Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Chubby Checker. Enjoy!

"One of the dumbest things the empire is asking us to believe right now is that bombing Yemen again will lead to peace this time."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Trump Shares Collateral Murder-Style Snuff Film On 15th Anniversary Of Collateral Murder

President Trump has posted a video on social media showing a US airstrike in Yemen killing dozens of people who he claims are “Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.” Trump also bizarrely suggested that Ansar Allah has been sinking US ships in its Red Sea attacks, writing “They will never sink our ships again!”

There is no public information about any US ships having been sunk by Houthi attacks. As of this writing there is also no evidence supporting the president’s claim that the people killed in the airstrike were combatants; there are photos online of unarmed Yemeni tribesmen standing in the exact formation seen in the video Trump posted for normal civilian gatherings.

I’ve seen many observers comparing the video Trump posted to the leaked Collateral Murder video published by WikiLeaks in 2010, which showed US servicemen firing on Iraqi civilians and journalists from Apache helicopters while laughing and joking about the carnage they were inflicting. What hasn’t received quite enough attention is the fact that Trump actually shared his Collateral Murder-style snuff film on the 15th anniversary of the day WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder.

These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack. Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis!

They will never sink our ships again! pic.twitter.com/lEzfyDgWP5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2025

Within hours of Trump’s posting, the WikiLeaks Twitter account tweeted the following:

“On this day in 2010: Collateral Murder. WikiLeaks released a secret US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.”

For those who don’t know, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was savagely persecuted by the US government for the information he published in 2010, spending 2012 to 2019 trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London under political asylum from US extradition attempts, and then jailed in a British maximum security prison on a US extradition warrant from 2019 to 2024 before securing his freedom. It was the first Trump administration who had him dragged from the embassy for the crime of journalism in 2019.

This is just the latest disgusting act of warmongering that Trump has inflicted on Yemen, and as always it is completely unjustifiable. It’s obviously idiotic to think bombing Yemen again will bring peace to the region; only a foam-brained moron would believe such a thing. But it’s also worse than that, because Trump wouldn’t even have any moral legitimacy in bombing Yemen if peace really was his goal.

Yemen is trying to stop an active genocide. That’s what its Red Sea blockade has always been about. That’s the only reason Ansar Allah has ever attacked ships in the region. Their explicit and publicly stated goal is to exert pressure on Israel and its allies to halt the genocide in Gaza.

Trump has no moral legitimacy in trying to stop Yemen from doing this. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is telling Congress behind closed doors that Trump’s costly war on Yemen is failing to achieve its objectives despite daily airstrikes, but even if Trump was successful in bombing Yemen into submission, all he’d be succeeding in doing is removing economic pressure on Israel to end its ongoing mass atrocity. Trump is actually bombing Yemen to defend Israel’s right to commit genocide.

Even if Trump could mass murder his way into ending the Houthi blockade, that wouldn’t be peace — at least not the kind of peace that normal, healthy people care about. It would be the kind of “peace” that exists in a room full of corpses. The kind of “peace” that exists on a slave plantation where all the slaves have been successfully whipped and tortured into obedience.

When Trump’s supporters babble about “peace through strength”, that is what they mean by “peace”. When normal, healthy people say peace, they mean the absence of abuse. When empire loyalists say peace, they mean obedience and submission to the empire.

This is what people are saying when they claim “There was a ceasefire on October 6th,” implying that there was peace before Hamas launched its attack in 2023. They don’t mean the same thing that normal, healthy people mean by peace. Their vision of “peace” was always Palestinians lying down and submitting and slowly getting shuffled out of the way, like the indigenous victims of other western settler-colonialist projects throughout history.

That’s not peace. That’s just unresisted abuse.

But that’s the only kind of “peace” that Trump and his fellow empire managers will ever accept in the middle east. The “peace” of compliance and obedience. The “peace” of prostration before the empire. The kind of “peace” you get when you start murdering everyone in the room until there’s nobody left but corpses and those who submit to your will.

