Music: Kefaya — ‘Symphony’ ft. Nicki Wells
Kamala Harris is ‘ready to step up and unite the party,’ says Elizabeth Warren
CNBC reports: Vice President Kamala Harris has gained more public support from Democratic lawmakers as a potential replacement for President Joe Biden, should he decide to drop out of the race against former President Donald Trump. California Rep. Mark Takano on Saturday became the thirty-sixth Democrat on Capitol Hill to call on Biden to exit the race on the record. He added that he believes Harris should be the one to helm the ticket. “President Biden’s greatest accomplishment remains saving…
DNC moves forward with nominating Biden via virtual roll call as though his candidacy is not in question
NBC News reports: Democrats are in an unprecedented crisis over who should be their presidential candidate. But the party committee that governs the nominating process met Friday and proceeded as if everything was normal and its entire plan was not at risk of being upended at any minute. As calls mount for President Joe Biden to step aside and let another Democrat lead the party into the November election against former President Donald Trump, the Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee…
We volunteered at a Gaza hospital. What we saw was unspeakable
Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa write: In the United States we would never dream of operating on anyone without consent, let alone a malnourished and barely conscious 9-year-old girl in septic shock. Nevertheless, when we saw Juri, that’s exactly what we did. We have no idea how Juri ended up in the Gaza European Hospital preoperative area. All we could see was that she had an external fixator — a scaffold of metal pins and rods — on her left…
Israel confirms airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Hodeidah port
Middle East Eye reports: The official spokesperson for the Houthis, Nasruddin Amer, described the Israeli airstrike on the oil tanks and power facility at Hodeidah port as “a brutal act of aggression against Yemen aimed at worsening the suffering of its people and pressuring Yemen to halt its support for Gaza.” The Israeli military announced that it carried out strikes on the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah in Yemen earlier on Saturday. In a post on X, Amer dismissed…
JD Vance’s wife faces racist online backlash from far-right social media posts
ABC News reports: The wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and the couple’s children have become the targets of backlash for their Indian ancestry. Chilukuri Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in San Diego, as well as RNC speaker Harmeet Dhillon — who is Sikh and Indian – are facing anti-Asian hate from far-right figures online. Posts appear to have spiked this week following Vance’s nomination criticizing Vance for marrying someone who…
NOAA is under threat from Project 2025
Zoë Schlanger writes: In the United States, as in most other countries, weather forecasts are a freely accessible government amenity. The National Weather Service issues alerts and predictions, warning of hurricanes and excessive heat and rainfall, all at the total cost to American taxpayers of roughly $4 per person per year. Anyone with a TV, smartphone, radio, or newspaper can know what tomorrow’s weather will look like, whether a hurricane is heading toward their town, or if a drought has…
Earth’s water is rapidly losing oxygen, and the danger is huge
Science Alert reports: Supplies of dissolved oxygen in bodies of water across the globe are dwindling rapidly, and scientists say it’s one of the greatest risks to Earth’s life support system. Just as atmospheric oxygen is vital for animals like ourselves, dissolved oxygen (DO) in water is essential for healthy aquatic ecosystems, whether freshwater or marine. With billions of people relying on marine and freshwater habitats for food and income, it’s concerning these ecosystems’ oxygen has been substantially and rapidly…
Music: Emil Brandqvist Trio — ‘Grand Piano’
Rep. Zoe Lofgren: Biden is on a trajectory to lose the election. He needs to step aside
NBC News reports: Another close Bay Area ally of Pelosi, longtime Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., also joined the group of detractors Friday, releasing a letter that she sent to Biden on Thursday night. In it, Lofgren mentioned her work on the House Jan. 6 Committee, warning that Trump “remains as grave a threat to the Constitutional order and rule of law that he was on January 6, 2021 when he incited insurrection.” “We must face the reality that widespread…
Democratic donors begin mobilizing to raise money for Harris if she’s the nominee
Politico reports: Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris have begun courting Democratic donors to provide financial support for her if President Joe Biden drops out of the 2024 race. One Democratic donor adviser has begun collecting pledges from female Democratic donors to support Harris, while a women’s political organization has begun speaking to its donor base in an effort to ensure an initial wave of contributions to a potential Harris campaign, according to people familiar with the efforts. These people…
Plastics pollution has become a ‘crisis,’ Biden administration acknowledges
Inside Climate News reports: Single-use plastic would be phased out of all U.S. government operations by 2035 under a new federal plastics pollution strategy unveiled Friday by President Joe Biden’s administration, which cited a “crisis” of littered oceans and poisoned air due to plastics. “The Federal government is—for the first time—formally acknowledging the severity of the plastic pollution crisis and the scale of the response that will be required to effectively confront it,” said Brenda Mallory and Ali Zaidi, the…
Israel’s settlement policies break international law, International Court of Justice finds
The Guardian reports: The top United Nations court has ruled that Israel’s settlement policies and use of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories violate international law. The international court of justice said “the transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, is contrary to article 49 of the fourth geneva convention”. The panel of 15 judges from around the world also said the use of natural resources was…
UK to resume funding to UN Palestine relief agency UNRWA
The Guardian reports: Britain will restore funding to the UN’s Palestine relief agency Unrwa, the foreign secretary has announced, in Labour’s first major departure from the previous government’s stance towards the Middle East crisis. David Lammy told MPs on Friday he had decided to unfreeze funding, which was suspended in January after Israel alleged that Unrwa staff were involved in the 7 October attack by Hamas. Catherine Colonna, a former French foreign minister, carried out a review of the allegations…
For 18 years she worked in the U.S. government. Then came the war on Gaza
For 18 years, Hala Rharrit worked in the US State Department, most recently becoming its Arabic-language spokesperson. But the Biden administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza forced her to resign in April, becoming the first US diplomat to quit in protest over the US’s Gaza policy. In this wide-ranging Real Talk interview, Rharrit reveals what went on behind the scenes, how her Gaza reports were received by US officials, and why she ultimately decided to resign.
How one bad CrowdStrike update crashed the world’s computers
Wired reports: Only a handful of times in history has a single piece of code managed to instantly wreck computer systems worldwide. The Slammer worm of 2003. Russia’s Ukraine-targeted NotPetya cyberattack. North Korea’s self-spreading ransomware WannaCry. But the ongoing digital catastrophe that rocked the internet and IT infrastructure around the globe over the past 12 hours appears to have been triggered not by malicious code released by hackers, but by the software designed to stop them. Two internet infrastructure disasters collided on Friday to produce…