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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lee Dorsey

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans r&b singer Lee Dorsey. Enjoy!

^{Lee Dorsey – Working in the Coal Mine}

"The Global Sumud Flotilla is saying they’re seeing drones around their ships again just days out from their planned arrival to bring aid into Gaza. ... I don’t know if the Israelis are going to kill these courageous activists, but you can tell they really, really want to."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

More Attacks On The Gaza Aid Flotilla

The Global Sumud Flotilla which is bringing aid to break the Israeli siege on Gaza has once again come under attack. Activists say drones are dropping explosive objects which have reportedly burned the arm of one crew member and destroyed the main mast of one of the boats.

As Middle East Eye recently noted, US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack has admitted that Israel was behind the attacks on flotilla boats in Tunisia which we discussed earlier this month, stating offhand during an interview that “Israel is attacking Tunisia.”

This happens as the Israeli government repeatedly issues statements branding the boats a “Hamas Flotilla” and claiming the activists are “pursuing a violent course of action,” something Israel tends to do when preparing to launch attacks on civilians in hospitals or press uniforms.

The Israelis will literally launch drone strikes on activist boats for trying to bring formula to starving babies and then turn around and say the world hates them because of their religion.

Les explosions continuent sur la flottille. pic.twitter.com/uPjXBpd1yV

— Emma Fourreau (@emma_frr) September 23, 2025

Yanis Varoufakis On Israel’s Threats, And Why The UK Still Needs Corbyn

Israeli Foreign Ministry Says It Won’t Allow Aid Flotilla To Break Blockade on Gaza

The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Monday issued a threat to the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is attempting to break Israel’s starvation siege on Gaza, warning that it wouldn’t allow the boats to breach the Israeli blockade.

“Statement Regarding the Hamas Flotilla (‘Sumud’): This flotilla, organized by Hamas, is intended to serve Hamas,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry wrote on X. “Israel will not allow vessels to enter an active combat zone and will not allow the breach of a lawful naval blockade.”

The ministry said that if the “flotilla participants’ genuine wish is to deliver humanitarian aid rather than serve Hamas, Israel calls on the vessels to dock at the Ashkelon Marina and unload the aid there, from where it will be transferred promptly in a coordinated manner to the Gaza Strip.” But the IDF continues to block food aid and humanitarian goods from entering Gaza despite an ongoing famine in the Palestinian territory.

Bibi BUSTED? Massive Spy Ring Uncovered In NYC

The consensus is clear: it’s genocide. Now will international law die in Gaza too?

Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide in Gaza. That is the conclusion of a UN commission report. Since the release of the report last week, Palestine has finally been recognised as an independent state by the UK and a number of other countries. In his announcement at the weekend, Keir Starmer called the death and destruction in Gaza “utterly intolerable”. This recognition comes too late and is still conditional, but has the UK government indeed now stopped tolerating Israel’s devastation of Gaza? Has anything changed for the people there who are being starved and bombed? Far from it.

Even as the UN publishes the findings of its independent commission, and a flag is raised outside the Palestinian mission in London, mass displacement and killing continues to take place in Gaza City as Israel attacks. As a lawyer who has spent my life believing in the rule of law, this makes me wonder: will Gaza’s destruction also bring with it the death of international law? ...

Palestinian groups documenting the atrocities – including the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), of which I am director, well as the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Palestinian rights organisation Al-Haq – have been targeted by Israeli airstrikes and sanctioned by the US Treasury for documenting legal evidence of the crimes being committed. Even the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese and international criminal court (ICC) officials – including chief prosecutor Karim Khan – are being threatened and sanctioned for speaking out about their findings. These findings match those in the PCHR’s newest report: that the intent to commit genocide was there from October 2023 onwards, evidenced by the testimony of the very survivors and victims that we should have been protecting.

The UN’s commission now joins the wide consensus that Palestinians in Gaza have been experiencing genocide. This is a welcome intervention. But it is also crucial to remember that the purpose of the genocide convention is in its full name: the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. The philosophy for it was to be preventive and punitive – which means we are at a crossroads now. This genocide was not prevented, but it can still be stopped. Will this be enough for people to act? Or will the pounding of Gaza also turn the principles of international law into rubble? ...

