Edward Carver, Common Dreams

Boeing revoked the company-sponsored healthcare benefits of about 33,000 striking workers starting Tuesday, drawing condemnation from progressives, who said it showed the need for a universal healthcare system in the United States.

The workers, who are mostly in Washington state and are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), went on strike on September 13, and the corporation announced on its website that their healthcare benefits would expire at the end of the day on September 30.

"Boeing's greed offers another perfect example of why we need Medicare for All," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media. "Like other wealthy countries we must guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child as a human right, not a job benefit. Whether you're on strike or not, everyone is entitled to healthcare."

Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), wrote on social media that "healthcare should not be tied to employment."

"Also, shame on Boeing!" she added.

Many companies have been accused of cutting off healthcare benefits as a strike-breaking tactic. General Motors revoked healthcare benefits to striking workers in 2019, and Warrior Met, a coal mining company, did so in 2021; John Deere, meanwhile, threatened to follow suit during its 2021 strike.

In 2022, House Democrats moved to establish a federal law preventing the maneuver, but the proposed bill didn't pass.

Washington state, which has a Democratic trifecta, did pass legislation this year providing a modicum of support to striking workers. The new law allows workers involved in a labor dispute open enrollment into subsidized healthcare through the state exchange system.

The striking Boeing workers said they plan to remain steadfast despite the cutoff of benefits.

"I'm 50 years old. I've been working since I was 16," Robert Silverman, told a local reporter from the picket line on Monday. "I've been saving for a long time. From day one in my hiring process, they told us about this day, they said to be ready."

The healthcare cutoff followed a month of frenzied negotiations. On September 8, Boeing and IAM reached a tentative deal that could have averted a strike, but the 33,000 workers voted overwhelmingly against it days later, opting to go on strike.

The strike has effectively stopped Boeing's commercial airline production, though most of its 170,000 workforce is not on strike, and the corporation continues production in other domains.

The points of dispute in the negotiations include wages and retirement benefits. The tentative deal included a 25% wage increase by the end of a four-year contract, but employees wanted a 40% increase. On September 23, Boeing proposed a 30% increase, saying that was its "best and final" offer. IAM rejected it, angered by the wording and the fact that the offer was made via the media, rather than directly to the union.

Boeing, once a beacon of U.S. industrial prowess, was already in turmoil before the strike began after a series of scandals in recent years that have raised serious questions about its commitment to safety.

The corporation has also long been in the crosshairs of progressives and working-class advocates who say its management has been especially greedy.

"Boeing could have taken help to keep people on payroll through Covid, but they turned down billions in federal assistance because it came with strings such as banning stock buybacks and capping executive compensation," Nelson, the AFA-CWA leader, told Common Dreams. "This company has bowed repeatedly before the alter of shareholder capitalism."

Nelson said the union's campaign for fair pay and benefits was in fact connected to efforts to improve safety protocols.

"Machinists are fighting... [for] good union jobs and in the process they are fighting for our safety," she said. "We stand with them. This strike is the best chance we have of saving Boeing and making it once again a marvel of engineering and solid maintenance."

The push for Medicare for All in the U.S., meanwhile, remains muted, despite the failures of the U.S. healthcare system. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation as a senator, but hasn't included it as part of her 2024 platform.

Dockworkers at East and Gulf Coast ports are set to go on strike after their contract expires at midnight on Monday as they seek higher pay and better job protections, in what would be the first coordinated walkout at ports from Maine to Texas since 1977.

The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), a union, has reached an impasse with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), the port operators' group, over pay rises and protection against automation of jobs, among other benefits.

The strike is expected to have consequences across the economy: East and Gulf Coast ports bring in about half of the country's containerized goods and send out about two-thirds of them.

President Joe Biden doesn't plan to intervene to force a deal, administration officials have said, following pressure from union officials and advocates who want to ensure the dockworkers keep their right to strike.

An ILA statement on Sunday said USMX "refuses to address a half-century of wage subjugation," and another earlier in the week referred to the wages the port operators were offering as "insulting" and "a joke."

The expiring contract covers 45,000 longshoremen at about three dozen ports, including the Port of New York and New Jersey, which is the third busiest in the country.

The last strike at all of the East and Gulf Coast ports was in 1977; containerized trade is now even more essential to the U.S. economy than it was then.

West Coast dockworkers are covered under a different contract that was reached last year after many months of acrimonious negotiations.

The U.S. president has the authority to suspend a dockworkers strike under the Taft-Hartley Act, anti-union legislation passed in 1947. Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush both used the act to break dockworkers strikes.

Union officials are watching the Biden administration closely in the current labor dispute. AFL-CIO President Elizabeth Shuler last week implored Congress to stay out of the process, warning that even the suggestion of federal intervention could prevent USMX from negotiating in good faith.

"Averting a strike is the responsibility of the employers who refuse to offer ILA members a contract that reflects the dignity and value of their labor," Schuler wrote.

Biden, a Democrat, angered many union members and working class advocates in 2022 by working with Congress to intervene to stop a major railworkers strike.

Some experts believe the president won't want to do that again ahead of the November election, for fear of hurting Democratic turnout.

"They just don't want to have a fight with labor going into the election," Harry Katz, an economist and labor relations expert at Cornell University, toldThe New York Times. "Because you need the unions to get out the vote."

However, the administration will also likely face pressure from certain Democrats and business interests who worry about the economic impact of a strike just before the elections. JPMorgan analysts estimated that the strike would cost the U.S. economy about $5 billion per day, roughly 6% of gross domestic product.

