North Sea oil and gas extraction can cause pollution to spike by more than 10,000% within half a kilometer around off-shore sites, a study has found.

The University of Essex, Natural History Museum and Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) research has uncovered the true impact on Britain's seabed life—with the number of species plummeting nearly 30% near platforms.

The findings, published in Science of The Total Environment, come in the face of continued global fossil fuel exploration.

The study discovered pollutants such as hydrocarbons were up to 10,613% higher within 500 m of the platforms than unimpacted, farther away sites.

And heavy metals—such as lead, copper, and nickel—were 455% higher within the same distance.

Utilizing data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, researchers discovered a unique energy peak in the aftermath of the brightest Gamma-Ray burst ever seen, suggesting the annihilation of electrons and positrons. This finding provides new insights into the behavior of cosmic jets and the extreme conditions following such bursts.

In October 2022, astronomers were stunned by what was quickly dubbed the BOAT — the brightest-of-all-time gamma-ray burst (GRB). Now an international science team reports that data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals a feature never seen before.
Unprecedented Spectral Feature Identified

“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said lead researcher Maria Edvige Ravasio at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and affiliated with Brera Observatory, part of INAF (the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) in Merate, Italy. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”

The newly crowned Miss Kansas is emerging as an advocate for domestic violence survivors after she shocked judges and her audience in the final interview of her competition victory by calling out her abuser in the crowd.

Standing on stage in a blue sequined gown in June, Alexis Smith told the crowd: “Some of you in this audience saw me very emotional because my abuser is here today. But that’s not going to stop me from being on this Miss Kansas stage because I, and my community, deserve healthy relationships.”

She said her abusive relationship began when she was 14 and ended in about 2018 or 2019. After escaping the relationship, the 25-year-old Smith said she moved to Texas – but she ultimately decided to return to Wichita to pursue a nursing degree from Newman University.

Smith said she was a “bystander, victim and survivor” of domestic violence – but she pledged to strive to advocate against it after clinching her pageant title.

A Texas family got wrapped up in an unforeseen animal rescue mission and saved a baby bird by cocooning it in a tortilla, earning them praise for their quick, compassionate actions.

In a viral 13 July Facebook post, the Wild West Wildlife rehabilitation center in Amarillo, Texas, recounted how its employees first learned of the saga upon receiving a call from the Adlongs, the family at the center of the story.

The Adlongs said they had found what appeared to be an orphaned barn owl. A facility staffer asked whether the Adlongs had placed the bird in a box, which would keep it safe and prevent it from causing additional injury to itself.

However, the Adlong family didn’t have a box. So they had to get creative.

“I wrapped my little bird in the warm tortilla and swaddled him up,” one member of the family, Katie Adlong, said in an interview with the Guardian on Monday. “That’s all I had.”

he Wild West Wildlife staffer brought the hatchling back to the animal rehab facility. There, the bird was given the name Taquito – Spanish for little taco. And its recovery was going well.

Donald Trump has moved swiftly to turn his attack machine on to the vice-president in the wake of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, dusting off his derisive nickname for her: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris”.

But as the Republican nominee refocuses his campaign to target Harris, there is one awkward truth that Trump will have to face. What about that check for $5,000 dated 26 September 2011, bearing Trump’s distinctive signature, and made payable to one “Attorney General Kamala D Harris”?

Within hours of Biden’s historic decision breaking on Sunday, and with a new possible Trump v Harris battle honing into view, Trump’s uncomfortable donation resurfaced on social media. Jared Moskowitz, a Democratic congressman from Florida, posted a photo of the check on his X feed with the words: “Was a wise investment.”

Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, snarked: “When Trump wrote that check to re-elect Kamala Harris in 2011, I bet he didn’t think she’d cash it in 2024!”

In fact, the $5,000 donation was just one of several gifts from the Trump family to Harris at the time when she was working as California’s top prosecutor. Records held by the California secretary of state note the largest $5,000 donation, but also give details of a further $1,000 check from Trump to Harris from February 2013 at the start of her re-election campaign as the state’s attorney general.

The NYT detailing 90 reporters onto the Biden deathwatch reveals yet another American civic institition in its glaring failure to stand up to the stress test of imminent fascism. Alas, it falls into agenda-setting elite political journalists’ narcissicism sweet spot: it makes themselves the center of the universe, while denying they have any political agency at all…

…Also, lets them preen in their version of virtue, which is “balancing” all the bad stuff they had to say about the GOP.

