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This story was co-published with Popular Science.

Electric vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace on the nation’s roadways.

The federal government wants nearly two-thirds of all cars in the United States to be EVs within the next decade. All the while, EVs are breaking sales records, and manufacturers are building charging stations and production plants to incentivize a shift away from fossil fuels in the transportation sector.

With EVs taking the streets by storm, an unlikely industry now wants a piece of the pie.

Trade associations, fuel producers, and bipartisan lawmakers are pushing for biogas, fuel made from animal and food waste, to start receiving federal credits meant for powering electric vehicles.

The push for biogas-powered EVs would be a boon for the energy sector, according to biogas industry leaders. Environmental groups and researchers, however, say the fuel has yet to prove itself as a truly clean energy source. Biogas created from agriculture has been linked to an increase in waterway pollution and public health concerns that have disproportionately exposed low-income communities and communities of color to toxic byproducts of animal waste.

With the nation needing more ways to power fleets of Teslas and Chevy Bolts, the use of livestock manure to power EVs is still in limbo.

For biogas, there are, broadly speaking, three sources of waste from which to produce fuel: human waste, animal waste, and food waste. The source of this fuel input can be found at wastewater treatment plants, farms, and landfills.

At these locations, organic waste is deprived of oxygen, and a natural process known as anaerobic digestion occurs. Bacteria consume the waste products and eventually release methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. The gas is then captured, piped to a utility, turned into electricity, and distributed to customers.

Fuel created from animal waste isn’t a new concept. Farms around the country have been cashing in on biogas for decades, with a boom in production facilities known as anaerobic digesters expected after funding for their construction made it into the Inflation Reduction Act.

At the end of June, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, which outlines how much renewable fuels — products like corn-based ethanol, manure-based biogas, and wood pellets — are used to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as well as reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil, or jet fuel.

Under this program, petroleum-based fuels must blend renewable fuels into their supply. For example, each time the RFS is updated, a new goal for how much corn-based ethanol is mixed into the nation’s fuel supply is set. This prediction is based on gas and renewable-fuel-industry market projections.

These gas companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply.

A currency system tracks which renewable fuels are being produced and where they end up under the RFS. This system uses credits known as RINs, or Renewable Identification Numbers. According to the EPA, a single RIN is the energy equivalent of one gallon of ethanol, and the prices of the credits will fluctuate over time, just as gas prices do.

Oil companies and refineries purchase credits from renewable-fuel makers to comply with the mandated amount of renewable fuel that needs to be mixed into their supply. The unique RIN credit proves that an oil seller has purchased, blended, and sold renewable fuel.

Currently, the biogas industry can only use its RIN credits when the fuel source is blended with ethanol or a particular type of diesel fuel. Outside of the federal program, biogas producers have been cashing in on low-carbon fuel programs in both California and Oregon.

With the boom in demand for renewable electricity, biogas producers want more opportunities to sell their waste-based fuels. EVs might get them there.

During recent RFS negotiations, the biogas industry urged the EPA to create a pathway for a new type of credit known as eRINs, or electric RINs. This pathway would allow the biogas and biomass industry to power the nation’s EVs directly. While the industry applauded the recent expansion of mandatory volumes of renewable fuels, the EPA did not decide on finalizing eRIN credits.

Patrick Serfass is the executive director of the American Biogas Council. He said the EPA could approve projects that would support eRINs for years, but has yet to approve the pathway for biogas-fuel producers.

“It doesn’t matter which administration,” Serfass said. “The Obama administration didn’t do it. The Trump administration didn’t do it. The Biden administration so far hasn’t done it. EPA, do your job.”

Late last year, the EPA initially included approval of eRINs in the RFS proposal. Republican members of Congress who sit on the Energy & Commerce Committee sent a letter to the EPA, saying that the RFS is not meant to be a tool to electrify transportation.

“Our goal is to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, available, reliable, and secure energy,” the committee members wrote. “The final design of the eRINs program under the RFS inserts uncertainty into the transportation fuels market.”

The RFS has traditionally supported liquid fuels that the EPA considers renewable, the main of which is ethanol. Stakeholders in ethanol production see the inclusion of eRINs as an overstep.

In May, Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, introduced legislation that would outlaw EVs from getting credits from the renewable-fuels program. Grassley has been a longtime supporter of the ethanol industry; Iowa alone makes up nearly a third of the nation’s ethanol production, according to the economic growth organization Iowa Area Development Group.

Serfass said biogas is a way to offset the nation’s waste and make small and midsize farms economically sustainable, as well as local governments operating waste treatment plants and landfills. When it comes to animal waste, he said the eRIN program would allow farmers to make money off their waste by selling captured biogas to the grid to power EVs.

“There’s a lot of folks that don’t like large farms, and the reason that large farms exist is that as a society, we’re not always willing to pay $6 to $9 for a gallon of milk,” Serfass said. “You have farm consolidation so that farmers can just make a living.”

Initially, digesters were thought of as a climate solution and an economic boon for farmers, but in recent years, farms have stopped digester operations because of the hefty price tag to run them and their modest revenue. Biogas digesters are still operated by large operations, often with the help of fossil fuel companies, such as BP.

In addition to farms, Serfass said biogas production from food waste and municipal wastewater treatment plants would also be able to cash in on the eRIN program.

Dodge City, Kansas, a city of 30,000 in the western part of the state, is an example of a local government using biogas as a source of revenue. In 2018, the city began capturing methane from its sewage treatment and has since been able to generate an estimated $3 million a year by selling the fuel to the transportation sector.

Serfass said the city would be able to sell the fuel to power the nation’s EV charging grid if the eRIN program was approved.

The EPA’s decision-making will direct the next three years of renewable-fuel production in the country. The program is often a battleground for different industry groups, from biogas producers to ethanol refineries, as they fight over their fuel’s market share.

Of note, the biomass industry, which creates fuel from wood pellets, forestry waste, and other detritus of the nation’s lumber supply and forests, also wants to be approved for future eRIN opportunities.

This fuel source has a questionable track record of being a climate solution: The industry has been linked to deforestation in the American South, and has falsely claimed they don’t use whole trees to produce electricity, according to a industry whistleblower.

The EPA did not answer questions from Grist as to why eRINs were not approved in its recent announcement.

“The EPA will continue to work on potential paths forward for the eRIN program, while further reviewing the comments received on the proposal and seeking additional input from stakeholders to inform potential next steps on the eRIN program,” the agency wrote in a statement.

Ben Lilliston is the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He said he supported the EPA’s decision to not approve biogas-created electricity for EVs.

“I think the jury is still out around biogas from large-scale animal operations about how effective they are,” Lilliston said.

He wants more independent studies to determine what a growing biogas sector under the eRIN program would mean for the rural areas and communities of color that surround these facilities.

Predominantly Black and low-income communities in southeastern North Carolina have been exposed to decades of polluted waters and increased respiratory and heart disease rates related to the state’s hog industry, which has recently cashed in on the biogas sector.

In Delaware, residents of the largely rural Delmarva peninsula have become accustomed to the stench of the region’s massive poultry farms. These operations now want to cash in on their waste with the implementation of more biogas systems in a community where many residents are Black or immigrants from Haiti and Latin America who speak limited English, according to the Guardian.

“I think that our concern, and many others’, is that this is actually going to increase emissions and waste and pollution,” Lilliston said.

