A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people - including world leaders - at the conference in November.

The state government touts the highway's "sustainable" credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

There were very few cicadas around this year... No Greengocers, but some of these highly decorated types, strangely quieter — unless the pitch of their call was too high to be heard.... 

Floury Baker Cicada
Scientific name: Abricta curvicosta

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Washington: Australia has been warned Donald Trump’s tariffs could push up the cost of submarines due to be acquired under the AUKUS defence pact, as Trump tasks Elon Musk’s team with improving the US capacity to build the boats.

Advocates of the agreement also say the second pillar of the pact, under which Australia, the US and the UK share military data and technology, lacks focus, should be narrowed to more manageable initiatives, and that politicians need to do more to champion AUKUS to sceptical voters.

President Donald Trump has prolonged US sanctions on Russia for another year, based on the supposition that Moscow still poses a serious threat to the country’s national security.

Washington placed punitive restrictions on Russia after it absorbed Crimea following a referendum held in 2014, and later over Moscow’s alleged meddling in American elections. The sanctions were drastically expanded following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.

The latest extension approved by Trump and dated April 10, 2025, has been posted to the Federal Register’s website, announcing the “Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation.”

Imagine living in a world where every worker contributed the same amount, every problem was equally important, and every product was equally popular with users. Planning would be so simple. In reality, however, the distribution is quite skewed. In most people’s everyday routines, low-impact chores hijack a lot of their day.

IN 2012, CRIKEY POSTED A SOMEWHAT PESSIMISTIC ARTICLE ON THE IRANIAN URANIUM DEAL:... 

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front. Many observers seem to be gripped by a deep pessimism — a feeling that Israel and the US are locked on a trajectory towards war with Iran, which everyone accepts would be a disaster but nobody seems to know how to stop.

Only faint hope for a deal with Iran on nukes

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front.

IN 2012, CRIKEY POSTED A SOMEWHAT PESSIMISTIC ARTICLE ON THE IRANIAN URANIUM DEAL:... 

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front. Many observers seem to be gripped by a deep pessimism — a feeling that Israel and the US are locked on a trajectory towards war with Iran, which everyone accepts would be a disaster but nobody seems to know how to stop.

Only faint hope for a deal with Iran on nukes

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front.

CHARLES RICHARDSON

IN 2012, CRIKEY POSTED A SOMEWHAT PESSIMISTIC ARTICLE ON THE IRANIAN URANIUM DEAL:... 

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front. Many observers seem to be gripped by a deep pessimism — a feeling that Israel and the US are locked on a trajectory towards war with Iran, which everyone accepts would be a disaster but nobody seems to know how to stop.

Only faint hope for a deal with Iran on nukes

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front.

CHARLES RICHARDSON

IN 2012, CRIKEY POSTED A SOMEWHAT PESSIMISTIC ARTICLE ON THE IRANIAN URANIUM DEAL:... 

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front. Many observers seem to be gripped by a deep pessimism — a feeling that Israel and the US are locked on a trajectory towards war with Iran, which everyone accepts would be a disaster but nobody seems to know how to stop.

Only faint hope for a deal with Iran on nukes

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front.

IN 2012, CRIKEY POSTED A SOMEWHAT PESSIMISTIC ARTICLE ON THE IRANIAN URANIUM DEAL... 

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front. Many observers seem to be gripped by a deep pessimism — a feeling that Israel and the US are locked on a trajectory towards war with Iran, which everyone accepts would be a disaster but nobody seems to know how to stop.

Only faint hope for a deal with Iran on nukes

For a couple of months things have been looking pretty bleak on the Iranian front.

The United Nations on Friday said its analysis of 36 recent Israeli strikes in Gaza showed only women and children were killed and decried the human cost of the war.

The UN rights office also warned that expanding Israeli evacuation orders were resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking spaces in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

36 Israeli strikes in Gaza killed ‘only women and children,’ UN finds

US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to "get moving" on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted for more than four hours and focused on "aspects of a Ukrainian settlement". The talks, Witkoff's third with Putin this year, were described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as "productive". 

Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: "Russia has to get moving. Too many people ere [sic] DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war." 

As we're about to remember the sacrifice of soldiers in war, with ANZAC day, and about to vote for our Australian government we should reflect on the ideas that have shaped our choices through history. 

The history of war is remembered through dedicated memorials going back to the Boer Wars, conveniently forgetting the "Frontier Wars" as the English stole the country from the Aboriginal people. This war was easy — a few sheep and a few "colonists" were killed while many aborigines died. But it left an uneasy legacy in which every new government tries to fix or hide depending on the political party in charge. 

This is a sore point that the parties on the right want to bury by dismissing the robbery. Until a proper settlement is achieve this genocide will not go away — despite attempts to make it right.

Antony Sutton has been persecuted but never prosecuted for his research and subsequent publishing of his findings. His mainstream career was shattered by his devotion towards uncovering the truth. In 1968, his Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development was published by The Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

Sutton showed how the Soviet state's technological and manufacturing base, which was then engaged in supplying the North Vietnamese the armaments and supplies to kill and wound American soldiers, was built by US firms and mostly paid for by the US taxpayers. From their largest steel and iron plant, to automobile manufacturing equipment, to precision ball-bearings and computers, basically the majority of the Soviet's large industrial enterprises had been built with the United States help or technical assistance.

China likened the United States’ tariff policy to a ‘numbers game’ with no practical meaning after the administration of US President Donald Trump imposed multiple rounds of duties on Chinese imports over the past few weeks.

In a statement on Friday, the Chinese government accused Washington of using tariffs as a weapon for bullying and coercion, while hitting back with its own reciprocal trade duties.

”Even if the US continues to impose even higher tariffs, it would no longer have any economic significance and would go down as a joke in the history of world economics,” a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said, as cited by Reuters.

The US has imposed four major tariff hikes on China in just over two months, with the latest escalation on Wednesday bringing the duties from an initial average of 20% to a cumulative rate of 145%.