The Gaza Strip − why the history of the densely populated enclave is key to understanding the current conflict

Published: The Conversation, October 10, 2023 7.16pm BST Updated: October 12, 2023 4.17pm BST

Author

  1. Maha Nassar Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona

Disclosure statement

Maha Nassar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The focus on conflict in the Middle East has again returned to the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s defense minister ordering a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave.

Tiếp tục đọc “The Gaza Strip − why the history of the densely populated enclave is key to understanding the current conflict”

Thanh tra Chính phủ công bố kết luận thanh tra tại Dự án Trung tâm Đức mẹ Núi Cúi

Cập nhật lúc 08:00, Thứ sáu, 27/09/2024 (GMT+7)

(Thanh tra) – Thanh tra Chính phủ vừa công bố công khai thông báo kết luận thanh tra việc chấp hành pháp luật trong quản lý, sử dụng đất đai, xây dựng tại Dự án (DA) Trung tâm Đức mẹ Núi Cúi, huyện Thống Nhất, tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết luận thanh tra được Thủ tướng Chính phủ có ý kiến chỉ đạo tại Văn bản số 6356/VPCP-V.I ngày 6/9/2024 của Văn phòng Chính phủ.
Article thumbnail

Quy hoạch chi tiết xây dựng tỷ lệ 1/500 Trung tâm Đức mẹ Núi Cúi tại xã Gia Tân 1, huyện Thống Nhất, tỉnh Đồng Nai. Ảnh: Bộ XD

Tiếp tục đọc “Thanh tra Chính phủ công bố kết luận thanh tra tại Dự án Trung tâm Đức mẹ Núi Cúi”

As big supermarkets pursue profits, new research shows growing exploitation of shrimp farmers [including Vietnamese farmers]

Image

By  DAVID RISING Updated 1:00 PM GMT+7, September 30, 2024Share

BANGKOK (AP) — Indonesian shrimp farmer Yulius Cahyonugroho operated more than two dozen ponds only a few years ago, employing seven people and making more than enough to support his family.

Since then, the 39-year-old says the prices he gets from purchasers have fallen by half and he’s had to scale back to four workers and about one-third the ponds, some months not even breaking even. His wife has had to take a job at a watermelon farm to help support their two children.

“It is more stable than the shrimp farms,” said the farmer from Indonesia’s Central Java province.

Tiếp tục đọc “As big supermarkets pursue profits, new research shows growing exploitation of shrimp farmers [including Vietnamese farmers]”

Four swing states that could matter most

On Politics

September 25, 2024


The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia during the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump this month. Graham Dickie/The New York Times

The four swing states that could matter most

By Jess Bidgood

The latest, with 41 days to go
Vice President Kamala Harris made a broad economic pitch in Pittsburgh, casting herself as a pro-business pragmatist.

*Threats to former President Donald Trump may prompt changes to his travel plans and event types, according to several people briefed on the matter.

* In a television interview, President Biden called Trump a “loser” who lacked “redeeming value.”

The 2024 presidential election is, according to where the polls stand right now, confoundingly close.

The most recent national New York Times/Siena College poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied, while our polling average shows Harris with a slim, two-percentage-point lead.
And each of the seven battleground states that will probably determine the outcome of the election is just about as narrowly divided — or even more so.
This meant that my mission for today was hard.

I wanted to bring you, my dear and busy readers, a slimmed-down list of states that can best help you understand the presidential election, hoping to home in on a combination of blue wall and Sun Belt battlegrounds that rise above the rest to tell the story of how this thing might go. When I got stuck, I called Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, who said he, too, found the battlegrounds difficult to narrow down.

“Everything is so close,” he said, “that even though things are really stable, even the tiniest movement is sufficient to change the whole outcome.”

To put it another way: In this election, everything — and everywhere — matters. It’s a battle of inches, one in which whole states and key groups of voters are behaving a little differently than they have in the past, and that makes it hard to know where exactly the electoral tipping point will be. Both candidates are battling it out across the map.

But as Nate and I considered the polls, the size of each state and how large each looms in each candidate’s most obvious path to victory, we landed on four states that we think are worth watching extra closely. My colleagues across the newsroom will be covering them — and I’ll be heading to all of them myself before the election.

Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania
It’s the indomitable, indisputable and invulnerable king of the swing states: It’s Pennsylvania.

