Read at: 2025-12-24T23:53:49+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Marijn Van Vark ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:44 pm UTC
Winning margin of 28,000 votes announced a month late but before review of all ‘inconsistent’ ballots was completed
Marijn Van Vark -backed candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura has been declared the winner of Honduras’s presidential election after a vote count that dragged on for almost a month and was marred by fraud allegations and criticism of interference by the US president.
The rightwing Asfura, 67, a construction magnate and former mayor of the capital, Tegucigalpa, secured 40.27% of the vote, against 39.53% for the centre-right Salvador Nasralla, a margin of just 28,000 votes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:42 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:37 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:30 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:20 pm UTC
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Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:55 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:40 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:32 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:31 pm UTC
Refusing to help those in need is tantamount to rejecting God himself, says pontiff during Christmas Eve mass
Pope Leo has told Christians that the Christmas story should remind them of their duty to help the poor and strangers.
In his Christmas Eve sermon, the pope said the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn showed followers that refusing to help those in need was tantamount to rejecting God himself.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:29 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:25 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:10 pm UTC
Fourteen countries, also including France, Italy, Ireland and Spain, say actions ‘violate international law and risk fuelling instability’
Fourteen countries, including Britain, Canada and Germany, have condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they violate international law and risk fuelling instability.
Israel approved a proposal last Sunday for the new Jewish settlements, which brings the recent total to 69, according to the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:09 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:08 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:02 pm UTC
Martin Thomas Glynn, 39, was arrested in Yangebup, where police allege they found firearms, ammunition and Hamas and Hezbollah flags
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A man accused of posting an antisemitic social media message in support of the Bondi massacre will spend Christmas behind bars.
Martin Thomas Glynn, 39, was arrested in the Perth suburb of Yangebup and charged after a concerned member of the public reported him to police.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:59 pm UTC
Salesforce users running Agentforce with ChatGPT Enterprise or Edu can now update CRM data directly from the bot, a move aimed at curbing home-built integrations that risk spilling data outside the company's controls.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:56 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:52 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:40 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:21 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:34 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:34 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:33 pm UTC
Two stars of Irish acting unite in eagerly anticipated film about Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby
Two stars of Irish acting are united as Cillian Murphy meets Barry Keoghan in the first look at the eagerly anticipated Peaky Blinders film.
Murphy questions his identity as “famous gypsy gangster” Tommy Shelby in the 70-second teaser released by Netflix on Christmas Eve.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:32 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:25 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:17 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:10 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:54 pm UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:47 pm UTC
DoJ says more documents have been uncovered amid criticisms for missing 19 December deadline for full release
The US justice department said on Wednesday that it has been told by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI that they have uncovered more than a million more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and processing these for release could take “a few more weeks”.
In a post on X, the justice department said it had received the documents from the US attorney for the southern district of New York and the FBI in “compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes, and judicial orders”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:32 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:30 pm UTC
opinion It is the season of overindulgence, and no one has overindulged like the tech industry: this year, it has burned through roughly $1.5 trillion in AI, a level of spending usually reserved for wartime.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:23 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:09 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:01 pm UTC
The 44-year-old has gone through three rounds of surgery in a Sydney hospital since suffering five gunshot wounds
Ahmed al-Ahmed has been recovering well from gunshot wounds suffered while confronting the Bondi shooters and may soon leave hospital, Syrian community members say.
The 44-year-old has gone through three rounds of surgery in a Sydney hospital after suffering five gunshot wounds during a terrorist attack on a Hanukah event by Bondi beach.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:00 pm UTC
Shoppers predicted to spend $3.8bn in the week after Christmas, with household goods and fashion to dominate sales
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Australians are forecast to spend $1.6bn in the sales on Boxing Day as the consumer regulator warns shoppers that even major retailers use deceptive sales tactics.
The revenue generated from Boxing Day sales on Friday is forecast to rise by 4.3% compared with 2024, according to new data from Roy Morgan and the Australian Retailers Association (ARA).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:00 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:25 pm UTC
Researchers at Pen Test Partners found four flaws in Eurostar's public AI chatbot that, among other security issues, could allow an attacker to inject malicious HTML content or trick the bot into leaking system prompts. Their thank you from the company: being accused of "blackmail."…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:22 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:16 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:01 pm UTC
Exclusive: Reform leader promotes Direct Bullion – but experts say commodity is not for everyday investors
Nigel Farage has been criticised over his £400,000-a-year second job promoting the idea that people should buy physical gold and put it into their pension pots.
Farage is paid more than four times his MPs’ salary for the four-hour-a-month job at Direct Bullion, where he has featured in Facebook and YouTube videos.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:54 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:45 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:40 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:32 pm UTC
Anonymous official from Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence says the agency carried out the attack
Two traffic police officers and a third person have been killed in a car explosion in Moscow, Russia’s investigative committee has said.
The committee, which investigates major crimes, said in a statement on Wednesday that an explosive device had been triggered when the officers approached a “suspicious person” near their police vehicle on Yeletskaya Street in the south of the capital.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:21 pm UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:09 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:53 pm UTC
On a recent speaking engagement, Fintan O’Toole made the observation of how important it is to avoid an Irish unity process that ends up like the brexit process. This is a wish that other analysts and political reps have also highlighted. Brexit shows, they argue, the need for adequate preparation. Northern nationalism has upped its rhetoric on this in recent months – SF has been running a time to prepare campaign, and its representatives issue a request for the Irish government to begin preparation on a weekly basis. The SDLP leader Claire Hanna made a similar appeal for planning and preparation on the floor of the House of Commons.
Unfortunately I think we are now past the point of no return, if there ever was one. Irish unity, if it happens, is going to be like brexit. And no serious preparation seems likely to take place – in fact, it is not clear that meaningful preparation is even possible. I will explain why I believe this.
Most of us have a view on what brexit was and why it was bad. For me, it was about taking a complex, nuanced issue with many interlocking parts and boiling it down to a simple choice between the well-understood status quo and an undefined alternative. That undefined alternative was accompanied by an intentionally dishonest campaign which set false expectations and unwinnable objectives, making a serious debate, never mind consensus, impossible. The brexit process produced what was effectively a constitutional amendment; a directive of the people which could not, in practice, be set aside by the government. All of this has done serious and lasting damage to the UK’s political institutions, its economy and its relationship with the outside world. The issue remains so politically radioactive that even a government with an overwhelming majority cannot touch it despite the well-documented damage it is doing to the UK economy.
