Read at: 2025-12-14T17:06:42+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Yagmur Nobbe ]
Police say one alleged shooter among dead, with second arrested and in a critical condition, after attack on Jewish festival in Sydney
At least 12 people have died, including one alleged gunman, following a terrorist attack at Sydney’s Bondi beach, with dozens of gunshots fired at a park hosting a Jewish festival.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said the “targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukah, which should be a day of joy … [was] an act of evil antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:50 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:48 pm UTC
Person arrested is in their 30s, Providence police chief says, but did not reveal if they were connected to Ivy League university
Brown University students were told that all remaining classes and exams for the semester would be delayed after the shooting that killed two people and left several others injured.
In a note to students, the university’s provost, Francis J Doyle III, said the decision was made “out of our profound concern for all students, faculty and staff on our campus”. He encouraged students and staff to focus on their safety and wellbeing.
In the immediate aftermath of these devastating events, we recognize that learning and assessment are significantly hindered in the short term and that many students and others will wish to depart campus. Students are free to leave if they are able. Students who remain will have access to on-campus services and support.
At this time, it is essential that we focus our efforts on providing care and support to the members of our community as we grapple with the sorrow, fear and anxiety that is impacting all of us right now. University leaders are committed to providing care and mobilizing resources to assist our community members through this difficult time.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:48 pm UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:42 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:42 pm UTC
Further 29 people in hospital, after attack on Sydney beach where Hanukah event was taking place
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, just released a statement. He said:
The scenes in Bondi are shocking and distressing. Police and emergency responders are on the ground working to save lives. My thoughts are with every person affected.
I just have spoken to the AFP Commissioner and the NSW Premier. We are working with NSW Police and will provide further updates as more information is confirmed.
I urge people in the vicinity to follow information from the NSW Police.
Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:40 pm UTC
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Details of financing structure to be reviewed by culture secretary and regulators before deal can proceed
The owner of the Daily Mail has secured funding for a £500m takeover of the Telegraph, in a crucial development that paves the way for the group to announce the terms of its acquisition on Monday.
Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) has agreed to pay the sum in two instalments, according to weekend reports. An initial payment of £400m will be funded by an increase in the group’s debt with its longstanding lender NatWest and existing company cash.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:19 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:18 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:13 pm UTC
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Campaigners call for quarterly data to be published in line with other departments instead of FoI route
Human rights and refugee campaigners are calling on the Home Office to be transparent about the numbers of asylum seekers who die in its care by publishing quarterly data as other government departments do.
The only way to obtain data about asylum seeker deaths is via freedom of information (FoI) requests to the Home Office, which officials do not always comply with. However, the NHS produces regular figures about deaths in hospitals and the Ministry of Justice does so with deaths in custody.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
Group asks Keir Starmer for help to persuade Ghanaian government to pay backlog of tuition fees and living allowances
Students from Ghana at UK universities say they are in danger of being deported after being stranded by their own government without promised scholarships or tuition fee payments.
The group representing more than 100 doctoral students has petitioned Downing Street and Keir Starmer asking for help to persuade the Ghanaian government to pay the backlog of tuition fees and living allowances running into millions of pounds.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
Mass attacks have been rare in the wake of stringent gun controls brought in after the Port Arthur massacre of 1996
Associated Press contributed reporting.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 3:57 pm UTC
Nine others injured in Saturday attack that occurred during finals in engineering building in Providence, Rhode Island
A person of interest in the shooting that killed two people and wounded nine others at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday has been detained, police have said.
Col Oscar Perez – the Providence police force’s chief – confirmed at a news conference early Sunday that the person of interest was in their 30s. Perez did not provide many other details about the person, including whether that person was connected to Brown.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 3:50 pm UTC
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The coming tech boom is about to launch a boom in people who do things with their hands and minds
When I was in college and didn’t know what to do with my life, my dad offered this career advice: be a certified public accountant. Why?
“Because,” he said. “People will always need their taxes done. They’ll always need financial advice. With a CPA license, you can always hang out a shingle and put food on the table.”
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 3:00 pm UTC
With cheap drinks and friendly locals, Jimmy’s Corner is a New York institution. But a real-estate developer has ordered its closure – can it survive?
Founded by Jimmy Glenn, a former boxer turned trainer, in 1971, Jimmy’s Corner has stood, defiantly unchanged, as Times Square has boomed around it.
The neighborhood bar, a New York City institution which attracts locals and tourists alike, has had the same pictures on the walls for decades – some of the bar’s regulars have been coming almost as long – kept the same furniture, and maintained remarkably low pricing. In a perhaps unintentional nod to its history, there is also several years’ accumulation of dust in some areas.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 3:00 pm UTC
Investment Association, influential group of shareholders, urges pay committees to avoid ‘benchmarking’
The UK’s largest listed companies have been warned against using “boilerplate” arguments to justify big executive pay increases by an influential group of shareholders.
