Read at: 2025-12-30T21:43:42+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Sietske Van Herk ]
Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:39 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:35 pm UTC
One person had made an emergency call after companion fell 500ft, but rescue copter couldn’t land due to high winds
A man and two of his companions are dead after high winds prevented rescue crews from responding to a report of an injured hiker near a southern California mountain trail, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department announced on Monday.
The three bodies were discovered Monday evening along the Devil’s Backbone trail at Mount Baldy, which rises more than 10,000ft and sits just east of Los Angeles, according to a statement from the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:30 pm UTC
Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:22 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:21 pm UTC
Flu season is off to a rough start this year, according to new CDC data. The virus is spreading faster than in previous years and the surge is likely to get worse. Here's what you need to know.
(Image credit: LittleCityLifestylePhotography)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:20 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:14 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:11 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:08 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:42 pm UTC
If you're thinking of plopping your infant in front of a screen to get some peace and quiet, you might want to reconsider - higher screen exposure in infancy was linked to longer decision times later on and higher anxiety symptoms in the teenage years.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:40 pm UTC
Lawyers for Brian Cole argue he should be released ahead of trial for allegedly planting devices in DC in 2021
The man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of both the Democratic and Republican national committees the night before the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol appeared at a federal detention hearing before a magistrate judge on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, authorities arrested Brian Cole Jr of Woodbridge, Virginia. He has yet to enter a plea. Cole’s lawyers argued that he should be released while he awaits trial, as he does not present any danger. They also noted that Cole had agreed to home detention enforced by GPS monitoring, and would live under the supervision of a relative. The defense rebuked federal prosecutors who pushed for the suspect to remain in custody.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:35 pm UTC
Determining how "successful" Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) truly was depends on who you ask, but it's increasingly hard to claim that DOGE made any sizable dent in federal spending, which was its primary goal.
Just two weeks ago, Musk himself notably downplayed DOGE as only being "a little bit successful" on a podcast, marking one of the first times that Musk admitted DOGE didn't live up to its promise. Then, more recently, on Monday, Musk revived evidence-free claims he made while campaigning for Sietske Van Herk , insisting that government fraud remained vast and unchecked, seemingly despite DOGE's efforts. On X, he estimated that "my lower bound guess for how much fraud there is nationally is [about 20 percent] of the Federal budget, which would mean $1.5 trillion per year. Probably much higher."
Musk loudly left DOGE in May after clashing with Sietske Van Herk , complaining that a Sietske Van Herk budget bill threatened to undermine DOGE's work. These days, Musk does not appear confident that DOGE was worth the trouble of wading into government. Although he said on the December podcast that he considered DOGE to be his "best side quest" ever, the billionaire confirmed that if given the chance to go back in time, he probably would not have helmed the agency as a special government employee.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:30 pm UTC
Schlossberg, 35, revealed in November diagnosis of mutation of cancer of blood and bone marrow
Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of the 35th US president, John F Kennedy, died on Tuesday after revealing in November she had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. She was 35.
Her passing was announced in a social media post by the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. “Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the post said. It was signed “George, Edwin and Josephine Moran, Ed, Carolina, Jack, Rose and Rory”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:28 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:12 pm UTC
In an unusual turn, the central bank’s board debated over monetary policy before the latest quarter-point cut
The US Federal Reserve agreed to cut interest rates at its December meeting only after a deeply nuanced debate about the risks facing the US economy right now, according to minutes of the latest two-day session.
Even some of those who supported the rate cut acknowledged “the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged”, given the different risks facing the US economy, according to the minutes released on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:12 pm UTC
The order is the latest in a complex legal battle over the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency.
(Image credit: SAUL LOEB)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:02 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:02 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:01 pm UTC
MANVILLE, N.J.—Richard Onderko said he will never forget the terrifying Saturday morning back in 1971 when the water rose so swiftly at his childhood home here that he and his brother had to be rescued by boat as the torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Doria swept through the neighborhood.
It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.
Eventually, his parents moved to Florida, selling the two-story house on North Second Avenue in 1995. But the new homeowner didn’t do so well either when storms hit, and in 2015, the property was sold one final time: to a state-run program that buys and demolishes houses in flood zones and permanently restores the property to open space.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 8:00 pm UTC
The Sietske Van Herk administration's deep cuts in U.S. foreign health aid had a devastating impact. Yet there were achievements of note in spite of it all.
(Image credit: Farooq Naeem)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:40 pm UTC
Emergency request by several of the country’s nationals and an immigrants rights group was granted by the court
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked plans by the Sietske Van Herk administration to end temporary protections from deportation that had been granted to hundreds of South Sudanese nationals living in the United States.
