Israel has launched more deadly strikes on towns across southern Lebanon, pressing on with its invasion despite a diplomatic push in Washington for direct talks between the two countries.
Lebanon’s
state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that Wednesday’s attacks
killed at least 13 people, just one day after a sit-down between
Lebanese and Israeli envoys to the United States.
An
Israeli bombing of the town of Jbaa hit a family home, killing a man
and his wife, their son and their daughter-in-law, according to NNA,
which reported that another five people were killed in the town of
Ansariyeh and four in the town of Qadmus.
In parallel, Israel
launched more strikes south of Beirut, hitting two vehicles – one in the
seafront town of Saadiyat and another on a coastal highway in
neighbouring Jiyeh, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the capital.
Reporting
from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said: “There is anger here.
People believe the Lebanese government should not have sat down with
Israel, the enemy, which has already killed more than 2,000 people in
the past few weeks alone.
“What people want here is an end to the
attacks,” she said, noting that the neighbourhoods had been “repeatedly
targeted in Israeli strikes in recent weeks.”
Residents, she
added, were asking why the November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and
the armed group Hezbollah, which the former repeatedly breached with
near-daily violations, had not been implemented.
Hezbollah lawmaker slams Beirut’s ‘concessions’
The
meeting between the Lebanese and Israeli envoys was hosted by US
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, marking the first direct contact in
decades between the two countries.
Both sides said the talks were
positive, though ahead of the meeting, Israel had ruled out any
discussion of Lebanon’s demand for a ceasefire in the latest war, which
erupted on March 2 when Hezbollah opened fire in retaliation for the
US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
As
Israel doubled down on its offensive against the armed group, issuing
another forced displacement order to residents in the south, Hezbollah
lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said the “option of negotiations with the
enemy is wrong”.
Speaking at a news conference, he accused the
Lebanese government of “squandering Lebanon’s political and military
strength”, criticising it for withdrawing its army from the south and
“leaving it vulnerable to occupation and giving the enemy free rein”.
“The
current government has not lived up to the people’s expectations and
has failed to grasp the resistance of the young fighters,” he said,
slamming Beirut for its “concessions” and for “inciting internal
division” in the country.
He added that the Iran-aligned group wants a comprehensive ceasefire, not a return to near-daily Israeli strikes and assassinations as seen after the November 2024 ceasefire deal.
Earlier
on Wednesday, the Israeli military had issued an evacuation order to
residents in the south. NNA said attacks also hit the southern towns of
Baraachit, Souaneh, Babliyeh, Seddiqine, Nabatieh El Faouqa and areas
along the Litani River.
The outskirts of the town of Bint Jbeil,
which has been hit especially hard by a recent Israeli operation that
claimed to have killed at least 100 Hezbollah fighters, were also struck
by shelling, said NNA.
Homes were also blown up in the southern town of Hanine.
This story was originally published bytheGuardianand is reproduced here as part of the Climate Deskcollaboration.
Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies
legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group
described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over
communities,” with other states expected to follow suit.
The new state legislation comes as part of a push from Big Oil and
its political allies—including groups tied to rightwing impresario
Leonard Leo—for legal immunity in red statehouses and Congress, with a
goal of winning state and federal legal immunity similar to the
liability waiver granted to the firearms industry in 2005.
Such policies would shield major fossil fuel companies from a wave of
litigation they are facing from states, subnational governments, and
individuals who claim the firms knew their products would cause climate
damages, but sold them to the public anyway. Four other red states are
considering laws similar to Utah’s—with two close to passage—and federal
legislation is seemingly in the works.
Signed into law by the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, late
last month, Utah’s new legislation shields any person or entity from
civil or criminal liabilities related to planet-warming emissions,
unless a court finds that the defendant violated the specific
“enforceable limitation” on a greenhouse gas or the “express terms of a
valid permit.”
The new law “prioritizes profits for the biggest polluters over communities already suffering from climate impacts.”
Challengers would also have to provide “clear and convincing evidence
that unavoidable and identifiable damage or injury has resulted or will
result as a direct cause of the” violation. The language will make it
virtually impossible to successfully sue polluters for climate damages,
critics say.
“This is a surrender to wealthy special interests and an affront to
the public good,” said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the science hub
for climate litigation at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned
Scientists. “Utah’s new law prioritizes profits for the biggest
polluters over communities already suffering from climate impacts and
constituents should be outraged.”
Set to be enacted next month, Utah’s HB 222 was sponsored by the Republican representative Carl Albrecht, who has receivedsome funding from oil and gas interests. He was also formerly the CEO of a rural electric cooperative.
“That cooperative is substantially powered by fossil fuels,” said the
Democratic Utah state senator Nate Blouin, who opposed the bill, which
he said passed quickly and without much discussion. “He’s got a history
in the industry, and continues to draw from that experience to push
bills like this forward.”
