No "substantive" Progress Made On Fiscal Cliff: Boehner

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter. In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems. That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author.

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“Japan’s ruling party lost a special election Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had described in part as a judgment on himself, months ahead of a party leadership vote,” Bloomberg reports. “Public anger over a slush fund scandal helped the main opposition candidate Akiko Kamei defeat the Liberal Democratic Party’s Norimasa Nishikori by about 83,000 votes to 58,000 in what had been a party stronghold in Shimane prefecture.”

“Rishi Sunak has spent 18 months as prime minister fending off internal Conservative Party criticism and rumors of plots to oust him. So far it’s come to nothing — though his team is taking nothing for granted this week,” Bloomberg reports. “His critics on the Tory right have spent months gearing up for Thursday’s local and mayoral elections across England as their final chance to oust Sunak.

This is wild stuff. Thank you, Larry Smoot. Holotile is being developed by Lanny Smoot, the Disney Research Fellow, and Imagineer behind special effects used in the Haunted Mansion and Star Wars lightsabers. Disney announced Smoot is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame Will brain dead Sen. Marsha Blackburn claim Holotile is Disney's latest attempt to groom your school children to change their sexual identity? Open thread below… read more

TEL AVIV, Israel — The White House on Sunday said U. S. President Joe Biden had again spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as pressure builds on Israel and Hamas to reach a deal that would free some Israeli hostages and bring a cease-fire in the nearly seven-month-long war in Gaza. The White House said that Biden reiterated his “clear position” as Israel plans to invade Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah despite global concern for more than 1 million Palestinians sheltering there.