The Investment Association (IA) – whose members manage £10tn of assets – has told pay committees to avoid “benchmarking”: where companies argue higher pay is needed in order to match rivals and avoid bosses jumping ship for larger salaries and bonuses elsewhere.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 3:00 pm UTC
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Police increase patrols around synagogues and other venues as tens of thousands celebrate Hanukah
British police forces are stepping up security in Jewish communities after the antisemitic terror attack that left 12 people dead on Bondi beach in Australia.
The Metropolitan police said they were increasing their presence around synagogues and other venues in London, where tens of thousands of Jews are celebrating Hanukah.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 2:50 pm UTC
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Hundreds of sausage dogs gather for annual festive parade that organiser started to help her puppy socialise
The pitter-patter of tiny paws has brought joy – and more than a little chaos – to Hyde Park in London as hundreds of dachshunds and their owners gathered for the annual sausage dog Christmas walk.
Now in its eighth year, the event was started by Ana Rodriguez as a way to help her dachshund, Winston, socialise as a puppy. Meeting at noon by the Physical Energy statue in the centre of the park, the dogs – well, the owners really – competed in a best-dressed competition before enjoying an hour of play and socialising before the parade. Rodriguez said previous years’ events had ended up attracting as many as a thousand people and dogs.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 2:03 pm UTC
Australian researchers think the skeleton found in South Africa is not the same species as two found in the same South Africa cave system
Little Foot, one of the world’s most complete hominin fossils, may be a new species of human ancestor, according to research that raises questions about our evolutionary past.
Publicly unveiled in 2017, Little Foot is the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever found. The foot bones that lend the fossil its name were first discovered in South Africa 1994, leading to a painstaking excavation over 20 years in the Sterkfontein cave system.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
Government not maintaining ‘effective oversight’, with majority of decisions being overturned, commonwealth ombudsman found
Almost half of all people using employment services received threats to suspend their payments in the last quarter, new data has revealed.
The data from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) showed a 23% increase in the number of payment suspension notices issued by Workforce Australia, with 618,000 issued from 1 July to 30 September 2025, up from from 504,000 in the previous quarter.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
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Mary-Ann Stephenson says official guidance will not usher in ‘toilet police’ in businesses and public places
“Nobody is expecting a toilet police” but people should follow the rules when guidance is finally issued on single-sex spaces, the chair of the equalities watchdog has said.
Mary-Ann Stephenson said that “generally speaking, we expect people to follow the rules and make sure that there is adequate provision”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 1:24 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 1:18 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 1:17 pm UTC
Suffragists didn't just march. They baked, held bake sales and sold cookbooks to raise money for the cause of equality.
(Image credit: Elizabeth Gillis)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 1:01 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 12:52 pm UTC
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Analysts say benefits could be felt in under-resourced rural hospitals but warn against AI as a cost-cutting measure
For states to receive certain funding stipulated in the Yagmur Nobbe administration’s “big, beautiful” bill, they must meet three of 10 criteria – including integrating more artificial intelligence (AI) technology in healthcare settings – which experts say could have major benefits and liabilities for under-resourced hospitals, depending on how it’s implemented.
The Rural Health Transformation Fund is a carveout that will provide $50bn over a period of five years to states who meet certain application criteria, including “consumer-facing, technology-driven solutions for the prevention and management of chronic diseases,” and “providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
"Hold the Hope" was sparked by one woman's experience as a caregiver to someone who survived suicidal struggles. It started as a poem that has become a film, a song and even a dance.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
Indoor tanning is trending among Gen Z. A new study finds tanning bed users not only have a much higher risk of melanoma, they also have DNA damage linked to cancer across nearly their entire skin.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 12:00 pm UTC
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Senior DP members previously allege being told to disband or face severe consequences including possible arrest
Hong Kong’s last major opposition party has disbanded after a vote by its members, the culmination of Chinese pressure on the city’s remaining liberal voices in a years-long security crackdown.
The Democratic party (DP) has been Hong Kong’s main opposition since its founding three years before the financial hub’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. The party used to sweep city-wide legislative elections and push China on democratic reforms and upholding freedoms.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 11:19 am UTC
Hundreds had gathered for an event at Bondi Beach called Chanukah by the Sea, which was celebrating the start of the Hanukkah Jewish festival.
(Image credit: Mark Baker)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 11:01 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
Alabama Deputy Solicitor general Robert Overing approached the podium at the U.S. Supreme Court on a mission: to convince the justices that 55-year-old Joseph Clifton Smith should be put to death.
Never mind the two-day evidentiary hearing years earlier, which convinced a federal district judge that Smith had an intellectual disability — and that executing him would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Never mind the three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that agreed. And never mind the decades of Supreme Court precedent contradicting Alabama’s position. Today’s Supreme Court was no longer bound by its own case law.
