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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Fabulous Counts

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Detroit soul and funk band The Fabulous Counts. Enjoy!

^{The Fabulous Counts - Jan Jan}

"As footage of dead kids in Gaza fills your social media timeline once again, keep in mind that the reason the empire has worked so hard to stomp out all criticism of Israel’s western-backed atrocities is because our rulers planned on sponsoring a lot more atrocities and murdering a lot more kids."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Palestinians Didn’t Choose The Religion Of Their Oppressors

It is a well-documented fact that Israel and its supporters use lobbying, campaign funding and blackmail to exert influence over western nations. It is also a fact that the US empire has the power to stop Israel from doing this at any time, but chooses not to. The empire managers in the official elected government don’t do anything to stop these influence operations, nor do the empire managers in the far more powerful unelected national security state. Does anyone really believe Israel would still be exerting such massive influence over the US government if the CIA determined that this was impeding their agendas of global domination?

It follows that the Zionist influence operations exist because the empire wants them to. The artificially manufactured support for Israel has been deemed a necessary evil to help ensure constant violence, division and instability in the middle east and justify endless military presence in a crucial geostrategic region which, if left to its own devices, might unite and conduct its affairs in a way that is disadvantageous to western interests.

There are many other nations in the middle east who are aligned with the US and are used to advance its interests in the region, but none of them are fully dependent on support from the US government for their continued existence. It’s a completely artificial construct that was inserted into the middle east like a glass shard into a foot, and its continued existence benefits both the settler colonialists who live there and the long-term hegemonic interests of the US-centralized empire.

I say all this to point out that the west isn’t some passive innocent victim of manipulations by the big mean tyrant Israel. It is just as guilty of Israel’s crimes as Israel itself, because those crimes are inseparable from the western empire as a whole. You see some on the right trying to argue that the west would be this wonderful virtuous place if not for the malign influence of those nasty Jews, but this narrative is refuted by the entire historical existence of the western world. The west has always been a warmongering, genocidal civilization driven by conquest and domination, and the western settler-colonialist project of Israel is just one more manifestation of the dystopia we are living in.

Israeli strike at Gaza hospital kills five including Hamas political leader

An Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza has killed five people, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, Hamas has said, in an attack that Israel said had targeted a key figure in the militant group. The Gaza health ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimise harm at the site.

Hamas said a member of its political office, Ismail Barhoum, had been killed. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the target was Barhoum. The military did not name the target, which it described only as “a key terrorist” in Hamas.

Hamas’s al-Aqsa TV said Barhoum was being treated at the hospital for wounds sustained in a previous attack. Israel says Hamas systematically embeds personnel in hospitals, schools and shelters, which the group denies. Video on social media showed a fire blazing on the third storey of what appeared to be the hospital. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.

After two months of relative calm in the war, Palestinians in Gaza have again been fleeing for their lives after Israel effectively abandoned a ceasefire, launching a new all-out air and ground campaign on Tuesday against Hamas.

Another leader in Hamas, Salah al-Bardaweel, was killed in a separate strike in Khan Younis, Hamas said earlier. The Israeli military confirmed it had killed Bardaweel on Saturday. Both Bardaweel and Barhoum were members of the 19-member Hamas decision-making body, the political office, 11 of whom have been killed since the start of the war in late 2023, according to Hamas sources.

Ray McGovern : Intel and War in Iran

Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week

Early on Tuesday morning, within minutes of the wave of Israeli airstrikes that broke the fragile two-month ceasefire which had brought some respite to Gaza, the emergency room of al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah was full.

“At no point were there less than 65 people in ER, all with open wounds, mainly women and children … The floor was awash with blood,” said Mark Perlmutter, a US-based volunteer orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital that morning.

Just a few kilometres away, there were similar scenes at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.

“There was just wave after wave,” said Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor. “As soon as patients had died or been sent elsewhere and we cleared some space, more would come in. It was chaos. One doctor stepped on a corpse on the ground as he tried to do a life-saving procedure on a child.”

Palestinian medical officials say more than 200 people were killed on Tuesday morning alone across Gaza, and hundreds more injured. Within five days, as more airstrikes and shelling continued, the overall death toll in the devastated Palestinian territory in the 18-month war would reach 50,000, comprising mostly women and children. A total of 113,274 others had been injured, the health ministry said.

