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Humans have used enough groundwater to shift Earth’s tilt
The Washington Post
Rampant removal of groundwater for drinking and irrigation has altered the distribution of water on Earth enough to shift the planet’s tilt, according to a sweeping new study. The finding underscores the dramatic impact that human activity can have on the planet.
Humans pump most of our drinking water from natural underground reservoirs called aquifers. Researchers calculate that between 1993 and 2010, we removed a total of 2,150 gigatons of groundwater — enough to fill 860 million Olympic swimming pools.
According to the new study, published on June 15 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, moving all that water has shifted Earth’s tilt 31.5 inches eastward. [...]
“Groundwater pumping is one of the few management decisions that can be made about how to slow the rate of sea level rise,” said [James] Famiglietti, [hydrologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study]. “We are really having an impact on this planet, and we really need to be better stewards of Earth’s resources.”
Canadian wildfire smoke spreads, 100 million Americans under air-quality alerts
Reuters
Murky, dull skies loomed over tens of millions of Americans on Thursday as smoke from prolonged Canadian wildfires drifted across the Midwest and East, causing unhealthy and, in some spots, dangerous conditions.
Air-quality alerts were in effect until midnight for a swath of the United States that extended from Wisconsin and northern Illinois stretching through Michigan and Ohio and extending into New York, Washington and the East Coast, the National Weather Service said.
More than 100 million Americans were urged to limit prolonged outdoor activities, and, if needed, wear a mask if they suffer from pulmonary or respiratory diseases. Children and the elderly were also advised to minimize or avoid strenuous activities.
Amazon rainforest study: Brazil led deforestation in 2022
Deutsche Welle
In former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro's four years in power, vast tracts of the Amazon fell to make way for mining, cattle ranches, and soybean farming. In 2022 alone, the last year of his leadership, almost two million hectares (5 million acres) of forest was lost.
During his tenure from 2019 to 2022, Bolsonaro's administration weakened regulation and enforcement around deforestation, shrinking the budgets of agencies monitoring environmental crimes and pushing for laws allowing forest-destroying mining on indigenous land.
It took a toll. Deforestation in Brazil in 2015 accounted for just over a quarter of global tree cover loss in tropical primary forests, which are some of the oldest and most untouched forests in the world. That figure grew to 43% in 2022, according to authors of the new Global Forest Watch (GFW) report published by research organization World Resources Institute (WRI).
The country also saw the highest amount of tree loss not related to fires since 2005, said the report.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Universities’ Affirmative Action Programs
Mother Jones
The Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that the use of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus is unconstitutional, dealing a serious blow to affirmative action measures used by colleges to create diverse student bodies and remedy past discrimination against minorities. […]
In a dissent she read from the bench, Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the majority decision for contravening the equality envisioned by the 14th Amendment. “Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” she wrote. “In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”
The court’s newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a separate and equally furious dissent. “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” she wrote. “And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”
Biden proposes 'new standard' after Supreme Court overturns affirmative action
UPI
Reacting to Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning affirmative action in university admissions, President Joe Biden said it was one with which he strongly disagreed, adding, "Discrimination still exists in America."
The court overturned the affirmative action policy in a 6-3 vote on Thursday, ruling it unconstitutional because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
"I strongly disagree with the decision," Biden said during a livestream address from the White House. "We cannot let this decision be the last word. Discrimination still exists in America. Today's decision does not change that."
Biden said he's directing the Department of Education to examine what practices uphold diversity and what practices hold it back. He urged schools that value diversity to not let the Supreme Court decision dissuade them from diversity practices.
The New Yorker
[…] During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent, Townsend found. What’s going on? The trend mirrors a global one; four-fifths of countries in the Organization for Economic Coöperation reported falling humanities enrollments in the past decade. But that brings little comfort to American scholars, who have begun to wonder what it might mean to graduate a college generation with less education in the human past than any that has come before. […]
For decades, the average proportion of humanities students in every class hovered around fifteen per cent nationally, following the American economy up in boom times and down in bearish periods. (If you major in a field like business for the purpose of getting rich, it doesn’t follow—but can be mistaken to—that majoring in English will make you poor.) Enrollment numbers of the past decade defy these trends, however. When the economy has looked up, humanities enrollments have continued falling. When the markets have wobbled, enrollments have tumbled even more. Today, the roller coaster is in free fall. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the percentage of college degrees awarded in health sciences, medical sciences, natural sciences, and engineering has shot up. At Columbia University—one of a diminishing number of schools with a humanities-heavy core requirement—English majors fell from ten per cent to five per cent of graduates between 2002 and 2020, while the ranks of computer-science majors strengthened.
