Israel is poised to demolish Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank – an act that could be a war crime. But Britain could save it
WASHINGTON (AP) — Halfway through a news conference Wednesday, the head of the world’s most powerful central bank was asked a question weighing on the minds — and the checking accounts — of Americans everywhere:
When will people finally start getting meaningful pay raises?
Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, had no satisfactory answer.
He called it a “puzzle.” And then, as if measuring his words, he said he wasn’t prepared to call it a “mystery.”
The ultimate selfie.A couple believed to be from Britain and Australia have fallen to their death from a wall overlooking a popular tourist beach in Portugal, apparently losing their balance after taking a selfie....
Rui Pereira da Terra, the head of the rescue service in Cascais port near Lisbon, told the news agency Lusa that officials suspected the man and woman had been taking a selfie on a wall above the beach when they fell.[Agence France-Presse]
Some of Africa’s oldest and biggest baobab trees have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, according to researchers.
The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and in some cases as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated....
Further research is needed, said the team from Romania, South Africa and the United States, “to support or refute this supposition”.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli authorities have foiled over 200 Palestinian attacks by monitoring social media and sifting through vast amounts of data to identify prospective assailants ahead of time, according to Israel’s public security minister.As expected, what was foiled and the steps it required are not detailed.
These pre-emptive actions put Israel at the forefront of an increasingly popular — and controversial — trend used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world that use big data technology to track would-be criminals. While the technology appears to be effective, its tactics drew angry Palestinian condemnation and have raised questions about civil liberties.
Remember when politicians and other public figures could occasionally be credited with courage? Remember when Trump vowed to bring back and then claimed to have brought back 45,000 coal mining jobs ... when the number of new coal jobs totaled 1,200? Remember when he promised to "repeal and replace" the health care system referred to as "Obamacare?" The replacement is no where in sight. And remember the peacemaker Trump who “will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V,” he thundered. “The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies.” And, by the way, global warming supported by science instead of whimsy?Robert De Niro wins ovation for 'Fuck Trump' speech at the Tony award
When a local newspaper closes, the cost of government increases. That’s the conclusion of new survey from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, which draws a direct line between loss of the watchful eyes of local newspapers and a decline in government efficiency."Watchful" is one of those kinky, sounds-good words that leaves out the newspapers that have been co-opted by government (the Goebbels Effect, I call it). Most newspapers care first about money and secondarily about news, so playing political patty-cake with officials is one of the options teetering newspapers employ to shore up what is waning.
Paul Gao, a professor of finance at the college, said he got the idea for the study while watching Jon Oliver’s Last Week Tonight about the decline of local newspapers almost two years ago.
On Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with 26 other Democrats and two independents introduced a bill that would put new limits on federal law enforcement’s ability to separate immigrant children from their families unless a court decides that would be best for the child.As usual in the world of Donald Trump, the barn door begins to close only after the horse (the damage) is loosed. Everyone plays catch-up behind the latest Trump chaff attack that provides no policies or legislation but, like a picador's spear at a bull fight, makes the hapless bull moan.
The bill specifically states that a minor cannot be removed from a parent or legal guardian “solely for the policy goal of deterring individuals from migrating to the United States."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s comment on Friday that he might pardon boxing legend Muhammad Ali drew a prompt response from the late heavyweight champion’s estate: thanks but no thanks.Perhaps as a nation the U.S. could dedicate one day this summer for a laugh-in ... huge throngs of people simply laughing at the name and implications of "Donald Trump."
“We appreciate President Trump’s sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971. There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed,” said Ron Tweel, a lawyer for the boxer’s estate and his widow, Lonnie.
Before leaving to attend the Group of Seven summit in Canada, Trump told reporters he was considering pardoning some 3,000 people, including Ali, who died in 2016.
The United Nations has urged Washington to immediately halt its controversial practice of separating asylum-seeking Central American children from their parents at the southern border.
The UN human rights office said it was deeply concerned over the zero tolerance policy introduced by the Trump administration to deter illegal immigration.
During the presidential election the Huffington Post’s US site carried the following editor’s note at the end of every story about the Republican nominee: “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims – 1.6 billion members of an entire religion – from entering the US.”Younge's column pointed out what I find all-but infuriating -- that those with the loudest moral mouths in the long-ago-and-far-away stand a good chance of divorcing themselves from the demagogue they helped to erect. Yes, Trump is a liar et al, but those riding his coat tails have their own obfuscations to own up to ... and probably won't ... probably without political penalty.
Shortly before 6am on that long election night – in between Trump’s winning Iowa and being declared the victor in Pennsylvania – the Washington bureau chief announced that the note would be removed, “in respect for the office”, and that it was time for a “clean slate”.
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Well, kiss my grits!A Democratic candidate has made history by appearing in an election campaign advert believed to be the first in the US to feature a same-sex kiss. Richard Madaleno, who is running in the party primary for state governor in Maryland, kisses his husband, Mark Hodge, and then says: “Take that, Trump!” [The Guardian]
(Reuters) - U.S. celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, host of CNN’s food-and-travel-focused “Parts Unknown” television series, killed himself in a French hotel room, CNN said on Friday, in the second high-profile suicide of a U.S. celebrity this week. He was 61.....
