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This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Eddie Boyd. Enjoy!

"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy."

-- Ramsey Clark

News and Opinion

Biden calls for new era in US foreign policy in defensive Afghanistan speech

Joe Biden has said he takes responsibility for the bloody, often chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and said it should mark a new era in US foreign policy, relying less on military muscle. Addressing the nation from the White House 24 hours after the last US soldier left Kabul, Biden sought to confront his critics about the handling of the withdrawal. He celebrated the evacuation of 124,000 civilians in the 17 days following the fall of the Afghan capital and said it was time to “turn the page” on the US role abroad, pointing to a less interventionist future.

“​​This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries,” the president said. Facing reporters in the state dining room, Biden looked into the camera and said he took responsibility for what he insisted was a “wise” decision. He admitted that his administration had not anticipated the speed of the Afghan army’s collapse, but also made clear there was plenty more blame to go around, singling out his predecessor and the former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.

He pointed out he had inherited the Doha agreement from Donald Trump’s departing administration. That accord, signed with the Taliban a year earlier, did not make the promised US withdrawal on 1 May contingent on any political settlement inside Afghanistan, and it allowed the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Biden said those released fighters “including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan”.

“By the time I came to office the Taliban was in his strongest military position since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country,” Biden said. “So we’re left with a simple decision: either follow through on the commitment made by the last administration and leave Afghanistan, or say we weren’t leaving and commit tens of thousands more troops, going back to war.”

“I was not going to extend this forever war,” he said. ... The president, whose tone was defensive for much of the half-hour speech, said that sticking to the deadline of 31 August and cutting off the evacuation was the “unanimous recommendation of my civilian and military advisers”.

Biden Defends Ending “Forever War” in Afghanistan & Criticizes Using War as Tool for Nation-Building

Taliban enjoy moment of victory as focus shifts to challenges ahead

The Taliban marked the start of their first day in full control of Afghanistan with celebratory gunfire, minutes after the last US plane of soldiers and their ambassador lifted off from Kabul airport, sealing Washington’s humiliating defeat in its longest war. Twenty years, tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars separated the arrival of the first US troops on Afghan soil after 9/11 and the Taliban’s triumphant restoration in the Afghan capital. They now control more of the country than they did in the autumn of 2001, when a significant resistance movement still held swathes of the north. Their armed opposition is now largely pinned into Panjshir province, north of the capital.

“The world should have learned their lesson and this is the enjoyable moment of victory,” said the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a livestreamed statement.

With the conquest complete, now they have to work out how to rule a country that is desperately poor, facing a crippling drought and has lost large numbers of its educated elite overnight. Doctors and civil servants risked their lives to flee because they were so terrified of Taliban rule. Taliban commanders have acknowledged the challenge ahead, even secretly reaching out before they captured Kabul to ask some prominent Afghans to join a future government.

But on Tuesday the focus was on celebrating a campaign that humbled a superpower through persistence and attrition over two decades. As the oft-quoted Taliban maxim went, “you [Americans] have the watches but we have the time”.

Here are a couple of snippets from an interesting article worth a read:

“We Will No Longer Sell Crude Abroad”: Mexican President AMLO

Last Thursday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made another public statement that won’t have gone down well in Washington’s corridors of power — or for that matter Texas, Louisiana, California or any other US state with a big refinery. Lopéz Obrador — commonly referred to as AMLO — said that Mexico will stop selling crude oil abroad and will only extract the oil that it needs to produce the gasoline the country requires. It is all part of the president’s quest for energy self-sufficiency.

AMLO also claimed that Mexico’s long-suffering state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is finally putting its decades-long crisis behind it:

“Pemex is recovering from a crisis inherited from many years of neglect, because the goal of the previous neoliberal governments was for Pemex to go bankrupt in order to privatize oil… to ruin Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE ). Fortunately, the people of Mexico said enough was enough. The change has occurred and we have dedicated ourselves to strengthening Pemex and the CFE … and we have already pulled Pemex out of the hole it was in.”

...