Aaron Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, said electricity produced from biogas could be a red herring when it comes to cheap, clean energy.

“There’s often a tendency to say, ‘We have this pollutant like methane gas that escapes from a landfill or a dairy manure lagoon, and if we can capture that and stop it from escaping into the atmosphere, that’s a win for the climate,'” Smith said. “But once we’ve captured it, should we do something useful with it? And the answer is maybe, but sometimes it’s more expensive to do something useful with it than it would be to go and generate that energy from a different source.”

Smith’s past research has found that the revenue procured by digesters has not been equal to the amount of methane captured by these systems. In a blog post earlier this year, Smith wrote that taxpayers and consumers are overpaying for the price of methane reduction. He found that the gasoline producers have essentially subsidized digester operations by way of the state’s low-carbon transportation standards. To pay for this, the gasoline industry offloads its increased costs by raising the price of gas for consumers.

“I think we do need to be wary about over-incentivizing these very expensive sources of electricity generation under the guise of climate games,” Smith told Grist.

Subscription users of X, formerly Twitter, will need to send a selfie and copy of ID to an Israeli verification company.

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, will now require X Blue users to submit a selfie alongside a photo of a government-issued ID, according to a report by PC Magazine.

The user’s personal information required by the verification process will be handled by Israeli company AU10TIX software which will store the information for up to 30 days.

said the data collected from a user’s profile will be used “for the purpose of safety and security, including preventing impersonation”.

Many X users were unhappy with the choice of the company to store user data, pointing out its employees’ links to Israeli intelligence. Others expressed their discomfort with giving a company their data when so many data breaches have been reported in the past.

AU10TIX helped to create the identity verification systems for airports and border controls in the 1980s and 90s before expanding, with the growth of the internet, into what it describes as “digital spaces” in 2002. It now boasts several high-profile clients such as Uber, PayPal and Google.

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022, appeared to have completed ID verification on August 1, suggesting that the ID verification system is already operational and could therefore appear publicly soon.

Verification was then extended to any account with a verified phone number and an active subscription to an eligible Twitter Blue plan.

On April 1, Twitter announced it would begin removing its legacy verification programme and removing legacy verified checkmarks.

These changes led to fears that impersonation would be easier on the platform and hand false credibility to accounts that spread misinformation.

In response, the platform, introduced gold and grey checkmarks, used by verified organisations and government-affiliated accounts, respectively.

In July 2023, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranded as X.

The latest X verification process, which requires a selfie and a government-issued ID, is part of a drive to add an additional layer of security against impersonation and fraud.

Sunday’s vote makes Ecuador the first country to restrict fossil fuel extraction through the citizen referendum process.

Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject oil drilling in a section of Yasuní National Park, the most biodiverse area of the imperiled Amazon rainforest.

Nearly 60% of Ecuadorian voters backed a binding referendum opposing oil exploration in Block 43 of the national park, which is home to uncontacted Indigenous tribes as well as hundreds of bird species and more than 1,000 tree species.

The Associated Press reported that “the outcome represents a significant blow to Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who advocated for oil drilling, asserting that its revenues are crucial to the country’s economy. As a result of the vote, state oil company Petroecuador will be required to dismantle its operations in the coming months.”

Yasunidos, the civil society group behind the referendum, celebrated the vote as “a historic victory for Ecuador and for the planet.” Drilling operations in Block 43, which began in 2016, currently produce more than 55,000 barrels of oil per day.

Most of Ecuador’s oil is located under the Amazon rainforest, whose role as a critical carbon sink has been badly diminished in recent years due to deforestation and relentless corporate plunder.

Sunday’s win was decades in the making. As The New York Times reported ahead of the vote, the referendum is “the culmination of a groundbreaking proposal suggested almost two decades ago when Rafael Correa, who was president of Ecuador at the time, tried to persuade wealthy nations to pay his country to keep the same oil field in Yasuní untouched. He asked for $3.6 billion, or half of the estimated value of the oil reserves.”

“Mr. Correa spent six years in a campaign to advance the proposal but never managed to persuade wealthy nations to pay,” the Times noted. “Many young Ecuadoreans, though, were persuaded. When Mr. Correa announced that the proposal had failed and that drilling would begin, many started protesting.”

Yasunidos ultimately collected around 757,000 signatures for the proposed ban on oil exploration in Yasuní — nearly 200,000 more than required to bring a referendum to a vote in Ecuador.

“The uncontacted Tagaeri, Dugakaeri, and Taromenane have for years seen their lands invaded, firstly by evangelical missionaries, then by oil companies,” said Sarah Shenker, head of the Survival International’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign, following the vote. “Now, at last, they have some hope of living in peace once more. We hope this prompts greater recognition that all uncontacted peoples must have their territories protected if they’re to survive, and thrive.”

Sunday’s vote makes Ecuador the first country to restrict fossil fuel extraction through the citizen referendum process, according to Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani leader.

“Yasuní, an area of one million hectares, is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth,” Nenquimo wrote in a recent op-ed for The Guardian. “There are more tree species in a single hectare of Yasuní than across Canada and the United States combined. Yasuní is also the home of the Tagaeri and Taromenane communities: the last two Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in Ecuador.”

“Can you imagine the immense size of one million hectares?” Nenquimo added. “The recent fires in Quebec burned a million hectares of forest. And so the oil industry hopes to burn Yasuní. It has already begun in fact, with the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project on the eastern edge of the park.”

Ecuadorians’ decision to reject oil drilling in the precious ecosystem drew applause from around the world.

“Historic and wonderful,” responded the climate group Extinction Rebellion Global. “Thank you and congratulations to the people of Ecuador for protecting their people, land, nature, future, and those of the rest of the world, too.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative — a global campaign that works to accelerate the transition to renewable energy — added that “the historic vote sets a remarkable example for other countries in democratizing climate politics.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Survival International.

Rickets – a disease associated with Victorian-era slums – is on the rise in Scotland, while other conditions linked to poverty and malnutrition are also increasing across the UK. On the rise: rickets and other diseases

Rickets is a skeletal disease caused by a sustained lack of Vitamin D. It can lead to skeletal deformities such as bowed legs or knock knees. Research has linked rickets to a lack of exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D, which is found in foods like oily fish and eggs. It largely disappeared from Britain more than half a century ago. This was after government and health service efforts to improve the public’s diet and exposure to sunlight. However, it’s now on the rise again.

In Scotland, a total of 442 cases of rickets were recorded in 2022, compared to 354 in 2018 – a 25% increase. Most of the cases were recorded in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area, with 356 diagnoses.

Glasgow is one of the most deprived local authority areas in Scotland. 32% of all children in the city were estimated to be living in poverty in 2021-2022. According to the latest data from 2019, men living in the most deprived areas of the city on average live 15.4 years less than those in the most affluent parts. For women, the gap has increased from 8.6 to 11.6 years in recent times.

Some 482 cases of rickets were also found across England. Back in Scotland, and data collated by the Times showed 112 cases of tuberculosis in 2022, another disease which historically had been got under control. There was a sharp rise in scarlet fever diagnosis, with 223 cases in 2022 compared with 39 the year before. Meanwhile, in England there were 171 cases of scurvy in 2022, with three recorded in Scotland. This is a disease linked to Vitamin C deficiency.

