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The Evening Blues - 7-14-25

Submitted by joe shikspack on Mon, 07/14/2025 - 3:00pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Little Willie John

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Little Willie John. Enjoy!

^{Little Willie John - All Around The World}

"To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life."

-- Woodrow Wilson

News and Opinion

Australia Unveils Plan To Fight “Antisemitism” By Crushing Free Speech

As Australia’s dear friend Israel announces its plan to move Gaza’s entire population into concentration camps to prepare them for deportation and murder them if they refuse, the Australian government is laser-focused on tackling the problem of — you guessed it — antisemitism.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a big spectacle of announcing a new strategy to combat Australia’s completely fictional epidemic of “antisemitism” on Thursday, waving around a 20-page plan which is being denounced nationwide as a Trumpian agenda to stomp out free speech in advancement of the interests of the state of Israel.

The author of the plan is Jillian Segal, a career Israel lobbyist born in apartheid South Africa who was named Australia’s first Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism by the Albanese government last year. Segal has had an established record of defending and supporting Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza. Her husband John Roth directs one of the major funders of Advance, a climate denying right wing lobbying group which helped kill Australia’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023.

Segal’s plan is being slammed as “Trumpian” by free speech advocates because it advocates implementing the US president’s policy of cutting off federal funding for universities and other public institutions deemed to be promoting the spread of antisemitism, which of course in effect means protesting against the actions of the Israeli government. Segal writes that she personally “will work with government to enable government funding to be withheld, where possible, from universities, programs or individuals within universities that facilitate, enable or fail to act against antisemitism.”

Segal calls for all public institutions to be forced into espousing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been opposed around the world for its conflation of criticism of Israel with hateful actions toward Jews. Under the IHRA definition it is considered antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavor, or to compare Israel’s abuses to those of Nazi Germany — both of which are entirely legitimate criticisms which should be put forward far more often than they are.

Here is a summary of the full scope of Segal’s plan written up by the ABC’s Tom Crowley:

Education — a greater role for the Envoy to resource and educate the community, schools, businesses and public institutions about antisemitism and to embed an understanding of antisemitism in law enforcement, government agencies and the school curriculum.

Universities — call to withhold public funding to universities or those within them deemed to “facilitate, enable or fail to act” on antisemitism, and an inquiry into “clusters” of antisemitism if encampments continue into 2026.

Media — a new role for the Envoy to encourage media organisations to “avoid accepting false or distorted narratives” and encourage public broadcasters to “accurately and positively” represent Jewish history and culture and make programs that support “social cohesion”.

Arts — a recommendation that there be protocols for arts festivals and organisations to respond to antisemitic incidents, with public funding able to be withheld similar to universities.

Policing — a permanent standing arrangement for law enforcement agencies to co-operate on investigating antisemitism, similar to the Avalite taskforce set up after the Adass synagogue attack.

Online hate — stronger regulation of online hate speech and algorithms, and the ability to support “trusted voices” to refute antisemitism on social media, plus a review of hate speech laws.

Migration — screen visa applicants for antisemitism and ensure the Migration Act effectively facilitates visa cancellations for antisemitism.

As you can see, Segal is demanding the authority to exert control over pretty much every major aspect of Australian society. She is claiming she wants to do this to combat antisemitism, but everyone knows she actually wants to do this to promote the interests of Israel, because that’s what these things always mean in practice.

"Segal seems fixated on driving a pro-Israel narrative and repressing legitimate criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza" – Dr Max Kaiser, Jewish Council of Australia pic.twitter.com/G4UZWO7LMJ

— Anthony Klan (@Anthony_Klan) July 10, 2025

Segal’s plan claims that “manipulated narratives in the legacy media” are driving antisemitism and accuses the Australian press of “misinformation”, asserting that “publicly funded media organisations should be required to uphold clear editorial standards that promote fair, responsible reporting to avoid perpetuating incorrect or distorted narratives or representations of Jews.”

Segal says that under her plan she will “monitor media organisations to encourage accurate, fair and responsible reporting and assist them to meet their editorial standards and commitment to impartiality and balance and to avoid accepting false or distorted narratives.”

Asked on the ABC on Thursday to list some of the changes that she would make to the reporting of public news broadcasters, Segal adamantly refused to give a single example, despite being repeatedly pressed to do so by the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson.

