Exclusive: Iranian Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi Calls for Israel-Iran Ceasefire

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has long fought for freedom and human rights, even at the expense of her own. With her country now at war with Israel, Mohammadi called on her fellow activists to band together and call for a ceasefire.

In an exclusive message to TIME from Iran, Mohammadi said that the outbreak of war, which began in the early morning of June 13, has forced millions of Iranians to leave their homes and caused damages to “critical national infrastructure,” compounding an economic crisis its citizens already bore the brunt of. Mohammadi herself has left Tehran.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“The scale of destruction already resembles that of a months-long conflict,” Mohammadi writes.

Read More: A New Middle East Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes

Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her women’s rights advocacy in Iran. She is known for helping imprisoned activists, leading a campaign against the death penalty, and openly criticizing the Iranian regime’s use of torture and sexualized violence. 

She has been arrested several times for her work, and sentenced to more than 36 years. Mohammadi was in prison when she became the Nobel Prize recipient in 2023, but she was furloughed in December 2024 for medical reasons.

Mohammadi called on other Nobel laureates “to use all your individual, collective, and institutional capacities to amplify the call of ‘No to War’ and support our urgent plea for a ceasefire and an end to this war.”

Earlier, Mohammadi told the BBC that she could possibly return to prison for speaking publicly against the war, but she said she’s “not worried.” Mohammadi, alongside fellow Nobel laureate Shirin Ehbadi and other prominent Iranian voices, wrote an op-ed earlier this week demanding a halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment program and an end to the attacks.

Israel launched an attack on Iran saying it intends to stop the country from achieving the capability of producing a nuclear weapon. Hundreds are believed to have been killed in the strikes on Iran, which has retaliated by firing missiles into Israel, killing at least 24.

Read Mohammadi’s full statement below.

---

To the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Human Rights Orgs, people of the world peace lovers,

I urge you to take action to stop the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Six days have passed since the beginning of this horrific war. The violence is accelerating at a devastating pace, and the scale of destruction already resembles that of a months-long conflict.

The growing fear that Israel may attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities adds terrifying uncertainty to the war. Millions of Iranian citizens have fled their homes. Amid crushing economic hardship and soaring inflation, they are unable to afford basic daily expenses and have sought refuge in other cities.

The targeting of critical national infrastructure, the rising number of casualties, and the threat to evacuate the capital, Tehran, are deeply alarming.

I call on you—Nobel Peace Prize laureates—to use all your individual, collective, and institutional capacities to amplify the call of “No to War” and support our urgent plea for a ceasefire and an end to this war.

Let us rise together to form a united, global front for the right to peace. The scope of war expands by the day. Its fire will not remain confined to the lands directly involved—it will cross borders and engulf the entire world.

War casts a dark shadow over humanity’s future—a darkness that cannot easily be erased from the eyes of humankind.

Let us stand together—loudly, clearly—for peace and for an end to war.

I demand an immediate halt to the war and the declaration of a ceasefire.

— Narges Mohammadi

18th June 2025

source https://time.com/7295994/narges-mohammadi-israel-iran-ceasefire-nobel-peace-prize/

Why Iran Is Urging Residents to Delete WhatsApp Amid Israel Conflict—and WhatsApp’s Response

Amid the escalating active conflict between Israel and Iran, the latter has delivered yet another directive to its residents, this time involving the popular messaging platform WhatsApp.

Iran instructed its population, via state television, to delete WhatsApp on account of safety and privacy concerns.

Here’s what to know about the country-wide directive.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Why has Iran instructed its residents to delete WhatsApp?

Iranian state television urged residents on Tuesday afternoon to delete WhatsApp from their smartphones, on account of concerns the messaging platform is gathering user information to share with Israel. 

It’s understood that residents were encouraged to refrain from using other “location-based applications,” also.

The television report did not offer any evidence to support the privacy-related claims.

How has WhatsApp responded to the claims?

A WhatsApp spokesperson told TIME on Wednesday morning that the Meta-owned messaging platform is concerned about the reports coming from Iranian state television.

