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Blinken Heads to Israel for Gaza Cease-Fire Push as IDF Slaughter Continues
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed for Israel on Sunday in an effort to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, even as Israeli forces continued to massacre Palestinians in the embattled strip and Hamas dismissed hopeful assertions by optimists including President Joe Biden that an agreement on a cessation of hostilities is within sight. Blinken's trip to Israel comes days after Israeli negotiators met with senior U.S. officials, as well as Qataris and Egyptians mediating between Hamas and Israel, in Doha, Qatar. Although those talks ended without any major progress toward a cease-fire deal, Biden said Friday that "we are closer...
'Enough Is Enough': Indian Doctors Stage Nationwide Strike After Rape, Murder of Trainee
Indian doctors and healthcare workers on Saturday ramped up a nationwide strike in response to the rape and murder of a trainee physician in a state-run hospital in Kolkata, shutting down all hospital services except for emergency care in a bid to force action to protect women from sexual assault. The August 9th murder of the 31-year-old doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata sparked massive demonstrations that began Monday and continued throughout the week. On Wednesday, protesters at a "Reclaim the Night" march attacked the hospital where the woman was killed. Protests also took place...
UN Secretary-General Urges 'Polio Pause' in Israeli War on Gaza as First Case Reported
Following over a month of warnings, Gaza recorded its first case of polio since the highly contagious virus was eradicated there 25 years ago, prompting a Friday call by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for a temporary truce to enable a vaccination drive in the embattled strip. The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that an 10-month-old infant in the central city of Deir al-Balah "who has not received any polio vaccine dose" has tested positive for the virus, which often causes paralysis and can be fatal. The ministry said the baby is one of "a number of children" who have presented...
Supreme Court Denies Biden Administration's Request to Reinstate Expanded Title IX Rule
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied the Biden administration's emergency request to reinstate parts of its updated Department of Education Title IX rule expanding the definition of "discrimination on the basis of sex" to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy status. The nation's highest court ruled 5-4—with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining liberal colleagues Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent—that the Biden administration "has not provided this court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts' interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of...
'Not Another Bomb' to Israel Demand Grows Ahead of Democratic Convention
Leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, calls for the U.S. government to stop arming Israel's devastating assault on the Gaza Strip—widely denounced around the world as genocide—continued to mount on Friday. "We join the millions of people who've taken action the last 10 months, taxpayers who don't want to pay for genocide and are demanding an immediate arms embargo on Israel," U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) executive director Ahmad Abuznaid said in a statement Friday. "We know that politicians won't change their unjust policies until it's in their own self-interest to do so," he continued. "We...
'Turning Into the Super PAC Election': Outside Spending Tops $1 Billion for 2024
Empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling allowing unlimited independent financial contributions to support political campaigns, outside spending during the current election cycle has hit a record $1 billion, according to a report published Thursday by the watchdog group OpenSecrets. "Super PACs and other outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money have poured about $1.1 billion into 2024 federal elections as of August 15—nearly twice what similar groups spent over the same period in the 2020 presidential election cycle when independent expenditures hit an all-time record," OpenSecrets said. "More than...
'Very Unpleasant Regime': Fellow Leftist Lula Criticizes Maduro Amid Election Dispute
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a potential mediator in the ongoing electoral dispute in Venezuela, spoke harshly on Friday about the government of President Nicolas Maduro, calling it a "very unpleasant regime" with an "authoritarian slant"—perhaps the first time he has been so publicly critical of his fellow leftist. Venezuala has been in turmoil since its presidential election on July 28, pitting Maduro against opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, came to a disputed result. The electoral council controlled by Maduro's government announced that he'd won reelection with 51.95% of the vote, but provided no evidence. However, the opposition also...
Global Health Advocates Call for Massive Mpox Vaccination Effort
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders on Friday appealed to wealthy countries that have stockpiles of mpox vaccines to immediately donate doses to several countries in Africa that have been affected by recent outbreaks, as global officials warned the spread of the disease is now a public health emergency of international concern.The group, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), expressed support for the World Health Organization's (WHO) call for donor countries to help fund a coordinated response to the outbreak, including surveillance, building laboratory capacity, increasing community engagement, and guaranteeing access to treatments, vaccines, and...
'Insane Torture': Israeli Soldiers Confirm Horrific Abuse of Palestinians at Sde Teiman
An Israeli newspaper on Friday published interviews with Israel Defense Forces reservists and medical staff who witnessed the "day-to-day torture" of Palestinian prisoners at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, where dozens of detainees have died and others were allegedly raped. The Israelis described seeing torture and abuse of Palestinians detained in Sde Teiman, who included everyone from Hamas fighters to innocent civilians, and ranged in age from children to octogenarians. "We said, 'It's torture.' But you don't get into it; you change the subject immediately." "What's happening there is total dehumanization. You don't really relate to them as if...
Sanders Hails Harris Economic Agenda as Important Step Toward 'More Just Society'
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders praised the economic agenda outlined Friday by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris as "an important step forward in making our country a fairer and more just society." While acknowledging that the vice president's slate of proposals does not go as far as he "would like," Sanders said it is "an economic agenda that begins to speak to the needs of working families and takes on the unprecedented corporate greed that is taking place throughout America." "At a time when the price of healthcare is soaring, Vice President Harris understands that we need to cancel medical debt in America," said...
