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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sam Chatmon

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features early country blues singer Sam Chatmon. Enjoy!

^{Sam Chatmon - Sittin' On Top of the World}

"It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else. Nothing has a more diverse and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections."

-- Carl Jung

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News and Opinion

They Tell Us To Fear Muslims While The US Empire Terrorizes The World

The other day I published an essay titled “Zionists Push Islamophobia Because It’s Easier Than Getting People To Like Israel,” based on the conspicuous overlap between virulent Israel supporters and people who promote hatred of Muslims.

What I didn’t know at the time until readers alerted me was that Drop Site News had put out an article last month about a leaked polling report commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs which actually found that promoting Islamophobia is the most effective way of combatting the way worldwide public opinion has been turning against Israel.

“Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high,” Drop Site’s Ryan Grim writes. “By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’ Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country.”

So this is an actual, planned tactic. The shrieking vitriol we’ve been seeing about Islam and Muslims lately is being deliberately and systematically fomented as a calculated strategy.

If you notice posts that fuel Islamophobia or incite fear of jihad coming from Pro-Israel accts, it’s deliberate.

Israel commissioned polling to identify how to turn US sentiment back to favoring Israel. They found fueling Islamophobia will help increase Israel’s support by 20% pic.twitter.com/kyU4HyADPt

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) September 28, 2025

One of the moronic things about this latest wave of Islamophobic hysteria is that the US and Israel and their allies are vastly more murderous and tyrannical than the entire Muslim world combined.

The Trump administration is currently sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier and a bunch of warships to the waters off Latin America, where they’ve been waging a bogus new war on terror with increasingly frequent attacks on boats carrying alleged “narco-terrorists”. They’re not even disguising the fact that this is actually about preparing for regime change interventionism in Venezuela, a government that Washington has long sought to topple because of its massive oil reserves and noncompliance with the capitalist world order.

The US power alliance is constantly doing things like this. Waging wars, bombing countries, imposing starvation sanctions, staging coups, backing proxy conflicts, meddling in foreign elections — all with the goal of total planetary domination. It’s accepted as the baseline norm and the western press often barely even reports on its abuses (did you know Trump has bombed Somalia more than 80 times this year?), but that doesn’t make it any less murderous and tyrannical.

And we’re being told day in and day out that we all need to be afraid of Muslims, who even with a worldwide population of two billion still manage to be far, far less violent and destructive than the US-centralized power alliance.

Huge Trump admin escalation against Venezuela

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the deployment of the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford as well as its accompanying warships and attack planes to waters off Latin America, the Pentagon said on Friday, in a dramatic…

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) October 24, 2025

Hell, the most abusive Muslim states are US partners in crime like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose genocidal butchery in Yemen was backed by the US and its allies from 2015–2022. The UAE is funding genocidal atrocities in Sudan right this very moment. The US-centralized empire is the most destructive power structure on earth, and the most destructive Muslim states are backed by that same western power structure.

The empire we live under is everything we’re trained to fear. Our own rulers are the murderers. Our own rulers are the terrorists. Our own rulers are the tyrants. Our own rulers are the problem.

Our rulers want us shaking our fists at Muslims, immigrants, disobedient governments, and members of the other mainstream political party so that we don’t start shaking our fists at them.

Alastair Crooke : Netanyahu's War Against Israel

Fears Gaza ‘temporary’ ceasefire line could become permanent new border

A supposedly temporary yellow line marking Gaza’s ceasefire is taking an increasingly physical form as the precarious truce shows signs of stalling, with potentially dramatic consequences for Palestine’s future. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have started installing yellow concrete markers every 200 metres to delineate the area remaining under Israeli control during the first phase of the ceasefire.

The line cuts Gaza roughly in half. In the western part, Hamas is seeking to reassert its control in the vacuum left by the partial Israeli withdrawal, carrying out public executions of rival militia or gang members it claims are backed by Israel. In the other half of Gaza, covering the eastern strip as well as the northern and southern borders, the IDF has been reinforcing scores of military outposts and firing at anyone approaching the line, whether it has been marked with yellow blocks or not.