Gaza medics issue malnutrition alert as total Israeli blockade enters fourth week

Malnutrition is spreading in Gaza, medics and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory are warning, as a total Israeli blockade of all supplies enters its fourth week.

There has been no sign that Israel will open entry points to allow essential aid to flow or ease its new offensive in Gaza, which started on Tuesday with a wave of airstrikes that killed 400 people, mostly civilians, ending two months of relative calm. On Sunday, Palestinian officials said the total death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict had passed 50,000. ...

Aid officials said distributions would be reduced gradually if possible, while the provision of community kitchens that feed about a million people would get progressively more difficult. “At some point we will just run out and things will get desperate … but even if we had supplies it would be very difficult to distribute them because the security environment means we can’t operate,” said one UN official based in Gaza.

Six out of 23 bakeries operated by the UN World Food Programme have already been shut due to a lack of cooking gas, while Unrwa, the main UN agency with responsibility for Palestinians’ welfare, had stocks of about 60,000 bags of flour on Friday, enough for just six days of distribution. ...

“It is very clear that people are underweight. The population is very young, and children need nutritious food,” said Khamis Elessi, a senior consultant doctor in Gaza City. Feroze Sidhwa, a US-based volunteer emergency doctor in Gaza, said the consequences of 18 months of poor diet were very evident among his patients. “We see very clearly that everyone has lost weight … I can see my surgical incisions are not healing well,” he said.

Pepe Escobar - First Interview From Yemen

Netanyahu claims decision to fire Shin Bet chief not connected to Qatar inquiry

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a Saturday speech that the decision to fire the country’s domestic security chief Ronen Bar was made before the announcement that Bar was investigating the prime ministry for alleged ties to the Qatari government. Netanyahu said that he had decided to fire Bar, the director of Shin Bet, after the agency’s report on the 7 October 2023 attack, rather than after it opened its investigation.

“Ronen Bar will not remain head of the Shin Bet. There will not be a civil war, and Israel will remain a democratic state,” said Netanyahu. Shin Bet has said that it began its investigation into connections between officials in the prime minister’s office and the Qatari government in early February, before the release of the 7 October report. The investigation is looking into allegations that some members of the prime minister’s office, as well as other government agencies, took money to promote the interests of Qatar.

The decision to fire Bar has brought tens of thousands of Israelis to the streets, protesting against what they have said is an attack on the country’s democracy. Demonstrations have also been egged on by the government’s resumptions of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip this week, killing more than 590 people, including 200 children, and upending a two-month truce.

Israel’s supreme court suspended Netanyahu’s decision to fire the domestic intelligence head, which will remain in place until a hearing is held, by 8 April at the latest. The country’s attorney general also said the prime minister cannot appoint a new Shin Bet director.

Netanyahu, in a post on X, said it was his right to fire and appoint agency heads. “There will be no civil war! The state of Israel is a state of law, and according to the law, the government of Israel decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu said. He doubled down in his speech on Saturday, claiming that the government can dismiss the heads of security agencies.

Trump Israel Aide FOLDS To Lobby As Gaza War Explodes

Israel Planning More Aggressive Invasion of Gaza

According to the Washington Post, the Israeli military is gearing up for a major ground operation in Gaza that could last months or longer. Last week, Israel broke a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas and conducted large-scale bombings in the Strip that killed hundreds.

The Post spoke with current and former Israeli officials, who explained that “The new and more aggressive tactics” would probably include “direct military control of humanitarian aid,” “targeting more of Hamas’s civilian leadership, and evacuating women, children and vetted noncombatants from neighborhoods to ‘humanitarian bubbles.’”

The officials said those who are not evacuated would face a siege that is a “more intense version of a tactic employed last year in northern Gaza.” In 2024, the Israeli military carried out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals for Northern Gaza.

The plan called for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians south of the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed, either by military action or starvation.

