Breaking News: Iran fires missiles towards Israel as IDF says it is working to intercept threats
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyengg72pgt
Summary
- Iran has fired multiple waves of missiles at northern Israel
- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps Guard (IRGC) says this is “the beginning of a full week of continuous strikes”
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it is working to intercept the threats and sirens have been sounded in “several areas across the country”
- It had warned it was “preparing for potential fire” after Israel hit the Lebanese capital Beirut earlier on Sunday – a move Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was “in response to Hezbollah’s firing at Israeli territory”
- This is a breaking news story, we’ll bring you more on this shortly
Hegseth Ripped for ‘Racist Rant’ Against Migrants at D-Day Event
Article by Jessica Corbett republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Apparently our nitwit secretary of war(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far-right ideology in Europe,” said US Sen. Tim Kaine.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came under fire from critics around the world this weekend after he turned his speech at a Saturday event marking the D-Day anniversary into a “racist rant” against migrants.
On June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in France, which was occupied by Nazi Germany’s troops. Thousands were killed, but it is now widely seen as the beginning of the end of World War II. More than eight decades later, Hegseth traveled to the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer for the second straight year.
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“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” President Donald Trump’s Pentagon chief said at the cemetery. “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria—boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”
Critics quickly decried Hegseth’s comments as “straight-up white nationalist talk,” “utterly disgusting,” “despicable,” and “a disgrace to the memory of the men and women who gave their lives to win World War II.”
US Army veteran and progressive advocate Mike Lavigne denounced Hegseth as “a disgrace to his office and to the nation.”
Sharing a report about Hegseth’s remarks on social media, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote, “Apparently our nitwit secretary of war(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far-right ideology in Europe.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: “Thousands of American heroes died on D-Day to defend freedom and defeat fascism. Pete Hegseth should honor and respect their memory. Not politicize their ultimate sacrifice. May God Bless the Greatest Generation on D-Day and every day.”
After the speech, Hegseth “conspicuously skipped [the] afternoon’s main international ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied landings,” France 24 reported. “His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.”
As the news network detailed:
“He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values,” Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.
A message on the association’s website called for Hegseth’s visit to be canceled on the grounds that the Pentagon chief “espouses values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace” and had made “numerous anti-European remarks,” “warlike statements,” and “American supremacist pronouncements.”
“The honor of Langrune, that of France, and the memory of the young Allied soldiers—American, British, Canadian—who died on our beaches in the name of democracy would dictate canceling this individual’s visit,” the statement concluded.
Hegseth’s comments notably came a just day after US Vice President JD Vance claimed on social media that Henry Nowak—an 18-year-old student fatally stabbed in the United Kingdom last year by a fellow Brit who has since been sentenced to life in prison—would still be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
“Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger,” Vance added. “One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse.”
In response, a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “in recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets. The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they don’t want his death to be used to create further division, hatred, or tension. We should be respecting their wishes. Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”
The recent remarks from Vance and Hegseth align with the Trump administration’s official National Security Strategy, which was released in December and is full of rhetoric often used by white nationalists. The document accuses the European Union of enacting “migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife,” claims that “should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” and stresses that US policy is to help “Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”
Earlier this week, the 27-nation EU moved forward with an overhaul of its migration policy, which has led some human rights advocates to draw comparisons to Trump’s use of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to crack down on people in the United States.
“Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement,” Silvia Carter, a spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, told The Associated Press. “Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it.”
Already, many migrants die while trying to reach Europe. The International Organization for Migration announced in February that at least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide last year—including at least 2,185 who died or went missing in the Mediterranean Sea, and another 1,214 on the Western Africa/Atlantic route toward the Canary Islands—but “the real toll is likely higher.”
Article by Jessica Corbett republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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As the Climate Crisis Heats Our Ocean, Trump Is Tossing the Thermometer
At a time when ocean heat, the slowing of the Gulf Stream, and other major changes are sending shock waves through scientific and decision-making circles, we need greater understanding of what we’re facing, not self-imposed blind spots.
It’s easy for us land dwellers to forget that we live on a water planet, more than 70% of it covered by a vast ocean. But we are entering an age—or more accurately, have created an age—when that fact will be impossible to ignore. With global climate change, the seas are rising, yes, but they are also warming, slowly but steadily, and that warmth is now reaching levels that can drive profound changes here on land. Many of those changes have begun, many are on display this year, and some will have seismic consequences going forward.