“In our area, the yellow lines aren’t clearly visible. We don’t know where they start or end. I think they’re clearer in other places, but here, nothing is defined,” Mohammad Khaled Abu al-Hussain, a 31-year-old father of five, said. His family’s house is in al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis and just east of the yellow line, in the IDF-controlled zone. “As soon as we get close to our homes, bullets start flying from every direction, and sometimes small drones, the quadcopters, hover above us, watching every move,” he said. “Yesterday, I was with my friend when we suddenly came under heavy gunfire. We threw ourselves to the ground and stayed there until the shooting stopped. I couldn’t reach my house. ...

Israel insisted on Sunday that it would maintain control of security in Gaza. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told ministers it would decide for itself where and when to strike its foes and which countries would be allowed to send troops to police the truce. ... Two weeks into the ceasefire, more than 20 Palestinians are still being killed on average each day, many of them close to the yellow line. Consequently, very few of the displaced are returning to the area under Israeli control.

The political hurdles remain immense to moving to a second phase of the ceasefire, which would involve Hamas being disarmed and replaced by an multinational stabilisation force, and an IDF withdrawal from the yellow line to positions closer to the Gaza border. The right wing of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is fiercely opposed to further withdrawal, and the internationalisation of control over Gaza. In the impasse, the yellow line continues to take on a more permanent form, and is increasingly referred to in Israeli media as a “new border”.

Jeremy Scahill on Gaza Ceasefire, Talking to Hamas & Israel's Doctrine of Dehumanizing Palestinians

A Minefield in Gaza

After two years of unrelenting war, the world breathed a sigh of relief on October 9 as the first phase of Trump’s 20 point plan for Gaza went into effect. But, on October 13, while hostage release celebrations were taking place in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, five children playing amid the rubble near Al-Shifa hospital were injured, two severely, when an unexploded ordinance (UXO) went off.

In December 2023, only two months into the war, the Wall Street Journal called Israel’s actions in Gaza the "most devastating urban warfare in the modern record”. By April 2024, Euromed estimated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of explosives on the area, an amount exceeding all of the bombs dropped on London, Dresden, and Hamburg throughout World War II. This month, as the fragile ceasefire came into effect, the Gaza Government of Media office estimated the tonnage to be 200,000, the equivalent of thirteen Hiroshimas.

According to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), around 5% to 10% of the munitions used by Israel in the war in Gaza failed to detonate on impact. But, the duds are far from innocuous. Like the anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines being used right now in Ukraine and Myanmar, the UXO lie in wait, seemingly innocuous, ready to kill or maim whoever, soldier or civilian, adult or child, is unfortunate enough to come upon them.

The first widespread use of landmines occurred during the American Civil War, when the Confederate army invented and instituted them as an affordable way to compensate for shortages of resources and manpower. An immediate debate arose on the ethics of their use.

In WWI, an extensive number of anti-tank landmines were laid by the Germans. When the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1918, it obligated Germany to provide the locations of the mines and assist in their removal.

In WWII, landmines were used heavily by both sides. After Germany lost the war, their POWs were forced by Allied troops to undertake the extensive and dangerous job of removing the mines. In Denmark, around 1,000 Germans, many of them mere teenagers, were either killed or maimed in the process.

1.5 million mines were laid during the 1967 war by Israeli, Jordanian, and Syrian forces. It wasn’t until 2011, following the tragedy of an 11-year-old Jewish-Israeli boy losing his leg after tripping a leftover mine while playing outside his home in the Golan Heights, that cleanup efforts began in earnest.

In 1992, Human Rights Watch and five other NGOs launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and in 1997, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (known informally as the Ottawa or Mine Ban Treaty) was signed by 122 countries.

Today, 165 countries, more than three-quarters of the world’s states, are party to the convention. Jordan joined in 1998, and Palestine in 2017. Israel, however, insists that, due to security needs, they are unable to commit to a total ban on landmines.

Although the last verified use of landmines by Israel was in 2011 (they have denied media reports that they used anti-personnel mines to seal off the Gaza border right after Hamas’s October 7 attack), their actions over the past two years have turned the Gaza Strip into a dense, unmapped minefield.

