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March 28, 2024

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Friday, January 28, 2022

The Weekend Off – News You Missed

 WeekendMissed

Alaska

The Economist – Murre mystery – Thousands of seabirds are washing up dead on Alaska’s shores

AT THE end of the highway, 200 miles from Anchorage, sits a small fishing and tourism town where, in early January, thousands of dead common murres, or guillemots, were washed ashore. These penguin-like seabirds littered the tidal wracks so densely that beach walkers had to be careful where they stepped. And beyond Homer, tens—probably hundreds—of thousands of these birds have drifted in dead along Alaska’s vast coastline or have been found far inland half-dead in the snow.

Bloomberg – U.S. Bans Import of `Frankenfish’ Salmon With New Ruling

Genetically engineered salmon, called “Frankenfish” by critics, have been banned from sale in the U.S. just months after being initially approved by regulators as the first such modified animals for human consumption.

The Food and Drug Administration issued an import alert on Friday, saying the salmon won’t be allowed to be sold until the agency publishes final labeling guidelines, a process that typically takes years. The ban also applies to food made from the fish.

ADN – Photos: Anchorage homeless count

Before most of Anchorage awoke Wednesday morning, roughly 140 volunteers fanned out across the city to speak to as many homeless people as possible. The occasion was the annual “Point-In-Time” homeless count — a national, federally-required homeless census that Anchorage and other cities conduct on a single day in late January. In all, they found 797 people.

National

The Week – Flint water victims can’t sue the government. That’s another crime.

Michigan’s state and local officials poisoned Flint’s water with lead but innocent federal taxpayers are the ones having to foot the cleanup bill. President Obama has pledged to hand Flint $85 million in aid money. This sounds like a lot, but the fact of the matter is that it is far less than what Flint’s victims would have gotten if a corporation — rather than government — had been the culprit. That’s because, unlike private companies, the government is shielded from liability lawsuits.

Christian Science Monitor – Obama visits mosque for first time as president. What took him so long?

President Barack Obama will visit an American mosque next week, the White House announced Saturday, in a show of support for American Muslim communities facing increased threats in the wake of Islamic State attacks around the world and anti-immigration rhetoric focused on Muslim asylum seekers.

The Intercept – Marco Rubio, Following Donor Dollars, Frequently Veers From Limited-Government Dogma

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio casts himself as a champion of limited government and in a new campaign ad even depicts himself as a warrior against special interests.

International

Der Spiegel – ‘I Wish I Could Die’: Meeting the Man Who Helped Trigger the Arab Spring

Hosni Kaliya pulls a cigarette out of his pack with his mouth. When he poured gasoline on his body and set himself on fire, most of his right hand was consumed by the flames and all that remains is a stump without fingers. He still has four fingers on his left hand, but they jut out like claws, burned, stiff and contorted. His fingernails are curled. He wears black wool gloves with the fingertips cut off, so that they won’t dangle emptily. A knit cap protects Kaliya’s head, where his hair was burned off, and his unusually small ears. But the disfigured face, the work of doctors using old and new skin, how could he hide that?

Reuters – At least 65 people killed in attack in Nigeria’s Maiduguri

At least 65 people were killed during an attack by Islamist militant group Boko Haram near Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, a Reuters reporter said after counting bodies at a hospital morgue.

The Guardian – Greeks worry threatened closure of EU border ‘would be the definition of dystopia’ 

Walter Mugisha never meant to end up in Eleonas. When the computer technician left his native Uganda, Denmark was his goal, not a dusty camp in a former olive grove in the industrial moonscape of Athens.

For the 32-year-old, as for the vast majority of Syrian migrants and refugees making the perilous crossing from Turkey, Greece was a transit point, the route that would get him there. Athens was happy to oblige, waving through the estimated 850,000 men, women and children who have similarly landed on its shores, providing transport but never hosting the caravan of humanity that, over the course of a tumultuous 2015, wended its way from the Mediterranean, through the Balkan peninsula and further north into central Europe.

 

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Comments
2 Responses to “The Weekend Off – News You Missed”
  1. Good news on the Frankenfish ruling.

    I always wonder about homeless folks in Anchorage. Seems like a Hell of a place to be without a roof over your head.

  2. mike from iowa says:

    Steerike 12,wingnuts. You are out! http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2016/02/04/columbus-ohio-ohio-attorney-generals-planned-parenthood-statements-based-on-misinformation.html

    More wingnuts caught lying about Planned Parenthood and having to eat tasty crow.