People are poor in the UK – poverty has increased, and it set to continue to do so. With think tank the Resolution Foundation forecasting that child poverty is set to reach its highest levels since since 1998/88 in 2027/28, it’s likely that without action, the increase in Victorian-era diseases will only continue.

A slew of Antioch and Pittsburg officers were arrested following an FBI probe into civil rights violations and investigation tampering.

Nine officers across two police departments in East Bay, Calif. were arrested by FBI agents Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury. Of those officers were the slimy Antioch cops exposed for calling Black people gorillas, n-words and all types of degrading insults in their texts.

Over 100 FBI agents were deployed to arrest current and former officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments, according to KRON4 News. The 30-page federal indictment accuses the group of crimes including college degree benefit fraud and violating the civil rights of civilians. As if the APD isn’t in enough hell upon the state and federal probes into their employees’ bigoted banter, two of them were accused of slinging anabolic steroids. They were also accused of trying to destroy the evidence. Another APD cop, Morteza Amiri, was accused of excessive force for deploying his K-9 on 28 people and then saving images of the bloody dog bites in his camera roll.

At this point, what haven’t they been accused of?

cw: graphic violence

Eric Rombough, Devon Wenger and Mortez Amiri have been accused of conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate” residents in Antioch, a city of roughly 114,000 people located 45 miles northeast of San Francisco, according to a 30-page indictment filed in federal court in California’s Northern District.

In a 2020 text, Wenger told Amiri that they needed to “go 3 nights in a row dog bite!!!” Amiri emphasized the message, according to the indictment, and Wenger replied with a homophobic slur about a senior officer, saying they should give the lieutenant “something to stress out about lol.”

In another text that year, Amiri sent Wenger eight graphic images of people with dog bites and described the work week as “very eventful,” according to the indictment.

Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who was a target of the racist police messages, issued a statement in response to the arrest calling it a “dark day” for the city.

“People trusted to uphold the law allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI. Today’s actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process. Today’s arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades,” he said.

Simultaneously, the Contra Costa DA’s office, FBI and California Attorney General’s Office are investigating the officers involved. Over the past 2 two years of the probes, nearly half the Antioch Police Department was accused of something. More arrests could be on the way.

Replace the word stop with keep whenever applicable

The future is here, robots are out here parking our cars, cleaning our floors, and now delivery food and groceries to communities across America. But if we’re to succeed in this new robot-run world, we need to learn to live with our autonomous friends, and not keep robbing the little delivery robots.

Because that’s what’s happening in some communities that have started rolling out delivery robots to carry out grocery runs and drop off takeout orders. According to Autoweek, businesses in Los Angeles and Greenville, NC, have reported thefts from their delivery bots.

The LA delivery robots operate across West Hollywood and were built by a company called Serve Robotics. So far, operators in the area have reported the theft of goods from these robots, such as food. As Autoweek reports:

Early on delivery robot developers have tried to allay commercial customers’ concerns over the potential for theft from robots, showcasing locked compartments and plenty of surveillance tech on the robots themselves, in addition to loud sirens. After a honeymoon period of sorts early on in the pandemic where robots were generally left alone, this is no longer the case, and sirens aren’t stopping acts of theft and vandalism in all cases.

The robberies aren’t limited to California, and reports have also emerged of vandalism affecting GrubHub robots operating on the East Carolina University campus in Greenville, NC. There, robots have been found flipped upside down and have even been discovered in a creek.

In order to protect the bots, they are equipped with all manner of surveillance tech. But actually prosecuting people for stealing from these machines is proving much trickier than it is for people who shoplift from a physical store.

Despite the crimes falling under the same legislation for theft and vandalism, Autoweek reports that the low priority for police forces investigating such incidents means prosecution for these crimes remains unlikely.

Still, while the spate of robberies appears to be spreading, robot operators across the country say their little worker bots are still managing to hit a 99.9% delivery completion rate.

He was only arrested after multiple officers showed up to the scene.

Public urination is never a good idea, but arresting an innocent child for doing something like that is maybe taking the law a little too seriously. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to a 10 year old in Mississippi, Fox Memphis reports.

On August 10th, Latonya Eason stopped by an attorney’s office in Senatobia, MS for some legal advice. Her two children, a daughter and her 10 year old son Quantavious, waited in the car while she was in the office. At some point, Quantavious needed to use the restroom, so he got out of the car and went to pee behind it. At the same time, a Senatobia Police officer just happened to be passing by and caught the kid peeing behind the car.

But it was no biggie; Latonya said the officer was just going to give them a warning: “I was like son, why did you do that? He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they don’t have a bathroom there.’ I was like you knew better, you should have come and asked me if they had a restroom. [The officer] was like you handled it like a mom. He can get back in the car,” she said to Fox Memphis. It wasn’t a big deal — until other officers became involved.

Eason said several other officers showed up, including a lieutenant who said that Quantavious had to be arrested and taken to jail for peeing. Eason admits her son shouldn’t have peed, but she says arresting him over it was doing too much.

“No, him urinating in the parking lot was not right, but at the same time I handled it like a parent, and for one officer to tell my baby to get back in the car, it was okay, and to have the other pull up and take him to jail? Like no. I’m just speechless right now. Why would you arrest a ten year old kid?” she said.

Quantavious said he was scared and started shaking when the officers took him to jail. Once there, they held him in a cell, charged him with “child in need of services” and then released him to his mother.

keep reading : https://jalopnik.com/police-arrested-10-year-old-peeing-behind-his-moms-car-1850752223

Stonewall was a riot — but in some cities, Pride officials have banned “political” groups and welcomed cops. Now activists are organizing radical Pride marches to show that Pride is a protest, not just a party.

In 2016, Toronto was preparing for its annual Pride march. For the first time, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, would attend alongside the thousands in the parade, with Black Lives Matter (BLM) as guests of honor. But BLM was angry, after years of seeing Blockorama — the only Pride month event for black queers — moved further from the march, even as police were welcomed at the parade. Objecting to their presence, BLM blocked the march for thirty minutes.

This cop involvement especially mattered because Toronto Pride had first begun in 1981 as a protest against a police raid on four bathhouses in the city. That February, officers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers had arrested over two hundred fifty gay men in “Operation Soap.” Black activists who participated in that first Pride were back in 2016 and were joined by both younger protesters and indigenous drummers in bringing the march to a halt. Faced with the protests, Toronto Pride’s executive director, Mathieu Chantelois, signed off on BLM’s demand not to allow the police to return in future — but then backtracked, claiming he had only done so to get the march moving again. After widespread criticism, Chantelois resigned; next time around, the police float was noticeably absent.

Toronto is hardly the only city where police have joined Pride. In a similar action in Britain last year, activists from Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSM) broke through the barriers at London’s Pride march to stage a die-in. Holding funeral bouquets and draped in pink veils, they held up the march for twenty-three minutes — one minute for each person that had died in police custody since 2020 — to protest metropolitan police officers joining the parade.

One participant in the protest, Ink, explains, “I watched friends cheer on the police at London Pride, despite understanding their role in oppressing queer people. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, the presence of police at pride became especially unconscionable and we felt it was important to reclaim Pride as a space hostile to the presence of the state and its violence.”