According to the aid group, Humanity and Inclusion, surface clearance of UXO in Gaza could be accomplished in 20 to 30 years, but full clearance, to get to the UXO buried deep underground, will take generations. The organization is ready to send a seven-person team of experts into the enclave to begin identifying the UXO in such essential places as hospitals and bread bakeries. Unfortunately, Israel has yet to give them permission to start their work and has refused to allow the equipment to decommission and remove the UXO, due to it being considered “dual use,” having both civilian and military potential.

As Human Rights Watch has articulated, the United States is a party to the conflict in Gaza, providing weapons, intelligence, and even direct participation in the war, and as such, the US is responsible under international law for aiding and assisting in internationally wrongful acts “with knowledge of the circumstances.” They have been calling for an end to arms sales and military assistance to Israel, targeted sanctions on Israeli officials, and the suspension of preferential trade agreements with Israel. These actions will be necessary if we are going to be able to stop the creation of more UXO and begin the process of clearing the territory so that it is again habitable for children and other living things.

ICE detains British journalist after criticism of Israel on US tour

British journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.

A statement from Cair said it was “a blatant affront to free speech” to detain Hamdi for criticizing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza while he engaged on a speaking tour in the US. A Trump administration official added in a separate statement that Hamdi is facing deportation. “Our attorneys and partners are working to address this injustice,” Cair’s statement said. The statement also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to immediately account for and release Mr Hamdi”, saying his only “‘crime’ is criticizing a foreign government” that Cair accused of having “committed genocide”.

The press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote of Hamdi in a social media post: “This individual’s visa was revoked, and he is in ICE custody pending removal”. McLaughlin’s post also said: “Those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country.”

During his tour, Hamdi spoke on Saturday at the annual gala for Cair’s chapter in Sacramento. He was expected to speak on Sunday at the gala for the Florida chapter of Cair.

McLaughlin’s post about Hamdi’s detention was shared by Trump administration ally Laura Loomer, who took credit for his being taken into custody. Loomer, who has called herself a “white advocate” and a “proud Islamophobe”, has often peddled conspiracy theories such as endorsing claims that the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were an “inside job”.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted punk band Bob Vylan prosecuted for chanting “Death to the IDF!” Now he’s bullying police to let Israeli football thugs into the U.K. to chant “Death to the Arabs!”

Jonathan Cook: A Tale of Two Chants

June 2025: Keir Starmer’s government urge police to investigate the punk band Bob Vylan for inciting racial hatred and public order offences after chanting “Death, death to the IDF!” at the Glastonbury music festival. Lisa Nandy, Britain’s sports and culture secretary, calls the chant against the IDF — and the BBC’s inadvertent broadcasting of it — “appalling and unacceptable.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer terms the chant “appalling hate speech.” They agree that Bob Vylan and another band, Kneecap, should have never been given “a platform” by either Glastonbury or the BBC. There is widespread agreement in the media and Westminster that the chant is evidence of anti-Semitism. ...

October 2025: West Midlands police announce that they are barring Tel Aviv Maccabi fans from attending a match in Birmingham against Aston Villa next month because of fears of violence. Tel Aviv’s supporters are notorious for their racist and violent behaviour, both inside Israel and abroad. Nearly a year ago, there were ugly riots in Amsterdam’s streets provoked by the Tel Aviv fans — many of whom have served or are serving in the IDF — after their team lost against local side Ajax. Inside the stadium and later on the streets, the Tel Aviv fans could be heard chanting ”Death to the Arabs” and “There are no more schools in Gaza because we killed all the kids!”

Despite the Tel Aviv fans instigating the Amsterdam violence, much of it caught on video, Dutch and British politicians and media initially went out of their way to portray the Tel Aviv fans as the victims — until, confronted with the evidence, that narrative collapsed. For example, David Lammy, then Britain’s foreign secretary, lost no time writing on “I utterly condemn these abhorrent acts of violence and stand with Israeli and Jewish people across the world.”