The following morning Segal was interviewed on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast and pressed on the same issue, where she finally relented and gave one single example of absolutely breathtaking ridiculousness.

“Six months ago or so,” Segal said, “the ABC ran a story repeatedly about a hospital in Gaza that had been bombed. And there was incomplete information, as there is only perhaps information emanating from Hamas, but it was alleged to be, the ABC reported as fact, that it had been bombed by Israel. And then horrified people were upset and the Jewish community was looked at with disgust and worse. And then it turned out indeed that it was not bombed by Israel, that it had been from Gaza itself, and it had been a bomb that had fallen short.”

Segal appears to be referring to one of the early bombings of the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, which occurred not six months ago but in October of 2023. Israel and various western institutions claimed the hospital was accidentally bombed by Palestinian forces while analysts like Forensic Architecture say the attack came from Israeli forces, accusing Israel of peddling misinformation about the strike. Since that time Israel has deliberately demolished Gaza’s health infrastructure with hundreds of attacks on healthcare facilities, and the al-Ahli Hospital has been bombed no fewer than eight separate times.

Segal’s one and only example is a perfect illustration of the kind of extreme bias she wants to impose upon Australian consciousness, which obviously has no place in a free society.

The fraudulent antisemitism panic in Australia has been reinvigorated by two events last week that were seized upon with shrieking hysteria by the mainstream press, none of which showed any signs of an antisemitism crisis in our nation.

As Paul Gregoire explains for the Sydney Criminal Lawyers blog, Australia is being whipped up into a frenzy by the conflation of one incident in which a Sydney man set fire to the doors of a Melbourne synagogue with a different and completely legitimate act of anti-genocide activism.

The synagogue attacker is yet another story of a shady individual with no known record of antisemitic ideology or pro-Palestinian sentiment perpetrating an apparent antisemitic attack, following a long stretch of supposed antisemitic incidents which turned out to have been staged by organized crime operatives with no ideological motive.

The mainstream media is once again manufacturing an ‘antisemitism crisis’ that does not exist by misreporting incidents and the motives behind them. #sydneycriminallawyers #antisemitism #melbourne #media https://t.co/iRJbfjWO6e

— SydneyCriminalLawyer (@sydcrimlawyers) July 10, 2025

This one dubious story of a man committing an actual crime against an actual Jewish place of worship has been obnoxiously mentioned in the same breath as another unconnected incident by the entire Australian political/media class all week. Protesters gathered at the Miznon restaurant in Melbourne to demonstrate against the establishment’s Israeli co-owner, who is also the spokesperson for the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation where Israeli soldiers admit they’ve been massacring starving civilians seeking food. A fight broke out with a group from the restaurant across from Miznon who the protesters say instigated the attack and who are clearly seen assaulting the pro-Palestinian activists in the available video footage.

The entire so-called “antisemitism crisis” in Australia is like this. The overwhelming majority of it is just people criticizing Israel and trying to do what they can to stop the live-streamed genocide they’ve been watching on their screens every day for two years, which is then deliberately conflated with the actions of a few fringe actors with frequently suspicious motives.

“Antisemitism” means criticism of Israel. That’s just what it means now. It used to mean something else, but years of bad faith actors using that word in the most dishonest ways imaginable to defend the most horrific things you’ve ever seen has changed the definition. It is no longer possible to separate that word from this sustained campaign of mass deception.

Anti-Israel sentiment is often treated as if it's the product of mass antisemitism or weird hypnosis whose tricks we'll never understand. But the truth is pretty simple: people don't like Israel because Israel is committing genocide. That's it. https://t.co/H9qPMc6IaS

— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) June 30, 2025

It’s the genocide. People are mad at the genocide. They don’t hate Jews, they hate genocide. This was explained quite nicely the other day by Jack Mirkinson, who wrote the following about the controversy surrounding musical duo Bob Vylan’s chants of “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury Festival last month:

“Left unmentioned in any of this freakout is the context in which it is taking place. Why was Bob Vylan talking about Palestine right now? Why was a giant crowd of people so receptive to these comments? Why has this become such a totemic issue?

“The answer will not shock you. It’s because Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza for nearly two years.

“That’s it! That’s why. People don’t like genocide, and when they see a country committing genocide, they stop liking that country so much. If the genocide ended, a lot of people would be less mad at Israel than they are right now.

