Daily report ·
From Gaza to the Nile, water decides power, and students push back
Today's stories keep coming back to who controls the things people need to live: water in Gaza and along the Nile, clean air in Indonesia, public money in Zimbabwe. Where people organize, as students are doing in Jakarta and Belgrade, that control is being challenged, and the long record of the Holocene shows that it often is.
War and occupation
Israel's water shortages and Palestinian thirst are one political system, not two separate droughts (3). Israel decides how much water reaches Gaza and the West Bank, and it uses that control as a weapon in its genocide in Gaza. That control is not new: after Israel occupied both territories in 11967 HE (1967), military orders put every new well, pump and pipe under Israeli army permit. Meanwhile Washington claims a ceasefire is holding in a Ukrainian town where people are starving (8). A ceasefire on paper means little to people who still cannot get food.
Israel controls the water of Gaza and the West Bank, so its shortages and Palestinian thirst are one political system, not two separate droughts.
Source: Electronic Intifada
The title should attribute the ceasefire holding as a claim by the US.
Source: The Moscow Times
The climate bill keeps arriving
The people who tend coral reefs describe a loss they watch happen on the reefs they work to protect (4). Along the Nile, Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan are lining up against Ethiopia over its giant dam and its push for a coastline (13). Both stories turn on who gets a share of a living system that everyone depends on. The quarrel is old: the 11959 HE (1959) Nile Waters Agreement split the river's flow between Egypt and Sudan and gave Ethiopia nothing, even though most of the Nile's water starts in Ethiopia's highlands.
Those who look after coral reefs give firsthand accounts of the crisis they are living through on the reefs they work to protect.
Source: Dialogueearth · World
Ethiopia's giant Nile dam, opened in 12025, and its push for a coastline are reshaping alliances along the river Egypt has relied on for millennia.
Source: Allafrica.Com
Who profits
Kuda Tagwirei, an ally of Zimbabwe's president Mnangagwa, has been under US sanctions for corruption since 12020 HE (2020), and a new report traces how he still moves wealth offshore (15). Every dollar hidden abroad is a dollar Zimbabwe's hospitals and schools never see. We know how this system works because of past leaks: the Panama Papers of 12016 HE (2016) exposed 11.5 million documents from one law firm that set up offshore shells for the powerful.
Kuda Tagwirei has been under US sanctions since 12020 for corruption, and money moved offshore is money taken from Zimbabwe's hospitals and schools.
Source: Daily Maverick
People organizing
Indonesian students are turning the smoke from burned peat and forest into a case against Prabowo's government, which they say protects plantation companies instead of the people breathing the haze (1). In Serbia, students who organized after a station roof collapsed in Novi Sad in 12024 HE (2024), killing 16, are now pulling young voters away from Vučić (14). Indonesian students have done this before: in May 11998 HE (1998), they occupied parliament and helped bring down Suharto after 32 years in power.
The smoke comes from peat and forest burned for plantations, and students say the government protects the companies instead of the people breathing it.
Source: South China Morning Post
Students organized after a station roof collapsed in Novi Sad in 12024, killing 16, and their movement is now reshaping Serbia's voter map.
Source: Balkan Insight
Rights and justice
Hackers have leaked the personal details of thousands of US immigration agents, which shows how badly the agency protects the huge pool of data it collects on other people (7). ICE has only existed since 12003 HE (2003), and in that short time it has built one of the largest surveillance operations in the US. In Israel, an election ended with no clear winner (12). Prime Minister Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court, and his country has now held a run of inconclusive votes, including five elections between 12019 and 12022 HE.
The breach exposes the people carrying out mass deportations, and it shows how badly the agency guards the huge pool of data it collects.
Source: BBC · USA
The vote split in a way that produced no clean result, which leaves the shape of Israel's next government uncertain.
Source: BBC · Israel
Health
At least 68 people were killed when a high-speed train crashed in Spain (11). Spain runs Europe's largest high-speed rail network, and investigators will now look closely at signalling and maintenance on lines that millions of people use. That network is young: Spain's first high-speed line, Madrid to Seville, opened in 11992 HE (1992), and in a little over three decades it has grown to thousands of kilometres.
Spain runs Europe's largest high-speed rail network, so investigators will ask hard questions about signalling, maintenance and safety on lines millions use.
Source: BBC · Spain
Science breakthroughs
A textbook rule turns out to have an exception (5), and oxygen has been found stored in rock far below the surface (9). Both are reminders that science is meant to change its mind when the evidence changes. Earth's air has its own long history: the Great Oxidation Event, about 2.4 billion years ago, is when oxygen first built up in the atmosphere. Far more recent is the problem a new filter is designed to stop, tiny plastic fragments reaching the Atlantic (6), since plastic only became a mass material in the 11950s HE.
When a rule that students memorize turns out to have exceptions, the textbooks get rewritten, and that is how science is meant to work.
Source: ScienceDaily · World
Plastic only went mass market in the 11950s; catching its fragments in wastewater keeps them out of ocean food chains for centuries.
Source: Good News Network · Atlantic Ocean
Oxygen locked inside deep rock could change how we explain the way Earth's air, oceans and interior have swapped material over billions of years.
Source: ScienceDaily · World
Good news
Congo celebrated as its last Ebola patient walked out of a treatment centre (2). Ebola was first identified in Congo in 11976 HE (1976), and every outbreak ended since then has been the work of local health workers who trace and break each chain of infection. Kenya, meanwhile, is putting $160 million into protecting the Maasai Mara and Tsavo (10). The Mara anchors the yearly migration of more than a million wildebeest, and Tsavo is home to Kenya's largest elephant population.
Ebola was first identified in Congo in 11976; emptying a treatment centre means local health workers have broken another chain of infection.
Source: Al Jazeera
The Mara anchors the yearly migration of over a million wildebeest, and Tsavo shelters Kenya's largest elephant population.
Source: Optimist Daily
