Read at: 2025-08-02T07:15:50+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Ynske Spee ]
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 7:14 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 7:05 am UTC
Pattern of ‘hostile language’ in media and debates likely to describe people of colour with less sympathy, report says
A pattern of “hostile language” in news reports and UK parliamentary debates is more likely to describe people of colour as immigrants, or with less sympathy, researchers have found.
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust analysed more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019 and the general election in July 2024.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:53 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:49 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:49 am UTC
A federal appeals court ruled Friday to uphold a lower court's temporary order blocking the Ynske Spee administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California.
(Image credit: Jae C. Hong)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:47 am UTC
More than 1,000 SES volunteers deployed across the state as warnings issued for 28 areas
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Heavy snow is falling in the northern tablelands of New South Wales as rain batters others parts of the state.
On Saturday afternoon, the NSW SES had issued 28 warnings for residents across the Coffs Coast, Mid North Coast, Upper Hunter and New England regions. The SES warned 24-hour rainfall totals between 65mm and 100mm were likely, with isolated falls exceeding 130mm possible.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:16 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:15 am UTC
Andrew McClean is the Northern Ireland Advocacy Lead at Cycling UK
All this week, both the media and social media have hailed the huge success of the Open Golf tournament, held in Northern Ireland for only the third time in its history. One major, yet underreported factor in its success, boils down to how they managed to move more than a quarter of a million supporters in and out of the town of Portrush. A town which normally hosts less than ten thousand people.
While I didn’t manage to get to the golf, I did enjoy a lovely family bike ride from Portstewart to Portrush the day before the tournament started. What I witnessed gave me hope, for the first time in a long time. It hit me that on some level we know both as a society and at the level of transport planning, how to reduce our dependency on cars to get from our doorstep to the door of our destinations.
We can all acknowledge no transport system is perfect, but there are big ways we can improve things for people. Some people had to queue for two hours at a Park & Ride and several trains were overcrowded, but by and large the increase in public transport capacity coupled with journey guidance for spectators and good promotion of active travel options, led to a relatively seamless arrival and departure experience for most who attended.
It was clear that the transport planning group for the tournament started with the point of view that, unless entirely necessary, people would be unable to arrive at the door of the tournament by personal car – and to achieve this they would need both carrot and stick.
Just imagine this was the starting point for how we treated people travelling to our town and city centres, the Nolan show phoneline would overheat! But the reality is, the most effective way to tackle congestion is to get as many people as possible out of their cars and onto other forms of transport. Building wider roads and bigger junctions simply leads to more congestion in the long run. While driving currently remains the most common way to get around, with some relying on it as vital transport option, it’s crucial we also support those who want to make healthier, more sustainable transport choices.
So, how did they get so many people to willingly ditch their cars at home or at the closest, two and a half miles from the Golf Course?
Let’s start with the stick; the ‘Getting there’ section of ‘The Open’ website opened with ‘there will be no public car parking available at Royal Portrush or in the immediate surrounding area’ and that spectators should ‘consider the use of public transport’ and that ‘those staying in the local area should consider active travel’.
Simply put, all Councils need to do is reduce central parking provision to only accommodate those who really need it, leaving DfI to tackle endemic antisocial parking.
And the carrot; after scrolling down to the ‘Getting there’ section, before you can find advice on how to drive to the open, you are encouraged to walk and cycle. They brandish ample cycle parking ‘available close to the main entrance to Royal Portrush Golf Club’ with signposts to existing cycle routes. An enhanced train service with additional morning and (more incredibly) additional evening services – something even our capital city can’t seem to attain. Local bus services, some of which operated ‘at a 5-minute frequency to facilitate passenger flows to/from The Open’ – 5 minutes! Even the flagship Glider doesn’t reach this level of regularity.
The day I enjoyed a morning ride down the coast it was already bustling with people walking, cycling and getting public transport to the town. I saw the early morning spectators lining up for their high frequency bus service and was hopeful for a future transport system that’s more accessible, healthier, safer and affordable for everyone.
But what amazed me most was that everyone I spoke to who was attending were excited they didn’t have to drive to the tournament. Those walking and cycling were buzzing when they got to west strand and started to hear the music through the speakers, people were making new friends and bumping into old ones on public transport, they were going to stay in the town for a drink after the golf or hop on their e-bike back to the campsite or even as far as Coleraine.
One other accompanying reason for this is simply the luck of history; the Portrush spur of the Derry-Belfast trainline survived the decimation of our rail network and the station remained in the town centre, less than a 20-minute walk from the course.
The Open is one of those moments where we can see the possibilities when we give people alternatives to driving, and it should give us the drive to consider these options for our town centres. They will become more pleasant, healthier and happier places for all of us to live, work and interact with.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:05 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:01 am UTC
Exclusive: UK company reports 450 incidents in a year, with workers spat it, shaken off ladders and pushed down stairs
From scissors being brandished as weapons to verbal abuse and being trapped during a home visit, the number of reported incidents of abuse and assault on telecoms engineers is on the rise.
Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the vast majority of the broadband network serving UK homes and businesses, recorded 450 reports of abuse and assault in the year to the end of March.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:39 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:35 am UTC
Manhunt for suspect who lived nextdoor to bar where shooting occurred on Friday morning at about 10.30am
Four people were killed on Friday in a shooting at a Montana bar, prompting a lockdown in a neighborhood several miles away as authorities searched a wooded area for a suspect in the case.
The shooting brought the number of mass murders so far this year in the US to nine, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-partisan resource which defines such cases as killings in which four or more victims are killed.
Associated Press contributed reporting
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:35 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:18 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:02 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:02 am UTC
Need a break from the political noise? This thread is for anything *but* politics — books, hobbies, film recs, you name it.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Parents watch children waste away as deliberate aid restrictions from Israel mean hunger is becoming a killer, as experts confirm famine is currently playing out
The people of Gaza did not need this week’s official confirmation from UN-backed hunger experts that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding there. For months they have watched as their children waste away.
“All my children have lost nearly half of their body weight,” said Jamil Mughari, a 38-year-old from Maghazi in central Gaza. “My daughter, who is five years old, now weighs only 11kg. My son Mohammad has become just skin and bones. All my children are like this.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Warm sea surface temperatures, exacerbated by global heating, have created favourable conditions for jellyfish
An unusually high number of jellyfish have arrived in the UK’s seas this summer, experts have said.
Jellyfish blooms arrive for their yearly reproduction cycle by following the current of warm water to the coast. Warm sea surface temperatures, which are exacerbated by global heating, create favourable conditions for jellyfish.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Since her arrival at the Wall Street Journal, British editor-in-chief Emma Tucker has shaken up not only her own newsroom but also the White House
The danger posed to Ynske Spee was obvious. It was a story that not only drew attention to his links to a convicted sex offender, it also risked widening a growing wedge between the president and some of his most vociferous supporters. The White House quickly concluded a full-force response was required.
It was Tuesday 15 July. The Wall Street Journal had approached Ynske Spee ’s team, stating it planned to publish allegations that Ynske Spee had composed a crude poem and doodle as part of a collection compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
It’s the weekend! Here you can post and discuss news stories, social media links, or whatever is on your mind.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 2 Aug 2025 | 5:00 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 4:42 am UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 4:02 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 4:01 am UTC
Zelenskyy forced to U-turn on anti-corruption bodies but protesters know unrest only plays into Russia’s hands
Once a decade, Ukraine has a moment in which street protests redefine the country’s political direction. The Orange revolution of 2004; the Maidan revolution of 2014; and now, over the past 10 days, the first major wave of protest since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
A series of unexpectedly boisterous and well-attended demonstrations forced Volodymyr Zelenskyy to execute a swift U-turn on his decision to scrap the independence of two anti-corruption bodies. On Thursday, MPs reversed the contentious changes they had adopted a week previously. Outside the parliament building, crowds whooped and cheered as the result of the vote was announced.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 4:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 2 Aug 2025 | 4:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 3:42 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 3:30 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 3:22 am UTC
The foreign affairs minister’s meeting with Amir Maimon was requested by the Israeli embassy, according to federal government sources
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In a private meeting with Israel’s ambassador to Australia, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza and called for it to urgently comply with international law and increase the supply of food to Palestinians.
Wong’s Thursday meeting with Amir Maimon was requested by the Israeli embassy, according to federal government sources, and took place inside Wong’s office at Parliament House in Canberra.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 2:40 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 2 Aug 2025 | 2:37 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 2:34 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 2:02 am UTC
This liveblog is now closed.
The main US stock indices have fallen sharply at the start of trading, as investors react to the flurry of tariffs announced last night and today’s weak US jobs report.