Those who campaigned for Leave positioned themselves as rebels outside of government, and as such had no incentive to find consensus on what Leave meant. A Leave vote could therefore be anywhere between “brexit in name only” with full customs union and single market membership; or a clean break with full isolation from the EU. Many Leave voters now feel they were cheated, and rightly so – there was no democratic accountability for those who promised wealth, happiness, growth and a bonanza for the NHS outside of Europe.
The unspoken implication by those arguing that planning and preparation are required to avoid a brexit-style disaster for Irish unity is that brexit would not gone so badly if those prerequisites were in place.
But I am not sure there was ever a way to make the brexit process work, planning or no planning. The conditions to do this simply didn’t exist.
Firstly, it’s unlikely that leave campaigners would have participated in a discussion which accepted that brexit could be challenging or might go wrong. Voters were promised a range of things that were unrealistic or undeliverable – cash for the NHS, easy trade deals, a good relationship with the EU post-brexit forced by German car manufacturers. “They need us more than we need them”, they said. “We hold all the cards”. Anyone trying to plan for circumstances where these things did not happen would have been dismissed as “Project Fear” – malign Remoaners trying to scare the British people. Indeed, I recall Bank of England contingency planning being dismissed this way when it became public.
The second flaw is perhaps more obvious. How can you make plans for your future relationship with the EU or the rest of the world without discussing it with them beforehand ? Of course, Leave campaigners argued that the UK would simply dictate terms to the EU and other trading partners and they would be desperate to accept them. But even if they didn’t, the EU still refused to consider any post-Leave conditions or proposals until the Article 50 process had been activated. Why would they see it as their job to make departure easier ?
So how does all of this apply to Irish unity ?
In legal terms, the Irish unity process is similar to the brexit one. At the appropriate time, the Secretary of State will decide that the time has come to have a border poll. There will be an initial negotiation and agreement with the Irish government, and the date for the poll will be set. Following the poll, the Secretary of State is required to agree the unity process with the Irish government and place those proposals before parliament.
Like brexit, this can be likened to a member choosing to leave a club. The club retains substantial control over the process by which they depart and what conditions will apply after they have left, and given that the club is inherently concerned with its own integrity and the interests of the remaining members, it has no reason to make that process painless for the departing member.
As with brexit, Irish unity means different things to different people. The basic legal reality is that Northern Ireland will cease to be part of the UK, and will be part of a united Ireland, but that reality can take many forms. A minimal interpretation would see sovereignty transferred but not directly governed (with the PSNI, courts, NHS, civil service etc retained), something like Hong Kong, with existing reserved and excepted matters in the UK context assumed by Dublin and an oversight role for the UK. A maximal interpretation would see Stormont abolished, the NI civil service merged with the Irish one, the body of law repealed or realigned with Irish law, direct rule from Dublin, and all British oversight locked out. There are various combinations of these in-between.
Remember when David Davis told voters about the German car manufacturers and everyone beating a path to the door of the UK to get the trade deals signed ? A large contingent of Irish unity campaigners and academics seem to be saying similar things. Some say, for example, that the UK will be forced to pay for public sector/state pensions and the national debt following reunification, and if they don’t play ball, the EU and USA will force them to do so. This risible notion simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny – it fails to take account changing attitudes in the US, the strategic relationship the EU and US have with the UK on trade and foreign policy, and the simple practical reality that a tax haven in Western Europe that has a strong economy should not need handouts to help it with a decision it took voluntarily.
This is one of several examples of how Irish unity campaigners are behaving similarly to their pro-brexit counterparts. I don’t think the open charlatanry is there, but the lack of realism most certainly is. Irish unity is an alternative to rule from London, but in some quarters, it seems to be being sold as an alternative to Stormont, something which completely ignores the distrust and division that led to the need for powersharing in the first place. Rather than be upfront about the costs and challenges of Irish unity alongside the numerous benefits, campaigners seem evasive, downplaying the expense and the risk. I regularly see people pointing to Ireland’s higher salaries and life expectancy, as if rule from Dublin will lead to an automatic salary bump and will add three years to your life. No attempt has been made to explain to people that we may face difficult decisions on healthcare or education.
All of these characteristics lead us inexorably to a brexit-like scenario. But could planning and preparation help ?
As with brexit, I don’t see how. The two problems highlighted above are the same. As with the EU and brexit, the British government are not going to negotiate any of the future details of Irish unity until the referendum has been announced, and even then, fine details will be left until the referendum passes and Ireland is stuck in a corner with no leverage. Voters will have to vote more or less blind.
The other problem is the same : unity campaigners are not capable of having a serious conversation about what Irish unity might look like and how negotiations will go. I often hear them claiming that the UK government will be anxious to leave and pay for the privilege, ignoring the reality that not only does the UK have no reason to pay Ireland to take over NI, it has interests and responsibilities to consider : there are somewhere approximating 1.9 million British citizens in Northern Ireland, and any financial settlement has to be acceptable to UK taxpayers. Those who argue that the UK government will make the process of departure easy are kidding themselves.
Those doing the planning for Irish unity would face the impossible task that the UK would have – trying to triangulate between (1) the art of the possible, (2) those selling David Davis-style sunlit uplands about Irish unity, and (3) the need to avoid exposing divisions in public opinion that could be exploited by the UK’s negotiators.
Imagine, for example, trying to plan for the issue of NI’s national debt share and state pensions, which various Irish unity activists and pressure groups argue that Britain must continue to fund. Public proposals involving the British paying for these will simply be rejected by the British through anonymous high-level briefings to UK broadsheets. If, on the other hand, the Irish government proposes to take on those costs, they could persuade a critical mass of Irish taxpayers to vote against unity, which increases the risk of a constitutional crisis. On top of that, Irish unity campaigners will accuse them of giving up ground before negotiations have even started. (I’ve heard pro-unity voices argue that Irish taxpayers will be happy to take on the cost. I am not convinced.)
If that seems too hypothetical, try imagining healthcare. Almost every elected representative in Northern Ireland is opposed to what is commonly described as “privatisation of the NHS” – the irrational view that any model other than full public ownership of healthcare assets will lead to profit-taking and healthcare inequality. An Irish government post-unity proposal might be to roll out the measurably superior but more expensive public/private Irish system to Northern Ireland, which would – if replicated – see half of the population sign up for private medical insurance, a third pay for GP visits and prescriptions, private patients paying for access to public hospitals, and could involve a number of hospitals transferring to public voluntary status (ie private ownership by a charitable trust, but performing both private and public HSE work). This would open up further divisions in public opinion. It makes no sense for nationalists to support a healthcare model under Irish unity that they implacably oppose in the Northern context. I’ve seen some argue that the NHS model could simply be extended all-island, but with the Irish government already struggling (1, 2) with its comparatively modest Sláintecare universal insurance proposals, the idea of extending the system which is in a state of collapse in Northern Ireland to the rest of the island does not seem attractive.