Fmr UN Official Says Yemen’s Red Sea Blockade Follows International Law to Stop Genocide

Netanyahu Demanded the IDF Bomb Homes Without Intelligence

Early in the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the head of the Israeli military to hit thousands of targets without intelligence, including homes. According to Nahum Barnea’s reporting in Ynet, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told Netanyahu during a meeting on October 9, 2023 that the IDF already was bombing 1,500 targets per day.

Barnea’s sources explained that Netanyahu banged on the table and demanded, “Why not 5,000?” When the PM was told the IDF lacked the intelligence to conduct so many strikes, he replied, “I’m not interested in targets. Take down houses, bomb with everything you have.”

Previously, 972 Magazine reported that the IDF had employed an AI program dubbed Lavender to mark Palestinians as members of Hamas. This program increased the number of targets the IDF would generate, with a source explaining that it treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.”

In total, 37,000 Palestinians were put on Lavender’s target list, with many of them killed in their homes, along with dozens of family members. Sources discussed with the outlet how they changed the inputs in Lavender so the AI would add additional names to the list.

Law Prof. Katherine Franke Accuses Columbia of Empowering Trump by Agreeing to $400M "Ransom Note"

Pro-Palestinian Cornell Student Momodou Taal Ordered to Surrender to ICE, Faces Possible Deportation

Russia-US talks. Putin's Odessa plan

Gulf in US and Russian expectations marks start of latest ceasefire talks

US and Ukrainian officials have met for further talks aimed at hammering out a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, with Washington signalling its hope for “real progress” even as Moscow warned that “difficult negotiations” lie ahead.

The gulf in expectations marked the start of the latest round of negotiations in Saudi Arabia, which was set to follow with a meeting between American officials and Russia on Monday. The US is pushing for a broad ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine by 20 April, according to Bloomberg, though sources said the timeline may slip given the wide gap that exists between Kyiv and Moscow’s positions.

On Sunday, the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, appeared upbeat about working with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since the second world war. “I feel that he wants peace,” Witkoff told Fox News. ...

The Kremlin, however, swiftly poured cold water on hopes for a rapid resolution, saying that “difficult negotiations” lie ahead. “We are only at the beginning of this path,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state TV on Sunday. Peskov said the “main” focus in its talks with the US would be a possible resumption of a 2022 Black Sea grain deal, brokered by Turkey and the UN, that ensured safe navigation for Ukrainian farm exports via the Black Sea.

Moscow pulled out of the deal in 2023, amid accusations that the west had failed to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s exports of farm produce and fertilisers.

Larry Johnson : What Witkoff Doesn't Know

South African ambassador expelled from US welcomed home by supporters

The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration was welcomed home on Sunday by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praising him. Crowds at Cape Town International airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their home town, and they needed a police escort to help them navigate their way through the building.

“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth … like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”

“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets,” he said.

Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying the Maga movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”. Rasool said on his return home that it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance, even before the decision to expel him.

The US president issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa, alleging its government is supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran, and pursuing anti-white policies at home.

Turkey’s protests over Istanbul mayor grow into ‘fight about democracy’

When demonstrators gathered ­at Istanbul’s city hall last week in outrage at the arrest of mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, 26-year-old Azra said she was initially too scared to defy a ban on gatherings. As protests grew on university campuses and in cities and towns across Turkey, she could no longer resist joining. ...

The arrest of the mayor of Turkey’s largest city in a dawn raid last week was a watershed moment in the country’s prolonged shift away from democracy. Opponents of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fear it is a move to ­sideline the sole challenger capable of defeating him in upcoming elections, expected before 2028. Early on Sunday, prosecutors requested the formal arrest and jailing pending trial of İmamoğlu, who was being held pending a court decision. On Saturday, protests in support of İmamoğlu erupted in Istanbul – where flares and stones where thrown at police, who responded with pepper spray – while in Ankara, the capital, police used water cannon and tear gas on demonstrators. ...

During the week, İmamoğlu and more than 100 other people including municipal officials and the head of the mayor’s construction firm were served ­detention orders and accused of embezzlement and corruption – charges the mayor denies. He also denies terrorism charges levelled at him over collaboration with a leftwing political coalition prior to local elections last year, which saw major losses for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP).