The biggest swing state, with 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is the only battleground widely seen as critical to each candidate’s most straightforward path to victory. It’s the state with the biggest spending on television and radio advertising: Groups supporting Trump and Harris have reserved more than $138 million in airtime in the state between today and Election Day, according to AdImpact (Michigan was next, at more than $82 million).

Pennsylvania is also the battleground state where both Trump and Harris have spent the most time. Since Harris entered the presidential race on July 21, she has held or attended public events in the state on nine different days; Trump has done so on at least eight days since the race was reset. (Those figures for both candidates include attending the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia and a Sept. 11 memorial in Shanksville, which was not a campaign event.)

Trump won Pennsylvania, and the presidency, in 2016. Biden did the same in 2020. Either candidate can get to 270 electoral votes without it — but their path to doing so will be complicated.

Wisconsin
Let’s talk about Harris’s clearest path to victory. In our polling average, she currently has two-percentage-point leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and if she wins all three, and a single electoral vote from Nebraska, the presidency is hers, assuming the less narrowly divided states vote as expected.

That makes Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes critical for Harris, who has campaigned in the state three times since she became the Democratic nominee. But it’s also important for Trump, who could use it to make up ground if he loses Pennsylvania.In 2020, Wisconsin was considered the “tipping point” state that put Biden over the edge in the Electoral College, when he won there by fewer than 21,000 votes. The state is shaping up to be another nail-biter, with Democrats and Republicans alike skeptical of Harris’s polling edge in the perennially close state.

Michigan is critical, too, though it has a recent history of friendliness to Democrats, who performed well there in the 2022 midterms and in the 2020 election.”You think of Wisconsin as maybe right up there, next to Pennsylvania, as one of Trump’s best chances to break the Harris path,” Nate told me.

North Carolina
Trump’s advisers believe his path to victory runs through Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. Yet North Carolina is, as Nate put it, a place where the polls have been “shockingly” good for Harris.

A Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won North Carolina since Barack Obama did in 2008, but according to our polling average, Trump’s lead is less than one percentage point, and it’s unclear how a scandal involving Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Trump endorsed, might shape his fortune there. Trump’s campaign appears to be watching the state closely: He has spent at least six days campaigning there since Harris entered the race, more than any state aside from Pennsylvania.

With 16 electoral votes, North Carolina is a major prize that could help Harris offset a loss in Pennsylvania, and it’s a place she and other Democrats are working furiously to contest.

Georgia
For Trump, Georgia is all-but-must-win. It’s a state that went narrowly for Biden in 2020; now, according to our polling average, it’s Trump’s best state of all seven battlegrounds.

Nate pointed out that Georgia also helps illustrate an important and surprising dynamic in the 2024 election: It is whiter states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, where Harris appears to be polling stronger, while more diverse states are leaning slightly Trump’s way.

But that’s not the end of the story. The Harris campaign is hoping that a surge of turnout from her supporters in and around Atlanta as well as more rural parts of the state could hand the state to her. She has spent four days campaigning there since announcing her candidacy, while Trump has been only there twice.

And beyond

In choosing these four states, I have left off two other important battlegrounds: Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, and Nevada, which has six.

Both candidates are taking these states seriously — Harris, for example, will be campaigning in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday — but given their smaller sizes and the paths I’ve laid out above, these two states seem less likely to be determinative.

If we knew the outcome of the race in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Georgia, Nate told me, we’d have a pretty good chance of predicting the outcome of the election. “The Arizona and Nevada picture would only come back into play under a relatively narrow set of circumstances,” he said.

Arizona and Nevada will both tell us a lot, though, and we’ll be watching them closely. So will states like California and New York, reliably blue states that could determine control of the House of Representatives. So, really, we can’t take our eyes off anywhere.

— Ama Sarpomaa contributed reporting.




A bus emblazoned with Ms. Harris’s campaign slogan in Philadelphia earlier this month. Graham Dickie/The New York Times

How is political advertising affecting you?

It’s autumn! The season of falling leaves, Halloween costumes and — this year — wall-to-wall political advertising.
I want to know how this is affecting your life. What’s happening in your mailbox? What’s it like to watch TV? How has that shaped your daily routine? And where else are you getting information about the election?
I’d especially like to hear from readers who live in swing states.
Let me know here, and I may use your answer in an upcoming story or newsletter.

