Special Interest Glance
Humans have filled the world’s oceans with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic, dramatically more than previously estimated, according to a major study released Wednesday.Five women denied abortion care in Texas sue state over bans
Five women denied abortions in Texas, along with two doctors, have sued the state after they were refused abortion care despite suffering severe complications with their pregnancies.
None of the plaintiffs’ fetuses had a chance of survival. The state’s abortion bans are supposed to allow for the procedure in cases where there is a fatal diagnosis for the fetus, as well as when the pregnancy poses substantial harms to the pregnant person’s health.
And yet, under the overlapping abortion bans in effect in Texas – which threaten doctors with losing their medical licenses, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and up to 99 years in jail for providing abortion care – the plaintiffs claim they were not given the healthcare they needed and were entitled to.
Russia Launches Rescue Ship To Space Station After Leaks
Russia launched a rescue ship on Friday for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose original ride home sprang a dangerous leak while parked at the International Space Station.
The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.
The capsule leak in December was blamed on a micrometeorite that punctured an external radiator, draining it of coolant. The same thing appeared to happen again earlier this month, this time on a docked Russian cargo ship. Camera views showed a small hole in each spacecraft.
The Russian Space Agency delayed the launch of the replacement Soyuz, looking for any manufacturing defects. No issues were found, and the agency proceeded with Friday’s predawn launch from Kazakhstan of the capsule with bundles of supplies strapped into the three seats.
Deaths in Turkey, Syria earthquake surpass 11,000; some areas will be 'uninhabitable for years'
The search for survivors grew more desperate, the homeless problem more acute and the death toll rose sharply Wednesday as rescuers labored to find signs of life amid the rubble of Monday's earthquakes and aftershocks that laid waste to a wide swath of Turkey and Syria.
Turkey’s disaster management agency said the country’s death toll passed 8,500. The Syrian Health Ministry placed the toll in government-held areas at more than 1,200, and at least 1,400 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to the White Helmets volunteer agency.
Dale Buckner, CEO of McLean, Virginia-based Global Guardian, said his international security firm has clients in the region, and his team is helping with medical evacuations, transportation and the delivery of food, water and power supplies in and around the earthquake zone. It will take months to stabilize the region and years to recover from the disaster, he said.
Trump’s political fate may have been decided – by a Georgia grand jury
Even as Donald Trump prepares to dial up his campaign to take back the White House, the former US president’s political and personal fate may already have been decided by the secret workings of a grand jury in Georgia.
The 23-member panel, convened to consider whether Trump and others committed crimes in trying to overturn his defeat in Georgia when it appeared the state might decide the outcome of the entire 2020 presidential election, was dissolved on Monday after submitting its conclusions and asking that they be made public.
If the grand jury’s report recommends prosecution, a county district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis, will face the most consequential decision of her career – whether, for the first time in American history, to charge a former president with a criminal offence.
Jeremiah Green, Modest Mouse Drummer, Dies Of Cancer At 45
Jeremiah Green, the founding drummer for the rock band Modest Mouse, has died just days after the band announced he had been diagnosed with cancer. He was 45.
“Today we lost our dear friend Jeremiah. He laid down to rest and simply faded out,” according to a statement posted Saturday on the band’s social media accounts. “Please appreciate all the love you give, get, have given, and will get. Above all, Jeremiah was about love.”
Green was barely in his teens when he joined the newly formed Modest Mouse, which featured singer-guitarist Isaac Brock and bassist Eric Judy among others. Modest Mouse was originally based in the Seattle suburb Issaquah and later relocated to Portland. Its name originates from a passage by Virginia Woolf, who once described everyday individuals as “modest mouse-coloured people.”
US Senate passes bill protecting same-sex marriage
The US Senate has passed the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation to protect same-sex unions that Democrats are hurrying to get to Joe Biden to be signed into law before Republicans take over the House next year.
The House must now pass the bill, a step the majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said could come as soon as Tuesday 6 December. Nearly 50 House Republicans supported the measure earlier this year. In the Senate, support from 12 Republicans was enough to override the filibuster and advance the bill to Tuesday’s majority vote, which ended 61-36.
Although the Respect for Marriage Act would not codify Obergefell v Hodges, the 2015 supreme court decision which made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, it would require states to recognise all marriages that were legal when performed, including in other states. Interracial marriages would also be protected, with states required to recognise legal marriage regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin”.
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