new report from 160 scientists across 23 countries warns that Earth has reached its first major climate tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. Rising ocean temperatures, which have absorbed 90% of human-generated heat, and acidification from CO₂ emissions have caused half of the world’s coral cover to disappear over the past fifty years. Coral bleaching occurs when corals expel the symbiotic algae that provide energy, destabilizing reefs and pushing them toward collapse. Since 2023, over 80% of reefs have experienced severe bleaching events, while rising acidification hampers recovery and reproduction.

Warm-water corals are crucial ecosystems, supporting a quarter of all marine species, providing $9.9 trillion annually in goods and services like fisheries and tourism, and acting as natural barriers against storm surges. Yet governments are inadequately prepared, with emissions reductions far below what’s needed, leaving reefs—and society—vulnerable to cascading, interconnected crises such as droughts and disrupted ocean currents.

The report emphasizes the urgency of proactive measures to prevent further tipping points, highlighting that existing policies are insufficient. Positive developments include falling costs for renewable energy, making wind, solar, and battery storage more viable economically, though the world is still on track to exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.

Locally, protective measures like marine reserves, overfishing control, and reduced coastal pollution can help reefs recover. Scientists are also actively breeding corals in labs, both as genetic refuges and to produce heat-tolerant corals for potential reintroduction into the wild. While the situation is dire, rapid shifts toward clean energy and innovative conservation strategies offer a chance to avert further irreversible damage to coral ecosystems and the broader climate system.

https://grist.org/oceans/coral-reefs-climate-tipping-point/

When they hit oil over and over again, men like H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchison set off a rush to the Texas oilfields that has never stopped. They also established themselves as powerful backers of right-wing politicians and, in Hunt’s case, fundamentalist Christian preachers. Over the next thirty years, oilmen who made their fortunes in the 1930s bankrolled right-wing think tanks, Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts, the John Birch Society, and a number of explicitly racist and anti-Semitic groups. By 1962, The Nation was reporting that “virtually every Radical Right movement of the postwar era has been propped up by Texas oil millionaires.”

"the vision underlying Abbott’s legislative agenda reflects a fascinating confluence of ideological streams. Colonial-era fears of a Mexican onslaught meet a New Deal-era dread of economic redistribution. Calls for individual freedom justify the universal imposition of a deeply patriarchal Christianity. The historical power of each of these streams amplifies the seeming legitimacy of the others until they flow together into a vision of a world led by white men, ordained by God with the right to rule over women and people of color and the natural world."

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-texan-ideology-turner

Trump knew about Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails reveal | Jeffrey Epstein | The Guardian https://share.google/hIyhSt1Kehzu6zPJs

EUI Robert Schuman Center. Policy Brief: Reindustrialising Tuscany - A Manifesto

Align Act Accelerate. Research, Technology and Innovation to boost European Competitiveness

Align research, innovation, and European competitiveness.
Put R&I at the center of Europe’s economic strategy, strengthen the “fifth freedom” (free movement of knowledge, research, innovation, education), and reinforce the Framework Programme to build a true Research & Innovation Union.

Boost Europe’s global competitiveness and resilience.
Mobilize major public and private RD&I investments to deliver excellent research, impactful innovation, industrial scale-ups, and long-term economic strength across all regions.

Increase European added value through a balanced RD&I portfolio.
Expand and better target funding across the full RD&I spectrum, raise the Framework Programme budget, fund all excellent proposals, and ensure Europe leads international scientific cooperation.

Stimulate breakthrough and disruptive innovation.
Create an agile experimental unit to pilot new tools (e.g., ARPA-type programmes, innovation prizes, AI-assisted evaluation) with faster time-to-funding.

Strengthen excellence, talent, and key RD&I institutions.
Reinforce ERC, EIC, and MSCA; attract and retain top talent; scale private investment; and expand support for disruptive firms and research.

Enhance industrial competitiveness and strategic technologies.
Establish a Technology & Competitiveness Council to monitor critical value chains, support cross-border industrial research, open up partnerships, and better align with EU industrial policies.

Address societal challenges more effectively.
Create a Societal Challenges Council to set priorities, engage civil society and philanthropy, and coordinate mission-related RD&I with broader policy and regulatory action.

Build an attractive, inclusive, and coherent RD&I ecosystem.
Invest in research infrastructures, strengthen university alliances, require ambitious national RD&I strategies, and help less successful Member States capitalize on excellence and EU funding tools.

Radically simplify and modernise the Framework Programme.
Remove redundant programmes, reduce administrative burdens, shorten time-to-grant, use less prenoscriptive calls, and adopt a more agile, risk-accepting funding approach.

Leverage demand-side tools to scale innovation.
Create a strong EU-level innovation procurement programme to accelerate industrial scale-up.

Use international cooperation strategically and selectively.
Recognize partners, competitors, and systemic rivals by RD&I domain; collaborate based on clear purposes; and use partnerships to gain knowledge, talent, and mutual benefits.

Adopt a pragmatic approach to dual-use technologies.
Distinguish “military RD&I” from civilian and dual-use research, and harness the innovation potential generated by increased security and defence spending.

Adnan al-Bursh, the head of orthopedic surgery at Shifa Hospital, was captured by Israeli forces in 2023 along with the rest of his medical team after Israeli troops stormed and ransacked Al-Awda Hospital. He was not simply killed in captivity, but because of it: After months of detention and solitary confinement, Israeli guards eventually dumped him, bleeding and naked from the waist down, in the yard of the prison where he was being held. He died soon afterwards. It’s likely that al-Bursh had been “raped to death,” as Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights suggested, but since Israel has refused to release his body, this remains unproven. (For years, since long before the Gaza genocide, it has been Israel’s standard practice to hold the bodies of Palestinians it has murdered—including those of children—as bargaining chips, all with the blessing of the high court. Hundreds of bodies remain in its freezers, invariably caked with dried blood and dirt from the streets where they fell.)

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/after-the-genocide-the-genocide/