We may be looking at a new world where international law is selective and politicised. A genocide in our time with this level of mass killing, destruction, pain and suffering shows how fragile the rule of law is. Arrest warrants issued by the ICC has not prevented a genocide. Yet another institution finding that Israel is committing genocide has not stopped it. The law can only exist if it is enforced and applied to all. The facts are there, the law is there. No one can claim they didn’t know.

Laith Marouf & Matthew Hoh: This Is HOW ISRAEL LOST IT - Putin Drops Bombshell on Trump

‘Unwilling and unable’: Half of Gaza City refuses to flee as Israeli attacks intensify

Dima Abuaita packed her most precious belongings, along with clothes and mattresses, and placed them by the door of her family’s home in the central Gaza City neighbourhood of Rimal. For more than a week, she has been searching for affordable transportation to flee to the southern Gaza Strip amid relentless Israeli attacks. “It’s not that I refuse to save my life and my children’s - it’s that I don’t have a fortune to keep us safe,” Abuaita told Middle East Eye.

“I need around 5,000 shekels ($1,500) just to move my belongings to the central or southern parts of the strip, another 2,000 shekels ($600) for a tent, and then a monthly rent for the land to set it up. I simply cannot afford all that.”

Last month, Israel declared it was going to fully occupy Gaza City and intended to force all Palestinians there and elsewhere in the north - around 1.2 million people altogether - towards the south. Relentless Israeli attacks since 11 August have forced half of the city’s population out, leaving around half a million remaining as paratroopers backed by tanks push a ground offensive into various neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile, booby-trapped robots and explosive-packed, remote-controlled vehicles have been used to level the city. “Every day, the Israeli occupation detonates dozens of explosive-laden vehicles in neighbourhoods that are only around 10 minutes away from where I stay. And I feel them approaching day after day, but where would I go?” Abuaita said. ...

While many Palestinians like Abuaita have not fled Gaza City due to the exorbitant costs and lack of transportation, others refuse to leave their homes, believing they would not be allowed to return.

Craig Murray: UK’s Rank Hypocrisy on Terrorism

The outgoing Head of MI6 Richard Moore has formally admitted in a public speech in Istanbul that MI6 has been cooperating with HTS [Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham] in Syria – a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act — for years.

The government is arresting little old ladies for holding signs supporting one proscribed organisation, Palestine Action, while it admits it has been actively supporting another proscribed organisation. HTS was proscribed as a division of Al Qaeda as shown on the government website.

As I learnt while in Lebanon, the British support for HTS included intelligence support, training and weapons, based at secret U.K. bases in the Bekaa valley, including inside the Rayak airbase. It also included support via an NGO named Inter-Mediate, run by current British National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, who is Tony Blair’s old Downing Street Chief of Staff.

In the U.K. neither the government nor the security services stand above the law. The fact that neither Moore nor Powell nor any of those on the ground directly involved in actively and substantively supporting HTS — a proscribed organisation — has been arrested, while people are arrested for holding a placard supporting Palestine Action because it is a proscribed organisation, is the very definition of arbitrary and oppressive government.

UN Iran snapback sanctions

Pro-Trump Billionaires Want to Control What You Watch

Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle, is the second-richest billionaire in both the US and the world, and for a brief moment was No. 1 in the world (AP, 9/11/25). But for a long time, unlike many of his peers, he was unable to boast that he controlled a chunk of the news and opinion reaching the American public.

On Forbes‘ US list, he is sandwiched between Elon Musk, No. 1, who bought the social media network Twitter and rebranded it as X, and Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram. Jeff Bezos, at No. 4, has the Washington Post. Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Nos. 5 and 6, operate the leading search engine as well as one of the most important news aggregators, Google News. Michael Bloomberg, at No. 13, the former New York City mayor, has Bloomberg and its various outlets.

Ellison seems to have joined the club, as TikTok, under US government coercion (FAIR.org, 1/23/25), is selling 80% of its US operations to an investor consortium that includes Oracle, along with investment firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz (Reuters, 9/16/25).