In February, a fierce winter storm in Texas resulted in days of crippling outages, not only in Texas but also large swathes of Northern Mexico that depend on natural gas supplies from the US for its electricity. The chaos wreaked by the storm, including astronomic energy bills, were a stark reminder of the risks of depending too much on one’s neighbors for energy. Prices for imported gas that Mexico uses to generate power spiked 5,000% during the crisis, Lopez Obrador said.

“What is the lesson in all of this? We must produce,” he said, referring to gas, but also to gasoline and diesel. “We are seeing that we must seek to be self-sufficient.”

In April, Mexico’s lower house of congress passed AMLO’s proposal to tighten state control over the country’s fuel market. The bill now just needs to clear the senate, where the ruling Morena party and its allies have a majority. If approved, the initiative would overturn large parts of the country’s hydrocarbon law. Most importantly, it would expand government control over fuel distribution, imports and marketing. It would allow authorities to suspend permits based on national or energy security, as well as let Pemex take over facilities whose permits have been suspended.

Venezuela opposition ends boycott ahead of local elections

Israel registers record daily coronavirus cases

Israel has recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus cases with nearly 11,000 new infections, amid a surge caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant as schools prepare to re-open. The previous high came on 18 January, with 10,118 cases.

Despite Tuesday’s 10,947 confirmed cases, Israel is pressing ahead with plans to fully open its school system on Wednesday as it tries to boost vaccination rates.

The prime minister, Naftali Bennett – a critic of the cycle of lockdowns implemented by his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu – has maintained that the surge can be controlled through vaccination and protective measures such as masks. His government has encouraged all residents aged 12 and above to get a third jab of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

About 60% of Israel’s 9.3 million residents have received two shots of the vaccine, including 80% of adults.

Top FDA Vaccine Officials RESIGN Over Fast-Tracked Booster Shot Approval By CDC, White House

Judge orders hospital to treat Ohio Covid patient with ivermectin

A judge in Ohio ordered a hospital to treat a Covid-19 patient with ivermectin, despite warnings from experts that the anti-parasitic drug has not proved effective against the virus and can be dangerous in large doses. Gregory Howard, a judge in Butler county, outside Cincinnati, ordered doctors at West Chester hospital to administer ivermectin to Jeffrey Smith, 51, who contracted Covid-19 in July and was transferred to intensive care.

“My husband is on death’s doorstep,” Julie Smith wrote in court documents. “He has no other options.”

A doctor outside the hospital was willing to prescribe the drug but the hospital refused to administer it. The judge ordered that Smith receive 30mg for three weeks. Ivermectin is most commonly used against parasites in livestock animals including horses and cows. It is also used in humans, against some parasitic worms and external parasites like head lice. ...

In Ohio, Dr Steve Feagins, chief clinical officer for Mercy Health, told the local ABC affiliate WCPO: “I absolutely understand desperation when your loved one is in the hospital, and they’re doing everything they can and you hear about something that you want to use it.” He also said the decision to prescribe ivermectin to treat Covid had “a tough risk-to-benefit ratio”.

DeSantis Accused of 'Statistical Sleight of Hand' to Conceal Surge in Covid Deaths

Earlier this month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' Department of Health deliberately altered how it reported Covid-19 deaths, making it appear as though the public health crisis was waning even as the state's residents endured the most significant escalation in infections since the pandemic began, according to a report published Tuesday by the Miami Herald. 

New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that much of the United States is in the midst of a deadly coronavirus surge driven by the ultra-contagious Delta variant.

The Herald's analysis of data from Florida's Department of Health (DOH), however, found that the DeSantis administration responded to the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by changing the way it reported deaths to the CDC, which generated a misleading reduction in mortality.

The newspaper explained the implications of the DOH's sudden and unacknowledged move:

On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 "new deaths" per day over the previous seven days.

The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded—a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On August 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.

If you chart deaths by Florida's new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear—even during a spike like the present—that deaths are on a recent downslope. That's because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death—creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.

Tracking mortality by date of death is essential for long-term studies of Covid-19, Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, told the Herald. But the DOH's decision to abruptly stop counting deaths by date reported—a method that Floridians had come to rely on to see daily patterns immediately—obscures current trends, endangering public health.