"There is little chance that the administration would risk jeopardizing its recent economic successes less than two months before a tightly-contested election," Bradley Saunders, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients last week, according toThe Washington Post.

The ILA and USMX are negotiating pay increases, healthcare benefits, and the use of automated or semi-automated terminals, which threaten jobs. Pay has reportedly emerged as a central point of contention in recent negotiations. USMX offered an hourly pay rise of $2.50 each year over the course of a six-year contract; the ILA asked for a $5 raise per year, the Times reported.

The current top pay rate for the 45,000 longshoremen is $39 an hour, but the West Coast dockworkers are set to receive just over $60 in 2027, the final year of their contract. The ILA's requested rate would mean the top rate was $69 an hour in the final year of the new contract.

USMX is made up of global shipping companies that made "windfall profits" in 2021 and 2022, according to the Times.

The shutdown, which could begin as early as 12:01 am on Tuesday, won't affect cruise ships or military cargo, which the ILA has pledged to continue transporting.

The German foreign ministry on Wednesday issued a rejoinder to Republican nominee Donald Trump's debate claim that Germany had reverted back to a "normal" energy policy after, as he implied, failing to transition away from fossil fuels.

Near the end of the televised presidential debate, Trump addressed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, saying:

"You believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack. We're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do, things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants."

The Germans replied forcefully and included a snarky reference to Trump's baseless claim, made earlier in the debate, that immigrants were eating Americans' pets.

"Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables," the German foreign ministry, which is led by Annalena Baerbock of the country's green party as part of a coalition arrangement, wrote on social media. "And we are shutting down—not building—coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don't eat cats and dogs."

"The former president is not famous for his grasp of the finer details of European energy policy," Bernd Radowitz wrote Wednesday in Recharge, a trade news publication.

Radowitz and other commentators took Trump's "normal" to mean fossil fuel-driven energy production.

"As usual with Trump, it takes some patience to interpret his incoherent line of argument, but what most U.S. viewers and potential voters likely understood from this statement is that Germany tried to ditch fossil fuels, but within a year had to give that up. The assumption here is also that Trump by 'normal energy plants' meant fossil-fired generation."

Germany has since 2010 undertaken an Energiewende aimed at drawing down on fossil fuel use and nuclear-powered energy and ramping up renewables. The transition plan hit a rough patch in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia had supplied more than half of Germany's natural gas, as well as some of its oil and coal. German authorities turned some nuclear plants back on, added more coal consumption into the energy mix, and imported more natural gas from elsewhere, drawing criticism from climate campaigners.

However, those changes were meant to be temporary and Germany has since made progress on implementing its green transition plans. In March, the government declared itself on target to reach its 2030 climate goals. Over 60% of the country's electricity was powered by renewables in the first half of this year, a marked increase from 2022.

The foreign ministry's social media post had been viewed by over 1 million people as of Wednesday morning. It was not entirely clear why the ministry raised Trump's pet remarks, which were seemingly aimed at immigrants of color from low-income countries. Trump's claim, which The New York Times called "false and outlandish," was based on a rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets for sustenance. Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), had spread the racist rumors on Monday.

As president, Trump had a scratchy relationship with Germany, which he frequently criticized for its export surplus to the U.S. and its lack of defense spending. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the center-left Social Democratic Party, made remarks in July that indicated that he hoped Harris would win the election. Scholz, who's held office since 2021, had last year endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection, speaking in unusually direct terms about the U.S. race.

Bat die-offs in the U.S. led to increased use of insecticides, which in turn led to greater infant mortality, according to a "seminal" study published Thursday that shows the effects of biodiversity loss on human beings.

Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, authored the study, which was published by Science, a leading peer-reviewed journal.

Bats can eat thousands of insects per night and act as a natural pest control for farmers, so when a fungal disease began killing off bat populations in the U.S. after being introduced in 2006, farmers in affected counties used more insecticides, Frank found. Those same counties saw more infant deaths, which Frank linked to increased use of insecticide that is harmful to human health, especially for babies and fetuses.

The study was greeted by an outpouring of praise from unaffiliated scientists for its methodology and the important takeaways it offers.

"[Frank] uses simple statistical methods to the most cutting-edge techniques, and the takeaway is the same," Eli Fenichel, an environmental economist at Yale University, toldThe New York Times. "Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticide to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying. It is a sobering result."

Carmen Messerlian, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard University, told the Times the study "seminal" and "groundbreaking."

The study shows the need for a broader understanding of human health that includes consideration of entire ecosystems, said Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "It emphasizes the need to move from a human-centric health impact analysis, which only considers the direct effects of pollution on human health, to a planetary health impact assessment," he told New Scientist.

Reporter Benji Jones echoed that sentiment in Vox, calling Frank's findings "astonishing" and writing that such studies could help us fight chemical pollution by corporations.

"When the link between human and environmental health is overlooked, industries enabled by short-sighted policies can destroy wildlife habitats without a full understanding of what we lose in the process," Jones said. "This is precisely why studies like this are so critical: They reveal, in terms most people can relate to, how the ongoing destruction of biodiversity affects us all."

Frank, who said he started the work after stumbling on an article about bat population loss while procrastinating, happened upon an excellent natural experiment. The spread of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease, was well tracked on a county-by-county level, leaving him with high-quality data that is hard to find for researchers who study the intersection of human and animal life.

The benefits of biodiversity on humans, and the drawbacks to its loss, are normally very difficult to quantify.