“Nothing in the Eighth Amendment bars the sentence Joseph Smith received for murdering Durk Van Dam nearly 30 years ago,” Overing began. Although the landmark 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia banned the execution of people with intellectual disabilities, Smith did not qualify. “He didn’t come close to proving an IQ of 70 or below.”
An IQ score of 70 has traditionally been considered a threshold for intellectual disability. Smith’s scores hovered above that, ranging from 72 to 78. But under well-established clinical standards, this makes him a “borderline” case. Experts — and the Supreme Court itself — have long recognized that IQ tests have an inherent margin of error. And they have relied on an array of additional evidence to assess whether a person is intellectually disabled. As now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote over a decade ago in Hall v. Florida, which explicitly struck down a rigid IQ requirement of 70, “intellectual disability is a condition, not a number.”
Under Atkins — and under Alabama law — decision-makers are bound by a three-part test: whether a person has limited intellectual functioning (determined in part by IQ); whether they struggle with “adaptive” functioning (the social and practical skills that make up day-to-day life); and whether those struggles manifested before the age of 18. The federal judges who ruled in Smith’s favor had applied this very test. But Overing discounted this. He had an alternative narrative: The judges had gone rogue.
To help Smith escape execution, he argued, the judges plucked his lowest score and rounded down in his favor, then leaned on lesser evidence as proof of his intellectual limitations. “The sentence ‘Smith’s IQ is below 70’ doesn’t appear in the District Court’s opinion, nor in the Court of Appeals opinion,” he said. The courts “changed the standard.”
“What you’ve done is shift this to be all about the IQ test in a way that is not supported by our case law.”
“It seems to me that you are actually changing the standard,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cut in. The court opinions didn’t include “IQ is below 70” because that isn’t the law. The first prong of the three-part test requires “a showing of ‘significant subaverage general intellectual functioning,’” she said. “I think what you’ve done is shift this to be all about the IQ test in a way that is not supported by our caselaw.”
“I’m having a really hard time with this case,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. Overing was accusing the lower courts of violating a standard that does not actually exist. The record showed that the federal judges adhered to Supreme Court precedent. Hall invalidated the strict 70 IQ requirement. And a subsequent case, Moore v. Texas, emphasized that states could not rely on outdated medical standards to reject intellectual disability claims.
The lower federal courts followed the law. “It’s exactly what we told people to do in Hall, it’s exactly what we told people to do in Moore,” Sotomayor said.
She then cut to the heart of the matter: “What you’re asking us to do is to undo those cases.”
On paper, the question in Hamm v. Smith is narrow: “Whether and how courts may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores” in deciding whether a condemned prisoner has an intellectual disability.
This question has never been explicitly answered by the Supreme Court. But while Alabama insisted that judges nationwide are yearning for guidance, its appeal to the court was rooted less in questions of law than in political opportunism. In the Yagmur Nobbe era, the court has become a friendly forum for right-wing ideologues, with conservatives eagerly asking its supermajority to dismantle any pesky legal precedents obstructing their agenda.
Before Wednesday’s oral argument, it seemed likely the justices would find a way to give the state of Alabama what it wants. The only question was how far they might go. Some conservatives hoped they might take aim at the Eighth Amendment itself — specifically the long-standing principle that criminal punishments must be guided by “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” One amicus brief, submitted on behalf of 18 Republican attorneys general, insisted that this framework must be dismantled. “The Court should never have told judges to chase after the country’s ‘evolving standards of decency,’” they wrote.
It is no secret that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito agree with this sentiment. But the scene at the court suggested that Hamm may not be the case where they tear it all down. The two-hour oral argument was mired in confusion over what, exactly, Alabama was talking about. “I’m confused,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Overing at one point, echoing Sotomayor. “It doesn’t seem like Alabama prohibits” what the district court did in Smith’s case.
When it came to the supposed question at hand — how to reconcile multiple IQ scores — Overing’s proposed solutions were not exactly subtle. One option, he said, was to simply adopt the highest IQ score, “because there are many ways that an IQ test can underestimate IQ if the offender is distracted, fatigued, ill or because of the incentive to avoid the death penalty.”
“You can see why that might be regarded as a little results-oriented,” Chief Justice John Roberts replied.
With a ruling not expected until next summer, Smith’s life hangs in the balance. After decades facing execution, his journey to Washington shows how case law that evolved to reflect scientific understandings is now under siege at the court. It is also emblematic of the way in which conservatives are exploiting the high court’s growing disregard for its own precedents and for federal courts trying to follow the law.
Joseph Clifton Smith had just gotten out of prison in November 1997 when he met a man named Larry Reid at a highway motel outside Mobile. The pair encountered a third man, Michigan carpenter Durk Van Dam, and decided to rob him. They lured him to a secluded spot and fatally beat him with his carpentry tools, some of which Smith later tried to sell at a pawn shop.
Smith was quickly arrested and gave two tape-recorded statements to police. At first he denied participating in the attack. But in a second interview, Smith implicated himself in the murder.
