British insect population decline

The population of flying insects in Britain fell by half from 2021 to 2023. In 2024 it did not bounce back. The cause is not known, but it can cause disaster for many kinds of plants, as well as birds, frogs, and other things that eat insects.

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Trump cancels HIV elimination funding

Just as the world came to have a chance to eliminate HIV through medicines that prevent its spread, the wrecker showed up and cancelled US plans to pay for doing that.

If civilization falls due to global heating, we are likely to lose the technology to make medicine to treat and prevent HIV. What a shame to prevent us from getting rid of it first.

Eliminating patents on medicines is very important. The three fields where patents are most harmful are agriculture, medicine and software.

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El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)

El Salvador's CECOT prison is more cruel than Guantanamo. The prisoners are kept incommunicado and have no legal rights. Anyone there can be sent to that prison on the "president"s whim. Other, older prisons there are (reportedly) even more cruel.

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Israel and Red Cross

*Israel must give Red Cross access to jailed Palestinians, Britain tells ICJ.*

The crimes of HAMAS are grave, an many, but the crimes of Israel are comparably grave and far more numerous. Citing one side's crimes does not justify the other's.

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US-Ukraine minerals deal

*US and Ukraine sign minerals deal* that sets up a way for Ukraine to pay the price of the military aid that the US has already donated.

This agreement is not really a deal; rather, it is a general roadmap to reach a deal. This will give the cheater at least one excuse to start demanding that Ukraine sell the whole store for one dollar. But since he doesn't feel the need a valid excuse, the cheater won't hesitate to break it anyway to demand more money. You should prepare for any deal with him to be cancelled at any moment.

Nonetheless, if this deal results in continued US military aid and that stops the advance of the Putin forces ( please don't call them "the Russians"), it is better than no agreement at all.

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Trump environment onslaught

*Charting 100 days of [the saboteur in chief]’s onslaught on the environment.*

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Trump vs clean air

*[The wrecker] has launched more attacks on the environment in 100 days than his entire first term.*

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US cruelty

*I witnessed US cruelty as a Guantánamo lawyer. [The bully's] deportations are disturbingly familiar.*

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Paramount and CBS

Paramount wants to do a merger, and Paramount owns CBS. That relationship enabled the represser to impose censorship on CBS.

Last year, the FTC might have blocked the merger to preserve competition, but it would not have demanded power over CBS programming.

It is clear that the purchase of news publishers by much bigger businesses is bad for the freedom of the press. These larger companies are vulnerable to many kinds of government pressure, and they have no tradition of seeing censorship as bad.

If we get out of this mess, we should ban such mergers and break up those mergers.

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RFK Jr's false vaccine claims

*RFK Jr and [department of HHS] falsely claim MMR vaccine includes "aborted fetus debris".

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Mohsed Mahdawi bailed

Mohsed Mahdawi has been freed on bail. There was never any reason to jail him except the Republican policy of intimidating all opposition into submission.

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Mercenary spyware

Italian journalists that have exposed fascist-leaning members of Melonu's right-wing governing Party have been attacked with spyware on their snooping devices. (They don't by default snoop for anybody and everybody.)

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"Carbon bombs"

*[London Banks] have poured more than $100bn (£75bn) into companies developing “carbon bombs” -- huge oil, gas and coal projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global consequences.*

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Robert Reich: Trump's next 100 days

Robert Reich: If leaders stay silent, the US won't survive [the corrupter's] next 100 days.

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An American's democracy plea

An American pleads for other countries to adopt policies that can lead/press the US back to democracy.

*I firmly believe that the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan have a historic obligation to the American people to do what they can to help us preserve our democracy. An America descending into authoritarianism also poses a threat to the democracies they lead.*

I hope that they share these feelings, despite the disadvantage that they must scramble to protect themselves from the right-wing extremists in the United States while resisting similar extremists in their own countries.

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Urgent: Pass the Social Security Expansion Act

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Social Security Expansion Act.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

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Groundwork for privatizing some space and satellite operations

The muskrat *appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.*

This shows us a directly corrupt potential in the DOSE (Depredations of Sabotage and Evisceration).

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Israel abuse of UNRWA staff

*UNRWA says Israel has abused [jailed UNRWA] staff and used some as human shields.*

UNRWA says that Israeli prison guards subjected some of them to brainwashing techniques and obtained some forced confessions. This is what Israeli prisons generally do to Palestinian prisoners.

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Time for US to guarantee healthcare to all

Bernie Sanders: *It's time for the US to guarantee healthcare to all.*

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Switch to no-till farming

US farms switched to no-till farming to reduce loss of topsoil, which prevents harmful environmental degradation. Friends of the Earth warns that this has led to much more use of dangerous herbicides.

So what should we do? The loss of topsoil is permanent and we need to prevent that. We need to keep people safe from the herbicides too &mdash but how do we do both?

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