Good morning — and a Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in Belarus!
The Cuban Missile Crisis began on this date in 1962, when a U-2 spy plane spotted Soviet missiles being installed in Cuba. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and in 1982 Ronald Reagan announced that he was launching a “war on drugs.”
Stat of the Day: $10 million — the estimated daily cost of US operations against the Islamic State (IS), according to the Pentagon. As Linda Bilmes reports for the Boston Globe, that doesn’t include “veterans’ benefits, depreciation of equipment, humanitarian aid, covert action, and paying (as the US frequently does) for the military efforts of our coalition ‘partners.'”
Getting what they paid for –> At ProPublica, Theodoric Meyer reports that a document accidentally made public reveals how dark money secretly funneled through a nonprofit “helped get favorable mining legislation passed” in Wisconsin.
Generations clash –> In Ferguson, Missouri, veterans of the civil rights movement called for “healing,” but that message wasn’t well received by younger activists who accused them of offering nice words but no concrete plan to bring about change. Chris McGreal reports for The Guardian. AND: Over the long weekend, more than 50 people were arrested in renewed protests in Ferguson, including Cornel West and several members of the clergy. Matt Pearce reports for the LAT.
Call off the anti-voting crusade –> At TNR, Alec MacGillis offers the GOP four good reasons why.
Will policymakers listen? –> The Pentagon issued a report on Monday concluding that global warming poses “immediate risks” to US national security. According to NBC News, the military sees climate change as a “threat multiplier,” as “rising seas and increasing numbers of severe weather events could exacerbate the dangers posed by threats ranging from infectious disease to terrorism.”
Fearmongering works –> Another poll, this one by ABC News and the WaPo, finds that two-thirds of Americans are worried about a widespread Ebola epidemic in the US “despite repeated assurances from public officials that the country’s modern health-care and disease-surveillance systems will prevent the type of outbreak ravaging West Africa.” AND: At Yahoo News, Chris Moody writes that two members of Congress who visited Liberia before the first deaths were reported have a view of the outbreak starkly different from that of their colleagues.
Islamic State –> Loveday Morris reports for the WaPo that the militants seized the third Iraqi army base in Anbar Province in as many weeks “as Iraqi forces in the region appeared close to collapse despite US-led airstrikes.” AND: After a brief lull, heavy fighting in Kobani, Syria, resumed on Monday, as two suicide bombers detonated explosives in the city. CBS and the AP have the latest. ALSO: At FP, Gopal Ratnam and John Hudson report that some of the countries included on the US list of coalition partners aren’t happy to be named as such. ALSO, TOO: Reuters reports that the Turkish Air Force has bombed Kurdish militants within its borders who are “furious at Ankara’s refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.”
“The likeliest explanation is access to firearms” –> Real Clear Science headlines a report from Alex Berezow that to “end the suicide epidemic,” we have to “make guns harder to get.”
Home again –> The US military has had a “secretive robotic spacecraft” in Earth orbit for the past 22 months, and Irene Klotz reports for Reuters that they plan on landing it at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California today.
Your childhood nightmares realized –> Time reports that “creepy clowns brandishing weapons are taking to the street late at night” in several California towns.
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