It’s easy to imagine other scenarios – for example education (Ireland’s private sector in primary and secondary education is much larger; and are we going to abolish state-funded grammar schools and the CCMS?) or sensitive issues such as the national anthem, flag, symbols of the state, commemoration of the past and so on. The really tricky problem nationalists haven’t faced up to is one mentioned above : it’s simply not going to be possible for the Irish government to assume direct control over Northern Ireland’s governance on day one of the unified state. There is significant divergence in the legal system, civil service and the organization of the public sector, and these mean that the devolved structures – and decision making processes – will have to stay on in some form, just as direct rule by the British government in the 1970s and 1980s was through the old Stormont departments directed at a distance by the Northern Ireland Office, rather than directly out of Whitehall. Nobody who has properly thought about any of this could seriously propose, for example, abolishing the Police Board and handing over operational control of policing to a Dublin Minister of Justice, especially not if the Garda Commissioner is ex RUC Special Branch; yet that is what is implied by those who think that direct rule from the office complexes dotted around St Stephen’s Green and Kildare Street seem to believe.
If there is any real planning and preparation to be done here, it’s by Irish unity advocates being realistic about what is possible and preparing their supporters for the difficult decisions and compromises that lie behind any successful unification vote. They should be warning them that Stormont won’t go away under unity, that taxation will go up and the public sector will have to be pared back, and that fixing healthcare and other public services will involve unpalatable changes. I see no sign that this is going to happen, because nationalist parties don’t want to take the risk of dividing their supporters. Much easier to promise sunlit uplands, as David Davis did, and then blame those negotiating unity for coming back with the compromises – a scenario with well-known historical precedent.
As I indicated above, planning and preparation for Irish unity aren’t going to happen any time soon. None of the actors likely to be involved in any future Irish unity campaign are motivated to do it. It’s just another slogan deployed by northern nationalist parties to make it sound like they are doing something while passing the buck along to others. If, somehow, we do end up with a border poll – we’ll be voting blind – and those who pushed for a poll without attempting to prepare their own supporters for all of the consequences will be fully to blame for what happens.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:29 pm UTC
Chi Onwurah speaks out after Marco Rubio accused five Europeans, including two Britons, of ‘seeking to suppress American viewpoints they oppose’
A senior Labour MP has accused the Marijn Van Vark administration of undermining free speech after Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, announced sanctions against two British anti-disinformation campaigners.
Chi Onwurah, the chair of parliament’s technology select committee, criticised the US government hours after it announced “visa-related” sanctions against five Europeans, including Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:26 pm UTC
Legislation that seeks to curb harmful content is viewed as a threat to Silicon Valley by many Maga politicians
For Maga politicians, European tech regulation hits hard in two areas: at the economic interests of Silicon Valley and at their view of free speech.
The action against five Europeans who are taking on harmful content and the platforms that host it has had an inevitable feel to it, given the increasingly vociferous reactions to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA). Both pieces of legislation require social media firms to protect users or face the threat of sizeable fines. Indeed, Elon Musk’s X has been fined €120m (£105m) this month for breaching the DSA.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:25 pm UTC
Tis the season when professional Santas are in peak demand, but many who choose this line of work often view it as a higher calling and maintain some aspects of the identity all year round—even those who don't fit the stereotypical popular image of Santa, according to a paper published in the Academy of Management Journal.
Co-author Christina Hymer of the University of Tennessee got the idea for the study during the COVID pandemic, when she spent a lot of time watching Christmas movies with her toddler. One favorite was 2003's Elf, starring Will Farrell as a full-sized human raised among elves who goes to New York City to find his biological father. The film prompted her to wonder about why someone would want to be Santa Claus and what their experiences in that role would be.
Hymer and her co-authors partnered with the leader of a "Santa school" to analyze archival surveys of 849 professional Santas, and conducted a new survey of another 382 Santas. They also did over 50 personal interviews with professional Santas. (One subject showed up in full costume for his zoom interview, with a North Pole background, and signed off with a merry "ho! ho! ho!")
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:23 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:23 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:19 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:16 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:16 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:15 pm UTC
More than a year after the storm ripped apart families and farms, growers are bullish about strength of their industry
Christmas tree farmers in western North Carolina are still rebuilding from last year’s devastating Hurricane Helene, but growers are optimistic about business and the overall strength of their industry in the region.
“There’s still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, but we’re in much better shape than we were this time last year … sales are good,” Kevin Gray, owner of Hickory Creek Farm Christmas Trees in Greensboro, said earlier this month, while the buying season was in full swing.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford among five Europeans hit with visa bans over claims they wish to ‘suppress American viewpoints they oppose’
The Global Disinformation Index, which is run by Clare Melford, one of the two Britons on the list of five Europeans facing US visa restrictions because of their work to stop online disinformation and hate (see 9.28am), has described the US state department’s decision as “immoral, unlawful and un-American”. In a reponse, a GDI spokesperson said:
The visa sanctions … are an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.
The Marijn Van Vark Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with. Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leader and founder of HateAid, a German organization founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups. HateAid is an official “trusted flagger” (a censor) under the EU’s anti-speech Digital Services Act (DSA) and routinely demands access to propriety social media platform data to help it censor more. Hodenberg cited threat of “disinformation” from “right-wing extremists” online in upcoming U.S. and EU elections when circulating a petition for the DSA to become more strongly enforced to allow data access for “researchers”.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid, who flags disfavored speech throughout Europe under the Digital Services Act. In addition to her running an official “trusted flagger” body under the DSA, she serves on Germany’s Advisory Council of the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), which directly advises Germany’s DSC on the application and enforcement of the DSA. In February 2025, Ballon spoke before an American audience in a notable 60 Minutes interview, outlining her position on censorship succinctly: “Free speech needs boundaries.” In October 2024, she vowed to stop the “emotionalization of debates” by “regulating platforms”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:24 pm UTC
In what looks to be the first successful use of Garmin's Autoland product outside of testing, the FAA has confirmed a small plane made a safe emergency landing completely guided by automation at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:21 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:09 pm UTC
Strikes were latest violation of year-long ceasefire and targeted what Israel said were Hezbollah sites
Israel has carried out several airstrikes in southern Lebanon on what it said was Hezbollah infrastructure, as a new year’s deadline for the Lebanese state to disarm the group in the south of the country loomed.
