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This evening's music features New Orleans singer and songwriter King Karl, of Guitar Gable's Musical Kings (also featured). Enjoy!

[Egypt's hideous tyrant, President Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi isn’t someone you invite over to your house for dinner; he’s someone you send money and weapons to in secret after you give your pretty speeches in front of American flags about human rights and freedom.

-- Glenn Greenwald

News and Opinion

White House Meeting With Egypt’s Tyrant Highlights Key Trump Effect: Unmasking U.S. Policy

What Trump is achieving by opening the White House doors to Sisi is not ushering in a new policy but rather clarifying and illuminating a very old one. This Trumpian effect — unmasking in all its naked ugliness what D.C. mavens prefer to keep hidden — is visible in multiple other areas.

Exactly the same thing happened last week when Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, announced that the U.S. would no longer condition transfers of arms to the regime in Bahrain on human rights improvements. The outrage over this announcement utterly masked the fact that Obama continued to lavish the same Bahraini regime with all sorts of weapons and other forms of support even as it imprisoned dissidents and violently crushed protests. ...

There are, of course, instances where Trump is imposing genuinely new destructive policies, such as his deportation crackdown, increased civilian massacres, and the rollback of vital regulations. But in the case of Egypt and Bahrain, the only new aspect of Trump’s conduct is that it’s more candid and revealing: rather than deceitfully feign concern for human rights while arming and propping up the world’s worst tyrants — as Obama and his predecessors did — Trump is dispensing with the pretense. The reason so many D.C. mavens like [the Washington Post's neoconservative columnist Jackson] Diehl are so upset with Trump isn’t because they hate his policies but rather despise his inability and/or unwillingness to prettify what the U.S. does in the world. ...

The real target of this rhetorical human rights pretense — this propaganda designed to prettify U.S. action — is not the oppressed people living under the thumb of those U.S.-supported dictators but rather Americans themselves. It’s all designed to allow U.S. citizens to believe the myth that their country stands for Freedom and Democracy in the world and shuns tyrants like Putin or the Iranian mullahs, even though propping up the planet’s most savage dictators has long been, and continues to be, central to U.S. policy. The beloved-in-Washington Henry Kissinger built his career on this mentality and is loved because of it, not despite it.

Egypt, a weak ally against terrorism? Al-Sisi’s rights abuses only fuel more radicalization

Trump tells Sisi U.S., Egypt will fight Islamist militants together

U.S. President Donald Trump moved to reset U.S. relations with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday after the prior Obama administration's strained ties, giving him firm backing and vowing to work together to fight Islamist militants.

A joint statement said the two leaders agreed on the importance of advancing peace throughout the Middle East, including in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and expressed interest in supporting Israel and the Palestinians in moving toward peace.

"I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President Sisi. He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt," Trump said in an Oval Office meeting with the Egyptian leader.

Why Does U.S. Consider Iran the Greatest Threat to Peace, When Rest of World Agrees It's the U.S.?

MLK’s Warning of America’s Spiritual Death

Now, five decades after Martin Luther King Jr.’s anti-war speech (which was widely kept from the public), it is clear how prophetic King’s observations were. America is indeed losing its soul. Violence, racism, militarism and economic oppression are still American epidemics. Both upper- and middle-class investors of get-rich-quick schemes in America have succumbed to predatory lenders, cannibalistic corporate mergers and acquisitions, psychopathic multinational corporate schemers, corrupt crony capitalists, and the rapist/exploiters of the land and water by extractive industries all schemes that will eventually burst as part of predictable economic bubbles.

Those busted bubbles regularly wipe out investors (except for the large, deep-pocketed “insiders” who, usually being forewarned, will have sold their holdings just in time, before the publicly revealed “bust”), leaving the taxpayers to bail out the financial messes that were created by the so-called “invisible hand of the market” but are really caused by the cunning work of corporate gamblers.

King was trying to warn us not just about the oncoming epidemic of violence toward victims at home but also about the tens of millions of people around the world who were and are still being victimized by U.S. military misadventures. King was also warning us about the multinational corporate war profiteers whose interests are facilitated and protected by the U.S. military whether they are operating in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East. ...

