Month: August 2022

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in San Luis Obispo, California, as seen on March 31, 2015.

The much-heralded Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), while offering a vital lifeline to the renewable energy industry, also contains massive subsidies to keep dangerously aging atomic power plants operating for years to come.

Meanwhile, six decrepit atomic reactors are now caught in a terrifying military crossfire in southeastern Ukraine, showing exactly why it is so important to shut down nuclear plants instead of subsidizing them. The Ukrainian reactors, located at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, are now being used as a shield for Russian artillery arrays. A single errant shell could send far more atomic radiation pouring over Europe than did Chernobyl, with an unimaginable toll of downwind death and destruction from which the continent might never recover.

https://truthout.org/articles/inflation-reduction-acts-subsidies-may-prop-up-aging-nuclear-plants-for-years/

Docent Joan Mastropaolo shares her first-person account of the September 11, 2001 attacks with students during a tour at the 9/11 Tribute Museum in New York City, U.S., August 26, 2021. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs

NEW YORK, Aug 18 (Reuters) – A museum in New York City that told the story of the 9/11 attacks from the perspectives of the people affected has closed its building and ended its walking tours, a co-founder said Thursday.

After shuttering the doors of the 16-year-old 9/11 Tribute Museum Wednesday evening, volunteers spent Thursday morning coordinating the pickup of a World Trade Center steel beam that was heading for storage, along with other artifacts such as first responders’ gear and parts of the two planes that crashed into the buildings.

Attendance has decreased from nearly 300,000 a year prior to a six-month closure in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic to a record low of 26,000 in 2021, said Jennifer Adams-Webb, a co-founder of the museum and CEO of the non-profit September 11th Families’ Association, which helped start the museum.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-911-museum-closes-after-telling-tragedys-story-helping-survivors-heal-2022-08-18/

Uvalde and Highland Park mass shootings survivors, families and supporters rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., calling for stricter gun controls on July 13, 2022.

On Friday, the House voted to pass a ban on certain military-style assault weapons for the first time in 20 years, legislation that advocates say is crucial to curbing gun violence and mass shootings in the U.S.

The bill passed 217 to 213 in a largely party line vote. Two Republicans, Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania) and Chris Jacobs (New York), voted to pass the bill, while five Democrats, Representatives Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Kurt Schrader (Oregon) and Ron Kind (Wisconsin) voted against it.

https://truthout.org/articles/house-passes-assault-weapons-ban-first-of-its-kind-in-decades/

Lapid referred to what he called Israel’s “other capabilities.”