"That's just quite rare—to get good, empirical, grounded estimates of how much value the species is providing," Charles Taylor, an environmental economist at Harvard Kennedy School, toldThe Guardian. "Putting actual numbers to it in a credible way is tough."

Taylor himself is the author of a somewhat similar study that showed that pesticide use and infant mortality rose during years in which cicadas appeared; the insects do so at 13-17 year intervals.

David Rosner, a historian based at Columbia University, said the new bat study joins a large body of evidence dating back to the 1960s that links pesticide use with negative human health outcomes. "We're dumping these synthetic materials into our environment, not knowing anything about what their impacts are going to be," he said. "It's not surprising—it's just kind of shocking that we discover it every year."

Frank's claim about the cause of increased infant mortality should be taken with some caution, said Vermeulen, the Dutch researcher. He said the loss of agricultural income caused by bat die-offs could be connected to the increased deaths in complex ways.

The exact causal mechanism isn't known, Frank told media outlets, but the data shows the rise of infant mortality didn't come from food contamination by insecticides—rather, it's more likely it came via the water supply or contact with the chemicals.

Frank's other research extends beyond pesticide use. He and another researcher recently estimated that hundreds of thousands of human beings have died in India due to the collapse of the country's vulture population, as rotting meat increased the spread of diseases such as rabies.

Frank is not the first to study the impacts of white-nose syndrome on humans. Other studies have shown a reduction in land rents in counties hit by the bat plague and documented the billions of dollars that farmers have lost as their natural pest control disappeared.

The syndrome attacks bats while they hibernate. It was first identified in New York in 2006 and has since spread to much of North America. It's believed to have been brought over from Europe. It doesn't affect all bat species, but it's killed more than 90% of three key species, and bats also face a myriad of other threats, including habitat loss, climate change, and the dangerous churn of wind turbines.

Frank's bracing study should be a call to arms, experts said.

"This study estimates just a few of the consequences we suffer from the disappearance of bats, and they are just one of the species we're losing," Felicia Keesing, a biologist at Bard College, told The Washington Post. "These results should motivate everyone, not just farmers and parents, to clamor for the protection and restoration of biodiversity."

Crews breached the final of four dams on a key stretch of the Klamath River on Wednesday, letting salmon run freely there for the first time in over a century and garnering tears from Indigenous activists who had campaigned for the dam removals for decades.

Together the four demolitions mark the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.

The Klamath, which runs from south-central Oregon into northwestern California, has long been bordered by Native American tribes—"Salmon People," as they call themselves—that once relied on the protein-rich fish for about half of their caloric intake but were impoverished by the institution of the dams, among other white settler colonialist initiatives.

"Another wall fell today," Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe, said in a statement. "The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free. Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today's events represent a fulfillment of that obligation."

The four dams were built between 1918 and 1962 to generate electricity in the region and have been owned in recent years by PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate owned by Warren Buffett.

Beforehand, chinook and coho salmon were plentiful in the river.

"My grandpa said that there were so many salmon when he was younger that you could walk across their backs to the other side," Brook Thompson, a 28-year-old activist who grew up on the Yurok reservation, toldThe New York Times. "It's just so hard to express to people who are so used to fishing for sport or fun that salmon is really everything for us. The health of the river is literally our health."

The campaign to remove the dams took flight in 2002 following a devastating salmon die-off which Thompson and other Indigenous activists still talk about as a turning point. Campaigners went as far as the United Kingdom—where Scottish Power, which then owned the dams, was headquartered—to demand their removal.

The campaign faced opposition but was pushed through by a coalition that included Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Kate Brown of Oregon, who left office in 2023.

"This moment is decades in the making—and reflects California's commitment to righting the wrongs of the past," Newsom said in a statement on Wednesday. "Today, fish are swimming freely in the Klamath for the first time in more than a century, thanks to the incredible work of our tribal, local, and federal partners."

The Klamath decommissioning project is part of a larger movement aimed at restorative justice for Indigenous peoples and ecological renewal. More than 2,000 dams have been removed in the United States, mostly in the last 25 years, according to American Rivers, an advocacy group.

Thompson said the removal of the dams showed that activism can pay off.

"The biggest thing for me, the significance of the dam removal project, is just hope—understanding that change can be made," she recently told the Los Angeles Times.

The Klamath is unusual in that it runs from a desert area into the mountains and then back down to the Pacific Ocean—National Geographic has called it "a river upside down." Two upstream dams on the river have not been removed, but they have swim ladders that allow salmon to get through.

Construction work to remove the last infrastructure on the four dams is expected to last another month, while ecological restoration work will go on for years, led by Indigenous groups and Resource Environmental Solutions, a company contracted to do the work.

The Center for American Progress on Tuesday released an analysis of the tax plans in Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto whose authors have close ties to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, showing that conservatives aim to lower taxes on corporations and the rich while raising them on working- and middle-class Americans.

The liberal research and advocacy group, which published the analysis as part of a series of in-depth articles on Project 2025, found that the right-wing plan would raise income taxes for the median family of four by about $3,000, cut taxes by at least $1.5 million for a household earning more than $10 million per year, on average, and cut the corporate tax rate to 18% from 21%, an already historically low rate instituted by Republicans in 2017.

The analysis, authored by Brendan Duke, a senior director of economic policy at CAP, shows that, of households with a married couple and two children, only those earning more than $170,000 per year would see a tax break under the Project 2025 plan.