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A more representative, less terra-centric view of our 70% water planet. (Photo by NOAA/NASA GOES via Smithsonian)
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Most recently, the administration ordered the “descoping” of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observing Infrastructure Project, a system of sensing and data gathering infrastructure distributed in the North Atlantic and Pacific. Information is still sparse about this dismantling; the process is not transparent. What’s clear is that, at a time when ocean heat, the slowing of the Gulf Stream, and other major changes are sending shock waves through scientific and decision-making circles, we need greater understanding of what we’re facing, not self-imposed blind spots. Sending taxpayer-funded ships on taxpayer-funded missions to essentially unplug functional taxpayer-funded ocean monitoring systems is baffling. Given the fossil fuel industry’s influence on the Trump agenda, it could look like a massive attempted cover up, except that the crime—warming the planet—is ongoing, and there’s really no covering up the changing climate, because we live here.
The ocean has become easy for the wealthier people of the world to ignore: a place to extract resources and dump waste. But this titan is now rumbling into a new kind of activation, more central character than backdrop. It’s hard to think of a more monumental failure than overheating an ocean planet and handing it off to younger generations. History won’t look kindly on the leaders of this time who ignore the science and the obvious signals. May it reflect that they were forced by their people, in time frames that made a difference, to phase out fossil fuels and invest in a safe and just climate future for all on this rare water planet. invest in a safe and just climate future for all on this rare water planet.
Edited since this article is not published under a CC licence
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Judge Strikes Down Trump ‘Anti-Immigrant’ Policies, Orders Restart of Asylum Processing
Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” said one advocate.
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday struck down a series of President Donald Trump’s policies that he ruled were rooted in “anti-immigrant sentiments” and ordered the administration to resume processing of asylum grants and immigration benefit applications of people from 39 targeted countries.
Last November, US Citizenship and Immigration Services indefinitely suspended asylum adjudications and froze immigration applications for people affected by a travel ban implemented after a man from Afghanistan allegedly shot two National Guard troops in Washington, DC.
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Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn’t consider “a net asset” to the United States. The administration’s move halted the ability of people from affected nations to obtain green cards, US citizenship, and other benefits.
US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in his ruling that the administration’s policies are rooted in “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making” and have placed immigrants living in the United States in “indeterminate legal limbo.”
“The challenged policies placed the lives of countless individuals on hold—solely by virtue of their countries of birth,” McConnell wrote. “Over six months later, many of those individuals remain without work, without legal status, and without any meaningful ability to plan for their futures.”
“The government effectively invites the court to shut its eyes and ignore the strong evidence of anti-immigrant animus before it,” the judge added. “Doing so would require profound naiveté on the court’s part. Unfortunately for the government, that is an invitation that this court will have to decline.”
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival slammed McConnell’s ruling in a social media post accusing “the Left” of “running the same gambit with so-called ‘animus’ claims since 2017.”
“It is sabotage dressed in legal clothing,” Percival added. “It goes like this: (1) the admin is racist, (2) therefore a policy I don’t like is motivated by race, (3) therefore it is invalid. They have used it on virtually every Trump-era DHS policy.”
Plaintiffs and others involved in the case welcomed McConnell’s decision.
“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: The federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a statement.
“These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives,” Perryman added. “We are pleased that the court recognized the devastating human consequences of these policies. Our communities deserve a fair process governed by law, not political targeting rooted in fear-mongering and discrimination.”
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Milagro Sique, CEO at the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, said: “Today is a good day. On behalf of the thousands of immigrants we serve, we are grateful to Judge McConnell for his ruling.”
“These policies were wrong, plain and simple, and caused profound fear and uncertainty for so many of our friends, neighbors, and coworkers,” Sique added. “Having the judicial process work as intended—by upholding the rule of law—gives us some reassurance that all is not lost and allows those who have been impacted to move forward with their lives in a meaningful way.”
Abbey Koenning-Rutherford, staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, said that “today’s decision is an unsparing rejection of the government’s discriminatory and unlawful actions to gut access to immigration benefits under the false pretext of national security.”
“These policies unjustly revived the discriminatory logic of the first Muslim and African bans and expanded them widely to millions of community members already inside the United States,” she continued, referring to policies enacted during Trump’s first term.
“In vacating these unlawful policies, the court makes it unmistakably clear that the Trump administration cannot hold the lives of immigrants in legal limbo based on their countries of birth, and must continue processing their applications for status and benefits as required by law,” Koenning-Rutherford added.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—an immigrant from India—was among the Democratic lawmakers who applauded Friday’s ruling, writing on social media that “this is a BIG win.”
“A judge has now reaffirmed that Trump’s freeze on processing immigration applications for 39 countries is illegal and that processing must restart immediately,” she added. “Today’s ruling is not the end of the fight, but it is a major step in the right direction.”
Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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