Two beluga whales are rescued from war-ravaged Kharkiv, Ukraine and taken to an aquarium in Spain. Salma Abdelaziz has more on their remarkable journey. pic.twitter.com/Tnll5fryp9 — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 21, 2024 From the New York Times ( good news gift link for you!) It was a whale of an evacuation. Actually, two. In what experts said was among the most complex marine mammal rescue ever undertaken, the pair of beluga whales were extricated from an aquarium in the battered city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and transported to Europe’s largest aquarium in Valencia, Spain, on Wednesday morning. As Russian aerial bombardments of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, have intensified, the evacuation of Plombir, a 15-year-old male, and Miranda, a 14-year-old female, came just in time, marine mammal experts said. “If they had continued in Kharkiv, their chances of survival would have been very slim,” said Daniel Garcia-Párraga, director of zoological operations at Oceanogràfic de Valencia, who helped lead the rescue. Belugas, whose natural habitat is the Arctic, need cold water to survive.
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This time it’s for “debauchery” This morning I wrote about the use of the Comstock Act and other zombie laws to help the right take America back to the 1890s. Get a load of this one: A government watchdog group filed suit in Delaware federal court this week, seeking to compel the Justice Department to produce records that may determine whether Hunter Biden should be further investigated under a 1910 law relating to “prostitution or debauchery.” The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project petitioned the same Wilmington bench where Biden was found guilty on gun charges this month, contending that there is a significant amount of evidence the first son was being probed on Mann Act grounds. The law, stemming from a time when prostitution was more prevalent in urban areas, states it is a felony to “knowingly transport… in interstate or foreign commerce… any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery.” The legal brief, obtained by Fox News Digital, includes part of a 2023 interview transcript from IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler before the House Ways & Means Committee.
Trump keeps telling his fans that he doesn’t need any votes. He says he has more than enough. He says everything depends on stopping Democrats from “cheating” (by which he means voting.) So it makes sense that they wouldn’t be putting much effort into get out the vote. They figure they don’t really need it. Bill Sher at the Washington Monthly discusses the Trump “ground game” here and it turns out that they’re outsourcing it to a grifter. Yep: CNN reported that “Donald Trump’s campaign is taking a vastly different approach to 2024 compared with 2020, with plans for fewer staff and expenses [and instead] relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure, and significant bank accounts.” It further noted that one of the most important of these groups is Turning Point Action, part of the Turning Point network that began with Turning Point USA. Turning Point USA is a right-wing student group founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, an 18-year-old soon-to-be college dropout, and Bill Montgomery, an elderly Tea Party activist. You know about Kirk by now.
Issue 55 of the Nautilus print edition is our Rebel Issue. It includes contributions from science writer Elena Kazamia, astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter, film producer Namir Khaliq, philosopher Jonathon Keats, and more. This issue also features new illustrations by Angie Wang and Mark Belan.
The post Print Edition 55: The Rebel Issue appeared first on Nautilus.
The summer after I graduated college, a group of friends and I moved out west and lived together in Berkeley, California. There were about ten of us in Rochdale Village, a complex of student cooperative housing on Haste Street, just off Telegraph Avenue, not far from the Berkley campus. I hadn’t thought about those apartments, or their name, till this afternoon, when I was reading Marx’s chapter on cooperation (chapter 11) in the first volume of Capital. I’m reading Capital in a new and amazing translation by Paul Reitter; it’s edited by Paul North. Wendy Brown has a foreword, and Will Roberts has an afterward. It’s due out this September. I’ll be reviewing it. In the middle of chapter 11, […]
In today’s excellent newsletter, Brian Beutler is absolutely right about this. We know that most of the kvetching about the economy at this point is coming from Republicans and even then they are reporting that their own finances are fine it’s everyone else who is suffering terribly under the horrors of Joe Biden’s economy. There are some independents and Democrats who are complaining as well which is where the real problem lies. Beutler points out that this phenomenon is asymmetric: [S]urvey data reliably shows that Republican economic sentiment is much, much more sensitive to partisan control of the White House than Democratic sentiment. Republican voters are trained by their media, or acculturated by their communities, to dissemble about their economic sentiments depending on who’s president—or, more generously, to feel so invested in who holds power in America that they lose touch with reality. Every poll like this one from Monmouth will sweep in voters whose responses are tethered to facts, and others, mostly Republicans, whose responses are shaped by partisanship and tribalism.