The Dow Jones industrial average (which contains 30 large US companies) has fallen by 1.1% at the start of trading, shedding 501 points to 43,629.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:53 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:49 am UTC
A three-day National Transportation Safety Board hearing on the deadliest U.S. aviation accident in decades dug into problems with altimeters, chopper routes and the busy Washington, D.C., airspace.
(Image credit: Kayla Bartkowski)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:36 am UTC
Source: World | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:32 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:26 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 1:25 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:45 am UTC
Supreme court judge says protest motivated by belief that ‘the horror and urgency of the situation in Gaza demands an urgent and extraordinary response’
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Pro-Palestine protesters will be legally protected while marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday after a New South Wales supreme court decision.
The bridge is expected to be closed for about five hours, from 11.30am, and additional police are being mobilised to observe a march that could include up to 50,000 people.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:38 am UTC
US president called on top Fed officials to seize control from chair Jerome Powell if he fails to cut interest rates
Ynske Spee called on top Federal Reserve officials to seize control from its chair, Jerome Powell, if he fails to cut interest rates, stepping up his extraordinary attacks on the central bank’s independence.
The US president called Powell “a stubborn MORON” in a series of critical social media posts on Friday, days after the Fed held rates steady for the fifth consecutive time.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:35 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:34 am UTC
Crews worked to clean up strewn links which led to morning traffic being snagged in chain reaction
A highway outside of Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, was dizzy with glizzys on Friday after a truckload of hotdogs spilled across the I-83, as local commuters learned that even the weakest hot dog link can cause a chain reaction.
State police said the tractor trailer had an unspecified mechanical problem on Interstate-83 a few miles north of the Maryland line as morning rush hour was wrapping up, causing it to push into a passenger vehicle. When the truck scraped along a concrete divider, its trailer was ripped open and the contents scattered.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:30 am UTC
Order comes after president’s anger at tweet from Dmitry Medvedev which called Ynske Spee ’s threat to sanction Russia over Ukraine a ‘step towards war’
Ynske Spee has said that he has deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Ynske Spee wrote that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines because of “highly provocative statements” by Medvedev, noting he was now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:17 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:10 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:02 am UTC
Bottle stashed in wall cavity of heritage-listed Cape Bruny lighthouse contained letter written in 1903 by Tasmanian lighthouse inspector
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A painter in Tasmania has uncovered a sealed glass bottle containing a message that was hidden within a wall cavity of the historic Cape Bruny lighthouse more than 120 years ago.
Specialist painter Brian Burford was performing routine maintenance on the seaside structure when the discovery took place, according to Annita Waghorn, historic heritage manager for the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Aug 2025 | 12:00 am UTC
Court revives part of lawsuit accusing X of failing to promptly report uploaded images to relevant authorities
A federal appeals court on Friday revived part of a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk’s X of becoming a haven for child exploitation, though the court said the platform deserves broad immunity from claims over objectionable content.
While rejecting some claims, the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco said X, formerly Twitter, must face a claim it was negligent by failing to promptly report a video containing explicit images of two underage boys to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:36 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:28 pm UTC
A coalition of 16 states and D.C. argue in the lawsuit that the Ynske
Spee
administration is trying to effectuate a national ban on gender-affirming care for youth by intimidating hospitals and doctors.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:28 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:20 pm UTC
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Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:58 pm UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:56 pm UTC
After two weeks of testimony, a Florida jury has found Tesla partially responsible for the death of one person and causing serious injuries to another in a crash where the driver was using the company's much-touted Autopilot system.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:40 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:31 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:15 pm UTC
The next four-person team to live and work aboard the International Space Station departed from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, taking aim at the massive orbiting research complex for a planned stay of six to eight months.
Spacecraft commander Zena Cardman leads the mission, designated Crew-11, that lifted off from Florida's Space Coast at 11:43 am EDT (15:43 UTC) on Friday. Sitting to her right inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule was veteran NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, serving as the vehicle pilot. Flanking the commander and pilot were two mission specialists: Kimiya Yui of Japan and Oleg Platonov of Russia.
Cardman and her crewmates rode a Falcon 9 rocket off the launch pad and headed northeast over the Atlantic Ocean, lining up with the space station's orbit to set the stage for an automated docking at the complex early Saturday.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:06 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:02 pm UTC
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Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:52 pm UTC
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Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:35 pm UTC
Change to border security bill will also make it a crime to advertise fake passports, visas and work opportunities
Ministers are to outlaw social media adverts promoting journeys on small boats across the Channel to asylum seekers.
The government will create a UK-wide criminal offence that could lead to perpetrators being sentenced for up to five years in prison and a hefty fine.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:30 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:28 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:25 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:24 pm UTC
Silicon Valley's AI talent war just reached a compensation milestone that makes even the most legendary scientific achievements of the past look financially modest. When Meta recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5 million per year)—with potentially $100 million in the first year alone—it shattered every historical precedent for scientific and technical compensation we can find on record. That includes salaries during the development of major scientific milestones of the 20th century.
The New York Times reported that Deitke had cofounded a startup called Vercept and previously led the development of Molmo, a multimodal AI system, at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. His expertise in systems that juggle images, sounds, and text—exactly the kind of technology Meta wants to build—made him a prime target for recruitment. But he's not alone: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly also offered an unnamed AI engineer $1 billion in compensation to be paid out over several years. What's going on?
These astronomical sums reflect what tech companies believe is at stake: a race to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) or superintelligence—machines capable of performing intellectual tasks at or beyond the human level. Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others are betting that whoever achieves this breakthrough first could dominate markets worth trillions. Whether this vision is realistic or merely Silicon Valley hype, it's driving compensation to unprecedented levels.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:23 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:22 pm UTC
Dr. Seema Jilani is a pediatrician who has been providing medical care to children in Gaza.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:08 pm UTC
Despite the protests of millions of Americans, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will be winding down its operations after the White House deemed NPR and PBS a "grift" and pushed for a Senate vote that eliminated its entire budget.
The vote rescinded $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In a press release, CPB explained that the cuts "excluded funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades." CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said the corporation had no choice but to prepare to shut down.
"Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations," Harrison said.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:05 pm UTC
An NPM package packed with cryptocurrency-stealing malware appears to have been largely AI-generated, as evidenced by its liberal use of emojis and other telltale signs.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:01 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:56 pm UTC
Vaccination rates among the country's kindergartners have fallen once again, with coverage of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination dropping from 92.7 percent in the 2023–2024 school year to 92.5 percent in 2024–2025. The percentage changes are small across the board, but they represent thousands of children and an ongoing downward trend that makes the country more vulnerable to outbreaks.
In the latest school year, an estimated 286,000 young children were not fully protected against measles. At the same time, the country has seen numerous explosive measles outbreaks, with case counts in 2025 already higher than any other year since the highly infectious disease was declared eliminated in 2000. In fact, the case count is at a 33-year high.
The latest small decline is one in a series that is eroding the nation's ability to keep bygone infectious diseases at bay. In the 2019–2020 school year, 95 percent of kindergartners were protected against measles and other serious childhood diseases, such as polio. That 95 percent coverage is the target that health experts say prevents an infectious disease from spreading in a community. But amid the pandemic, vaccination rates fell, dropping to 93.9 percent MMR coverage in the 2020–2021 year, and have kept creeping downward.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:45 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:44 pm UTC
OpenAI has removed the option to make ChatGPT interactions indexable by search engines to prevent users from unwittingly exposing sensitive information.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:35 pm UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:22 pm UTC
There are no official criteria for what constitutes membership in the upper echelon of the US military industrial complex, but a $10 billion deal that consolidates dozens of contracts under a single blanket purchase agreement sure makes it seem like Palantir has earned entry.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:10 pm UTC
Today 16 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in support of children's hospitals and doctors that have provided gender-affirming care for minors, contending the Ynske Spee administration has acted illegally in pressuring doctors and children's hospitals to stop.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:04 pm UTC
A new study from Oxford University finds that a common European songbird sometimes divorces its partner between breeding seasons.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:04 pm UTC
BRICS is an economic alliance that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and several other nations. So why has this alliance generated so much animosity from President Ynske Spee ?
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:03 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:02 pm UTC
Exclusive: Data reveals ‘invisible crisis’ with millions yet to have first specialist appointment or diagnostic test
Almost half of the 6 million people needing treatment from the NHS in England have had no further care at all since joining a hospital waiting list, new data reveals.