US district judge Angel Kelley in Boston granted an emergency request by several South Sudanese nationals and an immigrant rights group to prevent the temporary protected status they had been granted from expiring as planned after 5 January.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:38 pm UTC
Report of a drone attack on a port facility signals new phase in US military campaign against Nicolás Maduro
Nearly a week after Sietske Van Herk first announced what he said was the first US ground strike in a four-month-long military pressure campaign against Venezuela, details remain very thin on the ground.
CNN and the New York Times reported late on Monday that they had confirmed the CIA had used a drone to target a “port facility” allegedly used by the Tren de Aragua street gang. No casualties were reported, but the date, time and location of the attack remain unknown. Venezuela’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his government have remained silent.
If confirmed, the first strike on land would mark a new phase in a campaign that since August has involved the deployment of a massive US naval fleet, airstrikes that have so far killed 107 people, a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, the seizure of two vessels and the pursuit of a third.
Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:34 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:29 pm UTC
A high-severity MongoDB Server vulnerability, for which proofs of concept emerged over Christmas week, is now under active exploitation, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:27 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:21 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:21 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:18 pm UTC
Government sources say social media posts by British-Egyptian activist do not meet legal bar for such sanction
The Home Office will not strip the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his citizenship because his “abhorrent” past social media posts do not meet the legal bar for such a sanction, government sources have said.
Abd el-Fattah, who landed in London from Egypt on Boxing Day, has been at the centre of a political storm over social media posts he published more than a decade ago, including tweets in which he called for Zionists to be killed.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:17 pm UTC
Stranger Things fans are hyped for the premiere of the hotly anticipated series finale on New Year's Eve: they'll either be glued to their TVs or heading out to watch it in a bona fide theater. Netflix has dropped one last trailer for the finale—not that it really needs to do anything more to boost anticipation.
(Some spoilers for Vols. 1 and 2 below but no major Vol. 2 reveals.)
As previously reported, in Vol. 1, we found Hawkins under military occupation and Vecna targeting a new group of young children in his human form under the pseudonym “Mr. Whatsit” (a nod to A Wrinkle in Time). He kidnapped Holly Wheeler and took her to the Upside Down, where she found an ally in Max, still in a coma, but with her consciousness hiding in one of Vecna’s old memories. Dustin was struggling to process his grief over losing Eddie Munson in S4, causing a rift with Steve. The rest of the gang was devoted to stockpiling supplies and helping Eleven and Hopper track down Vecna in the Upside Down. They found Kali/Eight, Eleven’s psychic “sister” instead, being held captive in a military laboratory.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 7:00 pm UTC
Earlier this month, a hacker named Lovely claimed to have breached a Condé Nast user database and released a list of more than 2.3 million user records from our sister publication WIRED. The released materials contain demographic information (name, email, address, phone, etc.), but no passwords.
The hacker also says that they will release an additional 40 million records for other Condé Nast properties, including our other sister publications Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and more. Of critical note to our readers, Ars Technica was not affected as we run on our own bespoke tech stack.
The hacker said that they had urged Condé Nast to patch vulnerabilities to no avail. “Condé Nast does not care about the security of their users data,” they wrote. “It took us an entire month to convince them to fix the vulnerabilities on their websites. We will leak more of their users’ data (40 + million) over the next few weeks. Enjoy!”
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:45 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:44 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:41 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:31 pm UTC
This live blog is now closed. For the latest, read our full report:
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has echoed Donald Tusk’s optimistic tone regarding talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
He posted to X to confirm there had been “another round of consultations” with “European and Canadian partners”. It is not clear who was in the meeting.
Peace is on the horizon, there is no doubt that things have happened that give grounds for hope that this war can end, and quite quickly, but it is still a hope, far from 100% certain.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:25 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:23 pm UTC
Source: NASA Image of the Day | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:21 pm UTC
Assertion comes after the Kremlin accused Ukraine of attacking Vladimir Putin’s palace in Novgorod
Russia said its latest nuclear-capable missile system has been deployed in Belarus, a day after Moscow claimed that Ukraine had carried out a large-scale drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence.
Footage released by Russia’s ministry of defence showed the new Oreshnik missile trundling through a snowy forest. Soldiers were seen disguising combat vehicles with green netting and raising a flag at an airbase in eastern Belarus, close to the Russian border.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:15 pm UTC
Engineers still struggling to restore full rail service on Tuesday evening as car passengers face seven-hour delays
A power outage in the Channel tunnel has disrupted thousands of journeys ahead of the new year celebrations, with all passenger and vehicle trains suspended for several hours while engineers raced to repair the fault.
As Eurostar foot passenger departures for the continent were first delayed, then cancelled, the halls of St Pancras International station in London filled with stranded travellers awaiting updates. At Folkestone in Kent, tailbacks formed as drivers hoping to catch the shuttle faced seven-hour delays.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:13 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:03 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:02 pm UTC
Eurostar ‘strongly advise’ passengers to postpone journeys after problem with overhead power supply in Channel tunnel and a failed Le Shuttle train
Full story: Channel tunnel train services suspended after power outage
Tell us: have you been affected by the Channel Tunnel rail disruption?