This is who these people are. This is the closest thing to “peace” that they will ever allow under their rule.

"Point-Blank": Israeli Soldiers Execute 15 Gaza Medics & Rescue Workers, Bury in Unmarked Mass Grave

Israeli military changes account of Gaza paramedics’ killing after video of attack

Israel’s military has backtracked on its account of the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza last month after footage contradicted its claims that their vehicles did not have emergency signals on when Israeli troops opened fire. The military said initially it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations late on Saturday, said that account was “mistaken”.

The almost seven-minute video, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday was recovered from the phone of Rifat Radwan, one of the men killed, appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle. It shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights. The vehicle stops beside another that has driven off the road. Two men get out to examine the stopped vehicle, then gunfire erupts before the screen goes black.

Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one UN employee, were killed in the incident in Rafah on 23 March, in which the UN said Israeli forces shot the men “one by one” and then buried them in a mass grave.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the incident was still under investigation. It added: “All claims, including the documentation circulated about the incident, will be thoroughly and deeply examined to understand the sequence of events and the handling of the situation.”

The official said the initial report received from the field did not describe lights but that investigators were looking at “operational information” and were trying to understand whether this was due to an error by the person making the initial report. “What we understand currently is the person who gives the initial account is mistaken. We’re trying to understand why,” the official added.

Alastair Crooke : Trump Demands the Impossible from Iran

Netanyahu heads to Washington to talk tariffs, Gaza and Iran with Trump

Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a last-minute visit to Washington to meet with Donald Trump, where the Israeli leader is expected to discuss Iran, the war in Gaza, and tariffs with the US president. The Washington visit, Netanyahu’s second since Trump was inaugurated in January, comes after the resumption of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, and underlines the strong relationship between the two men.

Trump has pressed Tehran for a new deal on its nuclear programme, although little progress has been made. There is widespread speculation that Israel, possibly with US help, might launch a military strike on Iranian facilities if no agreement is reached.

Al Hadath, a Saudi television channel, reported on Saturday that the US transferred a second THAAD battery and two Patriot batteries to Israel amid rising tensions. Flight tracking websites showed that a C-5M Super Galaxy, a large US air force transport plane, landed at an airbase in southern Israel on Saturday for about eight hours, the Times of Israel reported.

The Biden administration sent one THAAD battery, an advanced anti-missile system, to Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack in October 2023. It has been used since to intercept missile attacks from Iran and the Tehran-allied Houthi group in Yemen.

The US president said on Thursday that he expected a visit soon from Netanyahu – “maybe even next week” – though the Axios website said the timing caught Israeli officials and even some in the Trump administration by surprise. ... Other thorny issues in the meeting on Monday include Israel-Turkey relations and “the fight against the international criminal court”, which has accused the Israeli leader of war crimes, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Saturday night.

Is Qatargate a scandal too far even for Benjamin Netanyahu?

Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is no stranger to scandal. Over three decades in politics, the 75-year-old has been accused of everything from spending excessive public money on ice-cream and striking deals with media outlets for favourable coverage to undermining trust in public institutions and the rule of law. In November, the international criminal court announced it was seeking his arrest for alleged war crimes in the conflict in Gaza. To date, the prime minister has always managed to find a way to cling on to power – and public support. But even for “King Bibi”, as he is known to both supporters and detractors, this has been a difficult week, as a new scandal known as Qatargate gains momentum.

On Monday, while Netanyahu was attending a hearing in his corruption case at the Tel Aviv district court, the prime minister was forced to interrupt his own testimony to respond to an urgent police summons after the arrest of two of his aides. Jonatan Urich, one of Netanyahu’s most trusted advisers, and Eli Feldstein, hired as a spokesperson by the prime minister’s office shortly after the war broke out, are suspected of taking money from Qatar, funnelled via a US lobby group, in order to promote a positive image of the Gulf state in their briefings to journalists. Lawyers for both men have declined to comment on the allegations.

