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'Back With a Bang': Climate Marches Kick Off Worldwide as Global South Seeks Reparations
Climate protesters across the world hit the streets on Friday to kick off this year's Global Climate Strike ahead of the opening of high-level United Nations General Assembly meetings next week, where climate finance for the Global South is on the agenda. Protests for climate justice were planned across 50 countries, with Germany alone seeing more than 100 rallies that together drew some 75,000 people. The protests were spearheaded by the youth-led group Fridays for Future (FFF), started by Greta Thunberg in 2018. The New York chapter of the group marched across the Brooklyn Bridge Friday afternoon aiming to "tear down...
Omar Says Bigotry of Senator Kennedy 'Just the Tip of the Iceberg'
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing earlier this week on the rise in hate crimes since last October was historic for its inclusion of testimony on crimes against Palestinians, Muslims, and Arab Americans, said Rep. Ilhan Omar on Friday—but the event also served to illustrate how Islamophobia is still widely accepted—and practiced—among top government officials, including elected lawmakers.The Minnesota Democrat responded to comments made by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to witness Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, in which the lawmaker accused Berry of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and told her to "hide [her] head in a...
Tlaib Enters '14 Pages of Babies' Killed by Israel in Gaza Into Congressional Record
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Thursday entered into the Congressional Record a list containing the names of thousands of children killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since October 7—a war the lone Palestinian American lawmaker called "one of the most documented horrific crimes against humanity in our history." Earlier this week, the Gaza Ministry of Health published a 649-page list containing the names of 34,344 Palestinians killed during Israel's annihilation of the coastal enclave. The list includes the names of more than 11,000 children. Its first 14 pages contain the names of babies under the age of 1...
US Healthcare Failures Prove 'We Need' Medicare for All, Says Jayapal
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday night responded to a new analysis exposing the failures of the for-profit U.S. healthcare system by renewing her call for Medicare for All.Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are the lead sponsors of the Medicare for All Act. When they reintroduced the bill last year, they highlighted research showing that it could save 68,000 lives and $650 billion per year. The Commonwealth Fund report—titled Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System and released Thursday—adds to the mountain of evidence that, as Jayapal said in a series of social media posts,...
Norwegian Deep-Sea Mining Threatens Arctic Biodiversity With 'Irreversible Harm'
Norway's plans to move forward with deep-sea mining could do irreparable damage to unique Arctic ecosystems and even drive unobserved species to extinction.That's the warning issued Friday in a Greenpeace report titled Deep Sea Mining in the Arctic: Living Treasures at Risk. The environmental group argues that Norway's mining plans contradict its previous ecological commitments, such as its 2020 pledge to manage 100% of its ocean area sustainably by 2025."The measure of a nation's success is not how many promises it makes, but how it honors them and how much of its ecosystem is safeguarded for present and future generations,"...
'Hellscape': Microsoft Deal Would Reopen Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Power AI
The corporation that owns the shuttered nuclear plant on Three Mile Island on Friday announced a deal with Microsoft to reopen the facility to provide power to the tech company for data centers using artificial intelligence. Three Mile Island is well-known as the site of largest nuclear disaster in U.S. history—a reactor there, Unit 2, partially melted down in 1979. However, the site's other reactor, Unit 1, continued to operate safely until 2019, when it was closed for economic reasons. With the help of tax breaks from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), plant owner Constellation Energy plans to spend $1.6...
'Horrific' Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Pushing, Kicking Palestinian Bodies From Rooftop
In the latest potential violation of international law by Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, footage verified by media outlets on Friday showed members of the Israel Defense Forces pushing and kicking what appeared to be the lifeless bodies of three Palestinians off a rooftop in Qabatiya, a West Bank town. The Associated Press obtained video showing three soldiers on the roof of a building that the IDF had attacked with grenades earlier, picking up a body and dragging it toward the edge of the rooftop before pushing it off. On another nearby rooftop, the soldiers in the footage...
Scientists Who First Identified Threat of Microplastics Say World Must Now Act
Some of the key scientists who first informed the world of the potential damage being done to natural systems by microplastics are now calling for world leaders to take decisive action to curb the introduction of these polluting materials into the environment—and they hope the looming United Nations treaty process on plastics can be a key vehicle for progress. Alongside a new scientific review published cataloging the growing body of research on microplastics—defined as plastic particles smaller than 5 millimeters and "composed of polymers together with functional additives as well as other intentionally and unintentionally added chemicals"—the international group of scientists...
'Failure of Leadership': Hoffa Rips O'Brien Over Teamsters' Snub of Harris
The former longtime president of the International Brother of Teamsters, James P. Hoffa, called out his successor Sean O'Brien late Thursday over the powerful union's announcement earlier in the week that it would effectively sit on the sidelines of this year's presidential election by refusing to endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump."This is a critical error and frankly, a failure of leadership by Sean O'Brien," Hoffa said in a statement. "This election is too important for our union not to do its duty. We must take a stand for working Americans. There is only one candidate in this...
South Carolina AG: Freddie Owens to Be Executed Despite Key Witness' Bombshell Claim
Barring an unlikely 11th-hour reprieve from South Carolina's governor or U.S. Supreme Court, correctional officials are set to carry out the state's first execution in 13 years after its attorney general brushed off a key prosecution witness' bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he is condemned to die. Freddie Owens—who legally changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while imprisoned—was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection for the shooting death of convenience store cashier Irene Graves, a 41-year-old mother of three, during a 1997 robbery. Although there was no forensic evidence...