If America is to avert future financial and military catastrophes, King’s central warnings about the “triple evils” of militarism, racism and economic oppression must be heeded. That means a retreat from worldwide network of budget-busting military bases. And, if America wants to shed the justified label of “Rogue Nation,” the covert killing operations of its secret black ops mercenary military units all around the world must be stopped, as should the infamous extrajudicial assassinations by America’s unmanned drones.

If King’s 50-year-old warning continues to be ignored, America’s future is bleak. The future holds the dark seeds of economic chaos, hyperinflation, unendurable poverty, increasing racial/minority hostility, worsening malnutrition, armed rebellion, street fighting, and perhaps, ultimately, institution of a reactionary totalitarian/surveillance police state in order to control citizen protests and quell rebellions.

Trump Quietly Inks Deal Selling Out Americans to Telecom Industry

Without fanfare or cameras, President Donald Trump on Monday quietly signed away Americans' right to internet privacy, inking a deal that will allow internet companies to track and sell private information without user consent.

Though the White House issued a statement of support after the bill was passed by Republicans in the House and Senate, advocacy organizations and Democratic lawmakers called on Trump to veto the measure, holding out hope that the faux-populist president (and vocal critic of surveillance) would be swayed by its unpopularity as it sells out individuals' right to privacy to the highest bidder. ...

Formally, the law repeals Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations enacted by the Obama administration that forbade internet service providers (ISPs), such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, from selling user data to third-party companies. This includes information like one's search history—information about health, finances, and other private matters—as well as their location and the applications they use.

What's more, because it came in the form of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution, the legislation prevents the FCC from putting any similar rules in place in the future.

With this overreach now established as the law of the land, open internet advocates like Fight for the Future are encouraging consumers to protect themselves and their data. Over the weekend, the organization launched #GetSafe, a simple step-by-step guide that helps users beef up their digital security.

NYPD officers accessed Black Lives Matter activists' texts, documents show

Undercover officers in the New York police department infiltrated small groups of Black Lives Matter activists and gained access to their text messages, according to newly released NYPD documents obtained by the Guardian.

The records, produced in response to a February court ruling, provide the most detailed picture yet of the sweeping scope of NYPD surveillance during mass protests over the death of Eric Garner in 2014 and 2015. Lawyers said the new documents raised questions about NYPD compliance with city rules. The documents, mostly emails between undercover officers and other NYPD officials, follow other disclosures that the NYPD regularly filmed Black Lives Matter activists and sent undercover personnel to protests. The NYPD has not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment or interview.

Emails show that undercover officers were able to pose as protesters even within small groups, giving them extensive access to details about protesters’ whereabouts and plans. In one email, an official notes that an undercover officer is embedded within a group of seven protesters on their way to Grand Central Station. This intimate access appears to have helped police pass as trusted organizers and extract information about demonstrations. In other emails, officers share the locations of individual protesters at particular times. The NYPD emails also include pictures of organizers’ group text exchanges with information about protests, suggesting that undercover officials were either trusted enough to be allowed to take photos of activists’ phones or were themselves members of a private planning group text. ...

Michael Price, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it was difficult to know whether NYPD’s undercover surveillance operations crossed the line, as the documents did not make clear what, if any, stage of investigation the police were in at the time of the operations. But he said the department’s retention of pictures and video raised questions, since police are not allowed to retain information about public events unless it relates to unlawful activity. “So my question would be: what was the unlawful activity that police had reason to suspect here?” said Price. “It doesn’t appear that there was any criminal behavior they were talking about in the emails. Most references are to protesters being peaceful, so I would be very concerned if they were hinging their whole investigation on civil disobedience, such as unpermitted protests or blocking of pedestrians.”

