Increase in infectious diseases strongly associated with loss of biodiversity

Increase in infectious diseases strongly associated with loss of biodiversity

Anthropocene reports: When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world in 2020, it drew attention to the ways environmental damage can set the stage for disease outbreaks. Scientists pointed to the potential roles of urbanization, habitat loss, and trade in live animals for helping to fuel a disease that many scientists think leapt from wild animals to people. While all those factors might have influenced this particular pandemic, they aren’t the main ways that environmental destruction threatens to amplify infectious disease….

Read More Read More

This is what Bruce Robbins, a Jewish professor at Columbia, wants you to know

This is what Bruce Robbins, a Jewish professor at Columbia, wants you to know

  For over seven months, a dominant conversation in the U.S. news media has been about alleged and increased antisemitism on American campuses – culminating in the coverage around student encampments. The “Gaza solidarity encampment” at Columbia University, in particular, has received a lot of attention which sparked encampments across the country — as well as university-backed police repression and violence. In this interview, AJ+ speaks to Dr. Bruce Robbins, a Jewish professor at Columbia University who supported students protesting…

Read More Read More

U.S. doctor (who saved Sen. Duckworth’s life in Iraq) now trapped in Gaza, appeals to Biden to stop the war

U.S. doctor (who saved Sen. Duckworth’s life in Iraq) now trapped in Gaza, appeals to Biden to stop the war

  Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Adam Hamawy, one of around 20 American medical workers trapped in Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. A plastic surgeon and Army veteran, Hamawy is on a volunteer mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Like many Gazans, the U.S. medical workers are now facing dehydration and other deadly health conditions. “We’re continuing to do our job. … It’s tiring, but this is…

Read More Read More

Interior Dept staffer becomes first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign over war in Gaza

Interior Dept staffer becomes first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign over war in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: An Interior Department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, accused President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify U.S. policy in the conflict. Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate…

Read More Read More

White House opposes House bill to force Israeli arm shipments as it approves $1 billion more weapons

White House opposes House bill to force Israeli arm shipments as it approves $1 billion more weapons

Politico reports: The White House announced on Monday that it opposes a Republican-led bill that would force President Joe Biden to send withheld military assistance to Israel. “We strongly, strongly oppose attempts to constrain the president’s ability to deploy a U.S. security assistance consistent with U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. House Republicans introduced the bill over the weekend in response to Biden’s decision to pause a shipment of weapons in an effort…

Read More Read More

She campaigned for a Texas school board seat as a GOP hard-liner. Now she’s rejecting her party’s extremism

She campaigned for a Texas school board seat as a GOP hard-liner. Now she’s rejecting her party’s extremism

By Jeremy Schwartz, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, May 15, 2024 This story was originally published by ProPublica Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum, spending her nights and weekends poring over hundreds of pages of lesson plans that she had fanned out on the coffee table in her living room and even across her bed. She was searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement…

Read More Read More

The New York Trump case embodies the defendant

The New York Trump case embodies the defendant

George T. Conway III writes: Not all that long ago, I thought that the trial currently being held in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump would be the last one I’d want to see as the first one tried against the former president. It seemed the least serious of the cases against him. Here’s a man who tried to overthrow American democracy by launching a coup to stay in power. A man who allegedly stole dozens of boxes of classified…

Read More Read More

Some of the universe’s oldest stars have been discovered in the Milky Way

Some of the universe’s oldest stars have been discovered in the Milky Way

Quartz reports: Some stars in our very own Milky Way are some of the earliest ever seen, according to research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The stars are in the Milky Way’s halo, a shroud of stars that surrounds the galactic disk. The stars are also relatively close, at just 30,000 light-years from Earth. The team found that the stars are between 12 billion and 13 billion years old, clocking them to around the…

Read More Read More

In defense of Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson assails U.S. government in an attack on the judicial system

In defense of Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson assails U.S. government in an attack on the judicial system

The Associated Press reports: U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson assailed the hush money case against Donald Trump Tuesday as an illegitimate “sham,” becoming the highest-ranking Republican to show up at court, embrace the former president’s claims of political persecution and attack the U.S. system of justice. It was a remarkable moment in modern American politics: The House speaker amplifying Trump’s defense and turning the Republican Party against the federal and state legal systems that are foundational to the U.S. government…

Read More Read More

Trump blasts his trial judges. Then his fans call for violence

Trump blasts his trial judges. Then his fans call for violence

Reuters reports: On a recent Tuesday morning, a visibly frustrated Donald Trump sat through a tense hearing in the first-ever criminal trial of a former American president. During a break, he let rip on his social media platform. New York Justice Juan Merchan, Trump declared on Truth Social, is a “highly conflicted” overseer of a “kangaroo court.” Trump supporters swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan. The comments soon turned ugly. Some called for Merchan…

Read More Read More

New York City’s Union Theological Seminary votes to divest from Israel’s war on Gaza

New York City’s Union Theological Seminary votes to divest from Israel’s war on Gaza

  As student protests around the world call for their educational institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel, we speak to the Reverend Dr. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary, an ecumenical seminary affiliated with Columbia University that is one of the first schools to begin divesting from companies that “profit from war in Palestine/Israel.” Jones says divestment is an extension of Union’s “long policy of trying our best to bring our values, our core mission…

Read More Read More

Israel cabinet ministers and allies say Palestinians should be ‘encouraged’ to emigrate

Israel cabinet ministers and allies say Palestinians should be ‘encouraged’ to emigrate

The Times of Israel reports: Cabinet ministers and MKs called for the rebuilding of Jewish settlements in Gaza at an ultra-nationalist march and rally attended by thousands in the town of Sderot, close to the Gaza border on Tuesday. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza should be promoted, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi insisted that the resettling of Gaza was the only way to ensure Israeli security, and Religious Zionism MK Zvi…

Read More Read More

Facing an endless barrage, Ukraine’s air defenses are withering

Facing an endless barrage, Ukraine’s air defenses are withering

The New York Times reports: This is what a year of Russian missile strikes on Ukraine looks like. Ukrainian air defenses used to intercept most missiles, but in recent months, more and more have made it through. The data, from a New York Times analysis of daily Ukrainian military reports, shows a major shift: Ukraine is increasingly failing to stop Russian missiles, crippling its ability to protect major infrastructure and plunging cities into darkness. Russian air assaults have struck critical…

Read More Read More

U.S. overhauls electric grid to make way for more renewables

U.S. overhauls electric grid to make way for more renewables

Reuters reports: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday approved the first major electric transmission policy update in over a decade that aims to speed up new interregional lines to move more clean energy to meet growing demand amid the explosion of electric vehicles, data centers and artificial intelligence. Approved in a 2-1 vote, the new rule is also the first time the FERC has ever squarely addressed the need for long-term transmission planning, playing a key role in…

Read More Read More