Ellison is a big Trumper, joining in the reactionary denial of the 2020 presidential elections (Washington Post, 5/20/22). Like some of the others in the deal, he is part of the inner circle of Trump’s favorite corporate ideologues. This TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.

But owning a big chunk of the US’ leading short-form video platform is not Ellison’s only claim to being a media mogul. Eyeing the corporate media throne, you can almost hear Ellison channeling Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza, confronted with the daunting prospect of competing in computer sales against IBM and Microsoft, declaring: “I’ve got a secret weapon. My son.”

Enter Larry’s son David Ellison, who was born into the kind of riches most can barely dream of. As I wrote for FAIR (7/24/25), the younger Ellison is the CEO of Skydance, which recently merged with Paramount, giving him control over CBS. David’s campaign contributions trend more to the Democratic establishment, but it’s his father’s politics that seem to be reshaping the newly bought network: “CBS Shifts to Appease the Right Under New Owner,” as an NPR headline (9/12/25) put it.

Anti-woke zealot Bari Weiss is nearing “a top role at CBS News,” which “left-leaning staffers at the network fret could amount to ‘dropping a grenade’ in the newsroom,” the New York Post (9/10/25) reported. It added that the network “is weighing naming Weiss editor in chief or copresident of the network,” and that Ellison is looking to buy her “news site, the Free Press, in a deal valued at upwards of $100 million.” According to Reuters (9/15/25), it was David Ellison who “installed Kenneth Weinstein—a supporter of President Donald Trump and the former CEO of conservative think tank Hudson Institute—as ombudsman of CBS News.” (See FAIR.org, 9/9/25.)

The New York Post (9/11/25) reports that Ellison father and son are now looking to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which carries with it CNN, creating an unprecedented level of media consolidation. While the Post said such a purchase could be difficult, because Warner Brothers “has a market cap of around $38 billion,” that might not matter, as “Larry Ellison’s net worth leaped by $100 billion following Oracle’s latest blowout earnings report.” He is “closing in on being the richest dude in the world, with a net worth… of more than $370 billion.”

CNN reports 1.8 million viewers, and CBS reports an average total audience of 1.4 million viewers, for a combined 3.2 million, which eclipses ABC’s 2.3 million, NBC’s 1.4 million, and MSNBC’s 1.2 million viewers (Forbes, 7/24/25).

The CNN/CBS combo would reach far more Americans through online news, with CNN.com‘s 276 million visits per month already making it the nation’s second-biggest news site. Add CBSNews.com‘s 63 million visits, and you’ll have an entity that edges closer to the heretofore undisputed leader, NYTimes.com, with its 425 million visits a month.

Former CBS Evening News star Dan Rather (Hollywood Reporter, 9/15/25) said Americans “have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” Rather added, “It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.”

Scott Ritter : How Close Is Doomsday?

Trump says he believes Ukraine can regain all land lost to Russia since 2022 invasion

Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv. The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.

He wrote: “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. “With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, Nato, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?”

Trump added: “Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years, a war that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.” The US president said this was not making Russia look distinguished, but instead a paper tiger, pointing to the long queues for petrol inside the country. He added: “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.” He also promised “to supply weapons to Nato for Nato to do what they want with them”.

Trump Insults Russia Dumps Kiev Zelensky UK/EU On Their Own; Russia Has 70% Kupiansk, Wants Kharkov

Trump calls for nations to close borders and expel foreigners in UN speech: ‘Your countries are being ruined’

Donald Trump took the stage at the United Nations general assembly hall for the first time in six years to launch a full-on assault on the world body, which he described as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership.

In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.

“It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders,” he said in a headline speech to world leaders and visiting delegations in the grand general assembly hall in midtown Manhattan. “You have to end it now … Your countries are going to hell.”

Directly addressing European leaders in contentious terms, he accused them of “destroying your heritage” and of allowing international migration because of misplaced “political correctness”. Trump also attacked green energy initiatives as redistributing manufacturing power from the developed world to “polluting countries that break the rules and are making a fortune”.