“Until about four years ago, I thought it was a reversible situation—that those who profess the humanities hadn’t been good enough at selling them to students,” James Shapiro, an English professor at Columbia, told me… “I no longer believe that, for two reasons.”
The Verge / New York Magazine
A few months after graduating from college in Nairobi, a 30-year-old I’ll call Joe got a job as an annotator — the tedious work of processing the raw information used to train artificial intelligence. AI learns by finding patterns in enormous quantities of data, but first that data has to be sorted and tagged by people, a vast workforce mostly hidden behind the machines. In Joe’s case, he was labeling footage for self-driving cars — identifying every vehicle, pedestrian, cyclist, anything a driver needs to be aware of — frame by frame and from every possible camera angle. It’s difficult and repetitive work. A several-second blip of footage took eight hours to annotate, for which Joe was paid about $10.
Then, in 2019, an opportunity arose: Joe could make four times as much running an annotation boot camp for a new company that was hungry for labelers. Every two weeks, 50 new recruits would file into an office building in Nairobi to begin their apprenticeships. There seemed to be limitless demand for the work. They would be asked to categorize clothing seen in mirror selfies, look through the eyes of robot vacuum cleaners to determine which rooms they were in, and draw squares around lidar scans of motorcycles. Over half of Joe’s students usually dropped out before the boot camp was finished. “Some people don’t know how to stay in one place for long,” he explained with gracious understatement. Also, he acknowledged, “it is very boring.”
But it was a job in a place where jobs were scarce, and Joe turned out hundreds of graduates. After boot camp, they went home to work alone in their bedrooms and kitchens, forbidden from telling anyone what they were working on, which wasn’t really a problem because they rarely knew themselves.
Vanity Fair
She arrives, queenlike, in a designer Italian overcoat, high collar, and sunglasses, lipstick smile at once warm and fixed. An aide guides her by the elbow, security detail in tow, to the dining room of Pier 23, an old-school San Francisco tavern in the Embarcadero with a stuffed marlin on the wall and a multistory cruise ship idling outside. Two workmen in dayglow safety coats crane their necks from the bar to see Nancy Pelosi, Madam Speaker, doyenne of San Francisco, bête noire of the right.
Pelosi removes her shades and requests a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on top. “A lot of chocolate,” she orders.
I ask her if she’s been briefed on the subject of today’s interview. Her press man told her I was writing “about California,” she says with a knowing twinkle, “and how magnificent it is, and how it is the leader in the world.”
Yes. And no.
Once in a while, an East Coast journalist will come out to California to find out what’s happening in the land of dreams. As Los Angeles goes, so goes the nation; if San Francisco loses its charm, what then? “It’s what’s coming next for you,” Pelosi says, portentously.
Amid crumbling cliffs, Orange County considers moving its famously scenic rail line inland
Los Angeles Times
It’s among the nation’s most iconic and heavily utilized passenger rail lines, linking Southern California’s cities via a stunning coastal route. From the grassy headlands of San Luis Obispo to Orange County’s wide-open beaches and San Diego’s oceanside bluffs, the so-called Lossan rail corridor is famous for its breathtaking views of the pounding Pacific.
But can it last?
Between crumbling bluffs and relentless beach erosion, regular passenger service along the Lossan (short for Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo) corridor has been shut down in southern Orange County for all but a few weeks since last September. Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner train has shifted to replacement buses that ferry passengers through traffic and sprawl further inland, while Metrolink has simply stopped serving key tourist destinations such as San Clemente.
‘It gets worse every day’: why are sea lions and dolphins dying along California’s coast?
The Guardian
[…] Since the beginning of June, dead sea lions and dolphins have been turning up all along the southern California coast – from the tiny Butterfly and Miramar beaches, down south to Santa Monica beaches in Los Angeles and even further to Laguna Beach in Orange county. […]
The culprit is an algae named pseudo-nitzschia, which produces an amino acid that can act as a neurotoxin. […]
Every harmful algae bloom (HAB) has its own features and this particular bloom seems to be coming from further offshore than usual. This means that in addition to an estimated more than 1,000 sick and dying sea lions, 110 dolphins have also been killed along the California coast. And these numbers don’t include those that may be dying at sea or out on the Channel Islands.
While the outbreaks are naturally occurring, scientists say their intensity appears to be increasing. […]
Scientists say the climate crisis also drives imbalances in two key ways: rising ocean acidity creates conditions where more harmful algae can thrive, and warming ocean temperatures are leading to a proliferation of more toxic algae species and blooms globally.