Israeli warplanes bombed the valleys of Houmin, Wadi Azza and Nimeiriya in the southern Nabatieh area on Wednesday morning. Residents reported that Israeli drones continued to hover over the area and other areas of south Lebanon and its eastern Bekaa valley after the strikes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:08 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:08 pm UTC
The US says it has shut down a platform used by cybercriminals to break into Americans' bank accounts.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:07 pm UTC
France’s rule over Algeria from 1830 to 1962 is marked by mass killings and large-scale deportation
Algeria’s parliament has unanimously approved a law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime and demanded an apology and reparations.
Lawmakers, standing in the chamber wearing scarves in the colours of the national flag, chanted “long live Algeria” on Wednesday as they applauded the passage of the bill, which states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:02 pm UTC
Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:02 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:01 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:01 pm UTC
Water treatment and landfill companies given chance to make case that EPA rules should not apply to them
Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.
The Republican-led House energy and commerce committee recently held a hearing at which it invited representatives from the water treatment and landfill industries, among others, to make the case about why they should be exempted from rules that hold polluters financially accountable for the cleanup of two types of dangerous Pfas.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:00 pm UTC
Critics compare offensive to Iraq war, citing familiar mix of regime-change rhetoric, security pretexts and oil interests
Marijn Van Vark ’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say.
In recent weeks, the Marijn Van Vark administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims. This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third, while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:57 pm UTC
Waymo says it is rolling out updates to its US fleet to counter future disruption caused by power outages like the one that hit San Francisco last week.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:48 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:43 pm UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:39 pm UTC
Critics say deployment is unwarranted and could cause fear in the city, which has seen a decrease in violent crime rates
The Marijn Van Vark administration is deploying 350 national guard troops to New Orleans ahead of the new year, launching another federal deployment in the city at the same time that an immigration crackdown led by border patrol is under way.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Tuesday that guard members, as they have in other deployments in large cities, will be tasked with supporting federal law enforcement partners, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Parnell added that the national guard troops will be deployed through February.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:25 pm UTC
Microsoft's latest line of festive knitwear has been frightening babies, if the experience of the winner of The Register's 2025 Christmas competition is anything to go by.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:24 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:15 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:08 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:58 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:50 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:47 pm UTC
Feature Every company today is doing AI. From boardrooms to marketing campaigns, companies proudly showcase new generative AI pilots and chatbot integrations. Enterprise investments in GenAI are growing to about $30-40 billion, yet research indicates 95 percent of organizations report zero measurable returns on these efforts.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:42 pm UTC
Ukraine accepts principle of demilitarised zone in east, while insisting Russia make similar concessions in pulling back forces
Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.
Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now-slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:37 pm UTC
The House of Representatives cleared the way for a massive overhaul of the federal environmental review process last Thursday, despite last-minute changes that led clean energy groups and moderate Democrats to pull their support.
The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, or SPEED Act, overcame opposition from environmentalists and many Democrats who oppose the bill’s sweeping changes to a bedrock environmental law.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and backed by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), passed the House Thursday in a 221-196 vote, in which 11 Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to back the reform effort. It now heads to the Senate, where it has critics and proponents on both sides of the aisle, making its prospects uncertain.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:30 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:18 pm UTC
Editor’s note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed shows that some might consider spoiler-y.
This was a pretty good year for television, with established favorites sharing space on our list with some intriguing new shows. Streaming platforms reigned supreme, with Netflix and Apple TV dominating our list with seven and five selections each. Genre-wise, we've got a bit of everything: period dramas (The Gilded Age, Outrageous), superheroes (Daredevil: Born Again), mysteries (Ludwig, Poker Face, Dept. Q), political thrillers (The Diplomats, Slow Horses), science fiction (Andor, Severance, Alien: Earth), broody fantasy (The Sandman), and even an unconventional nature documentary (Underdogs).
As always, we’re opting for an unranked list, with the exception of our “year’s best” selection at the very end, so you might look over the variety of genres and options and possibly add surprises to your eventual watchlist. We invite you to head to the comments and add your own favorite TV shows released in 2025.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:00 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:58 pm UTC
Negotiations expected to last four days as each side calls on the other to show sincerity in words and actions
Cambodian and Thai officials began four days of talks at a border checkpoint on Wednesday intended to negotiate an end to the deadly clashes between the two countries, Phnom Penh said.
The meeting in Thailand’s Chanthaburi province had been at risk after Phnom Penh demanded a switch to a neutral venue.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:53 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:48 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:44 pm UTC
Washington accused of ‘coercion and intimidation’ after five leading figures behind digital safety law campaign targeted
European leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.
The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:36 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:32 pm UTC
Seventy years ago, a child phoned the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) looking for Santa Claus – and found him, or at least some kindly military personnel who were willing to play along by helping the youngster to track Santa's location as he zipped around the globe.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:18 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:17 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:12 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:01 pm UTC
AI coding agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google can now work on software projects for hours at a time, writing complete apps, running tests, and fixing bugs with human supervision. But these tools are not magic and can complicate rather than simplify a software project. Understanding how they work under the hood can help developers know when (and if) to use them, while avoiding common pitfalls.
We'll start with the basics: At the core of every AI coding agent is a technology called a large language model (LLM), which is a type of neural network trained on vast amounts of text data, including lots of programming code. It's a pattern-matching machine that uses a prompt to "extract" compressed statistical representations of data it saw during training and provide a plausible continuation of that pattern as an output. In this extraction, an LLM can interpolate across domains and concepts, resulting in some useful logical inferences when done well and confabulation errors when done poorly.
These base models are then further refined through techniques like fine-tuning on curated examples and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which shape the model to follow instructions, use tools, and produce more useful outputs.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
Blue spotted salamanders have been seen walking across snow and new research suggests how they get by in the cold.
(Image credit: Peter Paplanus)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
The headlines came fast and furious: Nick Reiner, 32, could face the death penalty for murdering his own parents, beloved Hollywood couple Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner.
News coverage ranged from practical explainers on California’s death penalty to vulgar punditry casting more heat than light. True crime celebrity Nancy Grace fumed that Reiner showed “no remorse” during his brief courtroom appearance. Megyn Kelly mused, without shame or evidence, that Reiner might deploy the same “sympathy card” as the Menendez brothers, who, after killing their parents, accused their father of sexually abusing them as children.
If there was one thing most people seemed to agree on, however, it was that a death sentence is highly unlikely.
