Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Far from being outdated and past their time, the ideas behind the electoral college are greatly underutilized. The electoral college is thought by many to be somehow uniquely American, but this is not the case. Similar mechanisms — sometimes called "double-majority" systems — have been used in many different times and places in political history.
The Gaza strip may become uninhabitable by 2020 if nothing is done to address the water crisis in the world’s largest open prison. 1.9 million Palestinians are trapped in a narrow strip of land, living under an illegal blockade enforced by Israel. Only 10 percent of Gazans have access to clean drinking water, the World Bank said on Tuesday, calling the situation “alarming”. Gaza’s water supply could be irreversibly ruined soon as sea water seeps into destroyed infrastructure making the Palestinian territory uninhabitable.
Donald Trump nearly sparked a diplomatic scandal earlier this week when he tweeted that Nigel Farage, the interim UKIP leader and the lead Brexit campaigner, would be great as Britain's ambassador to Washington, a suggestions which Theresa May's government quickly dismissed saying there was "no vacancy" as Kim Darroch is currently serving as ambassador to Washington, and leading to an outpouring of protests from the UK press accusing Trump of meddling in sovereign affairs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has now jumped on the bandwagon, warning against the power of ‘fake news’ on social media. EU bureaucrats voted on a non-legislative resolution Wednesday that calls for a response to counter Russian propaganda threats, equating RT and Sputnik news agencies to Daesh (ISIS) propaganda outlets.
Around fifty thousand people are being evacuated as wildfires rage through parts of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa. The fires had been burning in several locations for the past three days but intensified on Thursday, fueled by unseasonably dry weather and strong winds. The wildfires tore across central and northern Israel on Thursday, with Israeli leaders blaming arsonists for some of the blazes and branding them terrorists. The BBC reports: Wildfires are also threatening homes near Jerusalem and in the West Bank.