“We’re concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most,” the emailed statement read. “All of the messages you send to family and friends on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted. We do not track your precise location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging, and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another. We do not provide bulk information to any government.”

WhatsApp’s publicly-shared information purports that its “end-to-end encryption” effectively “locks” chats between individuals, and that no one, including WhatsApp, can access those messages.

Read More: Air Supremacy Over Tehran Gives Israel a Decisive Edge—And Raises New Risks

Has Iran issued warnings or taken action over WhatsApp before?

A number of social media and messaging apps are banned or heavily restricted in Iran, including Instagram, Telegram, and X, but millions of Iranians still access the sites via VPNs.

In 2022, WhatsApp and Google Play were banned by the Iranian government during nationwide protests after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. Iran restored access to WhatsApp and Google Play in December 2024.

Read More: What To Know About Iran’s Nuclear Program After Israel’s Strikes

Wider privacy concerns about WhatsApp messaging

While no evidence has been provided by Iran regarding its recent instruction to its residents, there have long been privacy concerns surrounding WhatsApp.

In January, Meta alleged that journalists and other WhatsApp users had been targeted by spyware from Paragon Solutions, an Israeli spyware maker.

A WhatsApp official said that at least 90 users were targeted in over two dozen countries by a “zero-click hack,” which uses a malicious electronic document to compromise an account without any interaction from the user themselves.

It was not clear who was behind the incident or which of Paragon’s clients may have ordered the attack.

In May, the NSO Group—the Israeli firm which developed the Pegasus spyware—was ordered to pay WhatsApp $167m over a hacking campaign that targeted 1,400 users in 2019. Meta called the settlement “an important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone.”

Meta claimed that WhatsApp was not the only target of the attacks, and that Pegasus “has had many other spyware installation methods to exploit other companies’ technologies to manipulate people’s devices into downloading malicious code and compromising their phones.”

source https://time.com/7295424/iran-urges-residents-delete-whatsapp-israel-privacy/

Lawmakers Seek to Limit Trump From Dragging U.S. Into Israel-Iran War

The Brief June 17, 2025

Updates on the rise of political violence in the U.S., Israel and Iran, and more

Podcast ID – Short Length: d172b396-a05f-49a8-91f4-5e9ecff5874e

Podcast ID – Long Length: 34e224e1-2194-42f7-a6bb-b33a19e61436

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

As the war between Israel and Iran rages on for a fifth day, it is unclear whether the Trump Administration is preparing to intervene militarily. On Monday, U.S. forces were sent to the Middle East, ostensibly for “defensive” purposes, as Donald Trump left the G7 summit early and warned Tehran to evacuate.

But whether the U.S. gets more involved than it already is, some members of Congress from both parties argue, is not a decision that should be up to the President.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced plans to introduce a resolution on Tuesday that asserts the requirement of Congress’ approval if Trump wants to commit armed forces to military action in the region.

“This is not our war. But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution,” Massie posted on X.

The resolution has already gained the support of progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who replied “Signing on” to Massie’s post.

It’s also not the first proposal by a lawmaker seeking to limit U.S. military engagement in the conflict. 

[video id=KBP7sVeC autostart="viewable"]

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a war powers resolution in the upper chamber on Monday that would terminate the unauthorized use of U.S. armed forces against Iran, given that there has not been a declaration of war, which only Congress can issue. War powers resolutions are “privileged,” meaning that the Senate is required to promptly debate and vote on the resolution.

“I am deeply concerned that the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran could quickly pull the United States into another endless conflict,” Kaine said in a statement. “This resolution will ensure that if we decide to place our nation’s men and women in uniform into harm’s way, we will have a debate and vote on it in Congress.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also introduced a separate bill, cosponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), on Monday that would prohibit the use of federal funds for “any use of military force in or against Iran” without congressional approval, with the exception of self-defense.

“Another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives, waste trillions more dollars and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, and more displacement,” Sanders said in a statement. “I will do everything that I can as a Senator to defend the Constitution and prevent the US from being drawn into another war.”