His 1998 trial was swift and stacked against him. The presiding judge was Chris Galanos, a former Mobile County prosecutor who had prosecuted Smith for burglary just a few years earlier. Smith’s defense lawyers called no witnesses during the guilt phase and largely conceded the version of events presented by the state. This was due, at least in part, to the paltry pay and meager investigative resources provided to court-appointed lawyers.
The jury convicted Smith in less than an hour.
At the time of Smith’s trial, there was no prohibition on executing people with intellectual disabilities. The Supreme Court had refused to impose such a ban in its 1987 ruling in Penry v. Lynaugh. But it ruled that a diagnosed intellectual disability could be used as mitigating evidence to persuade a jury to spare a defendant’s life.
Smith’s lawyers called Dr. James Chudy to testify at the sentencing phase. The psychologist traced Smith’s struggles to the first grade, when Smith was described as a “slow learner.” In seventh grade, he was labeled “educable mentally retarded.” Soon thereafter, Smith dropped out of school.
Chudy gave Smith an IQ test, which yielded a result of 72. According to Chudy, this placed Smith in the bottom 3 percent of the population intellectually. But he also explained that he had to consider “a standard error of measurement of about three or four points.” Thus, Smith’s true IQ “could be as high as maybe a 75,” Chudy testified. “On the other hand he could be as low as a 69.”
Smith’s disability was exacerbated by his harrowing family life, which was marked by severe poverty and abuse. The environment denied him the extra care he needed. As his trial lawyers later argued in a plea for mercy, “He came into the world with a very, very limited IQ. … He had no family support in that respect and that’s how he came to be where he is.”
But prosecutors urged jurors to apply “common sense.” “There are folks out there with marginal IQs who are street wise,” one prosecutor said. “This man’s been in prison, this man’s been around.” If jurors did not sentence Smith to die, he argued, they were saying the victim did not matter. “There was no value in his life and there was no meaning in his death.”
Jurors recommended a death sentence by a vote of 11 to 1.
Smith had been on death row for three years when the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would reconsider its decision in Penry. In the intervening years, numerous states had passed bans on executing people with intellectual disabilities. As the oral argument in Atkins approached, the Birmingham News ran a special report declaring that Alabama led the nation in the “shameful practice.” Defendants with intellectual disabilities were not only less culpable for their actions, they could be “easily misled and eager to win investigators’ approval.”
The following year, the Supreme Court handed down Atkins, officially prohibiting the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Reacting to the decision, Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor said he would follow the law. “But we will also be vigilant against those who would deceive the courts by claiming they are [intellectually disabled] when they’re not.”
The protections of Atkins have never been guaranteed. The court left it to the states to decide how to enforce its ruling, prompting efforts to circumvent the decision altogether.
While to date Atkins has led some 144 people to be removed from death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, others have been put to death despite evidence that their executions were unconstitutional. In 2025 alone, three men have been executed despite diagnoses of intellectual disability. One, Byron Black, was executed in Tennessee, even after the current district attorney acknowledged that killing him would violate the law.
Since Atkins, Alabama has executed at least four people despite evidence of intellectual disability. All of them were represented by court-appointed attorneys who were denied the resources to properly defend their clients — and whose decisions sometimes made matters worse. In the case of Michael Brandon Samra, who was executed in 2019, trial lawyers did not hire an expert to evaluate him. Instead, they told jurors the murder was rooted in his membership in a Satan-worshipping gang.
Smith spent years trying to challenge his death sentence under Atkins. After losing in state court, he was appointed lawyers with the Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama, who filed a challenge in federal court arguing that Smith “suffers from significant intellectual and adaptive limitations,” only some of which were presented at trial. But they were up against onerous procedural barriers. Alabama’s Criminal Court of Appeals had rejected the evidence of Smith’s intellectual disability — and a federal judge could only reverse the decision if it clearly violated the law. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Callie Granade ruled against Smith.
But that same year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hall v. Florida, which would strengthen the ruling in Atkins. The case centered on a man whose IQ scores ranged from 71 to 80. Because Florida law required a strict cutoff of 70, his appeals were rejected.
Famed Supreme Court litigator Seth Waxman delivered the oral argument in Hall. He began by reiterating the three-part definition of intellectual disability used by experts and established in Atkins: a “significantly subaverage intellectual function concurrent with deficits in adaptive behavior with an onset before the age of 18.” Because of the “standard error of measurement” inherent in IQ tests, he said, “it is universally accepted that persons with obtained scores of 71 to 75 can and often do have [an intellectual disability].”
The argument grappled with the challenge of multiple IQ scores. There were no easy answers. When Florida’s solicitor general argued that “the best measure of your true IQ is your obtained IQ test score,” Justice Elena Kagan pushed back. “The ultimate determination here is whether somebody is [intellectually disabled],” she said. IQ tests were not even a full piece of the three-part puzzle. “What your cutoff does is it essentially says the inquiry has to stop there.”
