The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle East among people of all social strata, and boards for playing it have been found at locations as far away from Mesopotamia as Crete and Sri Lanka. One board, held by the British Museum, is dated to c. 2600 – c. 2400 BC, making it one of the oldest game boards in the world.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35398547

SEATTLE (AP) — The Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, believing the Trump administration is putting Americans’ health and safety at risk by politicizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The move comes with COVID-19 cases rising and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has restructured and downsized the CDC and attempted to advance anti-vaccine policies that are contradicted by decades of scientific research. Concerns about staffing and budget cuts were heightened after the White House sought to oust the agency’s director and some top CDC leaders resigned in protest.

“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the governors said in a joint statement.

“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisers, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health are placing lives at risk,” California State Health Officer Erica Pan said in the news release.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33927344

In an extraordinary move brokered with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, dozens of Texas House Democrats aim to deny a quorum as the GOP is set to draw new maps.

The roughly 30 Democrats are expected to stay for the week in a plan brokered with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who had met with the Texas caucus late last month and has directed staff to provide logistical support for their stay. A news conference with the governor and Texas Democrats is expected later Sunday.

Last week, Texas Republicans released a proposed new congressional map that would give the GOP a path to pick up five seats in next year’s midterm elections. It followed President Donald Trump’s public pressure for a new map in the state as he works to retain a majority in Congress in what historically is a difficult year for the party holding the White House.

The proposed map would shift district lines in ways that would target current Democratic members of Congress in and around Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as two already endangered Democrats representing south Texas districts that Trump carried last year.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32071277

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/18356779

cross-posted from: https://ponder.cat/post/513776