Akin to how they puffed up and domesticated the Tea Party, to “balance” the way they puffed up Obama.

…oh, and, bottom line, they’re all so jacked up over the prospect of a ten-way contest of Boar on the Floor. (The Peter Bakers are, yes, the Logan Roy in this scenario.)

Perlstein is exactly right. The Big Foot media are dying for an open convention where they can watch a Democratic shit show — and blame Biden and the administration for being losers.

Women across the U.S. learned in 2022 that they’d lost control of their bodies when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Remember when the prospective justices pledged fealty to stare decisis in their Senate confirmation hearings? Right? Their statements under oath were and are worthless. Because the ends that justify the means with this crowd.

Since Donald Trump lost the presidency in 2020, conservative reactionaries have dropped the coy act. They’re saying out loud what they plan to do to America — to you — when they regain control of the White House. SCOTUS just promised Trump king-like immunity for whatever crimes he commits under the color of official acts. He’s drooling.

The Lincoln Project is made up of former Republicans. They know their former allies. They created a primer on what’s ahead. Yes, they mean to scare you straight. Straight to the voting booth.

Donald Trump’s plan for America is no secret. Beating Trump this November is the only mission. The Lincoln Project invites you to take a peek at the terrible future Donald Trump would impose on America. pic.twitter.com/XyynK48FG6
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 8, 2024

John Yoo authored the infamous Bush administration memos that justified torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Torture wasn’t about the mythical ticking time-bomb scenario. It was about exacting revenge on suspected terrorists in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In the conservative Matrix, laws are bent to justify criminal acts, revenge, and retribution.

Jonathan Chait wrote recently about Yoo’s concern for norms and his vision for twisting the laws to exact Republican revenge on Democratic enemies:

John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024.

“Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo. “In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents.”

Like allegations of stolen elections and voter fraud, no evidence required. Republicans will lock up opponents for unspecified “crimes.”

It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.

And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.

First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.

Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.

That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.

Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?

“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”

There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.

Public Notice sees fallout from the SCOTUS decision to overturn the Chevron deference doctrine. It’s already heading to courts:

It’s been barely a week since conservatives on the US Supreme Court radically upended the balance of power between the branches of government, giving the federal courts the exclusive power to interpret statutes rather than deferring to agency experts. And we’re already seeing impacts on the ground.

Right-wingers have been in the habit of running to their preferred courts to get regulations overturned, but the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which officially destroyed agency deference, will make it easier — even routine — to block every Biden administration rule they don’t like.

Lawsuits to invalidate specific rules had been proceeding through the federal courts before Loper Bright, generally arguing that agencies exceeded their authority in promulgating a rule. These lawsuits exist in no small part because the Supreme Court made it clear they would destroy Chevron deference for years now, with Justice Neil Gorsuch having led the way well before his appointment to the Court.

Trump appointee Sean Jordan, who sits in the reliably hard-right Eastern District of Texas, was so eager to block a Biden administration’s overtime rule that he dropped his decision the same day Loper Bright came out. It runs 36 pages and mentions Loper Bright multiple times, which means either Jordan was so confident of the Supreme Court decision that he either wrote it in advance or he hurried to stuff Loper Bright into his already-written opinion.

Jordan’s opinion also rests heavily on dictionary definitions rather than expertise from the Department of Labor, which issued the rule. So now, the rule that would have made 4 million more Texas workers eligible for overtime, and thus more pay, is blocked thanks to a hurried read of a SCOTUS opinion and Webster’s Dictionary.

Lisa Needham concludes:

… rather than having a well-reasoned rule that applies uniformly across the country, courts will invalidate or uphold rules in a piecemeal fashion based on the whims of judges who are in no way qualified to interpret complex regulatory issues. Those judges, though, are extremely well-qualified to find a way to strike down regulations whenever conservatives demand it. The demise of the regulatory state is as grim as anyone could have possibly guessed, and absent court reform, there seems to be no way out.

How far might the fringe right take this? A gallon of milk or gas need no longer be a gallon. An inch is 2.54 centimeters. Or is it? How many eggs is a dozen? Depends now on how the judge feels today.