Blackout Risk Rises As Heatwave Stresses Largest US Electric Grids

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Blackout Risk Rises As Heatwave Stresses Largest US Electric Grids (Maria)

The author writes, “The risk ⁠of power outages ⁠is expected to ​escalate across a broad swath of the US this week as intense heat tests the capacity of electricity supplies ⁠serving millions of homes and businesses from the Midwest through the mid-Atlantic. The Energy Department warned of the potential for heightened blackout risks in ⁠the PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest electric grid, which serves 67 million people from Washington, DC to ‌Chicago.”

JD Vance Says He’s OK With Bringing About the End Times (Sean)

From The New Republic: “Vice President JD Vance isn’t sure if we’re living in the ‘end times,’ but he’s not afraid to bring them about, either. In a sit-down interview with 22-year-old evangelist podcaster Bryce Crawford, Vance said that he’s ‘OK’ if his work on earth brings about a biblical doomsday event. ‘Do I think we are in the end times? I don’t know,’ Vance said in the interview released Monday, noting that it would be bad for him spiritually if he were to spend too much time thinking about that query. ‘While I’m fascinated by it, I think that focusing on it too much can be very bad. I think there are things about the world that make feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us,’ Vance added. In another portion of the interview, Vance claimed he’s focused on ‘doing as much of God’s work as possible,’ shrugging that ‘if that leads to the end times, OK.’”

Cubans Living in Florida Are Being Deported to Africa (DonkeyHotey)

The author writes, “Yasmany Moreno thought he was being transferred. Again. The 32-year-old Cuban who traveled between Tampa and Miami for work had already spent more than a year in immigration detention centers across the United States. Officers moved him from one jail to another before putting him on a plane in Texas on the morning of July 30. No one told Moreno, who originally came to the United States on a temporarily protected basis, where he was going until five hours into the flight, when an immigration officer told him they were going to Africa. … A month after arriving in the Central African Republic, Moreno and 35 other immigrants deported on a 21-hour flight remain in Bangui, the country’s capital, without passports and no information about what will happen next. They stay at the Maison Confort, a modest hotel located in a busy neighborhood near central Bangui.”

The US Has Killed 227 Civilians in Boat Strikes During ‘A Year of Murders’ (Dana)

From The Intercept: “Top military officers from a secretive command watched a speedboat cut through the waters of the Caribbean Sea, early last September. A plane above provided live video of the vessel and the 11 men on board. In the early morning hours, Adm. Frank Bradley sought the counsel of his top legal adviser, Col. Cara Hamaguchi. Then he ordered SEAL Team 6 operators to attack the packed boat. After the vessel exploded, two helpless survivors pulled themselves onto a fragment of the overturned hull, drifting with the current for roughly 45 minutes. Bradley — then the head of the Joint Special Operations Command and now the four-star chief of Special Operations Command — again turned to Hamaguchi for guidance. Soon, a second missile screamed down, killing the survivors. Two more missiles followed in rapid succession, sinking the remnants of the boat. That strike, carried out on September 2, 2025, began a campaign of attacks that has never ceased.”

London’s Low Emission Zone Is Working — So Why Are Cities Around the World So Cautious About Clean Air? (Laura)

The author writes, “Poor air not only causes respiratory difficulties and the stunting of children’s lungs, but also heart disease and stroke. It is associated with some forms of cancer, dementia, autism and cognitive difficulties in children too. New studies are adding to our knowledge, but we have known for decades of the basic dangers of dirty air. So why is there so much opposition to curbs on air pollution, which are clearly sound public health measures?”

Babies Born Under Sugar Rationing Grew Into Adults With Lower Cancer Risk (Reader Jim)

From The Conversation: “Could how much sugar you consumed before your second birthday shape your health decades later — even into your 70s? A new study that my colleagues and I conducted suggests the answer could be yes. People who had less sugar exposure during the first few years of life were much less likely to develop several different cancers later in life, and they also showed signs of slower biological ageing. We also found that even in adulthood, they continued to consume less sugar and had healthier diets overall. This is not an easy question to study in real life. Researchers obviously can’t run that experiment on real babies — split them into groups, feed one group sugar, then wait 70 years to see what happens. Britain’s postwar sugar rationing offered a rare alternative.”