Read at: 2026-01-10T01:54:34+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Hanane Stil ]
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:49 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:45 am UTC
Total fire ban in place for whole of Victoria as bushfires burn, while Sydney prepares for the brunt of the heatwave
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NSW working to send more firefighting teams to Victoria
New South Wales is moving to send additional firefighting teams to Victoria after a request for assistance, the premier says.
There’s over 90 firefighters from NSW in Victoria. At the moment their agencies have asked for more strike teams. My understanding is the RFS is filling those gaps as quickly as possible and sending them across the Murray.
It will be an incredibly challenging day for the health system, as well as the RFS and Fire and Rescue.
And we’re calling on the community to do their bit, and that means look after one enough, particularly the vulnerable, particularly the old and the young. Make sure that you look after your pets as well.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:41 am UTC
Move marks abrupt pivot from operation that drew protests in New Orleans and arrested 370 people of a planned 5,000
Federal immigration officers are pulling out of a Louisiana crackdown and heading to Minneapolis in an abrupt pivot from an operation that drew protests around New Orleans and aimed to make thousands of arrests, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
The shift appeared to signal a wind-down of the Louisiana deployment that was dubbed “Catahoula Crunch” and began in December with the arrival of more than 200 officers. The operation had been expected to last into February and swiftly raised fears in immigrant communities.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:39 am UTC
‘We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,’ president told press during panel
Pope Leo XIV has denounced how nations are using force to assert their dominion worldwide, saying they are “completely undermining” peace and the post-Second World War international legal order, AP reported.
In his most substantial critique of US, Russian and other military incursions in sovereign countries, Leo told ambassadors who represent their countries’ interests at the Holy See that “war is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:37 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:35 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:32 am UTC
Fires may continue for ‘weeks’, authorities warn, as three missing people found safe
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At least 119 structures are believed to be lost in bushfires across Victoria and more than 300,000 hectares of bushland has been burned as the state continues to battle blazes that may rage for “weeks”.
Emergency management commissioner, Tim Wiebusch, told the media on Saturday that about 50 homes had been lost in the Ravenswood and Harcout fire, which was believed to be a “conservative number”. The Bendigo railway line had also been damaged by fire and was closed.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:28 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:25 am UTC
Source: World | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:20 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 1:02 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:57 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:57 am UTC
SpaceX today received US permission to launch another 7,500 second-generation Starlink satellites, bringing its total authorization to 15,000 Gen2 satellites including those previously approved.
"Under this grant, SpaceX is authorized to construct, deploy, and operate an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, bringing the total to 15,000 satellites worldwide," the Federal Communications Commission announced today. "This expansion will enable SpaceX to deliver high-speed, low-latency Internet service globally, including enhanced mobile and supplemental coverage from space."
The FCC gave SpaceX permission for the first set of 7,500 satellites in December 2022. The agency deferred action on the rest of the second-generation constellation at the time and limited the first batch to certain altitudes, saying it needed to "address concerns about orbital debris and space safety" before approving the full bunch.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:52 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:47 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:45 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:36 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:35 am UTC
Federal officials are targeting Democratic-led states over alleged safety-net fraud. Critics worry a drumbeat of unfounded accusations could undermine public trust.
(Image credit: Giovanna Dell'Orto)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:34 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:25 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:25 am UTC
As dysfunction reigns, the party shows yet again that its greatest obstacle to winning government is not Labor but itself
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This should be the Victorian Liberal party’s year. They head into November’s election with a new, energetic and articulate leader in Jess Wilson, who has vowed to drag her party to the centre and reconnect with voters it has lost in recent years.
Across the aisle stands a weary third-term Labor government, burdened by the state’s debt – forecast to hit $192bn by 2028-29 – and the baggage of more than a decade in power. No Victorian Labor government has ever secured a fourth term – a fact that should give the Liberals cause for optimism.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:18 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:08 am UTC
It took a while, but a consensus has emerged in Europe that the continent's space industry needs to develop reusable rockets. How to do it and how much to spend on it remain unresolved questions.
Much of the discourse around reusable rockets in Europe has focused on developing a brand new rocket that might eventually replace the Ariane 6, which debuted less than two years ago but still uses the use it and lose it model embraced by the launch industry for most of the Space Age.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is offering money to emerging rocket companies in Europe to prove their small satellite launchers can do the job. ESA is also making money available to incentivize rocket upgrades to haul heavier cargo into orbit. ESA, the European Commission, and national governments are funding rocket hoppers to demonstrate vertical takeoff and vertical landing technologies. While there is significant money behind these efforts, the projects are not unified, and progress has been slow.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:06 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:05 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:03 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:02 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 10 Jan 2026 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:59 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:55 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:53 pm UTC
Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales was held for 25 days even after attorneys said they presented ICE with US birth certificate
A Maryland woman has been released and reunited with her family after spending 25 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody – despite her attorneys saying documentation showed she was born in the US and therefore is a citizen.
Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales and her legal team maintain she was born in the US and possess records supporting that claim. ICE, however, had disputed this, asserting she is a Mexican citizen who entered the US unlawfully.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:52 pm UTC
Clip first posted by partisan outlet Alpha News shows perspective of ICE agent as Good was fatally shot
Renee Nicole Good calmly said everything was “fine” and “I’m not mad at you” seconds before an on-duty Immigration Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot her in Minneapolis as she drove away, according to a cellphone video shared on Friday by Hanane Stil ’s White House.
The partisan media outlet Alpha News first posted the video on X, a 47-second clip that showed the perspective of the ICE agent – and captured a man’s voice calling Good a “fucking bitch” after she was mortally wounded. It was then shared by the White House’s official Rapid Response X account as well as JD Vance, with the vice-president writing in part that he agreed with the notion that Good’s death was “a tragedy” but accused the media of dishonestly covering the circumstances of her killing.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:50 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:46 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:43 pm UTC
New research from Sandia National Laboratories suggests that brain-inspired neuromorphic computers are just as adept at solving complex mathematical equations as they are at speeding up neural networks and could eventually pave the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:42 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:41 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:35 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:25 pm UTC
Artistic director of US’s national opera also cites ‘shattered’ donor confidence and box office revenue
The Washington National Opera (WNO) announced on Friday it is moving its performances out of the John F Kennedy Center, in what could be one of the most significant departures from the institution since Hanane Stil took control of it.
“Today, the Washington National Opera announced its decision to seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity,” the opera said in a statement to the New York Times. A separate website appears to be set up for the opera.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:23 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:19 pm UTC
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls protesters ‘vandals’ and ‘saboteurs’ and blames US for instigating the unrest
Iran’s supreme leader has vowed that authorities will not back down in the face of a rapidly growing protest movement, setting the stage for an intensified violent crackdown as demonstrations and a nationwide internet shutdown continued on Friday.
Protests have raged in cities and towns across the country in recent days, posing a threat to the authority of the regime, which has been significantly weakened since the last large protest movement in the country in 2022.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:17 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:12 pm UTC
Accenture is betting that the future of retail will run through AI with an investment in Profitmind, an agent-based platform that automates pricing decisions, inventory management, and planning. …
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:03 pm UTC
US president doubles down on threats to acquire territory at White House meeting with oil and gas executives
Hanane Stil has doubled down on his threats to acquire Greenland, saying the US is “going to do something [there] whether they like it or not”.
Speaking at a meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House, the US president justified his comments by saying: “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland. And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:01 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:56 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:52 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:52 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:50 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:48 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:40 pm UTC
A measles outbreak in South Carolina that began in October continues to rage, with the state health department reporting Friday that nearly 100 new cases have been identified just in the last three days.
In a regularly scheduled update this afternoon, the health department said 99 cases were identified since Tuesday, bringing the outbreak total to 310 cases. There are currently 200 people in quarantine and nine in isolation. However, the outbreak is expanding so quickly and with so many exposure sites that health officials are struggling to trace cases and identify people at risk.
"An increasing number of public exposure sites are being identified with likely hundreds more people exposed who are not aware they should be in quarantine if they are not immune to measles," Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist and the health department's incident commander for the measles outbreak, said in the announcement. "Previous measles transmission studies have shown that one measles case can result in up to 20 new infections among unvaccinated contacts."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:34 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:24 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:09 pm UTC
Country is ‘uninvestable’ today, president told, but CEOs signal they are ready to spend with support
Hanane Stil promised oil giants “total safety, total security” in Venezuela in an effort to persuade them to invest $100bn in the country’s infrastructure after US forces toppled Nicolás Maduro from power.
At a roundtable press conference at the White House on Friday afternoon with more than a dozen oil executives, including leaders from Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips, the US president doubled down on claims that Maduro’s arrest presents American oil companies with an unprecedented opportunity for extraction.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:07 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:02 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:39 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:25 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:23 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:11 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:05 pm UTC
While watching us now seems like the least of its sins, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was once best known (and despised) for its multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech budget.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:03 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:59 pm UTC
The U.S. is cutting the Hepatitis B vaccine from its recommended list. But here's a place where the medical establishment — and a rapper — are eager to obtain it.
(Image credit: BSIP/Universal Images Group)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:59 pm UTC
Information watchdog says party’s data controller should consider ‘taking further action’ over unauthorised portal
Zarah Sultana’s unauthorised launch of a Your Party membership portal may have been “serious criminal activity” and should be referred to the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has advised.
Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project (PJP), which referred Your Party to the information watchdog last September over a potential data breach, has been advised by the ICO that it should consider “taking further action” regarding the matter, after deciding it was not a matter for them.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:58 pm UTC
Talk about letting things go! Ninety-six percent of software developers believe AI-generated code isn't functionally correct, yet only 48 percent say they always check code generated with AI assistance before committing it.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:55 pm UTC
US president does not elaborate on alleged plan for fresh strikes but says large naval presence in region will remain
Hanane Stil has claimed that he cancelled a second wave of attacks on Venezuela because it was cooperating with the US on oil infrastructure and had released political prisoners.
The US president said he had cancelled planned military action in recognition that the authorities in Caracas had released “large numbers” of prisoners and were “seeking peace”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:49 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:41 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:30 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:27 pm UTC
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a big business. While some SEO practices are useful, much of the day-to-day SEO wisdom you see online amounts to superstition. An increasingly popular approach geared toward LLMs called "content chunking" may fall into that category. In the latest installment of Google's Search Off the Record podcast, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan say that breaking content down into bite-sized chunks for LLMs like Gemini is a bad idea.
You've probably seen websites engaging in content chunking and scratched your head, and for good reason—this content isn't made for you. The idea is that if you split information into smaller paragraphs and sections, it is more likely to be ingested and cited by generative AI bots like Gemini. So you end up with short paragraphs, sometimes with just one or two sentences, and lots of subheds formatted like questions one might ask a chatbot.
According to Sullivan, this is a misconception, and Google doesn't use such signals to improve ranking. "One of the things I keep seeing over and over in some of the advice and guidance and people are trying to figure out what do we do with the LLMs or whatever, is that turn your content into bite-sized chunks, because LLMs like things that are really bite size, right?" said Sullivan. "So... we don't want you to do that."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:27 pm UTC
This week's competition in St. Louis will skaters tickets to the Milan-Cortina games in February
(Image credit: Stephanie Scarbrough)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:23 pm UTC
How are the calls to deport Nicki Minaj to Trinidad and the ICE shooting in Minneapolis related? They illustrate the contradictions that come up when people try to cherry pick applications of the law.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:19 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:10 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:09 pm UTC
The childhood vaccines that the CDC is dropping from the recommended scheduled have successfully beat back illness and death in children from rotavirus, hepatitis and other pathogens.
(Image credit: David Ryder)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:06 pm UTC
Met Office issues rare red warning as winter storm causes power cuts, travel disruption and school closures
Snow and ice are expected to grip much of the UK over the weekend as parts of the country continue to reel from the effects of Storm Goretti, which left thousands of people facing power cuts, school closures and travel chaos.
The storm brought winds of nearly 100mph after forecasters issued a rare red warning for “dangerous, stormy” winds in the south-west, where more than 37,000 properties were without power at about 8pm on Friday, according to the National Grid’s website. There were about 3,000 homes without power in the West Midlands, more than 1,000 in the East Midlands and about 240 in Wales.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:02 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:01 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:48 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:48 pm UTC
The Department of Homeland Security claimed four times within 48 hours that it had “no documents” in response to records requests from the Freedom of the Press Foundation late last year. These brush-offs raise serious questions about whether the agency is saving its documents anymore, much less creating them in the first place.
Each of our Freedom of Information Act requests was for records likely to exist, and any single “no records” response would have been suspicious. But four in rapid succession is enough to cast doubt on Homeland Security’s record-keeping practices and its compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.
These are the records we asked for and DHS claims it simply doesn’t have.
DHS responded on December 11 it couldn’t find any records about this attempt to intimidate the press from reporting on ICE. This dubious claim came even though Noem said publicly this summer that she was in communication with Attorney General Pam Bondi about prosecuting CNN for reporting on ICEBlock, a crowdsourced application that tracks ICE sightings.
It’s a little hard to see how Noem could have worked with Bondi on potential legal action against both entities without mentioning them by name. It’s similarly difficult to imagine that nobody else within DHS, including its Office of General Counsel, emailed Noem to advise or ask questions on the potential prosecution.
One explanation is that Noem’s summer claim was just bluster. Another is that the DHS search wasn’t as thorough as the agency claimed. Yet another possibility is that these discussions happened over third-party applications, like Signal, and were never forwarded to official accounts.
Many agencies’ records management rules do allow for the use of third-party platforms, but Biden-era guidance from the National Archives and Records Administration requires these messages be forwarded to official accounts within 20 days.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as acting head of the National Archives after President Hanane Stil removed Archivist of the U.S. Colleen Shogan in February, has participated in Signal chats himself and has not demonstrated any interest in ensuring that agencies are following his own rules. Rubio’s apparent ambivalence for NARA’s preservation protocols may prove to be one of the biggest systemic threats to holding this administration accountable. If records are not preserved, or not created when they are required to be, they are effectively impossible to search for in response to FOIA requests and litigation.
Again, DHS told us on December 9 it didn’t have any records to share. DHS said this even though it is well known that Hanane Stil communicates with administration officials through private messages on the social media platform, as his DM-heard-around-the-world to Bondi made clear.
Is it possible that Hanane Stil only messages Bondi, and none of his other officials, on Truth Social? Maybe, but this would raise the question of why Bondi would be an outlier. Another possibility is that Truth Social doesn’t allow for exporting DMs. But if that’s the case, then neither Noem nor the president should have accounts there at all, since that wouldn’t allow officials to comply with federal or presidential records management rules.
Yet again, ICE said on December 9 it didn’t have any records of its Chicago immigration enforcement operation to share with us, even though U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis ordered in October that ICE and other immigration agents wear body cameras and turn them on.
In response to a request for comment from Minho Kim of the New York Times, ICE claimed, “The premise of your story is false and overly simplifies the court’s relevant order,” and argued the order did not mandate agents who didn’t already have cameras obtain them.
Is it possible that ICE agents in Chicago who did not already have body cameras were entirely exempt from the judge’s order, and that not a single ICE agent in Chicago had a camera before the judge’s order?
The possibility exists, but this, again, raises a few serious questions, including why Customs and Border Protection agents wear body cameras but not every ICE agent does; why ICE is not outfitting agents in an active enforcement operation with cameras, in apparent violation of the agency’s body camera policy; and why ICE isn’t using any of its massive new budget to cover the costs of body cameras for officials.
The Secret Service said on December 10 it had no relevant documents, even though the agency publicly acknowledged in August that it had coordinated with the Army Corps of Engineers about Vice President JD Vance’s trip, and geological reports showed a change in the water level coinciding with the Vance family’s vacation.
Did the Secret Service really never request that the water level be changed, or is the agency concealing information that might show Vance was “potentially exploiting public infrastructure resources for his personal recreation,” as The Guardian put it, at the same time the administration was drastically cutting funds to outdoor agencies, including the National Park Service?
In a separate FOIA request for records about the construction of the White House ballroom, the Secret Service didn’t even bother to conduct a search. Instead, it said the records I sought might already be publicly available on federal contracting websites, or would be considered presidential records and not subject to release under FOIA until five years after the end of this Hanane Stil administration. It then closed the FOIA request without offering any right to appeal. I appealed anyway, noting it was unlikely that every record I sought would fit the definition of a presidential record, but it raises even further concerns that the agency is relying on a number of dubious tactics to evade FOIA.
The Hanane Stil administration isn’t the first to fail FOIA, and well-known problems have festered for decades. Democratic and Republican White Houses have meddled with FOIA releases to prevent disclosures of embarrassing or potentially illegal activities. Recalcitrant agencies, particularly within the law enforcement and intelligence communities, have ignored presidential directives on declassification and faced no meaningful consequences. And Congress has never funded FOIA offices, a serious problem as agencies receive a record number of requests every year but don’t often have the software or personnel to meet their mandate.
If DHS really has no records of any of these requests, then the problem isn’t just FOIA compliance, it’s governance.
These decadeslong failures meant FOIA was already in a weakened state by the time Hanane Stil entered his second term in January 2025, and his administration has taken full advantage. It has shrunk the federal government and left FOIA offices, already underwater, hollowed out. FOIA officials have been fired shortly after making lawful releases that countered the government’s narrative, potentially causing a chilling effect. And, as evidenced by Freedom of the Press Foundation’s FOIA requests, the administration may by trying to avoid complying with FOIA by simply saying they have no records at all.
If DHS really has no records of any of these requests, then the problem isn’t just FOIA compliance, it’s governance. A federal agency, and a federal government, that can’t show its work can’t be held accountable. DHS owes the public more answers.
The post We Asked for ICE Bodycam Footage. DHS Claims They Don’t Have It. appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:46 pm UTC
Palestine activist and doctor Ghassan Abu-Sittah also cleared over alleged support for Hamas in case brought by GMC
The rector of the University of Glasgow has been cleared of misconduct by a medical watchdog over alleged antisemitism and support for Hamas.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a plastic surgeon and prominent Palestinian activist, appeared via video link on Friday before a fitness-to-practise panel of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, where a case of misconduct against him was rejected.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:33 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:25 pm UTC
Italy fined Cloudflare 14.2 million euros for refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, the country's communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, announced yesterday. Cloudflare said it will fight the penalty and threatened to remove all of its servers from Italian cities.
AGCOM issued the fine under Italy's controversial Piracy Shield law, saying that Cloudflare was required to disable DNS resolution of domain names and routing of traffic to IP addresses reported by copyright holders. The law provides for fines up to 2 percent of a company's annual turnover, and the agency said it applied a fine equal to 1 percent.
