Welcome to Cleveland! You are now under arrest

Cleveland just witnessed a very strange and disturbing incident. Ahmed al-Menhali, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, had come to Cleveland to take advantage of the medical facilities at the Cleveland Clinic and was checking into a suburban hotel when a police team armed with assault rifles stormed in and tackled him to the ground. They soon discovered that he was innocent but the man collapsed and was rushed to a nearby hospital.
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The continued oppression of Palestinians by Israel is leading to a crisis

With much of the attention focused on the US presidential elections and the vote by the UK to leave the EU, not much attention has been paid to what has been going on in Israel where there has been yet another crackdown by the Israeli government on the Palestinians that show their willingness to use their power over the Occupied Territories in the West Bank and Gaza to make life miserable for the people living there.
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What the US gave up when it achieved independence

Today is independence day in the US. John Oliver takes a moment to remind Americans what they gave up when they broke their bonds with England. I can do without almost everything he lists but the one thing that I regret not being able to find in the US are the savory pastries. In the US, pastries tend to be very sticky and sweet, like doughnuts and Danishes.
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Why can’t we do with climate change what we did with the ozone layer?

Readers may remember the scare over the hole in the ozone layer that appeared over Antarctica and had been growing at an alarming rate. That layer protected the Earth from dangerous levels of ultraviolet radiation and the danger posed by the hole resulted in concerted action to try and combat it. The 1987 Montreal Protocol targeted the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)that were believed to be the main cause of the rupture and the good news is that those efforts seem to be bearing fruit.
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Great moments in driving

While the fatal crash involving a Tesla car on autopilot mode attention has naturally focused attention on whether self-driving cars can be trusted, we should not lose sight of the dangerous levels of outright stupidity that human drivers are capable of. I was reminded of this when a few days ago I was stopped at a red light and looked in my rear view mirror. In the car behind me the driver had his cat perched on top of the dashboard exactly between him and the windshield.
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More anti-abortion laws ruled unconstitutional

Rachel Vorona Cote provides a roundup of the way that anti-abortion laws are being targeted following the recent ruling by the US Supreme Court in Whole Women’s Health v. Hallerstadt that struck down laws that are labeled TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) that seek to impose on conditions on clinics that provides abortions that are not required for other procedures that might carry similar or even greater risks.
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