monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Israel's days are numbered.

They're paid because of the repression they suffer through the Zionists' policies of collective punishment, e.g. the demolition of the families' houses.

Don't be a segregationist.

They're being denied their Right of Return by the Zionists.

Those verses have nothing to do with the Zionists'oppression of the Palestinians.

Israel will never know peace.

Israel's days are numbered.

InfraBlue wrote:

Israel's days are numbered.

Then so are the world's. Exactly what Iran wants. Too bad you will have no one left to tell that you helped.

In the shadow of some of America's most controversial coal mines, where companies use huge amounts of explosives to blow the tops off mountains, isolated communities say their water has been poisoned.

Now, they must decide if they will fight back against an industry they have relied upon for generations.

Casey (not her real name) wears a one-dollar wedding ring now. She bought the blue plastic band after her original ring was ruined by the toxic water that has been pumping into her home for more than a decade.

"I just needed something there," she says, as she holds the replacement ring up to the light. "I felt empty without it." She places her original wedding band, now discoloured and corroded, in her palm. Her skin, especially on her hands, has become coarse and sore.

The taps in her house have been worn down, her washing machine frequently stops working, and her bathroom and kitchen have been stained a deep, bloody orange by the pollutants - iron, sulphur, even arsenic - that have seeped into her home's water supply.

This is Appalachia - the heart of America's coal country. It is home to some of the poorest and most isolated communities in the US and the legacy of mining, be it the abandoned processing plants or the scarred landscape, can be seen dotted alongside its vast highways.

Casey's home is a small, double-berth structure with a wooden porch in southern West Virginia, in a place with very patchy mobile phone reception.

She pours a glass of water from her kitchen tap and lets it rest on a table. It has a strange smell and a sticky texture and within minutes begins to turn dark orange. A layer of black sediment soon sinks to the bottom of the glass.

"This is what we have to live with," Casey says. "We don't bathe in the water and we don't cook with it. It stains our fingernails, our knuckles, and our clothes. It's really, really difficult living like this."

Casey and her husband Jack (not his real name), have two young children and drive for more than an hour to stock up on bottled water to drink and cook with. So who do they hold responsible?

"I've been here all my life, but when the surface [coal] mine came in that's when the water started changing," says Jack, who, despite being a miner himself, believes the industry is accountable for his family's water problems.

"I think if they've done wrong they should have to fix it."

At the sprawling mine in the neighbouring valley, millions of pounds of explosives are being detonated on the mountaintops so that coal, buried deep below the surface, can be excavated.

This process is a type of surface mining known as mountaintop removal, and has drawn the ire not only of nearby residents but environmental groups who say it devastates the landscape and pollutes the waterways.

One study estimates that an area the size of the state of Delaware has been flattened by this type of coal mining, which was first practiced in the 1970s.

Another report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that more than 2,000 miles of streams - a distance longer than the Mississippi river - have been buried by the excess rock and soil (known as overburden) that is dumped after the explosions.

And in a part of the world where many people rely on their own wells to get water, rather than a conventional pipeline, any pollution from mining waste can have devastating consequences.

These private wells are essentially unregulated, so it is up to people like Casey and Jack to determine whether their water has been contaminated. But the complex nature of water pollution means many people are completely unaware of what's coming out of their taps.

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.

Insect population collapses have recently been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, but the review strongly indicates the crisis is global. The researchers set out their conclusions in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper: “The [insect] trends confirm that the sixth major extinction event is profoundly impacting [on] life forms on our planet.

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” they write. “The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

I regret to you inform you that the President of the United States still does not understand climate change or the science behind our warming planet.

On Sunday at a rally in Minneapolis, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced that she is running for president. In her speech, Klobuchar said that as president she would take steps to mitigate climate change. It was snowing heavily while she spoke, a fact that President Trump, despite all of the scientific evidence, still seems to think disproves that global warming is happening.

Well, it happened again. Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2019

Time and time again, scientists have explained that just because it’s cold or snowing outside doesn’t mean that climate change is some kind of a hoax. During the polar vortex that gripped much of the country in January, Trump fired off a similar tweet about how global warming needed to “come back fast.” A NOAA spokesperson denied it was a response to the president, but shortly after his comments, the agency tweeted a very simplistic cartoon that explains why many Americans experienced record-breaking cold despite the fact that the planet is getting hotter.