The California reparations taskforce released 115 recommendations. Will any become law?
The Sacramento Bee
The California reparations task force met for its 16th and final hearing Thursday, passing a report to state legislators with 115 policy recommendations spread across its 1,100 pages.
Now, lawmakers will decide whether to codify the panel’s work into law. But recent votes by the legislature, waning public support and the Supreme Court decision ruling affirmative action unconstitutional signal an uphill climb.
“The final report is not the end of the work. It is really just the beginning,” said state Senator Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, one of the two state legislators who served on the task force.
The Death Cult of the American Car
The American Prospect
Last week, the Governors Highway Safety Association released its annual preliminary report on pedestrian safety in the United States for 2022. It projected that pedestrian deaths will have increased for the 12th consecutive year, nearly doubling from 4,302 in 2010 to an estimated 8,126—the highest number in more than 40 years. Back in April, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its preliminary report on motor vehicle fatalities in 2022, finding a slight decrease from the prior year but still a 32 percent increase compared to 2011.
Also last week, ProPublica and FRONTLINEreported that in 2017, the Department of Transportation started writing a report considering possible regulations for side guards on commercial trucks, which would help prevent pedestrians and cyclists from being trapped and crushed underneath. This prompted a furious backlash from the trucking lobby, which was allowed to provide extensive comments on a draft of the report before its publication. Sure enough, the final product contained no recommendations for new regulations.
That’s what I call car supremacy in this country. Drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians are maimed and slaughtered at rates that would count as a hair-on-fire emergency in any other rich country. Yet instead of doing anything about that, the government, half paralyzed by bureaucratic inertia and half comically in bed with the various vehicle industries, twiddles its thumbs.
Domingo Germán Throws M.L.B.’s First Perfect Game Since 2012
The New York Times
During bids for no-hitters and perfect games, conventional baseball superstition demands that the pitcher throwing the gem not be disturbed. Teammates and coaches shy away.
But after Domingo Germán completed a seventh perfect inning Wednesday at Oakland Coliseum, the Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake sat beside him and chatted.
The break in tradition did not matter. Germán set down the next six hitters in the Athletics’ order to throw the 24th perfect game in Major League Baseball history in an 11-0 win.
“So exciting,” Germán said in Spanish through an interpreter during an on-field interview after the game. “When you think about something very unique in baseball. Not many people have an opportunity to pitch a perfect game and accomplish something like this.”
Top Trump campaign aide identified as key individual in classified docs indictment: Sources
ABC News
One of the top advisers on Donald Trump's 2024 campaign is among the individuals identified but not named by special counsel Jack Smith in his indictment against the former president for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Susie Wiles, one of Trump's most trusted advisers leading his second reelection effort, is the individual singled out in Smith's indictment as the "PAC Representative" who Trump is alleged to have shown a classified map to in August or September of 2021, sources said.
Trump, in the indictment, is alleged to have shown the classified map of an unidentified country to Wiles while discussing a military operation that Trump said "was not going well," while adding that he "should not be showing the map" to her and "not to get too close."
Prosecutors are prepared to hit Trump and his allies with new charges, sources say
The Independent
The Department of Justice is prepared to seek indictments against multiple figures in … Donald Trump’s orbit and may yet bring additional charges against the ex-president in the coming weeks, The Independent has learned.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the department has made preparations to bring what is known as a “superseding indictment” — a second set of charges against an already-indicted defendant that could include more serious crimes — against the ex-president in the Southern District of Florida.
But prosecutors may also choose to bring additional charges against Mr Trump in a different venue, depending on how they feel the case they have brought against him in is proceeding.
Trump ‘Standing Order’ to Declassify Not Found by DOJ, Intelligence Agency
Bloomberg
A “standing order” that … Donald Trump has claimed authorized him to instantly declassify documents removed from the Oval Office could not be found by either the Justice Department or Office of Director of National Intelligence.
The disclosure by the agencies was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last August by Bloomberg News, which sued ODNI and the Justice Department’s national security division for a copy of Trump’s so-called standing order — if one existed.
Trump insisted that he had such a declassification order after the FBI found top secret materials at his Mar-a-Lago home last year. He has since been charged in the case by Special Counsel Jack Smith, making him the first former president to face federal allegations of criminal conduct.
