‘Everyone has a tipping point’: Hunger fuels Cuba’s protests

‘Everyone has a tipping point’: Hunger fuels Cuba’s protests

The New York Times reports: Hospitals and pharmacies have run out of medicines as basic as penicillin and aspirin. Blackouts have become maddeningly frequent and agonizingly long. Cubans lucky enough to have foreign currency wait in line for hours for staples like beans and rice. A searing economic decline, leading to hardships Cubans have rarely seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union devastated their country in the 1990s, has stirred the island’s largest protest movement in decades, eliciting a…

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Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit

Lawyers retreat from pro-Trump election suit

Politico reports: The legal reckoning for attorneys who pushed former President Donald Trump’s spurious claims of election fraud advanced on Monday, with a federal court in Detroit holding a hearing on whether to impose sanctions over a suit filed last year seeking to decertify Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan and declare Trump the winner. Two of the most prominent attorneys in the pro-Trump camp — Dallas-based Sidney Powell and Atlanta-based L. Lin Wood — are among the lawyers who brought…

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Experts keep promising the walls are closing in on Trump. Haven’t we learned anything?

Experts keep promising the walls are closing in on Trump. Haven’t we learned anything?

Ankush Khardori writes: You could be forgiven if you experienced a vague sense of bewilderment after the Trump Organization and Allen Weisselberg were charged, depending on what you were reading and watching in the days that preceded it. Just that week, some prominent legal commentators had suggested that Trump himself might be charged (despite days of reporting indicating otherwise), that the charges would extend beyond the tax-fraud scheme that is reportedly at issue (and ultimately alleged), or that the Trump…

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Biden’s ideology is largely invisible

Biden’s ideology is largely invisible

Adam Gopnik writes: The Brooklyn-reared boxing trainer Charley Goldman, who crafted Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight champ of the nineteen-fifties, once made a wise statement: “Never play a guy at his own game; nobody makes up a game in order to get beat at it.” He meant that there was no point getting into a slugging match with a slugger or a bob-and-weave match with a bob-and-weaver. Instead, do what you do well. Damon Runyon, another New York character of…

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Trump praises mob who assaulted U.S. Capitol: ‘These were great people’

Trump praises mob who assaulted U.S. Capitol: ‘These were great people’

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump on Sunday widely praised those who attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the insurrection at the Capitol, repeatedly using the word “love” to describe the tone of the event. Echoing his rhetoric about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump said, “These were peaceful people, these were great people.” Speaking on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on the Fox News Channel, he also said the rally participants were patriots, that…

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Biden launches assault on monopolies

Biden launches assault on monopolies

Politico reports: The White House announced a sweeping executive order Friday to promote competition throughout the U.S. economy, in the most ambitious effort in generations to reduce the stranglehold of monopolies and concentrated markets in major industries. The order — whose details POLITICO first reported last week — also includes elements designed to lower the price of prescription drugs, protect consumers’ privacy and increase scrutiny of abusive business tactics in the tech industry. The effort marks a major push by…

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Let’s put community health workers to work

Let’s put community health workers to work

By Miya Barnett, Knowable Magazine It’s no secret that the US health system is less than ideal, and that it is time to think outside the box. Some researchers are starting to evaluate one innovative solution for improving health care — community health workers (CHWs).  In 2017, researchers published the results of a study that included 300 of some of the most disadvantaged patients in Philadelphia — residents of high-poverty neighborhoods who had at least two chronic health issues, such as hypertension and…

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When bacteria kill us, it’s more accident than assassination

When bacteria kill us, it’s more accident than assassination

Ed Yong writes: The classic novel by H G Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898) – a tale of England besieged by Martian conquerors – ends not with a rousing and heroic victory but an accidental one. The aliens subjugate humanity with heat rays and black smoke but, at the height of their victory, they die. Their machines come to a standstill amid the ruins of a deserted London, and the birds pick at their rotting remains. The cause…

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How the white press wrote off Black America

How the white press wrote off Black America

Brent Staples writes: Newspapers that championed white supremacy throughout the pre-civil rights South paved the way for lynching by declaring African Americans nonpersons. They embraced the language once used at slave auctions by denying Black citizens the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. and referring to them in news stories as “the negro,” “the negress” or “the nigger.” They depicted Black men as congenital rapists, setting the stage for them to be hanged, shot or burned alive in public squares all…

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Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Top Biden ally, Rep. Jim Clyburn, pleads with him to scrap filibuster for election reform

Politico reports: After months of setbacks and gridlock on voting rights, one of President Joe Biden’s top allies in Congress is calling for him to support amending the Senate filibuster. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) told POLITICO Biden “should endorse” the idea of creating a carveout to the legislative filibuster in the Senate for legislation that applies to the Constitution. In effect, the reform would make it possible for Democrats to pass their sweeping elections reform bill and another…

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Like in ‘postapocalyptic movies’: Heat wave killed marine wildlife en masse

Like in ‘postapocalyptic movies’: Heat wave killed marine wildlife en masse

The New York Times reports: Dead mussels and clams coated rocks in the Pacific Northwest, their shells gaping open as if they’d been boiled. Sea stars were baked to death. Sockeye salmon swam sluggishly in an overheated Washington river, prompting wildlife officials to truck them to cooler areas. The combination of extraordinary heat and drought that hit the Western United States and Canada over the past two weeks has killed hundreds of millions of marine animals and continues to threaten…

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FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

FDA calls for federal investigation into its controversial Alzheimer’s drug approval

STAT reports: The head of the Food and Drug Administration has called for a wide-ranging federal investigation into the approval of Biogen’s treatment for Alzheimer’s disease just one month after a decision that sparked the ire of lawmakers, doctors, and public health advocates. In a letter posted Friday, acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock asked the independent Office of Inspector General to investigate how agency staff interacted with Biogen in the run-up to the June 7 approval of Aduhelm. The agency cited…

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How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for ‘green energy’ in Europe

How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for ‘green energy’ in Europe

CNN reports: Andrea Macklin never turns off his TV. It’s the only way to drown out the noise from the wood mill bordering his backyard, the jackhammer sound of the plant piercing his walls and windows. The 18-wheelers carrying logs rumble by less than 100 feet from his house, all day and night, shaking it as if an earthquake has taken over this tranquil corner of North Carolina. He’s been wearing masks since long before the coronavirus pandemic, just to…

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