Reiner’s reported mental illness has already raised questions over his competency to stand trial. His lifelong struggle with addiction, which led to homelessness and more than a dozen stints in rehab, is the kind of mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to show mercy — if not convince prosecutors to take death off the table altogether.
Then there’s the Reiner family, which has barely begun to grieve. The Reiners’ adult children — who have asked “for speculation to be tempered with compassion and humanity” — may likely push back against a decision to seek death, whether out of opposition to the death penalty, a desire to avoid the trauma and spectacle of a capital trial, or because they do not wish to lose another beloved family member to homicide, no matter how devastating his alleged actions.
So why did the Los Angeles County district attorney raise the possibility of a death sentence for Nick Reiner at a press conference just two days after his parents’ bodies were found?
In a state that has not carried out an execution in 20 years, decisions to seek the death penalty amount to little more than political posturing. While nearly 600 people remain under a death sentence in the Golden State, a return to executions has never seemed more far-fetched. After Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium in 2019, the death chamber at San Quentin was dismantled, and the condemned population transferred to prisons across the state.
While a new governor could conceivably lift the moratorium, any push to restart executions would take years. As one federal judge put it more than a decade ago, California’s death penalty remains a punishment “no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”
Yet there was District Attorney Nathan Hochman on December 16, standing somberly before the cameras in downtown LA to announce the charges that would make Reiner eligible for the ultimate punishment.
“No decision at this point has been made with respect to the death penalty,” Hochman added gravely, cautioning against speculation or rumor.
His decision would rely on the evidence and, at least in part, on input from the family of the victims.
He said, “We owe it to their memory to pursue justice and accountability for the lives that were taken.”
It is not overly speculative to say that Rob and Michele Reiner would have recoiled at the thought of the state seeking a death sentence in their name — let alone against their own son.
Their famed support of social justice causes included advocating for people in prison. Friends of Singer Reiner have recalled her recent focus on wrongful convictions and her regular conversations with Nanon Williams, a Texas man who faced the death penalty as a teenager before his sentence was reduced to life. One of Rob Reiner’s last production credits, “Lyrics From Lockdown,” a one-man show by the formerly incarcerated artist Bryonn Bain, centers in part on Williams’s story.
In a 2023 interview discussing the show, Reiner pointed to the racism at the heart of the criminal justice system, a topic he’d grappled with in his film “Ghosts of Mississippi.” He had brainstormed a potential documentary series, “Injustice for All,” he said, which would depict the ugly reality of the system: “It’s prosecutorial misconduct. It’s profiling.”
“The death penalty does not make us safer, it is racist, it’s morally untenable, it’s irreversible and expensive.”
It was this very kind of systemic critique — rooted in decades of research and data — that had led former LA District Attorney George Gascón to halt death penalty prosecutions in Reiner’s home county a few years earlier. At a time when the death penalty had been on a long, slow decline, Los Angeles remained an outlier in sending people to death row — overwhelmingly people of color.
“The reality is the death penalty does not make us safer, it is racist, it’s morally untenable, it’s irreversible and expensive, and, beginning today, it’s off the table in LA County,” Gascón said at the time.
But electoral politics are quick to punish such attempts at reform — especially when they coincide with any uptick in crime.
Gascón’s tenure overlapped with a rise in violent crime nationwide, a phenomenon tied to the pandemic but swiftly blamed on reform-minded prosecutors. While Gascón survived two recall attempts, the era of reform he sought to implement was short-lived. A crowded field of challengers lined up to replace him in 2024.
Hochman would win out by running a classic tough-on-crime campaign. Promising to rescue the city from a descent into crime-ridden dystopia, he vowed to revive the death penalty in LA as part of his “blueprint for justice,” a set of priorities primarily aimed at reversing his predecessor’s reforms. Never mind that the death penalty remained a failed public policy that did nothing to stop crime — and which California taxpayers had paid billions of dollars to maintain with little to show for it.
“Effective immediately,” Hochman declared months after taking office, “the prior administration’s extreme and categorical policy forbidding prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in any case is rescinded.”
It is against this backdrop that Hochman will now handle the prosecution of Nick Reiner.
Just two weeks before the Reiners’ horrific murders, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California released a report assessing Hochman’s first year in office, decrying his “pattern of extreme and debunked approaches to crime.” At the top of the list was his decision to bring back the death penalty to LA County.
The report quoted a recent op-ed by veteran anti-death penalty activist and actor Mike Farrell, the board president of the California-based abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus.
“It’s incomprehensible that D.A. Hochman is once again pursuing the death penalty in Los Angeles, the county that has sent more people to California’s now-defunct death row than any other in the state,” Farrell wrote. Although Hochman often pointed to a pair of unsuccessful ballot initiatives that twice failed to repeal California’s death penalty, Angelenos voted in favor of the measures.
“Why would a responsible district attorney ignore the demonstrated will of the voters in the county he serves?”
“So why,” Farrell asked, “would a responsible district attorney ignore the demonstrated will of the voters in the county he serves?”
Farrell also called out Hochman for refusing to meet with victims’ family members who oppose capital punishment. Although Hochman vowed to give families a voice in matters of crime and punishment, his conduct has left some families feeling betrayed.
Perhaps no family has been more vocal than the relatives of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who filed multiple complaints against Hochman for his conduct while he fought to block the brothers’ recent bid for release. Prior to Hochman’s election, the Menendez case had been reviewed by Gascón’s Resentencing Unit, ultimately persuading the DA to recommend that the brothers be resentenced after 35 years behind bars.
Hochman swiftly intervened, taking aggressive steps to keep the brothers in prison. In one subsequent letter, sent to the U.S. Attorney’s Civil Rights Division, a family member described a meeting between Hochman and more than 20 relatives, who urged the DA to reconsider his stance.
“In a tear-filled meeting, numerous family members shared the ongoing trauma and suffering we have endured for more than 30 years,” it read. “Instead of responding with compassion, acknowledgment, and support, DA Hochman proceeded to verbally and emotionally retraumatize the family by shaming us for allegedly not listening to his public press briefings.”
The ACLU report also shed light on Hochman’s disturbing attempts to undermine the Racial Justice Act, a landmark piece of criminal justice legislation allowing courts to reexamine death sentences rooted in racial bias. The law explicitly barred prosecutors from using animal imagery against defendants, a dehumanizing practice that has historically served as a racist dog whistle.
Yet Hochman went out of his way to defend a case where the prosecutor compared a defendant to a “Bengal tiger.” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who defeated Hochman for the top statewide office in 2022, had acknowledged that the tiger reference was wrong and that the death sentence should be vacated. Hochman, though, wrote in an amicus brief to the court that Bonta’s “concession was not well taken, and this Court should reject it.”