Judge rejects Trump’s ‘presidential immunity’ defense in second E. Jean Carroll case
Politico
A federal judge on Thursday sharply rejected Donald Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity” to fend off a defamation lawsuit from the writer E. Jean Carroll, ruling that Trump’s disparaging comments about Carroll in 2019 had no legitimate connection to his duties as president.
The 46-page opinion all but ensures that Carroll’s second lawsuit against [Trump] will go to trial. And it’s the latest setback in Trump’s repeated bid to use the muscular protections of the presidency to shield him from civil litigation.
Ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder sentenced to maximum 20 years
The Columbus Dispatch
In one of the largest corruption cases in Ohio history, former state House Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced Thursday to the maximum 20 years in prison for orchestrating a nearly $60 million illegal bribery scheme that fueled his return to political power.
Once one of the most powerful politicians in Ohio, Householder is now a convicted felon, guilty of racketeering conspiracy and breaking the public's trust. […]
Householder, former Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges and three other men were charged with participating in a pay-to-play scheme that helped Householder win control of the Ohio House of Representatives in 2018, pass a $1.3 billion bailout for two nuclear plants in House Bill 6 and defend that law against a ballot initiative to block it.
Man with weapons and Jan. 6 warrant arrested after running toward Obamas' D.C. home
CBS News
A man with materials to make explosives and an active Jan. 6-related warrant was arrested by law enforcement in former President Barack Obama's Washington, D.C., neighborhood, multiple sources briefed on the matter tell CBS News.
Several sources identified the suspect as 37-year-old Taylor Taranto, of Seattle, Washington. Secret Service spotted him within blocks of the Obama's home, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter. Taranto fled, and Secret Service chased him. He was running toward the Obama home, but was apprehended before reaching it.
Taranto's van was parked close to where he was arrested. There were multiple weapons and the materials to make some kind of explosive device akin to a Molotov cocktail, but it had not been assembled, according law enforcement officials familiar with the details. He had said he had explosives, but first responders only found the materials to make them.
Nearly 10,000 more babies were born in Texas after six-week abortion ban, study finds
Houston Chronicle
Nearly 10,000 more babies were born in Texas in the months after the state enacted a first-of-its-kind abortion ban in September 2021, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The research, which evaluated births between April and December 2022, found that Texas’ Senate Bill 8 was associated with 9,799 additional live births. The legislation outlawed abortions after fetal cardiac activity was detected — usually around six weeks of pregnancy, when many people do not yet know they are pregnant.
The study does not explicitly detail why the extra births happened, but “our findings strongly suggest that a considerable number of pregnant individuals in Texas were unable to overcome barriers to abortion access,” said Alison Gemmill, one of the lead authors of the study.
Worldwide survey kills the myth of ‘Man the Hunter’
Science
For decades anthropologists have witnessed forager women—those who live in societies that both hunt and gather—around the world skillfully slay prey: In the 1980s, Agta women of the Philippines drew bows and arrows as tall as themselves and aimed at wild pigs and deer, and Matses Amazonians struck paca rodents with machetes. Observations from the 1990s described Aka great-grandmothers and girls as young as age 5 trapping duiker and porcupine in central Africa.
A study published today in PLOS ONE has united these reports for a first-of-its-kind global view of women hunters. Reviewing accounts penned by scholars who study culture, known as ethnographers, as well as those by observers between the late 1800s and today, the researchers found that women hunted in nearly 80% of surveyed forager societies.
These data flatly reject a long-standing myth that men hunt, women gather, and that this division runs deep in human history.
Poland receives green light for $15 billion Patriot missile systems buy
Stars and Stripes
Poland’s weapons-buying spree just keeps on going, with a multibillion-dollar battle command system that will be used to support the country’s Patriot missile defense program poised to become the latest major purchase.
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement announcing initial approval of the $15 billion deal.
The acquisition is part of the program’s second phase and involves an Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System and a wide array of supporting equipment, including 48 Patriot M903 launch stations, hundreds of advanced missiles and assorted launchers and sensors.
Reznikov: ‘Main event’ in counteroffensive still to come, reserves not yet committed
The Kyiv Independent
Ukraine’s main troop reserves have yet to be used in the counteroffensive, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the Financial Times on June 28.
Those reserves include most brigades recently trained in Western countries and equipped with modern NATO tanks and armored vehicles.
Reznikov said the liberation of a group of villages in recent weeks was a “preview” of a much bigger push to come and not "the main event” of the military campaign.
“When it happens, you will all see it . . . Everyone will see everything,” Reznikov said.
Speculation grows over fate of Sergei Surovikin - Russia's 'General Armageddon'
EuroNews
Speculation grows after a top Russian general disappears from public view following the Russian mercenary mutiny.