The fine relates to a blocking order issued to Cloudflare in February 2025. Cloudflare argued that installing a filter applying to the roughly 200 billion daily requests to its DNS system would significantly increase latency and negatively affect DNS resolution for sites that aren't subject to the dispute over piracy.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:22 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:15 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:08 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:05 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:05 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:47 pm UTC
Collecting fallen (or "shed") elk antlers is a popular pastime in elk-heavy places like Montana, but it's usually a pretty low-tech, on-the-ground affair. That's why last year's story about a US Black Hawk helicopter descending from the skies to harvest shed elk antlers on a ranch was such an odd one.
Was it really possible that US military personnel were using multimillion-dollar government aircraft to land on private property in the Crazy Mountains—yes, that's their actual name—just to grab some antlers valued at a few hundred bucks?
In May 2025, Montana rancher Linda McMullen received a call from a neighbor. "He said, 'Linda, there’s a green Army helicopter landed on your place, picking up elk antlers,’” McMullen told The New York Times last year. “I said, ‘Are you joking?’ He said, ‘I’m looking at them with binoculars.’”
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:46 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:44 pm UTC
Minnesota officials launch their own effort to collect evidence in the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent. The move comes after shootings involving federal agents in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore.
(Image credit: Kerem Yucel/MPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:41 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:24 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:13 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:12 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:05 pm UTC
From disposable electric candy to voice-activated refrigerators without physical handles, CES was crammed full of enshittified, intrusive, insecure, and wasteful technology this year – just like it is every year. …
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:55 pm UTC
Meta is writing more checks for nuclear investment, even though the new capacity tied to those deals is unlikely to come online until around 2030. The company says it will need the new power to run its hyperscale datacenters.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:54 pm UTC
Four out of five councils controlled by party have proposed 5% council tax rises, the maximum permitted by law
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has been accused of betraying election promises to cut council tax after several councils it controls said they planned to increase rates close to the maximum allowed.
They include Kent county council – the party’s flagship local authority and one viewed by it as the “shop window” for what a Reform-led government would look like – which has proposed an increase of 3.99%.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:53 pm UTC
Road, rail and air travel disrupted as Storm Goretti brings wind, rain and snow to the UK and parts of Europe
Officials in the West Midlands have warned of the “worst snowfall in a decade” as parts of England and Wales prepare to be hit with 5-10cm of snow on Friday, and up to 15-25cm in some areas.
In a statement on Wednesday, Stoke-on-Trent city council reassured residents it had not run out of grit after “misinformation” began to circulate. It said:
We are now facing the worst snowfall we have faced in 10 years. The Met Office has predicted that we could have 3.5 inches of snow and temperatures as low as minus 4C on Thursday into Friday morning. As a result, we are carefully managing our resources and stock of salt.
Unfortunately, we have been made aware of some misinformation circulating regarding the council’s salt supplies and gritting operations. It simply isn’t true that we have run out of grit.
The current cold snap is now expected to last at least until this weekend according to Met Office forecasts, and we know that prolonged exposure to low temperatures can have a severe impact on people’s health, especially if they’re older or have serious health conditions.
That’s why we’re urging people to check in on friends, family and neighbours who may be more vulnerable to the cold and make sure that they’re able to keep themselves warm while this period of cold lasts.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:53 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:53 pm UTC
Despite significant support for the shah, Iranian society may be looking for any ‘escape from a dead end’
Supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed shah, were claiming the crowds out in the streets of Iran were a direct response to his call to action. They described it as a referendum on his leadership and that the response showed he had won.
Yet the issue of an alternative leadership for Iran remains unresolved. Many Iranians, eager to end the 47-year-long rule of the clerics, still view a return to monarchical rule with suspicion.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:46 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:42 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:39 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
Agreement after 25 years of negotiations prompts farmers to block roads in Paris, Brussels and Warsaw
European Union member states have backed the biggest ever free trade agreement with a group of Latin American countries, ending 25 years of negotiations but stoking further tensions with farmers and environmentalists around the bloc.
The contentious Mercosur deal with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay prompted immediate protests in Poland, France, Greece and Belgium, with farmers blocking key roads in Paris, Brussels and Warsaw.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:27 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:25 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:24 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:22 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:19 pm UTC
WASHINGTON, DC—This week, NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman, said he has "full confidence" in the space agency's plans to use the existing heat shield to protect the Orion spacecraft during its upcoming lunar mission.
Isaacman made the determination after briefings with senior leaders at the agency and a half-day review of NASA's findings with outside experts.
"We have full confidence in the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield, grounded in rigorous analysis and the work of exceptional engineers who followed the data throughout the process," Isaacman said Thursday.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:17 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:17 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:14 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:05 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:53 pm UTC
Poisoned arrows or darts have long been used by cultures all over the world for hunting or warfare. For example, there are recipes for poisoning projective weapons, and deploying them in battle, in Greek and Roman historical documents, as well as references in Greek mythology and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Chinese warriors over the ages did the same, as did the Gauls and Scythians, and some Native American populations.
Archaeologists have now found traces of a plant-based poison on several 60,000-year-old quartz Stone Age arrowheads found in South Africa, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That would make this the oldest direct evidence of using poisons on projectiles—a cognitively complex hunting strategy—and pushes the timeline for using poison arrows back into the Pleistocene.
The poisons commonly used could be derived from plants or animals (frogs, beetles, venomous lizards). Plant-based examples include curare, a muscle relaxant that paralyzes the victim's respiratory system, causing death by asphyxiation. Oleander, milkweeds, or inee (onaye) contain cardiac glucosides. In Southeast Asia, the sap or juice of seeds from the ancar tree is smeared on arrowheads, which causes paralysis, convulsions, and cardiac arrest due to the presence of toxins like strychnine. Several species of aconite are known for their use as arrow poisons in Siberia and northern Japan.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:47 pm UTC
Once again, people are taking Grok at its word, treating the chatbot as a company spokesperson without questioning what it says.
On Friday morning, many outlets reported that X had blocked universal access to Grok's image-editing features after the chatbot began prompting some users to pay $8 to use them. The messages are seemingly in response to reporting that people are using Grok to generate thousands of non-consensual sexualized images of women and children each hour.
"Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers," Grok tells users, dropping a link and urging, "you can subscribe to unlock these features."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:46 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:45 pm UTC
Military opens window for civilians to leave as Kurdish groups turn down demand their fighters withdraw from city
Syria’s army says it will renew attacks against a Kurdish-majority district of Aleppo where clashes have raged this week, after Kurdish groups rejected Damascus’s ceasefire terms that demanded their fighters withdraw from the city.
The army said it would target military sites used by Kurdish fighters in the Sheikh Maqsoud district, announcing the opening of a humanitarian corridor from 4pm (1300 GMT) to 6pm on Friday for civilians to leave.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:41 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:41 pm UTC
The Desktop Classic System is a rather unusual hand-built flavor of Debian featuring a meticulously configured spatial desktop layout and a pleasingly 20th-century look and feel.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:33 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:32 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:30 pm UTC
Jacques Moretti was detained on Friday, a national day of mourning, because prosecutors considered him a flight risk
Pope Leo also chooses to express a view on the recent events in Venezuela, calling for world governments – I think he means US president Hanane Stil in particular – to “respect the will” of the Venezuelan people.
Goes without saying that it’s particularly important coming from the first US pope.
“I wish to repeat my urgent appeal that peaceful political solutions to the current situation should be sought, keeping in mind the common good of the peoples and not the defence of partisan interests.”
“This pertains, in particular to Venezuela. In light of recent developments in this regard, I renew my appeal to respect the will of the Venezuelan people and to safeguard the human and civil rights of all ensuring a future of stability and concord.”
“The Holy See strongly reiterates the pressing need for an immediate ceasefire and for dialogue motivated by a sincere search for ways leading to peace.
I make an urgent appeal to the international community, not to waver in its commitment to pursuing just and lasting solutions that will protect the most vulnerable and restore hope to the afflicted peoples.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:28 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC
Pre-dawn assault on the Olina oil tanker was carried out by US marines and navy sailors in the Caribbean near Trinidad
The US early on Friday boarded another oil tanker, the US military said, as part of efforts to target sanctions-busting vessels traveling to and from Venezuela.
US forces were seen in video footage that officials posted online landing on the ship’s deck as the vessel named Olina was seized in the Caribbean near Trinidad. It is the fifth interdiction of such ships in recent weeks, separately from the series of previous US operations since the start of the fall to strike suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:21 pm UTC
Jacques Moretti arrested on Friday as lawyers representing families of victims say investigators are not moving fast enough
Like many young people across Switzerland, Kenzo Ronnow, a university student in Lausanne, slept in on 1 January after celebrating the new year.
