A Republican 2024 climate strategy: more drilling, less clean energy
Conservatives are laying the groundwork for a 2024 Republican administration that would dismantle efforts to slow global warming. The move is part of a sweeping strategy dubbed Project 2025 that Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank organizing the effort, has called a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a future Republican presidency. The plan calls for shredding regulations to curb greenhouse gas pollution from cars, oil and gas wells, and power plants, dismantling almost every clean energy program in the federal government and boosting the production of fossil fuels — the burning of which is the chief cause of planetary warming.
For the first time, there’s a pill for postpartum depression
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first pill for postpartum depression, a milestone considered likely to increase recognition and treatment of a debilitating condition that afflicts about a half-million women in the United States every year. Clinical trial data shows the pill works quickly, beginning to ease depression in as little as three days, significantly faster than general antidepressants, which can take two weeks or longer to have an effect. The pill, zuranolone, which will be marketed under the brand name Zurzuvae, was developed by Sage Therapeutics, a Massachusetts company that produces it in partnership with Biogen. The companies have not announced a price for the pill.
DeSantis dismisses Trump’s 2020 election theories as false
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that claims about the 2020 election being stolen were false, directly contradicting a central argument of former President Donald Trump and his supporters. The comments went further than DeSantis, a Republican candidate for president, typically goes when asked about Trump’s defeat. The governor has often tried to hedge, refusing to acknowledge that the election was fairly conducted. In his response Friday, DeSantis did not mention Trump by name — saying merely that such theories were “unsubstantiated.” Later in the day, DeSantis suggested that he would pardon Trump, should the former president be convicted in the election case.
Parkland hosts a grim reenactment of a school massacre
The stillness felt eerie Friday outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Everyone present — and all the surrounding neighbors — knew what was about to happen. At noon, it began. Two loud sounds. Pop, pop! Gunfire. The rare reenactment of a deadly mass shooting was underway. More than five years after a former student killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018, ballistics experts and technicians were reconstructing the massacre, gunshot by gunshot. The sounds were recorded for possible use in a civil trial against a former sheriff’s deputy who failed to rush into the building as the shooting unfolded.
Biden is expected to permanently block Grand Canyon mining
President Joe Biden is likely to announce the creation of new national monument to protect about 1 million acres around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining as soon as next week. The area in question is already off-limits to uranium mining, a designation made by President Barack Obama in 2011. But those protections are set to expire in 2032. If Biden were to designate the land as a national monument, those conditions would be permanent. Native tribes have long lobbied for the government to permanently protect the area from uranium mining that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed as well as areas with great cultural meaning for Native Americans.
Vocal Scientology critic files suit against church
Actress Leah Remini, a former longtime member of the Church of Scientology who has been highly critical of the organization since leaving it in 2013, filed suit against the church this week seeking to end what she said were the “mob-style tactics” it had used to harass and defame her. The lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, lists the church as a defendant along with its Religious Technology Center, which the church describes as an organization formed to preserve, maintain and protect the religion; and David Miscavige, the chair of the center’s board and the leader of the church.
Anger builds in towns deliberately flooded, in part, to save Beijing
For days, the rain pounded Beijing and areas around it in what the government said was the heaviest deluge China’s capital had seen since record keeping began 140 years ago. When the downpour finally stopped Tuesday, most of Beijing had been spared the worst — but partly because officials made sure the floodwaters went elsewhere. China is not the only country that sometimes opens spillways to divert floodwaters from big cities to areas with fewer residents. But the crisis in the city of Zhuozhou has set off widespread anger, in part because help was initially slow to arrive in some areas.
India’s top court clears way for Rahul Gandhi’s return to parliament
India’s Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for Rahul Gandhi, the country’s foremost opposition leader, to return to parliament and run in next spring’s national elections, a contest that will pit Prime Minister Narendra Modi against a coalition featuring a debilitated Congress Party led unofficially by Gandhi. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that had sentenced Gandhi to two years in prison and therefore disqualified him from the legislature for a taunting remark that he made in 2019 about the name Modi. It was unclear when Gandhi — the fourth-generation scion and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding father of independent India — would be reinstated to parliament.
Acropolis will limit visitor numbers as Europe tackles a tourist crush
Greece will start capping the number of visitors to the Acropolis, government officials said, an effort to curb overcrowding at its most popular archaeological site amid worries about the impact of tourists thronging European attractions. The cap of 20,000 visitors a day will be tested beginning Sept. 4, and similar measures will be rolled out to other ancient sites across the country, according to Culture Minister Lina Mendoni. She said the restrictions were spurred by worries over potential damage to the site and the experiences of staff members and visitors.
Ukraine hits a distant Russian ship, showing reach of naval drones
A Ukrainian maritime drone damaged a Russian warship on the Black Sea on Friday, the most serious strike on Moscow’s navy since last year, demonstrating both the escalating conflict at sea and the growing range and capability of Ukraine’s uncrewed vehicles. The drone slammed into the ship and detonated its explosive payload near the Russian port of Novorossiysk, a key naval and shipping hub on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea, hundreds of miles from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory. The New York Times verified multiple videos and photographs of a Ropucha-class landing ship listing to its port side.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Navalny receives a new 19-year sentence
A Russian court Friday handed Alexei Navalny, the jailed opposition campaigner, a new 19-year sentence on charges of supporting “extremism” and ordered him imprisoned under the harshest conditions. The sentence demonstrated the widening scope of repression under President Vladimir Putin and threatened to further isolate his most cutting domestic critic. Navalny was already serving a nine-year sentence east of Moscow on fraud charges when Russian authorities added additional cases against him, in what his supporters have characterized as a savage campaign to banish him from Russia’s public sphere and erode his health in confinement. Navalny, 47, on Friday was sentenced for creating an extremist organization and other crimes.
Chris Christie meets with Ukrainian President in surprise trip to Kyiv
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made an unannounced visit to Ukraine on Friday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, offering full-throated support for the nation in its war with Russia while staking out a clear position on an issue that has divided his party and his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. Christie’s whirlwind one-day trip had the feel at times of an episode from an alternate-universe GOP primary: one in which former President Donald Trump had not wrenched the party loose from decades of its foreign-policy history, and in which Christie’s more traditionally hawkish vision of America’s place in the world might win over voters.
By wire sources