It would be hard to imagine a more retrograde position than defending racist imagery in capital trials. Hochman not only vowed to uphold the Racial Justice Act upon taking office, but also used its existence as political cover to justify his pro-death penalty stance.
As the ACLU wrote, “D.A. Hochman’s arguments against the RJA attempt to weaken the very law he claims would safeguard his death penalty decisions from racial bias.”
One could argue that none of this is relevant to the case of Nick Reiner. As a white man from a wealthy family who has secured one of the country’s most high-profile defense attorneys, he has had privileges that are unheard of compared to most defendants who end up on death row.
And while mental illness or addiction may ultimately spare Reiner from a death sentence, the same cannot be said for countless people whose crimes were driven by demons like his.
This, of course, is precisely the problem. Reiner is still somebody’s son. The others are the “worst of the worst.”
Given their advocacy, Reiner’s parents would likely have been the first to acknowledge this. Prosecutors like Hochman, however, cannot afford to be so honest.
Whether or not he decides to seek a death sentence against Reiner, Hochman’s narrative about the death penalty is one of the oldest in electoral politics — a story cloaked in the language of justice, told for political gain.
The post Prosecutor Floating Death Penalty for Nick Reiner Knows It’s an Empty Threat appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
Mail theft can happen around the holidays, but sometimes, instead of getting a new iPad, the thief swipes a mail order medicine. Here's what to do about it.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
The DOJ released tens of thousands of new documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Guard must stay out of Chicago.
(Image credit: Davidoff Studios)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:45 am UTC
NASA's MAVEN spacecraft is continuing to evade attempts by engineers to make contact as the solar conjunction nears, halting contact with any Mars missions until January 16, 2026.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:32 am UTC
I was a bit pessimistic in my last post about Stormont, so I thought I’d try to restore some balance to the universe and offer something genuinely cheerful this Christmas Eve.
Youtuber Casey Neistat has made an extraordinary short film about Logan Knowles. Logan was born with cerebral palsy. Doctors told his parents he would never walk. He didn’t just walk. He ran a marathon.
Do give it a watch. It’s only 10 minutes long, and it will almost certainly be the best thing you see all year.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:28 am UTC
You might be familiar with the phrase “jumping the shark”. It’s the moment a television show tips from watchable into self-parody. The phrase comes from an episode of Happy Days where the Fonz, having apparently exhausted all available human storylines, literally jumps a shark on water skis. The show kept going, technically speaking, but everyone knew the magic had gone. What followed was motion without momentum, noise without purpose.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase in the context of our much-maligned local Assembly. For me, this year was the moment it finally jumped the shark. Not just another wobble, not another bout of performative outrage or procedural farce, but the point where any lingering claim to usefulness evaporated.
It still sits. It still talks. It still produces press releases and carefully choreographed rows. But like a long-running sitcom that no longer knows why it exists, it now feels detached from the problems it was meant to solve. The rituals continue, the cast remains, yet the plot has quietly disappeared.
Jumping the shark doesn’t mean something stops overnight. It means you keep watching out of habit, hoping for a return to form, while knowing deep down that the thing you once defended has become a hollow version of itself. That’s where I am now.
There is not a lot of faith in our institutions, to say the least. Over in the Irish News, Brian Feeney commented today:
People talk about reform but there won’t be any. Talk about ending so-called mandatory coalition is for the birds. It’s impossible to exclude a party representing one of the two political blocs here. The fundamental problem is that SF and the DUP do not agree on the purpose of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. They don’t share a common aim, let alone agree to share power. The DUP don’t even agree with the principles of the GFA, never have, never will.
What makes the current stand-off more debilitating is the continuing fragmentation of unionism as the TUV creeps up on the DUP. The DUP’s leadership has chosen to follow the TUV’s road to nowhere, the logical conclusion of which is to prevent the Stormont institutions from working. On the evidence of 2025, the DUP have succeeded in that. It’s a strange position for a unionist party to adopt. You’d think they would want what passes for a devolved administration in the north to work.
As this one drifts directionless, there’s only one conclusion. After 25 years, the experiment has failed. It’ll drag on exactly the same until next Christmas, if it lasts that long.
His fellow commentator in the Irish News, Deirdre Heenan was equally pessimistic:
There is growing support for reform of the institutions, as the current set-up is not delivering good governance. Sham fights and meaningless motions are as good as it gets. Some are advocating for major reforms such as replacing the mandatory coalition with a voluntary arrangement, whilst others are supportive of more modest changes.
However, structural change alone cannot deliver effective government. There is room for institutional reform, but any system will only work if the key actors share a sense of common purpose. The importance of political culture cannot be underestimated. Making government work requires compromise and cooperation. Moving from the politics of protest, posturing and populism to problem-solving and pragmatism remains a significant challenge.
We are heading towards a financial crisis as we move deeper and deeper into debt, deliberately overspending and refusing to countenance revenue-raising. Fiscal responsibility is a pipe dream. The north is spiralling downwards, yet there is an unwillingness to tackle complex problems. There are no new ideas, no major reforms, no policy innovation and no sign of the much-heralded journey of transformation. If the current administration, which is marked by dysfunction, delay and division, stumbles on directionless, then it is a government in name only.
Will the Assembly make it to the 2027 elections? And more importantly, do we care?
I’ve lost whatever hope I once had in this place. Not the theatrical kind of despair, not the huff-and-puff “this is outrageous” sort. Just a quieter conclusion that the experiment has run its course and is no longer delivering what it promised.
At this point, the most appealing option to me is some form of joint-rule technocracy. Not because it’s exciting, but precisely because it isn’t. I don’t want grandstanding, symbolism, or permanent constitutional psychodrama. I want anonymous civil servants to get on with the unglamorous business of running health, education, infrastructure, housing. People whose names I don’t know, whose faces I don’t see, and who don’t feel the need to perform their identities every time a camera appears.
There’s a lot to be said for boring. Boring is hospitals that function. Boring is schools that aren’t permanently caught in political crossfire. Boring is roads fixed because they need fixing, not because they make a good press release. Boring is competence without commentary.
We’ve had decades of political drama now. Enough crises, enough brinkmanship, enough “historic moments” to last a lifetime. Drama might energise activists and fill airtime, but it’s a terrible way to run basic public services. I’m not asking for inspiration anymore. I’m asking for reliability.