Jeff Sessions orders review of police reforms prompted by high-profile shootings

The US attorney general on Monday ordered a nationwide review of all reform agreements with local police departments, placing a key part of Barack Obama’s legacy on criminal justice in jeopardy. Jeff Sessions signalled in a memo filed to a federal court that “consent decrees” such as those struck in recent years with troubled departments in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, could be scrapped or scaled down.

“It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” Sessions said in the memo.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s legal defense fund slammed the move, calling it “a blatant attempt by the justice department to abandon its obligations under federal civil rights law and the US constitution”.

Mayor's $15 Veto has Unions Rethinking their Support of Democrats

Trump drops some hints of his $1 trillion infrastructure plan

President Donald Trump told a gathering of corporate executives at the White House on Tuesday that his infrastructure plan would cut permitting times down to a year and could exceed $1 trillion. Trump complained that it required approval from 16 federal agencies to build a highway and the process took a decade or longer. “We’re really speeding up that process,” Trump said as D.J. Gribbin, his special assistant for infrastructure policy, held up a long chart illustrating the complexity of the process. “We’re going to cut a lot of red tape.” ...

Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn told the executives that converting the air traffic control system from land-based radar to GPS would be among the administration’s top infrastructure priorities. Cohn also said the infrastructure plan would include improvements to the electric power grid and the building of high-speed passenger rail.

Koch Brothers’ Operatives Fill Top White House Positions, Ethics Forms Reveal

Newly disclosed ethics forms reveal that a significant number of senior Trump staffers were previously employed by the sprawling network of hard-right and libertarian advocacy groups financed and controlled by Charles and David Koch, the conservative duo hyper-focused on entrenching Republican power, eliminating taxes, and slashing environmental and labor regulations.

Some of the relationships were well-known. Marc Short, for instance, now Trump’s chief liaison to Congress, previously led Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the dark money nonprofit used by the Koch brothers and their donor cohort to dispense money to allied groups. Freedom Partners, which maintains an affiliate Super PAC, was at the center of the Kochs’ $750 million election effort during the campaign last year. ...

Donald McGahn, Trump’s campaign attorney turned White House counsel, provided legal services to a range of outside Koch groups working to influence the election. ... Ann Donaldson, McGahn’s chief of staff, came to the White House from McGahn’s law firm. Her financial disclosure shows that she also provided legal services to Freedom Partners and i360.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager turned close White House advisor, consulted over the last year for Americans for Prosperity’s national foundation, as well as for the Michigan and Ohio chapters of the group. Conway served as a board member for the Independent Women’s Forum, a Koch-backed group whose goal is “increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty.”

The fact that Trump’s political team worked for the Koch network during the campaign adds a new wrinkle to the relationship between the president and the most well-known pair of Republican billionaires.

The nuclear option

Democrats are about to find out if Republican senators were bluffing when they said they’d exercise the nuclear option to get Judge Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The move — changing the number of votes needed to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court from 60 to 51 — would allow Republicans to overcome a Democrat-led filibuster, which was confirmed Monday.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, announced Monday he would join 40 other Senate Democrats planning to oppose Gorsuch, ensuring that Republicans will not have the 60 votes necessary to proceed with the Supreme Court nomination. Their only option left to confirm Gorsuch to the court will require at least 50 of the 52 Senate Republicans to vote to change the rules for Supreme Court justice confirmations. If they don’t, then President Donald Trump will have to find a new nominee and start the confirmation process all over again.

Gaius Publius: It’s Not About Gorsuch, It’s About the Democrats

As of the latest reports, on Friday, April 7, just prior to a two-week recess, the full Senate will take up the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for justice of the Supreme Court, filling the vacancy left by the death, more than a year ago, of Antonin Scalia on February 13, 2016. (As anyone following this story knows, then-President Barack Obama had shortly thereafter nominated Merrick Garland for the seat, but in an unprecedented move, the Senate under Mitch McConnell refused even to hold hearings, in a apparent — or obvious — attempt to hold the nomination for a potential Republican president after the November 2016 election.) ...

According to The Hill, here’s where we stand with Gorsuch.