MORE POLITICS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Harris Casts Herself as a Pro-Business Pragmatist in a Broad Economic Pitch
Declaring “I am a capitalist” in a speech in Pittsburgh, Kamala Harris promised not to be “constrained by ideology” even as she said she would fiercely defend unions and the middle class.
By Nicholas Nehamas and Reid J. Epstein

via Doug Diny

A Wisconsin Mayor Took Issue With a Ballot Drop Box Decision, So He Took the Drop Box
Mayor Doug Diny of Wausau, Wis., said the City Council should have been consulted before the installation. The Wisconsin Supreme Court had said authority rested with the city clerk.
By Maggie Astor

Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

Meet the G.O.P. Personal Injury Lawyer Buying His Own Trump Ads
Dan Newlin has spent millions on billboards and TV spots promoting Donald J. Trump (and himself).
By Ken Bensinger, Nicholas Nehamas and Theodore Schleifer

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Trump’s Low-Tax, High-Tariff Strategy Could Clash With Economic Realities
The former president’s efforts to compel companies to remain in the United States had limited success while he was in the White House.
By Alan Rappeport

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Leadership, but No Clear Leader, Failed at Tragic Trump Rally
A Senate committee report on the Secret Service’s inability to protect the former president at a July event depicts a lack of individual responsibility among those charged with planning.
By Luke Broadwater, Kate Kelly and Eileen Sullivan



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Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.


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Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, makes sense of the latest political data.
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Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.September 25, 2024
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia during the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump this month. Graham Dickie/The New York Times

The four swing states that could matter most

By Jess Bidgood

The latest, with 41 days to go

Vice President Kamala Harris made a broad economic pitch in Pittsburgh, casting herself as a pro-business pragmatist.Threats to former President Donald Trump may prompt changes to his travel plans and event types, according to several people briefed on the matter.In a television interview, President Biden called Trump a “loser” who lacked “redeeming value.”

The 2024 presidential election is, according to where the polls stand right now, confoundingly close.

The most recent national New York Times/Siena College poll showed Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied, while our polling average shows Harris with a slim, two-percentage-point lead.

Tiếp tục đọc “Four swing states that could matter most”

Why debunked falsehoods about Haitian migrants gained traction

September 24, 2024, New York Times newsletter

Downtown Springfield, Ohio, last month. The small Midwestern city has been gripped by a false narrative that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating pets.
Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Why debunked falsehoods about Haitian migrants gained traction
Author Headshot
By Tiffany Hsu

In early September, a Springfield resident published an error-riddled Facebook post that relied on what she later called a “game of telephone.” She deleted the post and disavowed it, but on Sept. 5, a conservative user posted it on X. Tiếp tục đọc “Why debunked falsehoods about Haitian migrants gained traction”

U.N. Security Council: what it will take to break the gridlock

The Conversation

In the coming days, presidents, prime ministers and top diplomats will descend on my adopted home of New York City for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. As I attempt to find a route around the inevitable security roadblocks impeding my cycle to work, those world leaders will be navigating far more consequential barriers: the ones holding back progress to peace and security for civilians in any one of the many current conflict zones. Tiếp tục đọc “U.N. Security Council: what it will take to break the gridlock”

Is the UN past the point of no return? World leaders debate in New York next week

Richard Roth

Analysis by Richard Roth and Tara John, CNN

 5 minute read 

Published 1:00 AM EDT, Sat September 21, 2024

View of the UN Security Council as they meet on the situation in the Middle East on September 16, 2024 in New York City.

View of the UN Security Council as they meet on the situation in the Middle East on September 16, 2024 in New York City. Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty ImagesUnited NationsCNN — 

It’s time for UNGA 79!

Quick explanation: the United Nations General Assembly is an annual world leaders’ summit that has gone on for nearly eight decades since the international body’s founding in San Francisco. It’s a place for long speeches, private country-to-country whisper sessions, and group meetings on everything from regulating artificial intelligence to global conflicts.

This year features a UN once again caught in a debate over its relevancy while attempting to stem wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. All of which its Secretary General Antonio Guterres is keen to remedy.

Tiếp tục đọc “Is the UN past the point of no return? World leaders debate in New York next week”

China 5 this week

Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.THIS WEEK: China 5
Electric vehicle sales pass milestone, Huawei challenges Apple’s iPhone 16, new college textbook features Xi Jinping Thought on national security, Congress launches “China week” with key bills, and the wrath of Super Typhoon Yagi

An electric car charging station in China. Photo by MASTER via Getty Images.1. Electric Vehicle Sales Pass Milestone

What Happened: More than one million electric vehicles were sold in China during August, as battery-powered and plug-in hybrid models accounted for nearly 54% of all vehicle sales and demand for internal combustion engine cars continued to fall.
Tiếp tục đọc “China 5 this week”

“The Houthis Have Defeated the U.S. Navy,” or, What is a Navy For?