Within days, what began as protests in response to İmamoğlu’s detention has grown into something more. “This is bigger than İmamoğlu. It’s about a fight for democracy, law and equal rights,” said Azra as demonstrators massed around her. The Turkish president has long sought to retake Istanbul from opposition control, fuelling protesters’ joy at defying a ban on gatherings in the city where Erdoğan began his ­political career as mayor. Standing outside a metro station as hundreds of cheering people poured into the street, breaking into anti-government chants and banging on the escalators, another protester, named Diler, called the demonstrations “a response to the pressure that has built up over years”.

“There are problems with the ­economy, with education, with the health ­system,” she said in a nod to the ­economic ­crisis that has seen the cost of ­living soar. “We are fed up with this government.” Supporters of the mayor said 300,000 people joined the demonstration in Istanbul on Friday night, while video showed protesters taking to the streets and clashing with the police in major towns and cities across the country.

Billionaire Trump Sec LAUGHS At Missed Social Security Payments

Trump's Billionaire Commerce Secretary: Only 'Fraudsters' Will Complain If Social Security Checks Don't Arrive

As U.S. President Donald Trump's temporary leader of the Social Security Administration threatened to shut down the agency over an unfavorable court ruling on Friday, the billionaire commerce secretary came under fire for suggesting that only "fraudsters" will complain if they don't get their earned benefits.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on All-In — a podcast hosted by "four billionaire besties"—on Thursday. A brief clip of his interview, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, made the rounds on social media Friday.

Lutnick told two of the hosts that if the SSA didn't send out checks this month, his 94-year-old mother-in-law "wouldn't call and complain," but "a fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining."

BREAKING: In a shocking moment, Trump Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says his 94-year old mother-in-law wouldn't complain if her Social Security check didn't arrive, and only loud "fraudsters" would complain about it. This is vile.pic.twitter.com/JSmgUZncM4

— Really American (@ReallyAmerican1) March 21, 2025

Critics were quick to point out Lutnick's wealth. As More Perfect Union posted, "His net worth is estimated at $2 billion."

Richard Phillips, pensions and tax policy director for U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called the commerce secretary's comments "shameful."

"Nearly 40% of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income and nearly 1 in 7 rely on it for more than 90% of their income," according to Phillips. "These people would call due to missing checks because their very survival depends on it."

The watchdog group Public Citizen similarly pushed back on social media, saying: "You know who actually makes the loudest noise? Someone who depends on Social Security to buy groceries. Someone who depends on Social Security to pay rent. Someone who depends on Social Security to survive. But billionaires like Howard Lutnick don't care about those people."

Groundwork Collaborative chief of policy and advocacy Alex Jacquez said in a statement that "the Trump administration just told seniors that they should shut up and sit down if they don't receive their Social Security checks on time. The real 'fraudsters' are Trump's out-of-touch billionaire donors and advisers denying seniors their hard-earned benefits to pay for their next tax giveaway."

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers, also tied Lutnick's remarks to Republican tax ambitions—as well as a broader attack on the federal bureaucracy by Trump and the de facto leader of his Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk.

"First, Elon called Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme' and said we need to eliminate it," Kelley said. "Then DOGE started trying to cut SSA staff. Now Lutnick says 'don't complain' when the payments stop. They are taking money from working-class people in order to give it to their rich friends."

As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek is threatening to shut down the agency in response to a federal judge's Thursday order blocking DOGE's SSA "data grab." The Washington Post later revealed that the official "is consulting with agency lawyers and the Justice Department" about the possible shutdown.

Some political observers see the Republican administration's attacks on the SSA—and the rest of the federal government—as a major opportunity for the Democratic Party, which has minorities in both chambers of Congress.

"If Dems have any strategic mojo left, they will clip this and play it on a nonstop television ad loop in the two Florida districts holding special congressional elections," Helaine Olen of the American Economic Liberties Project said about the Lutnick interview. "Seniors will rightly whine when their checks don't show up."

Already, some seniors have publicly shared stories of benefits incorrectly shut off since Trump took office, and some congressional Democrats are taking aim at his administration. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a longtime SSA defender who has framed the DOGE assault as a push toward privatization, posted the commerce secretary's video on social media.