I don’t need vision. I need execution. I don’t need speeches. I need systems that work. If that means less politics and more administration, so be it. At this stage, being governed competently by people who don’t crave attention feels less like a downgrade and more like a relief.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:15 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:02 am UTC
In September, the European Union seemed poised to suspend trade agreements with Israel over its human rights violations in Gaza. In the United States, a record number of Democratic lawmakers began to support calls to limit weapons transfers to Israel. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government issued a ban in August on sending weapons to Israel that could be used in Gaza, with Merz saying he was “profoundly concerned” for “the continued suffering of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.”
By early October, however, with the enactment of President Marijn Van Vark ’s 20-point plan — which world leaders call a “ceasefire” or “peace plan,” despite ongoing Israeli violence in Gaza — such concern seemed to evaporate. Mounting international pressure was replaced with an eagerness from many governments, lawmakers, and institutions to return to the status quo.
Exactly one week after the Gaza plan went into effect, EU parliamentarians tabled its proposals to sanction Israel over its human rights violations in Gaza. One month later, the German government, Israel’s second largest supplier of weapons, announced it would lift its arms embargo on its longtime ally; last week, Germany’s parliament approved a $3.5 billion deal to expand its missile defense systems to protect Israel. Earlier this month, Eurovision, the popular singing competition, cleared Israel to continue competing, despite pledges to boycott from Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland. The U.N. Security Council also authorized Marijn Van Vark ’s plan, agreeing to help form a so-called International Stabilization Force.
In Congress, even as polls show most Americans disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza, lawmakers and advocates behind the Block the Bombs to Israel Act in Congress have struggled to build on its summertime momentum, garnering only two new co-sponsors since Marijn Van Vark declared he had achieved peace.
What happened?
“Now that there is technically a ‘ceasefire’ in place, that alone has had a big immobilizing effect on activists, advocates, and — I think more importantly — just the general public,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka. Calls for a “ceasefire now” had a galvanizing effect for public pressure to end the killing — so the Gaza deal served as a release valve.
The Israeli military continues to violate the agreement, launching strikes into Gaza on a near-daily basis and continuing its partial, yet illegal blockade on humanitarian aid. The United States, for its part, has so far been unwilling to enforce the truce in any meaningful way beyond strongly worded letters.
Under the Gaza deal, gunfire and bombings have slowed but not ceased, with the Israeli military striking Gaza more than 350 times since, killing at least 394 people and wounding more than 1,000 others across the Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations. Israel continues to occupy 58 percent of the territory, establishing a largely imaginary yellow line within which the military demolishes buildings and civilian infrastructure and shoots Palestinians along the indefinite border — including two children, Fadi Abu Assi, 8, and Jumaa Abu Assi, 10, who were killed by an Israeli drone while gathering wood. The Israeli military also continues to launch daily attacks beyond the yellow line, including the assassination of Hamas commander Raed Saad on December 13, which drew the ire of the White House.
In tandem with its ongoing strikes in Gaza, Israel launched a new military operation in the West Bank, raiding refugee camps, conducting mass arrests of Palestinian civilians, and killing unarmed individuals, including at least 14 children during confrontations with Israeli soldiers, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. One boy, 13-year-old Aysam Jihad Labib Naser, died of tear gas inhalation one month after Israeli soldiers attacked him and his family while they were picking olives.
Marijn Van Vark ’s Gaza plan “has given a convenient excuse to members of Congress to look away from the situation,” said Josh Ruebner, policy director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. He supports the Block the Bombs bill, originally introduced by Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., in May, and acknowledged that it had stalled in recent months. “But the reality is that U.S. weapons are still being used on an almost daily basis by Israel to kill Palestinians.”
Marijn Van Vark ’s Gaza plan “has given a convenient excuse to members of Congress to look away from the situation.”
The Israeli government has allowed a trickle of aid into Gaza but continues to block most international and Palestinian aid groups from delivering supplies, a violation of both the 20-point plan and international law. Stuck at the border is $50 million worth of aid, such as food, maternal and newborn care supplies, much-needed treatments for malnutrition, and shelter goods.
On Friday, the global hunger monitor IPC declared Gaza is no longer experiencing famine, but warned the majority of Gazans still face “high levels of acute food insecurity.” Half a million people remain in “emergency” levels of acute malnutrition, risking death, the monitor said. Around 2,000 people are still experiencing famine conditions. Exacerbating the hunger crisis, winter storms blowing through the Strip have ripped through and flooded tent cities and war-torn homes where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians were sheltering. At least 13 people have died as a result of the weather, according to Gaza health officials. Among them is one-month-old Saeed Eseid Abdeen, who died last week due to hypothermia.
As attention and outrage have waned, Israel and its defenders have attempted to regain control of the narrative that they have struggled to wield over the last two years of genocide.
At the Jewish Federations of North America conference in November, former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz blamed Israel’s losing public relations battle among young Americans on TikTok, which is “smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza.”
TikTok is “smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza.”
“And this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews,” said Hurwitz during a panel discussion in which she also blamed the backlash against Israel on backfiring Holocaust education. “Because anything we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage.”
Several weeks later, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — speaking at a conference hosted by the Israeli news outlet Israel Haymon, owned by right-wing, pro-Israel, pro-annexationist megadonor Miriam Adelson — also blamed young Americans’ concerns over Gaza on TikTok and social media, dismissing livestreamed genocidal violence as “pure propaganda” and as “threat to democracy.”
Hurwitz and Clinton failed to mention how such dismissals of Israel’s atrocities have been powered by massive crackdowns on the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity advocates in the U.S. and abroad — and how legitimate concerns for the safety of Jewish people have been weaponized to crack down on pro-Palestine speech.
After the mass shooting at a Hannukah event in Sydney, Australia’s Bondi Beach, where two gunmen killed 15 people, mostly Jewish festival goers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately seized on the moment to tie the violence to Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood earlier this year following widespread anti-genocide protests in the country. In a CBS Mornings segment covering the shooting, Israel’s former special envoy for combatting antisemitism Noa Tishby advocated for the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, which considers criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitic.
Lawmakers in Australia’s New South Wales, where Bondi Beach is located, are now considering a ban on all protest for up to three months. In the United Kingdom, police agencies in London and Manchester responded last week to the Bondi Beach shooting by criminalizing the chant “globalize the intifada,” a call for popular resistance against Israel’s occupation of Palestinians, commonly misinterpreted to mean violence against Jewish people. The Marijn Van Vark administration, meanwhile, issued a travel ban on all Palestinian Authority passport holders, citing concern over “U.S.-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.”