'An Extremely Dark Place in History': UN Panel Says Israel Violated Child Rights Treaty
A United Nations committee on Thursday called out Israel for "serious violations" of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly with its nearly yearlong assault on the Gaza Strip. "The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history," said Bragi Guðbrandsson, vice chair of the U.N. Child Rights Committee, which also released its findings on five other parties to the global treaty—Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Mexico, and Turkmenistan. Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed at least 41,272 Palestinians in Gaza and injured...
Aid Groups Applaud US Bill to Restore UNRWA Funding
Rights groups on Thursday applauded three Democratic lawmakers for their proposal of a bill to restore United States funding to the United Nations' key agency tasked with providing services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza, six months after the U.S. suspended contributions following unverified accusations against the agency. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, expressed gratitude to Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) for introducing the UNRWA Emergency Restoration Act of 2024, aimed at restoring funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—legislation that Zogby...
'Spineless': Democracy Watchdog Condemns FEC Refusal to Act on Election Deepfakes
The Federal Election Commission on Thursday voted to forgo new rulemaking on the use of artificial intelligence in U.S. political campaign advertising, drawing sharp criticism from a watchdog group that said deepfakes threaten electoral integrity. Public Citizen, the watchdog group, had last year petitioned the FEC to issue regulations clarifying that the use of deepfakes in political ads is illegal. The commission on Thursday formally declined to do so and instead voted in favor an anodyne "compromise" rule that states that artificial intelligence is subject to current regulations. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said "compromise" was a "misnomer" and the...
FTC Report Shows Profit-Hungry Tech Giants 'Harmful to Children and Teens'
Child welfare advocates renewed calls for U.S. lawmakers to pass a pair of controversial bills aimed at protecting youth from Big Tech's "dangerous and unacceptable business practices" after the Federal Trade Commission published a report Thursday detailing how social media and streaming companies endanger children and teens who use their platforms. The FTC staff report—entitled A Look Behind the Screens: Examining the Data Practices of Social Media and Video Streaming Services—"shows how the tech industry's monetization of personal data has created a market for commercial surveillance, especially via social media and video streaming services, with inadequate guardrails to protect consumers." The agency...
Student Researchers Expose Fossil Fuel Ties at US Universities
Students at universities and colleges across the U.S. have long demanded that their schools cut ties with the fossil fuel industry as planetary heating has increasingly been linked to extreme weather and pollution-causing emissions have continued.New findings released by student researchers with the Campus Climate Network on Wednesday, said the organization, "add more detail and evidence to what these students have already been campaigning for—fossil fuel funding has no place in universities' climate research." The students spoke at a virtual press conference titled "Big Oil's Stain on Our Universities," presenting research compiled in six reports regarding fossil fuel industry ties...
Hezbollah's Nasrallah Says Israel Crossed 'All Red Lines' With Remote Bombings
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday accused Israel of having "violated all red lines" by killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands more in surprise bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices across Lebanon, calling the audacious attack "an act of war" that will not go unpunished. In a televised speech during which Israeli warplanes flew over the Lebanese capital of Beirut, Nasrallah condemned the attack as "a major terrorist operation, an act of genocide, and a massacre," adding that it "amounts to a declaration of war." "The enemy used a civilian method used by a large segment of society...
CEO Pay Has Risen 1,085% Since 1978, But for Workers? Just 24%
Chief executive officers at the largest companies in the United States saw their compensation surge by 1,085% from 1978 to 2023, compared with only a 24% increase for typical worker pay, according to an annual report published Thursday.The Economic Policy Insitute (EPI) analysis focuses on the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms by revenue. "Since CEO pay is mostly stock-based—and the value of stocks changes frequently—calculating it is not entirely straightforward," the report explains, so EPI uses "a backward-looking measure—realized compensation—and a forward-looking measure—granted compensation."CEOs' annual realized compensation in 1978 was $1,874,000 in 1978, but rose to $22,207,000 last...
'No One Is Above the Law': Sanders-Led Panel Votes to Hold Steward CEO in Contempt
A U.S. Senate panel led by Sen. Bernie Sanders voted Thursday in favor of holding Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre in civil and criminal contempt after he refused to appear at a hearing last week in defiance of a congressional subpoena.The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee passed the contempt resolutions in a near-unanimous vote, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) abstaining. The vote marked "the first time in modern American history that the HELP Committee has issued a civil or criminal contempt resolution," according to Sanders' office.The approval of the two resolutions, which now head...
Experts Say Israel's 'Booby-Trap' Attacks in Lebanon Violate International Law
Experts from the United Nations and human rights groups said that the device attacks in Lebanon, which killed at least 37 people Tuesday and Wednesday while injuring 2,900, violated international law due to their indiscriminate nature and could constitute a war crime. The surprise attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, including by unnamed U.S. officials. They came in two waves. On Tuesday afternoon local time, thousands of pagers exploded, killing 12 people, including four children, and injuring 2,300. On Wednesday, another 25 people were killed and 600 injured by the explosion of other communications devices, including walkie-talkies and smartphones....
Report Shows How Five Global Powers on UN Security Council Are 'Vetoing Humanity'
As the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance worldwide has skyrocketed by 150% over the last decade, five powerful countries on the United Nations Security Council have had hundreds of opportunities to vote for progress in some of the world's most protracted conflicts—but in dozens of cases, countries including the United States and Russia have instead vetoed peace and security resolutions. In its report, Vetoing Humanity, Oxfam International pointed Thursday to numerous vetoes made by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC), or the P5, which the humanitarian group said have placed their own economic...
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