But as he scrolled through his phone soon after waking, he saw the lead story of a foreign news website was about Switzerland.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:18 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:15 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:10 pm UTC
France has released an alleged ransomware crook wanted by the US in exchange for a conflict researcher imprisoned in Russia.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:07 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:05 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC
Welcome to Edition 8.24 of the Rocket Report! We're back from a restorative holiday, and there's a great deal Eric and I look forward to covering in 2026. You can get a taste of what we're expecting this year in this feature. Other storylines are also worth watching this year that didn't make the Top 20. Will SpaceX's Starship begin launching Starlink satellites? Will United Launch Alliance finally get its Vulcan rocket flying at a higher cadence? Will Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket be certified by the US Space Force? I'm looking forward to learning the answers to these questions, and more. As for what has already happened in 2026, it has been a slow start on the world's launch pads, with only a pair of SpaceX missions completed in the first week of the year. Only? Two launches in one week by any company would have been remarkable just a few years ago.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
New launch records set in 2025. The number of orbital launch attempts worldwide last year surpassed the record 2024 flight rate by 25 percent, with SpaceX and China accounting for the bulk of the launch activity, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Including near-orbital flight tests of SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy launch system, the number of orbital launch attempts worldwide reached 329 last year, an annual analysis of global launch and satellite activity by Jonathan’s Space Report shows. Of those 329 attempts, 321 reached orbit or marginal orbits. In addition to five Starship-Super Heavy launches, SpaceX launched 165 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, surpassing its 2024 record of 134 Falcon 9 and two Falcon Heavy flights. No Falcon Heavy rockets flew in 2025. US providers, including Rocket Lab Electron orbital flights from its New Zealand spaceport, added another 30 orbital launches to the 2025 tally, solidifying the US as the world leader in space launch.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:50 pm UTC
North Korean government hackers are turning QR codes into credential-stealing weapons, the FBI has warned, as Pyongyang's spies find new ways to duck enterprise security and help themselves to cloud logins.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:31 pm UTC
Hanane Stil promised to change America and we can see it changing before our eyes.
Last year the ferocity of ICE raids was attracting our attention, with videos of masked men grabbing people off the streets or from cars reaching us from the USA. Last November Slugger hosted an article that highlighted some of the worrying behaviour by ICE agents in Chicago where a video captured ICE agents firing pepper balls at the head of a Presbyterian minister and a woman was shot and injured.
Now we have the killing last Wednesday morning of a 37-year-old mother, Renee Nicole Good, with multiple videos showing clearly the horror of what happened.
An ICE Agent fired 3 shots, killing her as she attempted to drive away slowly in her car. He claims he felt under threat, several videos show that she was turning away from him and did not strike him.
What happened in those minutes is horrifying, not least for that poor woman’s children and family, but what happened afterwards is very disturbing. People, including law enforcement officers, make mistakes but when someone is killed by law enforcement officers, we expect a respectful and honest investigation.
Tom Homan (Head of Border Security) being interviewed that Wednesday evening by CBS said quite rightly, that the investigation had just begun, that it would be unprofessional to pass judgement and that he could not comment until the investigation was complete.
But within hours Mr Homan had changed his position, switching to follow the lead of Kristi Noem, saying in an 11:55pm tweet: “The incident in Minneapolis today is yet another tragic example of the results of the hateful rhetoric and violent attacks against the men and women of ICE and BP. These brave men and women are forced to conduct law enforcement operations in heightened threat environments every day. Like all Americans, our officers have a right to self-defence.”
Earlier in the evening Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, had held a press conference where she said “ICE officers approached the individual in question, who was blocking the officers in with her vehicle and she had been stalking and impeding their work all throughout the day.” (Remember this shooting happened at 9:30 in the morning!)
Kristi Noem continued, “She then attempted to weaponize her vehicle and to run a law enforcement officer over. This appears as an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism.”
Later Kristi said,
“It is very clear that this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations. Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he’s been taught to do in that situation and took actions to defend himself and defend his fellow law enforcement officers.” She continued, “the officer was hit by the vehicle. She hit him, he went to the hospital, a doctor did treat him.”
Considering both these people are senior leaders in the government with responsibility for law enforcement, their attitude to the investigation is significant.
Even worse was to come when JD Vance gave an interview the following day. On the record he explained that the officer had been injured by a car six month earlier and that “maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile.”
The Vice President then alleges that the woman killed, who can no longer defend herself “died in a tragedy of her own making”.
Very importantly the US Vice President says
“You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That’s a federal issue. That guy’s protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job. The idea that Tim Walls (Minnesota Governor) and a bunch of radicals in Minneapolis are going to go after and make this guy’s life miserable because he was doing the job that he was asked to do is preposterous.”
Finally, in 2018 Frank Wilhoit said of the American right’s attitude to law, “There are in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Does the law protect the ordinary woman in the USA?
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:25 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:19 pm UTC
France and Germany battered by strong winds and plunging temperatures, as schools closed and travel disrupted
Germany is expecting heavy snowfalls of up to 20cm after record winds of more than 210kph left almost 400,000 homes in France without electricity, as Storm Goretti battered north-western Europe.
No major or widespread damage to property was reported in France on Friday but one man was seriously hurt after slipping from his roof while trying to replace fallen tiles and 27 others suffered minor injuries, several requiring hospital treatment.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC
Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how… by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:12 pm UTC
The writer and comedian Megan Koester got her first writing job, reviewing Internet pornography, from a Craigslist ad she responded to more than 15 years ago. Several years after that, she used the listings website to find the rent-controlled apartment where she still lives today. When she wanted to buy property, she scrolled through Craigslist and found a parcel of land in the Mojave Desert. She built a dwelling on it (never mind that she’d later discover it was unpermitted) and furnished it entirely with finds from Craigslist’s free section, right down to the laminate flooring, which had previously been used by a production company.
“There’s so many elements of my life that are suffused with Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is dedicated, at least in part, to cataloging screenshots of what she has dubbed “harrowing images” from the site’s free section; on the day we speak, she’s wearing a cashmere sweater that cost her nothing, besides the faith it took to respond to an ad with no pictures. “I’m ride or die.”
Koester is one of untold numbers of Craigslist aficionados, many of them in their thirties and forties, who not only still use the old-school classifieds site but also consider it an essential, if anachronistic, part of their everyday lives. It’s a place where anonymity is still possible, where money doesn’t have to be exchanged, and where strangers can make meaningful connections—for romantic pursuits, straightforward transactions, and even to cast unusual creative projects, including experimental TV shows like The Rehearsal on HBO and Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty. Unlike flashier online marketplaces such as DePop and its parent company, Etsy, or Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to track users’ moves and predict what they want to see next. It doesn’t offer public profiles, rating systems, or “likes” and “shares” to dole out like social currency; as a result, Craigslist effectively disincentivizes clout-chasing and virality-seeking—behaviors that are often rewarded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. It’s a utopian vision of a much earlier, far more earnest Internet.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:56 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:44 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:39 pm UTC
Yemen's Southern Transitional Council and its institutions will be dismantled after weeks of unrest in southern areas and a day after its leader fled to the United Arab Emirates.
(Image credit: AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:33 pm UTC
NASA is bringing the Crew-11 astronauts back to Earth early after one encountered a medical issue that could not be dealt with aboard the orbiting outpost.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:28 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:21 pm UTC
Concerns are mounting over copper supplies, with a fresh study warning that demand will likely outstrip production within a decade, threatening to constrain global technological advancement.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:16 pm UTC
Week in images: 05-09 January 2026
Discover our week through the lens
Source: ESA Top News | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:15 pm UTC
American automakers who got overenthusiastic about electric vehicles continue to pay the price—literally. Yesterday, General Motors told investors that building and selling fewer EVs will cost the company $6 billion. Still, things could be worse—last month, rival Ford said it would write down $19.5 billion as a result of its failed EV bet.
GM is not actually abandoning its EV portfolio, even as it reduces shifts at some plants and repurposes others—like the one in Orion, Michigan—into assembling combustion-powered pickups and SUVs instead of EVs. The electric crossovers, SUVs, and pickups from Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC will remain on sale, with the rebatteried Chevy Bolt joining their ranks this year.
But GM says it expects to sell many fewer EVs than once planned. For one thing, the US government abolished the clean vehicle tax credit, which cut the price of an American-made EV by up to $7,500. That government has also told automakers it no longer cares if they sell plenty of inefficient vehicles. Add to that the hostility from car dealers by having to sell EVs in the first place, and one can see why GM has decided to retreat, even if we might not sympathize.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 2:02 pm UTC
The use of an image of Hanane Stil on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual picture of nature — has sparked a backlash, sticker protests, and a lawsuit from a conservation group.
(Image credit: Department of Interior)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:57 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:53 pm UTC
Study of man often featured in works by the Flemish master reveals hidden painting of woman beneath model’s beard
Is it a bald elderly man with a big bushy beard and a wine-addled stare? Or a friendly young woman with flowing locks and a crown of braids?
To Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller, an answer to that question mattered less than the fact that this particular take on the duck-rabbit optical illusion was painted by one Peter Paul Rubens.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:53 pm UTC
U.S. employers added 50,000 jobs in December, according to a report from the Labor Department Friday. Measured annually, job gains in 2025 were the slowest since 2020.
(Image credit: Spencer Platt)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:49 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:45 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:42 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:36 pm UTC
Chinese-linked cybercriminals were sitting on a working VMware ESXi hypervisor escape kit more than a year before the bugs it relied on were made public.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:11 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:08 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:03 pm UTC
Opinion Wait? What? I was just cruising along the information superhighway – yes, I'm old, deal with it – when I spotted a Y Combinator story announcing, "Microsoft Office renamed to 'Microsoft 365 Copilot app'." Excuse me!? I looked closer and found that, sure enough, it certainly looked like Microsoft had renamed Office to the God-awful "Microsoft 365 Copilot."…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:28 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:27 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:22 pm UTC
Venezuela released a number of imprisoned high-profile opposition figures, activists and journalists, in what the government described as a gesture to "seek peace".