It is believed that the aim of the alleged Qatari campaign was to improve Doha’s standing among Israelis, and with the US, while it was mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel – and to spread negative messages about Egypt, the other leading mediator in the negotiations.

The affair has deeply shocked the Israeli public because Qatar is widely viewed as a patron of Hamas, hosting leaders of the Palestinian militant group in the capital, Doha. Last year, Israel banned the Qatari state-funded media network Al Jazeera, which is fiercely critical of Israeli actions in the conflict. Doha has sent millions of dollars in aid to the Gaza Strip, facilitated by the Israeli government – but some in Israel allege Qatari money was used to help Hamas prepare for the 7 October 2023 attack that precipitated the war.

Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case, and has railed against the investigation as a “political witch hunt”. Qatar denies it supports Hamas, and in a statement on Thursday called the claims it paid Israeli political actors in an attempt to influence public opinion “baseless”. However, if the allegations are substantiated, the premier faces serious questions about how a foreign power seen by many as an enemy state was able to infiltrate the highest levels of the Israeli government.

Mahmoud Khalil says his arrest was part of ‘Columbia’s repression playbook’

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist who led campus pro-Palestinian rallies and is now resisting the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, has accused the university of laying “the groundwork for my abduction” and called on the student body to continue demonstrations and protests.

Khalil, a green-card holder who is in custody in Louisiana as his case moves through the courts, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him under a provision in federal immigration law that permits the state department to deport non-citizens considered to be a threat to US foreign policy. Federal officials have said that Khalil, who has not been charged with any crime, led activities “aligned to Hamas”, which the US designates a terrorist organization.

In an op-ed published Friday in the Columbia Spectator, dictated to his attorney, Khalil accused Columbia’s leadership of suppressing student dissent over Israel’s war in Gaza, which it launched after the 7 October 2023 terror attack by Hamas. “Since my abduction on March 8, the intimidation and kidnapping of international students who stand for Palestine has only accelerated,” Khalil said, pointing to the arrest of three other students, the self-deportation of a fourth and another who is fighting similar orders but without arrest.

“The situation is oddly reminiscent of when I fled the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and sought refuge in Lebanon,” Khalil continued. “The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia’s repression playbook concerning Palestine.”

Khalil also accused the university of suppressing student dissent under the auspices of combating antisemitism and bowing to pressure from Congress to turn over student disciplinary records and creating a taskforce on antisemitism “that broadly categorized anti-Israel sentiment as hate speech to condemn protests”. He urged students to continue their protest efforts. “It is incumbent upon each of you to reclaim the University and join the student movement to carry forward the work of the past year,” he wrote.

Sectarian MASSACRES Sweeping Syria! w/ Kevork Almassian

Tariff turbulence and reindustrialization

Trump Tariffs Will Concentrate Wealth Even More

Trump’s trade policies have been wildly unpredictable in the first two months of his second presidency. Tariff deadlines have come and been delayed with no rhyme or reason, leaving cross-border trade in the lurch. Such volatility was a nightmare for investors in the top 1 percent, but they are now given some clarity thanks to the inauguration of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day — a comprehensive set of retaliatory tariffs imposed on all imported products from trading partners who allegedly disadvantage U.S. exports through their own regulatory regime.

But this class of high net worth individuals have no reason to be nervous or anxious. They are set to see long-term monetary gains because they have the resources to properly adapt and make financial decisions that expand their capital, not to mention the economic benefits they will receive from the tax cut that is currently part of the Republican agenda. Yet the same cannot be said for the working-class. The indiscriminate deployment of taxes on all imported goods is a blatant attack on their living standards.

And that is because Trump’s trade war is a class war designed not to revitalize American manufacturing, but to weaken progressive taxation.

The Trump administration has argued that the implementation of tariffs is critical to ushering in a new era of American prosperity. The administration expects this tariff regime to generate a massive windfall in tax revenue, making trillions of dollars available to the federal government over the next several years. The money raised can then be used to reduce the deficit and service our ever-growing national debt. Government coffers will be overflowing with so much revenue — so the argument goes — that the IRS can be abolished and replaced with a new agency, the External Revenue Service. Federal income taxes will gradually become obsolete and be thrown into the dustbin of history, never to be resurrected again.