"This analysis lays bare how the extreme, conservative Project 2025 plan is more of the same from conservative leaders—delivering handouts to the wealthy and corporations on the backs of working people," Kobie Christian, a spokesperson at Unrig Our Economy, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

The Project 2025 plan would consolidate seven tax brackets into just two—15% and 30%—on the grounds that it would "simplify" the tax code. However, CAP says that the existing number of tax brackets don't create any additional complexity and are easily dealt with by tax-filing software. Moreover, 70% of tax filers only deal with the two lowest tax brackets—10% and 12%—"so they effectively are already in a two-bracket system," Duke wrote.

CAP's findings about the impact of Project 2025's tax proposals on median earners are in keeping with those of the Democrats on the U.S. congressional Joint Economic Committee, who released a similar analysis earlier this month.

CAP included projections of the impact that Project 2025 would have on median income earners in each state and in the District of Columbia. Only in D.C., a high-earning area, were median earners projected to pay lower taxes under the right-wing plan; in all 50 states, their taxes went up.

It's unclear how popular the Project 2025 tax plans would be. Polling from Navigator Research, a progressive polling firm, in February showed that the vast majority of Americans favor increasing taxes on the rich and large corporations.

In addition to the immediate tax plans laid out above, Project 2025 also puts forth a long-term plan to replace all income taxes with a value-added tax—a flat, regressive proposal endorsed by some U.S. House Republicans. In addition to the injustice of such a plan, it may also be impractical. CAP found that it would require a value-added tax—similar to a sales tax—on everything, even essential items such as groceries and healthcare, of at least 45%, if it were to replace lost government revenues, and warned that this would cause inflation.

Project 2025 policy agenda is a 920-page manifesto written by right-wing groups including the Heritage Foundation. The plan has drawn intense media attention in recent months and has proven unpopular with the American public, leading Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, to repeatedly try to distance himself from it. However, 140 of his former administration officials helped create the manifesto.

Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow and an outside economic adviser to Trump, helped write Project 2025 tax plan, according to Duke. Moore drew scrutiny this week for questioning the need for the child tax credit.

The Sunrise Movement on Tuesday launched a campaign program in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, aiming to reach 1.5 million young voters in key swing states.

The left-wing, youth-led climate action group didn't endorse Harris—though it's part of the Green New Deal Network, which has— but announced that it would mobilize to help her defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump, whom Kidus Girma, the group's campaign director, referred to as "Big Oil's favorite henchman."

The group's program will include canvassing, phone banking, and digital outreach, as well as protests and the creation of social media videos aimed at stoking youth enthusiasm.

"Young climate voters could decide this election," Stevie O'Hanlon, the group's communications director, said in a statement. "The Harris-Walz ticket means millions more young voters are tuning in and considering voting. We're going all-out to reach those voters and mobilize our generation to defeat Trump this November."

Sunrise argued in the statement that Harris is polling better than President Joe Biden did because she has more support from youth and climate-minded voters.

The group also cited a recent poll commissioned by Climate Power, an advocacy group, that showed the gap between public trust for Harris and Trump is larger on climate—at 23 percentage points—than on any other issue, even slightly more so than abortion. Sunrise wants to see Harris to press that climate advantage.

The group's program marks an increase in organizational ambition from what was planned in support of Biden's reelection bid—before Harris replaced him, Sunrise's voter engagement goal had been 1 million.

"The difference in excitement between Biden and Harris among young people we've been talking to is night and day," O'Hanlon toldThe Washington Post.

Media outlets have in the last three months made much of Sunrise's refusal to endorse either Biden or Harris, starting with Axios in early June and continuing with the Post on Tuesday.

Sunrise has explained that it's waiting for more information on Harris' climate policies, as well as her approach to Israel's war on Gaza. So far, climate hasn't been a point of emphasis for her; the issue received scant attention at last week's Democratic National Convention.

The group took a similar tack in 2020, mobilizing in support of Biden but declining to endorse him. They are trying to steer the Democratic nominee toward stronger climate action.

"We will continue to urge the Harris campaign to put forward a bold vision that will energize young voters," O'Hanlon said.

Sunrise has long been a lightning rod for criticism, not just from Republicans but also from the more technocratically oriented establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Jonathan Chait wrote a scathing column, full of straw man arguments, about the group in New York in June.

The Post on Tuesday suggested that any attempt by Harris to draw in younger voters with new climate or Gaza policies could alienate "moderate" voters in swing states, where fossil fuel groups have launched ad campaigns attacking her climate record and claiming she would ban gasoline-powered cars. Harris has already walked back some of the climate pledges she made while running for president in the 2020 cycle, including a ban on fracking.

Amid the challenges of operating in a media sphere and political system heavily influenced by corporate interests, Sunrise has continued to work with Democratic leaders while also pushing them to be bolder. Many progressives see the group's past work as key to the development of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—the most notable climate action law in U.S. history, however flawed it may have been.

O'Hanlon, in an interview with Mother Jones on Thursday, expressed optimism that more change could be forthcoming, pointing out that the Democratic Party's climate platform is in fact strong.

"The 2024 platform calls out Big Oil, pledges to make polluters pay, and targets oil and gas company subsidies, which is really substantial," O'Hanlon said.

The Great Barrier Reef recently experienced the highest ocean temperatures in at least four centuries and faces an "existential threat" due to repeated mass coral bleaching episodes, a study published Wednesday in Science found.

The network of coral reefs off of Australia—the world's largest living structure—has faced five of the six hottest three-month periods of average surface temperature ever recorded just since 2016, each of which was accompanied by devastating coral bleaching.