Criticisms of mainstream Pride, made by queer participants like Ink who would prefer to see it returned to its roots in protest, have been bubbling under the surface for years. In 2001, Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist who cofounded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries alongside fellow Stonewall riots veteran Marsha P. Johnson, called modern Pride “a big smokescreen.” Baulking at how corporations use Pride to present themselves as virtuous — what we now call pinkwashing — she mourned a modern Pride that only believes in the “almighty dollar,” stating “this is no longer my Pride.”

Gay rights have progressed, but activists still debate assimilation versus liberation — whether queer people should adapt to the norms and values of wider society or else change society to one that doesn’t privilege certain queer identities. Indeed, as Pride events have become mainstream, so too have certain versions of fitting in. Equality for some LGBTQ people means the freedom to marry, adopt kids, or even to get a well-paying job at an arms company with the same rights and protections as a straight colleague. That is lauded as progress whilst queers who can’t — or don’t want to — obey such norms continue to be marginalized.

Corporations and the state use diversity and inclusivity in this way to wash themselves clean. At this year’s Pride in Washington DC, arms industry giant Lockheed Martin drove a sponsored float through the city, much to the disgust of socialists and queer activists. This year in London, big oil was the target of protests as activists picketed the annual LGBTQ awards sponsored by BP, Shell, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Santander, Amazon, and Nestlé. Days later, this July 1, five activists from Just Stop Oil were arrested after jumping in front of BP’s float and halting London’s Pride parade, reminding onlookers that there will be no pride on a dead planet.

In recent years, Reclaim Pride groups sharing these criticisms of contemporary Pride celebrations have sprung up from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Oslo, Norway, and New York City. Some groups have tried to reclaim Pride by protesting, as BLM and LGSM have. Others have chosen opt out and create their own celebrations that stay true to Pride’s roots in a riot against police violence.

In 2019, as preparations were underway for the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, activists in New York City organized an opposing Queer Liberation March instead. The official parade ran for twelve hours because there were so many corporate floats, notes Paul Nocera from New York’s Reclaim Pride Coalition. He told Jacobin how activists had become disillusioned with Pride — and the way acceptable queerness was policed by letting in some people and shutting out others: “The barricades don’t just contain people, they set up an entertainment dynamic where the people on one side are the audience and the people on the inside are the entertainment. This is a march, we’re not the entertainment,” he explains. “It really gives so much control over the message, the method, the anger. All the aspects of what we’re trying to do in our march get squashed . . . the cops want to have a march that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t make any complaints.”

For activists in New York, it was important to have a protest with radical politics to mark the anniversary. Each year since, they have held one on the same day as New York’s official Pride parade. Sometimes — Nocera told me — he gets disillusioned and exhausted, “It’s really tough because we do this every year and I don’t see anything changing — so what the hell are we marching for? But I was reminded that this is the moment when the community gathers together and link arms. Whether were faced outward and yelling and screaming or faced inward and having a teary eye, it’s still the gathering of the community, and that’s hugely important,” says Nocera. “To not have a march, to not have any radical gathering of people and spirits, that would be a huge loss.”

Over in England, Sheffield Radical Pride (SRP) took things a step further and organized the city’s only Pride march this year, scheduled for July 22 to coincide with Tramlines music festival when tens of thousands descended on the city. In 2018, the previous organizers declared the event was a march of “celebration, not protest.” They banned political groups from taking part and demanded banners and placards be inspected for approval to avoid causing offense. This sparked outrage from many in the queer community, who criticized Pride Sheffield for conveniently forgetting the previous fifty years of history. Since the pandemic, Sheffield has struggled to organize a Pride and 2023 marks the third year the council has not funded one.

Over winter, a group of young, largely transgender activists started conversations about how their organizing could reach the wider city and decided they should step in and organize this year’s event. They want to turn Pride back into a street movement they hope those at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 could be proud of. A month before the march, SRP announced cops and corporations were banned. “It’s exciting and it’s fun . . . I’m glad that we have the opportunity to make Sheffield’s only Pride one that is genuinely radical and one that is free of corporations and cops,” says Alex, one of the organizers.

This year, the theme for the Queer Liberation March in New York was “Trans + Queer; Forever Here!” Nocera says trans people have been at the forefront of organizing the march for years, but they felt in 2023 trans liberation needed special attention. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States, and a large number of those attack trans people in various ways such as limiting their access to health care and preventing social transition or education about trans people in schools. Some have already passed laws attempting to limit drag performances and prevent cross-dressing. In New York, where trans people led the Stonewall riots, Nocera says the focus of this year’s march has given a sense of “continuing the legacy of Stonewall which is protest, resistance and resilience as a community.”

Organizers of Sheffield’s trans-led march have also seen the recent attacks on the trans and queer community from both far-right street mobilization and the UK government. One of the recent attacks from the British state came from the Tories’ so-called equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch. In April, she announced plans to change the legal definition of “sex,” which could see the trans community lose vital rights and protections.

For the trans community, pride has to be a protest — because pretending they can safely celebrate their identity simply isn’t an option. Across the UK, grassroots Trans Pride marches have appeared, with the largest held annually in London. Another of their organizers, Matt, tells me that the vitriol targeted at trans people is the first step to revoking everyone’s rights: “This pushback and backlash against trans rights is a gateway to repealing more equalities and targeting more minorities. It’s being done by some people in the name of feminism and women’s rights but really, these people are partnering with fascists.” He adds, “Rights aren’t this permanent thing once you’ve achieved them — they can also go away.”

In making Sheffield Pride a protest, Matt and Alex hope honest conversations can be had about queer liberation and the challenges it faces: “We’re not putting on this façade about how everyone’s super-accepting and how some company is going to sell you products and hire you and therefore homophobia is over,” says Matt. “We’re not going to radicalize everyone who comes. But we can tell people how it is for queer people now and we can’t be silenced through threats over funding or permissions.”

As groups like Sheffield Radical Pride and the Reclaim Pride Coalition continue organizing marches, we can hope Pride is slowly returning to something Sylvia Rivera might recognize — and be proud of.

China is the world’s biggest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment and is making plans for how to dispose of it once it stops working

China, the world’s biggest renewable equipment manufacturer, will set up a recycling system for ageing wind turbines and solar panels as it tries to tackle the growing volumes of waste generated by the industry, the state planner said.

China has ramped up its wind and solar manufacturing capabilities in a bid to decarbonise its economy and ease its dependence on coal, and it is now on track to meet its goal to bring total wind and solar capacity to 1,200 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, up from 758 GW at the end of last year.

But as older projects are replaced and decommissioned, waste volumes are set to soar, with large amounts of capacity already approaching retirement age, posing big environmental risks.

To cope with the challenge, China will draw up new industrial standards and rules detailing the proper ways to decommission, dismantle and recycle wind and solar facilities, the National Development and Reform Commission, said on Wednesday.

The state planning agency said that China would have a “basically mature” full-process recycling system for wind turbines and solar panels by the end of the decade.

Photovoltaic (PV) panels have a lifespan of around 25 years, and many of China’s projects are already showing significant signs of wear and tear, China’s official Science and Technology Daily newspaper said in June.

The paper cited experts as saying that China would need to recycle 1.5 million metric tons of PV modules by 2030, rising to around 20 million tons in 2050.

The problem of waste from the renewable energy sector has become a growing global concern. Total waste from solar projects alone could reach 212 million tons a year by 2050, according to one scenario drawn up by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) last year.