The nonstrategic deployment of tariffs will not make American manufacturing great again and the math does not support the administration’s fantastical revenue estimates. ... Tariffs, if anything, exacerbate the already existing problem of extreme inequality. When the economic pie of the rich expands, they will use these new resources to extract more wealth from the working-class through the acquisition of critical assets like residential housing and infrastructure that we rely upon like energy plants, often through private equity and asset management firms.

'ECONOMIC NUCLEAR WINTER' Coming Says Trump Billionaire

Senior Trump officials give conflicting lines on tariffs after markets turmoil

Senior officials within Donald Trump’s administration gave conflicting messages on Sunday about the US president’s global tariffs that have caused a meltdown in stock markets, prompted warnings of a world recession and provoked rare expressions of dissent from within his Republican party. Cabinet members fanned out across Sunday’s political talk shows armed with talking points on Trump’s 10% across-the-board tariff on almost all US imports, with higher rates targeted at about 60 countries. If the intention was to calm nerves with a clear statement of intent, then it backfired as top officials gave starkly contrasting signals.

Howard Lutnick, the billionaire commerce secretary, struck an aggressive note on CBS News’s Face the Nation in which he portrayed the tariffs as here to stay. Asked whether there was a chance that tariffs would be postponed to allow countries to negotiate a deal with Washington, he replied: “There is no postponing – they are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks, that is sort of obvious.” Lutnick added that Trump intended to “reset global trade”. ...

However, two other cabinet members gave the opposite take, suggesting that negotiations with individual countries were very much on the cards. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, told Meet the Press on NBC News that Trump had “created maximum leverage for himself, and more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation”. The agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, echoed Bessent by flagging up possible talks. “We’ve got 50 countries that are burning the phone lines into the White House,” she told CNN’s State of the Union.

The scale of Trump’s tariffs have sent shockwaves around the world, catching US investors as well as top Republican politicians by surprise. In just two days last week, more than $6tn was wiped off Wall Street’s market value. Trump told US consumers in a post on his Truth Social network to “hang tough, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic”. Yet as he spent the weekend golfing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, his unprecedented tax increase goaded senior Republicans to speak out, in a vanishingly rare display of criticism of their leader. ...

As the tariffs kick in, analysts are increasingly pointing to the chances of a recession, which is normally assessed as being two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. The head of economic research at JP Morgan, Bruce Kasman, has raised the probability of global recession to 60%, a figure that he included in a memo titled There Will Be Blood.

"Terrifying": Poorest Countries & Global Working Class Face Worst Impacts of Trump's Tariffs

Markets brace for another volatile week as Trump’s most punitive tariffs kick in

Markets are braced for another rollercoaster week as the most punitive of Donald Trump’s tariffs kick in and world leaders weigh up retaliatory action, adding to fears of a global recession. Stock indices plunged by nearly $5tn (£3.9tn) last week, with markets in the UK and US experiencing losses not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, as investors took cover from the opening salvoes of Trump’s trade war.

With no sign of the Trump administration rowing back on its so-called “liberation day” tariffs, analysts warned of persistent market turbulence and an increased risk of all-out recession in the US, UK and EU.

Roman Ziruk, a senior market analyst at the global financial services firm Ebury, said: “Volatility will likely stay elevated as we move into [the] week.” He said some investors were still holding out hope that tariffs against China and the EU, due to kick in from Wednesday, would be delayed or remodelled. “The danger of escalation of trade tensions cannot, however, be overlooked, particularly as China’s response to the latest round of US tariffs has been more aggressive than before,” Ziruk said. ...