• Three votes to break the filibuster and approve the nomination —Joe Donnelly (IN), Joe Manchin (WV), Heidi Heitkamp (ND). (Update: Michael Bennet will vote to end the filibuster.)
• 38 votes to block the nomination, including the surprising Claire McCaskill (MO), but perhaps not including Richard Blumenthal (see below). Most of these say they will also support the filibuster, but not all.
• Five votes “undecided” in the vote to approve the nomination — Michael Bennet (CO), Chris Coons (DE), Angus King (Maine), Jon Tester (VT), Mark Warner (VA). Tester was in Senate Democratic leadership; he’s the outgoing chair of the DSCC. Mark Warner is in leadership now and a Schumer ally. This may indicate how strongly (or weakly) Schumer is whipping against Gorsuch. Watch Bennet, Coons and King, for example.

  CNN’s count adds Richard Blumenthal (CT) as undecided in approving Gorsuch and includes Ben Cardin (MD) and Patrick Leahy (VT) as undecided in supporting the filibuster. (Yes, Leahy, who was accommodating to so many Bush II lower court appointees.)

• Two votes “unclear” — Dianne Feinstein (CA), Bob Menendez(NJ). “Unclear” may mean “negotiating for favors” if the vote is close and one of the two sides can give them something they want. (CNN has Feinstein supporting the filibuster and also opposed to the nomination.)

If you’re counting, the three firm yes votes and the five, six or seven undecides alone could break the filibuster.

Keiser Report: Go Viral or Die Trying

Republicans want to restrict cities from creating their own labor laws

For the nine years that Christina Cortez worked at a McDonald’s in her hometown of Minneapolis, she wasn’t able to take a single sick day off work, even when she had the flu. When Minneapolis passed a bill last year giving residents paid sick leave, Christina was relieved. But now, Republicans in the state Legislature have introduced a new bill that would strip cities’ ability to create their own labor laws.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Pat Garofalo, is one of a growing number of “pre-emption bills” being pushed by conservatives in the state Legislatures. They prevent local governments from creating their own laws, on everything from gun control to sanctuary cities to pesticide control. On pre-empting paid sick leave, 15 states have already passed these kinds of bills, and 10 more states are considering it.

Chomsky: With U.S. History of Overthrowing Govts, Outrage over Russian Hacking Claims is Laughable

Susan Rice should testify under oath about Trump intel unmasking

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Monday said former national security adviser Susan Rice should testify under oath about her reported requests to “unmask” the identities of Americans associated with President Trump in intelligence reports. Paul was referencing a report by Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake on Monday that said Rice asked for the identities of individuals in intelligence reports associated with Trump’s transition team and campaign, making such requests dozens of times.

The Kentucky senator, while acknowledging he has little information about the matter beyond the news report, called the unmasking an “enormous deal” and indicated that it should be illegal. “I don’t think we should discount how big a deal it was that Susan Rice was looking at these, and she needs to be asked, did President Obama ask her to do this? Was this a directive from President Obama?” Paul told reporters.

“I think she ought to testify under oath on this. I think she should be asked under oath, did she reveal it to The Washington Post.” “I think they were illegally basically using an espionage tool to eavesdrop or wiretap — if you want to use the word generally — on the Trump campaign,” Paul said.

Were the hackers who broke into the DNC’s email really Russian?

... Jeffrey Carr of the international cybersecurity company Taia Global Inc notes, the FBI never examined the servers that were hacked at the Democratic National Committee. Instead, the DNC used the private computer security company CrowdStrike to detect and repair the penetrations. “All the forensic work on those servers was done by CrowdStrike, and everyone else is relying on information they provided,” said Carr. “And CrowdStrike was the one to declare this the work of the Russians.”

The CrowdStrike argument relies heavily on the fact that remnants of a piece of malware known as AGENT-X were found in the DNC computers. AGENT-X collects and transmits hacked files to rogue computers. “AGENT-X has been around for ages and ages, and its use has always been attributed to the Russian government, a theory that’s known in the industry as ‘exclusive use,’” Carr said. “The problem with exclusive use is that it’s completely false. Unlike a bomb or an artillery shell, malware doesn’t detonate on impact and destroy itself.