Labor’s cowardice on the world stage stems from a deep-rooted fear that to do anything other than slavishly follow American policy would be to hand government over to a Coalition which has always done exactly that. The trouble being that, as the cringe of Labor perceives it, many if not most Australians are comfortable with Continue reading »
One’s immediate thought on looking at any of the multitude of photos of the devastation of Gaza is a profound sense of sorrow and grief at the capacity of humans to wreak such destruction and suffering. There is mind-numbing despair at the plight of children who have lost everything – their parents, other family members, Continue reading »
Former Australian defence force chief and admiral retired, Chris Barrie frankly discusses with Michael Lester his deep concerns that Australia is complacent in its unwillingness to face up to the threat to our national security posed by global climate change. Barrie speaks of his years of campaigning and advocacy on the issue and characterises government Continue reading »
In Asian media this week: Anwar slams ‘insane’ US over Gaza. Plus: Putin, Kim reduce dependence on Beijing; Where child brides are considered normal; India prosecutes Arundhati Roy for Kashmir speech; American arms-makers struggle to match China; Big cities become lethal heat traps. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is in conflict with many Western countries Continue reading »
Let’s not goad the Reserve Bank to fight higher underlying inflation that can be corrected by disciplined fiscal policy and a more open and competitive economy. Polls show cost of living is the overriding issue on voters’ minds. One reason is that lowering the annual inflation rate has stalled at around 4% since last December. Continue reading »
Malcolm Turnbull calls Dutton’s nuclear fantasy a “dangerous and expensive farce”, how the far right won ground in the European elections while the left won ground in Poland, public policy ideas from Pope Francis and Lucy Turnbull. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic Continue reading »
While Australia and China have very different approaches in PNG, both are in working primarily with political elites, while alienating the New Guinean public. Two recent financial deals that seemingly benefit Papua New Guinea indicate the problems at the heart of the country’s political and economic outlook. The separate agreements between PNG and two rival Continue reading »
As US Investigators probe the transactions of Epoch Times finance chief Bill Guan, recently arrested on money laundering charges, the spotlight is spreading to associated groups and individuals. Anti-China campaigner John Zhong Zhang, Epoch Times Founder and CEO, resigned, although he has not been charged with any crime. He and Guan have been replaced by Continue reading »
For the third consecutive year, Israeli weapons sales reach record highs amid rising violence against Palestinians.
The post Israel Turns Gaza Conflict into Record Arms Sales appeared first on MintPress News.
It’s going to be a blockbuster All over cable news today are breathless reports about how “momentum” has shifted toward Trump because he collected $141 million last month compared to Biden’s apparently paltry $84 million. But they fail to mention that most of Trump’s money came from 3 billionaires, one of whom was this guy: Timothy Mellon, a reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, donated $50 million to a super PAC supporting Donald J. Trump the day after the former president was convicted of 34 felonies, according to new federal filings, an enormous gift that is among the largest single disclosed contributions ever. The donation’s impact on the 2024 race is expected to be felt almost immediately. Within days of the contribution, the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., said in a memo that it would begin reserving $100 million in advertising through Labor Day. The group had only $34.5 million on hand at the end of April, and Mr. Mellon’s contribution accounted for much of the nearly $70 million that the super PAC raised in May.
A new strategy for copyrighting a writer’s signature style.
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I yawn awake at the painfully early hour of noon o’clock to the pinging of 1,005 unread emails. A voicemail from my boss leaps to the top of my mountain of notifications: “PLEASE LOG INTO TEAMS NOW!!” I take a deep breath and realize it’s the perfect time to grab a cold brew—on the company card, of course.
At the coffee shop, I join a group of remote employees typing away on their laptops. They inspire me to work on my pressing daily tasks: New York Times games. Fortunately, I expensed my subscription this month as “emotional support software.” I consider checking my work messages while on my laptop, but I hesitate. My company uses Slack, and I understand that as a directive, not a software.
The unbearable stress of Connections has pushed me to take my first break of the day, but certainly not the last. As a WFH (“work from home” or “will fire her”) employee, I prioritize my mental health. My mind is a temple—if the temple laid off every employee.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of reproductive rights in America had heard of the antediluvian Comstock Act but I doubt most of them ever thought it would actually be back in use in the 21st century. The notorious “anti-vice” laws from 1873 banned the shipment of “lewd” written materials, contraceptives and any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” for the purpose of abortion, had not been in force for many decades since the passage of various laws and the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion in 1973’s Roe v. Wade. Nonetheless, it remained on the books and leave it to the radicals putting together Project 2025 to exhume it the minute Samuel Alito and company gave them the green light.
Project 2025 — a road map for the next Trump White House — urges overturning Supreme Court precedent, and a trickle of bills may tee up challenges.
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