Ocean temperatures around the reef reached a record-breaking extreme from January to March this year, with the three-month mean temperature 1.73°C higher than the pre-1900 average, according to the study, authored by researchers based in Australia.

The study includes climate modeling that attributes the temperatures to fossil fuel-driven carbon emissions, and concludes that urgent climate action is needed.

"This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend, and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realized," the study says.

"In the absence of rapid, coordinated, and ambitious global action to combat climate change, we will likely be witness to the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders," the authors also wrote.

The researchers estimated the surface temperatures for 1618-1899 by using a reconstruction method based on drilling into coral skeletons and analyzing the chemical makeup. For the period from 1900 to 1995, they used both the reconstruction method and measurements by modern instruments, and for the last 30 years they used instrumental data.

They found that temperatures were relatively stable until 1900 but have climbed steadily since, especially since 1960.

The trend has culminated in a series of bleaching events, in which stressed corals expel the microscopic algae in their tissues and become transparent or white. Without the helpful algae, which live inside them symbiotically, corals are at risk of disease and death.

In interviews with journalists, the study authors spoke about the severity of the threat to the Great Barrier Reef and the urgent need for climate action.

"The heat extremes are occurring too often for those corals to effectively adapt and evolve," Ben Henley, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Melbourne and lead author of the study, toldThe New York Times. "If we don't divert from our current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth's great natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef."

Henley said he snorkeled with his father on the Great Barrier Reef as a child.

"You can't even take in the diversity," he said. "It's a kaleidoscope of color, it's absolutely spectacular."

He said he worries that his own 2-year-old daughter may not be able to enjoy the same experience.

"In her childhood years the reef is likely to see immense destruction," he said.

He called for strong global action so that his daughter and members of her generation could "marvel at the reef in their lifetimes."

Helen McGregor, a scientist at the University of Wollongong and study co-author, told the BBC the new research "could send a huge signal to the world about how grave the problem is."

"We know what we need to do," she added. "We have international agreements in place [to limit global temperature rise]."

Scientists not involved in the study agreed about the importance of the research, not just for the Great Barrier Reef but for coral reefs more generally.

"It's a stunningly important summary of the history of the world's largest reef system," Stephen Palumbi, a marine biologist at Stanford University, told the Times. "The paper lays out the danger that corals all around the world face from this heat."

Far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday said that it might be "justified and moral" to cause two million Palestinian civilians to starve to death until Hamas returns Israeli hostages, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups.

Human rights campaigners have demonstrated that Israel is limiting and delaying aid into the Gaza Strip, and even using starvation as a "weapon of war." United Nations' experts warned earlier this month that famine had spread across the enclave, calling it an "intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people" and "a form of genocidal violence."

The comments from Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, added further weight to critics' charges that the country's leaders are uncommitted to addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"We bring in aid because there is no choice," Smotrich, the finance minister, said at a conference hosted by the right-wing news outlet Israel Hayom. "We can't, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned."

"We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war," he added.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued that Smotrich's comments indicated a genocidal intent to kill all of the people of Gaza. "This is what fascism and the desire for mass extermination and displacement look like," he wrote on social media. "These criminals want to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza, not just Hamas."

Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies, said Smotrich's comments were "horrifying but not surprising."

"This vile rhetoric is just the tip of the iceberg," he wrote on social media. "Smotrich is a minister in a government that Western leaders claim shares their values."

Peace Now, an anti-occupation Israeli group, condemned Smotrich's remarks in several social media posts, expressing disbelief that a "senior member of our government" would say such a thing and arguing that it would be "justified" for the U.S. to sanction Smotrich.

"All the way to the Hague," Peace Now wrote, suggesting that Smotrich or other Israeli leaders were guilty of war crimes.

Smotrich implied that allowing in any aid to Gaza was a public relations exercise aimed at quelling international criticism of the Israel's assault on the enclave, which has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Hamas and affiliated militant groups killed more than 1,100 Israelis in a horrific massacre on October 7, taking about 250 hostages, only about half of whom have since been returned. Israeli authorities have said they believe more than 70 hostages are still being held alive, while more than 40 have died.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' top court, has issued a series of rulings against Israel this year, determining that the country must prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and provide sufficient aid, stop its assault on Rafah, and end its unlawful occupation of Gaza and the West Bank immediately. In May, the International Criminal Court, which was founded in 2001 to establish accountability for the world's most serious crimes, sought arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders.

Humanitarian groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said repeatedly that Israel has not complied with the first ICJ ruling—Israeli forces continue to obstruct aid transport and distribution in Gaza, despite mass starvation there.

Four environmental groups on Monday evening endorsed the presidential run of U.S. vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, whom many campaigners view as slightly stronger on climate issues than President Joe Biden.

The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, the Sierra Club, and Clean Energy for America Action issued a statement of support for Harris and pledged to mobilize millions of their supporters behind her.

“Kamala Harris is a courageous advocate for the people and the planet," said Ben Jealous, Sierra Club's executive director.

"She has worked for decades to combat the climate crisis and protect our health and future," he added.

Manish Bapna, president of NRDC Action Fund, agreed that the vice president was well-equipped to step into the top role and deal with the climate crisis.

"Harris grasps the urgency and scale of the challenge," Bapna said. "She'll advance the climate progress we've made at home and internationally. She'll raise climate ambition to make sure we confront the climate crisis in a way that makes the country more inclusive, more economically competitive, and more energy secure."