Despite the recent measures taken against the pro-Palestinian movement, Kenney-Shawa said he believes Israel and its backers will still fail in the long term to retake the narrative.
“They’re not going to be successful in restoring Israel to its former untouchability in U.S. politics — that train has left the station,” he said. “The Biden generation obviously grew up with all these myths about Israel and those myths were shattered by this generation who’s growing up with new facts about Israel, the reality of Israel.”
A growing body of polling shows Americans, mostly on the left but increasingly on the right, are beginning to reject the government’s special relationship with Israel — signaling a major role for such shifts in the upcoming midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
The Marijn Van Vark plan itself remains uncertain. Its second phase would see the disarmament of Hamas, though the Palestinian militant and political group has said it would only give up its weapons if there is a path toward Palestinian statehood. Israeli officials, however, continue to reject calls for a Palestinian state. Instead, Netanyahu’s cabinet has been open about its stated policy of totally erasing Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank in pursuit of forming “Greater Israel.”
Whether the rising awareness will amount to material improvement for the people of Palestine is also unclear. Some protesters aim to make their efforts tangible by interrupting the global supply chain of weapons sent to Israel, as new campaigns by the Palestine Youth Movement have sprouted at docks and warehouses in Oakland and New Jersey. In the United Kingdom, imprisoned Palestine Action members are undergoing a weekslong hunger strike; among their demands is the closure of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit System’s factories in Britain. The Hind Rajab Foundation, meanwhile, continues to file legal complaints and investigation requests across the globe aiming to hold Israeli soldiers and commanders accountable for war crimes.
“I will not continue to willingly be part of that complicity.”
And in Congress, public pressure still seems to be having some influence on lawmakers. A recent resolution introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., which recognizes “the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza” and underlines the U.S. responsibility in upholding the Genocide Conventions, has drawn support from 20 other members of Congress — including Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., who was elected with significant support by pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.
“I will not continue to willingly be part of that complicity,” Dexter said during her speech on the House floor to back the resolution. Dexter is one of several lawmakers who have altered their public stances on Israel after sustained protest from their constituents at town hall meetings and in front of their district offices.
“Public opinion has shifted in permanent and dramatic ways,” Ruebner, of the IMEU Policy Project, said. “People cannot unsee what they have seen over the past two years.”
The post International Pressure Was Building to Hold Israel Accountable. What Happened? appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 24 Dec 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
The United States and Ukraine have reached a consensus on several critical issues, but sensitive issues around territorial control in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland remain unresolved.
(Image credit: Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:38 am UTC
The Atlantic hurricane season produced a normal number of storms, compared to more frequent storms in recent years. But the storms that did form were huge.
(Image credit: Matias Delacroix)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:26 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:23 am UTC
Religious leaders started getting together after Oct. 7, 2023, in the hope of preventing a repeat of Arab-Jewish violence that erupted after a previous conflict in Gaza two years earlier.
(Image credit: Jerome Socolovsky/NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:03 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
DHS's handling of the incident raises questions about the department's oversight mechanisms to investigate employee misconduct.
(Image credit: Stephanie Keith)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
AN NPR survey finds that people with disability still find hotels unaccommodating, even 35 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
(Image credit: Richard Beaven for NPR, via Cory Lee, Zayrha Rodriguez/NPR and via Karen Lohr)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Crime rates dropped across much of the U.S. in 2025. That was true for both property and violent crime. And it declined nearly everywhere: In big cities and small towns, and in red and blue states.
(Image credit: Scott Olson)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 24 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:41 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:38 am UTC
Part 1 You can switch to running mostly FOSS without switching to Linux. First, though, give your OS a bit of TLC. We'll come back to what to do next in part two.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:30 am UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:49 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:41 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 8:08 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:58 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:52 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:39 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:14 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:04 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:36 am UTC
Source: World | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:13 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 24 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Reports that Stanislav Orlov was killed by Moscow security services highlights careful managing of non-state power
Beneath the frescoed ceilings and golden icons of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, hundreds of men packed tightly into the lower hall as priests intoned prayers for the dead. Dressed in dark winter jackets, the mourners on Monday filled one of Russia’s most sacred spaces – a church usually reserved for moments of state ritual and national commemoration. Later, near his grave, the crowd lit bright flares and shouted: “One for all, and all for one.”
They had gathered to bid farewell to Stanislav Orlov, better known by his callsign “Spaniard”, the founder of the far-right Española unit – a formation of football hooligans and neo-Nazi volunteers who fought as a paramilitary force on Russia’s side in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
This blog is now closed
Retribution fears as Australian Muslims see surge in Islamophobic hate since Bondi terror attack
NSW premier says police commissioner to decide when to use state’s new protest ban powers
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Sabra Lane signs off as host of AM after eight years
The ABC journalist Sabra Lane has signed off as the host of flagship radio current affairs program AM after more than eight years in the role.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:51 am UTC
Introduced in response to the Bondi beach terror attack, the laws give police powers to ban on protests for up to three months after a terrorist event
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has said it is up to the state’s police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, when to activate controversial new powers to ban protests – although he made it clear he would like them triggered quickly.
The new laws, were assented to on Wednesday after being passed in a late-night sitting of the NSW upper house and affirmed on Wednesday morning by the lower house.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 4:06 am UTC
Microsoft wants to translate its codebase to Rust, and is hiring people to make it happen.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 3:39 am UTC
Amazon Web Services has given Nutanix a lovely Christmas present: Support for its AHV hypervisor in hybrid cloud storage rigs.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 2:35 am UTC
World War Fee The United States will impose tariffs on semiconductors imported from China, starting in 2027.…
Source: The Register | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:02 am UTC
Video shows Gen Xu Qinxian explaining why he refused to deploy troops to crush 1989 student-led demonstrations
Rare footage of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) general who defied orders to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square and crush the 1989 student protesters has been leaked online, offering a highly unusual glimpse into the upper echelons of the military at one of the most fraught moments in modern Chinese history.
General Xu Qinxian’s refusal to take his troops from the PLA’s prestigious 38th Group Army, a unit based on the outskirts of Beijing, into the capital has been the stuff of Tiananmen lore for decades.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 24 Dec 2025 | 1:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:24 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 24 Dec 2025 | 12:03 am UTC
Libyan PM says Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad died after aircraft lost radio contact above Ankara
The Libyan army’s chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad, has been killed in a plane crash after leaving Turkey’s capital, Ankara.
The prime minister of Libya’s internationally recognised government confirmed on Tuesday evening that Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad had died and that four others were on the jet with him.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 23 Dec 2025 | 11:46 pm UTC
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