It was precisely these “violent clashes and hate crime offences” in Amsterdam that lead West Midlands police to decide its officers will not be able to safely police the Europa League match in Birmingham, scheduled for Nov.6. They term it “high risk”. But once again, Starmer and his ministers seek to revive the early, confected Amsterdam narrative, this time suggesting that it is the Tel Aviv football hooligans that are in danger from Aston Villa fans, that any resentment from Aston Villa fans towards Tel Aviv fans is driven solely by anti-Semitism rather than by the Tel Aviv fans’ long record of genocidal chants and racist violence, and that the police decision to bar the Tel Aviv hooligans is capitulation to “anti-Semitism.”

But as happened with the official Amsterdam narrative, Starmer’s utterly implausible narrative regarding the Aston Villa game collapses almost immediately. On Sunday, Israeli football authorities are forced to call off a derby between Maccabi and another Tel Aviv team after both sets of fans riot.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump’s attempt at Venezuelan regime-change and his Gaza Illusions

Israel Launched Airstrike in Gaza on Saturday After Getting US Approval

Israel launched an airstrike in Gaza on Saturday after notifying the US and getting approval to launch the attack, the Israeli news site Ynet has reported.

The Israeli military launched the strike in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in central Gaza, claiming it targeted a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) who was planning an attack on the IDF, a claim PIJ strongly denied.

PIJ said in a statement that the claim that its military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was preparing an attack was “a pure false claim and fabrication through which the occupation seeks to justify its aggression and violation of the ceasefire.” PIJ, which supported the ceasefire deal, called on mediating countries to “compel” Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza.

The Ynet report said the alleged PIJ operative who was targeted was wounded, not killed. According to Israeli sources, the strike came after Israel passed intelligence to the US, and the attack was only launched after coordination with US Central Command (CENTCOM), which included notifying CENTCOM Commander Adm Brad Cooper. CENTCOM has established a military post in southern Gaza where it is overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

"Rubio's Ideological Project": What's Driving Trump's Campaign Against Venezuela?

US Deploying Aircraft Carrier Strike Group Near Venezuela as Regime Change Push Heats Up

The US military is deploying an aircraft carrier to the waters near South America as the Trump administration continues its military buildup in the Caribbean and its push toward war with Venezuela.

Sean Parnell, a US War Department spokesman, wrote on X on Friday that the USS Gerald Ford and its strike group, which includes five destroyers, will be heading to US Southern Command’s area of responsibility to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere.”

The Gerald Ford has been deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, and according to a ship tracker, it is currently off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea. According to USNI News, it would take the aircraft carrier at least a week to reach SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility from Croatia.

The US has been stepping up the military pressure on Venezuela by flying bombers near its coast and continuing its bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the region. A US Navy destroyer, the USS Gravely, has also arrived in Trinidad and Tobago for joint exercises near the coast of Venezuela.

Battle for Pokrovsk nears its end

Zelensky Admits Pokrovsk Situation Critical; Russia To Destroy Trapped Troops Ukraine Blackout Looms

Argentina goes to polls amid economic crisis and Trump ‘interference’

Argentina’s radical libertarian leader, Javier Milei, is facing a pivotal moment in his presidency with voters set to deliver their verdict on his two-year-old administration on Sunday against a backdrop of political and economic crisis and accusations that his ally Donald Trump is meddling in the country’s affairs.

A poor showing in Sunday’s midterm election would be a hammer blow to Milei, who took power in December 2023 pledging to kickstart “a new era of peace and prosperity” by slashing spending and inflation. Milei has had some success in taming triple-digit inflation, but in recent months the 55-year-old former TV celebrity has been buffeted by a succession of crises, including corruption scandals involving his sister, and chief-of-staff, Karina Milei, and another close ally who was linked to an alleged drug trafficker, and a sell-off of Argentina’s currency, the peso.

In August, Milei was pelted with stones by angry voters and the following month his party, La Libertad Avanza, suffered a stinging defeat in the provincial election in Buenos Aires, where 40% of Argentina’s 45 million citizens live. The US president, who is Milei’s most powerful foreign friend, has thrown him a lifeline in the form of a bailout that could total US$40bn (£30bn). But even Trump painted a dire picture of the South American country’s stagnating economy last week, telling reporters: “Argentina is fighting for its life … They are dying.”