"When you have big surges in deaths, the deaths by date reported will always show an increase while deaths by date occurred will go down," Salemi said. "Someone could have died yesterday and we may not know about it for a week, or two weeks."

Covid-19 mortality trends show up faster when using death report dates than death dates. The delayed collection of official date of death data is what made it possible for Florida's health department to claim that new Covid-19 deaths were decreasing this month even though the number of deaths reported each day was increasing.

Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University, called the DOH's decision to share temporarily incomplete data that downplays Covid-19 mortality—a change unveiled on August 10 without warning or justification—"extremely problematic."

The covert switch, which came just four days after the DOH requested 300 ventilators from the Biden administration, makes it "look like we're doing better than we are," said Patel, and that could distort public perceptions of the pandemic for weeks.

With infections and hospitalizations also reaching record highs in Florida this month, Patel said that "what we're seeing is an active rise in cases where we can't keep up, an active rise in deaths that, because of using actual date of deaths, has been shifted back in time and we have no idea where we really are."

Tim Hartford, an economist and author of The Data Detective, warned against subtly manipulating presentations of data without adequate explanations, which he called a "statistical sleight of hand."

"The truthful-yet-deceptive framing of numbers is a serious problem," he said. "Covid is a matter of life and death and people deserve to have information that is both accurate and understandable without having to decode it."

Governor DeSantis withholds funding from Florida schools with mask mandates

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has acted on his threat to withhold funding from school districts that make mask-wearing mandatory in the new academic year. The Florida Department of Education announced on Monday that two districts with mask mandates have forfeited a monthly amount of state funding equivalent to the salaries of school board members.

DeSantis took the action in defiance of a court ruling issued Friday stating that DeSantis’s ban on local school mask mandates was unconstitutional and could not be enforced. Ignoring the court ruling, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said the state was withholding funds from the Alachua and Broward county school systems “for their continued violation of state law.” Corcoran presented the Florida government’s murderous policy as protecting “parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their children.”

The Florida Department of Education confirmed in an email to NBC News that the school districts’ funds had been withheld since Thursday. State Communications Director Jared Ochs claimed the department “plans on continuing to follow the rule of law” and is “immediately appealing this [court] decision to the First DCA [District Court of Appeals] from which we will seek to stay the ruling.”

In response, Alachua County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Carlee Simon said, “Our School Board members made a courageous decision to protect the health and lives of students, staff and the people of this community, and a court has already ruled they had the legal right to do so. They deserve praise, not penalties.”

Corporations Mobilize Against $3.5T Bill

Sen. Bernie Sanders has expressed confidence that congressional Democrats will be able to overcome an aggressive corporate lobbying campaign against their popular $3.5 trillion reconciliation proposal, which special interests are aiming to strip of climate investments, Medicare expansion, taxes on big businesses, and other key progressive priorities.

"These guys don't lose," Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told the Washington Post earlier this summer when asked about the lobbying effort. "They're going to lose this round."

The Post, which published Sanders' remarks on Tuesday, offered a detailed look at the "massive lobbying blitz" that corporate America has launched in recent days in a bid to water down—or kill entirely—the reconciliation package, a centerpiece of President Joe Biden's economic and climate agenda.

The range of big-name corporations involved in the campaign—from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the fossil fuel behemoth ExxonMobil—reflects the potentially far-reaching scope of the nascent reconciliation bill, which could allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, reverse former President Donald Trump's corporate tax cut, institute paid family and medical leave, strengthen workers' rights, and establish a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

"The emerging opposition appears to be vast, spanning drug manufacturers, big banks, tech titans, major retailers, and oil-and-gas giants," the Post's Tony Romm reported. "In recent weeks, top Washington organizations representing these and other industries have started strategizing behind the scenes, seeking to battle back key elements in Democrats proposed overhaul to federal healthcare, education, and safety net programs."