International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.

In recent months, the discussion surrounding transgender participation in sports has intensified. Several sports organizations have ruled that transgender women cannot participate in their competitions. This trend has expanded beyond traditional sports like swimming, touching even disc golf and billiards, based on perceived “advantages” of transgender athletes. The reaction to trans people in competition has grown to include non-sporting contests like beauty pageants and Jeopardy! after seeing transgender success. Now, FIDE, the world’s foremost international chess organization, has introduced guidelines that would revoke titles from transgender men and bar many transgender women from competing, asserting that trans women "have no right to participate.”

The regulations, reported online by French transgender FIDE master, Yosha Iglesias, spell out a list of policy changes that apply to transgender competition in chess. Among the policy changes:

Transgender men must relinquish their women-category titles after transitioning.

Transgender women can keep their previous titles.

Transgender women have “no right to compete” in the women’s division.

Transgender women will be “evaluated” by the FIDE Council on if they will be allowed to compete in a process that may take up to 2 years.

FIDE can mark transgender players as “transgender” in their files.

Gender changes must be “comply with the player’s national laws” and may include birth certificate documents (despite many nations refusing to change transgender birth certificates)

See the main page on transgender participation from the organization:

The unveiling of these regulations drew widespread ridicule, with numerous individuals challenging the notion that transgender women possess a “natural advantage” in chess. According to the chess news site Chessbase, the women’s category in chess exists to encourage increased participation among women, not because women inherently perform at a lower level in the game. Thus, the typical arguments against transgender women competing don't hold water, as it's implausible to claim that transgender women have an unfair advantage.

This isn't the first instance of scrutiny regarding transgender participation in non-physical competitions. In 2022, transgender Jeopardy champion Amy Schneider set the record as the highest-winning woman in Jeopardy history. Following her success, several anti-trans voices online claimed she unfairly took the title from “real women,” suggesting that transgender women possess an inherent advantage in trivia over cisgender women.

The regulations are harmful and discriminatory towards transgender individuals. The logic behind revoking titles from transgender men transitioning from the women’s category is not explained anywhere in the document. Additionally, these rules would delay transgender women from competing for up to two years while their gender is examined, and could even prohibit them indefinitely. Given that the usual "unfair advantage" argument doesn't logically apply in this context, these regulations appear to unfairly target transgender individuals while sidestepping even the usual arguments against trans competition.

The enforcement of these policies remains unclear. Iglesias took to Twitter, asking, "Am I woman enough?" She listed the FIDE council members, sharing photos that depict the majority as older cisgender men, adding, "these people will decide." The documents don't specify how decisions regarding a transgender member's participation will be made. Until further clarity, transgender international chess players face uncertainty about their continued involvement in the sport.

In a hot afternoon in August, He Yuming, wearing her dad's big shirt and sweating profusely, sat down in a café and took out a neatly-folded handkerchief to wipe her sweat.

Everyday, He, beginning her sustainable journey in 2019, brings a reusable water bottle, tableware, portable charger, handkerchief, home-made lipstick and shopping bags in her small second-hand cross-body bag. The zero-waste kit can basically meet the needs of the day, so that she tries not to produce garbage.

In China, growing numbers of young people, with great respect for nature, are finding their ways to lower their carbon footprint. For those young nature-lovers, zero-waste is just a hobby, making them live with less and leading more fulfilling lives.

Su Yige, also named Yigedaizi on social media, labeling herself as "a hedonic environmentalist," is a lifestyle vlogger who shares her daily eco-friendly life and thoughts on environment protection on social media.

"Love myself and love our earth," she wrote on her YouTube profile.

She feels that "life without trace" will not sacrifice the quality of life and the pursuit of happiness, but, leave minimal impact on the environment.

Su's path on environment protection is also a teenagers' self-discovery journey. In her freshman year in university, Su was insecure about how she looked and how she dressed.

"Now, I really don't mind if people judge me on my clothes or my makeup. Instead, I would tell them that I truly didn't spend too much time on fashion or my outlook. What I love is the planet and nature," said Su.

For these nature lovers, environmental protection is just a hobby and a lifestyle.

"I don't care if I can influence anyone. I like environment protection just like some other people love basketball or pop singers," Su said to CGTN.

Deeply influenced by her family's living habits, He was instilled with eco-friendly awareness and respect for nature since childhood.

In 2019, He began her minimalist lifestyle journey — getting rid of the things she didn't need and focusing on things that really matter. Several months later, she realized that sustainability might be a better choice since it is about being a more conscious consumer and making decisions that doesn't damage the environment.

Then, He meticulously upgraded aspects of her existence to lead a more sustainable and less-carbon-consuming life by opting for consciously made, compostable and long-lasting, zero-waste daily items.

The first step was to change her shampoo and conditioner to shampoo bar soap and use reusable cups when ordering milk tea.

When talking about her next ecological footprint, He said she will be more eco-friendly on more occasions.

"I have many small goals. Next, I hope I can reduce the use of disposal napkins and plastic bags when buying vegetable or meat," He said.

"We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly," Su shared her favorite quotes in her video.

"When I started embrace sustainable lifestyle in Canada, many people thought I was a Japanese student since there were few Chinese people would choose such lifestyle," she said to CGTN.

Then she searched online and found that all the contents about sustainable lifestyle on social media in China were advocated by local government or non-profits organizations.

"It is not because no one in China likes this way of life, but because no one knows such lifestyle is possible," she said. Then she started her vlog journey on social media.

To help more nature-lovers find people sharing the same interests, Su established an online group named "life without trace," which has attracted over 30,000 members online.

In her group, the most active topics of discussion are reduction in the use of plastics, environmental protection life in university dormitories and how to grow vegetables at dormitories.

In Beijing, there is a group of thousands of people who keeping picking up garbage every week.

"There is a constant flow of garbage, and there is no end to picking them up,”Zhang Yashi, 36, the founder of Plogging Beijing, said. "I hope that I can influence more people to realize that the environment needs to be maintained through activities like this."

To them, plogging, an act of picking up litter while jogging, is just simplicity and a desire to make a positive difference.

Report on law enforcement being caught placing GPS trackers on an activist’s car in so-called Michigan. For more information and photos, go here.

On Monday August 1st, Michigan activist Peatmoss found 2 GPS tracking devises attached with powerful magnets to the rear axle of their car, see pictures here. This happened after Peatmoss spent a week hanging out with friends at the Camp Gayling Week of Action against the Camp Grayling national guard base.

A lawyer calling the police on Peatmoss’s behalf relayed that the police confirmed the trackers were placed by law enforcement, though they refused to name the agency.

Three days before, on the evening of Friday July 28th, Peatmoss was arrested outside Lansing, MI after being followed by a large blue Ford pickup truck into a church parking lot to meet two other folks. The arrest stemmed from a warrant issued in another area of Michigan. During the arrest the police verbally stated that they believed the car had been present at a recent legal demonstration put on by Sunrise Ann Arbor on the sidewalk in front of Accident Fund headquarters, an insurer of the Cop City project. The cops stated they knew the car had driven by the home of Accident Fund CEO Lisa Corless, which was nearby at 3945 Turnberry Lane, Okemos, Michigan.