Legal Coalition Says Chicago Police Must Protect Protest Rights at Democratic Convention
Chicago's history of "unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence" toward anti-war protesters over recent decades—including during the Democratic National Convention of 1968—is on the minds of peace advocates and legal experts planning demonstrations for this year's DNC, kicking off next week, against U.S. support for Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip. "We are a collective of progressive local and national legal organizations, attorneys, and legal workers writing to express our grave concerns about recent actions of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and city of Chicago to stop protestors from demonstrating at the upcoming Democratic Convention," one coalition wrote in a letter made...
UNRWA Says There Is 'Nowhere to Go' as Israel Orders Evacuation of Gaza Safe Zones
Following a series of evacuation orders this week, Israeli forces issued another on Friday for areas in central and southern Gaza, including "safe zones," leaving Palestinian families gripped with fear and with "nowhere to go," according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Israel's Arabic spokesperson announced on social media that people in six neighborhood blocks in various towns, several of which were part of a proclaimed humanitarian zone, must "immediately move," leading to a scramble of evacuations in those areas. "Once again, fear spreads as families have nowhere to go," UNRWA wrote on social...
Harris Unveils Sweeping Economic Agenda With New Child Tax Credit, Medical Debt Relief
After announcing earlier this week that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris plans to take on corporate price gouging with the first-ever federal ban in the food and grocery industries, the Democratic presidential nominee's campaign on Friday unveiled details about Harris' broader economic agenda, making clear to advocates that she is focused on lowering numerous costs facing working households. Along with a four-year plan to boost housing construction, provide financial help to first-time homebuyers, and rein in predatory corporate landlords, Harris announced plans to lower medical costs and provide financial assistance to new parents and families raising young children. The proposals,...
Gulf Coast Advocates: 2024 Election Is 'Inflection Point' for Climate Justice
A second Trump presidency would be a "complete disaster" for the global climate and for Gulf Coast communities bearing the brunt of the buildout of liquefied natural gas terminals, frontline advocates and their allies warned.The comments came during a press briefing on Thursday organized by Gas Exports Today, during which Vessel Project founder Roishetta Ozane, Better Brazoria director Melanie Oldham, and senior energy transition policy lead at Evergreen Action Mattea Mrkusic bore witness to the harm that the LNG export boom had already done to Texas and Louisiana, and called for a permanent ban."We are at this inflection point, and...
Arctic Warming Threatens to Set Off Toxic 'Mercury Bomb,' Study Warns
A study published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters warns that Arctic warming could unleash toxic mercury currently contained in rapidly thawing permafrost, potentially threatening the region's food supply and water quality.Researchers from the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences noted in the new study that the Arctic is "warming four times faster than the global average, destabilizing permafrost soils that have remained frozen for two or more years and that underlie much of the Arctic."Mercury (Hg) deposits in the region's permafrost have "accumulated over thousands of years," the study authors noted, "and Hg in the...
Harris to Target Predatory Wall Street Landlords With Four-Year Housing Plan
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Friday is set to outline a four-year housing plan that would promote the construction of 3 million new housing units, provide substantial down-payment aid to first-time homebuyers, and strip away tax incentives for corporate investors that purchase single-family homes and drive up prices to pad their bottom lines. Harris' proposals to tackle the nation's worsening housing crisis are part of a broader economic agenda that the vice president will lay out in a speech Friday afternoon in North Carolina. Harris, who recently pledged to "take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases," is expected...
Immigrant Rights Group Gives Harris Its First-Ever Presidential Endorsement
Facing the specter of draconian policies including mass deportations of undocumented immigrants under a potential second term for former U.S. President Donald Trump, a major progressive Latine-led advocacy group on Thursday announced its first-ever general election presidential endorsement, for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. "Our democracy is at a crossroads. Former President Trump and extremist politicians have promised mass deportations, the erosion of fundamental rights, and four more years of white supremacist ideology," said Theo Oshiro, executive director of Make the Road Action, in a statement announcing the group's endorsement. "In the face of this assault on freedom, equality, and dignity, Vice...
Pro-Democracy Coalition Urges Media to 'Rise to the Occasion' to Defeat Autocratic Threats
Pushing back against calls for the media to "refrain from covering mounting authoritarianism" in the United States since the Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, survived an assassination attempt, a coalition on Thursday urged news outlets "to wholeheartedly reject such a dereliction of journalistic duty, and to rigorously report threats to our democracy." "Media coverage shapes both public discourse and people's understanding of events of the day," states the coalition's open letter. "This is particularly critical during contentious and extreme times such as these. Media coverage can invite public engagement and robust participation in the democratic process. It can also...
Civil Society Groups Back FCC Effort to Confront Deceptive Deepfakes
A week after the Federal Elections Commission announced it would not take action to regulate artificial intelligence-generated "deepfakes" in political ads, more than 40 civil society groups on Thursday called on the Federal Communications Commission to step in to ensure U.S. voters will be informed about fake content used by campaigns as they prepare to go to the polls. The groups, including Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO, Access Now, and the Campaign Legal Center, backed a proposal by the FCC to require on-air and written disclosures when there is AI-generated content in political ads. "It's time for the FCC to...
As Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000, Congress Urged to Block New Weapons to Israel
As the Palestinian death toll from Israel's 314-day assault on Gaza passed 40,000—a figure Palestinian and United Ntions officials say is made up of mostly women and children and is likely a vast undercount—human rights groups this week decried the Biden administration's approval of $20 billion worth of new weapons for Israel and renewed pleas for Congress to block further arms transfers to the nation's far-right government. On Tuesday—just days after Israeli forces used at least one U.S.-supplied bomb in an airstrike on a Gaza City school that killed scores of forcibly displaced Palestinian civilians sheltering there—the Biden administration notified...
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