While the measures seeking to constrain Trump are unlikely to pass in the Republican-majority House or Senate, proponents have said that they want to force lawmakers to show where they stand on an issue where the public has been very clear. According to a University of Maryland poll in May, before Israel launched its strikes against Iran last Friday, only 14% of U.S. respondents across political parties supported “Military action in attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.”

“It’s time for every member to go on record,” Khanna posted. “Are you with the neocons who led us into Iraq or do you stand with the American people?”

What the Constitution says

War powers are divided between Congress and the President, according to the Constitution. While the President is named the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, only Congress has the authority to decide whether the U.S. should go to war—either a total war or more limited uses of force. The President retains inherent defensive powers to use military force without congressional authorization if the U.S. is attacked, but congressional approval is still needed for a prolonged war.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 provided further guidance on the President’s war powers, including that the President must have congressional approval for the use of force abroad except for certain circumstances like safely removing troops or rescuing Americans overseas. 

Nevertheless, the executive branch has expanded its view of the President’s defensive war powers, most notably with its interpretations of the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations of Use of Military Force (AUMF). Congress passed the 2001 AUMF after the September 11 attacks to allow the use of force against entities that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” in the attacks or “harbored such organizations or persons.” The 2002 AUMF authorized military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq government “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and was used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But the authorizations have been criticized for effectively giving Presidents a “blank check” to direct military actions without congressional approval far beyond their original intended scope. There have been multiple unsuccessful efforts by both parties to repeal the authorizations, including by Kaine in 2023 with the support of then-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who said at the time: “I think the fact that you have a lot of Republicans who are very skeptical of continuing to provide a blank check here I think is a good sign.”

When Trump in his first term authorized the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Defense Department general counsel explained at the time that it distilled the President’s constitutional and statutory authority to direct military action into a broad two-part test: first, “whether the President could reasonably determine that the action serves important national interests,” and second, whether the military action does not necessarily “bring the nation into the kind of protracted conflict that would rise to the level of a ‘war.’”

Party splits

Conflict with Iran has divided Democrats and Republicans—not along party lines but within them.

While some “America First” voices have rallied against direct U.S. involvement, Trump’s MAGA camp also includes war hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has said on X that, if negotiations fail, the U.S. should “go all-in to help Israel finish the job.”

“If diplomacy is not successful, and we are left with the option of force, I would urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that, when this operation is over, there’s nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program,” Graham said on CBS on Sunday. “If that means providing bombs, provide bombs. … If it means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.”

Nine lawmakers led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a pro-Israel Democrat, signed onto a letter imploring Trump to apply “crushing diplomatic pressure in addition to Israel’s military pressure” on Iran towards zero nuclear enrichment.

Trump, who also faces pressure from Israel to join the war, has continued to urge finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but he’s also expressed the possibility of U.S. involvement if Iran retaliates against U.S. targets.

“If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday night, “the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.”

source https://time.com/7294985/iran-israel-trump-us-war-powers-congress-massie-khanna-kaine/

‘They Just Walked Away’: New Poll Shows How Badly Democrats Are Losing Christian Voters of All Stripes

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

For years, Doug Pagitt has been sounding the alarm to fellow Democrats about a perceived hostility toward voters of faith within the party, flagging a fetishing of secularism that is reshaping the electoral map to their detriment. Now, he’s sending around the receipts to prove his point. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Pagitt is a progressive pastor and the executive director of Vote Common Good, which focuses on mobilizing voters of faith. Recently, he commissioned one of the largest polls of Christian voters ever to quantify the mood of the nation’s largest voting bloc. (Change Research, which counts major labor unions as clients and veterans of both Bill and Hillary Clinton as top hands, crunched the numbers last month. It runs with a standard margin of error of under 3 percentage points.) The results from more than 1,700 self-identified Christians—including Catholics and Mormons—offer plenty of reasons for Democrats still digging out from last year’s electoral thumping to question some of their foundational assumptions about the voters they are struggling to win over.