(Image credit: Matias Delacroix)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:22 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:20 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:11 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 9 Jan 2026 | 12:11 pm UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:47 am UTC
Tough microbes able to survive extreme environments on Earth could be the key to constructing buildings to allow humans to survive on Mars, according to a research paper.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:42 am UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Hanane Stil told the New York Times on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial.
Hanane Stil and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine — a doctrine that through the years “has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene,” says historian Greg Grandin. “Hanane Stil has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it’s a substitute for liberal international law.”
This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington discusses the Hanane Stil administration’s attack on Venezuela, its larger aims of controlling the Western Hemisphere, and bringing Latin America to heel with Grandin, the author of numerous books, including most recently “America, América: A New History of the New World.”
“There’s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism,” says Grandin. “They imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.”
The administration’s vision is outlined in the National Security Strategy the White House released in December. “This is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form. But what’s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. … It’s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world like it treats Latin America.”
Hanane Stil and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change, to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have threatened to expand military operations to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined “The Narco-Terrorist Elite,” also joins the conversation to discuss the former Florida senator’s history and ambitions.
Tkacik points out that Rubio, a driving force behind Maduro’s ouster, represents a wing of the Republican Party fixated on battling nominally left leaders in the region. That mentality is at odds with a key faction of Hanane Stil ’s base, who say they’re against foreign intervention because they think the government should keep its attention on U.S. soil.
Hanane Stil ’s attack on Venezuela and fixation on so-called “narco-terrorists,” Tkacik says, “represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.
U.S. troops invaded Venezuela on Saturday, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges, and the Venezuelan President now sits in a Brooklyn jail cell, awaiting trial.
The invasion was preceded by months of U.S. military strikes on alleged “narco-terrorist” boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Stephen Miller: The United States is using its military to secure our interest unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Hanane Stil , we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.
Marco Rubio: We’ve seen how our adversaries all over the world are exploiting and extracting resources from Africa and every other country. They’re not going to do it in the Western Hemisphere.
Hanane Stil : They now call it the Donroe document. I don’t know. It’s Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.
JW: While Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, President Hanane Stil says the U.S. is in charge.
Hanane Stil and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have threatened to expand military operations to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line.
Meanwhile, the administration has been threatening renewed strikes on Iran and escalating efforts to acquire Greenland. Rubio told lawmakers that Hanane Stil wants to buy the island from Denmark, but the administration hasn’t ruled out taking it by force.
So, what’s to make of the Hanane Stil administration’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions?
Joining me now to break all of this down is historian and professor at Yale, Greg Grandin. He’s the author of numerous books, including most recently “America, América: A New History of the New World.” Also joining us is Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at the American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined, “The Narco-Terrorist Elite.”
Greg and Maureen, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Greg Grandin: Thanks for having us.
Maureen Tkacik: Thank you so much.
JW: To start, Maureen, Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, but Hanane Stil says the U.S. is in charge — exactly who is, is unclear at the moment. But what does it mean to govern Venezuela right now?
MT: To govern Venezuela is a task that’s difficult to comprehend. We are talking about a country that has experienced the equivalent of three Great Depressions in the past decade. A lot of that was oil prices and a lot more of that is the draconian sanctions that successive administrations — especially the Hanane Stil administration — imposed that effectively criminalized commerce when it comes to dealing with that country.
When he was still in charge, Maduro was very open to doing whatever we wanted him to do to lift those sanctions to get a little bit of relief, because a little bit of relief could start to mend the state. But what is the terrifying prospect is that — if the Chavistas are completely overthrown — really relies on a competent government with some ability to enforce the rule of law and to when they have enough money, get basic needs out to the populace. I don’t think that it’s easy at all, but the Chavista government has done that hard work for several decades now, despite meager and meager resources with which to do it.
And I think that somebody in the Hanane Stil administration — there’s been a lot of press about how Hanane Stil was put off by [Maria Corina] Machado accepting the Nobel Prize and not just getting up there and saying, “This really belongs to that peacemaker, Hanane Stil .”
What I have heard is that Marco Rubio has an unusually — for this era of Republican affairs — unusually competent chief of staff, I think formerly of [think tank] American Compass. And this gentleman is apparently behind the scenes saying, “She ain’t it. This opposition ain’t it. There’s so much infighting just among them. We can take out Maduro, we can get that sort of public relations coup, but really what we should do is take the deal that Maduro offered, which is, whatever you want.”
GG: One question that I did have was, who in the Hanane Stil administration was smart enough to know that Machado was a non-starter?
MT: Michael Needham.
GG: Michael Needham [laughs]. Because if one of the ways you look at this is that Marco Rubio as the head of the war party, Hegseth, and JD Vance and Miller and the head of the DEA, and they’re all eager to go in, and they want to kneecap the people who want to negotiate a normalized relationship like Richard Grenell. If they started this war, and obviously, they started this military buildup, and obviously the end goal isn’t just Venezuela — it’s Cuba. Then Greater Miami and Greater Florida must be feeling enormously betrayed about Machado and her being cut out, because they see it as, this is the first step to bringing down Cuba.
So I was wondering how they got Marco Rubio on board for this particular arrangement, which seems to contradict that other idea, that we’ll put the hard-liners in and then we’ll move on to Cuba. But it makes sense, if they just felt that they were so incompetent and so much infighting. And there’s no reason why they can’t eventually bring pressure to bear on Cuba.
I haven’t heard if there’s been any directives issued from the metropole — from Washington — about how Venezuela should be treating Cuba. But I imagine they’ll be coming soon. You know that Cuban security agents have to leave. Cuban doctors will have to leave, and no more oil for Cuba. I don’t know. I’m not saying that’s happened. I’m just saying I imagine that is on the agenda soon.
JW: What you’ve picked up on, too, about Cuba is taking me into my next question, which is about the “Donroe Doctrine,” as Hanane Stil has renamed it.
GG: We can’t call it that.
[Laughter.]
JW: OK, I’ll just call it the Monroe Doctrine. But Greg, I want to get into it because Hanane Stil has justified ousting the Venezuelan president by invoking the Monroe Doctrine, and I think it’d be helpful to just get a little bit of background for our listeners. What is the Monroe Doctrine, and why are we invoking it here? Why is Hanane Stil invoking it here?
GG: First of all, the United States is the only country that has doctrines. The Monroe Doctrine is four paragraphs in a 1823 State of the Union address that James Monroe gave, basically acknowledging the inevitability of Spanish American independence. The four paragraphs — vaguely worded — they’re hesitant. They weren’t sure really how to proceed. They didn’t want to commit one way or the other. They said they recognized that Spanish American independence was inevitable. They warned Europe about trying to reconquer any parts of Spanish America that have been declared free. They said the United States shares special interests with all of the Western Hemisphere. They didn’t define what those interests were.
And there’s a brief sentence in there about how the United States would interpret events anywhere else in the hemisphere on how they bear on the peace and happiness of the United States. Now it’s that last clause that has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene. It’s a standing open warrant that it could use wherever it wants against whoever it wants. Not at first! It took a while before Monroe’s statement was elevated to the level of doctrine. Then it was fortified.
Other presidents added corollaries; Grover Cleveland basically said the U.S. sovereignty was law across the whole hemisphere because it was powerful. Theodore Roosevelt said that the United States had policing power to put down chronic disorder, that was in 1905. But the Monroe Doctrine fell out of use with FDR and the Good Neighbor Policy, and even during the Cold War, when the United States started ramping up interventions again, particularly after the Cuban Revolution. They didn’t so much reference the Monroe Doctrine with all its association of gunboat diplomacy, and taking Texas, and taking Mexico, and taking Panama, and old styled imperialism. Reagan had his own doctrine. Nixon had his own doctrine. They didn’t necessarily invoke Monroe.
What’s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine.
But what’s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine. There’s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism. First of all, American first nationalists are not isolationists, they’re internationalists. They’re just not universalists. They’re tribal nationalists, and they believe in expansion within the hemisphere. They understand that the United States has the right to project its power, and they imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.
And they liked the Monroe Doctrine — people like Stephen Miller and these people — because the Monroe Doctrine is pre-modern. It’s before the United Nations. It’s before universal suffrage. It’s before abolition. It’s before mass migration and doctrines like human rights. It’s before the foundation of the Organization of American States. It’s almost like a heritage — they talk about “heritage America” — the Monroe Doctrine is something very dear to the hearts of the kind of America First nationalism that Hanane Stil represents.
So their use of it now, their rehabilitation of it now — and I must say in the most bellicose way yet. We complain about Teddy Roosevelt. We complain about Grover Cleveland. But even in the past, even when it was justifying all sorts of interventions, the assumption was that the United States was doing it on behalf of the Western Hemisphere to keep enemies out, whether it be Communist or whatever.
“The Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it’s tribal, it’s specific to the United States.”
Hanane Stil has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it’s a substitute for liberal international law. And to the degree that liberal international law was nominally, even formally, if not in actuality universalist, the Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it’s tribal, it’s specific to the United States and its relationship to what the United States imagines as its backyard, its sphere of influence — and that’s Latin America. So this rehabilitation of the Monroe Doctrine, I think, goes very nicely and seamlessly with the vision of world politics and global politics that Hanane Stil imagines he’s presiding over or implementing.