The mission of the U.S. Navy has for centuries been to keep the sea lines of communication open, but the United States is abandoning that task in the Middle East today.

Blog Post by Elliott Abrams, CFR

August 31, 2024 10:45 am (EST)

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in London by former Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe was entitled “The Houthis Have Defeated the U.S. Navy.” If that is not correct, it is only because the U.S. Navy has been ordered not to fight. Tiếp tục đọc ““The Houthis Have Defeated the U.S. Navy,” or, What is a Navy For?”

‘Cruisezilla’ passenger ships have doubled in size since 2000, environmental group warns

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

Updated 2:12 PM EDT, Thu August 8, 2024

Passengers leave Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, after arriving at Costa Maya Cruise Port on February 6, 2024.

Passengers leave Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world, after arriving at Costa Maya Cruise Port on February 6, 2024. Paola Chiomante/ReutersCNN — 

Tiếp tục đọc “‘Cruisezilla’ passenger ships have doubled in size since 2000, environmental group warns”

How the climate crisis fuels gender inequality

The climate crisis may be a collective problem, but its impacts do not fall equally. Women and girls often bear the heaviest burdens.

November 30, 2023

Editor’s note

This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how As Equals is funded and more, check out our FAQ.

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, finding existing injustices and amplifying them. Women and girls already grapple with gender inequality, but when extreme weather devastates a community, the UN found that inequalities worsen: Intimate partner violence spikes, girls are pulled from school, daughters are married early, and women and girls forced from their homes face a higher risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Tiếp tục đọc “How the climate crisis fuels gender inequality”

Công nghệ phân nhôm – 4 kỳ

Kỳ 1: Tiềm năng khoáng sản Bauxite Việt Nam

Thứ ba, 25 tháng 2, 2020

Trong loạt bài viết lần này, Tạp chí Kinh tế Môi trường xin được cùng trao đổi về chuyên đề khoáng sản Bauxite Tây Nguyên với mong muốn có những ý kiến đánh giá khách quan vì sự phát triển bền vững đất nước.

Lời tòa soạn: Nghiên cứu, tìm kiếm, thăm dò nguồn tài nguyên khoáng sản có ý nghĩa hết sức quan trọng đối với mỗi quốc gia. Và thật hồng phúc lớn khi nguồn khoáng sản có được ấy lại có trữ lượng lớn, có thể khai thác cung cấp nguyên liệu sản xuất cho các ngành kinh tế của đất nước và cho xuất khẩu. Trong loạt bài viết lần này, Tạp chí Kinh tế Môi trường xin được cùng trao đổi về chuyên đề khoáng sản Bauxite Tây Nguyên với mong muốn có những ý kiến đánh giá khách quan trong bối cảnh mới mang Tầm nhìn thời đại, vì sự phát triển bền vững đất nước cho các thế hệ hiện tại và muôn đời con cháu mai sau.

Hiện nay các Tiểu ban chuẩn bị văn kiện Đại hội XIII của Đảng, trong đó có Tiểu ban Kinh tế đang gấp rút hoàn thành các báo cáo. Với quan điểm phát triển kinh tế-xã hội bền vững thì không thể không dựa vào nguồn vốn tự nhiên, trong đó khoáng sản cần được tính đến để khai thác và sử dụng hợp lý đóng góp thiết thực vào tiến trình phát triển kinh tế đất nước. Chúng tôi thấy rằng, tài nguyên khoáng sản bauxite cần được đặt đúng vị thế của nó để đánh giá thực chất.

Việt Nam là quốc gia có tiềm năng lớn về tài nguyên khoáng sản Bauxite – đây là điều chắc chắn, được khẳng định qua nghiên cứu và khảo sát, tìm kiếm, thăm dò thực địa trong nhiều thập kỷ qua.

Vấn đề khai thác Bauxite phục vụ phát triển kinh tế đất nước đã có nhiều ý kiến tranh luận mạnh mẽ trong dư luận Việt Nam vào những năm 2008-2010, khi hai dự án sản xuất Alumin theo công nghệ Bayer do nhà thầu Trung Quốc thực hiện tại Tân Rai, Bảo Lộc, Lâm Đồng và Nhân Cơ, Gia Nghĩa, Đắk Nông được quyết định đầu tư. Đây đều là những ý kiến đầy tâm huyết, rất trách nhiệm với đất nước, thực sự đáng trân trọng bởi trong bối cảnh cách đây một thập kỷ thì thực tế có nhiều điểm khác biệt so với hiện nay nên cần cân nhắc thận trọng. Có thể nói những băn khoăn, nghi vấn, khó khăn đặt ra khi đó thì giờ đây đã được giải tỏa, làm sáng tỏ và khả thi về tất cả các khía cạnh: Kinh tế, xã hội, công nghệ, môi trường.