A shocking 75% of these Christian voters say that they have little or no trust in the Democratic Party, according to the data shared first with TIME. (By contrast, Republicans just about break even on that question.) A stunning 70% of these voters have little to no confidence in the federal government. And 61% of these voters think life in America is harder today for people of faith than it was 10 years ago.

Taken as a whole, this dataset on 60 specific questions should set off flares for Democrats, who lost this group by a two-to-one margin in last year’s presidential contest.

“You can’t be the majority party if you ignore the majority faith in this country,” Pagitt tells me. “We know there’s this tension in the party.”

Democrats have long struggled to make a space for faith within the party, or overcome a sense—especially in the consultant class and very-online activist set—that any embrace of religion is a threat to the party’s brand of inclusivity. For millions of voters who hold their faith as a core piece of identity, this has created a political stumbling block.

“Republicans have made a concerted effort,” Pagitt says. “Democrats have done everything they can never to name that identity. They have a built-in bias against these identities in the Democratic Party.”

Read more: Inside the Democrats’ Reboot

The polls are definitely trending away from Democrats on this question. In 2016, a full 75% of voters fell into the broad definition of Christian voters, according to exit polls. Trump carried the 27% of voters who identified as Protestants by a 59-36 margin and won the 23% of Catholic voters by a 50-46 split, while winning the 24% who called themselves “Other Christian” by a 54-43 margin. In 2020, these voters accounted for 68% of the electorate, with Joe Biden—the nation’s second-ever Catholic President—winning Catholics by a 52-47 split. Among other Christians, though, Donald Trump dominated with a 60-39 division, according to exit polls.

And last year, with Christians accounting for 64% of the electorate Trump dominated Kamala Harris: he carried the 21% of the electorate that identifies as Catholics by a 59-39 margin, and the 43% of the electorate that identifies as generically Christian by a 63-36 margin, according to exit polls.

To put all that in context, recall that Black voters are the most reliable members of the Democratic coalition and the Black Church is the only reason these numbers aren’t even worse.

While it is clear that the share of the electorate formally aligning with organized faith is shrinking, Pagitt smartly notes that membership with a local house of worship is not a prerequisite to being counted as a voter of faith. For a lot of Americans who have perhaps cut ties with local churches,  that piece of their identity remains surprisingly durable. It’s why the imprint of faith traditions last longer than any church directory. 

Grievance is certainly part of this puzzle. Pagitt’s survey finds a full 50% of Christians say religion is losing influence in American life. And 60% of these Christian voters say they reliably back Republicans; 62% say they would never consider voting for a Democrat.

Both the Democratic Party and its voters are seen as unfriendly toward Christianity. In Pagitt’s survey, 58% of Christians see the Democratic Party as hostile to Christianity and 54% see the same traits among Democratic voters. By contrast, the same voters say the Republican Party is friendly to the tune of 70% and say the same about GOP voters at the rate of 72%.

Read more: Here’s Who’s Vying to Lead Democrats Against Trump

Pagitt is clear-eyed about what is possible given how much partisanship is baked into all this and how tough it is for brands to reboot. He’s been working with candidates since Vote Common Good launched in 2018 to help progressive efforts connect with faith traditions and constantly has to face reluctance to tell their personal stories. 

But in training sessions regardless of locality, Pagitt boils down his message on faith outreach to six very simple words: “I like you” and “we need you.” Once that respect is signaled to voters of faith, Pagitt says, a conversation on substance is a whole lot easier. Still, it’s not like Democrats are going to turn around trends in this super-majority voting bloc easily.

“They squandered it,” Pagitt says of the Democrats. “They just walked away.”

In turn, so too did Christian votes walk away from Democrats.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.

source https://time.com/7294664/they-just-walked-away-new-poll-shows-how-badly-democrats-are-losing-christian-voters-of-all-stripes/

What’s At Stake This Summer As Trump Targets Heat and Climate Experts

Experts predict this summer might be hotter than average—and the U.S. is not prepared to meet the challenge. Much of the Midwest and Northeast are forecasted to see temperatures “persistently above average” according to a Weather Channel prediction, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center estimates that the entire country will see above normal temperatures—with the only difference being in severity. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

This comes as the Trump Administration has conducted layoffs on climate and heat related initiatives and cut funding for research grants on extreme heat. Experts warn that this will risk the country’s ability to protect communities from extreme heat.

Heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) were told in early April that their positions would be eliminated as part of the cuts made by the Trump Administration’s Department of Governmental Efficiency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) entire environmental health unit was cut, though some jobs were restored last week. 

“What was lost there is just a giant value to communities,” says V. Kelly Turner, associate professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles. 

Extreme heat is not recognized as a disaster in the U.S.—despite being the largest weather-related killer in the country. Heat deaths have doubled in the past 24 years, and the number has been steadily rising since 2016, according to a study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, last August. 

Despite this, the issue has long lacked the same federal resources given to other natural disasters. “Heat actually doesn’t have a home in the federal government,” says Turner. “Other disasters, like fires or hurricanes have programs and institutions and policies and funding streams associated with them—heat didn’t have any of that.”

Read more: How to Know When High Temperatures Are Getting Dangerous

Previous administrations were only beginning to address the issue. The Obama Administration founded NIHHIS, an interagency network aimed at providing actionable solutions to protect people from extreme heat, which remained operational throughout the first Trump Administration. Last July, a working group convened by the Biden Administration published the first ever “National Heat Strategy”—which has now been removed from government websites by the current Trump Administration. The bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) dedicated funds towards climate resilience projects—many of which addressed extreme heat on a community level—but the future of the law’s many provisions remains unclear. 

”The government was catching up,” says Turner. “We only kind of got halfway up the hill, and now we’re rolling the ball back down.”

Communities in the U.S. are already woefully underprepared to address extreme heat management—and experts say cuts will only worsen our response. 

“We’re not prepared for the heat we’re experiencing today, let alone the heat we will experience due to climate change. We are a nation unprepared for extreme temperatures,” says Ladd Keith, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative. “Really we need a whole government approach to address extreme heat, and it needs to be especially [aimed at] supporting small local communities that don’t have the resources to address it on their own.”

Read more: Extreme Heat Is Endangering America’s Workers—and Its Economy

Today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began a public hearing on the creation of a first-of-its-kind proposal for federal heat health standards for workers. But experts say it could be on the chopping block after the Trump Administration fired federal heat experts from NIOSH in the spring.

“The general consensus is, among labor advocates and those who’ve been working on the OSHA rule, that it will probably not survive the rulemaking process,” says Keith. 

Both Keith and Turner were working on the Center for Heat Resilient Communities, an IRA funded program that aimed at helping local communities come up with their own heat action plans. The day before they were expected to announce the first cohort of cities taking part, their funding was cut by the Administration. 

The funding cut, Turner says, highlights a dichotomy between the Trump Administration’s aim to leave disaster response to communities—without providing them with the tools to respond. 

“There’s a general trend right now of saying the federal government shouldn’t have a hand in addressing disasters at all and that that should be a state by state issue, or even a community by community issue,” she says. “The problem is that would be an unfunded mandate, and I don’t know that there is the knowledge store, and there definitely is not the financial wherewithal, to actually address heat in that way.”

source https://time.com/7294598/whats-at-stake-this-summer-trump-cuts-heat-climate-experts/

How Jaws Wreaked Havoc on Marine Conservation

Jaws was one of Hollywood’s first viral summer blockbusters—a global, collective event from the moment it opened in theaters exactly 50 years ago this week. To mark the date on June 20, Steven Spielberg has filmed a new introduction to the movie, which will have a summer run in theaters.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Millions born long after the movie last disappeared from big screens still know the plot of the 1975 thriller: A terrifying great white shark attacks fun-loving beach-goers, sets off a panic, and is hunted down by a local sports fisherman. The iconic line “don’t go into the water,” seemed to live on in memory for years.