Trump has warned he could axe the aid package if Milei fares poorly in Sunday’s vote, when half of the seats in the 257-member lower house are up for grabs as well as 24 seats in the 72-member senate. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump said last week while hosting Milei at the White House.

Trump’s apparent attempt to influence Argentine voters is not his first intervention in South American politics this year. Starting in July, the US president set about trying to derail the trial of his far-right ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with a campaign of tariffs and sanctions against Brazil and its officials. But that campaign failed, boosting the political fortunes of Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, while also failing to save Bolsonaro from a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup.

In Argentina, Milei’s political opponents also predict Trump’s manoeuvres will backfire.

Yet Another Sign the Empire Is DYING Before Our Eyes | Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson

US judge rules ICE illegally detained man whose daughter is battling cancer

The detention by immigration authorities of a Chicago man whose 16-year-old daughter is undergoing treatment for advanced cancer is illegal, and he must be given a bond hearing by 31 October, a federal judge has ruled. Attorneys for Ruben Torres Maldonado, 40, who was detained on 18 October, have petitioned for his release as his deportation case goes through the system. While US district judge Jeremy Daniel said in an order on Friday that Torres’s detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is illegal and violates his due process rights, he also said he could not order his immediate release.

“While sympathetic to the plight the petitioner’s daughter faces due to her health concerns, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant statutes, rules, and precedents,” the judge wrote on Friday.

Torres’s attorney took the ruling as a win – for now. “We’re pleased that the judge ruled in our favor in determining that ICE is illegally detaining Ruben. We will now turn the fight to immigration court so we can secure Ruben’s release on bond while he applies for permanent residence status,” his attorney, Kalman Resnick, said in a statement on Friday night.

Torres, a painter and home renovator, was detained at a suburban Home Depot store. His daughter, Ofelia Torres, was diagnosed in December with a rare and aggressive form of soft-tissue cancer called metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma and has been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Torres entered the US in 2003, according to his lawyers. He and his partner, Sandibell Hidalgo, also have a four-year-old son. The children are both US citizens, according to court records.

BREAD LINES: 40 Million To Go HUNGRY As Food Stamps RUN DRY

Trump’s move to pay troops amid shutdown sets dangerous precedent, experts warn

By ordering that US military personnel receive paychecks even though the government is shut down, Donald Trump is seeing to the needs of a politically untouchable constituency that has been caught up in the congressional logjam over federal spending. But experts who spoke to the Guardian warn that he is doing so in a way that is almost certainly illegal and, if left unchecked, bodes ill for Congress’s constitutional authority to control government spending. Some fear it could set the stage for the president to unilaterally fund other contentious decisions in the future, such as the deployment of the military on US soil.

“I’m with the people who believe that there’s really no good legal justification for moving the money around in this way,” said Phil Wallach, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the separation of powers in the US government. “There’s no congressional authorization for troop payment for this new fiscal year. So it’s going pretty far out on a legal limb, and just sort of daring anybody to do anything about it. Because, of course, substantially, nobody thinks it’s very bad to pay the troops.”

The federal government shut down at the start of October after Democrats and Republicans in Congress failed to agree on legislation to extend funding beyond the end of September. About 700,000 federal workers have been furloughed, while hundreds of thousands of others continue to report to work, but are not getting paychecks.

Troops were paid during previous government shutdowns because Congress had either approved defense department spending, or passed bills specifically to guarantee their salaries, said Bobby Kogan, a former White House office of management and budget official who is now with the Center for American Progress, a liberal thinktank. Congress took neither of those actions this time, though lawmakers have unsuccessfully tried to get legislation addressing federal workers’ pay through Congress, as recently as this week.

Last week, Trump acted unilaterally, repurposing a reported $8bn in defense department funds meant for research and development to pay the military in the middle of October. Kogan called the decision “super duper duper illegal” under federal law. “If you try to spend money you have on the wrong purpose, you’re in trouble. And if you try to spend money into a purpose that you don’t have money for that purpose, then you’re in trouble as well,” he said.

Trump RAISES TARIFFS on Canada For Running Ad He Doesn't Like

There's no problem finding $20 billion to give to an Argentinian dictator, but Americans will have to just starve...