The joint statement followed a wave of endorsements from leading Democrats in the day and a half after Biden dropped out of the race and backed Harris. Evergreen Action, a climate advocacy group, also endorsed Harris.

The Sunrise Movement thanked Biden for stepping aside, after pushing him to do so. The group hasn't endorsed Harris but has, on social media, touted Harris' earlier climate proposals and initiatives, encouraging her to be as bold as she was on the issue in 2019 while running for president. That year, as a senator from California, she co-sponsored a Green New Deal bill pushed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), saying that climate change posed an "existential threat to our nation."

As a presidential candidate, Harris ran to the left of Biden on climate issues, calling for $10 trillion in climate investment, a carbon tax, and a ban on fracking and on new oil leases on federal lands. She even said that she would support eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass a Green New Deal.

And during a 2019 town hall on climate, Harris identified an underlying climate problem more squarely than many corporate Democrats are willing to do.

"On this issue, guys, as far as I'm concerned, it's not a question of debating the science," Harris said at the time. "It's a question of taking on powerful interests, taking on the polluters, understanding that they have a profit motive to pollute."

Yet that Harris candidacy, wedged awkwardly between corporate Democrats such as Biden and progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), flopped and she dropped out of the race in December 2019.

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden, in his momentous letter on Sunday, called "the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world." She also represented the U.S. at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai last year, speaking in strong terms about the need for action.

"The urgency of this moment is clear," she said in Dubai. "The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time."

"Around the world, there are those who seek to slow or stop our progress, leaders who deny climate science, delay climate action, and spread misinformation," she added. "In the face of their resistance and in the context of this moment, we must do more."

Longtime Harris observers in California commend her environmental record there. As district attorney of San Francisco, she established one of the nation's first environmental justice departments. She later pushed environmental measures as state attorney general and U.S. senator representing California: electrifying school buses, replacing lead water pipes, and strengthening vehicle emissions standards, for example.

As attorney general, she sued oil companies including Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips over pollution issues and took legal action against the Obama administration over fracking. Later, in the town hall event, she she said was proud to be a "fighter" who "took on the Big Oil companies—great, powerful interests."

Bloomberg reported Sunday that Harris is "seen as [a] tougher oil industry opponent than Biden."

Though Harris no longer calls for a Green New Deal and has moderated her rhetoric as part of the Biden administration, she still offers a stark contrast to Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose administration rolled back over 100 climate policies from 2017 to 2021. The new Republican platform doesn't mention climate change and vows to "drill, baby, drill"—in all caps.

Danish police on Sunday arrested prominent anti-whaling activist Paul Watson when his vessel came to port in Greenland, citing a warrant issued by Japan, a whaling nation that seeks his extradition.

Watson, a 73-year-old Canadian American who co-founded Greenpeace and founded Sea Shepherd, was traveling with 25 volunteers aboard the 236-foot M/Y John Paul DeJoria on a mission to the North Pacific for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF), which he started after leaving Sea Shepherd in 2022.

When the vessel arrived in Nuuk, Greenland to refuel, the Danish police immediately boarded and arrested Watson.

The CPWF denounced the surprise arrest, which came as Watson planned to intercept a new Japanese factory whaling ship.

"We implore the Danish government to release Captain Watson and not entertain this politically-motivated request," Locky MacLean, CPWF's ship operations director, said in a statement.

Sunday's arrest came as the M/Y John Paul DeJoria was making its way to the North Pacific via the Northwest Passage after setting off from Dublin. The CPWF team aimed to intercept the Kangei Maru, a new 370-foot, $48 million Japanese factory whaling ship that's equipped with state-of-the-art drones that expedite the killing of whales.

CPWF argues that the launch of the new vessel signals Japan's ambitions to restart commercial whaling on the high seas—international waters—in the North Pacific and the Southern Ocean as early as 2025. Japan long whaled the high seas in defiance of international law, under the guise of scientific research, but in recent years it has shifted to whaling in its own territorial waters, which extend 200 nautical miles from its shores.

Watson, who is known for confrontational tactics, was the star of the Animal Planet television show Whale Wars that ran from 2008 until 2015, in which he lead efforts to disrupt Japanese whaling on the high seas.

Over a dozen police and SWAT team members took part in Watson's arrest in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. He was handcuffed and taken to local detention. A judge denied him bail on the grounds that he was a flight risk, citing a 2012 case from Germany in which he fled house arrest; he will be held in Nuuk until August 15 as authorities assess his possible extradition to Japan, where he could face up to 15 years in jail, The New York Times reported.

The nature of Japan's charges against Watson was not specified in media reports. The Interpol arrest warrant cited by Danish police may be an old one, according to CPWF. MacLean said the warrant had "disappeared" from public view a few months ago and may have been made confidential, possibly as a tactic to lull Watson into a false sense of security when traveling internationally.

The ACLU on Friday issued a memo warning that a second term for former President Donald Trump would "exacerbate inequalities" in the criminal justice system and laying out plans to push against a potential Republican administration's efforts to do so.

The 14-page memo argues that Trump's agenda would be to expand incarceration, abusive policing practices, and the use of the death penalty, all of which the ACLU, a nonprofit human rights organization, opposes.

"We know from this country's history that these extreme and immoral policies harm communities and infringe upon our rights and humanity," Yasmin Cader, director of the ACLU's Trone Center for Justice and Equality, said in a statement that accompanied the release of the memo. "The ACLU is prepared to meet the Trump administration with the same fierce response as we did during his last term in office should he be reelected."

