Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Who acknowledges that climate change is a reality? And who doesn't?
• Suspect arrested in burning of three black churches:
Each church catered to an African American congregation. Each graced a rustic, country setting. Each fronted a small cemetery. And each is now a charred disaster scene, the result of three conflagrations that brought echoes of civil rights-era violence to Opelousas, a city of about 16,000 people in rural St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.
Thursday brought news of an arrest.
At a news conference, Gov. John Bel Edwards identified the suspect as Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old white man. He faces three counts of simple arson of a religious building on the state charges, said state Fire Marshal Butch Browning, who added that federal investigators also were looking into whether hate motived the fires.
• Despite $14 billion upgrade, New Orleans’ levees are sinking:
The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding.
But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.
• Reprise of 2017 Q&A at Just Security explores whether Julian Assange’s prosecution could pose a threat to press freedom.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Critics not happy with fertility treatment that produced a baby born in Greece with DNA from three people.
• Already-discovered nearby exo-planets could be hosting life right now says new study:
When rocky, Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of some of our closest stars, excitement skyrocketed -- until hopes for life were dashed by the high levels of radiation bombarding those worlds.
Proxima-b, only 4.24 light years away, receives 250 times more X-ray radiation than Earth and could experience deadly levels of ultraviolet radiation on its surface. How could life survive such a bombardment? Cornell University astronomers say that life already has survived this kind of fierce radiation, and they have proof: you. [...]
All of life on Earth today evolved from creatures that thrived during an even greater UV radiation assault than Proxima-b, and other nearby exoplanets, currently endure. The Earth of 4 billion years ago was a chaotic, irradiated, hot mess. Yet in spite of this, life somehow gained a toehold and then expanded.
• Jurors thought a gay man might enjoy prison, so they sentenced him to death:
When Charles Rhines, a gay man, was convicted of the murder of Donnivan Schaeffer in January 1993, the jurors at his trial in South Dakota were tasked with deciding whether he would serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, or to sentence him to death. During deliberations, some jurors wondered if life in prison would be punishment at all, suggesting that years in a men’s prison might not be a hardship for a man who is gay. The jurors sentenced him to death.
Rhines’ lawyers have filed a petition to the US Supreme Court, asking the justices to review his case, especially since the high court has weighed in recently on racial discrimination in juries. But Rhines’ case presents a new question: Should juries be able to discriminate against the LGBT community? “Just as the Constitution does not permit a person to be sentenced to die because of his race, it should not permit a person to be sentenced to die because of his sexual orientation,” the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said in an amicus brief supporting Rhines’ petition.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show: BREAKING: Fi
rst picture of black hole reveals large, black void. Greg Dworkin & Armando discuss Assange arrest; how Barr shocked pundits by doing what we said he would. Israel, UK wrestle with political collapse. Trump's sister retires to duck tax probe.