alanjjohnstone
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Biden may forgive business debts but not students’
When a town hall attendee said student loan debt is “crushing” her family, friends, and millions of Americans and urged Biden to unilaterally forgive a minimum of $50,000 per borrower, Biden responded, “I will not make that happen.”
Experts have said the president clearly has the authority to direct the secretary of education to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt without congressional approval, a move that a majority of Americans support.
Australian and Chinese researchers adds weight to scientists’ warnings from recent United Nations reports about how sea levels are expected to rise dangerously in the coming decades.
“You could say,” Grinsted added, “that this article has two main messages: The scenarios we see before us now regarding sea level rise are too conservative—the sea looks, using our method, to rise more than what is believed using the present method. The other message is that research in this area can benefit from using our method to constrain sea level models in the scenarios in the future.”
“The analysis of the recent sea level data indicate the world is tracking between RCP4.5 and the worst case scenario of RCP8.5,” Church warned. “If we continue with large ongoing emissions as we are at present, we will commit the world to meters of sea level rise over coming centuries.”
The research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, found that sea level rise projections for this century “are on the money when tested against satellite and tide-gauge observations,” as a statement from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) summarized.
However, because of the limited 11-year comparison period, Church added, “there remains a potential for larger sea level rises, particularly beyond 2100 for high emission scenarios.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in even larger demonstrations than seen in previous days with protesters blockading roads with vehicles to stop troops from moving through the area.
UN special rapporteur Tom Andrews warned that reports of soldiers being brought into Yangon could lead to a largely violent situation.
“I fear that Wednesday has the potential for violence on a greater scale in Myanmar than we have seen since the illegal takeover of the government on February 1,” Andrews said in a statement.
https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-coup-thousands-rally-against-military-build-up/a-56594373
In yet another challenge to China which risks resulting in a confrontation, a U.S. Navy warship sailed by islands claimed by China in the South China Sea.
The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said destroyer USS Russell “asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the Spratly Islands, consistent with international law.”
Bitcoin soared through the key $50,000 level as the growing acceptance of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency among large banks and investment funds continued to draw in mainstream investors.
I was reminded of this
I think there has been evidence that when anti-vaxxers campaigned locally, the number of cases of measles rose.
I think the importance of Andrew Wakefield to the anti-vaxxers is reflected in how much he is still being paid also demonstrates that anti-science does exercise influence.
Whether they should be legally suppressed from expressing their “advice” is something i would not say would be successful.
What is more effective is exclusion from school and nurseries and play-groups if a child is not vaccinated.
And what will be effective to many adults is the talk of introducing vaccination “passports”, (something i recall we discussed quite some time ago on this forum). No vaccination, no vacation.
But in my experience, in the USA, the more conservative minded are not known for their out-of-state trips much less foreign travel
Israel delays vaccine for ICU medical staff in Gaza.
The “request is still being processed”
Nearer to home
The Democratic Unionist Party has proposed a new law to prevent abortions being carried out in Northern Ireland in cases of non-fatal disabilities.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-56041850
Just to ask about the alternative to the more common Western produced vaccines being used.
The Chinese have two, one made by Sinopharm and another called Coronavac by Sinovac.
Then there are the Russians with their Sputnik V
Are they being offered patent-free or is intellectual ownership still claimed?
An article picking apart Biden’s Iran policy
On the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on the first day of my presidency.”
In contrast, Biden hums and haws…expecting the party which was victim of the broken promise should make the first move and not the party which walked away from the treaty.
We have never been friends of Hamas and one reason is this.
In a rollback in women’s rights a Hamas-run Islamic court in the Gaza Strip has ruled that women require the permission of a male guardian to travel. The decision by the sharia judicial council, issued on Sunday, says an unmarried woman may not travel without the permission of her “guardian”, which would usually refer to her father or another older male relative. Permission would need to be registered at the court, but the man would not be required to accompany the woman on the trip.
The ruling resembles the so-called guardianship laws that long existed in Saudi Arabia.
Zainab al-Ghunaimi, an activist who runs a Gaza-based group focused on women’s rights, said the ruling contravened the Palestinian basic law, which grants equal rights to adults, and meant that authorities were “going backwards in protecting human rights”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/women-male-guardian-hamas-gaza-strip
Katie Porter removed from the Financial Service Committee because of her combative style of questioning which was never appreciated by Wall St.
The problems of the pandemic goes beyond the actual medical consequences to people but as been pointed out, capitalism is a system that is not well suited for tackling the spread of the illness.
Socialism will no doubt still suffer from contagious diseases but the harm those bring will be mitigated by a system that does not foster poverty, national rivalry and social alienation,
When i talked of the past, Wez, i meant before our life-times and even the Party’s foundation, and, heresy of heresies, before even Marx. The “ignorant” mill-worker knew by common sense what was in his or her interests when the the social inequalities were starkly obvious in the days of the Chartists.