While in custody police attempted to coerce consent to a DNA sample by threatening Peatmoss with a longer detention. Peatmoss refused and was released without giving a sample. They also noticed their file had an “FBI number” highlighted underneath their SSN.

The second week of May, Peatmoss was followed for 45 minutes by a blacked out Ford sedan. The car began following them at their legal residence, the first time they had been home in several months. The car followed them onto the highway, off the highway, around in circles in a neighborhood, and then back onto the highway, only leaving when they were about to cross the Michigan-Ohio state border. They had given their legal name and address when putting money on many Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants’ commissary accounts earlier this year.

We, comrades and supporters of Peatmoss, wish to remind all of our comrades that repression is ongoing, but that we can build resilience together. This means affirming our solidarity and standing behind those targeted and sharing information broadly about repressive tactics. Understand that surveillance, like that faced by Peatmoss, can be both a tool for repression from the legal system, but also, conspicuous surveillance can be a tool of repression on its own as a way to chill otherwise legal activity, spread fear and distrust.

We encourage everyone to speak with comrades openly about repression they are facing or concerned about, and to educate yourselves on best practices when dealing with law enforcement or facing criminal charges.

Report on law enforcement being caught placing GPS trackers on an activist’s car in so-called Michigan. For more information and photos, go here.

On Monday August 1st, Michigan activist Peatmoss found 2 GPS tracking devises attached with powerful magnets to the rear axle of their car, see pictures here. This happened after Peatmoss spent a week hanging out with friends at the Camp Gayling Week of Action against the Camp Grayling national guard base.

A lawyer calling the police on Peatmoss’s behalf relayed that the police confirmed the trackers were placed by law enforcement, though they refused to name the agency.

Three days before, on the evening of Friday July 28th, Peatmoss was arrested outside Lansing, MI after being followed by a large blue Ford pickup truck into a church parking lot to meet two other folks. The arrest stemmed from a warrant issued in another area of Michigan. During the arrest the police verbally stated that they believed the car had been present at a recent legal demonstration put on by Sunrise Ann Arbor on the sidewalk in front of Accident Fund headquarters, an insurer of the Cop City project. The cops stated they knew the car had driven by the home of Accident Fund CEO Lisa Corless, which was nearby at 3945 Turnberry Lane, Okemos, Michigan.

While in custody police attempted to coerce consent to a DNA sample by threatening Peatmoss with a longer detention. Peatmoss refused and was released without giving a sample. They also noticed their file had an “FBI number” highlighted underneath their SSN.

The second week of May, Peatmoss was followed for 45 minutes by a blacked out Ford sedan. The car began following them at their legal residence, the first time they had been home in several months. The car followed them onto the highway, off the highway, around in circles in a neighborhood, and then back onto the highway, only leaving when they were about to cross the Michigan-Ohio state border. They had given their legal name and address when putting money on many Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants’ commissary accounts earlier this year.

We, comrades and supporters of Peatmoss, wish to remind all of our comrades that repression is ongoing, but that we can build resilience together. This means affirming our solidarity and standing behind those targeted and sharing information broadly about repressive tactics. Understand that surveillance, like that faced by Peatmoss, can be both a tool for repression from the legal system, but also, conspicuous surveillance can be a tool of repression on its own as a way to chill otherwise legal activity, spread fear and distrust.

We encourage everyone to speak with comrades openly about repression they are facing or concerned about, and to educate yourselves on best practices when dealing with law enforcement or facing criminal charges.

For more information on resisting political repression:

https://ccrjustice.org/if-agent-knocks-booklet https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights-english/ https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/24/when-the-police-knock-on-your-door-your-rights-and-options-a-legal-guide-and-poster http://grandjuryresistance.org/ http://resistgrandjuries.net/ https://ssd.eff.org/en

AIPAC's Super PAC has already raised nearly $9 million to spend on the upcoming 2024 Democratic primaries.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is gearing up to spend heavily on the 2024 elections and target lawmakers who are critical of Israel in the Democratic primaries.

Recently Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus’ donated another $1 million to AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP). Marcus is a GOP mega-donor (he donated $7 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign), but UDP is the political action committee AIPAC has used to intervene in Democratic primaries. Marcus’s donation brings UDP’s war chest to nearly $9 million with a little over a year until the 2024 elections.

UDP typically runs ads targeting incumbents or progressive challengers who have criticized Israel or supported policies designed to hold the country accountable. They never mention Israel in the ads they bankroll, as support for the country has declined among Democratic voters in recent years.

AIPAC is reportedly eyeing a number of progressive incumbents to target in 2024. The Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports that the lobbying group is in talks with Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw to potentially run against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in Minnesota’s 5th district. Since she was elected to the House in 2018, pro-Israel groups have been trying to oust Omar over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. AIPAC secretly spent $350,000 on Omar’s primary in 2022, backing centrist Don Samuels. Samuels came close to delivering a shocking upset, with Omar prevailing by just 2,500 votes. After the election, Samuels criticized pro-Israel groups for not investing more money in his campaign.

“[AIPAC] acknowledged they missed an opportunity last cycle but have said that, based on their internal assessment, Don has reached his capacity,” a Democratic operative privy to the discussions told Kassel.

AIPAC is also courting Westchester County executive George Latimer to run against Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th district. “If George Latimer runs he will be a formidable candidate — even more so if he’s well-funded,” Democratic strategist Chris Coffey told Kassel. “If he doesn’t run, it’s harder. Not impossible but harder. In the last cycle, Bowman was able to convince enough pro-Israel voters that he wasn’t extreme. That’s not the feeling now.”

“We just got word: AIPAC is at it again. They’re trying to recruit an establishment executive to run against my brother in The Bronx, Jamaal Bowman,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent fundraising email. “We know what comes next. AIPAC won’t wait much longer to start funneling dark money against Jamaal and ramping up attacks against our movement.”

Bowman joined Omar as one of the only lawmakers to vote against a recent House resolution declaring that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state.” They also both boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s recent address to congress.

AIPAC’s gargantuan budgets put progressive groups that work on elections in a challenging position. In July, the organization Justice Democrats (who have backed prominent progressive congress members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley) laid off nine of its 20 staff members.

Justice Democrats has supported some of the only congress members willing to call for Israel to be accountable for its action. The group’s super PAC spent over $1 million helping to elect Summer Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th district last election. AIPAC spent more than $4 million backing her opponent, former GOP staffer Steve Irwin. Irwin lost by less than a point.

AIPAC called Lee “anti-Israel” because she condemned the country’s brutal attack on Gaza in May 2021. Since being elected, she signed onto Rep. Betty McCollum’s historic bill defending the rights of Palestinian children and called for the Biden administration to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money isn’t used to expand illegal settlements. She also voted against the apartheid resolution and skipped Herzog’s speech.

Kassel’s report notes that Edgewood council member Bhavini Patel has been raising money to run against Lee, but whether AIPAC will support her remains unclear.

The organization’s executive director Alexandra Rojas told HuffPost that the group has had to adapt to primaries becoming more expensive and criticized Democratic leadership over its failure to act on the issue.

“It is unfortunate that after years of grumbling to the press on the paramount importance of protecting incumbents, Democratic leadership has seemingly turned its back on ours — allowing outside groups like AIPAC to target them with multimillion-dollar primary challenges,” she told the website.