"Trump and Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration could lead to the delay, denial, and disruption of your EARNED BENEFITS," Larson said Friday. "For 40% of our seniors, Social Security is the only income they have. They can't just wait for their next check."

Also responding to the clip, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said, "They are getting ready to destroy Social Security. Because the billionaires don't need it. Prepping the ground here by shaming people who dare complain if their Social Security check disappears."

The Social Security comments aren't the only reason the commerce secretary is facing intense criticism this week. On Wednesday, he told viewers of Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" to buy stock in Musk's electric vehicle maker, Tesla. One watchdog leader noted that Lutnick "conveniently forgot to mention his family business empire holds nearly $840 million in the company."

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center on Friday filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics and an ethics official at the U.S. Department of Commerce, urging them to investigate Lutnick's comments about Tesla stock—which has been crashing due to protests of the company resulting from Musk's work for the Trump administration.

Glenn Greenwald SCHOOLS SAAGAR ON Deportation

Baltimore bridge was 30 times above acceptable risk of collapse, officials say

The top US transportation safety agency said this week that the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse last March, after a cargo ship hit a support pillar, had been 30 times above the acceptable risk of breaking up if a vessel struck it and there was “no excuse” for a vital safety check having been missed years before.

In its investigation of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across a vital shipping channel in Baltimore, which killed six construction workers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that the Maryland transportation authority failed to complete a recommended structural vulnerability assessment that would have shown the bridge was extremely prone to a collapse.

In the midst of its investigation, the NTSB is now calling for the urgent assessment of risk related to 68 bridges across 19 states coast to coast, including national icons such as the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in California. Such examinations are meant to determine how vulnerable the bridges are to collapse after a ship strike, especially given the vastness of some modern container ships.

The NTSB notes that while the list does not mean the bridges are certain to collapse in the event of a collision, it is recommending that state transportation agencies conduct an assessment and develop a risk reduction plan should a bridge be shown to be at higher riskof collapse.

Is Trump Starting A New Domestic War On Terror? Ken Klippenstein Interview

20% of Americans support boycott of firms aligning themselves with Trump agenda

One in five Americans plan to turn their backs for good on companies that have shifted their policies to align with Donald Trump’s agenda, according to a new poll for the Guardian.

As high-profile brands including Amazon, Target and Tesla grapple with economic boycotts, research by the Harris Poll indicated the backlash could have a lasting impact.

“Companies and consumers are playing a high-stakes game of chicken – corporations betting on convenience winning out over conviction, while consumers wield their spending power like a weapon,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at the Harris Poll.

“The data suggests this is a miscalculation,” she said. “When 20% of Americans are permanently changing their consumption habits and nearly a third of boycotters say they’ll hold out indefinitely, convenience may no longer be the decisive factor companies think it is.”

When asked about the boycotts that have been making headlines over the last few weeks, 36% of Americans said they are or will be participating.

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Schumer REFUSES To Step Down As Democrat Leader; Bill Maher Says It Might Be ‘Game Over’ For Party

‘I’m not stepping down’: Chuck Schumer defies Democrats’ calls over funding bill

Chuck Schumer defied calls to give up the top Democratic position in the Senate after he voted for Republicans’ funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, saying on Sunday: “I’m not stepping down.”

Schumer has faced a wave of backlash from Democrats over his decision to support the Republican-led bill, with many Democrats alleging that the party leader isn’t doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s agenda.

Explaining his decision during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Schumer said: “I knew when I cast my vote against … the government shutdown … that there would be a lot of controversy.” He said that the funding bill “was certainly bad”, but maintained that a shutdown would have been 15 or 20 times worse.

Schumer has argued that billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would have used a shutdown to “eviscerate the federal government”, which he said would have been “devastating”. ...

In response to whether he believes he is making the same mistake as Joe Biden did last year when he refused to move aside to allow for new Democratic leadership, Schumer said: “No, absolutely not,” adding, “Our caucus is united in fighting Donald Trump every step of the way. Our goal, our plan, which we’re united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are.”