One of the organizations that has been "most active" in the effort to prevent passage of the reconciliation bill, according to the Post, is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying organization in the country. Romm reported that the Chamber is "in the early stages of putting together an economywide coalition to coordinate the fight against the still-forming economic package, including its significant price tag, policy scope, and potential for tax increases."

"The Chamber-organized effort could encompass traditional lobbying on Capitol Hill as well as advertising campaigns targeting Democratic lawmakers," Romm noted. "The group has been in talks with potential allies such as the National Association of Manufacturers, whose board includes executives from firms such as Dow Inc., Exxon, Caterpillar, and Johnson & Johnson... Other opponents include the Business Roundtable, whose board counts the chief executives from Apple and Walmart."

As Democrats move further along in the process of translating their newly approved $3.5 trillion budget blueprint into legislative text—a process lawmakers hope to complete by next month—the lobbying push is likely to intensify. The Hill reported Monday that corporate influence-peddlers are growing "increasingly optimistic" that they will succeed in keeping major tax hikes, Medicare expansion, and other critical measures out of the final package.

"The business community has made progress with certain Democrats on legitimate policy concerns with some of these proposals and their implications on the economy and international competitiveness," an unnamed lobbyist with ties to Senate Democrats told The Hill. "A lot of those arguments are landing."

While The Hill does not name the "certain Democrats" who have been receptive to lobbyists' arguments, the outlet noted that "business interests have Democratic allies in Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and the group of House moderates led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.)"—all of whom have voiced opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag.

But Sanders—who has characterized the reconciliation bill as potentially the most consequential legislation since the New Deal—said in an interview last week that $3.5 trillion is "the minimum of what we should be spending."

"I already negotiated," said Sanders, who previously pushed for a reconciliation package as large as $6 trillion. "The truth is we need more."

The Senate Democratic caucus can't afford to lose a single vote if it hopes to pass the reconciliation bill, which is exempt from the chamber's 60-vote filibuster rule. House Democrats have just three votes to spare.

Sanders was the chief architect of the $3.5 trillion spending blueprint that the Senate Democratic leadership ultimately agreed to last month, and he was instrumental in winning the inclusion of proposals to lower the Medicare eligibility age and expand the program to cover hearing, dental, and vision—ideas that prompted intense backlash from the powerful for-profit healthcare industry.

"The reforms threaten the bottom line of insurers who administer private Medicare plans and sell supplemental coverage for dental, vision, and hearing services," Politico reported last week. "Groups like the American Dental Association, worried their members will be paid less in traditional Medicare than in private Medicare plans, are also pushing to limit the new benefits to the poorest Americans."

Meanwhile, the Partnership for America's Health Care Future—an insurance industry front group formed to combat Medicare for All—has been sending near-daily email blasts attacking Democrats' push to lower the Medicare eligibility age.

In a tweet last week, Sanders made clear that he is unfazed by the industry's protests.

"I've got a message for the healthcare industry: Your days of writing legislation are over," the Vermont senator wrote. "We will expand Medicare to provide dental, vision, and hearing coverage to benefit seniors, not to pad the profits of healthcare industry CEOs. And we will do it by taking on your greed."

AOC calls on Joe Biden to replace Trump-appointed Fed chair

The New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Democratic party’s progressive caucus have urged Joe Biden to replace Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve as part of a top-to-bottom makeover of the US central bank.

“As news of the possible reappointment of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell circulates, we urge President Biden to re-imagine a Federal Reserve focused on eliminating climate risk and advancing racial and economic justice,” they said in a statement issued on Tuesday. Signatories to the letter include representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Mondaire Jones of New York and Chuy Garcia of Illinois.

Powell’s term expires in February. A Republican and former investment banker, he was appointed by Donald Trump in 2017 but the following year incurred Trump’s ire after the Fed again raised its benchmark interest rate. The Biden White House has not said if Powell will be reappointed, though it is not unusual for a Fed chair to be reappointed following a change of administration.

Powell has been widely praised for responding swiftly to economic turbulence brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Last week he signaled that the Fed was ready to begin easing economic stimulus but would not yet raise interest rates. In the statement, the progressives gave Powell credit for prioritizing the Fed’s goal of full employment, but said the central bank had not done enough to make mitigating the effects of climate change central to its mission.

