Walter Stabosz writes, "Delaware was the first state to ratify the US constitution, giving it the moniker 'The First State.' It is also the second smallest state, and has only three counties. Tonight in Delaware's most populous county, New Castle County, there will be a vote that may decide the fate of a library built in one of New Castle's most underserved and at-risk communities. Read the rest

1.4 million people in Puerto Rico lost power yesterday in an outage that lasted for a day and left part of the island without power even after service was mainly restored. Read the rest

The House of Commons Library has published research projecting the post-2008 growth of inequality until 2030, arriving at an eye-popping headline figure: at current rates, the richest 1% will own two thirds of the world's riches by 2030. I think that number is too low. Here's why. Read the rest

Naomi Klein's l(ooooo)ongread in The Intercept about the state of play in Puerto Rico is the comprehensive summary of the post-Maria fuckery and hope that has gripped America's colonial laboratory, the place where taxation without representation, austerity, chemical weapons, new drugs, and new agribusiness techniques get trialed before the rest of America are subjected to them. Read the rest

As Italy heads into a national election in which mass inequality and food poverty have disrupted Italy's always-shaky political equilibrium, La Republica publishes its analysis (Google Translate) of the Twitter followers associated with each of Italy's political superstars and finds some pretty intense inflation in the numbers. Read the rest

If Trump gets his way, your elderly relatives will be evicted from nursing homes after their Alzheimer's care eats up their lifetime Medicaid benefits; as Yves Smith writes, "are family members supposed to let them wander out into traffic and have nature take its course?" Read the rest

Wednesdbury Oak Academy in the West Midlands is an "academy school," similar to a US charter school -- a publicly funded, privately operated school, which, theory goes, is able to "experiment" with new educational techniques, by deviating from the standard curriculum, rejecting students on the basis of selection criteria, and hiring teachers without formal qualifications. Read the rest

For more than a month, Iran has been rocked by mass demonstrations in its major and outlying cities, but the origin of these protests has been obscure. Read the rest

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster (in which a building full of poor people were roasted alive because their homes had been skinned with a highly flammable decorative element that was supposed to make it easier to look at from a nearby luxury neighborhood), local UK governments have scrambled to replace the deadly cladding on other buildings with something a little less fiery. Read the rest

The Getting to the Future First: How Britain can lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution report was created by Alan Mak, Conservative Member of Parliament for Havant, and it's a laughable compendium of trickle-down nonsense proposing that if all dividends from automation flow to capital, somehow everyone in the world will share in the benefits. Read the rest

The countable homeless population of the UK -- the people living on the streets and in shelters, not including people sofa-surfing -- is 307,000, about 1 in 200. In some places, it's as high as one in 27. Read the rest

Dr Ben Maruthappu, a senior public health researcher from University College London is the lead author on a forthcoming peer-reviewed paper in the BMJ Open which attempts to quantify additional deaths attributable to the UK Conservative Party's austerity measures under the 2010-2015 coalition government and the Tory governments since; Maruthappu and his co-authors attribute 120,000 deaths to austerity, and call them "economic murder." Read the rest

What does it mean to be a Republican "values voter?" Well, for sure, it means hating abortion and coming up with grotesque, rapey, lethal, cruel, absurd, unconstitutional (very, very unconstitutional), racist, regulations; tricking women into unwanted pregnancies; turning a blind eye to terrorism, and targeting vulnerable teens, while charging women with murder and defunding programs that prevent unwanted pregnancies (and thus reduce abortions), while spinning fairytales about the big profits realized by the doctors who risk their lives to help women choose when to become mothers. Read the rest

Nippybus bills itself as "one of Somerset’s leading independent bus companies" and operates a schoolbus contract for a local council in Somerset, England, where it struggles to recruit drivers thanks to the low wages it offers. Read the rest

When New Yorker columnist/blowhard Andre Walker "Nobody goes to libraries anymore. Close the public ones and put the books in schools", librarians all over the net gave him what for, and one of the best responses came from self-described "Angriest Librarian" Alex Halpern, a student librarian in Portland, OR, whose tweetstorm went viral. Read the rest

Yesterday, the Catalonian parliament declared independence from Spain; today, the central government in Madrid made good on its promise to impose direct rule on the region, firing the top tier of the government and the chiefs of the police force; Josep Lluís Trapero Álvarez, chief of the regional police force (Mossos d’Esquadra) has been charged with sedition for refusing to block polling places during the independence referendum earlier this week. Read the rest

Days after the Spanish central government announced its plan to impose direct rule on Catalonia, deposing the elected regional government, the Catalonian government has declared independence, citing the outcome of a referendum earlier this month in which Spanish police fired rubber bullets and administered ferocious, unprovoked beatings against people heading to the polls. Read the rest