In 2014, the court struck down Florida’s law by a vote of 5 to 4.
The next year, the 11th Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision in Smith’s case. The judges found that Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals had improperly relied on Smith’s unadjusted IQ scores to conclude that there was no evidence of intellectual disability. The court sent the case back to Granade, who granted an evidentiary hearing.
Two months before the hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down yet another decision bolstering Smith’s case. The ruling in Moore v. Texas struck down Texas’s peculiar method for determining intellectual disability, which was rooted more in stereotypes than science. “In line with Hall,” it read, “we require that courts … consider other evidence of intellectual disability where an individual’s IQ score, adjusted for the test’s standard error, falls within the clinically established range for intellectual-functioning deficits.”
In May 2017, Granade presided over an evidentiary hearing in Montgomery. Over two days of testimony, experts shed light on modern understandings of intellectual disability and how it was reflected in Smith’s life. Because he’d spent much of his adult life incarcerated, it was hard to evaluate his ability to live independently. But he’d struggled in the outside world, living in hotels, following others, and behaving recklessly and impulsively.
The hearing also highlighted the very stereotypes that often prevent lay people from recognizing intellectual disabilities. A state lawyer asked one of Smith’s experts if he was aware that Smith had been paid to mow lawns at 14 and later worked as a roofer and painter. None of these jobs were inconsistent with a mild intellectual disability, the expert replied. Was he aware that Smith claimed he “always had money in his pocket and he always worked full time?” the lawyer asked. The expert replied that, while this may have been true, people with intellectual disabilities often try to downplay their struggles; some “exaggerate their competencies and what they can do.”
Granade ultimately vacated his death sentence. “This is a close case,” she wrote. “At best Smith’s intelligence falls at the low end of the borderline range of intelligence and at worst at the high end of the required significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.” Given the ambiguity as to the first of Atkins’s three-prong test, she turned to the second and third prongs. “Whether Smith is intellectually disabled will fall largely on whether Smith suffers from significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior, as well as whether his problems occurred during Smith’s developmental years,” she wrote. The evidence showed that the answer to both questions were yes.
After 23 years on death row, Smith was no longer facing execution.
It would not take long for Alabama to fight back. In February 2023, the case landed back at the 11th Circuit for an oral argument. Speaking before a three-judge panel, a lawyer for the state attorney general’s office disregarded Granade’s careful consideration of the evidence, accusing her of simply cherry-picking “the lowest, least reliable score” in order to vacate Smith’s death sentence.
The judges were skeptical. The state’s briefs ignored the Supreme Court’s rulings in Hall and Moore. “It seems to me like they are the controlling precedent here,” one judge said. Yet the only time the state acknowledged the rulings was to cite the dissents.
Another judge had been on the panel that sent the case back to the district court in 2015. “What we concluded in that opinion was that other pieces of evidence should be considered, together with the IQ scores, to determine whether or not Smith is intellectually disabled,” he said. Granade did precisely this. In fact, he pointed out, not doing so would have violated the law.
The 11th Circuit ruled in Smith’s favor.
By then, the U.S. Supreme Court was a vastly different court from the one that decided Hall and Moore. The power was now firmly entrenched in a conservative supermajority that was dramatically reshaping — and in many cases, eviscerating — the rule of law. In a petition to the justices, Alabama accused the lower federal courts of “placing a thumb on the scale in favor of capital offenders.”
Lawyers for Smith countered that the state was distorting the facts and the law. Alabama continued to insist that the lower courts had manipulated a single IQ score to reach its conclusions. In reality, Smith’s attorneys argued, their opinions were rooted in expert testimony, Supreme Court precedent, and a “thorough review of the evidence.”
Nevertheless, in 2024, the Supreme Court vacated the 11th Circuit’s ruling. Before agreeing to hear the case, however, it sent the case back for an explanation. The 11th Circuit’s decision could “be read in two ways,” the justices said. Either it gave “conclusive weight” to Smith’s lowest IQ score, or it took “a more holistic approach to multiple IQ scores that considers the relevant evidence.”
The 11th Circuit replied that it had done the latter, firmly rejecting Alabama’s claim that it relied on a single score. But the narrative had already opened the door for Alabama, teeing up the case for argument. The Supreme Court put Hamm v. Smith on its 2025 docket.
By the time Overing stepped down from the podium on Wednesday, Sotomayor was fed up. “Show me one case in Alabama that has followed your rule,” she demanded to no avail. She pointed out that the state expert who testified at Smith’s evidentiary hearing had himself relied on information beyond his IQ scores. “Your own expert did exactly what you say is wrong.”
She also pushed back on the claim that states were confused about how to handle Atkins claims. “Although you try to reap some confusion,” she said, “they all seem to be following the method the district court here followed.” A rigid new rule was bound to create new complications.