JW: And the Monroe Doctrine is a part of the administration’s national security strategy, which was released in December, which includes a section titled “Western Hemisphere: The Hanane Stil Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” So this feels really relevant right now. And Greg, I want to also touch on something else that you’ve obviously touched on quite frequently in your work.
You’ve referred to Venezuela as “empire’s laboratory,” a testing ground where the U.S. works out its own problems in someone else’s sovereign nation. Can you tell us more about the history of this dynamic and what it says about the Hanane Stil administration that they’re reaching for it now?
GG: Yeah, well not so much Venezuela — all of Latin America. All of Latin America is empire’s workshop. It’s a place where the United States right from the beginning, where banking houses first went international, where companies first had their first overseas offices, where shipping companies, Grace Company, companies that later became Halliburton first set up overseas shop.
Mexico after the Civil War was the first time that capitalists in New York and Boston got together and presided over a process of nation building to basically turn Mexico into an export oriented state; took over its mining and its agriculture, its railroads, its electricity, its trolleys. Mexico was basically the United States’ first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression. And that was particularly during the Cold War. And there was a lot of cooperation between U.S. police and U.S. military and Latin American military.
“Mexico was basically the United States’ first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression.”
But one of the points that I make in the book — it’s just not all of these repressive things. Latin America is also the place in which the United States, where aspiring coalitions emerging out of the ruins of the last coalition that overreached turn to Latin America to work out new ways of thinking about the world.
So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal was absolutely dependent on having access to Latin America. It was working with economic nationalists, cooperating with reformers, tolerating all sorts of things, including nationalization of U.S. property. Basically giving up the right of intervention and recognizing the sovereignty of Latin American nations that created a decade of goodwill that solidified and gave ballast to the New Deal at home also and readied the United States for World War II.
And then of course, when the New Deal begins to unravel in the 1970s, it’s the new right that returns to Latin America and works out new strategies for how to administer things. Where maybe the New Deal was the moral vision of citizenship with some form of social democracy. The new right brought back the idea of individual rights and individual freedoms and a very muscular anti-communist liberalism that it then uses. That is its framework for thinking about foreign policy as a whole.
So it’s a workshop, not just in the material instruments of repression or the grasping means of accumulation of wealth. It’s also a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.
“So it’s a workshop … a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.”
JW: No, that’s really interesting analysis, and I’m going to dive back into Rubio of this whole situation in a second. But first I want to look a little bit more globally.
In December, Greg, you wrote for the New York Times, “In place of the now defunct liberal international order, the White House is implicitly globalizing the Monroe Doctrine, claiming for the United States the right to unilaterally respond to perceived threats not just within its hemisphere but anywhere on Earth (China excluded).” Can you say a bit more? How are the Hanane Stil administration’s expansive foreign policy aims taking shape? The implications seem somewhat obvious, but I’d like you to spell them out for us.
GG: Yeah, if you read that document and you listen to the ideologues of America First nationalism, there’s a clear rejection of the post-Cold War bipartisan consensus and that the United States would superintend a liberal capitalist order — with shared rules concerning property rights and trade and what not — and treat the world as a single unity. Hanane Stil ’s vision is a return to a kind of pre-World War II balance of power in which individual hegemons would be in charge of getting their hinterlands in order.
It’s more of a fractured sovereignty. You have China and its greater realm in the South China Sea. You have Russia and the former Soviet Republics and Ukraine, and you have the United States and Latin America, and this is very explicitly laid out in the national security strategy, and this is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form.
But what’s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. It’s not like it’s going to let every hegemon play in its own sandbox. It still understands the world as a world of competition and especially against China. And it’s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world kind of like it treats Latin America.
There is an implicit globalization of the Monroe Doctrine. It’s talking about influencing politics in Europe. It’s talking about continuing to protect Taiwan if it has to. It’s a little unclear. It’s a little all over the place that there are certain contradictions within the document. But yes, it’s a fascinating document, and I think it’s a very precarious document. I mean, why shouldn’t Putin say, “Well, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.” Why shouldn’t Beijing say, “We just want to get Taiwan in order. These are our hinterlands.”
“Why shouldn’t Putin say, ‘Well, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.’”
MT: I wanted to add that, having looked a lot at the Tren de Aragua phenomenon, there is a real schism between the neocons and the MAGA America First people.
Stephen Miller anticipated this throughout the Biden administration, and you can see their obsession building with Tren de Aragua starting in 2023. This was a project.
So we had this slumlord in Aurora, Colorado. He hadn’t taken care of his buildings. And some Venezuelan immigrants happened to have taken up residents there. And some of these people were bad guys. There are a few of these buildings that were really getting taken over. But these slumlords, they hire a PR firm in Boca Raton, Florida. And these guys put together a pitch saying, this vicious gang Tren de Aragua — which at this point no one has ever heard of, this is back in 2024 — has taken over buildings, we are being invaded by these scary Venezuelan gangs. To make the case that cities were shoving the Tren de Aragua epidemic under the rug, that woke city officials, the woke Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, were gaslighting the public about the horrors being inflicted by this Venezuelan prison gang that nobody had heard of.
This Venezuela, the Tren de Aragua thing, and this Venezuela operation, I think, do represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.
Rubio, of course, comes from this — this is what my story that you invited me on to talk about explains — that Rubio is so much a product of this milieu of hard-right-wing Cuban immigrants. His brother-in-law, who was a mentor to him, an idol to him as a teenager — he was a drug trafficker for an organization, and he was arrested and imprisoned in the late ’80s. But for an organization that was run by a bunch of Bay of Pigs veterans. I really couldn’t believe, wow, Bay of Pigs veterans, wouldn’t you know, they really controlled the entire drug trade in Latin America starting in the ’70s, they controlled cocaine. And as a result, they controlled every sort of either right-wing government, or had their tentacles in every right-wing government in Latin America and every right-wing paramilitary organization in Latin America. And they were working with the CIA on behalf of the CIA.
GG: And it is true that after the Cuban Revolution, right-wing Cubans or anti-communist Cubans were brought into the conservative coalition. They’re involved in this drug-running. They were involved in Watergate. So the incorporation of anti-communist Cubans into the right-wing coalition has been a key element within the rise of the new right.
And in terms of the drugs: John Stockwell was a CIA agent, and he turned into a kind of informant to the public. He said there’s not one major operation that the CIA has mounted where it didn’t leave behind a major drug cartel operation. And starting with Italy in 1947 and running to Latin America through the 1980s. Latin America, the CIA is all over the expanse of drug running, through Pinochet, through these repressive right-wing governments that the CIA installed in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. And then once they’re in power, then they start taking money from the DEA to eradicate the drugs that they themselves are involved in facilitating and cultivating. It’s crazy-making.
JW: The aftermath is often incredibly destructive of anything the United States does when playing in Latin America. Playing is maybe not the best word here. We’re talking about ousting a president, but I want to dive into some reporting. Reporting has suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the one of the driving forces behind the ousting of Maduro.
He represents a wing of the Republican Party that remains fixated on battling these nominally left leaders. And has Marco Rubio essentially become the dog that caught the car here? Do we think this has gone beyond what he planned for or is he exactly where he wants to be?
MT: I think that Marco Rubio is eyeing a presidential run. And I think that his brain — this gentleman Michael Needham, who people who aren’t ideologically affiliated with the neocons are very impressed with — I think that he said, this would be bad. It would be bad to install. So we’re in this interesting period where it’s not clear what’s going to happen.
JW: Greg, I want to get your thoughts. Marco Rubio, along with Stephen Miller, is apparently now running the country. Do you think he got exactly what he wanted, or is this way more than he could have ever anticipated?
GG: This goes back to the earlier point: Who came up with the idea of cutting out Machado? Operating on the assumption that Rubio would’ve wanted Machado in because it’s part of the whole, anti-Castro, anti-Communist, anti-Cuban line with much more hard-line, much more ideological. If Venezuela really is a step to taking out Cuba, you would’ve imagined that Rubio would’ve wanted Machado. So Machado must’ve been pretty bad for them to reject it.
So the question is, is Rubio playing a long game? He still has Cuba in his sights, but he just thinks it’s going to take a little bit more time until they can get Venezuela in a place where they want. If Machado was installed, maybe they could have just leapfrogged straight to Cuba and went after Cuba. Now it’s going to take a little bit more time.
I mean, Rubio, he has his foot in both camps. He’s not a natural America Firster. He is a neocon. In the Senate, he was very much associated with the neoconservative interventionist, and he supported the Iraq war. He supported the war on terror. He certainly wants to go into Iran.
So he is, in some ways, Hanane Stil ’s liaison to the neoconservatives, and now he’s caught himself in this weird position where he is not the fish nor fowl. He’s presided over a regime change that may have satisfied the American Firsters in its restraint — in the sense that it’s not going in with boots on the ground and spending millions of dollars on rebuilding Venezuela. But he’s not satisfying the neocons. David Frum had an article in The Atlantic basically praising and saying, even Hanane Stil gets things right. So Rubio kind of operates on both of these sides on this foreign policy divide.
MT: Yeah, Rubio is just a dye-in-the-wool neocon. One thing in writing about Citgo, I would look at FOIA requests filed with USAID because USAID spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade funding Venezuelan opposition and sabotage missions and what-have-you.