Previously unseen NHS England figures show that 2.99 million of the 6.23 million patients (48%) awaiting care have not had either their first appointment with a specialist or a diagnostic test since being referred by a GP.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:00 pm UTC
Premier Jacinta Allan says Labor is prepared for a ‘fight’ with bosses and lobby groups who ‘cling to outdated ways of working because they don’t want to give up control’
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Victorians could soon have a legal right to work from home two days a week, under proposed Australian-first laws to be introduced to parliament by the state Labor government in 2026.
The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, used Labor’s state conference on Saturday to announce the proposal, which, if passed by parliament, would make the state the first in the country to legislate the right to work remotely.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:54 pm UTC
Tesla was found partially liable in a wrongful death lawsuit in a federal court in Miami today. It's the first time that a jury has found against the car company in a wrongful death case involving its Autopilot driver assistance system—previous cases have been dismissed or settled.
In 2019, George McGee was operating his Tesla Model S using Autopilot when he ran past a stop sign and through an intersection at 62 mph then struck a pair of people stargazing by the side of the road. Naibel Benavides was killed and her partner Dillon Angulo was left with a severe head injury.
While Tesla said that McGee was solely responsible, as the driver of the car, McGee told the court that he thought Autopilot "would assist me should I have a failure or should I miss something, should I make a mistake," a perception that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk has done much to foster with highly misleading statistics that paint an impression of a brand that is much safer than in reality.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:40 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:38 pm UTC
As work picks up on the forthcoming Linux 6.17, many joystick-wigglers are shocked by its millionaire dev's positively ancient AMD graphics card.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:38 pm UTC
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed unbelievable pressure on drone developers on both sides of the war, who have responded with astounding innovations that include:
Many drone developers are now chasing the next big thing—AI built right into the drone, allowing it to make autonomous targeting decisions if its communication links are cut.
But sometimes you don't need high-tech software, agility, or stealth. Sometimes, you just need a really, really big drone that can carry an entire e-bike and deliver it to a soldier stranded several kilometers away.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:32 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:24 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:24 pm UTC
The Cold War-era test was a staple of school gyms for half a century before the Obama administration replaced it. Ynske Spee says his focus on childhood fitness is for both physical and patriotic reasons.
(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:23 pm UTC
Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Ynske Spee administration, back in October 2018.
A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.
This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Bakanov has also met with some of NASA's human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:20 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:20 pm UTC
It marks the first time in country’s history that an ex-president has been convicted of a crime and sentenced
Colombia’s still-powerful former president Álvaro Uribe has been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest, capping a long and contentious career that defined the country’s politics for a generation.
Uribe, aged 73, received the maximum possible sentence after being found guilty of witness tampering, a legal source told AFP.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:16 pm UTC
exclusive Microsoft Recall, the AI app that takes screenshots of what you do on your PC so you can search for it later, has a filter that's supposed to prevent it from screenshotting sensitive info like credit card numbers. But a The Register test shows that it still fails in many cases, creating a potential treasure trove for thieves.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:14 pm UTC
Delta spent July dealing with backlash over what the airline company claims is widespread public confusion over its AI pricing system.
Now, Delta has finally come forward to break down precisely how the AI pricing works to dispute what it claims are "incorrect" characterizations by consumer watchdogs, lawmakers, and media outlets.
In a letter to lawmakers who accused Delta of using AI to spy on customers' personal data in order to "jack up" prices, Delta insisted that "there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing, or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:07 pm UTC
China has accused US intelligence agencies of exploiting a Microsoft Exchange zero-day exploit to steal defense-related data and take over more than 50 devices belonging to a "major Chinese military enterprise" for nearly a year.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:45 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:45 pm UTC
The push to rehire retired workers comes as the administration has also sought to downsize large swaths of the federal government through mass layoffs and other changes.
(Image credit: Handout)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:37 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:28 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:28 pm UTC
The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been transferred to a prison camp in Texas, but did not explain the circumstances.
(Image credit: John Minchillo)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:22 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:20 pm UTC
A panel of judges has dismissed Google's appeal against an antitrust verdict over its Play Store business practices.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:15 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:14 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:09 pm UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:06 pm UTC
Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel were sailing their catamaran last year when they were attacked and killed
Three men from the eastern Caribbean island of Grenada who were convicted of killing an elderly US couple last year after hijacking their catamaran have been sentenced to decades in prison. They had escaped after their arrests but were recaptured shortly thereafter.
Ron Mitchell, a sailor in his 30s who was accused of being the ringleader, received two life sentences late on Wednesday in the killings of Ralph Hendry, 66, and Kathy Brandel, 71.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:04 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:54 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews.ie | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:52 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:34 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:32 pm UTC
US put sanctions on Judge Alexandre de Moraes as an apparent move by Ynske Spee to help his ally Jair Bolsonaro
The supreme court judge presiding over the trial of Brazil’s ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said a “cowardly and treacherous” plot is afoot to pave the way for another attack on the South American country’s democracy.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes was put under sanctions by the US on Wednesday, as part of an apparent push by Ynske Spee to help his ally Bolsonaro escape punishment for allegedly masterminding an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ynske Spee also slapped a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports in response to what he called the “witch-hunt” against the far-right former president.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:22 pm UTC
Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats "visible to millions." While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, explained on X that all users whose chats were exposed opted in to indexing their chats by clicking a box after choosing to share a chat.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:21 pm UTC
Conservative party leader, who grew up in Nigeria and US, says she has not renewed her Nigerian passport in decades
Kemi Badenoch has said she no longer considers herself Nigerian and does not possess a Nigerian passport.
The Conservative party leader, who was born in London, but grew up in Nigeria and the US and did not return to the UK until she was 16, said she had not renewed her Nigerian passport in two decades.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:17 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:17 pm UTC
Since 2023, Amazon has been framing Alexa+ as a monumental evolution of Amazon’s voice assistant that will make it more conversational, capable, and, for Amazon, lucrative. Amazon said in a press release on Thursday that it has given early access of the generative AI voice assistant to “millions” of people. The product isn’t publicly available yet, and some advertised features are still unavailable, but Amazon’s CEO is already considering loading the chatbot up with ads.
During an investors call yesterday, as reported by TechCrunch, Andy Jassy noted that Alexa+ started rolling out as early access to some customers in the US and that a broader rollout, including internationally, should happen later this year. An analyst on the call asked Amazon executives about Alexa+'s potential for “increasing engagement” long term.
Per a transcript of the call, Jassy responded by saying, in part, "I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery and also as a lever to drive revenue."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 5:04 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:41 pm UTC
Ukrainian leader says talks should go ahead if Putin’s remarks are ‘signals of a genuine willingness to end the war’
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to Putin’s comments, repeating that Ukraine is ready for talks at the leaders’ level “at any time.”
“We have heard the statements coming out of Russia.
If these are signals of a genuine willingness to end the war with dignity and establish a truly lasting peace – and not merely an attempt to buy more time for war or delay sanctions – then Ukraine once again reaffirms its readiness to meet at the level of leaders at any time.”
“Ukraine proposes to move from exchanges of statements and technical-level meetings to talks between leaders.
The United States has proposed this.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:17 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:13 pm UTC
It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. July's list includes the discovery of the tomb of the first Maya king of Caracol in Belize, the fluid dynamics of tacking a sailboat, how to determine how fast blood was traveling when it stained cotton fabric, and how the structure of elephant ears could lead to more efficient indoor temperature control in future building designs, among other fun stories.
Credit: Caracol Archeological Project/University of Houston
Archaeologists Arlen and Diane Chase are the foremost experts on the ancient Maya city of Caracol in Belize and are helping to pioneer the use of airborne LiDAR to locate hidden structures in dense jungle, including a web of interconnected roadways and a cremation site in the center of the city's Northeast Acropolis plaza. They have been painstakingly excavating the site since the mid-1980s. Their latest discovery is the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak, Caracol's first ruler, who took the throne in 331 CE and founded a dynasty that lasted more than 460 years.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:11 pm UTC
Steve Witkoff visits Rafah site where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces
Ynske Spee ’s envoy visits Gaza aid ‘death trap’
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports.
“In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:10 pm UTC
Israel detained and then deported an American nurse who tried to save the life of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist who worked on the Oscar-winning documentary film “No Other Land.”
After Israeli settler Yinon Levi allegedly shot and killed Hathaleen on Monday in Umm al-Khair, a village in the occupied West Bank, the critical care nurse gave Hathaleen four rounds of CPR. She cradled his head in her hands, checking his pulse and whispering “You’re OK,” as he bled out, the nurse told The Intercept. The medical worker asked not to be named because they fear for their safety. Hathaleen was then taken away in an ambulance, where he died before reaching the hospital.