Cho đến nay, thông tin về tình hình hoạt động của hai nhà máy alumin Tân Rai và Nhân Cơ, có công suất mỗi nhà máy 650.000 tấn alumin/ năm đến với các cơ quan quản lý và cộng đồng dân cư còn hạn chế, chưa khách quan, không toàn diên và đầy đủ; nhất là từ năm 2017 khi hoạt động sản xuất của hai nhà máy đi vào ổn định và mang lại hiệu quả kinh tế cao. Sự thiếu hụt các thông tin mang tính chất hệ thống dẫn đến nhận thức và quan điểm còn khác biệt của các tầng lớp nhân dân đối với những định hướng phát triển ngành công nghiệp Nhôm của Việt Nam hiện tại và trong tương lai. Với vai trò là người phản biện các chính sách phát triển đất nước, trực thuộc Liên hiệp các Hội Khoa học và Kỹ thuật Việt Nam, Hội Kinh tế Môi trường Việt Nam đã rất chú trọng triển khai nghiên cứu sâu về vấn đề này. Các chuyên gia, nhà khoa học đã tiến hành lấy mẫu tại hiện trường các mỏ và phân tích trong phòng thí nghiệm để có được những số liệu cụ thể. Hội đã giao cho PGS.TS. Lưu Đức Hải, Phó Chủ tịch Hội Kinh tế Môi trường Việt Nam, nguyên là Chủ nhiệm Khoa Môi trường, Trường Đại học Khoa học Tự nhiên, ĐHQGHN (người có hơn 40 năm kinh nghiệm và đã trực tiếp tham gia vào việc tìm kiếm bauxite Tây Nguyên, thành viên của Hội đồng thẩm định các dự án Alumin nói trên, đồng thời là tác giả của giải pháp xử lý bùn đỏ) viết các bài tổng quan mang tính chất hệ thống về vấn đề này.

Thay mặt Hội Kinh tế Môi trường Việt Nam, Ban biên tập Tạp chí và tác giả rất mong được sự quan tâm của quý Bạn đọc để sớm nhận được góp ý trao đổi thẳng thắn, xây dựng sau khi đọc các bài viết này.

Tiếp tục đọc “Công nghệ phân nhôm – 4 kỳ”

An Open Letter from Catholic Bishops to the International Olympic Committee

Có bài tiếng Việt liên quan ở dưới bài tiếng Anh.

“If then my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and heal their land.” (2 Chr 7:14)

With shock the world watched as the summer Olympics in Paris opened with a grotesque and blasphemous depiction of the Last Supper. It is hard to understand how the faith of over 2 billion people can be so casually and intentionally blasphemed. Tiếp tục đọc “An Open Letter from Catholic Bishops to the International Olympic Committee”

Laws against forced marriage in Australia

Photo Illustration by CNN, Shutterstock, aph.gov.au, Victoria County Court

She wanted ‘the world’ for her daughter. Instead, she got a landmark prison sentence

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

 9 minute read 

Published 5:27 PM EDT, Sat August 3, 2024

Forced marriage is considered a form of gender-based violence that predominantly affects young women, whose control over their lives is passed without consent from their parents to their partners. It can lead to decades of physical and psychological abuse, and in some cases suicide or murder.

For more than two decades. Forced marriages have been reported within communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India, among others. Tiếp tục đọc “Laws against forced marriage in Australia”

A critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents could collapse as early as the 2030s, new research suggests

Angela Fritz

By Angela Dewan and Angela Fritz, CNN

Updated 10:56 AM EDT, Sat August 3, 2024

Light blue and turquoise phytoplankton seen through the clouds highlight the ocean currents off the coast of Greenland. New research suggest an important system of these currents is at risk of collapsing as soon as next decade.

Light blue and turquoise phytoplankton seen through the clouds highlight the ocean currents off the coast of Greenland. New research suggest an important system of these currents is at risk of collapsing as soon as next decade. NASA Earth/Shutterstock/FILECNN — 

vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study — a planetary-scale disaster that would transform weather and climate.

Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change. Tiếp tục đọc “A critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents could collapse as early as the 2030s, new research suggests”