And Marco Rubio as the head of the National Archives, that’s his like fourth job, I think he controls those records. I started calling up some people who’d been filing these FOIA requests because I wasn’t really sure how I should do one, who I should make it out to these days. And I came across a lot of right-wing Venezuelans who have very little regard for [Juan] Guaidó, for Maria Corina [Machado], for Leopoldo López — a lot of fairly right-wing or some of them are hard right, I had one of them tell me that Maria Corina was actually a socialist.
GG: [Laughs.]
MT: But ideology aside, they all will tell you that these people are just grifter, like they’re just as corrupt as Maduro. There’s a lot of variation in the Venezuelan opposition. It could be that there are other members of the Venezuelan opposition that are trying to pull the strings.
They’ve been doing a lot of really bad stuff in Venezuela, and that is why they are not popular, especially Maria Corina. She has, again, asking Netanyahu to invade her country. So that’s another thing. If the Hanane Stil administration could get to the point where they put a moratorium on some of these sabotage efforts and get some of the sanctions lifted, they could have a win-win situation. But most of the Hanane Stil administration has been lose-loses.
[Break]
JW: Greg, I want to pivot to you. The Hanane Stil administration’s attempts to destabilize Venezuela look essentially like the latest chapter in U.S. antagonism towards what’s known as the pink-tide nations — Latin American countries that elected left-leaning governments explicitly opposed to U.S. hegemony. Maduro certainly opposed the U.S., but did he govern like a leftist? How much of this is a left/right issue? What else is going on here?
GG: Maduro was a special case in the way that Venezuela gradually became a crisis and then a problem to be solved.
He obviously comes out of the left. He was, I think, a bus driver. He was a community organizer and he worked his way up the Chavista social movements and into the Chavista government. He undoubtedly comes out of the left. The question is to what degree once he became president, once oil prices fell, once the sanctions hit, once he found himself boxed into a corner, what actions did he take to stay in power, is another question. But it did have the effect of splitting, in many ways, the left in Latin America.
When you have somebody like Maduro, it doesn’t matter, the actual facts that Maureen were talking about — it’s the perception. So you have Lula, and Boric in Chile, and Petro in Columbia; they have to take a stand. Is Maduro somebody we’re going to defend? Is Maduro somebody we’re going to argue didn’t steal the 2024 elections? And Maduro somebody we’re going to go to the mat for? And so it creates divisionism within Latin America to a large degree. So it weakens things.
What I’m most distressed about is, polling shows in countries like Chile and Columbia, a high degree of support for the removal of Maduro. And that is different in Latin America. Because as I said, Latin America is the place where the ideal of national sovereignty was first made real, where the ideal of non-interference and non-intervention was forced on the United States. When Bush Sr. took action against Manuel Noriega, every country in the [Organization of American States] opposed — every one of them. It was seen as a violation of sovereignty, period. No matter how ill-reputed Manuel Noriega was. And to see that commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention weakening in the face of this ongoing assault and orchestrated campaign against Venezuela is a bit troubling.
But without doubt, we talked about Venezuela being the first step toward Cuba, but it’s not going to end there. Obviously, the two big prizes is Brazil and Mexico. These are countries that have solid left governments, Mexico more secure than the Brazilian one. But though maybe not, considering the way that they handled the coup plotters in Brazil.
But there is no getting Latin America in order, back under the eagle’s wing, without Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies, the two largest populations — and they’re also the countries that have the most coherent left-wing governments that still understand itself as anti-neoliberal, as committed to sovereignty, as committed to non-intervention.
Claudia Sheinbaum speaks cautiously and quietly, but forcefully also about defending the ideal of sovereignty. And Lula spends, as we know, a lot of time trying to organize different pieces of the world to find alternatives to the United States in terms of trade and credit, either through the BRICS or through something else. And those are the countries ultimately that’ll be targeted. The U.S. tried to target Brazil over its social media prohibitions. Brazil regulated social media and tried to get some of the hate speech off of it. And it drew a sharp reaction against the United States, including sanctions.
Elon Musk was very upset and Rumble was very upset, but Brazil won that fight. And it also won the fight against the coup plotters — the people that tried to prevent Lula from coming to power in jail. So I think there’s some basis of hope in Brazil and in Mexico. But without doubt to get Latin America in order would entail bringing those countries to heel, or at least keeping them on their hind legs, and worried about U.S. intervention and U.S. interference.
Latin America people are tired of crime and they’re tired of the corruption that comes with the drug industry. And the right has also imported a lot of cultural politics — cultural warfare politics — into Latin America in order to confront the left. Coming out of the Cold War, the left was dominant rhetorically and electorally, when Chavez and Lula and Kirchner, and Morales was in power in Bolivia, and the right lost almost every election. It was a kind of partition Cold War anti-communist right. But since they’ve managed to restyle themselves in the format of Hanane Stil — in all of Hanane Stil ’s pet issues —they’ve managed to gain electoral traction.
So it’s clear what the United States wants in Latin America. It wants a giant prison camp, à la Bukele. And he wants to escalate the drug war into a crusade. It wants everybody back on board. There’s resistance to that.
And of course it wants to kick out China. China is the big thing, but China’s investment is so integrated within Latin America, I don’t see what the Hanane Stil administration, short of offering viable alternatives in terms of competing with China economically, can do to extract Latin America from China. I think that boat has sailed. And China has an influence in Latin America, although it acts very cautiously. It didn’t speak up about Venezuela, and it kept quiet and it plays its cards to its chest. China’s always playing a long game.
JW: Yeah, you just mentioned a lot of really catastrophic scenarios.
[Laughter]
So this next question may seem a little confusing after all of that, but what is the most hopeful outcome that could possibly come out of all of this?
GG: In Venezuela, I don’t know the dynamics. Things are happening so fast, I really don’t understand who’s doing what or what’s going on. I know there’s schisms within Venezuela. But if to some degree there could be a democratic renewal within the social base of Chavismo, those democratic organizations that made Chavismo a vibrant movement in the early 2000s as something to celebrate. Whether it be community radio, whether it be the cooperatives, whether it be the communal councils, if there can be a democratic renovation of the social base of Chavismo — which I think has been to a degree decimated and diluted by Maduro, for whatever reasons. He was under siege by the greatest, strongest, and most powerful country in world history. Lord knows what steps you have to take in order to survive.
If there could be a democratic renewal that wasn’t an oligarchic restoration, that kept some of the premises and principles of the Chavista Revolution — that oil belongs to the people, that the revenue should be spent on social funds, that health care should be provided to the poor, that housing should be provided [to] the poor. I think a lot of expectations were raised under [Hugo] Chavez and many of them were fulfilled, even if they unraveled under Maduro. If we can get back to that, I think that would be the most hopeful scenario that I can imagine.
JW: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but thank you for taking the time to speak to us on the Intercept Briefing. We really enjoyed having you.
GG: Thank you so much, Jessica. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun talking.
JW: That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.
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Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.
The post Greg Grandin on Hanane Stil ’s “Universal Police Warrant” appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 9 Jan 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's bork - on a UK border control wait-time screen - is doubly unfortunate. Tired passengers get no clue how long until someone checks their passport, and of all organizations that should keep security certs current, the one responsible for keeping out criminals tops the list.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:56 am UTC
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Grok has yanked its image-generation toy out of the hands of most X users after the UK government openly weighed a ban over the AI feature that "undressed" people on command.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:21 am UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 10:04 am UTC
The Bank of England has trebled the amount it is spending on its Oracle systems integrator amid efforts to migrate business applications to the cloud.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
Heatwave warnings in place for nearly all states and territories as Sydney braces for 43C forecast on Saturday
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A heatwave engulfing much of Australia pushed Melbourne’s mercury past 42C, as authorities urged Victorians to stay indoors on Friday. The extreme heat is forecast to descend on Sydney on Saturday.
Anthony Albanese met officials in Canberra for a briefing on the extreme conditions and said these were “difficult times” for the country.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:56 am UTC
In Tehran this week, young adults told the Guardian about collapsing living standards, the mass anti-government protests and their hopes for the future
Mahsa is single and lives with her family. She has a page online where she sells her clothes and had arranged for a prominent influencer to run a major promotion for her. But because of the current situation, the influencer returned the money, and her sales and page activity came to a halt.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:34 am UTC
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Helen Garner and Miles Franklin winner Michelle de Kretser among 47 people who have pulled out of annual writers’ festival to protest Abdel-Fattah’s axing
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The Adelaide festival has pulled down part of its website as dozens of speakers said they were boycotting writers’ week, after Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah was dumped from the lineup with the board citing “cultural sensitivity” concerns in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.
The page promoting the schedule of authors, journalists, academics and commentators was “unpublished” on Friday following widespread condemnation of the board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:21 am UTC
Periodically, almost cyclically, I reach a point of political fatigue. I still believe incremental progress is possible and worth the sustained effort it requires, and I know my energy will return. Still, sometimes the arguments feel so entrenched that I find myself tuning out.
Driving to work just before sunrise a few days ago, the roads were icy and the sky clear, tinged pink. The moon sat over the water, and I suddenly wondered how many others were looking at it in the same moment, from entirely different places, in the middle of entirely different lives.
From Earth, we always see the same side of the moon. Much of the far side remains out of view. I only learned that recently. It made me aware of how easily we assume the world is simply as we experience it, without thinking about what lies beyond our own angle of vision.