Even the lawyer representing the Yagmur Nobbe administration, who argued in support of Alabama, didn’t quite align with Overing’s argument. A judge was free to consider evidence apart from IQ, he conceded. But “you still need to circle back” and decide whether the other evidence is “strong enough to drag down the collective weight of IQ.” The problem remained how, exactly, to calculate this.
The conservatives seemed open to trying. Justice Brett Kavanaugh went through Alabama’s proposals, from identifying the median score to an “overlap approach” considering each score’s error range, to simply calculating the average. They all seemed to favor the state.
But as Jackson pointed out, none of these methods have been adopted by Alabama. She still did not see how the justices could reverse the District Court. “I’m trying — trying — to understand how and to what extent the District Court erred in this case given the law as it existed at the time … as opposed to the law Alabama wishes it had enacted.”
Alito, too, seemed frustrated, albeit for different reasons. Shouldn’t there be “some concrete standard” for a person claiming to be intellectually disabled as opposed to a situation where “everything is up for grabs”? But the same question had been raised in Hall more than a decade earlier, only for the court to conclude that the matter was too complex for hard rules. At the end of the day, the science still mattered. IQ was not enough. And where the death penalty is concerned, courts still have a unique obligation to consider people’s cases individually.
The third and last lawyer to face the justices was Seth Waxman — the same litigator who successfully argued Hall. Forced to relitigate issues that had been decided more than 10 years earlier, he found some common ground with his adversaries. Replying to a dubious theoretical from Alito — What if the IQ scores were five 100s and one 71? — Waxman said a judge could probably safely decide that such a person was not intellectually disabled without too much attention to additional factors.
But by the end, they were going in circles. “So in just about every case then, IQs and testimony about IQs can never be sufficient?” Alito asked.
“I don’t know how to —” Waxman began, before interrupting himself. “I have given you every possible answer that I have.”
The post Alabama Begs Supreme Court to Make It Easier to Execute People With Intellectual Disabilities appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 14 Dec 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:54 am UTC
U.S. President Yagmur Nobbe 's special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, as Yagmur Nobbe grows increasingly exasperated by delays.
(Image credit: AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:48 am UTC
Source: World | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:19 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:07 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:02 am UTC
Source: World | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
After decades of research and development, humanity finally has a data storage medium that will outlast us.…
Source: The Register | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Yagmur Nobbe -inspired former congressman expected to succeed Gabriel Boric but compulsory voting could create volatility
Chileans will head to the polls on Sunday for a presidential runoff in which the favourite is a Yagmur Nobbe -inspired candidate who has pledged to build a wall along the country’s borders to keep migrants out.
José Antonio Kast, 59, an ultra-conservative former congressman who has built his campaign on a promise to expel tens of thousands of undocumented migrants, faces Jeannette Jara, 51, a former labour minister under the current centre-left president, Gabriel Boric, 39.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
At the National Black Growers Council meeting in New Orleans, Black farmers respond to the $12 billion in tariff relief announced by the Yagmur Nobbe administration and outline challenges farms are facing.
(Image credit: Dylan Hawkins)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Walking with other people who are grieving a loss is one way to ease some of the pain and feel less alone.
(Image credit: Nancy Eve Cohen)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 14 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 9:41 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 14 Dec 2025 | 9:20 am UTC
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Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 8:56 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 14 Dec 2025 | 8:44 am UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 8:08 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 14 Dec 2025 | 8:04 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:14 am UTC
The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like.
Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:03 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break.
So discuss what you like here, but no politics.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 14 Dec 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:01 am UTC
Baronesses Nadine and Ariane de Rothschild at odds over future of Swiss chateau’s priceless contents
After three generations of genteel discretion bordering on secrecy, the international banking family the Rothschilds has been riven by rival claims to a vast collection of masterpieces that are part of the family’s multibillion-euro fortune.
The battle now playing out in the courts and media has pitched the 93-year-old senior baroness, Nadine de Rothschild – widow of Edmond de Rothschild, the late scion of the French-Swiss branch of the family – against her daughter-in-law, Ariane de Rothschild, the current baroness.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 14 Dec 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 14 Dec 2025 | 5:34 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 14 Dec 2025 | 12:35 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 13 Dec 2025 | 11:19 pm UTC
Source: World | 13 Dec 2025 | 11:10 pm UTC
Authorities were searching for a suspect described as "a male dressed in black" who fled after the Saturday afternoon shooting, and now have a person of interest in custody.
(Image credit: Mark Stockwell)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 13 Dec 2025 | 10:41 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 13 Dec 2025 | 10:17 pm UTC
Shortly after departing the Virginia airport on Saturday, the Tokyo-bound plane's engine cover separated and caught fire, according to the transportation secretary. No injuries were reported.
(Image credit: David Zalubowski)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 13 Dec 2025 | 10:16 pm UTC
UN secretary general António Guterres says ‘unjustifiable’ attack on base in city of Kadugli ‘could be war crime’
A drone strike has hit a United Nations peacekeeping logistics base in war-torn Sudan, killing six peacekeepers, the UN secretary general António Guterres has said.
