Lydia Wilson writes: Deep in Australia’s Northern Territory, there is scant light pollution and the skies are full of stars. I asked my companion, David, to teach me the unfamiliar constellations, so different from those I see in my home in the Northern Hemisphere. An Indigenous Australian from the Central Desert Region of the continent, he was quick to comply. “Up there,” he pointed, “is the head of the emu, see?” I didn’t. He traced a swirl with his finger,…
The Observer reports: In further apparent defiance of Washington’s views, the Israeli military are carving out a buffer zone around Gaza’s borders which would take up 16% of the whole coastal strip, according to Haaretz. Israeli public opinion has to date shown itself largely impervious to US and other international pressure, and support for the Gaza war currently hovers at around 80%. Even more concerning for Washington’s hopes of containing the conflict, there is also more than 70% Israeli public…
The Guardian reports: David Cameron has come under pressure to restore funding to the UN’s humanitarian relief agency in Palestine from a cross-party group of more than 50 MPs and peers. The UK was among a group of countries that halted funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) amid allegations from Israel that some staff members were involved in the 7 October attacks carried out by Hamas. In a letter to the foreign secretary, the MPs and peers…
The Guardian reports: Israel has given the UN a proposal to dismantle Unrwa, its relief agency in the Palestinian territories, and transfer its staff to a replacement agency to make large-scale food deliveries into Gaza, according to UN sources. The proposal was presented late last week by the Israeli chief of the general staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, to UN officials in Israel, who forwarded it to the organisation’s secretary general, António Guterres, on Saturday, sources familiar with the discussions…
Reuters reports: Turks dealt President Tayyip Erdogan and his party their biggest electoral blow on Sunday in a nationwide local vote that reasserted the opposition as a political force and reinforced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as the president’s chief rival. With most of the votes counted, Imamoglu led by 10 percentage points in the mayoral race in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, while his Republican People’s Party (CHP) retained Ankara and gained 15 other mayoral seats in cities nationwide. It marked…
Leif Wenar writes: I’m fond of effective altruists. When you meet one, ask them how many people they’ve killed. Effective altruism is the philosophy of Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto wunderkind now sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and money laundering. Elon Musk has said that EA is close to what he believes. Facebook mogul Dustin Moskovitz and Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn have spent mega-millions on its causes, and EAs have made major moves to influence American politics. In 2021, EA boasted of $46 billion in funding—comparable to what it’s estimated the Saudis spent over…
E&E News reports: When the capital of Sierra Leone launched a major campaign to provide shade amid sweltering heat, officials came up with a catchy slogan of what they hoped the city would become: Freetown the Treetown. The West African city had been denuded by rapid population growth, conflict and unregulated development, increasing its vulnerability to rising temperatures. The tree planting plan uses an app to generate jobs and is helping a fast-urbanizing city fend off the dangers of climate…
Lina Zeldovich writes: When foraging for flowers, bees search for the familiar scents that blooms puff out into the air to attract them. Scientists call these little fragrant air pockets “odor plumes.” Once bees detect an odor plume, they start following it, flying from side to side to navigate to wherever the odor is strongest—scientists call this “casting”—until they land on a flower. “If you think of a flower, it’s basically acting as a message beacon,” says Ben Langford, an…
The Observer reports: The British government has received advice from its own lawyers stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public, according to a leaked recording obtained by the Observer. The comments, made by the Conservative chair of the House of Commons select committee on foreign affairs, Alicia Kearns, at a Tory fundraising event on 13 March are at odds with repeated ministerial denials and evasion on the issue. On Saturday…
The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washington’s concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been…
Six months into Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, the United Nations Security Council has finally passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire. The United States’s abstention marks a pivotal moment in Israel’s increasing international isolation. In the Israeli media, the opposition to the UN vote is near-unanimous and unsurprising. More striking is the lack of interest from American news outlets. The implications this story raises are perhaps a little uncomfortable for them – they hit too close to home.
Politico reports: The battle for Trump-skeptical Republican voters isn’t just about the suburbs. It’s true that the hundreds of thousands of GOP primary voters who voted against former President Donald Trump this year were concentrated in highly educated, suburban areas that have swung blue over the past decade. But a POLITICO analysis shows there’s also a significant bloc of voters who did not want Trump in more exurban, red-leaning counties — the kinds of places that were skeptical of Trump…
The Daily Beast reports: Retired American generals vehemently say that no, Donald Trump cannot deploy SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival. Gun groups howl that the United States is turning into Communist China. And a convicted Jan. 6 rioter warns that President Joe Biden could someday get sued over the death of a jogger in Georgia. These are among the 18 various groups that shared their wisdom with the Supreme Court earlier this month, filing amicus briefs on…
The Washington Post reports: When it comes to job satisfaction, members of Congress aren’t the only ones considering calling it quits. Only about one in five senior aides on Capitol Hill believe that Congress is “functioning as a democratic legislature should,” and about the same margin believe that it is “an effective forum for debate” on key issues. Given those assessments by the people who live and breathe these issues, this particularly glum finding should not come as a surprise:…