Leaders of European countries have condemned the tariffs, while the French president, Emmanuel Macron, appeared to call on the country’s businesses to halt investment in the US.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for negotiation with the US. However, the EU is expected to announce retaliatory tariffs on US consumer and industrial goods – which are likely to include emblematic products such as orange juice, denim and Harley-Davidson motorbikes – in mid-April as a response to steel and aluminium tariffs previously announced by Trump.

More than 1,000 ‘Hands Off’ anti-Trump protests hit cities across the US

People across the US took to the streets on Saturday to oppose what left-leaning organizations called Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”. Organizers estimated that more than 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere.

At Washington’s national mall, demonstrators from as far afield as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania gathered in the shadow of the Washington monument before the anti-Trump rally there. In overcast conditions, protesters displayed a vast array of placards and, in some cases, Ukrainian flags, expressing opposition to the policies of the administration, which has sought cordial relations with Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.

Some protesters said they hoped the event – the first mass demonstration in Washington DC since Trump took office – would act as an example to inspire others to register opposition. “The aim is, get people to rise up,” said Diane Kolifrath, 63, who had travelled from New Hampshire with 100 fellow members of New Hampshire Forward, a civic society organisation.

“Many people are scared to protest against Trump because he has reacted aggressively and violently to those who have stood up,” Kolifrath said. The goal of this protest is to let the rest of Americans who aren’t participating see that we are standing up and hopefully when they see our strength, that will give them the courage to also stand up.”

MoveOn, one of the organizations behind the day of protest dubbed “Hands Off” along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests took place across the US, including at state capitols. “We want to send a signal to all people and institutions that have been showing anticipatory obedience to Trump and showing they are willing to bend the knee that there is, in fact, a mass public movement that’s willing to rise up and stop this,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s executive director.

Senate approves Republican plan for trillions in tax breaks and spending cuts

Senate Republicans plugged away overnight and into early Saturday morning to approve their multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts framework, hurtling past hardened Democratic opposition toward what Donald Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill” that is central to his agenda.

The vote, 51-48, fell along mostly party lines, but with sharp dissent from two prominent GOP senators. It could not have come at a more difficult political moment. The US economy is churning after the president’s vast tariff scheme sent stocks plummeting, and experts are warning of soaring costs for consumers at home and threats of a potential recession. Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky both voted against the bill.

But with a nod from Trump, GOP leaders held on, determined to march ahead. Approval paves the way for Republicans, in the months ahead, to try to power a tax cut bill through both chambers of Congress over the objections of Democrats, just as they did in Trump’s first term with unified party control in Washington.

“Let the voting begin,” the Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, said on Friday night. The evening kicked off what’s called “vote-a-rama” as Democrats were intent on making the effort as politically painful as possible, with action on about two dozen amendments to the package that GOP senators will have to defend before next year’s midterm elections.

Among them were proposals to ban tax breaks for the super-wealthy, end Trump’s tariffs, clip his efforts to shrink the federal government, and protect Medicaid, social security and other services. One, in response to the Trump national security team’s use of Signal, sought to prohibit military officials from using any commercial messaging application to transmit war plans. They all failed, though a GOP amendment to protect Medicare and Medicaid was accepted. Democrats accused Republicans of laying the groundwork for cutting key safety net programs to help pay for more than $5tn in tax cuts they say disproportionately benefit the rich.

Doge’s attack on social security causing ‘complete, utter chaos’

Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency. The SSA operates the largest government program in the US, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor benefits.

An average of almost 69 million Americans per month will receive a social security benefit in 2025, totaling about $1.6tn in benefits paid during the year and accounting for 22% of the federal budget. While expensive and challenged by an ageing population, social security remains overwhelmingly popular with Americans. But the agency has been dubbed a “Ponzi scheme” by Elon Musk, the billionaire whose so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is currently slashing its staff and budgets.

“They have these ‘concepts of plans’ that they’re hoping are sticking but in reality, are really hurting American people,” said a longtime SSA employee and military veteran who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “No one knows what’s going on. They’re just coming up with ideas at the top of their head.” The SSA website has crashed several times this month. Wired reported Doge staff want to migrate all social security data and rewrite code in months, which could cause system collapse and further outages.

