Baby moose trapped in lake is rescued by Alaskan man and police as worried mother watches over him AP
15,000 people gather for summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge BBC
Crisis memories, geopolitics, and the risk of financial contagion Gillian Tett, FT
climate
Saudi Arabia searches for missing as Hajj death toll surpasses 900 France 24
Mexico heat wave kills more than 150 since March France 24
Why some scientists think extreme heat is the reason people keep disappearing in Greece CNN
India heatwave leads to fires, calls for tougher safety regulations Channel News Asia. Commentary:
Every surface is hot to the touch. The human body cannot withstand the nonstop heatwaves. The air conditioner runs nonstop but the room barely cools down, the houseplants are dying and need to be watered with boiling water. It’s hard to breathe in the hot air.
— Rituparna Chatterjee (@MasalaBai) June 19, 2024
NCR = National Capital Region of India.
Bat falls to death from tree in Kanpur due to extreme heat India Today
* * * Economists suggest stockpiling grain for next global emergency Guardian
* * * Occasional Paper: Fungal Banking Bent wood
Book Review – Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Shape Our World A curious biologist
water
What would happen if we caused the Colorado River to burst its banks? Salt Lake Tribune
Syndemics
Disruption to public health and growing threat of H5N1 avian influenza pandemic WSWS
Human SARS-CoV-2 challenge reveals local and systemic response dynamics Nature
China?
Xi Jinping’s mysterious People’s Bank of China plan emerges with biggest change in years Business Standard
China aims to solve real estate problem by promoting affordable housing, but debt remains a problem South China Morning Post
* * * South China Sea: Philippines urged to assert claim over disputed shallows with civilian land South China Morning Post
Philippines secretly builds up fleet at center of South China Sea dispute FT
Putin, Kim Jong Un, and the new multipolar world. Sullivan: Attacking Russia is common sense. Lebanon conflict. (Video) Alex Christoforou, YouTube. Watch at 8:30.
Korean Peninsula
‘We will keep fighting’: South Korea doctors’ strike crisis deepens as more strikers join Channel News Asia
Hanwha signs $100 million contract with Philadelphia shipyard Splash 247
Could the CIA disrupt North Korean arms shipments to Russia? Spy Talk
The secret behind the success of Korean brands Harvard Business Review
Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy” scores victories with visits from Biden, Xi Jinping and now Putin FT
President Putin’s official visit to Vietnam karlof1’s Geopolitics Gym
50 years on, Cambodia is coming to terms with its troubled past Diplomat
Shiraksta
Endless war, no ‘total victory’: IDF wants to withdraw from Gaza, but Netanyahu has other ideas Haaretz. Commentary:
“Detainees have reported torture including electrical torture, hanging, stretching and nail pulling, with some reporting that the worst torture was inflicted on them by the occupying forces. https://t.co/IGA2ZoGCqY
— Ryan Grimm (@ryangrim) June 20, 2024
IDF hands over authority over occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants Guardian
The US power structure is blindly loyal to Israel Mondoweiss
very sorry Atrios, Eschaton
European Separation
French women voters lean heavily to the far right POLITICO
Why the Greens are losing in the EU and what Ukraine should learn from it European Pravda
EU halts vote on child sex abuse law over encryption concerns POLITICO
Dear Old England
Blackburn’s Departure Craig Murray
Chancellor Sunak could impose sanctions on young Brits if they refuse to do mandatory national service Al Mayadeen
A new cold war
Zelensky’s Peace Summit Fails audience
* * * The US claims that Ukrainian forces can cross the border and attack anywhere in Russia. Politico. Caption: “‘This isn’t about geography. This is about common sense,’ National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told PBS.”
The US will strengthen Ukraine’s air defense capabilities by suspending exports to its allies The Washington Post
* * * EU Ambassador: “‘Foreign agents’ law puts Georgia’s European integration on hold” JAM News
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, China: When will a deal really be reached? BNE Intellectual News
Digital Watches
This week in AI: Generative AI takes over academic journals TechCrunch
Neo-Nazis go all-in on AI Wired
Hackers ‘jailbreak’ powerful AI models in global effort to expose flaws FT
Meta warns of bit flips and other hardware failures that cause AI errors Registry
Basil
Sweden’s demonetisation leaves it a hotbed of online fraud The Straits Times
Quick crime at Lambda School Sandovsky
supply chain
Amid Red Sea crisis, changing port patterns challenge transshipment ports Greek Shipping News
Liberia blocks Russian Ingostrakh ship insurance to counter sanctions-violating ‘shadow fleet’ BNE Intellectual News
health care
Drug shortages continue to grow, with older injectable drugs the most vulnerable. Medpage Today
The final frontier
Space kidney disease: A comprehensive, physiological and morphological study of renal dysfunction caused by spaceflight Nature. From the preface:
The new zeitgeist in space travel brought about by the advent of commercial space flight and space tourism has prompted nationally funded agencies to embark on ever more ambitious exploratory “deep space” missions, the first of which – Project Artemis, the Lunar Gateway space station, and the subsequent Deep Space Transport/Mars missions – would place humans for the first time outside Earth’s protective magnetic field, exposing them to large amounts of unmitigated space radiation and weightlessness for months or years at a time.
The health effects of low Earth orbit (LEO) spaceflight (e.g., to the International Space Station) are manifold, with many in the research community focusing on musculoskeletal, neurological, ocular, and cardiovascular degeneration that may manifest as early as a few weeks into the mission. In particular, the effects of LEO spaceflight on many other organ systems are less clear, with vital organs such as the kidneys receiving relatively little attention due to the lack of obvious symptoms. However, when faced with prolonged deep space travel, health problems may only develop with a delayed onset due to hidden subclinical pathophysiology and chronic damage that erodes the extensive functional reserve of such organs.
This revolutionary new observatory will discover threatening asteroids and millions of galaxies Smithsonian
Class struggle
‘America’s Sweetheart’ is a surprisingly infuriating portrayal of the ultimate pink-collar job time
High expectations Baffler
“These stores are unhealthy for our community.” fair
Bella Baxter and the Machine: On Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and Julie Wosk’s Artificial Women LA Review of Books
Listen to your soul’s warnings The Daily Stoic
Today’s antidote (Harald Werner):
Bonus Antidotes:
I just found out that my dad vacuums Twilight 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/VmbyjQCU9R
— Andy 🌷🫧🍓 (@frogclubs) June 21, 2024
See yesterday’s link and Antidote du Jour here.
