‘More Neanderthal than human’: How your health may depend on DNA from our long-lost ancestors

‘More Neanderthal than human’: How your health may depend on DNA from our long-lost ancestors

Live Science reports: The group had traveled for thousands of miles, crossing Africa and the Middle East until finally reaching the dimly lit forests of the new continent. They were long-vanished members of our modern human tribe, and among the first Homo sapiens to enter Europe. There, these people would likely have encountered their distant cousins: Neanderthals. These small bands of modern-human relatives had hooded brows, large heads and squat bodies, and they had spent epochs acclimating to Europe’s colder…

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How a Jewish desire for revenge against the Nazis turned into an Israeli justification for killing Palestinians

How a Jewish desire for revenge against the Nazis turned into an Israeli justification for killing Palestinians

76 years after, we are still in 1948. — Shachar Pinsker (@spinsker) May 14, 2024 Shachar Pinsker writes: By the end of the Second World War, writing about vengeance in Hebrew had taken on a new significance. A million and a half Jews fought in the armies of the Allied Powers. Writing in Hebrew, however, focused on the 30,000 Jews from the Yishuv [the Jewish community in pre-state Palestine] who volunteered to fight alongside the British army, especially the Jewish Brigade, numbering…

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UN says it has no more food or tents for nearly 2 million people in Gaza

UN says it has no more food or tents for nearly 2 million people in Gaza

The Guardian reports: The UN has run out of tents and food to distribute to almost 2 million people in Gaza, the majority displaced from their homes and dependent on aid to stave off looming famine. UN officials told the Guardian on Wednesday afternoon that their warehouses were now completely empty south of the river dividing the northern third of the Gaza from the south, with no likelihood of resupply as long as the main entry points into the territory…

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‘Resist the normalization of evil’: Israeli reporter Amira Hass on Palestine and journalism

‘Resist the normalization of evil’: Israeli reporter Amira Hass on Palestine and journalism

  Our guest is the Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She is the recipient of the 2024 Columbia Journalism Award, and on Wednesday she addressed the graduating class of the Columbia Journalism School in New York City. Hass discusses the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, why journalists should “resist the normalization of evil and injustice,” Israel’s recent censorship of Al Jazeera,…

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Apparently NYU has administrators schooled in the Soviet Union

Apparently NYU has administrators schooled in the Soviet Union

Ginia Bellafante writes: At one point during the demonstrations at Columbia University in 1968, protesters took the acting dean of the liberal arts college hostage. Barricading his office door with furniture, they kept Henry Simmons Coleman, a former Navy man, locked up for 26 hours. When he was finally released, he seemed unfazed; there had been plenty to eat. Retaliation was not on his agenda. So little did it interest him, apparently, that he went on to write letters of…

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Interview: Putin has not given up on erasing Ukraine ‘as a state, a concept, and a people’

Interview: Putin has not given up on erasing Ukraine ‘as a state, a concept, and a people’

Nataliya Bugayova, a nonresident fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, interviewed by RFE/RL: RFE/RL: In a recent ISW backgrounder that you co-authored, you wrote in the very first sentence that “Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West — and will likely lose — if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin.” How big is that “if,” and how big a step in that direction is the recently approved U.S. aid? Nataliya Bugayova: Thank you for…

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The Alitos flew a flag supporting the insurrection after being blamed for the Jan 6 insurrection

The Alitos flew a flag supporting the insurrection after being blamed for the Jan 6 insurrection

Adam Serwer writes: There may be an insurrectionist justice on the Supreme Court, perhaps two. The New York Times reported yesterday that 10 days after a violent mob ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in power, an upside-down American flag flew outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito. At the time, Trump supporters were using the upside-down flag as a symbol of their belief in Trump’s lies that the election had…

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The heart sends messages to the brain

The heart sends messages to the brain

Science News reports: Everyone knows that the brain influences the heart. Stressful thoughts can set the heart pounding, sometimes with such deep force that we worry people can hear it. Anxiety can trigger the irregular skittering of atrial fibrillation. In more extreme and rarer cases, emotional turmoil from a shock — the death of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis, an intense argument — can trigger a syndrome that mimics a heart attack. But not everyone knows that the heart…

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How the war on Gaza is shaping the 2024 elections — and the future of the Democratic Party

How the war on Gaza is shaping the 2024 elections — and the future of the Democratic Party

Samer Badawi writes: In a public park just outside Cleveland, Ohio, a small plaque marks the last stop on the Underground Railroad, the secret network that helped tens of thousands of enslaved people flee to freedom in the decades leading up to America’s Civil War. Etched into a paved walkway that leads to the water, the marker at Lakewood Park is easy to miss, a fitting emblem of a region that is nothing if not understated. Yet it was here,…

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We’re only in it for the money: Biden sees more value in donations than votes

We’re only in it for the money: Biden sees more value in donations than votes

Eli Clifton reports: A New York Times poll released this week found that 13% of voters defecting from President Joe Biden, those who voted for him in 2020 but will not do so in November, cite his handling of foreign policy and Israel’s war in Gaza as the reason for pulling their support. But an investigation by Responsible Statecraft finds that those same policies likely benefit the president’s re-election campaign in a different way: his biggest funders happen to support…

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Bernie Sanders: Don’t let Biden’s stance on Israel become the reason Trump gets elected

Bernie Sanders: Don’t let Biden’s stance on Israel become the reason Trump gets elected

Bernie Sanders writes: Biden is not popular and many progressives, including me, strongly disagree with his policies regarding Israel and this disastrous war in Gaza. But, let’s be clear. Biden is not running against God. He is running against Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in American history whose second term, if he is re-elected, will be worse than his first. And, on his worst day, Biden is a thousand times better than Trump. Are you concerned about the extreme…

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Sonoma State University president placed on leave for ‘insubordination’ — an agreement with protesters

Sonoma State University president placed on leave for ‘insubordination’ — an agreement with protesters

The Press Democrat reports: Sonoma State University was rocked Wednesday afternoon when President Mike Lee announced he is stepping aside, at least temporarily, in the wake of a controversial email he sent to students and faculty regarding the demands of campus pro-Palestinian protesters. It’s not known how long Lee will be away. In a Wednesday statement, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia wrote: “On Tuesday evening, Sonoma State University President Mike Lee sent a campuswide message concerning an agreement with…

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Amnesty International: Syrian refugees face detention, torture and death on return

Amnesty International: Syrian refugees face detention, torture and death on return

The security forces in Syria have subjected Syrian refugees who returned to the country to detention, disappearance and horrific torture – including sexual violence – Amnesty International said today in a shocking new report. Amnesty’s 51-page report – You’re Going To Your Death – documents appalling human rights violations committed by Syrian intelligence officers against 66 returnees, including 13 children. Five people died in custody, while the fate of 17 forcibly disappeared people remains unknown. The report – coming against…

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Texas gov. pardons Daniel Perry, who murdered a police brutality protester in 2020

Texas gov. pardons Daniel Perry, who murdered a police brutality protester in 2020

The Texas Tribune reports: More than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a protester in Austin, Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned Perry on Thursday shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon. A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color. One…

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