The agency plans to eliminate the jobs of 7,000 workers at the agency through voluntary buyouts, resignations or firings, though the union representing SSA employees anticipate even more firings beyond cutting staff to 50,000 workers. Acting commissioner Leland Dudek has acknowledged to staff that Doge are making the decisions at the agency. Musk, Donald Trump and others have claimed action is being taken to tackle widespread fraud at the agency.

Dudek was appointed acting commissioner after he reportedly secretly shared information with Doge staff. He has threatened to shut down the agency in response to a court order barring Doge from accessing the data.

DOJ PUNISHES Attorney In Deportation Case; Judge ORDERS Return Of Illegal Immigrant From El Salvador

Heh, how about sending one of Trump's favorite children down to the El Salvador gulag and then we can see if Trump's administration is really that helpless and clueless.

DoJ lawyer put on leave after not backing erroneous deportation of Maryland man

A federal justice department attorney has been placed on leave by the Trump administration for purportedly failing to defend the administration vigorously enough after it says it erroneously deported a Maryland man to El Salvador, which a US judge called a “wholly lawless” detention.

The action against justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni came after US district judge Paula Xinis had ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit, be returned to Maryland despite the Trump administration’s position that it cannot return him from a sovereign nation.The administration has appealed the case, and a ruling is expected as soon as Sunday night ahead of an 11.59pm Monday deadline for his return, which was set by the judge.

Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, went on Fox News Sunday and announced there that Reuveni was no longer actively working on the Abrego Garcia case or in the justice department in general. At a court hearing on Friday, Reuveni struggled to answer questions from the judge about the circumstances of Abrego Garcia’s deportation. Reuveni said he had raised questions with US officials about why the federal government could not bring back Abrego Garcia but had received no “satisfactory” answer. He acknowledged what he called an “absence of evidence” justifying Abrego Garcia’s detention and deportation.

Of Reuveni, Bondi told Fox News Sunday: “It’s a pending matter right now. He was put on administrative leave by [deputy US attorney general] Todd Blanche on Saturday.“You have to vigorously argue on behalf of your client.” Reuveni’s supervisor, August Flentje, was also placed on leave, ABC News reported.

"Hands Off!": 1M+ Protest Trump's DOGE Cuts, Attacks on Education, Immigration, War on Gaza & More

Ted Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recession

Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.

Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.

“A hundred years ago, the US economy didn’t have the leverage to have the kind of impact we do now. But I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue for ever and ever,” he added.

The Texan’s comments, made on his Verdict podcast on Friday, were a further sign that the imposition of global “reciprocal” duties on imported goods is causing unease among Republicans.

The Republican US senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced bipartisan legislation on Thursday to grant Congress more power over placing tariffs on US trading nations. The bill, co-sponsored by the Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, would “reaffirm” the role of Congress in setting and approving trade policy. The Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis have since signed on as co-sponsors.

Space probe to map carbon content of world’s remotest tropical forests

Scientists are about to take part in a revolutionary mission aimed at creating detailed 3D maps of the world’s remotest, densest and darkest tropical forests – from outer space. The feat will be achieved using a special radar scanner that has been fitted to a probe, named Biomass, that will be fired into the Earth’s orbit later this month.

For the next five years, the 1.25-tonne spacecraft will sweep over the tropical rainforests of Africa, Asia and South America and peer through their dense 40m-high ­canopies to study the vegetation that lies beneath. The data collected by Biomass will then be used to create unique 3D maps of forests normally hidden from human sight.

Less than 2% of sunlight reaches the forest floor in these regions, yet Biomass will study them in unsurpassed detail from a height of more than 600km. More importantly, the mission will allow scientists to calculate how much carbon is stored in the forests and measure how levels are changing as humans continue to cut down trees in the tropics and increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

In addition, Biomass – which has been built by a consortium led by Airbus UK and funded by the European Space Agency (Esa) – will map the sub-surface geology and topography of forest floors while it will also provide data about the rate at which biodiversity is being lost as forests are cleared for mining and agriculture. “We need to know the health of our tropical forests,” Simonetta Cheli, director of Earth Observation Programmes for Esa, told the Observer last week: “We need to know the quality and diversity of its vegetation and the amount of carbon stored there. To get that information we are going to create 3D images of them – from the top of the forest canopy to the roots of its trees.”

