Great Salt Lake could disappear in 5 years at the current rate of shrinkage. Conservationists say Utah needs to adopt policies to take less water from the lake.

The article says that the region is overdrawing the available water. At some point it will hit a hard stop and have to cease much of its economic activity. However, it doesn't explain what harm will come directly from the emptiness of the lake itself.

Harvard's school of political science invited the former head of Human Rights Watch to visit as a fellow. Then the dean cancelled the invitation because he has criticized Israel for human rights violations.

Those human rights violations already amounted to apartheid, but Israel's new government, which includes right-wing extremists, is planning to make things much worse. Honest defenders of human rights will have to criticize Israel more than ever. Rich supporters of Israel will surely increase the censorship pressure in US universities. Don't assume that those supporters are Jews. Some of them are fanatical Christians who are determined to bring about events that would fulfill certain prophecies related to Christian myths of doomsday. July 2004 (Uncritical support for Israeli policies from Christian fanatics)

Australia has brought home some Australians supporters of PISSI who were in prison camps in Syria. Now one of them is facing charges of going to Syria to support PISSI.

I think it was right to bring them home, and right to prosecute those who supported PISSI. Other countries should do likewise. Exile should not be used as a punishment for a crime, and imposing any punishment for any alleged crime without a trial is even worse.

However, the actual charge is "Travelling to Raqqa." That action is being used as a proxy for the act of going to support PISSI. The prosecution of an action which is only a proxy for the real accusation seems wrong to me.

California has been hit by several extreme rainstorms in sequence, and more are expected to follow.

Global heating is predicted to make this happen frequently in certain places, the US Pacific Coast being one of them.

Sabri al-Qurashi was released from Guantanamo prison to Kazakhstan, where he is treated as a stateless illegal immigrant, forbidden to work, and his wife is forbidden to visit him there.