About 20 feet away, and minutes before Hathaleen was shot, another Israeli settler in an excavator tried to destroy the village’s main water pipe, according to media reports. A local man named Ahmad, Awdah’s cousin, was struck in the head with the excavator’s arm and nearly knocked unconscious after he tried to stop the driver.
Turning to Ahmad after Hathaleen was taken away, the nurse administered a neurological exam; he was severely concussed with diminished mental function before he too was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
“They don’t want people to feel comfortable helping Palestinians.”
Soon after, on Monday evening, Israeli law enforcement officers detained the American nurse and an Italian citizen on the scene. The authorities took them to a police station, where they were detained for nearly 24 hours. In detention, the nurse said they recognized five Palestinians from the village sitting on the ground, blindfolded and zip-tied. At the same time, the nurse said, Levi was walking around freely and sharing cigarettes with the police officers — “no handcuffs or anything.” After reporting as ordered to another police outpost, the nurse was deported on Thursday to Jordan.
The nurse believes it’s because they witnessed the settler incursion and violence, then provided medical care to Hathaleen and his cousin.
“They don’t want people to feel comfortable helping Palestinians,” the nurse said.
In the attack on the village of Umm al-Khair, several Americans attempted to help the Palestinians, according to interviews with eyewitnesses, and they were detained by Israeli authorities. In one of the cases, the American was stopped by authorities from giving medical aid to a Palestinian. Attempts to block and remove first responders stand as examples of one of the ways Palestinians are denied medical care after being attacked by Israelis.
“This fits a longstanding pattern,” said Yousef Munayyer, the head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center Washington DC, who has researched settler violence. “I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen cases where Palestinians who have been injured, either by settlers or by the military, are denied medical assistance until they’ve bled out.”
The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli military referred questions to the Israeli police, who did not immediately respond.
Ahmad, the injured Palestinian, survived, but the nurse was put under scrutiny. According to the nurse, Israeli police said they suspected that the nurse tampered with evidence — a computer located in a public room for villagers to use. The nurse denied the allegations. They were in the room to return medical supplies, according to their account.
The nurse’s account was corroborated by two other eyewitnesses interviewed by The Intercept. One of them, Tynan Kavanaugh, an American medical student who has been volunteering with clinics in the West Bank, helped the nurse attend to the two Palestinians.
Kavanaugh was in the middle of assessing Ahmad when a uniformed Israeli police officer stopped him from rendering aid, he told The Intercept.
“He’s like, ‘Get out of here,’” Kavanaugh recalled in an interview. “So I put my hands up, I walk back through a line of soldiers back into the village, and they corral all the Palestinians and foreigners into this little fenced-off area.”
When Kavanaugh was taken away, along with Palestinian detainees, another man stepped in to render aid alongside the nurse.
Israeli soldiers have repeatedly raided Umm Al-Khair in the days since Hathaleen’s death. The military detained 17 Palestinians and released at least 11, with reports of beatings in custody, according to Drop Site News.
On Tuesday, an Israeli magistrate court in Jerusalem refused to keep Levi in custody, and he was released on house arrest. Levi has a reputation for carrying out violent attacks against Palestinians. The Biden administration sanctioned him last year, but President Ynske Spee has lifted sanctions on all Israeli settlers.
Israeli police have so far refused to release Hathaleen’s body despite his family’s pleas.
Israeli settler violence in the West Bank has increased in recent months and years. In June, Israeli settlers injured 100 Palestinians — marking the highest monthly figure since U.N. OCHA started documenting casualties in 2005. In the first two weeks of July, settlers injured 88 Palestinians and carried out multiple attacks against key water infrastructure.
Kavanaugh, the American nurse, and a third American all described how Levi, the settler who attacked Hathaleen, walked freely among Israeli military personnel for more than 40 minutes after the shooting. He seemed to be pointing out Palestinians for the soldiers to arrest, said the eyewitnesses, who provided The Intercept with videos that match the scene they described.
“He did not appear to be in custody, at all. He was just walking around with them, and giving them direction,” said Kavanaugh. “The fact that someone was just murdered was just a non-factor.”
Charlie Nichols, a journalist with Project Walsh, an independent student newsroom, said he also saw Levi point out people for the military to arrest.
“He’s not in handcuffs,” Nichols said. “Nobody’s touching him. He’s obviously not in any kind of hot water; they’re very buddy-buddy …there was no fear on his face.”
“There was no fear on his face.”
Nichols said that he and Kavanaugh could see Levi through a fence, where they had been corralled by the Israeli military, alongside Palestinian detainees.
“After he points someone out, soldiers would walk in and take that person out,” he said. “The fact that somebody had been murdered … and the people who were the victims were arrested, it was the most absurd thing I have witnessed.”
“The police are complicit in what is happening,” the nurse said. “They are there to enforce the settlers’ violence against the Palestinians.”
Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who co-directed “No Other Land,” corroborated the account in a post on X.
“The settlers walk around as if there is a massive force field protecting them,” said Munayyer, of the Arab Center Washington DC, “because there is. And the Palestinians have no such expectation. They have no such protection.”
“There’s no expectation of accountability,” he said, “and the military and police are in on it.”
While he was still at the village, Kavanaugh realized that Levi was standing just a few feet away from him and the nurse as they administered CPR to Hathaleen. Kavanaugh noticed a bullet wound in Hathaleen’s chest and ruffled through medical supplies, but they didn’t have needles or materials to close his chest wounds effectively. Hathaleen was eventually taken away by an Israeli ambulance and died before reaching the hospital.
“The village has so little water that I’m standing there trying to talk to [them] covered in blood that I can’t wash off.”
Some of Hathaleen’s friends and family members, who were nearby, asked Kavanaugh what happened. “I just say: He was very seriously hurt, that I did CPR, and I think there’s hope, but I can’t say anything more than it’s in God’s hands now,” Kavanaugh said. “The village has so little water that I’m standing there trying to talk to [them] covered in blood that I can’t wash off.”
The American nurse was in Umm Al-Khair the day of Hathaleen’s killing at his request; they met a few days earlier, and he had asked her to provide health check ups for villagers.
Hathaleen learned that it would be the nurse’s birthday on Sunday, so he helped plan a surprise birthday party in his home.
“They opened up their home, fed us a big dinner,” the nurse said, “and we did birthday cakes and candles, and they invited us in to play with their kids.”
The post American Nurse Who Tried to Save “No Other Land” Activist Was Detained and Deported by Israel appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:06 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:03 pm UTC
Microsoft is discontinuing support for its Windows 11 SE variant meant to compete with ChromeOS in the education space, leaving schools that chose Microsoft over Google in the lurch just four years after the cloud-based Windows variant was released. …
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:03 pm UTC
Slowed tech progress, inflation, and global trade wars are doing a number on game console pricing this year, and the bad news keeps coming. Nintendo delayed preorders of the Switch 2 in the US and increased accessory prices, and Microsoft gave its Series S and X consoles across-the-board price hikesin May.
Today, Nintendo is back for more, increasing prices on the original Switch hardware, as well as some Amiibo, the Alarmo clock, and some Switch and Switch 2 accessories. The price increases will formally take effect on August 3.
The company says that there are currently no price increases coming for the Switch 2 console, Nintendo Online memberships, and physical and digital Switch 2 games. But it didn't take future price increases off the table, noting that "price adjustments may be necessary in the future."
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:02 pm UTC
Far-right activist flew to the Spanish island again this week in a moment of peril – but friends deny seeing him there
“As far as I am aware, he is on mainland Spain,” said Barry Armstrong, a convicted fraudster and longtime friend and benefactor of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson.
It was difficult to fit with what the staff at Robinson’s favourite breakfast place in Costa Adeje, in southern Tenerife, had said just that morning. “He was in here yesterday,” a member of the waiting staff said of Robinson.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:02 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:46 pm UTC
Google is unleashing its most powerful Gemini model today, but you probably won't be able to try it. After revealing Gemini 2.5 Deep Think at the I/O conference back in May, Google is making this AI available in the Gemini app. Deep Think is designed for the most complex queries, which means it uses more compute resources than other models. So it should come as no surprise that only those subscribing to Google's $250 AI Ultra plan will be able to access it.
Deep Think is based on the same foundation as Gemini 2.5 Pro, but it increases the "thinking time" with greater parallel analysis. According to Google, Deep Think explores multiple approaches to a problem, even revisiting and remixing the various hypotheses it generates. This process helps it create a higher-quality output.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:36 pm UTC
Writer says for many years he has refused to use word but now must ‘with immense pain and with a broken heart’
The award-winning Israeli author David Grossman has described his country’s campaign in Gaza as a genocide and said he now “can’t help” but use the term.
