In a damning report published in January, ProPublica dissected the many ways that the Biden administration kept shifting the goalposts in Israel’s favor after 7 October 2023. Remember the threats of sanctions against Israel for invading Rafah? (It’s a “red line,” Biden said.) Or the 30-day ultimatum placed on Israel to dramatically increase the food aid? But nothing happened. Outside briefly pausing a shipment of 2,000lb (0.9 tonne) bombs, the military hardware kept on coming.

The Leahy law requires restricting assistance to military units of foreign governments engaged in gross human rights violations. It has never been applied to Israel. In April 2024, it looked like secretary of state Antony Blinken was about to sanction Netzah Yehuda, a notorious battalion in the Israeli Defense Forces, under the Leahy law. In the end, he punted, and the battalion not only escaped US sanctions, but according to CNN, its commanders were even assigned to train ground troops and run operations in Gaza.

“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the red lines have all just been a smokescreen,” Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told ProPublica. “The Biden administration decided to be all in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something about it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jul/06/destruction-of-palestine-is-breaking-the-world

In Amsterdam and Paris, this is already proving successful. Select bus stops and terminals are embedded with solar panels that collect energy and store it in batteries below the surface. As an electric bus pulls into the stop to pick up passengers, it’s able to draw power from the embedded system and top up its charge without needing to return to the central depot. A single charging point can produce 15 to 20 kilowatt-hours per day, enough to power a bus for several kilometers.

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/striding-into-the-future-on-solar-powered-sidewalks/