A half-century on, ocean advocates lament the impact the film had on the public’s view of sharks. Among its fiercest critics is endurance swimmer and U.N. patron of the oceans, Lewis Pugh. Raised in Plymouth, U.K. and Cape Town, South Africa, Pugh gained fame for his long-distance swim across the icy Geographic North Pole in 2007 without a wetsuit. He has also swum the Antarctic sea, and over long distances in every ocean in the world—including last month in the waters around Martha’s Vineyard where Jaws was filmed.

Speaking to TIME at the June U.N. Oceans Conference in Nice, Pugh says the world is still suffering the aftereffects of Jaws. Environmentalists say the film led to the wide destruction of shark populations, and that it instilled fear in many about swimming in the sea, markedly setting back the cause of ocean conservation for generations and inspiring a rise in shark trophy hunters. 

For the past few years, Spielberg, now 78, has expressed remorse over Jaws—even though it sealed his major-league status as a director, while he was still in his 20s. “I regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and film,” he told the BBC in 2022. “I truly and to this day regret that.” 

Far from Hollywood, on a dockside in Nice, while politicians holed up in the U.N. conference debating how to save the oceans, Pugh spoke about the film’s impact, and how to rewrite the story of sharks.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TIME: The movie Jaws really portrayed sharks as villains.

Pugh: It turned them into monsters. And they are nothing of the sort. They are essential to a healthy ecosystem. They are like the lions of the savannah. Imagine taking out all the lions in Africa. Very soon the wildebeest, the zebra, the impala, everything would be overgrazed, and there would be no food. There would be an ecological collapse. It’s the same with sharks. 

How are you marking the 50^th anniversary of the movie?

I went to Martha’s Vineyard, which is where it was filmed, and did the first unassisted swim [without a wetsuit or goggles] around the island. It was to me [about] introducing sharks to a new generation. I swam around Martha’s Vineyard over 12 days. It’s a big island, it’s just over 100 kilometers, or about 60 miles.

I’ve been swimming for 40 years, and Martha’s Vineyard turned out to be the toughest swim of my life. We suddenly went into a 10-day storm. Martha’s Vineyard is incredibly exposed to the North Atlantic. It’s out on Cape Cod. We had 10 days of really, really bad weather. Some days I went literally just one mile in the right direction.

It became very, very challenging to just keep calm and carry on. It would be calm, then I’d go over some sea grass which was black and whipping around. 

Nature can be very, very tough.

Steven Spielberg seems to now regret Jaws.

He expressed regret on the British radio show “Desert Island Discs.” 

Has there ever been a movie that’s been more detrimental to the environment?  And also: It terrified swimmers and ocean-goers for a generation—actually more than a generation now. It had a very significant impact. 

What’s the story we need to tell instead? 

We really do need to change that narrative about sharks. They are incredible animals. They’ve survived five mass extinctions. They are older than the dinosaurs. They are incredible, they are essential, and they are really threatened. 

I always tell people these numbers: 

First, 50: It’s been 50 years, and we now need a new narrative for the next 50. The second one is 274,000: That’s the number of sharks that are killed on average globally every day by commercial fishing.

How is that possible? 

It’s a number that is so deeply shocking. The other great threat to sharks other than commercial fishing is indifference. People believe sharks don’t matter. They do matter. You take out all the sharks and you will have a watery desert.

The third number is: If you multiply 274,000 sharks killed a day, it’s about 100 million a year. If that is not ecocide, I don’t know what is.

Why are they being killed on such a giant scale? 

[Many] kill sharks for their fins or for food, or they’re killed while they are trying to catch something like tuna in nets.

What fish do you eat? 

I don’t eat fish. I don’t any seafood. I eat a little bit of chicken. Look at what’s happening to the fish populations around the world… 

What if the fish are farmed? 

I would want to know where the food is coming from that the fish are fed. There’s this extraordinary situation where to farm salmon you need large amounts of anchovies and sardines to feed the salmon. In my view a lot of it is done very unsustainably.

The numbers are shocking: It takes 10 times the sardines in order to get one kilogram of salmon. [The industry says the ratio is closer to 1.7 kilos of wild-fish feed for a kilo of salmon] You are hoovering up the ocean in order to get a product which is higher up the value chain to sell to people in America or Europe.

