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Democracy Now!
- DOJ Whistleblower Confirms "Antisemitism" Probes Against Universities Were Sham Investigations
Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, has filed a complaint claiming the Trump administration task force charged with investigating antisemitism pushed universities into massive settlements despite turning up little to no evidence of anti-Jewish discrimination on campus. Van Erem said in her complaint that the government’s probes into schools like Harvard, Brown and Columbia were “an unlawful process designed to achieve predetermined political goals.” “Columbia affiliates, from the Board of Trustees down, have actually collaborated with the federal government in these sham investigations,” says Marianna Hirsch, professor emerita at Columbia University. “These were not […]
- Meet Loui Ridi: Palestinian American Returns to West Bank Home Besieged by Israeli Settlers
Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American man who lives in Ohio, traveled to the occupied West Bank on Monday to help relatives defend their family home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. Israeli settlers have surrounded the home, which Ridi owns, for more than a week. Settlers have besieged several Palestinian houses in the village, trapping people inside and cutting off water and electricity in some cases. “I’m not getting no protection here. I still fear for my life. I still fear for my family’s life here,” says Ridi, who joins Democracy Now! from the occupied West Bank. Ridi has raised an American flag on his home and reached out to the U.S. Embassy for help. “The IDF is not even making it better here. They’re not allowing […]
- As Pressure Grows, Israel Finally Opens Probe into 2024 Killing of 5-Year-Old Hind Rajab in Gaza
Israel’s military on Wednesday admitted that its soldiers opened fire in January 2024 on a car trying to flee Gaza City following Israel’s evacuation orders. The car was carrying 5-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and six of her relatives. They were all killed, as were Palestine Red Crescent Society medics dispatched to rescue them. The Israeli military said it would also investigate the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics whose bodies and crushed emergency vehicles were recovered from a mass grave in Rafah in March 2025. It made no mention of thousands of other incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces. “This seems to be nothing more than political theater,” says Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and […]
- Headlines for August 21, 2026
U.S. Treasury to Sanction Iran and Its Trading Partners: “You Are Either With Us or Against Us”, USS Abraham Lincoln Heads for San Diego After Record Wartime Deployment, Houthis Clash with Yemeni Forces in Largest-Scale Fighting Since 2022 Truce, Sudan’s Humanitarian Catastrophe Grows as 200,000 Are Displaced by Fighting and Flooding, “The People Want the Fall of the Regime”: Tunisian Protesters Demand Ouster of Kais Saied, Human Rights Watch: Russian Mercenaries Led Massacre of Civilians in Mali Village Raid, Armed Israeli Settlers Kill and Wound Palestinians During Raid on Village Near Hebron, Aisha Wahab Wins Special Election, Becoming First Afghan American U.S. Congressmember, FBI Searches Eric Swalwell’s Home and Seizes […]
- "Love Machines": James Muldoon on How AI Is Changing Relationships & the Global Workers Fueling AI
James Muldoon is a sociologist who writes about the changing nature of human-technology relationships. Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships investigates how people form emotional attachments with large language models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I., co-written by fellow researchers Mark Graham and Callum Cant and based on more than a decade of fieldwork, follows Global South workers whose knowledge and labor are the basis of AI tools and assistants. “A lot of people see artificial intelligence as something that is largely automated, frictionless, and just appears as a useful tool for us. But most of the human hours […]
Anthropocene
- Recycling food waste has a huge climate upside and a surprising downside.
A study of American composting and biogas schemes finds a climate win is shadowed by a microplastics problem. The clue is what food is wrapped in.
- Trashed solar panels will be a treasure worth up to $1 trillion
A huge new study charted 1,708 recycling scenarios across 32 regions and found a way to turn a looming waste crisis into a circular-economy windfall.
The Guardian
- Hakeem Jeffries meeting with Jared Kushner sparks backlash amongst Democrats ahead of midterm elections – live
House Democratic leader meets with president’s son-in-law has ignited fury amongst own partyDemocrats incredulous over Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner meetingSign up for the US Breaking News emailToday we can expect a new round of sweeping sanctions on Iran from treasury secretary Scott Bessent.The US also said it would impose steep penalties on any country trading with Tehran. Continue reading...