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Scientists identify ‘tipping point’ that caused clumps of toxic Florida seaweed

Scientists in Florida believe they have identified a “tipping point” in atmospheric conditions in the Atlantic Ocean they say caused giant clumps of toxic seaweed to inundate beaches around the Caribbean in recent summers.

Previous theories for the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt that has killed marine animals, harmed human health and plagued the tourism industry in several countries include a surfeit of nutrients in the water, such as nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff from intensive farming and carried into the ocean in the Congo, Amazon and Mississippi rivers.

While marine scientists at the University of South Florida (USF) acknowledge that as a contributory factor, they say the primary source of nutrients is a seasonal phenomenon known as vertical mixing in which shifting winds churn up the ocean and deepwater nutrient concentrations are brought to the surface. They identified atmospheric pressure changes over the Atlantic beginning around 2009 as the tipping point, with variations in circulation and wind patterns pushing more sargassum into the warmer waters of the tropics, where it grew through photosynthesis into the massive blooms that eventually ended up on the beaches of the Caribbean and the US Gulf coast.

“This was a surprising result,” said Frank Muller-Karger, distinguished professor and biological oceanographer at USF’s College of Marine Science. His team of international researchers used computer modeling to replicate the transport of blooms on strong currents controlled by negative North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), and how the changing atmospheric conditions helped create the giant sargassum belt. “We had posed the hypothesis before that it is not the rivers that feed the formation of the sargassum blooms in the tropical Atlantic. This model supports the idea that nutrients from slightly deeper layers in the ocean feed the blooms.”

Muller-Karger continued, saying that “models showed that some patches of the sargassum were swept up by the wind and currents from the Sargasso Sea toward Europe, then moved southward, and from there were injected into the tropical Atlantic. “At first, we saw just a few patches being pushed south by the NAO. But these algae patches were met with the right conditions to grow and perpetuate blooms. This population of algae, now separated from the Sargasso Sea, forms new blooms every year thanks to having enough light, nutrients and warmer temperatures,” he said.

Three wildfires burn more than 3,300 acres in North and South Carolina

Three major wildfires that broke out in one North Carolina county still recovering from Hurricane Helene have exploded to burn more than 3,000 acres combined as South Carolina’s governor declared an emergency in response to a growing wildfire in the Blue Ridge mountains.

The North Carolina department of public safety announced a mandatory evacuation starting at 8.20pm on Saturday for parts of Polk county in western North Carolina about 80 miles (129km) west of Charlotte. ...

The two biggest wildfires in Polk county – the Black Cove fire, which has burned 2,076 acres, and the Deep Woods fire, which had burned 1,700 acres – were at zero containment, said Kellie Cannon, spokesperson for Polk county government. The Fish Hook fire, which scorched 1,713 acres, was 50% contained.

All are burning about 30 miles south-east of Ashville, according to the North Carolina forest service, in an area where Hurricane Helene swept through in September. The downed trees leftover from the hurricane, as well as low humidity and dry vegetation, are helping to fuel the fires which ignited last week, officials said.

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Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: The Last Chapter of the Genocide

Death Toll in Gaza Surpasses 50,000 as Israeli Strikes Persist

Trump Is Just Bush In A Red Hat

In Movies We Understand That The Genocidal Child Murderers Who Blow Up Hospitals Are The Villains

Israeli envoy to Austria suggests executing Gaza children in secret recording

Iranian Supreme Leader Threatens Response to Any American Attack

How Zelenski Is Trying To Sabotage Trump's Negotiations With Russia

Luigi Mangione lawyer says arrest flaws invalidate evidence – but will it work?

Egg prices have quadrupled, chicken has doubled: the cost of US inflation in 10 items

Tesla Has Same Problem as Big Oil: Its Time Has Come

Irish Comedian’s HILARIOUS Sketch On The Israel-Palestine Conflict!

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A Little Night Music

Fabulous Counts - Get Down People

Fabulous Counts - Money

Fabulous Counts - It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World

Fabulous Counts - Rhythm Changes

The Fabulous Counts - Dirty Red

The Fabulous Counts - Scrambled Eggs

The Fabulous Counts - Girl From Kenya

The Fabulous Counts - The Bite

The Fabulous Counts - Lunar Funk

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