Food benefits set to expire for 41 million people as US shutdown continues

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Saturday that food benefits under one of the country’s biggest social assistance programs will not be issued in November amid the ongoing federal government shutdown. The shutdown was in its 25th day at the time of the announcement, which came after more than 200 Democrats in the US House of Representatives on Friday called on USDA to draw on its emergency reserves to fund November food benefits.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress remain at an impasse over how to fund and reopen the federal government. “Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the USDA said in a post on its website. “At this time, there will be no benefits issued” on 1 November. More than 41 million depend on the monthly payments, according to the USDA. In some states, such as New Mexico, dependence on the program is as high as 21% of residents, it said.

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TAX THE RICH: Kathy Hochul HECKLED At Fiery Zohran Rally

Hispanics’ support of Trump plunges since he started second term

Donald Trump’s standing with Hispanic adults has dropped notably since he took office at the start of the year, according to a new poll. Polling by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research suggests growing unease among a voting bloc that was crucial to the president’s 2024 re-election victory. The October survey shows 25% of Hispanic adults now hold a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down sharply from 44% in an AP-Norc poll conducted just before he began his second term.

At the same time, the share of Hispanic respondents who believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction has risen from 63% in March to 73% in October. Hispanic adults also expressed less confidence in Trump’s management of the economy and immigration, two key issues that once bolstered his support during last year’s campaign. Overall approval of his job performance has also fallen, with 41% approving of Trump’s handling of the presidency in March, compared with just 27% this month.

Hispanic voters played a crucial role in helping Trump win the presidency for the second time – nearly half of Hispanic voters backed him in 2024. His support among Hispanic voters was 12 points higher than in 2020 (48% in 2024, 36% in 2020). On the other hand, voting for the Democratic candidate fell from 61% to 51%. ...

Economists see immigration and economic concerns as intertwined, with both low-wage and high-skilled Latino workers feeling the impact of trade uncertainty and strict immigration measures. Studies have shown immigrants actually help improve local economies by boosting consumer spending and filling labor shortages.

Gavin Newsom confirms he is considering 2028 presidential run

Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, told CBS News Sunday Morning he plans to make a decision on whether to run for president in 2028 once the 2026 midterm elections are over.

Newsom’s term as governor ends in January 2027 and he is not able to run again due to term limits, but cautioned that a decision is years away.

The California governor has emerged as a high-profile critic of the Trump administration through his social media accounts and push of a ballot measure that would increase Democrats’ congressional seats in response to Republican redistricting efforts – a move that has made him a target for critics. ...

A CBS poll conducted earlier this month found 72% of Democrats and 48% of all registered voters said Newsom should run for president in 2028. Since Trump took office, Newsom’s favorability has increased to an average of 33.5% from about 30% and his unfavorability has decreased from an average of over 40% to 38.4%, according to Decision Desk HQ.

‘I am not done’: Kamala Harris says she may run for president again

Kamala Harris said she was not done with politics and strongly suggested that she was considering another bid for president.

In an interview scheduled to air on the BBC on Sunday morning, Harris said that she would “possibly” be the next president, making the clearest suggestion to date that she would make another run for the White House in 2028 despite lagging far behind in the polls.

Harris insisted that she had not yet made a decision, but that she was confident that there would eventually be a woman in the White House and her political career was not over.

“I am not done,” the former vice-president told the BBC. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.” Harris dismissed polls that place her as an outsider to win a place on the Democratic ticket – currently ranking behind even Hollywood actor Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

Mamdani RESPONDS To RACIST SMEARS in Home Stretch of Campaign

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‘I was contaminated’: study reveals how hard it is to avoid pesticide exposure

For decades, Khoji Wesselius has noticed the oily scent of pesticides during spraying periods when the wind has blown through his tiny farming village in a rural corner of the Netherlands. Now, after volunteering in an experiment to count how many such substances people are subjected to, Wesselius and his wife are one step closer to understanding the consequences of living among chemical-sprayed fields of seed potato, sugar beet, wheat, rye and onion.

