I wanted to do something about that,” Noecker, 39, said. “And it felt like politics was a way to do it.”…

Read More Read More

American, British forces escalate strikes on Houthis in Yemen in order to ‘de-escalate tensions’

American, British forces escalate strikes on Houthis in Yemen in order to ‘de-escalate tensions’

Politico reports: The U.S. and U.K. conducted large-scale air and missile strikes on Houthi rebel facilities across Yemen on Monday, according to a joint statement, stepping up operations against the militant group as it vows to continue attacking ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. and U.K. militaries, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, hit eight Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis’ continued attacks, according to a joint statement from the countries involved. The…

Read More Read More

Israel’s spy chief proposed Hamas leaders leave Gaza as part of broader ceasefire talks

Israel’s spy chief proposed Hamas leaders leave Gaza as part of broader ceasefire talks

CNN reports: Israel has proposed that Hamas senior leaders could leave Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire agreement, two officials familiar with the ongoing international discussions told CNN. The extraordinary proposal, which has not been previously reported, comes as Israel has struggled to achieve its stated goal of completely destroying Hamas. Despite its nearly four-month war in Gaza, Israel has failed to capture or kill any of Hamas’s most senior leaders in Gaza and left around 70% of Hamas’…

Read More Read More

A Louisiana teen traveled to the West Bank to learn about his roots. He was shot dead

A Louisiana teen traveled to the West Bank to learn about his roots. He was shot dead

NBC News reports: Tawfic Hafeth Abdel Jabbar was born and raised in Louisiana, in the city of Gretna, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. It’s a long way from the mountains of the occupied West Bank, but when Tawfic, 17, arrived in May, he was excited to properly explore the landscape of the village where his dad grew up, and to learn more about his roots as a Palestinian American. “He loved the outdoors,” his father, Hafeth Abdel Jabbar,…

Read More Read More

‘It’s not game over – it’s game on’: why 2024 is an inflection point for the climate crisis

‘It’s not game over – it’s game on’: why 2024 is an inflection point for the climate crisis

By Wesley Morgan, Griffith University In 2024, global climate trends are cause for both deep alarm and cautious optimism. Last year was the hottest on record by a huge margin and this year will likely be hotter still. The annual global average temperature may, for the first time, exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – a threshold crucial for stabilising the Earth’s climate. Without immediate action, we are at grave risk of crossing irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate system….

Read More Read More

Pentagon says Ukrainian soldiers running out of ammunition without U.S. funds

Pentagon says Ukrainian soldiers running out of ammunition without U.S. funds

Politico reports: Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines are running out of ammunition and other weapons needed to fight the Russian invaders, a Pentagon official said Tuesday, now that U.S. funding to support the war has lapsed. Since December, Washington has been unable to send urgently needed military aid to Ukraine at the same levels as the previous two years, Celeste Wallander, the Pentagon’s top official overseeing international security affairs, told reporters. That’s because the Pentagon has used all of…

Read More Read More

AI-generated fake news is coming to an election near you

AI-generated fake news is coming to an election near you

Sander van der Linden writes: Many years before ChatGPT was released, my research group, the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory, wondered whether it was possible to have neural networks generate misinformation. To achieve this, we trained ChatGPT’s predecessor, GPT-2, on examples of popular conspiracy theories and then asked it to generate fake news for us. It gave us thousands of misleading but plausible-sounding news stories. A few examples: “Certain Vaccines Are Loaded With Dangerous Chemicals and Toxins,” and “Government…

Read More Read More

Palestinians struggle to rebuild their lives after West Bank settler pogroms

Palestinians struggle to rebuild their lives after West Bank settler pogroms

Yuval Abraham reports: Naama Abiyat’s children are all she has left. I meet the 29-year-old mother of five inside a thinly-walled tent where she is living in the southern occupied West Bank; the tent is nearly empty, save for a blanket she received from passers-by and a few wooden logs. Her children interrupt our conversation from time to time, demanding her attention and letting her know that they are cold. Until two months ago, Abiyat had her own room, a…

Read More Read More

Israeli plan to destroy Hamas not working, peace talks needed, says EU foreign policy chief

Israeli plan to destroy Hamas not working, peace talks needed, says EU foreign policy chief

Reuters reports: Israel’s plan to destroy Islamist Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza is not working and the European Union must pursue efforts to create a “two-state solution” despite Israeli opposition, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister had on Sunday reaffirmed a hard line against any Palestinian state as it would pose “an existential danger” to Israel. He said Israel would keep insisting on full security control over all territory west of the Jordan River,…

Read More Read More

Furious families of Gaza hostages storm Israeli parliament

Furious families of Gaza hostages storm Israeli parliament

The Daily Beast reports: Relatives of Israelis still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza stormed into a committee session in the Israeli parliament on Monday to demand that lawmakers take immediate action to bring their loved ones home. Around 20 people rushed into the Knesset Finance Committee hearing in Jerusalem carrying signs and chanting “release them now, now, now!” Around 130 of the 253 people abducted and taken to Gaza during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel are feared…

Read More Read More

Wall Street opposition to Trump collapses, as ‘pipe dream’ of primary defeat ends

Wall Street opposition to Trump collapses, as ‘pipe dream’ of primary defeat ends

CNBC reports: As Donald Trump surges toward the Republican nomination, many Wall Street executives have made a calculated decision not to speak out against him, and in some cases they will consider supporting the Republican former president over Democratic President Joe Biden, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the matter. “A lot of people on Wall Street have been living in this pipe dream of Trump not getting the nomination. People were in the first stage of…

Read More Read More

New Russian disinformation campaigns prove the past is prequel

New Russian disinformation campaigns prove the past is prequel

Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren write: On Dec. 13, 2023, Lauren Witzke, a documented QAnon promoter and former Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Delaware, posted a barrage of criticism toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The post suggested Zelenskyy was preparing to retire to a $20 million home in Vero Beach, Florida, and claimed that “our leaders are buying mansions for elite leaches who facilitate their money laundering operations and crimes against the American people ……

Read More Read More

‘America is under attack’: Inside the anti-DEI crusade

‘America is under attack’: Inside the anti-DEI crusade

The New York Times reports: In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities. They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who made banning D.E.I. initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the…

Read More Read More

To end this war, Biden must apply on Israel all the diplomatic and military leverage at his disposal

To end this war, Biden must apply on Israel all the diplomatic and military leverage at his disposal

Daniel Levy writes: The first and most critical shift required is for the administration to embrace the need for a full cease-fire now. That demand cannot be one of rhetoric alone. The administration should condition the transfer of further military supplies on Israel ending the war and stopping the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population, and should create oversight mechanisms for the use of American weaponry that is already at Israel’s disposal. Ending Israel’s Gaza operation is also the…

Read More Read More