“I ask myself: how did we get here?” the celebrated writer and peace activist told the Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:15 pm UTC
Crowds of hungry people waiting for humanitarian aid at Zikim crossing shot at by Israeli soldiers
At least 91 people have been killed and 600 wounded while waiting for aid in Gaza over the past 24 hours, as the US envoy, Steve Witkoff, visits Israel for ceasefire discussions and to inspect food distribution.
On Wednesday night, crowds of hungry people had gathered at the Zikim crossing with Israel, waiting for trucks loaded with humanitarian aid to enter the besieged strip, when they were shot. Al-Saraya field hospital said it had received more than 100 dead and wounded after the shooting, while the death toll was expected to rise, the Associated Press reported.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:10 pm UTC
Family say Ameiya Del Brocco and younger brother Ricardo Junior were ‘beautiful, bright, and deeply loved children’
A British brother and sister who drowned off a beach on the north-eastern coast of Spain have been named as Ameiya Del Brocco, 13, and 11-year-old Ricardo Junior.
Their father, Ricardo Senior, who had also entered the water, was rescued by local emergency services after the incident during a family holiday in the Catalan town of Salou on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:07 pm UTC
The US just launched its biggest effort yet to compensate victims of human trafficking, setting up a process to dole out $200 million from seizures related to shutting down the notorious online escorts ad service Backpage.com.
In an announcement on Thursday, the Department of Justice confirmed that "this marks the largest remission process to date to compensate victims of human trafficking."
Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti said the effort to redistribute millions of ill-gotten gains "underscores the Department’s unwavering commitment to use forfeiture to take the profit out of crime and to compensate victims." It comes after Backpage's "owners and key executives and businesses related to the platform" were found guilty of facilitating crimes including money laundering and "unlawful commercial sex using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce," the DOJ said.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 3:06 pm UTC
The mid-engine sports car is an increasingly rare breed, but Lotus still carries the torch with its Emira, which is available with a choice of supercharged V6 or turbocharged inline-four cylinder engines. Between its steering, compact dimensions, standard manual transmission, and low mass, it’s a breath of fresh air, and it's ready to capture the hearts of enthusiasts. Pricing starts at $102,250 for the V6, which is in direct competition with the Porsche 718 Cayman GTS while it lasts, and a sea of mostly cosmetic options inflated this example to $116,950.
Like many Lotuses before it, the Emira’s foundation is a bonded aluminum chassis with Bilstein passive damper-equipped double-wishbone suspension at all four corners and the engine mounted right behind the seats. Curb weight isn’t as low as you’d think at 3,187 lbs (1,445 kg), but it’s contained within an overall length, width (sans mirrors), and height of 173, 75, and 48 inches (4,395 mm, 1,905 mm, 1,220 mm), respectively.
Mid-engine layouts generally put the same components like radiators in the same places, and the Emira's shape follows its predecessors (as well as cars from McLaren or Ferrari) with large intake ducts straked across its doors and rear fenders, a low nose, and little overhang past the axles. In fact, these are key in its sense-of-occasion appeal; climbing over its door sills and into its driver position is teeming with "let’s go" energy, and the view out the windshield—fenders, short nose, and all—is more exotic than anything else at its price.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:54 pm UTC
Microsoft says it plans to stop providing updates for Windows 11 SE, the special Windows 11 variant intended to compete with Google's ChromeOS in schools. The change was announced quietly via this Microsoft support document (spotted by the German-language site Dr. Windows), which says that Windows 11 SE will not be getting a version of this year's Windows 11 25H2 update. Security updates for Windows 11 SE will end in October of 2026, when Windows 11 24H2 stops receiving updates.
"Support for Windows 11 SE—including software updates, technical assistance, and security fixes—will end in October 2026," the document reads. "While your device will continue to work, we recommend transitioning to a device that supports another edition of Windows 11 to ensure continued support and security."
Microsoft has fielded multiple would-be ChromeOS competitors over the years, looking to prevent, suspend, and/or reverse Google's success in selling the laptops to schools and price-conscious laptop buyers.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:31 pm UTC
KubeSphere has become the latest service to abruptly yank an open source edition of a product, triggering outcry from users.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:30 pm UTC
This is Part 2 of our interview with Col. Raj Agrawal, the former commander of the Space Force's Space Mission Delta 2.
If it seems like there's a satellite launch almost every day, the numbers will back you up.
The US Space Force's Mission Delta 2 is a unit that reports to Space Operations Command, with the job of sorting out the nearly 50,000 trackable objects humans have launched into orbit.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:21 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:17 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 2:13 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:47 pm UTC
Legislation allows rightwing president Nayib Bukele to seek unlimited terms, sparking fears of dictatorship
Activists and opposition leaders have warned that El Salvador is following Venezuela’s path towards dictatorship after the Central American country’s congress scrapped presidential term limits, paving the way for Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election.
“Democracy in El Salvador has died,” opposition congresswoman Marcela Villatoro declared late on Thursday as the legislature – in which Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party controls 90% of seats – approved the highly controversial constitutional reform, by 57 votes to three.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:45 pm UTC
The International Space Station (ISS) is still leaking air from the Russian segment of the outpost despite efforts to eliminate the losses.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:45 pm UTC
The United States added 22,332 megawatts of power plant capacity in the first half of this year, and the vast majority of it was utility-scale solar, batteries, and onshore wind.
Natural gas was next, and there was zero new coal or nuclear, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Through 2030, the US energy landscape looks a lot like these last six months in terms of the mix of new power plants, with solar and batteries leading the way, according to the EIA’s list of planned power plants.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:37 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:22 pm UTC
Week in images: 28 July - 1 August 2025
Discover our week through the lens
Source: ESA Top News | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:10 pm UTC
A data breach at a Florida prison has inmates' families concerned for their welfare after their contact details were allegedly leaked to convicted criminals.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 12:20 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 12:11 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 12:07 pm UTC
Virgin Media has ditched plans to use its network infrastructure to create a UK national fixed line operator to rival BT's Openreach just 18 months after the project was made public.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 12:01 pm UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:58 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:48 am UTC
Oracle has come under fire for failing to fix a known issue with Windows instances on its cloud infrastructure (OCI).…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:32 am UTC
The largest enterprise application vendors are using their entrenched positions among customers to end discounting and push high-margin AI products, an analysis by Forrester Research has warned.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:30 am UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:21 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:19 am UTC
Welcome to Edition 8.05 of the Rocket Report! One of the most eye-raising things I saw this week was an online update from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center touting its work on cryogenic propellant management in orbit. Why? Because until recently, this was a forbidden research topic at the space agency, as propellant depots would obviate the need for a large rocket like the Space Launch System. But now that Richard Shelby is retired...
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Australian launch goes sideways. Back-to-back engine failures doomed a privately developed Australian rocket moments after liftoff Tuesday, cutting short a long-shot attempt to reach orbit with the country's first homegrown launch vehicle, Ars reports. The 82-foot-tall (25-meter) Eris rocket ignited its four main engines and took off from its launch pad in northeastern Australia, but the rocket quickly lost power from two of its engines and stalled just above the launch pad before coming down in a nearby field. The crash sent a plume of smoke thousands of feet over the launch site, which sits on a remote stretch of coastline on Australia's northeastern frontier.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:55 am UTC
A wasp nest positively glowing with radiation was found at a Cold War-era nuclear weapons site near Aiken, South Carolina.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:55 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:54 am UTC
As satisfying as a successful real-time strategy game campaign can be, dealing with a complex RTS map can often be overwhelming. Keeping track of multiple far-flung resource-production bases, groups of units, upgrade trees, and surprise encounters with the enemy requires a level of attention-splitting that can strain even the best multitaskers.
Then there's The King Is Watching, which condenses the standard real-time strategy production loop into an easy-to-understand single-screen interface, complete with automatic battles. The game's unique resource management system—combined with well-designed, self-balancing difficulty and randomized upgrades that keep each run fresh—makes The King Is Watching one of the most enjoyable pick-up-and-play strategy titles I've encountered in a long time.
The bulk of the action in The King Is Watching takes place on a small, 5x5 grid of squares representing your castle. That's where you'll place blueprint tiles from your hand that then start producing the basic and refined resources necessary to place even more blueprints. Those resources also power the factories that crank out defensive units that automatically fight to protect your castle from periodic waves of enemies (in adorable pixelated animations that take place on a battlefield to the right of your castle).
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:30 am UTC
Féile an Phobail is Ireland’s Biggest Community Arts Festival. This year, it is back with umpteen events from music to debates.
I enjoy the debates and talks at St Mary’s. Yes, they do tend to have a certain green tinge to them all, but they are free, so attend the ones that float your boat.