“We were shocked,” said Wesselius, a retired provincial government worker, who had exposure to eight different pesticides through his skin, with even more chemicals found through tests of his blood, urine and stool. “I was contaminated by 11 sorts of pesticides. My wife, who is more strict in her organic nourishment, had seven sorts of pesticides.”

Regulators closely monitor dietary intake of pesticides when deciding whether they are safe enough for the market, but little attention has been paid to the effects of breathing them in or absorbing them through the skin. According to a new study, even people who live far from farms are exposed to several different types of pesticides from non-dietary sources – including banned substances.

“What’s most surprising is that we cannot avoid exposure to pesticides: they are in our direct environment and our study indicates direct contact,” said Paul Scheepers, a molecular epidemiologist at Radboud University and co-author of the study. “The real question is how much is taken up [by the body] and that’s not so easy to answer.”

The researchers got 641 participants in 10 European countries to wear silicone wristbands continuously for one week to capture external exposure to 193 pesticides. In laboratory tests, they detected 173 of the substances they tested for, with pesticides found in every wristband and an average of 20 substances for every person who took part. Non-organic farmers had the highest number of pesticides in their wristbands, with a median of 36, followed by organic farmers and people who live near farms, such as Wesselius and his wife. Consumers living far from farms had the fewest, with a median of 17 pesticides.

Farmer WARNS Trump Is KILLING U.S. Agriculture - Impending U.S. Food Collapse?!

Rancher FURIOUS Over Trump's Argentina Beef Scheme

Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows

Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals. The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence. The Seattle firm operates hundreds of active facilities, with many more in development despite concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry.

Amazon defends its approach and has taken steps to manage how efficient its water use is, but it has faced criticism over transparency. Microsoft and Google regularly publish figures for their water consumption, but Amazon has never publicly disclosed how much water its server farms consume. When designing a campaign for water efficiency, the company’s cloud computing division chose to account for only a smaller water usage figure that does not include all the ways its datacentres use water so as to minimise the risk to its reputation, according to a leaked memo seen by SourceMaterial and the Guardian.

Amazon as a whole consumed 105bn gallons of water in total in 2021, as much as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco, according to the memo. ...

In the memo, ahead of the campaign’s launch, executives grappled with whether to include public disclosures about “secondary” use – water used in generating the electricity to power its datacentres. They warned that full transparency was “a one-way door” and advised keeping AWS’s projections confidential, even as they feared that their advice could invite accusations of a cover-up. “Amazon hides its water consumption” was one negative headline the authors anticipated.

Executives opted to use only the relatively smaller figure of primary use, 7.7bn gallons per year, roughly equivalent to 11,600 Olympic swimming pools, when calculating progress towards internal targets because of “reputational risk”, fearing bad publicity if the full scale of Amazon’s consumption was revealed, the document shows. Ultimately as part of the campaign for water efficiency, Amazon aimed to cut its estimated 7.7bn gallon primary consumption to 4.9bn by 2030 – without addressing secondary use.

India trials Delhi cloud seeding to clean air in world’s most polluted city

The Delhi regional government is trialling a cloud-seeding experiment to induce artificial rain, in an effort to clean the air in the world’s most polluted city. The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has been proposing the use of cloud seeding as a way to bring Delhi’s air pollution under control since it was elected to lead the regional government this year.

Cloud seeding involves using aircraft or drones to add to clouds particles of silver iodide, which have a structure similar to ice. Water droplets cluster around the particles, modifying the structure of the clouds and increasing the chance of precipitation. Months of unpredictable weather over India’s capital had put the BJP’s cloud-seeding plans on pause. But days after Delhi’s air quality once again fell into the hazardous range after Diwali festival, and a thick brown haze settled over the city, the government said the scheme would finally be rolled out.

The Delhi environment minister, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, said the first trial flight – during which seeding flares were launched into the sky – was conducted on Thursday. The city’s chief minister, Rekha Gupta, said: “If conditions remain favourable, Delhi will experience its first artificial rain on October 29.”

Experts who have studied cloud seeding say it is no panacea. It is supposed to produce more frequent and heavier rain than the clouds would otherwise release, but the effect is often small. The process also requires clouds, and they are often not present over Delhi during winter when pollution peaks. It also does not address the root causes of pollutants.

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