The Weekend Off – News You Missed

Alaska

NYTimes – Nowhere to Go Amid Alaska’s Melting Ice

Alaska’s Chukchi Sea was only just starting to freeze when Nima Taradji arrived at the Inupiat village of Shishmaref last December. Situated on a narrow barrier island, Shishmaref was founded over 400 years ago as a seasonal fishing settlement. Cold weather and natural ice barriers used to protect the shore, but now the municipal village, home to some 600 residents, faces the immediate threat of inundation.

ADN.com – State faces tough questions in case over Native and federal land control in Alaska

The state of Alaska got a rough reception from federal appeals court judges Friday in a case over state sovereignty and the ability of the federal government to take land into trust for Native communities.

The state wants the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower-court ruling and declare that because of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the federal government has no authority to create new sections of “Indian country” in Alaska.

The Seattle Times – By Alaska standards, 29 below zero equals a warm winter

If you live in Fairbanks, Alaska, you take perverse pleasure in surviving cold weather.

By cold, residents mean 40 below zero. The daily high temperature has dropped south of minus 40 in all but 10 of the last 85 years. Surviving such cold allows you to call yourself a real Alaskan and retain bragging rights over more balmy U.S. locations, such as, say, International Falls, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed “Icebox of the Nation.”

National

Variety – Arnold Schwarzenegger Announces Endorsement of John Kasich for President

Schwarzenegger made the announcement on Sunday via a Snapchat video, which also featured Kasich. “I want John Kasich to be the next nominee of the Republicans and also to be the next president of the United States,” said Schwarzenegger before showing the Republican contender.

 AlJazeera – Native tribe fights to save their language

Reporters notebook: UNESCO estimates that more than 6,000 languages will go into extinction if no efforts are made to preserve them.

Vice News – US Marines Cut Ties With Recruit Over Racist Incident at Donald Trump Rally in Kentucky

The United States Marine Corps has expelled a young recruit from Indiana for participating in a racially charged incident at a Donald Trump rally in Louisville on Super Tuesday. Shiya Nwanguma, a young African-American student at the University of Louisville, was shoved and verbally abused when she attempted to protest at the Trump event.

International

BBC – Inside ‘Islamic State’: A Raqqa diary

In areas controlled by the group that calls itself Islamic State the penalty for speaking to the Western media is death by beheading, so it took courage and conviction for Mohammed to compile this diary of life in Raqqa, the capital of IS’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

NY Times – 10 Shots Across the Border

Around 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2012, a police officer in Nogales, Ariz., named John Zuñiga received a call reporting suspicious activity on International Street, which runs directly alongside the Mexican border. Most of Zuñiga’s calls involved shoplifters at the local Walmart or domestic-violence complaints, but he also worked as a liaison with United States Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.). Though border security is the responsibility of the Border Patrol, the Nogales police can assist when illegal activity is happening stateside — if, for instance, drug smugglers have slipped over the fence and are making their way into Arizona.

Medium – Berta Cáceres, ¡presente!

March 3 2016, Planet Earth — In 2013, during one of many moments when Berta Cáceres was in hiding due to constant death threats, I wrote an article called Berta Cáceres is Still Alive.
There was every reason to believe that the Honduran state, the corporate oligarchs, the dam-builders, the mining companies, the timber companies, the agribusiness interests, the trade interests and all of the economic interests behind the ongoing plunder of lands and resources in Mesoamerica, wanted Berta dead.

Today, they got what they wanted. Berta Cáceres is dead.

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