Carr said he is aware of at least two working copies of AGENT-X outside Russian hands. One is in the possession of a group of Ukrainian hackers he has spoken with, and the other is with an American cybersecurity company. “And if an American security company has it, you can be certain other people do, too,” he said.

The Real Russiagate

Wall Street Journal editorialist Kimberley A. Strassel poses the real question: Why hasn’t the Trump administration had the Secret Service arrest Comey, Brennan, Schiff, the DNC and Hillary for trying to overthrow the President of the United States? “Mr. Nunes has said he has seen proof that the Obama White House surveilled the incoming administration—on subjects that had nothing to do with Russia—and that it further unmasked (identified by name) transition officials. This goes far beyond a mere scandal. It’s a potential crime.”

What we are watching is turning out to be traces of a plot against a government elected by the American people. Attempts by House national security committee Chairman Devin Nunes have been countered with demands by his potential victims to recuse himself so as to stop his exposé of how “Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.”

It seems that this has been going on for many years now. Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich has dropped a bombshell about what appears to be his own illegal surveillance under Obama’s NSC. “When the president raised the question of wiretapping on his phones in Trump Tower, he was challenged to prove that such a thing could happen. It happened to me.”

Here’s what happened, which was revealed two years after he left office in 2013 when the Democrats were overjoyed to see Ohio Republicans redraw the election district lines to get rid of his candidacy. The Washington Times asked him to authenticate a secret recording of a cell phone call “from Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, a high-ranking official in Libya’s government and a son of the country’s ruler, Moammar Qaddafi.” ... Given the quality of the recordings was excellent on both ends of the call, Kucinich concluded that “the tape was made by an American intelligence agency and then leaked to the Times for political reasons. If so, this episode represented a gross violation of the separation of powers.”

His repeated Freedom of Information Act requests made in 2012 before leaving office have been stonewalled by the intelligence agencies for five years.

We are now in a position to see the real story behind “Russiagate.” It’s not about Russia, except incidentally. The Obama regime abused the government’s surveillance powers and spied on Donald Trump and other Republicans in order to build a dossier for the DNC to leak to the press in an attempt to slander or compromise Trump and throw the election to Hillary.

Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian. ...

U.S. officials said the FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to comment. ...

A Prince spokesman said in a statement: “Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?”

Hat tip olinda:

Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives

What if reality does turn out to be a massive connect-the-dots image of St. Basil's Cathedral sitting atop the White House? (This was suddenly legitimate British conspiracist Louise Mensch's construction in The New York Times last week.) What if all the Glenn Beck-style far-out charts with the circles and arrows somehow all make sense? ...

One way we recognize a mass hysteria movement is that everyone who doesn't believe is accused of being in on the plot. This has been going on virtually unrestrained in both political and media circles in recent weeks.

The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time, has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom ("agents of influence") to Glenn Greenwald ("Russian shill") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also "Russian shills"), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted (really, she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office ("moles"). And that's just for starters. ...

But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, "If we do the investigations, we will find the connections."

Greens Claim Dems Stole Philly Special Election

A massive coal mining project was scrapped in Alaska after no one would invest in it

A controversial coal mining project in Alaska worth more than $600 million has been abandoned by its developers, underscoring the uphill battle President Donald Trump will face in fulfilling his promise to bring coal mining jobs back to America.

PacRim Coal LP, the developer behind the Chuitna Coal Project, was in the later stages of the state and federal mine permitting process to develop coal deposits 45 miles southwest of Anchorage. The firm planned to ship the coal to South Korea, Japan, and China.

But PacRim has suspended all permitting activities and will no longer pursue the project after failing to find an investment partner in the venture, an Alaskan state official confirmed to VICE News.

We can resist the Dakota pipeline through a powerful tool: divestment

Money is power. And when money conspires to block the path to a just and sustainable future, it takes the organized efforts of millions of people to break through those roadblocks. Divestment has worked in the past – and it is time to rediscover its power. The fossil fuel industry, and its enablers in government and the financial sector, have a stranglehold on the country. These must be resisted at every turn.