Most of the U.S. criminal legal system is run at the state or local level. More than 1.6 million people are incarcerated in state and local jails or prisons, compared to just over 200,000 in the federal system.

However, a second Trump administration would set the "tone" and create a "ripple effect across the country," threatening a "new era of mass incarceration," the ACLU said. The memo warns that Trump would do so in the following ways:

• Escalating punitive, draconian sentencing and incarceration approaches;
• Incentivizing dramatically worse conditions for the nation's 1.9 million incarcerated people;
• Reincarcerating nearly 3,000 people released to federal home confinement during the pandemic; and
• Undermining recent reforms, including the First Step Act.

The memo also argues that Trump encourages police abuses and has made an "open endorsement of authoritarian and violent policing." Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had the Department of Justice "pull back" on investigations of police abuse, the memo notes.

The ACLU also drew attention to Trump's extreme position on the death penalty. More people were executed by the federal government during his four-year term than had been in any in over a century, and his administration went on what ProPublicacalled a "last-minute killing spree" before his term ended.

Trump's pro-death penalty position dates back decades. In 1989, he took out full-page advertisements in The New York Times and several other city newspapers calling for a reinstitution of the death penalty in New York state following the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the crime.

A Texas-based company has developed vending machines that sell bullets and installed them at a handful of grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama, with plans for expansion into other states, according to news reports this week.

The machines, produced by American Rounds, based in the Dallas area, use artificial intelligence to verify the age of buyers, who must be 21 to purchase the shotgun, rifle, and handgun bullets on offer.

There are few federal regulations on the sale of ammunition, and only a small number of states have their own tougher laws.

The vending machines are "likely to stoke controversy," Newsweek reported, while Gizmodo called their spread a "questionable new trend." Social media users wrote that the idea of vending machines for bullets was "insane", "horrible," and "beyond sick."

"In some states, you can now walk into a grocery store and buy bullets from a vending machine as if you were ordering a candy bar or a soda," Gizmodo reported, though it explained that the process was "slightly more rigorous... than buying a Twix."

Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, expressed concern about the accessibility of the ammunition.

"In a country awash in guns and ammo, where guns are the leading cause of deaths for kids, we don't need to further normalize the sale and promotion of these products," Suplina toldThe Associated Press.

The introduction of the vending machine comes as gun-control advocates increase their efforts to defeat the gun lobby. There were more than 500 shootings nationwide over the 4th of July weekend, according to Moms Demand Action.

Though Walmart, a major ammunition retailer, has put some restrictions on sales in the last ten years, thanks to public pressure that followed mass shootings, bullets remain widely available in the U.S.

"In most of the country it's harder to buy Sudafed than it is to buy ammunition," according toThe Trace, which characterized federal law on ammunition sales as "next to nonexistent."

There were once stricter federal laws in place on ammunition sales but they were undone when Congress passed pro-gun legislation backed by the National Rifle Association in 1986.

One of the new vending machines was the source of controversy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama last week.

"I got some calls about ammunition being sold in grocery stores, vending machines," Tuscaloosa Councilor Kip Tyner said during a city council meeting on July 2, according toABC 33/40. "I mean, I thought it was a lie. I thought it was a joke, but it's not."

The vending machine in question was removed from a Fresh Value supermarket in Tuscaloosa the next day. The store manager said that the machine was removed due to lack of sales.

The American Rounds machines can currently be found at four locations in Oklahoma, one in Alabama, and one in Texas. The company has plans to install a machine in Buena Vista, Colorado, and already has more than 200 installation requests from stores in nine states, CEO Grant Magers told Newsweek. "And that number is growing daily," he said.

American Rounds' website says that "the future of ammo sales is here."

There are no limits to how much ammunition a customer can buy, other than the machine running out of stock, Newsweek reported. American Rounds is targeting small towns where ammunition might not be readily available. The machines are always set up inside of stores, Magers said.

The process of making the purchase, including the use of facial recognition software to check against the ID being used, can take one minute and a half, Magers told the AP.

A Texas-based company has developed vending machines that sell bullets and installed them at a handful of grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama, with plans for expansion into other states, according to news reports this week.

The machines, produced by American Rounds, based in the Dallas area, use artificial intelligence to verify the age of buyers, who must be 21 to purchase the shotgun, rifle, and handgun bullets on offer.

There are few federal regulations on the sale of ammunition, and only a small number of states have their own tougher laws.

The vending machines are "likely to stoke controversy," Newsweek reported, while Gizmodo called their spread a "questionable new trend." Social media users wrote that the idea of vending machines for bullets was "insane", "horrible," and "beyond sick."

"In some states, you can now walk into a grocery store and buy bullets from a vending machine as if you were ordering a candy bar or a soda," Gizmodo reported, though it explained that the process was "slightly more rigorous... than buying a Twix."

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Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, expressed concern about the accessibility of the ammunition.

"In a country awash in guns and ammo, where guns are the leading cause of deaths for kids, we don't need to further normalize the sale and promotion of these products," Suplina toldThe Associated Press.

The introduction of the vending machine comes as gun-control advocates increase their efforts to defeat the gun lobby. There were more than 500 shootings nationwide over the 4th of July weekend, according to Moms Demand Action.

Though Walmart, a major ammunition retailer, has put some restrictions on sales in the last ten years, thanks to public pressure that followed mass shootings, bullets remain widely available in the U.S.

"In most of the country it's harder to buy Sudafed than it is to buy ammunition," according toThe Trace, which characterized federal law on ammunition sales as "next to nonexistent."