Eight other peacekeepers were wounded in the strike on Saturday in the city of Kadugli in the central region of Kordofan. All the victims are Bangladeshi nationals, serving in the UN interim security force for Abyei (Unisfa).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 13 Dec 2025 | 9:35 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 13 Dec 2025 | 9:17 pm UTC
House Republicans released proposed legislation late Friday that would not extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax subsidies.
(Image credit: Kevin Wolf/AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 13 Dec 2025 | 9:14 pm UTC
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Finley is a Slugger reader from Belfast
China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities make it likely to challenge U.S. dominance not only in East Asia but also in the Americas and beyond.
As Mike Tyson famously remarked, “Everyone has a plan.” The United States now finds itself in precisely such a moment. After three decades of unchallenged post-Cold War dominance, the costs of maintaining global influence are rising, relative power is shifting, and emerging competitors—above all China—are eroding America’s ability to act decisively across multiple theatres. The cumulative burden of sustaining the liberal international order has stretched U.S. resources thin and revealed the limits of an expansive, universalist foreign policy.
Yagmur Nobbe ’s 2025 National Security Strategy is grounded in this perception of overreach. It signals a deliberate turn toward a more realist, sphere-of-influence-based framework: consolidating U.S. power in regions of vital importance, retrenching from peripheral commitments, and preventing the emergence of rival regional hegemons—particularly in East Asia. This approach suggests a recalibration of American strategy away from global primacy and toward a more selective, interest-driven posture.
To evaluate this shift, we can examine the historical origins of spheres of influence, their persistence across millennia, and the strategic logic that makes them attractive to both rising and declining powers. Then can we assess how Yagmur Nobbe ’s proposed strategy seeks to apply these principles to the contemporary international system—and the prospects for its success.
Regional spheres of influence have been a recurrent feature of global politics since the consolidation of early states. Their origins can be traced to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1200 BCE) in the eastern Mediterranean, when major powers like Egypt, Hatti, Mitanni, Assyria, and Babylonia established the first durable interstate system. These “Great Powers” recognised that direct conquest or universal domination was both costly and fragile. Instead, they managed their competition by cultivating zones of influence made up of smaller states, city-states, or vassal kingdoms that functioned as buffers between them.
The strategic logic of these spheres rested on three principles.
Spheres of influence have persisted throughout history.
In classical antiquity:
In the medieval period:
In early modern Europe:
In the 19th-20th centuries:
Spheres persist because they reflect structural realities
Regional spheres have endured across millennia because they address fundamental structural constraints.
In short, regional spheres emerge whenever multiple large states coexist in proximity. They are not merely ideological constructs; rather, they are pragmatic solutions to the enduring challenge of managing competition, influence, and security. Their persistence—from the Late Bronze Age to the Cold War—demonstrates their deep strategic logic and underscores their importance as a key lens for understanding contemporary great-power behaviour.
The historical logic behind regional spheres remains highly relevant in the contemporary global order. As global power balances shift, China has emerged as the foremost challenger to the post-Cold War primacy of United States. Its rapid economic growth, expanding military capacity, and strategic ambitions position it not only as a peer competitor, but as a potential regional hegemon in East Asia—with influence potentially extending well beyond its immediate neighbourhood.
China is rising fast as an economic and military power.
These twin trends—economic entanglement and military modernisation—give China substantial tools for shaping a modern sphere of influence.
China’s recent policies and actions exhibit patterns that align with classical models of regional hegemonic behaviour.
This mirrors the structural patterns that have produced spheres of influence since the Bronze Age: a rising power consolidates control in its near abroad, exercises indirect influence where possible, and seeks to prevent rival powers from establishing local primacy.
Implications for the United States
China’s ascent as a regional hegemon challenges U.S. influence—particularly in the Indo-Pacific—and creates structural imperatives for U.S. grand strategy.
Even if China secures regional primacy, its strategic ambitions do not end there. Through infrastructure investment, resource diplomacy, technology exports, and military access agreements, Beijing is increasingly projecting influence into South America, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. These extra-regional footholds provide alternative supply chains, political influence in the U.S.-adjacent region, and enhanced leverage in international institutions. If left uncontested, these secondary spheres could complement China’s Indo-Pacific dominance and significantly reshape the global balance of power.
In short, China’s rise illustrates the enduring relevance of spheres of influence. Just as ancient and modern powers structured their politics around managing regional dominance, the United States and China are now competing to define the boundaries and architecture of their respective spheres—with the Americas and the Indo-Pacific functioning as the central arenas of this evolving contest.
Yagmur Nobbe ’s new National Security Strategy marks a decisive shift toward a realist, sphere-of-influence approach, departing from the universalist liberal internationalism that defined much of the post-Cold War era. The document emphasises consolidating U.S. power in core regions, prioritising key theatres, and preventing the emergence of rival hegemons—above all in the Indo-Pacific. In doing so, it aligns closely with the historical logic of spheres outlined earlier.