The biggest first step was recently taken in Seattle, where city leaders voted to divest $3bn in public investments in Wells Fargo Bank, a prime investor and lender to companies building the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in defiance of the Standing Rock Sioux’s treaty rights to protect its water and sacred cultural lands. Seattle may be the biggest local government to act, but it is not alone. Across the United States, from Eugene in Oregon to Providence in Rhode Island, many localities are in varying stages of requiring the pension funds and other investment vehicles they control to divest from fossil fuel companies. ...

The focus of the divestment campaign’s first round has been Wells Fargo, which has pursued profits without principles by investing in private prisons, for-profit immigration detention centers and loan shark-like payday lending companies and by holding much of the bond debt strangling Puerto Rico’s efforts to pull itself out of its financial crisis. ...

Wells Fargo has millions invested in companies building the Dakota Access pipeline, which has drawn national attention for its utter disregard both for its environmental impacts and the treaty rights of the Standing Rock Sioux to protect against the pipeline’s path through sacred Sioux water and burial sites. Wells Fargo is not the only target of the divestment campaign, though: many others are facing intense public pressure. BayernLB, a German bank, recently ended its $120m in investments in the DAPL project. And Dutch banking and financial services giant ING, citing its discussions with indigenous leaders and other protesting DAPL, announced in March that it was selling its $120m stake in $2.5m of loan financing that a consortium of institutions has provided to the project.

Switch from nuclear to coal-fired power linked to low birth weight in US region

Children in a region of the US were born smaller after the area switched from nuclear plants to coal-fired power stations, new research has found. The study looked at of the impact of nuclear power plant closures in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 – the most serious such accident in US history – in which one of the power station’s reactors underwent a partial meltdown. ...

Writing in the journal Nature Energy, Severnini describes how he sought to analyse a so-called “natural experiment” whereby a number of nuclear power plants were closed following country-wide inspections carried out after the Three Mile Island accident. Among them were Browns Ferry and Sequoyah in the Tennessee Valley area: both remained closed for several years after they were shut down in 1985. The analysis of data from the US Energy Information Administration by Severnini reveals that the loss of nuclear energy following the two closures was made up almost entirely by an increase in energy production by coal-fired power plants in the Tennessee Valley area, although the increase varied across different plants.

The result was that particle pollution increased in areas where coal use rose. Around the Paradise plant, which accounted for almost a quarter of the rise in coal-fired energy, concentration of particulates increased by 27% in the 18 months after the nuclear shutdown. At the same time average birth weight fell. After taking into account a host of factors relating to the child, county and mother, including her age and education levels – although smoking habits were not specifically probed – birth weight in areas with coal-fired plants declined by around 5.4% in the 18 months after the nuclear shutdown. The impact was greatest in the areas which showed the greatest boom in coal-fired power plant activity after closure of the two nuclear sites. ...

Severnini carried out further analysis of the data, revealing that the rise in air pollution appears to be linked to both lower growth of the foetus and premature births. ... But the impact, adds Severnini, goes further, with lower birth weights linked to lower incomes, shorter height and even a lower IQ: a drop of 5.4% in birth weight, he notes, suggests a 0.7% decrease in full-time earnings.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Trump’s attacks on democracy will have repercussions for the economy

Putin is part of a continuum that stretches back to the tsars

Trump’s Foreign Policy Incoherence

How Netanyahu’s dirty tricks squad targets boycotts

A Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy

The ungrateful refugee: ‘We have no debt to repay’

A Little Night Music

King Karl - Baby, Baby Come To Papa

King Karl - I'm Just a Lonely Man

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - Irene

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - String Bean

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - Walking in the park

Guitar Gable - Congo Mombo

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - Cool, calm and collected

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - It's Hard But It's Fair

Guitar Gable - Guitar Rhumbo

King Karl w/Guitar Gable - Mary Lou