Winter storms don't prove that global warming isn't happening. https://t.co/LDqfq4JH9n pic.twitter.com/ndmLD637Cb

— NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) January 29, 2019

That didn’t deter Donald Trump from making tweeting climate denier rhetoric. But he may want to rethink his strategy. More and more Republicans are realizing that the scientists are right—global warming is happening.

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.

The head teacher of a secondary school says it will remove Colston as a house name for the next school year.

The names of the five houses at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School in Bristol are all linked to white males, but will now be changed to "reflect diversity".

Edward Colston made his fortune through slave trading, as well as bequeathing thousands to charitable causes.

Head teacher Elizabeth Gilpin said: "We cannot change the past. but we can change the future."

In a newsletter to parents and pupils, she wrote: "Role models matter to people when they are growing up.

"We want every young person, whatever their gender, ethnic background and family income, to know that they can aspire to any number of careers and roles in society."

The changes mean that Colston House becomes Johnson House after Katherine Johnson, who worked for NASA as a mathematician.

The other houses will be named after George Müller, who was famous for setting up orphanages in Bristol; Eric Liddell, the Scottish 400m Olympic champion featured in Chariots of Fire; Olaudah Equiano, who played a major role in the anti-slavery movement; and Rosalind Franklin who took the key X-ray crystallography photo that established the structure of DNA.

Mrs Gilpin added: "This has not come from a position of 'political correctness gone mad', but from a genuine desire to have role models with interesting stories which demonstrate our values."

Between 1672 and 1689, Colston's ships are believed to have transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas.

His memory has been honoured in Bristol for centuries.

But in recent years campaigners have called for the role he played in the slave trade to be acknowledged.

The school's decision comes as demolition begins on a concert venue bearing Colston's name.

Republican congressman Walter B Jones, known for changing the name of French fries in government cafeterias to "freedom fries", has died.

Mr Jones was a keen supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and pushed for the name change in protest against France's opposition to the war.

But he later had a complete change of heart, becoming one of the most vocal critics of the war in his party.

His office confirmed that he died on 10 February, his 76th birthday.

Mr Jones represented his district for 34 years, first in the North Carolina state legislature, then in Congress.

At the time of his death, he was being cared for in a hospice in Greenville, North Carolina, having broken his hip last month. His office said that his health declined after his fall on 14 January.

"Congressman Jones will long be remembered for his honesty, faith and integrity," a statement from his office said.

"He was never afraid to take a principled stand. He was known for his independence, and widely admired across the political spectrum. Some may not have agreed with him, but all recognised that he did what he thought was right."

Like most Republicans - and a number of Democrats - Mr Jones backed President George W Bush's resolution to use military force in Iraq to oust its leader Saddam Hussein.

Mr Bush justified the invasion by claiming that Saddam Hussein had developed and hidden weapons of mass destruction.

France, which threatened to veto the UN's resolution authorising US-led military action, was the most vocal in its opposition to the war.

In response, Mr Jones and his fellow Republican Robert W Ney pushed for cafeterias in the House of Representatives to rename their French fries and French toast "freedom fries" and "freedom toast".

The two congressmen were successful, and the new names were met with praise and derision in equal measure.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and it was later revealed that the war was justified using faulty information.

At the same time, Mr Jones met grieving families whose loved ones were killed in the war. This caused him to have a dramatic change of heart, and in 2005 he called for the troops to be brought home.

He spoke candidly on several occasions about how deeply he regretted supporting the war, which led to the deaths of more than 140,000 Iraqi and American people.

"I have signed over 12,000 letters to families and extended families who've lost loved ones in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars," he told NPR in 2017. "That was, for me, asking God to forgive me for my mistake."

In response, Mr Jones and his fellow Republican Robert W Ney pushed for cafeterias in the House of Representatives to rename their French fries and French toast "freedom fries" and "freedom toast".

The two congressmen were successful, and the new names were met with praise and derision in equal measure.

More and more Republicans are realizing that the scientists are right—global warming is happening.

Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.