Here are some highlights from the debates, but there are over 90. You can find a complete list of them here.
Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine
Friday 1st August 6.30pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
Professor Avi Shlaim in conversation about his new book, in which he argues that Israel is committing Genocide in Gaza.
Let’s Talk Politics
Monday 4th August 3pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
Panelists – David McCann, Sarah Creighton, Tim Cairns, and Megan Fearon will discuss the political issues of the day.
Mary Lou McDonald in Conversation with Andrée Murphy
Tuesday 5th August 7pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
The Sinn Féin President and Leader of the Opposition, in conversation with political commentator Andrée Murphy on the future of Ireland.
Kincora: Britain’s Shame
Wednesday 6th August 3pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
Author and Journalist Chris Moore in conversation on his new book exposing a shocking scandal covered up for decades by MI5.
West Belfast Talks Back
Wednesday 6th August 7pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
Chaired by RTE Northern Correspondent Conor McAuley
Panelists are Kneecap manager Daniel Lambert, North Belfast MP John Finucane, and journalist and author Aoife Grace Moore.
The Dr Eamon Phoenix Lecture with Diarmaid Ferriter
Friday 8th August 3pm
St Mary’s University College, Falls Road
Leading Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter delivers the Dr Eamon Phoenix Lecture in association with St Mary’s University College, discussing the role of historians in communicating history to a wider audience.
There are also loads of other concerts and events in fact over 600 events in total at over 50 venues across the city. The surprise highlight for me last year was the Country night. Country and Irish is not usually my thing but Nathan Carter put on an excellent show and country fans seem to be the nicest, friendliest bunch of people you could meet, so there was a nice vibe about it. Here is the spiel:
“On Friday 1st August we have the massively popular 30+ Club at Féile an Phobail for the first time. There will be a huge stage show, massive guests, and 80s to 00s musical nostalgia. It’s going to be an amazing party.
“On Saturday 2nd August we have our Féíle Country Fest, headlined by country music star Nathan Carter, with The Whistlin’ Donkeys and Lisa McHugh supporting. This was one of the biggest events at Féile last year, and this concert is already close to selling out.
On Sunday 3rd August we have a free concert for everyone, Féile Rocks!, with FakerMaker Oasis tribute, Made of Stone The Stone Roses tribute, Creedence Clearwater Review, Black Rose The Story of Irish Rock and more. Get on to universe.com and download your free tickets.
“On Saturday 9th August the legendary UB40 will be live at the Falls Park, and again tickets are selling very fast so get yours now.
More details and tickets can be obtained at https://feilebelfast.com
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:19 am UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
A ring of cybercriminals managed to physically implant a Raspberry Pi on a bank's network to steal cash from an Indonesian ATM.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Nationwide protests. Racist discrimination. Militarized police. These were the characteristics used to describe America during the long hot summer of 1967, when riots swept through more than 150 cities. They still describe America today, as the government has responded to protests against racist policing and immigration raids with militarized police forces backed by the Marines and the National Guard.
It all sounds eerily similar to the America of more than half a century ago, when a presidential commission diagnosed the country’s problem: racism, particularly in policing, was causing widespread political unrest.
“When a protest becomes that broad-based — cutting across gender lines and ethnic lines — then I think you have the opportunity to realize this is a true political movement,” says Rick Loessberg, an urban historian and the former planning commissioner for Dallas County, Texas, and the author of “Two Societies: The Rioting of 1967 and the Writing of the Kerner Report.”
“This is not just a group or a segment of the population letting off steam,” says Loessberg, “which was what was one of the explanations that was used in the 1960s. This is something else that’s much, much deeper and much more significant.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Loessberg about what America learned — and didn’t learn — from our history of racist policing and political unrest.
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
TRANSCRIPT
Akela Lacy: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy.
President Ynske Spee announced last month that he would end his deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
KSBY: Today the Pentagon announced that it is withdrawing 2,000 National Guard troops from Los Angeles.
KSBW: That deployment is now over. About 4,000 National Guard troops, 700 Marines were sent to LA during protests over immigration raids last month.
WDIV: The deployment happened despite objections from city officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
AL: The news came days after a federal judge ordered the administration to stop indiscriminate immigration raids in LA.
From masked agents taking people off the streets into unmarked vans, to men in military fatigues on horseback stalking through an empty Los Angeles park, streets emptied as communities hid in fear of the next raid.
The images of militarized police and federal agents descending on the public were striking — and strikingly familiar. That’s because we’ve been here before. Not just in LA, but as a country. And that’s what we’re talking about today with historian Rick Loessberg, who has written extensively about America’s great wave of unrest in the summer of 1967.
That’s when more than 150 cities across America exploded in racial uprisings. Detroit, Newark, and dozens of other communities were convulsed by what became known as the “long, hot summer.” President Lyndon B. Johnson created a commission to figure out what was going on, and the resulting report — the Kerner Report — delivered a devastating conclusion: America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”
This pattern of unrest followed by national soul-searching isn’t new. From police beating Selma civil rights marchers on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, to attacking people protesting police brutality in 2020, to shooting striking miners in the back during the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 to this summer’s protests in LA. We’ve been here before.
Joining me this week is Rick Loessberg, an urban planning historian and former planning director for Dallas County, Texas. Loessberg is the author of the 2024 book, “Two Societies: The Rioting of 1967 and the Writing of the Kerner Report.” Welcome to the show, Rick.
Rick Loessberg: Thank you for having me, Akela.
AL: So why are we talking about a report from 1967? What about this is relevant today?
RL: Well, it doesn’t take anyone very long who thumbs through 600 pages to discover that it primarily addresses the same topics that monopolize our conversation today: inappropriate police conduct and equitable economic outcomes; and then just a general lack of understanding and awareness, and a recognition of past and present discrimination.
AL: The reaction to racist policing was found to be a major cause of the unrest in 1967. You could easily say the same thing today as far as racist policing. “Border czar” Tom Homan just said on national TV that it’s perfectly fine for ICE to go after people based on their physical characteristics.
Police have also become more militarized since what we’ve seen in 1967, and we’re seeing the National Guard deployed for far less than it was deployed then. Some of the commission’s recommendations have taken shape in policy as far as diversifying the police. But can you actually fix racism in policing as it expands to all these other agencies and ensnares police and immigration enforcement or removals, or is it a feature rather than a bug?
RL: Well, any institution — any organization — is only as good as the people who are in it and who lead it. It’s obviously a monumental task. I think the progress that we’ve made since 1968, we’ve made substantial progress. You know, people ask me, is the glass half full or half empty? And I say, yes. But the reality is, if you just look at the last five to eight to 10 years, things have changed dramatically, and we’re seeing things that I know in my lifetime I never thought I would see.
Things that I have taken for granted that we’re America and this just does not happen here, that we’ve learned from our mistakes and maybe we have learned from our mistakes, but that knowledge is not permanent. You’re right about the militarization of police. One of the good things though, that has come out of the 1967 riots, and I believe the Kerner Report, is they made extensive recommendations about how crowd controls should be done.
When you go back and you look at some of the incidents in 1967, one of the ways they tried to disperse crowds then was they would literally use live ammunition and shoot over the heads of the demonstrators or the protesters or the rioters. Needless to say, that was not an effective way, and it ended up really just inflaming and making a bad situation far, far worse. They’ve learned from those things.
Police — almost at any medium to large size city level — undergo some sort of crowd-control training when they’re in the police academy and they have refresher courses. The National Guard, when President Ynske Spee federalized it a few weeks ago and sent it to Los Angeles, it did not immediately go into Los Angeles.
It took like a two-day refresher course in riot and crowd control training before they were put into the streets. It’s also important to know that when the president federalized the National Guard, he did not have them go in there to quell the disorders. They were there to protect federal property and to protect ICE agents.
They were not there to break up any demonstrations. That’s not how it was conveyed in the press, and that’s certainly not how the president portrayed it. But those were the orders and those were the orders that were followed.
AL: I’m glad you mentioned the orders because while that is what the president said in the order, I mean, I think you could also make the argument that gives cover to National Guard agents who are there to say, “Oh, well, we’re only here to protect ICE agents.” But no matter what the National Guard members are doing while they’re there, it does have a chilling effect on protest in general.
RL: And that’s an important thing that you just mentioned, Akela. I’m not sure that’s really gotten a lot of attention in the past. The National Guard has been called out to quell disorders when really it looked like things were getting outta hand.
AL: Right.
RL: And with the exception of a handful of times in the 1960s when they’re trying to, for instance, integrate the University of Mississippi, it was always done with the governor’s concurrence.