“Under his leadership the Federal Reserve has taken very little action to mitigate the risk climate change poses to our financial system,” the statement read, pointing to the Fed’s “D-rating” for its approach to climate risk policies from Positive Money’s Global Central Bank Scorecard, which placed it at the bottom of the G20 group of leading central banks.

Virginia governor pardons seven Black men executed in 1951 for rape of a white woman

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, has granted posthumous pardons to seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman. The case attracted pleas for mercy from around the world and in recent years has been denounced as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty. ...

The Martinsville Seven, as the men became known, were convicted of raping 32-year-old Ruby Stroud Floyd, a white woman who went to a predominantly Black neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia, on 8 January 1949, to collect money for clothes she had sold.

On 2 February 1951, four of the men were executed in the electric chair. The remaining three were electrocuted three days later. All were tried by all-white juries. ... On Tuesday, Northam said the death penalty for rape was applied almost exclusively to Black people. From 1908 – when Virginia began using the electric chair – to 1951, state records show that all 45 people executed for rape were Black, he said.

The pardons do not address guilt or innocence but Northam said they were an acknowledgment that the men did not receive due process and received a “racially biased death sentence not similarly applied to white defendants”.

The conservotwits on SCOTUS are feeling frisky. Worth a full read:

The US supreme court is deciding more and more cases in a secretive ‘shadow docket’

Last week, it was Remain in Mexico. On Tuesday, the supreme court issued an order requiring the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era policy that required asylum seekers from Central America to stay across the border in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated. It was an uncommonly aggressive intervention into foreign policy, an area where previous courts have preferred a light touch, and it posed massive logistical, diplomatic and humanitarian crises at the border that will need to be rapidly resolved if the Biden administration is to comply with the order.

Two days later, it was the eviction moratorium. On Thursday, the court blocked an extension of the federal emergency ban on evictions, gutting a 1944 law that gave the CDC the authority to implement such measures to curb disease, and endangering the 8m American households that are behind on rent – who now, without federal eviction protection, may face homelessness.

Both of these orders last week were issued in the dead of night. Their opinions were truncated, light on the details of their legal reasoning, and unsigned. Vote counts were not issued showing how each justice decided. And despite the enormous legal and human impact that the decisions inflicted, they were the product of rushed, abbreviated proceedings. The court did not receive full briefs on these matters, heard no oral arguments and overrode the normal sequence of appellate proceedings to issue their orders.

Welcome to the “shadow docket”, the so-called emergency proceedings that now constitute the majority of the supreme court’s business. Minimally argued, rarely justified and decided without transparency, shadow docket orders were once a tool the court used to dispense with unremarkable and legally unambiguous matters. To have an issue addressed on the shadow docket, a litigant has to apply for “emergency relief” – usually to stop a decision against them from a lower court from going into effect while appeals proceed. Traditionally, applicants would need to demonstrate that they would suffer “irreparable harm” if their petition wasn’t granted immediately. So one historical use of the shadow docket has been in federal death penalty cases, where the court has used the emergency proceeding to affirm or deny requests for stays of execution.

But in recent years the court has largely dispensed with any meaningful application of the irreparable harm standard, and instead has entertained emergency relief petitions from more and more litigants, issuing shadow docket rulings on increasingly significant and controversial legal questions without the rigor or transparency that such issues demand.

TX Heartbeat Act Effectively STRIKES DOWN Roe V. Wade, Hillary Stans SWARM Bernie Left

Texas legislature gives final approval to sweeping voting restrictions bill

The Texas legislature gave its final approval on Tuesday to a new bill that would impose substantial new restrictions on voting access in the state. The restrictions would only add to those already in place in Texas, which has some of the most burdensome voting requirements in the US and was among the states with the lowest voter turnout in 2020.