Many haven’t just turned their back on their issue. Despite AIPAC supporting dozens of Republicans who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory, many Democratic lawmakers continue to accept the group’s money and embrace their anti-Palestinian agenda.

Last week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) led a delegation of 24 House Democrats to Israel on a trip organized by AIPAC. “With this trip, House Democrats reaffirm our commitment to the special relationship between the United States and Israel, one anchored in our shared democratic values and mutual geopolitical interests,” said Jeffries in a statement. On the subject of settler violence against Palestinians, Jeffries claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “doesn’t condone violence, no matter where it originates. And I take him at his word.”

“This, of course comes against a backdrop of Israeli soldiers protecting settlers as they attack Palestinian villages, towns, and farmlands, and an enormous escalation, even by Israel’s standards, in the level of direct state violence against Palestinians,” notes Mitchell Plitnick.

The progressive Jewish group IfNotNow recently launched a campaign calling on Democratic candidates to reject endorsements and financial contributions from AIPAC.

“Our Jewish and American values demand that we speak up and take action in defense of freedom, human rights, and communal well-being,” reads an open letter to congressional candidates from the group. “We envision a thriving future for all here in the United States and in Israel-Palestine where everyone enjoys equality, justice, and freedom. AIPAC has demonstrated time and again that it is actively opposed to these basic values. We ask you to uphold these values by committing to reject AIPAC’s endorsement and contributions.”

JVP Action, who backed Omar and other Israel critics during the 2022 primaries, told Mondoweiss that AIPAC is spending big money because they know support for Israel is declining among voters. “As we head into the 2024 cycle, the Democratic voter base is significantly more sympathetic to Palestinians and more critical of the Israeli government — and at an unprecedented rate. AIPAC understands that the rapidly growing progressive movement is a direct threat to its racist and warmongering agenda, so it is already making plans to flood Democratic primaries with money in an attempt to oust the progressive incumbents who stand up for Palestinian human rights,” said the group in a statement. “Palestinian rights and accountability for the Israeli government will be a central issue in the Democratic primaries this cycle, and JVP Action will be mobilizing our massive base of Jews and allies to get Democrats to dump AIPAC. We’ll be protecting — and growing — the number of members of Congress who understand that all people, no exceptions, deserve freedom.”

The King of Jordan approved a cybercrime bill that will crack down on online speech deemed harmful to national unity, a bill opposition lawmakers and human rights groups have warned against.

King Abdullah II gave his approval on Saturday with the bill now slated as law and set to take effect one month after it is published in the state newspaper Al-Rai, which is expected on Sunday.

The legislation will make certain online posts punishable with prison time and fines.

Posts that could be targeted include those seen as “promoting, instigating, aiding, or inciting immorality”, demonstrating “contempt for religion”, or “undermining national unity”.

The bill will additionally target those who publish names or pictures of police officers online and outlaws certain methods of maintaining online anonymity.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill after amending it to allow judges to choose between imposing prison time and fines, rather than ordering combined penalties.

Jordan’s lower house of parliament passed it last month.

Before the parliament’s vote, 14 rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said in a joint statement the law is “draconian”.

“Vague provisions open the door for Jordan’s executive branch to punish individuals for exercising their right to freedom of expression, forcing the judges to convict citizens in most cases,” it said.

The United States, a key ally and Jordan’s largest donor, also criticised the law.

The measure is the latest in a number of crackdowns on online speech in the kingdom, including social media blackouts. In December, it blocked the TikTok app after users shared live videos of worker protests.

Human Rights Watch said in a 2022 report authorities increasingly target protesters and journalists in a “systematic campaign to quell peaceful opposition and silence critical voices”.

For some time now, I have been victim to a number of health-related issues: I’m tired, cranky, constantly hungry, plagued by headaches, and my pee is a harrowing mustard yellow. I’ve tried googling my symptoms and asking friends and family what I can do to improve my quality of life, and the answer I get is always the same: Drink water. It’s become increasingly evident that drinking water would solve absolutely all of my problems. Here’s why I won’t do it.

I’ve always had the proper sense of self-worth necessary to want the best for myself. Maybe if this was 100 years ago, before medicine existed, I would drink some water and hope that hydrating my cells would allow them to function properly again, but that’s not the case. It’s the 21st century, and there’s no such thing as a problem you can’t pinpoint and fix with a supplement, injection, or health secret that my doctor doesn’t want me to know because it would put her out of business. I even went so far as to confront my doctor with this theory and she said, “Please, no. There is no secret. You have to drink water or you will die,” which is exactly what someone with a secret would say.

I’ve always had a keen sense of when people are holding out on me. When I wanted to just get rid of the flap of skin between my underarms and boobs that forms when I wear tube tops, I went to a physical trainer and she told me that wasn’t possible and I would have to establish a holistic exercise routine for that to change. I left immediately. I still have that flap.

At this point, to start drinking water would be to give up on the possibility of a better life without any effort. There are a million moisture-locking serums from, I want to say, Australia, that I will gladly purchase before I slurp down some H2O to alleviate my flaking and broken out skin. I’m not just going to follow rules because someone on the internet or my whole family tells me to. I’m going to listen to my gut – and my gut says, “You are going to die soon.” So I’m just gonna do what I want.

Besides, why would I waste my time putting clear wet in my mouth when I could drink flavor? If you want me to start drinking water, you’re going to have to pry this diet Coke of my hands, which will actually be easy because the dehydration has severely affected my joints and I hardly can grip things at all.

What’s more important than making healthy choices is self-awareness. I am fully aware of the fact that drinking water would enable my body to function and improve my mood and eyesight which has become a bit cloudy in a bout of what cowboys call “desert sickness,” but I also know there has to be a better way.

And that’s why I’ll never drink water.

Tunisian president Kais Saied has launched an authoritarian clampdown on opposition parties and media while inciting hatred against African migrants. But EU officials seem happy to embrace Saied as another thuggish border guard for Fortress Europe.

On Friday, July 14, a crowd gathered outside the front gate of the Tunisian journalists’ union headquarters amid the colonial-era French buildings in downtown Tunis. Activists, most of them old hands in the struggle who know each other, milled around the gates, chatting together with placards in hand, awaiting direction as they prepared to protest.

Later, they started down one of the main avenues, blocking traffic as they chanted militant slogans in Arabic and French. The emergency action was small and called in response to weeks of racist violence against sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia by citizen vigilantes, most flagrantly in the country’s second-largest city, Sfax.

The Tunisian military went on to expel the migrants to a military zone in open desert on the Tunisian border with Libya and Algeria. They were left without water or food in heat well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The protest of perhaps a hundred people was the most recent action called by a newly formed Anti-Fascist Front. The Front had already called a much larger solidarity demonstration in February, after Tunisia’s autocratic president Kais Saied made a nationally televised speech propagating his own version of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.

At the time, Saied had claimed that black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were part of a “criminal plan to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia” by making it a “purely African” country. The president accused the migrants of violence and criminality, and his speech immediately set off a wave of violence against black people in Tunisia. It was just one of Saied’s many conspiratorial proclamations about purported enemies — “known parties” whom he never names, whom he charges with attempting to undermine Tunisia from within and without.

These proclamations are meant to distract the Tunisian masses from the real problems facing the country: crumbling infrastructure and public services, basic supply shortages, massive inflation, escalating police violence, drought and wildfires made worse by the impact of climate change, the ripping away of civic freedoms, and Tunisia’s subordinate role in the global economic system.