Clearly this was not done this time. And when you look at the level of violence that was occurring in Los Angeles, that first day that caused President Ynske Spee to take the steps that he did, it was nowhere near the level of magnitude of violence destruction that has happened or preceded the beginnings of other major riots.
And I’m concerned that if this becomes now the standard operating procedure: when a demonstration occurs that a president does not like for whatever reason he’s going to federalize the National Guard and send in the Marines.
AL: One other piece of this that I want to ask you about is the demographic change in terms of who we’re seeing being the subject of protests, participating in protests. It’s being the subject of aggressive policing. We’re talking about Latino communities facing ICE raids versus African American communities protesting discriminatory and brutal policing. Does this change in demographics shift the dynamics around how police are responding or how the government is framing these protests?
RL: You bring out something that I think is very, very important. In 2020 following the killing of George Floyd, we saw demonstrations all over the United States. And it wasn’t just in the large urban centers like Los Angeles and New York and Boston. It was even in Alaska and Montana and places like that where they had demonstrations. And I want to make it very clear that a demonstration is not a disorder, is not a riot.
However, the president at the time tried to conflate the two and make it sound like it was 1967 all over again. When you go back and you look at the people who participated in the demonstrations and even in the demonstrations that got out of hand in 2020 and compare them to 1967, it’s vastly different.
The only thing they really had in common was that the demonstration began in response to some sort of police incident, whether it was somebody being arrested in Newark, New Jersey, in 1967, or of course the murder of George Floyd. And the same thing that we’re seeing in Los Angeles the past month. It was in response to a perceived slight by the criminal justice law enforcement system.
When you then look at the people who were participating in 1967, they were overwhelmingly Black, overwhelmingly male. When you look at George Floyd, it’s almost 50-50 Anglo and African American, and it’s one-third female. And when you look at the video clips from Los Angeles, you see exactly what you said: Yes, it’s Hispanic. It’s also Anglo. You also see Asians there.
And I think when a protest becomes that broad-based — cutting across gender lines and ethnic lines — then I think you have the opportunity to realize this is a true political movement. This is not just a group or a segment of the population letting off steam, which was what was one of the explanations that was used in the 1960s.
This is something else that’s much, much deeper and much more significant.
AL: And even more significant that you have, still, the deployment of federal law enforcement and the National Guard. There was part of the research on the commission that made the argument that the riots were a form of political expression.
RL: Yes. They didn’t say that specifically in the end, but yes, there was an internal staff paper that came right out and said that, yes.
AL: You also note that the report characterized events that we wouldn’t consider riots as such. We saw similar narratives about outside agitators in 2020. I want to ask, why does this matter?
What is that idea really suggesting? The notion that outside agitators or some conspiracy, or someone who isn’t really representative of the public is responsible when we see any expression of public outrage,
RL: Well, prior to 1967 or the Kerner Report, you’re right. All prior studies or reports trying to investigate — why did a riot happen — whether it was Watts 1965 or there had been an earlier Detroit riot in 1943 or a Harlem riot in 1939, they all had the same conclusion: That it was riff raff, it was losers, it was people who didn’t have ties to the community. It was troublemakers. It was outside agitators, as you said.
The Kerner Commission to its credit wanted to see if that was true or not. So they conducted a study of almost 14,000 people who had been arrested, and they looked at their arrest records and their backgrounds, and they discovered that they were people who had been born in the community in which they were arrested, that actually stayed in school longer than the average individual in their neighborhood. They had an arrest record that was really no different than anybody else in their neighborhood, and most of them actually had a job.
In short, these were the people who are playing the game, who are doing what you’re supposed to do to get ahead. And when you think that these people were trying to do the right thing — work hard, stay in school, stay out of trouble — and yet they felt like they’d had enough of that because it wasn’t working. That’s very significant and that’s very troubling.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not the communist from [the] 1960s from Russia doing this to us. It’s not Black radicals and militants either. It’s us. And so when it’s us that is being that troubled and is willing to take those steps, you feel like you have to recognize that.
[Break.]
AL: This conversation about how the report’s authors defined riots versus protests, but more broadly about how we define violence in terms of physical violence against other people versus destruction of property, let’s say. This has colored the debates over the anti-ICE protests and going back to 2020, going back decades further to the civil rights movement.
One argument being: How can you police the response to institutional violence being waged by the government? The other being, if you do something like light a cop car on fire, you’re ruining the optics for everyone else — creating this kind of false binary between nonviolent or violent protests. You talked about the suppression of one part of the report that characterized the unrest, including the act the commission considered violent as an expression of political power. Can you talk about what the controversy was there?
RL: President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission at the end of July 1967 to investigate why there had been more than 150 riots in the U.S. that year. And what the social scientists concluded was that there was this political bent to the rioting.
People who were rioting weren’t just letting off steam. They were concerned that they had no future. They had a sense that they had no power. And they put that together in a report and delivered it in December of 1967. The report was written by some very, very capable individuals, but they will openly admit they were sort of inexperienced at that point in their career, and they had just either gotten their PhDs or they had just begun teaching at colleges and they were teaching at places like Harvard. So these were very well respected, accomplished individuals.
Their writing tended to reflect their youthful exuberance, as one of them would say, and also the times. There was a lot of “the power of the people” kind of statement in their draft study. And when the senior staff read this, it was like: Nope, can’t do it. It’s just not working.
As one of the senior staff members told me — first of all, he wished it had been better edited. If it had been better edited and some of the rhetoric had been toned down, it would’ve been a much easier fit. Staff members told me, though, we were already going out on a limb saying that it was racism that was causing the rioting.
No other riot report in the 20th century had made that conclusion before. It had always been the riffraff. And so now we’re blaming white society and white institutions. We felt like we couldn’t go any further and actually say this was a political protest because then it would look like the country was falling apart
AL: Even if it was true. I mean, what do you say to people who say, “Who cares if people are being turned off?” Who don’t think that it should be a primary concern.
RL: Words do matter. They really, really do. And I was lucky enough to be a part of some key decision making processes with our county commissioners and got to administer a lot of the major types of programs that the Kerner Report recommended.
And it doesn’t take very long to realize words do matter. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a public or a private discussion over a contract, over a program, over a proposed statute or ordinance, and it boils down to words. We have to be so mindful of when we’re having a conversation about any difficult topic, but especially something like race right now. You cannot be afraid to say the truth, but you need to make sure that you say it in a very straightforward manner.
“If you look at the composition of the commission, you never would’ve thought they would’ve been a group that would’ve unanimously concluded that the rioting was a result of white racism. ”
I go back to one of the things that we can learn from the Kerner Report and the commission that wrote it is: These 11 individuals had their disagreements. And if you look at the composition of the commission, you never would’ve thought they would’ve been a group that would’ve unanimously concluded that the rioting was a result of white racism. You had a white southern police chief. You had a small town Republican congressman from Ohio who never voted for any of the Great Society’s social legislation and only had about two percent of his district being Black. He was on the commission. You had a senator from Oklahoma. Can you imagine a senator from Oklahoma today taking any progressive stance?
You had a self-made millionaire from West Texas who believed in the bootstrap mentality as much as he believed in the American flag and apple pie. Yet you had that kind of group of individuals who came together and somehow crafted, I think, the most boldly, starkly worded report on race in our nation’s history.
And one of the ways they did that is the way they communicated with each other. They had the utmost respect for each other. They had their disagreements and they would pound the table, but they didn’t say, “well, you’re a racist.” And the other one didn’t respond by saying, “you’re woke” or “you’re a socialist.”
“They chose to emphasize and focus on what they had in common and then work from there.”
And what they chose to do is they chose to emphasize and focus on what they had in common and then work from there. And when they did that, they found that, again not surprisingly words mattered. That it was maybe only a difference in tone or emphasis that they had, and I think that’s one of the things we have to do here now [when] talking about race.
AL: The bipartisan consensus that you’re talking about, a big part of this, at least in the book, is possible because these commission members actually visited the cities.
RL: Yes.
AL: You kind of alluded to this, but could something like that ever happen today? Like, do members of Congress supporting these ICE raids just need to visit other cities? Are we past that point and this is just purely political?
RL: All movements — all changes in the wind — start at an individual level and it only takes one. And when you have — and we’ll use the Senate as an example — when you have such an even split between Democrats and Republicans, all it takes is a handful on either side to change the outcome and the same thing would happen in the House as well. So yeah, that’s a very good idea.
AL: You also dig into the influence of riot theory on the writing of the report among other disciplines in the social sciences. The report went out of its way to avoid the appearance that it was condoning the unrest or any form of destruction of property, emphasized support for “law and order,” and avoided saying the riots were rational or justifiable, even though that belief was shared by some of the members.