It’s a very personal choice what you eat. What I’ve learned is when you tell people what to eat, very, very quickly you divide people. But our oceans have been so overfished, and we’re sitting here right now on a sea, the Mediterranean, which is one of the most overfished in the world.

Are you hopeful that leaders will work together to protect the oceans?

You’ve got to be very careful about hope. It can be an abdication of responsibility, a feeling that some other countries are overfishing, that some countries are damaging the environment, that someone is going to come up with some magical solution. 

You have to earn hope, by taking action every single day. We’ve got to face reality head on. The stability we have had with our climate for the past 12,000 years has now ended. I see that because I’m in the ocean. I’m in the Antarctic frequently. 

What do you think these politicians could be doing? 

The leaders have got a very important responsibility. The decision whether to take action now, or not to take action, will impact every person on this planet, and the whole of the animal kingdom. It’s a very big responsibility.

The big changes I’m seeing from 40 years in the ocean: The impact of the climate crisis. I swim a lot in the Arctic and the Antarctic and see the ice melting so quickly. Ice is essential for the health of the planet, keeping it in a temperature we can live in.

I swam the length of the English Channel for 49 days. I saw a few dolphins, one shark, sea birds, and nothing else. And I had my head in the water for 49 days!  What I did see is lots and lots and lots of jellyfish. That is a sign of warming water.

The last thing I’m seeing is plastic pollution—everywhere, even places where humans have never been, like in Antarctica or high up in the Arctic. There’s the conveyor belt of currents taking plastic from a beach in Florida, into the north Atlantic high up into the Arctic.

Is there a sense of urgency among governments? 

No. If there was a sense of urgency they wouldn’t speak about preserving 30% of the oceans by 2030, which is what all the nations have agreed. And in order for that to become international law 60 nations have to ratify it into law. 

It’s underwhelming. And it shows that they don’t understand the scale and the speed of the crisis coming at us.

We’ve been focused on every single other crisis. The environment always gets kicked down the line. Nature won’t wait until you have time to negotiate deals.

So why did the U.N. call the global oceans conference this month? 

It’s important. You have governments, you have NGOs, you have business, you have scientists, coming together. They need to knock their heads together and find solutions. The ocean impacts all of us. You can’t be isolationist when it comes to oceans.

Is it important that the U.S. has taken itself out of the process? 

It’s extremely important. They have an enormous coastline. They have enormous influence in the world. As I say, you can’t be isolationist when it comes to the environment, and believe you can look after your own waters and you’ll be fine. No, it doesn’t happen like that. 

Americans have added so much over the years to the debate. It’s better to be in the room and share your thoughts, than not being in the room. 

source https://time.com/7294556/how-jaws-wreaked-havoc-on-marine-conservation/

Trump Orders ICE to ‘Expand’ Deportations in Democratic Cities

President Donald Trump said he wants to “expand efforts to detain and deport illegal Aliens in America’s largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside” in a lengthy Sunday night Truth Social post aimed at Democrats.

“These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State,” he added.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Trump also said he had directed his entire administration “to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration.”

The comments follow widespread “No Kings” protests that swept across the U.S. on Saturday— including in Washington D.C. alongside a military parade organized by the President—in response to what demonstrators say are his authoritarian excesses.

Sunday’s post came after Trump had earlier expressed concerns about deportations harming businesses in the American heartland. “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote on Thursday.

According to The New York Times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Tatum King sent an email to regional leaders on Thursday that, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”

The Trump Administration is reportedly divided on immigration raids. On Wednesday, Trump took a call from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins who relayed alarm from farmers and agricultural groups. But other officials, including Stephen Miller, have urged a hardline approach.

ICE raids in Los Angeles have sparked major demonstrations, which prompted Trump to deploy 4,000 National Guards and 700 Marines last week, against the wishes of state officials.

source https://time.com/7294521/us-trump-deportation-drive-democratic-cities/