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/kais-saied-tunisia-authoritarianism-european-union-border-security-migration/

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1295256.shtml

With its wine-hued head, cream-colored body, and its wings striped in black and chestnut brown, Kaempfer’s woodpecker makes quite an impression. Yet, despite its conspicuous looks, the bird has managed to evade detection for almost a century.

First described by ornithologist Emil Kaempfer in the mid-1920s in the Brazilian state of Piauí, east of Tocantins, it was initially thought to be a subspecies of the rufous-headed woodpecker (Celeus spectabilis). But differences in habitat, behavior and plumage led some ornithologists to conclude they were looking at a new species. They didn’t have the chance to confirm it, however: with no further sightings of the bird recorded, they thought that Kaempfer’s woodpecker had disappeared.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that a fresh look at the differences between the two woodpecker species showed that Kaempfer’s woodpecker was indeed a distinct species endemic to Brazil. Then, in 2006, biologist Advaldo Prado captured a live individual in Tocantins, showing that scientists previously had just been looking in the wrong place.

Tulio Dornas, an ornithologist from the Federal University of Tocantins who has studied the species’ ecology and distribution, said an error in the early records may have contributed to the confusion. Kaempfer’s original specimen, he said, “was collected at the extreme edge of the Cerrado, during an expedition to the Caatinga, so ornithologists back then wrongly assumed it was a bird from that biome,” Dornas told Mongabay.

Yet even in the Cerrado, finding the bird can be a challenge, he added. The species thrives in the gallery forests that line the riverbanks of the Cerradão, a type of dry forest within the savanna ecosystem. They’re particularly fond of shaded areas with mature taboca bamboo plants (Gauda paniculata), which host the woodpecker’s main food source: ants. Reliant on only a few ant species that nest within the bamboo, the woodpeckers flit between thickets, drilling holes into the shoots to extract their prey.

As researchers narrowed down the bird’s habitat and intensified their search, sightings began to be reported from several Brazilian states, including Goiás, Matto Grosso, Maranhão and Piauí, indicating that while the woodpecker was rare, it wasn’t as endangered as previously thought. As a result, its conservation status on the IUCN Red List improved from critically endangered to vulnerable.

But with about 47% of the Cerrado’s original cover lost to agriculture, the habitat of Kaempfer’s woodpecker remains under pressure; today, it’s either severely fragmented or at imminent risk of agricultural conversion. As more details about the species came to light, concern about its future has also increased.

“We couldn’t find it in a single protected area, be it a national or state park, anywhere in Brazil,” Dornas said.

David Vergara-Tabares, a researcher at Argentina’s National Research and Scientific Training Council (CONICET) who has studied land-use impacts on woodpeckers globally, said the situation facing Kaempfer’s woodpecker isn’t uncommon in the region.

“Protected areas cover less than 10% of the regions where these birds are found in South America,” he told Mongabay. “Approximately a quarter of woodpecker species’ distribution ranges are affected by agriculture and urbanization. It’s a problem that has been worsening in recent years.”

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/to-safeguard-a-rare-brazilian-woodpecker-an-ngo-bought-out-its-habitat/

edited with link to : https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15818 venezuelanalysis for less MSM perspective

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Recent arrest of 33 men increases criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s overtures to anti-LGBTQ religious groups.

It was an otherwise ordinary night at the Avalon Club, a bar and sauna popular with the LGBTQ community in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city.

Music was playing, drinks were flowing and guests were enjoying the accommodations, which included a restaurant, smoking room and massage parlour.

But that evening, on July 23, police would burst into the club, propelling the venue and its patrons into the national spotlight — and sparking questions about LGBTQ discrimination in Venezuela.

Patrons would later recount how the police arrived shouting, “Hands up!”

“I was having a drink with some of my best friends,” one guest, Ivan Valera, later told local media. “I thought it was a joke.”

But the officers proceeded to round up the 33 men in the establishment and hold them in the sauna’s locker rooms.

Luis – who asked to be identified by his first name only, to protect his privacy – told Al Jazeera that the police said they were conducting a “routine inspection”.

“At that moment I was calm,” he said. “I simply thought that it was a normal police procedure.”

But then the officers took Luis and the other men to police headquarters in Los Guayos, a municipality adjacent to Valencia. The men were not told what crime they were being charged with, Luis said. On the contrary, they were told they were “witnesses”.

“That’s when I began to question what was happening,” Luis told Al Jazeera. “Because why are we going as witnesses? Witnesses to what?”

Only after he was forced to give up his mobile phone and have his picture taken did Luis realise he was under arrest.

“[The police] said I have the right to a phone call,” said Luis. “That’s when I started to feel disoriented, like, what’s happening? They didn’t even tell us we were arrested

Being gay is not a crime in Venezuela. But the men were eventually charged with “lewd conduct” and “sound pollution” among other counts. The police offered images of condoms and lubricant as evidence for the supposed crimes.

In addition, the men’s photos were leaked to local media, where they were accused of participating in an “orgy with HIV” and recording pornography. Some of the men, like Luis, had not previously gone public with their sexuality.

But the backlash to the mass arrest was swift. Protests broke out in Caracas and Valencia, with demonstrators calling for the men’s release. The hashtag #LiberanALos33, or “Free the 33”, also went viral on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Thirty of the men were ultimately released on “conditional parole” after 72 hours in custody. The other three — the owner of the Avalon Club and two massage specialists — were let go 10 days after their arrest.

The Public Ministry of Venezuela and the Valencia Police did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/mass-arrest-at-lgbtq-club-in-venezuela-prompts-outcry-over-discrimination

In the case of the 33 men from the Avalon Club, Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab has recommended the charges be dropped.

But the experience has shaken Luis’s hopes for the future of the LGBTQ community in Venezuela.

New South Wales Labor premier Chris Minns came to power after promising to scrap the coalition’s public sector pay freeze. After less than five months, he has spectacularly broken his promise — and offered what amounts to a pay cut.

During its 2023 state election campaign, New South Wales (NSW) Labor committed to abolishing the state’s wage cap, which has depressed the pay packets of public sector employees such as public-school teachers, nurses, and transport workers since 2011. After ousting the Liberal-National Coalition government, NSW Labor built on the goodwill it had generated among teachers by immediately commencing negotiations with the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) over a new agreement.

By May 31 this year, the union and NSW government had all but signed off on a suite of improvements for teachers and, by implication, students. These included reforms to how casual, temporary, and permanent teachers are paid as well as an increase to paid time out of class, to allow teachers to complete planning, programming, assessments, reporting, and other important work. The new enterprise agreement would also have scrapped the wage cap by granting a pay raise, which, for salaried teachers, would have amounted to between 8 and 12 percent, depending on position and years of experience. Teachers in NSW seemed set to win an above-inflation salary increase, making them the highest-paid teachers in the country.

On June 22, the NSW Department of Education reaffirmed the agreement, which was set to commence from October 9 this year, and last for twelve months. Then, on July 28, in a sudden and unexpected backflip, the NSW Labor government vacated negotiations with the NSWTF and rescinded its proposed agreement. The government’s new offer is a betrayal and it amounts to austerity.

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/new-south-wales-teachers-federation-chris-minns-australian-labor-party-pay-cut/