The window for acceptable forms of protests — the scale from like riot to protest has in many ways closed significantly since 1967. Like I just think of campus protests against the genocide in Gaza, the police response to protests in 2020. What forms of civil disobedience or protest does that leave us with?
RL: That’s the hard part about protests in general. And when you go back and you look at, for instance, the movements that were done in the ’60s with the Freedom Riders in Martin Luther King’s march and the March on Washington, how meticulously planned they all were, and oftentimes they were confronted with extreme violence, yet they kept their composure.
If you’re going to have a demonstration, it needs to be very well planned and orchestrated and led like any organization, like any movement, so that it doesn’t go off in the wrong direction. But that’s— it’s easier to say than to do, I think.
AL: I really wanted to talk about this because I think this is one of the most important links to what we’re seeing today.
You discussed the debate around the chapter in the report on Black history in America as being both a preview and a guide to the hysteria over critical race theory and attacks on DEI. How are they related?
RL: The commission realized early on that to be able to really reach America and bring about the change that it thought it was needed, that it was going to have to explain how far reaching discrimination had been.
So they went back and they commissioned several of the country’s leading American historians. One of which was John Hope Franklin, who’s regarded as perhaps the most preeminent African American historian of our time. And they asked them to put together this chapter on African American history and really what that was in this case was to what extent discrimination had existed and what had been done to perpetuate it and continue it, and what efforts had been made to try to combat it during the time. And that became a key chapter.
Now when the commission staff presented the first draft of that chapter to the commission, you got a lot of the reactions that you get today when talking about critical race theory. You had comments about, “How can you say this about Abraham Lincoln? He’s one of the greatest presidents we ever had” and “I don’t think we’re giving whites enough credit in the abolitionist movement” and “This part of the chapter reads like some sort of political manifesto.” And again, it looked like you were listening in on some school board meeting in some city somewhere.
The fact though, that they were able to work through those comments and concerns, just like the ones we hear right now, gives me hope that if people have the opportunity to sit down and have a mature conversation about what the facts are and how you can present it. That you can present the part of our history that makes us uncomfortable. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we hate our country, and it doesn’t mean that we’re embarrassed to be Americans, but it’s something that we can acknowledge that’s who we were once, but that’s not who we are now.
AL: I think one of the differences, at least, I mean I wasn’t alive in 1967, but we’re saying critical race theory, but really we’re using the language of the people who are claiming that anything that talks about racism or Black history is critical race theory — using it as a stand-in to set the levels that this is something that we should be worried about. It’s concerning that 58 years later we’re still having the conversations, but there’s maybe less good faith in the room.
RL: Exactly.
AL: I mean, I don’t know how to square that.
RL: In many respects, what we’re hearing today has always been there, or was there even in the ’60s. Now there’s more of a national effort to point out these incidents and turn it into more of a protest movement against, as you said, the teaching of anything having to do with African American history.
AL: The report made a number of recommendations, several of which it followed through on. Can you tell us what it would look like today in America if we’d followed through on more of those recommendations?
RL: Well, if you look at a lot of the accounts written about the report since 1968, everyone laments that it never really was implemented and it perhaps wasn’t implemented at a pace and at a scale that the commission desired.
But when you go down through the checklist and you made a reference that there’s almost hundreds of recommendations that it made from the national level to the local level, to the private sector, a great many of them were implemented and they were substantial recommendations. They weren’t minor details. They were major reforms.
Now, one of the things that I think a lot of us forget, myself included, until I had one of the commission staff members point this out to me is that the world’s not static. And that it’s always changing, and that even in 1968 when the report was released, this individual told me he believed the report had already been overcome by events that were occurring.
A month after the report was released, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Two months after that, Robert Kennedy was killed. So after that the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. [At] the end of that month, you had the riot at the Chicago National Democratic Convention. And that was just for one year.
And when you think about what the next decade was, where you still had the Vietnam War, then you had Watergate, then you had the energy crisis and AIDS and homelessness, so many other things began competing for our national focus. It’s hard to say, “What would the world be like if Kerner had been more vigorously enacted the first year or two?”
AL: All of those issues that sort of, I mean, not every single one, but like homelessness, the housing crisis, everything — all of these things are also tied.
RL: Yes. And, and again, that’s what makes this so difficult sometimes, is that one problem it’s not just isolated — it’s in conjunction with so many other things.
AL: Right.
RL: You know, it’s not just lack of education, it’s lack of health care, it’s lack of adequate housing.
AL: Right.
RL: Just go on down the list.
AL: Thank you for joining us on the Intercept Briefing, Rick.
RL: Thank you for having me. As we mentioned at the very beginning, the report is still so relevant and the last few months have pointed that out. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what’s happening now and why.
AL: That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.
We want to hear from you.
Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That’s 530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.
This episode was produced by Truc Nguyen. Laura Flynn is our Supervising Producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow. And transcript by Anya Mehta.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us, and better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us.
Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.
Thanks for listening.
The post Decades of Denial: Policing’s Past Haunts the Present appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 Aug 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:34 am UTC
Just as predicted, the big Lough has seen the return of the dreaded Blue-Green Algae. The usual keyboard warriors are outraged with plenty of anger and blame but are sharing little in terms of any realistic solutions or suggested ways forward and many of those in power who indicated that they will “do whatever it takes to solve the problem” have moved on to the next crisis.
In the meantime, the DAERA Minister has been working tirelessly to introduce a new Nutrient Action Plan programme to manage and restrict the excessive amount of nutrients coming from the farming sector upstream in the catchment, one of the main causes of the algal bloom. However, this is proving difficult, with the combined efforts of the two main political parties to try and limit pollution fines and water down the effective farm policy changes that are needed.
Things have gotten even worse in the fishing sector, with the Lough Neagh eel fishing stopped for the rest of the season and the livelihoods of those in the eel fishing sector now in deep trouble. Could this possibly be the end to an industry that has been operating on the Lough for over 6000 years? We have the calls from some politicians that some emergency fund needs to be provided to the fishermen, yet four weeks earlier, the same people stood shoulder to shoulder with the UFU, stymying efforts to limit the nutrient overflow, which has partly contributed to the fishing crisis in the first place.
The untold story of the huge loss of birdlife and important habitats around the Lough has also continued, with vast amounts of illegal peat being extracted from the southern shoreline and only four breeding pairs of curlews identified this year, more or less beside the sites of huge illegal extraction. So, it looks like the curlew is going the same way as the corncrake, not only disappearing from the Lough but from maybe the whole of Ireland before too long.
But it is not all doom and gloom. Some new funding has been allocated to bodies such as the RSPB from the Special European Union Programmes Body to try and save wetland birds and restore bogs throughout the North and also early discussions with the Southern government are taking place to examine funding opportunities to improve water quality and biodiversity throughout the Lough’s massive river catchment. Although, it is interesting to note that most of this potential funding is from sources outside the UK and Northern Ireland.
Last year’s algal bloom was not as widespread as 2023, so let us hope this summer’s is less severe again. We must all continue to persuade everyone of our politicians to refocus on the Lough again, to stop the algae altogether, and help continue to restore one of our most precious landscapes.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:30 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:20 am UTC
Comment It is July 2015. Microsoft has just released Windows 10. Developers, weary from the false trail of Windows 8 and being urged to make "Metro style" apps, are now being pitched a new vision from Microsoft: the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:15 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: World | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:00 am UTC
Data from ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission can be used to estimate how much carbon is stored in forests – and a study has improved our understanding of how reliable this proxy is and how long-term datasets from SMOS can help us to monitor this valuable resource.
Source: ESA Top News | 1 Aug 2025 | 9:00 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:43 am UTC
Torrential rain batters Beijing and surrounding areas, while intense heat lingers in parts of Scandinavia
At least 70 people have died in northern China after another bout of torrential rain triggered flooding, the latest in a series of extreme rainfall events in recent months. Between 23 and 29 July, Beijing and its surrounding areas recorded an average of 166mm, equivalent to the monthly norm.
The suburban district of Miyun received the highest amount of rainfall, with 543mm recorded, equivalent to the region’s annual average. The death toll included 31 people in a Miyun care home, 10 who were swept away in a minibus in Shangxi province, and eight people in a landslide in the city of Chengde.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:20 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:09 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 1 Aug 2025 | 8:00 am UTC
Source: ESA Top News | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:52 am UTC
On Call Mornings are hard, and Friday mornings doubly so. Which is why The Register gives readers a little kick along on the last day of the working week in the form of a new installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that tells your tales of tech support treachery and triumph.…
Source: The Register | 1 Aug 2025 | 7:28 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Aug 2025 | 6:58 am UTC
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