“This isn’t rocket science. But — and this is the crucial thing — because our world’s leading politicians and media outlets fundamentally don’t see opposition to the genocide as a legitimate viewpoint to hold, they can’t quite comprehend what is happening all around them.”

That’s it. It’s the genocide, stupid. That’s all this has ever been about. I wish I could force every pundit, politician and journalist in Australia to listen to these words.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Why the US Is In Decline

Israeli airstrike kills at least 10, including six children, at Gaza water station

An Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people, including six children, who were waiting to collect water in Gaza, Palestinian health officials have said. A separate airstrike on Sunday hit a home, killing nine people, and 31 others were shot dead near an aid distribution site on Saturday, marking another bloody weekend as the conflict’s death toll exceeded 58,000.

Witnesses said a drone fired a missile at a crowd holding empty jerry cans beside a water tanker in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. About 20 children and 14 adults were lined up when the strike occurred, Ramadan Nassar, who lives in the area, told the Associated Press. Al-Awda hospital received 10 bodies, including six children, health officials said.

The Israel Defense Forces said a “technical error” caused a strike aimed at an Islamic Jihad “terrorist” to fall dozens of metres from the target, and that the incident was under review.

The nine people killed in the separate strike on the home in Zawaida also included children. The 31 Palestinians shot dead on Saturday were on their way to a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli-backed logistics group, near Rafah in southern Gaza, according to hospital officials and witnesses.

The Red Cross said its field hospital recorded its largest influx of dead in more than a year of operation after the shootings, and that the overwhelming majority of the more than 100 people injured had gunshot wounds.

‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

The “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian. Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said. Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.

“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened,” Olmert said. That would be “the inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said. Olmert did not consider Israel’s current campaign was ethnic cleansing because, he said, evacuating civilians to protect them from fighting was legal under international law, and Palestinians had returned to areas where military operations had finished. ...

Extreme suffering in Gaza and settler atrocities in the West Bank were fuelling growing anger against Israel that cannot all be written off as antisemitism, Olmert said. “In the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel,” he said. “We make a discount to ourselves saying: ‘They are antisemites.’ I don’t think that they are only antisemites, I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks.

“This is a painful but normal reaction of people who say: ‘Hey, you guys have crossed every possible line.’” Attitudes inside Israel might start to shift only when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure, he said, calling for stronger international intervention in the absence of serious political opposition at home.

Netanyahu Had Ceasefire Deal in April 2024 But Kept Gaza War Going to Stay in Power: NY Times

Israeli settlers kill American-Palestinian visiting relatives in West Bank

A 20-year-old Palestinian-American was killed by Israeli settlers while visiting relatives in the occupied West Bank, his family have said. Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet was reportedly beaten by Israeli settlers while he was on his family’s farm in an area near Ramallah. A group then prevented ambulances from reaching Musallet for three hours, according to the family, who said he died of his injuries before reaching hospital.

“I was the first one to reach Saif,” said Mohammed Nael Hijaz, a 22-year-old friend of Musallet. “He was not moving when I got there and he could barely breathe. There was time to save him.”

Another Palestinian man, 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi, was fatally shot during the attack and was left to bleed to death, the Palestinian health ministry said. The funeral for both men will be held on Sunday so they can be buried together, according to a cousin of Musallet. ...

A spokesperson for the US Department of State said that it was aware of reports of the death of a US citizen in the West Bank and that it was “ready to provide consular services”, declining to comment further “out of respect for privacy of the family”. In a statement, the family demanded an investigation by the US state department into the killings and called on it to “hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes”. Witnesses of the confrontation claimed that Israeli soldiers were present during the confrontation.

Three Palestinian-American teenagers have been killed in the West Bank since 7 October. As yet, no one has been punished for the deaths.

COL. Douglas Macgregor : How Close is World War III?

US threatens ICC: Drop Israel war crimes probe or 'all options on the table'

A senior legal adviser to the US State Department has issued a dramatic threat to the International Criminal Court's oversight body, warning that "all options are on the table" if the court does not drop investigations and arrest warrants against the US and Israel.

Reed Rubinstein made the threat on Tuesday during a meeting of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the ICC's oversight body, in New York.

"We will use all appropriate and effective diplomatic, political and legal instruments to block ICC overreach," the US representative warned.

"Our additional sanctions of June 5 should underscore our resolve," he added, referencing the US's recent move to sanction four ICC judges who issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant last November.