Russia's president has succeeded in exiling Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny last week, but the fate of several top generals is still unclear.
There were unconfirmed reports that one of them with ties to Prigozhin has been arrested and another was mysteriously absent from several events attended by President Vladimir Putin and embattled Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
American Technology Found in Chinese Spy Balloon Debris
Gizmodo
The Chinese spy balloon captured images and video surveillance using American technology, U.S. officials reported on Thursday. The balloon, which was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this year, likely didn’t transmit the information back to the Chinese government based on a preliminary investigation, although the investigation is still ongoing. […]
That technology has now been identified as commercially available in the U.S., with some of the technology readily available online, officials told the Wall Street Journal. The gear found in the debris supported the government’s belief that the balloon was intended to spy on the U.S. and contradicted China’s claims that it was used for weather monitoring.
South China Morning Post
Beijing adopted new legislation overseeing the country’s foreign policy on Wednesday, its latest effort to expand a “legal toolbox” to counter sanctions and other perceived hostile Western actions amid concerns about its impact on foreign business operations in China.
With a particular focus on national security and countering alleged US-led “long arm” jurisdiction, the all-encompassing Foreign Relations Law is expected to help Beijing use domestic law to retaliate against sanctions and deter future provocations, according to observers. […]
The new law is broader and more comprehensive than the anti-sanctions law, which focused solely on sanctions and legalised retaliatory measures such as visa denials and freezing an individual’s assets, according to Henry Gao, professor of law at Singapore Management University.
“The foreign relations law is part of China’s drive to beef up the legal ‘toolbox’ for dealing with challenges and preventing risks concerning anti-sanctions, anti-interference, and anti-long-arm jurisdiction issues,” he said.
France shooting: Policeman charged over teen's traffic stop death
BBC News
A French policeman has been charged with homicide and is in custody over the killing of a teenager near Paris on Tuesday.
The 17-year-old, named as Nahel M, was shot at point-blank range as he drove off and crashed soon afterwards.
Anger at his killing has sparked violence across the country. A march led by the boy's mother was marred by clashes on Thursday afternoon.
In a third night of unrest, protesters were arrested in Lille and Marseille.
In the town of Nanterre, where the teenager was killed, a huge fire engulfed the ground floor of a building where a bank is located.
Federal Reserve may tighten financial rules after US bank failures, Powell says
AP News
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the central bank may have to tighten its oversight of the American financial system in the wake of the failure of three large U.S. banks this spring.
Powell said in prepared remarks delivered at a banking conference in Madrid that tougher regulations put in place after the 2007-2008 financial crisis have made large multinational banks much more resilient to widespread loan defaults, such as the bursting of the housing bubble that led to that crisis.
But the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank exposed different vulnerabilities that the Fed will likely address through new proposals, Powell said.
Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time
Nature
Gravitational waves are back, and they’re bigger than ever.
After the historic first detection of the space-time rattles in 2015 using ground-based detectors, researchers could have now rediscovered Albert Einstein’s waves with an entirely different technique. The approach tracks changes in the distances between Earth and beacon stars in its Galactic neighbourhood called pulsars, which reveal how the space in between is stretched and squeezed by the passage of gravitational waves.
Whereas the original discovery spotted waves originating from the collision and merger of two star-sized black holes, the most likely source of the latest finding is the combined signal from many pairs of much larger black holes — millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun — slowly orbiting each other in the hearts of distant galaxies. These waves are thousands of times stronger and longer than those found in 2015, with wavelengths of up to tens of light years. By contrast, the ripples detected since 2015 using a technique called interferometry are just tens or hundreds of kilometres long.
US public wants climate change dealt with, but doesn’t like the options
Ars Technica
[…] In general, the US public supports action on climate change. Three-quarters of those surveyed said that the US should participate in international efforts to reduce climate change, and two-thirds say the US' top priority should be developing alternative energy sources. […]
Over 60 percent of people even supported requiring all power plants to have zero emissions by 2040, a key step toward President Biden's climate goals.
As with most climate-related issues, there was a large partisan gap. A slim majority of Republicans felt that we should be prioritizing fossil fuel production, including coal. But these opinions were strongest in older, more conservative Republicans. Younger and more moderate Republicans tended to break ranks on things like promoting carbon capture and engaging in international climate treaties.
Democrats, in contrast, were nearly unified, with 90 percent of them saying that developing renewable energy should be the priority. The strong support for climate policies was widespread among left-leaning participants.