The Texas house of representatives gave its approval to a final form of the measure on Tuesday, 80-41. The senate quickly followed with an 18-13 vote Tuesday afternoon. The bill, nearly identical to a measure that passed the legislature last week, would prohibit 24-hour and drive-thru voting – two things officials in Harris county, home of Houston, used for the first time in 2020.

It would also prohibit election officials from sending out unsolicited applications to vote by mail, give poll watchers more power in the polling place and provide new regulations on those who assist voters.

The bill now goes to the desk of Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican. Civil rights groups are expected to swiftly challenge the measure once it is signed into law.

The sole remaining point of disagreement between the two houses on Tuesday was a provision inserted by the House that would have clarified people could not be prosecuted for illegally voting unless they knew they were ineligible.

Democrats in last-ditch effort to protect voting rights

Democrats are pushing what may be their last chance to hold off voter suppression efforts by Republicans, and say that their control of both the House and Senate is at risk if they do not pass their new legislation to protect elections. Their bill, which cleared the US House on a party-line vote last week, has now been taken up by a bitterly divided Senate. It would ensure that states with a recent history of voter suppression must obtain federal approval before making any changes to their election systems, while also undoing a recent supreme court decision that makes it harder to challenge laws under the Voting Rights Act. ...

Outside groups continue to escalate pressure on members of Congress to pass the bill, which is named after John Lewis, the civil rights icon. They held marches in Washington on Saturday – the 58th anniversary of the historic march on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr gave his I Have A Dream Speech. ...

Democrats have highlighted the importance of passing voting rights legislation since the beginning of the year, but the bill arrives in the Senate at a moment when the stakes are uniquely high. State lawmakers are currently drawing maps for electoral districts that will be in place for the next decade. Unless the bill passes, it will be the first time since 1965 certain states with a legacy of racial discrimination won’t have to get their district approved before they go into effect. That could encourage state lawmakers to draw districts that make it harder for Black and other minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice, critics say. ...

Amid growing concern the White House wasn’t taking the fight for voting rights seriously enough, the president gave a public speech on the topic in July. Still, White House advisers have said they believe they can “out-organize” voter suppression, an idea that has infuriated civil rights leaders. “You said the night you won that Black America had your back and that you were going to have Black America’s back,” the Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, said at the rally in Washington on Saturday. “Well, Mr President, they’re stabbing us in the back. In 49 states, they’ve got their knives out stabbing us in the back.

“You need to pick up the phone and call Manchin and others and tell them that if they can carve around the filibuster to confirm supreme court judges for President Trump, they can carve around the filibuster to bring voter rights to President Biden,” he added.

Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ contaminate indoor air at worrying levels, study finds

Toxic PFAS compounds are contaminating the air inside homes, classrooms and stores at alarming levels, a new study has found. Researchers with the University of Rhode Island and Green Science Policy Institute tested indoor air at 20 sites and detected the “forever chemicals” in 17 locations. The airborne compounds are thought to break off of PFAS-treated products such as carpeting and clothing and attach to dust or freely float through the indoor environment.

Experts previously considered food and water to be the two main routes by which humans are exposed to PFAS, but the study’s authors note that many humans spend about 90% of their time indoors, and the findings suggest that breathing in the chemicals probably represents a third significant exposure route.

“It’s an underestimated and potentially important source of exposure to PFAS,” said Tom Bruton, a co-author and senior scientist at Green Science.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 9,000 compounds used to make products water-, stain- or heat-resistant. Because they are so effective, the chemicals are used across dozens of industries and are in thousands of everyday consumer products such as stain guards, carpeting and shoes. Textile manufacturers use them to produce waterproof clothing, and they are used in floor waxes, nonstick cookware, food packaging, cosmetics, firefighting foam and much more.

The study, published on Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology, used a new PFAS measurement technique for checking air. It found particularly high levels in several kindergarten classrooms and also checked the supply room of an outdoor clothing store, offices, several university classrooms, university labs and an elevator.

Cyprus prepares for Mediterranean oil spill from Syrian power plant

Turkish Cypriot authorities have taken emergency action to stop an oil slick blamed on a faulty power plant in Syria from wreaking environmental havoc along some of the island’s finest unspoilt coastline. Officials in the war-partitioned country’s breakaway north erected what local media described as a 400 metre barrier off the Karpas peninsula to prevent the slick reaching its pristine shores.