“Your countries are being ruined,” he also said, pointing to UN programs that he claimed provide food, shelter and debit cards to fund immigrant journeys to the United States. “The UN is funding an assault on western countries.” In many ways, the speech was an appeal to European leaders to embrace a blood-and-soil nationalism in which Trump laid out the recent US assault on immigration as a model for the world to follow.

Trump BAILS OUT Argentina Amid Javier Milei COLLAPSE

Nothing more libertarian than taking a massive government bailout https://t.co/7ddAnWRudR

— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserftimes) (@theserfstv) September 23, 2025

Javier Milei can't be allowed to fail b/c MAGA leaders and the tech right have propped him up as a true libertarian fighting the globalists and "doing what needs to be done" (immiserating his people on behalf of private capital). https://t.co/vfAd6CFE2o

— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) September 22, 2025

Trump’s GOP Blamed as Rural Health Clinics Begin to Fall Under Crushing Weight of Big, Ugly Bill

Hospitals and healthcare clinics across the US have been announcing layoffs, service cuts, and closures in the weeks since Republicans passed a budget law that’s estimated to slash spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

Monday reporting by CNN highlighted that Augusta Medical Group is closing three of its rural clinics in Virginia. The company said in a statement earlier this month that the closures were “part of Augusta Health’s ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery.”

The CNN report noted that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger recently campaigned in Buena Vista, one of the rural communities that will be losing its clinic, to make the case that the cuts in the GOP’s budget law should be reversed.

Tim Layton, an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia, told CNN that rural areas figure to be particularly vulnerable to the Medicaid cuts given their lower population densities.

“You can expect those places to be impacted by now having people who don’t even have Medicaid,” he said. “With fewer people to spread fixed costs across, it becomes harder and harder to stay open.”

Layton also dismissed Republicans’ claims to have created protections for rural hospitals with a $50 billion rural health fund, as he described it as a “short-term patch” that will “go pretty quick.” KFF earlier this year estimated that rural Medicaid spending would fall by $137 billion as a result of the GOP law, which is nearly triple the money allocated by the health fund.

Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general, seized on the CNN report and used it to tie incumbent Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares to the national Republican Party’s policy agenda under President Donald Trump.

“The Big Bill causing three rural clinics in Virginia to close is just the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote in a social media post. “And it’s happening because Jason Miyares is too scared to fight against Trump’s Medicaid cuts that will throw nearly 300,000 Virginians off their healthcare.”

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten also ripped the GOP for passing Medicaid cuts that are hurting the communities they represent.

“Hundreds of healthcare providers in rural areas depend on Medicaid funding to keep doors open and care for patients,” she wrote. “But Trump’s Big Ugly Bill cuts millions from Medicaid, leaving these healthcare providers in jeopardy.”

Leor Tal, campaign director for Unrig Our Economy, said that the cuts to Medicaid looked particularly bad politically for Republicans when contrasted to the tax cuts that disproportionately benefit high-income Americans.

“These closures are the congressional Republican agenda in action: cuts to healthcare for rural moms and families, tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires,” Tal said. “These closures are not an accident—they are the direct result of a law written to serve the wealthy and leave working people behind, and unless Republicans in Congress reverse course, more working-class Americans will be left behind while the rich get even richer.”

Ice agent who shot man at traffic stop says his own injuries were ‘nothing major’

Police body camera footage released on Tuesday shows a federal immigration agent who fatally shot a Mexican immigrant describing his own injuries during a vehicle pursuit as “nothing major”, a contrast from the Trump administration’s characterization of events in suburban Chicago earlier this month.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said the officer was “seriously injured” by Silverio Villegas González, who allegedly tried to evade arrest after agents pulled over his car in Franklin Park. Nearly three hours of video and audio clips obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request shed new light on the shooting that has escalated tensions amid a federal immigration crackdown in the country’s third-largest city.

DHS said Villegas González drove his car at officers, dragging one of them “a significant distance”, leaving the officer to “fear for his life”. The officer then opened fire. Federal officials have said their officers weren’t wearing body cameras at the time. Franklin Park police footage shows local officers arriving at the roadside where a car had crashed into a cargo truck in Franklin Park, about 18 miles (29km) west of Chicago.

