What’s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- Democrats had better be careful in marketing student loans forgiveness, by Egberto Willies
- When people have to pay a discrete tax to fund it, war is less popular, by David Akadjian
- Trump is fomenting war with Iran. That's the entire story, by Laurence Lewis
- Democrats: Stop apologizing! by Mark E Andersen
- Meet the Press host disappoints serious journalist Chuck Todd, by Jon Perr
- My son's hair shouldn't limit his future—but it could, by Rochaun MeadowsFernandez
- A community read: The Mueller report, Part II, by Susan Grigsby
- Thanks to the Supreme Court, defending real elections will be a core issue in 2020, by Ian Reifowitz
- The migrant deaths aren't in the camps, they're in the desert and the Rio Grande, by Frank Vyan Walton
- The NRA is falling apart, one bad shot at a time, by Sher Watts Spooner
- The final score as Sarah Sanders exits White House: Sanders, 1, the press: 0, by Eric Boehlert
- Racism in Great Britain. 'Windrush Generation' had a day — the pain and suffering hasn't gone away, by Denise Oliver Velez
• Second Democratic debate sets audience record: 18.1 million viewers watched Thursday’s debate on NBC, MSNBC or Telemundo. On Wednesday, an estimated 15.3 million viewers watched the first debate.
• Finland’s Latin News radio program goes off the air:
The words the show’s dear listeners – or carissimi auditores – had been dreading came, of course, in Latin. “Nuntii Latini finiti,” was the blunt headline: after three decades on air, Finnish public radio’s weekly Latin news bulletin was over.
“It is a bit of a pity,” said Ari Meriläinen, the show’s producer for the past three seasons. “But it had to come to an end sometime. And 30 years is really quite a remarkable run. Especially for an idea as crazy as this.”
In terrarum orbe unicum – unique in the world – for most of its unexpectedly long life, Nuntii Latini was a five-minute review of world events, broadcast every Friday just after the main six o’clock news, in Latin, from Finland.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Man given as infant to unrelated family by Argentina’s fascist generals finds his biological family after 40 years: During the “Dirty War” of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, thousands of dissidents of the murderous Argentina military dictatorship were forcibly “disappeared” and their children often given to other families. Javier Darroux Mijalchuk was one of those children, taken when he was 4 months old. After he began to question his true origins a few years ago, he contacted the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organization that has made a vigorous effort to track down children stolen during the generals’ reign, using DNA. Darroux, the 130th child identified by the Grandmothers, was reunited with his uncle, who had searched for him over all those decades. "The restitution of my identity is, for me, a tribute to my parents, a caress to the soul, a symbol of memory, truth and justice," Darroux said.
• As record-breaking heatwaves bake people France, Germany, India and others, in California, the soaring temperatures in June roasted mussels in their shells: The die-off could have big impacts on the seashore ecosystem. Marine research coordinator Jackie Sones said: “Mussels are known as a foundation species. The equivalent are the trees in a forest—they provide shelter and habitat for a lot of animals, so when you impact that core habitat it ripples throughout the rest of the system.”
• World Trade Organization could wreak havoc on Green New Deal:
The World Trade Organization is back in the news, with a Thursday ruling against seven states’ renewable energy policies. The WTO is already unpopular with right-wing nationalists like President Trump. By siding with India against the United States, the WTO is likely to make left-leaning politicians and the burgeoning global environmental movement unhappy. [...]
The measures include biodiesel incentives in Montana, nudges for Michigan-made clean-energy manufacturing and other plans in California, Delaware, Connecticut, Minnesota and Washington state. The common denominator of these policies is an attempt to soften the inevitable economic dislocations of moving away from the carbon economy. The Michigan policy was typical: Electricity providers get a renewable credit when they generate one megawatt of green energy. However, they get another tenth of a credit when that energy uses Michigan-made equipment or Michigan laborers.