Turkey said it would also dispatch two ships to collect the spill while the island’s Greek Cypriot government requested an oil recovery vessel from the European Maritime Safety Agency. ...

Syria’s electricity minister had told the pro-government Al-Watan newspaper on Monday that the size of the leak ranged from two to four tonnes of fuel. He added that a committee had been formed to investigate the cause.

The head of the north’s deep diving centre, Erol Adalier, said the oil slick was approaching the island’s north-eastern Karpaz peninsula – a wild region of sandy beaches and verdant hills. He added that the oil had reached to within 20 miles of the coast on Tuesday morning and was drawing nearer by the hour.

Caldor Fire brings chaos to lake Tahoe resort

Caldor fire: thousands of firefighters aim to stop blaze from reaching Lake Tahoe

Thousands of firefighters are battling to stop a ferocious wildfire from reaching Lake Tahoe, after evacuations forced the residents of a popular resort city to flee. Fueled by strong winds, the Caldor fire continued its sweep down the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains overnight, its footprint swelling to more than 191,600 acres burned by Tuesday morning. Strong winds had pushed the fire across California highways 50 and 89 the day before, burning several mountain cabins on its path.

“[The fire] did progress into neighborhoods across highway 89 and has come down off the summit and those areas of Christmas Valley,” Stephen Horner of Cal Fire said Tuesday morning. Crews are working “like crazy” to prevent the fire from moving further towards the resort city of South Lake Tahoe, Horner said. But winds are expected to be gusty and conditions will continue to complicate the firefight. “The fuels are just primed for that ignition,” he said. ...

“There is fire activity happening in California that we have never seen before,” said Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire protection, known as Cal Fire. “For the rest of you in California: every acre can and will burn someday in this state.”

Ash rained down on long lines of cars gridlocked on the roads exiting South Lake Tahoe on Monday. Cars inched along through the smoky haze, some piled high with belongings and others towing trailers with bikes and other recreation equipment. Anxiety mounted with each gusty breeze, strong enough to shake the trees, reminding evacuees of the weather conditions that were fueling the blaze.

Ryan Grim: Our DYSTOPIAN Climate Future Is HERE As Big Oil PUSHES Line 3 Pipeline

Also of Interest

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

Biden sets himself apart by placing Afghanistan blame at predecessors’ feet

To understand what happens next in Afghanistan, look to its neighbours

Blowback: Taliban Target US Intel’s Shadow Army

The U.S. Has A Plan For What's Next in Afghanistan - It Does Not Include Peace

‘We are Not Done With You Yet,’ Biden Threatens More Airstrikes Against ISIS-K in Afghanistan

Ben Rhodes' Book Proves Obama Officials' Lies, and His Own, About Edward Snowden and Russia

NPR Trashes Free Speech. A Brief Response

What is C.1.2, the new Covid variant in South Africa, and should we be worried?

AFL-CIO Chief Warns Rejection of PRO Act Could Cost Kyrsten Sinema

'A Shattered Promise': Biden Blasted for Resuming Fossil Fuel Leasing on Public Lands and Waters

Experts Warn NOAA Plan Might 'Delay' Right Whales Extinction, But Not Save Them

Louisiana governor tells Hurricane Ida evacuees it’s too soon to return

Unstoppable movement: how New Zealand’s Māori are reclaiming land with occupations

Kim Iversen: ENRAGED Marine's VIRAL Video Shows What's WRONG with the Military Industrial Complex

A Little Night Music

Eddie Boyd - Drifting

Little Eddie Boyd - I Had To Let Her Go

Eddie Boyd With Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - Third Degree

Eddie Boyd & Fleetwood Mac - The blues is here to stay

Eddie Boyd - Blue Coat Man

Eddie Boyd - What make these things happen to me

Eddie Boyd - Nothing But Trouble

Eddie Boyd - I Got The Blues

Eddie Boyd - Hard time gettin' started