Two Ice agents attempt to explain to the police officer what had happened moments after an agent shot and killed Villegas González. “He tried to run us over,” an Ice agent says. “I got dragged a little bit,” said the injured agent, who can be seen walking and talking while wearing ripped jeans with blood on them. The videos show the first agent saying his partner had suffered “a left knee injury and some lacerations to his hands” while speaking over a radio. “Nothing major”, the injured officer says while putting his arms up to shrug off concerns. ...

Federal officials had previously said the agent suffered “multiple” and “serious injuries”. DHS, which has not identified either agent, said the injured officer who fired his weapon has been a member of Ice since 2021 and served in the military. DHS said it was the officer’s first time firing his weapon in a “use of force incident”.

Judge Rules Trump Admin VIOLATED Luigi Mangione's Right to Fair Trial

US border patrol collected DNA from thousands of US citizens for years, data shows

In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago’s Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which was sent to the FBI, according to a new report. The unnamed citizen was later admitted into the country. Their DNA was added to the FBI’s database of genetic material despite the lack of criminal charges.

The 25-year-old is one of about 2,000 US citizens whose DNA was collected between 2020 and 2024 by the Department of Homeland Security and shared with the FBI, researchers from Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology found in an analysis of recently released data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP officers took genetic material from some citizens as young as 14, according to the report.

“In a flagrant and alarming abuse of power, the DHS has been regularly collecting DNA from US citizens without legal justification,” said Stevie Glaberson, the director of research and advocacy at Georgetown’s privacy center. “The lack of checks on DHS’s collection power we think renders the program unconstitutional and violates the fourth amendment.”

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‘Families are dying’: an Ohio town suffering from fallout years after nuclear plant’s closure

Three years after starting work as an electrician at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Vina Colley started getting sick. The huge facility in the foothills of Appalachian Ohio was opened in 1954 to enrich weapons-grade uranium for the military as America’s cold war with the Soviet Union ramped up, and later, for commercial purposes. But in the decades since, Colley, her fellow former workers and the wider Pike county community find themselves paying a terrible price.

Colley, who advocates as president of Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (Press), says she was exposed to uranium hexafluoride and a host of other dangerous chemicals while working at the facility in the early 1980s. “We were working in confined spaces; we didn’t have any respiratory protection. Radiation was everywhere in these process buildings,” she says. Today, her body is hanging on. She’s had a total hysterectomy, found three tumors and suffers from congestive heart failure, peripheral neuropathy and beryllium disease. Her legs sometimes shake uncontrollably.

In 2018, her husband, who did not work at the plant, died of melanoma. Around the same time, her brother-in-law, who did work there, died of lymphoid cancer, as did his wife, who Colley recounts washed his contaminated clothes every day. Colley has lost one brother to small cell lung cancer and several months ago another brother died from pancreatic cancer. “So many people are suffering with illnesses, not just cancer,” she says.

For decades, the federal government attempted to compensate workers who had suffered health ailments associated with working at nuclear facilities. But in January, the Trump administration’s overhaul of the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) resulted in the indefinite suspension of review boards that oversee medical aid distribution to more than 700,000 cold war-era government employees who worked at 380 civilian and military nuclear programs around the country. All the while, Trump has called for a renewed push to increase nuclear enrichment activity for energy and national security reasons.

“He has endangered our workers’ lives, and the health of our nation,” says Colley of the move. She says she blames the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense for the calamity that’s befallen her community. “They regulate themselves,” she says. “The big thing here is that there is no overseer – the EPA can’t go in and take their own samples.” ... The cancer mortality rate in Pike county for the years 2018 to 2022 was 44% above the national rate and well exceeded the state level. At 70.6 years, Pike county’s life expectancy at birth is nearly eight years below the national rate.

Global investment in renewable energy up 10% on 2024 despite Trump rollback

Investment in renewable energy has continued to increase around the world despite moves by Donald Trump’s White House to cancel and derail low-carbon projects. In the first half of 2025, investment globally in renewable technologies and projects reached a record $386bn, up by about 10% on the same period last year.

