Matt McGrath, Environment Correspondent - BBC (U.K.)
Stephan:
The warnings about what is going to happen with climate change continue from the science community almost daily, but you don’t hear a word about this in the current election. I am afraid the results are going to be catastrophic, and if you live in an area where water, too much or too little, is becoming an issue, I urge you to think about your future and act accordingly.
Little progress has been made in limiting emissions of greenhouse gases that are driving up temperatures. Credit: Getty
Global efforts to tackle climate change are wildly off track, says the UN, as new data shows that warming gases are accumulating faster than at any time in human existence.
Current national plans to limit carbon emissions would barely cut pollution by 2030, the UN analysis shows, leaving efforts to keep warming under 1.5C this century in tatters.
The update comes as a separate report shows that greenhouse gases have risen by over 11% in the last two decades, with atmospheric concentrations surging in 2023.
Researchers are also worried that forests are losing their ability to soak up carbon, which could be contributing to record levels of warming gas in the atmosphere.
UN Climate Change, the UN agency tasked with addressing the issue, has carried out an analysis on the carbon cutting plans that have been submitted by close to 200 countries.
The UN wants to see how much progress is being made in driving down emissions that are threatening to push global […]
Jane Arraf and Jawad Rizkallah, Staff Writers - NPR
Stephan:
As you know, if you read me regularly, I very strongly disagree with Biden’s policy about Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Middle East. Now fascist Netanyahu and his cadre of fellow Jewish fascists have taken Israel’s war to yet another country. Politically the point I think it is important to keep in mind is that if Trump were elected his support of fascist Netanyahu would be even greater than Biden’s. Also, I don’t think Biden has involved Harris very much in his decisions about Israel, and what it is doing. If Harris is elected I think we will see significant changes stopping America’s support for this mass murder.
People inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Al-Kayal, Lebanon, Thursday. Credit: Sam Skaineh / AFP / Getty
BEIRUT, LEBANON — As Israel intensified attacks in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek this week, residents with nowhere else to go fled to the ancient Roman temples, hoping the archaeological site’s internationally protected status might save them.
The governor of Baalbek-Hermel province, Bachir Khodr, told them even that was no longer safe.
“Some citizens went to the Baalbek citadel,” he told NPR, referring to the part of the ancient site where the 2,000-year-old temple of Jupiter and temple of Bacchus are located. “But their lives are also at risk there, so to protect them, their safety and their lives, I urged them to leave the entire city of Baalbek.”
The Israeli military Wednesday released a map on social media encompassing the entire city and surrounding villages, warning it was preparing to bomb the area in its fight against the militant group Hezbollah. Tens of thousands of residents fled the city after the warning.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes in Baalbek […]
One of the reasons it is best for America that Harris and Walz win, and that Democrats win majorities in the Senate and House is that the Supreme Court needs to be restructured, and held to decent ethical standards. That will not happen if fascist Trump and his party prevail. Because of Trump, Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society, and the fascists in the Senate, the Supreme Court has transitioned from being an objective politically disinterested body into a corrupt part of the christofascist movement in the United States. The present court is dismantling democracy one majority decision at a time.
A polling place sign is displayed outside a polling location on the first day of Virginia’s in-person early voting at Long Bridge Park Aquatics and Fitness Center on September 20, 2024, in Arlington, Virginia. Credit: Andrew Harnik / Getty
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order on Wednesday lifting an injunction against Virginia Republican officials’ attempt to purge hundreds of names from voter registration rolls across the state.
The unsigned order means that those officials can push forward with their removal of names from voter registration rolls just days before the conclusion of the 2024 election — disenfranchising an unknown number of eligible voters in the process.
“The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is granted,” the court’s order said.
It’s unclear which of the nine justices ruled for lower courts’ stays to be lifted. However, all three liberal bloc members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — indicated that they would deny the application to […]
Clare Ansberry, Columnist - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan:
In the United States because of the way our tax structure is configured we now have 21,951,319 millionaires comprising 8.5% of the adult U.S. population. It is the largest percentage of uber-rich in the history of the country. And they are creating enclaves, as this article describes, resulting in the further division of our population. We are breaking apart, racially, economically, and by gender. E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many One — the intention of the Founders, and for centuries our reality has ended.
David and Virginia Pollard moved into Vi at Palo Alto in 2019. Credit: Katie Thompson / WSJ
In the heart of Silicon Valley, well-off baby boomers enjoy meals of porchetta and cheesy polenta, prepared with herbs plucked from the community garden. Thirty-foot-tall windows offer a view on a quiet creek winding along manicured grounds.
Spending later years at this community, Vi at Palo Alto, comes with a price tag that starts with an upfront payment that can range from $1.17 million for a one-bedroom apartment and up to $7.3 million for a three-bedroom unit. Ongoing monthly fees up to $13,800 cover services such as housekeeping and valet parking, and amenities. Residents can attend lectures by professors of nearby Stanford University or a performance by opera singers.
For wealthier Americans, greater options exist for how to spend their later years. A growing crop of high-end communities, called life plan communities, allow residents to start in an apartment and then move to […]
Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana, Staff Writers - ProPublica
Stephan:
Yet another horror story from Texas about how the MAGAt governor and legislature of Texas created laws that are killing women. I would strongly recommend that if you are a woman in one of these male-dominated anti-woman Red states with these horrific anti-woman laws and you get pregnant that you go live with relatives or friends in a Democratic-controlled Blue state for the term of your pregnancy. So if something happens that requires medical care during your pregnancy or delivery you can get decent honorable healthcare. Republican men don’t care about that as these stories prove.
Josseli Barnica and her daughter in 2020 Credit: Courtesy of the Barnica family
Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother […]
What I see is MAGAt Trumpers planning or actually carrying out a range of acts designed to disrupt American democracy. What I think is behind this is a race and gender schism that the media are afraid to cover properly. White men, particularly the less-educated ones, are frightened and enraged at the changes in American culture. They feel displaced, that somehow they have been reduced in power and status. Even though they may not know the specifics they sense that by 2042 it is projected we will be a nation that no longer has a White majority, and that women will no longer be subordinate to White men. They hate these changes and are willing to sacrifice our democracy if it means they can retain their status. That is what fascist Trump and his cult recognize and you can see in his Manhattan rally how he and his cult are cultivating this hatred to get white men to vote for Trump and his cult.
Larry Savage mugshot
MADISON COUNTY, Ind. — A former Republican candidate running for an Indiana seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been arrested and charged with stealing several election ballots during a recent voting machine test.
The charges filed against Savage, a 51-year-old Anderson resident and precinct committeeman, stem from an incident on Oct. 3 in which two election ballots went missing at the Madison County Government Center during testing of the local voting machines.
Court documents show county officials began testing voting machines at 10 a.m. on Oct. 3, an event open to the public. Several citizens attended the tests and were allowed to run “test” ballots through the machines assigned to their county.
Despite being marked “test,” the ballots were still officially tracked and counted by the State and included real candidate names as well as differing votes. After testing, officials found one straight-Republican ballot and one […]
