North America

United States: Nearly 120 million people are under extreme weather alerts due to extreme heat caused by a heat dome, while the northeast and some parts of the south faces abnormally heavy rains.^CD These storms have cancelled thousands of flights.^PD

The next US coronavirus wave is happening, with an estimated 280,000 daily infections.^WSWS

The JPMorgan Chase saga with Jeffrey Epstein's victims continues despite it being "settled".^WSoP

Canada: The Red Clarion looks at missing and murdered indigneous women and how they relate to the class struggle in Canada of the native population against state oppression, as the government continues to accidentally dig up - sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally - the history of their terrorist campaign against indigneous people.^RC

Latin America

As the CELAC-EU summit is being held, a People's Summit is beginning in parallel, organized by European and Latin American left-wing organizations and representatives.^TS

Ecuador: The government is importing rice from other countries on the continent due to shortfalls from crop issues, with potentially 200,000 tons needed.^MP

Brazil: Lula has pledged to turn abandoned public buildings into low-income housing units, signing into law a bill providing for the construction by 2026 of 2 million buildings.^MP

Argentina: Extremely cold temperatures are hitting 17 provinces.^MP

The War Against The West

The Western Front: Ukraine's damaged the Crimean bridge again, killing at least 2 civilians. One road span has been destroyed and another partly damaged, though the underlying supports are undamaged. Last time, rail traffic - the part important to the military - was going within like 8 hours, and the road span was reconstructed in a few months.^RT

Putin has once again said that Ukraine has had no success with their counteroffensive, which is essentially true so far.^RT Additionally, at least 34 Bradleys, or a third of the Bradleys supplied to Ukraine, have been destroyed, damaged, or abandoned according to Western sources.^RT

The Pentagon is dragging their feet on giving F-16s over to Ukraine for obvious reasons, with them stating, in the understatement on the century, that "the Russians still possess some air defense capability." My brother in christ, their air defense capability is like an order of magnitude superior to that of the combined West.^MoA

Russia has halted the Black Sea grain deal, which allowed Ukrainian grain exports to leave the country via ships without fear of being destroyed by Russia. The Kremlin has said that the deal may be resumed once the West upholds it part of the deal about allowing Russia's grain and fertilizer to be transported without sanctions, as Putin has allowed himself to be strung along for a year without any progress being made by the West on their promises.^RTEN

Jacobin notes that progressive dissent on the war has suddenly returned after a long hiatus, though I have no fear that the rebelling Democrats will return to licking boots and sobbing about how they were actually forced to push thousands of homeless people into the MAGA Human Blender constructed in 2026 under Trump's second presidency, and it's what they would have wanted anyway.

Retrospectives, Analysis, History, Theory, and Technology

Richard Wolff continues his protracted people's war against anti-China propaganda.^MR

Responsible Statecraft speculates that Erdogan has finally won over to the cause of the West.^RS It also quotes that report saying that most of the US's allies surrounding China are rather reluctant to enter the fray if a war over Taiwan started, or even other countries like Korea.^RS

The Red Clarion looks at the increasing number of medical drug shortages, which is causing doctors to have to triage their patients and only try and cure the people that have the most chance of surviving. They quote from the FDA, which states that drug shortages are caused by 1) a lack of incentives for manufacturers to produce less profitable drugs; b) a lack of reward for manufacturers for "mature quality systems" that focus on continuous improvement and early detection of supply chain issues; and c) logistical and regulatory challenges. So, essentially, we need to abolish the market.^RC

Climate Change

US Climate Envoy John Kerry has refuted the idea that US might pay for climate reparations after being asked by a sentient thumb if the US would have to pay other countries if they have floods or hurricanes, but said he supports the creation of a loss and damage fund as one of the objectives for Cop28.^CCN

Treated fuel exhaust from large ships, generated in compliance with international air pollution limits, is instead dumped into the sea.^ICN

The methane leaks from natural gas power make its emissions on par with coal, according to a new study casting doubts on its use as a bridge from coal to renewable energy.^MR The methane and CO2 generated from dead organic matter piling up behind hydropower dams is more climatically impactful than imagined, and the inadvertent emissions of some hydropower plants can even rival that of fossil fuel plants, leading some scientists to believe that they cannot be part of the future renewable energy mix. In other news, the minerals required for solar and wind energy generation require massively harmful mines and quarries often in developing countries; nuclear energy produces emissions from the concrete, requires lots of increasingly precious water, and also produces nuclear waste which is harmful for thousands of years; and carbon capture and storage doesn't work, so once we rule all those out, we arrive at... people running in hamster wheels.^ICN