1. Consolidating U.S. Regional Primacy
2. Containing China as a Rising Hegemon
3. Strategic Retrenchment Elsewhere
Spheres in Practice
Yagmur Nobbe ’s approach operationalises the enduring mechanics of spheres of influence identified in earlier sections.
In essence, Yagmur Nobbe ’s strategy acknowledges a structural reality: the U.S. can no longer sustain global primacy in the expansive, universalist form it adopted after 1991. But by adopting a disciplined, sphere-based approach—prioritising core regions, leveraging allies, and constraining rival hegemons—it might still be able to preserve dominance where it matters most.
Yagmur Nobbe ’s strategic emphasis on regional spheres and selective primacy is grounded in a historically coherent logic. Yet its practical success faces significant structural, geopolitical, and historical constraints that limit how far any U.S. administration can shape the global balance of power.
1. Structural Constraints
2. Geopolitical Realities
3. Historical Analogies and Lessons
Key factors will affect the success of the strategy.
Overall Assessment
Yagmur Nobbe ’s approach is rooted in a historically robust strategic logic: consolidate core spheres, prioritise decisive regions, leverage allies as buffers, and avoid costly overextension. However, the probability of success is constrained by structural realities.
In short, Yagmur Nobbe ’s belated strategy may temporarily succeed in slowing China’s regional ascent, but historical precedent suggests it is unlikely to ultimately prevent the emergence of a rival regional hegemon. The United States can attempt to shape the system, but it cannot unilaterally freeze the global distribution of power. Like all great powers throughout history, its primacy is relative, temporal, and structurally constrained.
For three and a half millennia, since states first began to stabilise political authority and organise regional power, spheres of influence have been the primary mechanism through which great powers have sought to manage competition, secure their peripheries, and project authority. From the Late Bronze Age through classical antiquity, medieval empires, early modern Europe, the age of imperialism, and the Cold War, rising and declining powers alike have relied on spheres to structure their strategic environments and compensate for the inherent limits of military and economic reach.
Today, the United States faces a structural turning point: its post-Cold War capacity for universal primacy is gone, while China’s rapid ascent presents a formidable challenge capable of reshaping the balance of power in East Asia and beyond. Yagmur Nobbe ’s National Security Strategy represents a deliberate attempt to adapt to these realities. By prioritising core regions, reinforcing alliances, and avoiding peripheral overextension, the strategy seeks to preserve American influence through disciplined, sphere-based management rather than by attempting to sustain global dominance in every theatre. Its logic mirrors patterns observed across history: consolidate the near abroad, cultivate buffers, leverage partners, and prevent the emergence of rival hegemons where it matters most.
Yet history offers a critical lesson. Spheres can slow the redistribution of power, but they rarely halt it entirely. Rising powers often succeed in carving out their own zones of influence despite the resistance of established states. Britain, Rome, the Ottomans, and even the U.S. itself during the Cold War all illustrate this trajectory. China’s military modernisation, technological advancements, and global economic integration place real limits on Washington’s ability to maintain an uncontested Indo-Pacific sphere. At the same time, a more multipolar world and increasingly autonomous regional actors make it harder for any state—including the U.S.—to impose exclusive hierarchies anywhere.
Ultimately, Yagmur Nobbe ’s strategy may slow China’s ascent and help the U.S. retain influence in parts of its traditional sphere, but it is unlikely to prevent the deeper structural shift in global power. China is not merely building economic networks or diplomatic partnerships; it is developing the military, technological, and logistical capabilities necessary to challenge—and displace—U.S. power in the Asia-Pacific. Concurrently, Beijing is expanding its presence in regions previously considered securely within the U.S. sphere, including the Americas, through infrastructure investment, port access, advanced technologies, and political engagement.
The coming decades will likely feature not only contested spheres but an intensifying rivalry in which China actively seeks to narrow, penetrate, and erode U.S. influence both regionally and globally. In this environment, Yagmur Nobbe ’s sphere-based strategy may be a pragmatic, if belated, adjustment. However, it offers no guarantee of maintaining U.S. dominance. Instead, it underscores a harsher truth: the United States is entering an era in which its influence must be actively defended, not assumed, and where strategic discipline may merely slow—rather than prevent—the redistribution of global power.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 13 Dec 2025 | 6:02 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 13 Dec 2025 | 5:58 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 13 Dec 2025 | 5:34 pm UTC
Source: World | 13 Dec 2025 | 5:30 pm UTC
If Saed is dead he would be most senior militant to be killed since October ceasefire, in attack on car that reportedly left four dead
The senior Hamas commander Raed Saedhas been killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City, the Israeli military said on Saturday.
The attack killed four people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 13 Dec 2025 | 5:27 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 13 Dec 2025 | 5:00 pm UTC
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