Albrecht did not respond to a request for comment, but told Bloomberg Law that
the policy aims to halt “frivolous” legal challenges from environmental
groups and to protect the state’s coal-fired power plants. He also said
industry trade groups gave him the idea for the proposal.
“To understand this bill you need to follow the coordination,” said Merner, noting that the Utah legislation closely mirrors a model policy called the Energy Freedom Act, circulated by the conservative group Consumers Defense.
Asked about Leo’s involvement in the model legislation, Will Hild,
president of Consumers Defense, said it was not attributable to “any
individual figure.”
In recent years, 70
cities, states, and individuals have sued energy majors for allegedly
deceiving the public about the climate crisis.
“The Energy Freedom
Act is intended to clarify that carbon emissions should not
automatically carry legal damages and to push back on efforts…to shape
national climate policy through litigation rather than through elected
lawmakers,” he said. “This ensures decisions remain with accountable
representatives, prevents a small number of states from imposing their
policies nationwide through judicial fiat, and protects consumers from
economically disruptive policies.”
In an emailed statement, Leo said: “Preserving individual dignity and
worth includes good stewardship of the environment as well as
maintaining conditions for the financial wellbeing of hardworking
consumers.”
“Getting this balance right can be very tricky, which is why we
support enterprises that seek to ensure that decisions are made based on
sound science and through an accountable and constitutional political
process, rather than lawfare supported by unaccountable judges, trial
lawyers, and dark money special interest groups on the left,” he said.
He did not answer a question about his role in the liability waiver
proposals.
Lawmakers in Louisiana and Oklahoma are considering similar legislation, and the state legislatures of Iowa and Tennessee have voted to pass climate liability-limiting legislation, though neither has yet been signed into law.
“In Tennessee they literally called the bill the Tennessee Energy
Freedom Act,” said Iyla Shornstein, political director at the Center for
Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports climate accountability
litigation. “It’s a direct borrowing from the Consumers Defense
language.”
The Utah bill’s passage comes as
climate lawsuits against big oil companies inch closer to trial, and as
states adopt climate accountability legislation.
In recent years, 70 cities, states and individuals have sued energy
majors for allegedly deceiving the public about the climate crisis. New
York and Vermont have also passed climate “superfund” laws requiring
major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating
pollution, with other states considering similar policies. “The oil
companies clearly see these as an existential threat to their business
model,” said Shornstein. “Their lobbying makes that clear.”
Earlier this year, the top US oil lobby group the American Petroleum
Institute (API) said one of its top priorities for 2026 would be blocking “abusive” climate lawsuits targeting Big Oil. Months earlier, 16 Republican state attorneys general also called on the justice department to provide a “liability shield” for oil companies.
Lawmakers have also pursued narrower efforts, including a failed
attempt to block Washington DC from the deployment of some legal
theories against oil companies, and a 2025 Maryland bill that would have
barred state and local climate lawsuits but never reached a vote. And
last year, both API and energy giant ConocoPhillips also pressed Congress on draft legislation to limit climate liability.
If Big Oil “can secure
blanket immunity now, they can avoid the fate of tobacco, but if they
fail, they face tobacco-level accountability.”
Such a federal policy appears to be in the works: during a House committee hearing last
month, the Wyoming representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican, said
“Congress has a role to play” in defeating climate accountability
lawsuits.
“To that end, I’m working with my colleagues in both the House and
Senate to craft legislation tackling both these state laws and the
lawsuits that could destroy energy affordability for consumers,” she
said.
Hageman did not provide specific details about the legislation. She
did not respond to a request for comment. The API declined to comment on
the state of a federal liability waiver proposal.
Other industries have lobbied for liability waivers before. Since the
firearms sector successfully pushed for the Protection of Lawful
Commerce in Arms Act in 2005, “not a single negligence case against a
gun manufacturer has gone to trial,” noted Merner.
The pesticide sector is also currently pursuing state-level immunity bills, while its allies have unsuccessfully pursued a federal waiver.
The tobacco industry, facing widespread litigation, also pushed for
such immunity in the 1990s but failed, ending up paying $260 billion in
settlements.
“It seems that the fossil fuel industry has learned from these
precedents. If they can secure blanket immunity now, they can avoid the
fate of tobacco, but if they fail, they face tobacco-level
accountability,” said Merner.
Lawmakers, advocates and journalists have amassed mountains of evidence in
recent years that oil companies intentionally covered up the climate
harms of their products. Climate science, meanwhile, continues to warn
that fossil fuels are the primary cause of dangerous global warming.