Rubinstein went on to threaten the ICC: "To be clear, we expect all ICC actions against the United States and our ally Israel - that is, all investigations and all arrest warrants - to be terminated," he said. "If not, all options remain on the table."

Caterpillar, a U.S. company that gladly profits from ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Israel Receives D-9 Bulldozers From the US That Will be Used To Demolish Palestinian Homes

A US shipment of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers arrived in the Israeli port of Haifa on Wednesday as Israel is conducting a record number of demolitions of Palestinian homes and structures in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

According to Israeli media, the shipment of bulldozers was reportedly paused by the Biden administration last year due to their widespread use in destroying Gaza.

“The shipment of D9 bulldozers is part of a broad-scale arming and military equipment effort worth billions of shekels, which the US government released and the Defense Ministry procured and transported to Israel,” Amir Baram, the head of Israel’s Defense Ministry, said.

Alastair Crooke : Trump's Hubris-Driven Blunders

US Envoy: Disarm Hezbollah or Israel, Syria Will Conquer Lebanon

In comments in an interview with The National, US Ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack warned that Lebanon faces an “existential” crisis if they don’t give in to US demands to fully disarm Hezbollah and all other armed factions by November.

“You have Israel on one side, you have Iran on the other, and now you have Syria manifesting itself,” Barrack insisted, adding that if Lebanon doesn’t give in to the demands both Israel and Syria are liable to just carve up the area as Bilad al-Sham, or Greater Syria.

“If Lebanon doesn’t hurry up and get in line, everyone around them will,” Barrack cautioned. The US recently issued demands for Lebanon to disarm everyone, though last week Lebanon responded after Hezbollah made it clear they would not disarm simply because of US demands. ...

Last weekend, it was further being reported that Israel and Syria were in talks regarding their own ongoing tensions, which center on Israeli occupations of parts of southwest Syria. The talks were said to include proposals to give Syria substantial parts of northern Lebanon, including the major city of Tripoli, in return for letting Israel nominally retain the Golan Heights.

FEMA GUTTED, Failed to Answer Flood Victim Calls

'Unforgivable': FEMA Missed Thousands of Calls from Texas Flood Victims After Noem Fired Contractors

Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.

According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.

According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.

"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.

"Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You've lost everything, you're trying to find out what's insured and what's not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs," he added. "One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork."

The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting "waste, fraud, and abuse."

Under this policy, Noem allowed other critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams and aerial imaging.

Following The Times' piece, DHS put out a statement claiming that "NO ONE was left without assistance, and every call was responded to urgently."

"When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase," DHS said. "Despite this expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center operators were laid off or fired."

This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained by The Times, which showed FEMA officials becoming frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: "We still do not have a decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary."

Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations into Noem's response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into how the Trump administration's mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.

Following The Times' revelations, outrage has reached a greater fever pitch.

LA Judge Orders ICE to Stop 'Indiscriminately Rounding Up' Immigrants Using Racial Profiling

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in the city and its surrounding areas, citing its use of "unconstitutional tactics," including racial profiling and denying the right to an attorney.

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California wrote that there is a "mountain of evidence" that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are "indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion" in violation of the Fourth Amendment during their "roving patrols" in the region.

She issued two temporary restraining orders against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One bars agents from targeting individuals based on race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in specific locations such as bus stops, car washes, or agricultural sites; or type of employment. The second requires DHS to provide access to attorneys for those who are arrested.

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other local legal organizations on behalf of five plaintiffs who said their rights were violated by immigration agents.

ICE Rounds Up 300 California Farmworkers, One Dies: Eyewitness and Oxnard Mayor Respond

Trump authorizes Ice agents to protect themselves using ‘whatever means’ necessary

Donald Trump has given “total authorization” to federal immigration agents to protect themselves after a series of clashes with protesters, including during enforcement raids on two California cannabis farms. “I am giving Total Authorization for Ice to protect itself, just like they protect the Public,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday, adding that he was directing the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and “border czar”, Tom Homan, to arrest anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protesters who impede immigration enforcement operations.

Trump said he’s told the administrators to “instruct all Ice, Homeland Security, or any other Law Enforcement Officer who is on the receiving end of thrown rocks, bricks, or any other form of assault, to stop their car, and arrest these SLIMEBALLS, using whatever means is necessary to do so”.

The president appeared to be referring to an incident on Thursday when federal agents clashed with protesters during immigration raids on two farms in California’s Ventura county, north of Los Angeles.