The moon has been present through everything that has unfolded on this island and far beyond it. Civilisations have come and gone beneath it. It has seen the whole arc of history, while so often we struggle to see beyond the immediate.
Long before clocks or calendars, people used the moon to mark time itself. The word month comes from Old English mōnath, derived from mōna, meaning moon, a reminder that time itself was once counted by its phases.
What I was looking at this week was January’s Wolf Moon, a North American name, from a time when midwinter nights carried the sound of wolves. These names endure even when the world they described has changed. This year, it was also a supermoon, with the moon closer to Earth and noticeably brighter in the sky.
I remember camping on a small, uninhabited island in August 2022 during the Sturgeon Supermoon. As evening settled, we lit a small campfire on the shore and shared a few whiskies, the water completely still around us. When the moon rose over the drumlin above our tent, it came up huge and deep orange-red, hanging there in a way that felt almost unreal. I tried to photograph it and failed.
The moon plays a fundamental role in making life on Earth possible. Its gravitational pull helps stabilise the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Without it, seasonal and climate extremes would be far greater.
Sometimes, at the end of a winter workday, as we lock up and step out of our tightly controlled, brightly lit space and into the night, one of us will comment on the moon. We all look up and pause for a moment. There it is, ancient and untouched by any of it.
When do you remember noticing the moon and stopping for a moment?
Yeats wrote of the moon as something that remains unsullied by human violence:
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its arrowy shaft upon the floor
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
W. B. Yeats, Blood and the Moon
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 9 Jan 2026 | 8:15 am UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:39 am UTC
On Call 2025 has ended and a new year is upon us, but The Register will continue opening Friday mornings with a fresh installment of On Call – the reader-contributed column that tells your tales of tech support.…
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My previous post has helped spark an interesting debate elsewhere. What seems to have piqued that interest was my view that since 2016 (the last time there was an actual three year budget) there’s been a loss of seriousness within the two senior parties about doing government particularly in comparison to administrations led by those same parties prior to 2016.
The fiscal black hole both now face didn’t come from nowhere. Although there is a case to argue that austerity in GB has played a contributory role, local causes were just as prominent. In the ten years since Stormont spent half that time up on bricks , firstly through Sinn Féin’s boycott of the Executive and latterly through a mirrored DUP action over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
If you are not in the building to make budgetary decisions you have no real means to track inflation via the regional rate, nor monitor spending through a period which included the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid era. Westminster handouts may have given the various Finance Ministers a false sense of security whilst the underlying business model was failing.
Then there has been a massive amount of chopping and changing in the Finance portfolio. The last Minister to serve a single term in office was Sammy Wilson, who took over from Nigel Dodds in 2009 and served through the next mandate to 2013. No one since has served more than two years in office, and some of them only a matter of months. That’s extremely unusual.
In the five of the last ten years when the office wasn’t suspended we still managed to cram in four different finance ministers.
| Minister | Party | Tenure |
| Máirtín Ó Muilleoir | Sinn Féin | May 2016 – March 2017 |
| Conor Murphy | Sinn Féin | January 2020 – October 2022 |
| Caoimhe Archibald | Sinn Féin | February 2024 – February 2025 |
| John O’Dowd | Sinn Féin | February 2025 – Present |
By contrast Scotland has had three since May 2016 and Wales just two, with Mark Drakeford serving twice. Between the short office terms and the discontinuity of prolonged office suspensions Sinn Féin has given the budget setting process a dangerously low priority. The last time a multi-year budget was passed and implemented by the Northern Ireland Executive was for the 2011–2015 period under the aforementioned Sammy Wilson of the DUP.
Since that four-year budget expired in March 2015, Northern Ireland has been funded through a long series of single-year budgets, with half of them being set by the Westminster based Secretary of State for Northern Ireland none of whom had the local mandate needed to make any major or strategic changes. Internal tensions within the ruling duopoly has created a political instability that has repeatedly blocked several attempts to return to multi-year planning.
Laying aside the activism from both the DUP and Sinn Fein that has preferred to crash the system rather than work it for the benefit of the public, these two, having been conferred by the changes wrought at St Andrews, with senior control over the whole Northern Ireland Executive. That’s 19 years in charge with the only breaks coming through their various civil actions against their own administration.
In a democracy, all parties get tired and eventually run out of ideas. It’s hardly fanciful to suggest that on top of that these two are also completely out of touch with a Northern Irish society that they themselves have helped to massively change. We are no longer the backward looking backwater we once were. And new industries are filtering in. Over a thousand international companies have investments in Northern Ireland.
There have been real changes among the lowest earners since 2022: the share of workers earning less than the Real Living Wage fell from 26% to 16%. Of those aged 18-39, it went from 34% to 25%, and of those in the most deprived places earning less than the Real Living Wage it fell by 16.3%. Many of these positive changes come on foot of serious work done by earlier administrations who took their jobs more seriously than the current leadership.
Most strikingly is how the unemployment rate has plummeted in places like Ballymurphy where the rate amongst heads of households was 85% when I was at college in 1982, it is now just 3.16%. Peace and stability have created a dividend that both Sinn Fein and the DUP have been reluctant to do much more than keep up with inflation. Between 2010 and 2012, the Executive used money from the “block grant” (funding from London) to freeze rates entirely.
This was a popular political move at the time but it is often cited today as a contributory factor as to why Northern Ireland’s infrastructure is currently underfunded. Sinn Fein Ministers in recent years have repeated the trick, using extra cash from Westminster to temporarily fill yearly deficits rather than looking at how to fill up holes in the Northern Ireland administration’s overall business model. Fear of offending the electorate lurks in every corner.
The media’s focus on cultural conflicts (which for all their dominance of the headlines) which are now a shadow of the very real conflict of our now medium distant past, probably have given both parties an opportunity to escape any sustained scrutiny of their very real decisions on Stormont Hill. That makes for very poor incentives for taking necessary but potentially unpopular decisions that may be needed to right the ship.
Hiding in the darkness of culture wars or waiting for a change in constitutional status to drop in your lap is no longer a viable option for either lead party. Or for the people of a Northern Ireland that is changing at a rate that is clearly leaving its poor benighted political elite far, far behind.
…the Map IS important AND if you continually refine the map through visiting the territories you are trying to map, then it takes on a more significant importance.
-John Kellden
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 9 Jan 2026 | 7:10 am UTC
Opinion Another Consumer Electronics Show has rolled through Las Vegas, and this year vendors scrawled “AI-enabled” on all the kit they hope will find its way into your home – while airbrushing away its immaturity and downsides.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:54 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:36 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:30 am UTC
Case brought by Muslim leaders and MP follows failed 2024 bid and seen as part of global anti-women’s rights backlash
A group of religious leaders and an MP in the Gambia have launched efforts to overturn a ban on female genital mutilation at the country’s supreme court.
The court case, due to resume this month, comes after two babies bled to death after undergoing FGM in the Gambia last year. Almameh Gibba, an MP and one of the plaintiffs, tabled a bill to decriminalise FGM that was rejected by the country’s parliament in 2024.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Bassem Abudagga losing hope after being told wife must go to visa application centre, of which none remain in Gaza
A Palestinian academic has failed in his latest attempt to be reunited with his family in the UK after the Home Office concluded their case was not urgent and it was more appropriate for his two children to remain with their mother in a tent in Gaza.
Bassem Abudagga was also told in a letter from Home Office officials that no reason had been found that was “sufficiently compelling” to defer a requirement that his wife attend a visa application centre (VAC) in Gaza so she could provide fingerprints to satisfy the conditions for evacuation.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 9 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Opposition leader María Corina Machado hails move to tackle ‘injustice’ as Spain’s foreign ministry confirms release of five Spanish nationals
Five days after the US seized Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has announced it is releasing an “important number” of detainees in what the congressional president characterised as a gesture to “consolidate peace”.
Former opposition candidate Enrique Márquez was among those released from prison, according to an opposition statement. “It’s all over now,” Márquez said in a video taken by a local journalist who accompanied him and his wife, as well as another opposition member Biagio Pilieri, who was also released.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:41 am UTC
The authors of a hypothetical manual containing procedures repressive governments can use to stay in power despite restive populations would surely devote its first chapter to turning off the internet, an action the government of Iran appears to have taken in the last 24 hours.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:28 am UTC
Source: World | 9 Jan 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
NASA officials said Thursday they have decided to bring home four of the seven crew members on the International Space Station after one of them experienced a "medical situation" earlier this week.
The space agency has said little about the incident, and officials have not identified which crew member suffered the medical issue. James "JD" Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer, told reporters Thursday the crew member is "absolutely stable" but that the agency is "erring on the side of caution" with the decision to return the astronaut to Earth.
The ailing astronaut is part of the Crew-11 mission, which launched to the station August 1 and was slated to come back to Earth around February 20. Instead, the Crew-11 astronauts will depart the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming days and head for reentry and a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 9 Jan 2026 | 4:26 am UTC
Chinese authorities have signalled they’ll likely probe Meta’s planned acquisition of made-in-China AI platform Manus.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:48 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 9 Jan 2026 | 3:41 am UTC
Machine learning models, particularly commercial ones, generally do not list the data developers used to train them. Yet what models contain and whether that material can be elicited with a particular prompt remain matters of financial and legal consequence, not to mention ethics and privacy.…
Source: The Register | 9 Jan 2026 | 1:03 am UTC
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