There were once stricter federal laws in place on ammunition sales but they were undone when Congress passed pro-gun legislation backed by the National Rifle Association in 1986.

One of the new vending machines was the source of controversy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama last week.

"I got some calls about ammunition being sold in grocery stores, vending machines," Tuscaloosa Councilor Kip Tyner said during a city council meeting on July 2, according toABC 33/40. "I mean, I thought it was a lie. I thought it was a joke, but it's not."

The vending machine in question was removed from a Fresh Value supermarket in Tuscaloosa the next day. The store manager said that the machine was removed due to lack of sales.

The American Rounds machines can currently be found at four locations in Oklahoma, one in Alabama, and one in Texas. The company has plans to install a machine in Buena Vista, Colorado, and already has more than 200 installation requests from stores in nine states, CEO Grant Magers told Newsweek. "And that number is growing daily," he said.

American Rounds' website says that "the future of ammo sales is here."

There are no limits to how much ammunition a customer can buy, other than the machine running out of stock, Newsweek reported. American Rounds is targeting small towns where ammunition might not be readily available. The machines are always set up inside of stores, Magers said.

The process of making the purchase, including the use of facial recognition software to check against the ID being used, can take one minute and a half, Magers told the AP.

Political figures from across the world congratulated France's left-of-center coalition following parliamentary elections on Sunday in which it gained the most seats of any group, outperforming the far-right party that many feared would take control of the National Assembly, in what the The Washington Post called "one of the greatest political upsets in recent French history."

In the second and final round of voting, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) won roughly 180 out of the 577 seats in the assembly, far from a majority but more than President Emmanuel Macron's centrist coalition, which won about 160, or Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which won about 140 or 145.

Several parties including the leftist La France Insoumise (LFI), the center-left Parti Socialiste (PS), and Les Écologistes, a green party, joined forces to form the NFP after Macron announced a snap election in early June.

The parties came together out of fear of the RN, which led the polls and had the strongest showing of any party or alliance in the first round of the parliamentary elections on June 30. The NFP also opposed Macron's neoliberal agenda and supported progressive economic policies such as a lower retirement age.

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. parliament and standard-bearer of the British left, said the French results provided "an urgent, valuable lesson."

"Don't concede ground to those who sow division and fear," Corbyn, who himself was reelected a few days ago, wrote on social media. "Build a bold left movement that offers an alternative of inclusion and hope. That is how you defeat the far right."

Similarly, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) argued that the French results offered confirmation of the popularity of progressive economic platforms like the NFP's.

"Here's a simple fact: If politicians stand with working families, working families will stand with you," Sanders wrote on social media. "As it turns out, lowering the retirement age and raising the minimum wage are very popular. Congratulations to the French left for taking on right-wing extremism and winning."

Several members of France's multiracial soccer team, currently competing in the UEFA European Football Championship in Germany, expressed joy and relief at the results of the election back home.

"The victory of the people," midfielder Tchouameni Aurélien wrote on social media.

Forward Marcus Thuram reacted similarly.

"Congratulations to all those who came forward in the face of the danger that hovered over our country," he wrote. "Long live diversity, long live the republic, long live France. The fight continues."

The effort to defeat the far right involved multiple levels of negotiation between left and centrist parties—not just the formation of the NFP, which prevented member parties from running candidates against one another, but also strategic cooperation between the NFP and Ensemble, Macron's own coalition, before Sunday's second round of voting.

Last week, going into the second round, more than 300 of the 577 legislative races had three or more candidates still in contention—in most cases, one NFP candidate, one Ensemble candidate, and one RN candidate. Because of a shared fear of the far right, the NFP and Ensemble negotiated to drop their third-place candidates from more than 220 races so that left and centrist votes wouldn't be split.

The strategy worked, with RN leaders, who last week had been openly speaking about obtaining a parliamentary majority of 289 seats, left with only about half of that figure or less—though even 140 seats marks a significant gain for the party, which had only 88 previously. The tallies are still being finalized, with different media outlets reporting slightly different totals.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist president of Brazil, praised the "maturity" of the groups that joined together to defeat the far right. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a centrist, expressed relief in light of the impact an RN victory could have had on the Ukraine war.

"In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief," Tusk wrote on social media. "Enough to be happy in Warsaw."

The coalition-building stands as a remarkable accomplishment given the challenges that it entailed: Just building the NFP alliance required tricky negotiation. Left-of-center parties, after decades of discord, formed an alliance for the first time in 2022, but it fell apart last year, and, though the PS was part of that alliance, it was not endorsed by prominent center-left figures such as former President François Hollande, who has backed the NFP.

The NFP parties didn't decide in advance whom they'd put forward for prime minister, and the different factions within the alliance are now jockeying for the position. Many of the more centrist NFP figures have declared that it can't be Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the LFI leader, whom they view as divisive.

In any case, Macron has the power to name the prime minister, and it's not clear if he would be willing to name Mélenchon, who ran against him for president in 2017 and 2022. Macron on Monday declined to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, an ally from his own party, explaining that he should stay on "to ensure the stability of the country."

That's likely just a temporary solution: Ensemble had a near-majority in the previous parliament but, having lost more than 80 seats, will no longer be strong enough to avoid a vote of no confidence in the prime minister and his government. Macron will have to name a prime minister that a majority of the incoming National Assembly approve of or risk triggering such votes of no confidence. The newly elected parliamentarians are scheduled to begin their first session on July 18.