Tropical forests play a crucial role in protecting the planet from some of the worst effects of global warming because they absorb so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: estimates suggest they take up about eight billion tonnes and are often described as the Earth’s green lungs. But deforestation and environmental degradation are now reversing this effect. Carbon, once stored in vast amounts, is being put back into the atmosphere, adding to growing levels of greenhouse gases. Hotspots include northern regions of South America, sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia and the Pacific where increased production of beef, soya, coffee, cacao, palm oil and timber are triggering widespread deforestation.

Millions of Americans believe they’re safe from wildfires in their cities. New research shows they’re not

Communities across the US that were once considered beyond the reach of wildfires are now vulnerable to disaster. As fires increasingly spread deep into neighborhoods, researchers estimate roughly 115 million people – more than a third of the US population – live in areas that could host the next fire catastrophe.

The understanding that many more Americans are at risk of losing their homes to wildfires comes as the climate crisis turns up the dial on extreme weather, drought and heat. But it’s also the result of new research that has exposed deep and dangerous gaps in our understanding of the threat. “The risks are more extensive than people think,” said Joe H Scott, the chief fire scientist at the wildfire risk research firm Pyrologix. Recent tragedies have added to grim examples of what’s possible when the right conditions align.

There was Lahaina in 2023, when a firestorm killed 102 people and turned the historic Maui town into smoldering ruins. In 2021, powerful gusts drove flames through suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, as the Marshall fire became the most destructive in state history. And, in January, 30 people were killed and homes on all sides of Los Angeles were flattened when the fierce Santa Ana winds rained embers across neighborhoods.

Key stakeholders – scientists, first responders and members of the insurance industry among them – are racing to understand the dynamics that drive these types of fires. They’ve learned that flames enter and move through structures differently from when they burn through backcountry, complicating scientific models used for decades that showed wildfires fizzled out at the edges of neighborhoods. Realizing that homes themselves serve as fuel, they’re working to build new tools that will help at-risk residents adapt.

Still, a stark disconnect about who is vulnerable remains, researchers say. Many of the suburbs and cities hit hardest by wildfire in recent years were caught off-guard. Millions more across the country don’t know that they are at risk. “It is obvious wildfire and wildland urban fire is increasing,” Scott said. “Fire reached all of those places and did really damaging stuff. What other places are like that? The answer is, almost anywhere.”

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Restoring Lies to US History

Truth Is Antisemitism. Protest Is Terrorism. Dissent Is Russian Propaganda.

Opposing The Gaza Holocaust Is Just The Basic, Bare Minimum Requirement To Not Suck As A Person

Pogromists Rule the West Bank

The Graver Israel’s Atrocities in Gaza, the Quieter the BBC Grows

Neocons Attempt To Stall U.S.-Russia Talks

As Global Conflicts Rage, Has Neoliberalism Already Won?

China announces retaliation against Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs”

Taking the US Constitution Seriously

The alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer faces the death penalty. Will a jury impose that punishment?

World’s largest wildlife crossing takes shape in Los Angeles

Anti-Trump protests hit cities worldwide – in pictures

Syrian Leader BEGS Israel To Cease Attacks!

The stalemate lie. The big Russian offensive

A Little Night Music

Chubby Checker - Limbo Rock

Chubby Checker - Pony Time

Chubby Checker - The Fly

Chubby Checker - Dancin' Party

Chubby Checker - Bristol Stomp

Chubby Checker - Quarter To Three

Chubby Checker - Hound Dog

Chubby Checker - Runaround Sue

Chubby Checker - Back in the U.S.S.R.

Chubby Checker - Toot