Suicide rates rose in nearly every U.S. state from 1999 to 2016, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. Nearly 45,000 people committed suicide in 2016, making it one of three leading causes of death that are on the rise, along with Alzheimer’s disease and drug overdoses.
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Hanover, GermanyA stork feeds its offspring in their nest in Laatzen near Hanover
Photograph: Julian Stratenschulte/AFP/Getty Images
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| Friends mourn Ezz El-Deen al-Tamimi, a Palestinian shot three times after he threw a rock. |
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military shot dead a Palestinian during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, saying a soldier fired back after a man pelted him with a rock.Does anyone else feel the similarities between Israel shooting-dead Palestinians armed with rocks and knives and the difficulty some American black people feel when running up against or perhaps away from U.S. police departments?
The Israeli military controls most of the territory of the West Bank, protecting 400,000 Jewish settlers who now live there among around 3 million Palestinians. U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2014.Trump and Netanyahu -- is that a mid-term election ticket?
Israeli use of force against Palestinians has drawn particular international attention in recent months after at least 120 Palestinians were killed during protests at the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, including 60 in a single day on May 14.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after scrubbing a White House visit by the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, President Donald Trump appeared to challenge a new NFL policy that requires players to stand if they’re on the field during the national anthem or stay in the locker room.
Trump initially praised the policy after the NFL announced it last month.
Seizing an opportunity to fan a culture war he has stoked, Trump tweeted Tuesday: “Honoring America! NFL, no escaping to Locker Rooms!”
And you thought separation of church and state was pretty much established! Ooops. Hey, if Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and whoever all else can lay claim to exceptionalism, why not Christians?Project Blitz: the legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape AmericaSince Donald Trump became president, rightwing groups are helping flood state legislatures with bills that promote hardline Christian conservative views....“If you are a more liberal Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim, or a non-believer of any sort, or whatever you happen to be, you’re a second class citizen at best.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal fund to help U.S. coal miners disabled by black lung disease will require a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout if Congress does not extend or increase the tax on coal production that funds it, according to a government report on Monday.
Meanwhile, the whereabouts and what's-she-doings of the president's wife, Melania Trump, seem to offer up a cornucopia of fake-news potential.In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.That’s an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. Slowly, the average number of claims has been creeping up.
[The] US first lady has not been seen in public since she went into hospital [May 10] for a procedure to treat a benign kidney condition. [She was released May 14]True, she is due for an appearance later today, after skipping the G-7 meeting she begged off. So if a fake news story is to be constructed, it's important to start building a fake-news foundation before it's too late. Under what circumstances has the First Lady gone absent from the media for the better part of a month?
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| No, that's not Melania, but if you look closely, it kind of looks like her cousin, doesn't it? She's the one who simultaneously married three men and an aardvark because there was no law against it. |
The First Lady's appearance at the event for military families, her first public engagement since her hospitalisation for a kidney procedure last month, came after it emerged she would not accompany her husband to the G7 summit in Canada, or the Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
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ScotlandA northern gannet picks up seaweed on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth where thousands of the sea birds gather nest material as they prepare for the new breeding season, forming the largest single-island colony of gannets in the world
Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA [Guardian]
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On June 5, 2013, The Guardian in Britain published the first story based on Snowden’s disclosures. It revealed that a secret court order was allowing the U.S. government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans. Later stories, including those in The Washington Post, disclosed other snooping and how U.S. and British spy agencies had accessed information from cables carrying the world’s telephone and internet traffic.Snowden, 34, remains holed up in Russia. Detractors continue to label him a "traitor." Supporters see him as more of a "whistleblower." And yet the further the issue gets from its 2013 starting point, the more flimsy the government accusations appear: To date, not a single skein of concrete evidence shows that Snowden was careless with the releases or that anyone was hurt in any serious sense. The word "traitor" rests on the belief that what the government says must be true because it is the government. When the government says something should be secret, the rest of the nation should agree ... just because.
“It’s been almost five years since newspapers around the world began reporting on the Snowden archive and the NSA has offered all kinds of shrill and reckless rhetoric about the ‘damage’ it has caused, but never any evidence of a single case of a life being endangered let alone harmed,” [former Guardian reporter Glenn] Greenwald said.There are plenty of plaints on the other side of the ledger, but as the years stretch on, the unwillingness to cite even one fleshed-out concrete instance of damage takes the air out of the patriotic balloon. "We can't tell you because it is secret" is a tale that just doesn't wash as time passes by.
If you wear glasses I’ve got some good news: you may well be smarter than the average person. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. But you probably knew that already....The story -- which does have other aspects -- left me wondering, 1. Since I own and use three pairs of glasses, am I 90% more likely to be smart or is my feebleness in math showing its hold over me once more? 2. Who makes this shit up and more, who pays for it?
It’s not just a pop culture trope – a University of Edinburgh study has found intelligent people are 30% more likely to have genes related to poor eyesight.