At Glass House Farms’ property in Camarillo, masked federal agents appeared to use crowd-control measures including teargas to curb a protest, which was responded to by thrown bricks. Agents conducted another raid at the Glass House Farms site in Carpinteria, 35 miles (55km) up the coast. About 200 suspected undocumented immigrants were arrested in both raids, according to federal immigration authorities, and a farm worker was fatally injured after falling from a roof.

The twin raids in California come despite guidance from Tatum King, a senior official with Ice, to regional department leaders at Homeland Security Investigations directing them to stop workplace immigration enforcement actions unless related to criminal investigations. “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” King wrote in the guidance last month. But the raids are continuing, along with clashes between protesters and federal agents.

Mamdani Hires Corporate DNC LACKEY as Comms Director

the evening greens

US pollution measurement practices raise questions about reliability of data

A Guardian analysis has raised fresh questions over the way regulators and corporations measure the air quality impact of planned factories that risk emitting dangerous levels of pollution. Between 2014 and 2024, air pollution permit applications in Michigan – designed to gauge if proposed industrial projects would cause regions to violate federal pollution limits – did not meet data collection rules or best practices over 90% of the time. Some measurements were taken more than a hundred miles away from sites.

The findings are likely to heighten concerns around whether the air around many large factories is, or will be, safe to breathe. Public health advocates and environmental attorneys have long claimed readings are manipulated in a bid to push through planned sites – and warned that practices uncovered in Michigan were not unique. The safety of air around many of the nation’s factories is similarly unclear.

Among the facilities is a Stellantis auto plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, a large Detroit suburb. In 2016, Michigan environmental regulators approved a permit application allowing then-FCA Chrysler to increase particulate matter emissions. The projected level of new particulate matter combined with current levels around the plant would not violate federal limits, FCA claimed: the air would remain safe.

But the air monitor FCA used to arrive at that conclusion was 17 miles to the north in New Haven, a largely rural community with cleaner air than Sterling Heights. FCA and regulators ignored two closer monitors in urban areas with dirtier airsheds that more closely matched that of Sterling Heights. Per Clean Air Act best practices, FCA should have installed an air monitor at its plant to determine the levels.

It did not. No one knows how much dangerous particulate matter hangs in the region around the Sterling Heights plant. Stellantis did not respond to a request for comment.

Wildfires force evacuations at two national parks in the US west

Fire activity is increasing across the American west, as critically dry landscapes and spiking temperatures fueled blazes in 11 states on Friday.

Evacuations were ordered at two national parks – Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as hot weather, low humidity and gusty winds pushed flames closer to recreation areas.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison national park, about 260 miles (418km ) south-west of Denver, closed on Thursday morning after lightning sparked blazes on both rims, the park said, adding to the more than a dozen fires burning across the state.

The South Rim fire burned more than 1,640 acres by Friday afternoon with no containment, churning through parched grasses, pinyon pine and juniper trees, as park rangers moved quickly to get all visitors, staff, and backcountry hikers out of the area. Residents in nearby Montrose county have not been evacuated but were advised to be prepared if conditions worsen.

The Grand Canyon’s North Rim in Arizona also closed on Thursday because of a wildfire on adjacent Bureau of Land Management land near Jacob Lake. The Coconino county sheriff’s office said it helped evacuate people from an area north of Jacob Lake and campers in the Kaibab national forest nearby.

Some gut microbes can absorb and help expel ‘forever chemicals’ from the body

Certain kinds of gut microbes absorb toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” and help expel them from the body via feces, new first-of-its-kind University of Cambridge research shows. The findings are welcome news as the only options that exist for reducing the level of dangerous Pfas compounds from the body are bloodletting and a cholesterol drug that induces unpleasant side effects.

The microbes were found to remove up to 75% of some Pfas from the gut of mice. Several of the study’s authors plan to develop probiotic dietary supplements that boost levels of helpful microbes in the human gut, which would likely reduce Pfas levels. ...

Though the findings represent the first time gut microbes have been found to remove Pfas, they have been found to alleviate the impacts of other contaminants, such as microplastics.

The researchers didn’t set out to determine if the gut bacteria expelled Pfas specifically, but instead looked at a suite of 42 common food contaminants. No Pfas limits for food exist in the US, but there is broad consensus that it is among the main exposure routes.