EPA Repeals Rule Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Power Plants

Listen To This Story

EPA Repeals Rule Limiting Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Power Plants (Maria)

The author writes, “The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas and announced it is taking a separate but related step to prevent future administrations from regulating climate pollution from power plants. …  Environmental groups decried the change, saying it would come at a cost to Americans’ health and further degrade the environment.”

Democrats Are Urging Trump to Re-Escalate on North Korea (Sean)

From Drop Site News: “Earlier this month, a coalition of 50 antiwar and foreign policy groups reached out to the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee with an unusual plea: Please don’t attack President Trump — at least not for his decision to de-escalate tensions with North Korea as he focuses his attention on the Mideast. The groups were worried that an almost instinctual Democratic response to Trump’s decision to scale back military exercises with South Korea would be to attack him from a hawkish direction, call him weak on national security, and demand ever more confrontation. Instead, they suggested, take the win, and celebrate the reduction in hostile tension. The advice was not taken.”

Palestinian Parents Fear for Children’s Lives at School as Settler Attacks Grow (Reader Jim)

The author writes, “On the first day of the new Palestinian school year, the head-teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived at work before dawn, walking past the freshly installed barbed wire fencing and reinforced school gates as the sun began creeping through olive trees around the village, deep inside the occupied West Bank. ‘We are scared,’ Bassam al Assaf told me. ‘The students are afraid, and their parents are afraid.’ Six people, including three pupils at the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year, in a surge of settler-related violence against Palestinians. One of them, 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan, was shot dead by a settler outside the school gates in April.”

This State Is Spending More on Lethal Injections. A Law Tries to Keep the Details Secret (Dana)

From ProPublica: “Before I joined ProPublica in 2021, I had spent a year writing about a Georgia prison physician named Carlo Musso, one of the rare doctors who’d openly talked about his role in lethal injections. After he stepped away from that work, I wanted to know who replaced him, so I filed open records requests for documents that would shed light on that. The role Musso held is so controversial that more than a dozen states have made it illegal to disclose the names of those involved with lethal injections. Georgia is among them. The state has gone to great lengths to hide the details around how it carries out lethal injections. Georgia wouldn’t release records I had requested, claiming that its secrecy law is needed to prevent those helping with its executions from getting harassed by opponents of the death penalty.”

Trump’s Border Wall Construction Threatens Rock Art as Old as the Pyramids (Laura)

From Public Domain: “On an overcast summer morning, Carolyn Boyd, an archeologist at Texas State University, stood at the foot of a cave in west Texas, looking up toward a series of towering murals painted on a rock wall. Three massive human-like figures soared toward an overhang that had sheltered the painting from the elements since they were drawn here perhaps 4,000 years ago. … The Trump administration is now dealing these rare treasures a potentially fatal blow. Last year, Republicans in Congress heaped a whopping $46.5bn for border wall expansion into Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ spending bill. The longest remaining unwalled stretch of the US-Mexico border lies in west Texas, a remote region that includes some of the state’s most-visited public lands, including the Big Bend national park.”

Fury Grows as MPs Demand US ‘Paedo’ Diplomat Is Extradited Back to UK After Yanks’ ‘Grotesque’ Dawn Raid (DonkeyHotey)

The author writes, “British cops and ministers must demand the return of a suspected paedophile secretly flown to the US after ‘high-handed’ Americans dodged international law to remove him, say experts. They spoke out after we told how a US snatch squad raided the diplomat’s London home without telling the Met Police and bundled him onto a cargo flight to Dover Air Force base, Delaware. Politicians, lawyers, and ex-cops have voiced their anger at the move.”

Why Hiding Is Getting Harder — Even for the Most Vulnerable (Russ)

The author writes, “In February 2024, German police announced the capture of Daniela Klette, a veteran of the terrorist group Red Army Faction who’d been on the run for decades. But before Klette’s arrest, investigative journalists were onto her as well, thanks to a cunning new tool. Michael Colborne, a member of the investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, had run a picture from Klette’s wanted notice through a number of face-comparison tools powered by artificial intelligence. They kept turning up the same result — a Berliner going by the name of ‘Claudia Ivone.’ … The frenetic game of hide-and-seek that began with an internet search box about 30 years ago just got smarter and more dangerous, thanks to a bundle of new technologies most commonly grouped under AI. Klette hasn’t been the only one to fall victim to its all-seeing, information-crunching eye.”