“I don’t see why industry would be pushing for immunity if they
thought they could win on the merits of their case,” said Merner. “The
evidence shows they knew about climate risks for decades and lied about
it, so they’re trying to change the rules of the game entirely.”
You Can Smell It Now: The Trump Presidency Is in Total Free Fall
A
loyal army of followers, a huge disinformation network, and a party of
soul-selling cowards can crowd out facts for a long time. But
eventually, reality catches up.
I
could go on—and on. But on top of all that, Trump’s purchase on
reality, tenuous at the best of times, is slipping fast. Think about
what it takes for the “leader of the free world” (a phrase we are now
obliged to tuck inside irony quotes) to wake up on Easter morning—the
day of the resurrection of the same Jesus Christ in whose name “War
Secretary” Pete Hegseth says we are killing Iranians—and post this unhinged and inflammatory comment
on social media: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all
wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the
Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST
WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
The
sentence with the three expletives will catch the notice of most
Western eyes, but I have a feeling it’s the next one, and its
schoolyard-level sarcastic mockery, that will get the lion’s share of
the attention in Iran and across the Muslim world. And that wasn’t even
his low point of the past week. His speech at the National Prayer
Breakfast on Thursday was an embarrassment,
rife with conspiracies, self-pitying grievance riffs, tasteless
“jokes,” and bile spewed at the usual targets—again, on a venerated day
on the Christian calendar, Maundy Thursday, the last full day of Jesus
Christs’s mortal life. Trump rendered a supposedly solemn occasion
profane in the way only he can do.
A rickety house often stands
longer than we imagine it will. The support structures are surprisingly
sturdy. But finally one day, something comes along—a hard rain, a mighty
wind—against which the beams and foundation are no match.
Trump
has survived as long as he has in politics—indeed, he succeeded in the
first place—because his support structures were unusually durable. The
percentage of people in this country who not only were fine with
nativist, authoritarian politics but openly embraced it shot Trump to
the top of the GOP polls in late 2015 and has remained basically steady
all these years. Millions of people still believe, with White House
“spiritual adviser” (we have to put irony quotes around nearly
everything these days) Paula White, that Trump is basically Jesus.
The right-wing propaganda networks for whom he can do no wrong are
still out there, marveling over his infallibility as fulsomely as ever.
And of course the Republicans in Congress, with just a few exceptions,
still praise him to the heavens.
These
were and are Trump’s four pillars (there is considerable overlap
between the first two groups, but they’re somewhat different). They have
sustained him in and out of power for more than a decade, and they’ve
proven stronger than the two things that in theory have the power to
bring Trump down: the political opposition and plain reality.
But
take a good, contemplative whiff of the zeitgeist right about now, and
you’ll smell change in the air. The opposition is stronger. And I don’t
mean chiefly the Democrats in Congress. We all know that some of them
are effective, others not so much, but even those who do speak to the
anger so many Americans feel don’t have much institutional power to do
anything about it.
No—the opposition arose not in Washington, but
in Chicago and Minneapolis, and in the thousands of No Kings Day marches
that brought eight million Americans out into the streets. And as Trump
is not a normal American politician, this is not a normal political
opposition. These millions of Americans aren’t merely against his
policies, although they surely are that. They’re against his hatred and
lawlessness and corruption, and the moral rot he’s spreading over this
country like blight over trees.
And
second, we may finally be reaching the point where even Trump’s blind
supporters and his vast propaganda network can’t defeat the facts on the
ground. They’re almost relentlessly grim. There was a good jobs report
last Friday, but otherwise, not only is the news uniformly bad, but it
exposes him as a charlatan who claimed powers for himself that he
doesn’t have.
I never understood, in 2024, how all these people
convinced themselves that Trump could lower the price of a gallon of gas
and a pound of ground chuck. He has raised the price of gas through his
war on Iran. The price of beef is at an all-time high, and while that’s
not really his fault—it’s mainly because cattle inventories are at a 75-year low
due to drought and other factors—the increase makes the crucial point
that there are many price inputs over which a president has no control.
I
also never understood why anyone believed that he wouldn’t start dumb
wars if the circumstances, in his mind, warranted doing so. The one
fundamental fact about Donald Trump is, as my late friend and great
Trump chronicler Wayne Barrett famously put it, he’ll say whatever he
needs to say to wriggle through the next 10 minutes. He said what he
said about wars to get elected. Period. Anyone who believed otherwise
was, frankly, an idiot. And so now here we are, with Trump mocking Allah
and likely this week to commit acts defined as war crimes under the Geneva Convention.
A
loyal army of followers, a huge disinformation network, and a party of
soul-selling cowards can crowd out facts for a long time. But
eventually, reality catches up. It’s finally happening. I’d say we
should celebrate. But there now arises the question of how he’ll react
as reality closes in on him. I fear we haven’t begun to see the worst.