- Trump’s border wall construction threatens rock art as old as the pyramids: ‘The ancestors are still here’
The president’s border wall plan could damage or destroy ‘the oldest-known books in North America’On an overcast summer morning, Carolyn Boyd, an archeologist at Texas State University, stood at the foot of a cave in west Texas, looking up toward a series of towering murals painted on a rock wall. Three massive human-like figures soared toward an overhang that had sheltered the painting from the elements since they were drawn here perhaps 4,000 years ago.An artist herself, Boyd knows how hard it would have been to paint these long, crisp lines. Before starting, the bands of Indigenous hunter-gatherers who lived in this west Texas valley, where the Pecos River empties into the Rio Grande, would have spent weeks pulverizing gypsum, […]
- New Mexico to continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after federal cuts
Trump administration finalized rule to end Medicaid support for care including hormones and speech therapyNew Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip). Continue reading...
- Top US firms that backed Voting Rights Act donate to groups working to undermine it
Watchdog data shared with Guardian shows contributions to Republican Attorneys General Association and othersOver a dozen US companies that signed a 2021 letter urging Congress to strengthen the Voting Rights Act continue to contribute to state political groups that are actively working to undermine the legislation, according to a campaign finance watchdog.Researchers at the Center for Political Accountability (CPA), a nonpartisan organization that tracks financial disclosures, found that companies – including Airbnb, DoorDash, Target and Zillow – that signed the letter are contributing to groups known as 527 organizations that prop up key state races, according to data provided exclusively to the Guardian. Continue reading...
- From Arizona to Wisconsin, election deniers are vying for office nationwide
Republicans who deny Joe Biden won the 2020 election are running for governor and secretary of state across the USElection deniers are back on the ballot.In most swing states, at least one major Republican candidate has questioned or outright denied the results of the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden. Continue reading...
The Conversation
- Using thunderquakes to X-ray Earth – a new study shows urban seismology in action
With the help of thunderstorms and everyday fiber-optic cables, these scientists are revealing a hidden world underground.
- More protein in your breakfast or snacks won’t give you more muscle without more work – a biologist separates the science from the marketing
Protein powders and protein-fortified versions of all manner of foods line grocery store shelves. But just because something has added protein doesn’t necessarily make it better.
- The importance of teaching students what AI can’t do
Educators can confront AI head on by distinguishing its pattern-recognition skills from its inability to daydream, embody other people and authentically express itself.
- Antarctic krill fishing is now concentrated in the exact pattern conservation rules were designed to prevent
With location regulations no longer in force, fishing boats are harvesting thousands of tons of krill from very few areas, increasing competition with penguins, seals, whales and other marine life.
- A seemingly technical change to international student visas could disrupt teaching and research at US universities
US colleges and universities hosted nearly 1.2 million international students in the 2024-25 school year, an all-time high.
Inter Press Service
- GEF Proposes $140 Million Program to Strengthen Drought Resilience
For pastoralists in Arvaikheer — a village in Mongolia’s dry central plains — rain can determine whether there is enough grass for cattle to roam, whether waterholes are replenished and whether families make it through another dry season. But as climate change makes rainfall increasingly unpredictable, even a wet season may no longer provide water
- ECUADOR: ‘Criminalisation Serves as a Deterrent, Seeking to Discipline Others’
CIVICUS discusses the rapid erosion of civic space in Ecuador with Gabriela Panchana, an activist, communicator and founder of the En Voz Alta and Rumbo Plural digital platforms. Gabriela faces legal proceedings as a result of her online activism. Her experience is part of a growing pattern where activists and journalists face criminalisation and
- Lailuma Built Opportunities for Afghan Women – Then She Was Killed
The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons
Sludge
- Trump Convenes White House Crypto Meeting With His Own Business Partners
Many of the companies at today’s White House meeting are in business with the president's or his son's crypto ventures, and have donated millions to Trump’s political committees.
Grist
- Tennessee helped usher in the nuclear age. It wants to lead the way again.
But the region’s long industrial and nuclear history has left more toxic legacies, too.
- Living with drought has taught pastoralists lessons the world needs
Half a billion pastoralists draw on generations of knowledge to thrive on rangelands. They say protecting their way of life would help others prepare for a hotter, drier world.
- Even meteorologists are baffled by the Midwestern tornado season
More than 200 tornadoes have hit Illinois this year. Here's how the twisters form, and how climate change might be influencing them.
Truthout
- Hind Rajab’s Family Says Israel’s Investigation Into Hind’s Death Just a PR Ploy
“Even now, all I hear is her crying, ‘I’m scared,’ and her plea: ‘Come here, Mama, take me,’” Hind’s mother said.
- Trump Is Destroying Pristine Public Lands to Build His Border Wall — Again
Contractors damaged federally protected habitats in Big Bend National Park and areas near sacred springs in Arizona.
- Trump Administration Is Reviving a Visa Rule That Could Disrupt Higher Education
These new rules will make it harder for some international students to visit and stay in the US.
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