Investment in energy around the world is likely to hit about $3.3 trillion (£2.4tn) this year. While more than $1tn of the total is still likely to flow into fossil fuels, double that amount – about $2.2tn – is expected for low-carbon forms of energy. A report from the Zero Carbon Analytics thinktank, published on Tuesday, shows that the rate of increase in renewable energy investment has not slowed significantly. Between the first half of 2023 and of 2024, the total increased by 12% and from 2022 to 2023 the increase was 17%.

Joanne Bentley-McKune, research analyst at the group, said: “This shows the sector still has momentum and underlying strength. There has been a decline [in the rate of growth] but it aligns with the average [of the last three years], and suggests that renewable energy investment is more resilient than might have been expected.” Finance for onshore and offshore wind increased by about a quarter in this first half of this year, reaching £126bn. China and Europe were the biggest markets for offshore wind.

Since January this year, at least $470bn in future clean energy finance has been announced, according to the report, of which roughly three-quarters is slated for energy grids and electricity transmission. This is good news for governments hoping to reach their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as ageing and inadequate grids have been a major bottleneck for the achievement of renewable energy goals. A separate report, also published on Tuesday, found that big companies are also continuing to press ahead with their climate promises, despite hostility from Donald Trump’s administration in the US, and some high-profile moves to row back on commitments.

Dodging New York traffic: how hundreds of whales are on a collision course with ships and boats

It is the beginning of August and a crowd is gathered on the deck of the American Princess cruise boat waiting for one thing – and they are not disappointed. Suddenly, a juvenile humpback whale, known as NYC0318 in local records, bursts through the surface of the water, engulfing thousands of small, oily fish. For those onboard the 29-metre (95ft) vessel, the scene is a thrill to watch, in part because it is taking place not far out at sea but just off the coast of Manhattan, New York. Among the tourists watching is Chris St Lawrence, a naturalist and the communications director of Gotham Whale, a volunteer-run marine research organisation in the city. He is not just looking out for the whales, he is watching for danger around them. “When they’re feeding, they can get really distracted, and they don’t care about boats,” he says.

When Gotham Whale began tracking humpbacks in 2012, its NYC humpback catalogue contained just five individuals. Today, it includes 470 whales – mostly transient juveniles such as NYC0318 drawn by the rich feeding opportunities of the New York Bight. But with the hunt for such bounty comes a growing problem. What was once a marine highway connecting southern breeding grounds to northern feeding areas has, since 2010, become a regular foraging destination, putting humpbacks on a collision course with maritime traffic.

Cargo vessels, tankers, cruise ships, fishing boats and recreational craft all cross humpback feeding grounds in the New York Bight – an area roughly the size of Switzerland, stretching from southern New Jersey to eastern Long Island and offshore to the Hudson Canyon, a deep submarine valley.

Danielle Brown, research director at Gotham Whale, says: “I don’t think people realise they are out there, and these shipping companies certainly don’t expect to see them.”

Lesley Thorne, a marine scientist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, says several factors are converging dangerously: recovering humpback populations, potential climate-related shifts in their food, and whales venturing into shipping corridors to feed. “It is this perfect storm of events,” she says.

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Also of Interest

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

China’s Ignored Role in Winning World War II

Why Trump’s 100K H-1B Visa Fee Won’t Work & How To Make It Work

Trump Admin Responds to Milei’s Failed Libertarian Policies With a US Taxpayer Bailout for Argentina

Elon Musk’s father accused of sexually abusing his children and stepchildren

Matt Hoh : On the Futility of War

Trump Slams United Nations, Global Migration & Climate Science in U.N. Speech

Chris Hedges DESTROYS Ezra Klein on Charlie Kirk | Useful Idiots

Tucker Carlson Responds to the Hysteria Over his Charlie Kirk Speech

Kirk Close Friend CONFIRMS Major Israel Pressure

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A Little Night Music

Lee Dorsey – Vista Vista

Lee Dorsey – Ya Ya

Lee Dorsey - Give It Up

Lee Dorsey – Can You Hear Me

Lee Dorsey – Ride Your Pony

Lee Dorsey – Four Corners

Lee Dorsey - Get out of My Life Woman

Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can

Lee Dorsey - Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky

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