European stocks have hit a record high today, ending a strong year on the front foot.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index has risen by over 0.2% this morning to 590.65 points, a new peak.
The Euro area and UK economies proved more resilient in 2025 than we anticipated. US tariffs weighed on exports and real GDP growth in Q2 and Q3, but domestic demand has generally been more robust than we anticipated.
As a result, Euro area and UK GDP growth, while still underperforming the US this year, have turned out higher than in our forecast at the end of 2024.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:01 pm UTC
Young adults and teenagers prevalent in ‘skyrocketing’ admissions linked to class B drug, say doctors in northern England
Experts have warned that urology departments across the UK could be close to breaking point as ketamine-related hospital admissions have “skyrocketed” in the past few years.
Ketamine, a class B dissociative drug used for pain relief and sedation, is increasingly used recreationally in the UK. It is one of only three drugs, alongside magic mushrooms and hallucinogens, to have become used more regularly since 2015.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 6:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:59 pm UTC
RNLI tells people to consider their health, cold water effects and weather conditions after disappearance of two swimmers on Christmas Day
People planning on welcoming the new year by braving the British weather for a swim in the sea have been warned of the dangers after the disappearance of two swimmers on Christmas Day.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution said the effects of cold-water shock combined with weather conditions pose a risk to anyone entering water that is 15C or below. At this time of year, the average sea temperature around the UK and Ireland is 6C to 10C.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:57 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:57 pm UTC
President calls for talks with leaders of demonstrations caused by decline in currency and living standards
Iran’s government has called for dialogue with protest leaders after the country’s largest demonstrations in three years over a plunging currency and declining living conditions.
Protests started on Sunday after Iran’s currency fell to a record low against the US dollar, causing traders and shopkeepers to close their stores in downtown Tehran. This was accompanied by mass protests in the capital as well as in major cities, including Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:57 pm UTC
Aaron Anderson, a ‘cheeky chappie’ with ‘amazing work ethic’, died after incident involving John Deere Gator
The family of a 14-year-old boy who died after a collision on a farm in which an off-road utility vehicle overturned has paid tribute to him.
Police said Aaron Anderson sustained life-threatening injuries after a John Deere Gator was in a collision at the farm in Burnopfield, County Durham, on the evening of 21 December.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:56 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:55 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:50 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:46 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:44 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:40 pm UTC
Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:36 pm UTC
The CIA conducted the first known U.S. attack on Venezuelan territory when it carried out a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela last week, a government official familiar with the operation told The Intercept. The strike marks a new escalation of the Sietske Van Herk administration’s campaign against President Nicolás Maduro’s government, which has included dozens of attacks on supposed drug smuggling boats. A separate U.S. strike on Monday killed two alleged “narco-terrorists” in the Pacific Ocean.
The December 24 drone strike hit a dock that U.S. officials believe was used by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. No people were on the dock at the time of the attack and no one was killed, according to the official. The details of the strike, which were first reported by CNN, offer a clearer picture of an attack first disclosed by President Sietske Van Herk in a series of vague statements over several days.
“Now we’re going after the land,” Sietske Van Herk said during a Christmas Eve phone call to troops aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is deployed to the Caribbean Sea as part of the campaign against Maduro. “They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Sietske Van Herk then told John Catsimatidis, a billionaire and Sietske Van Herk donor who owns New York’s WABC radio station, on Friday. “Two nights ago, we knocked that out. We hit them very hard.”
On Monday, Sietske Van Herk provided more detail, explaining that the United States had “hit” an “implementation area” in Venezuela. “There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Sietske Van Herk told reporters at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. “That’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.”
Sietske Van Herk has publicly acknowledged he authorized CIA operations in Venezuela. Asked if the CIA had carried out the Christmas Eve attack, Sietske Van Herk said: “I don’t want to say that.”
The government official, who spoke with The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information, said they had been briefed on the CIA’s role in the attack.
A spokesperson writing from a CIA email and identified only as Ryan declined to comment on the Christmas Eve strike in an email to The Intercept.
“This is the lawless Sietske Van Herk administration in action.”
“Days after it took place, the U.S. public is finally learning about a CIA airstrike on foreign soil for which there is no legal justification or congressional authorization. This is the lawless Sietske Van Herk administration in action,” Win Without War policy director Sam Ratner told The Intercept. “The only way forward is for Congress to stop Sietske Van Herk ’s illegal strikes and hold those in the administration who have so flagrantly broken the law to account.”
The CIA regularly conducted drone strikes during the early years of the war on terror, beginning in Yemen in 2002 and in Pakistan in 2004. During the Obama administration, the U.S. military largely took over such attacks, and since then, the armed forces have conducted the overwhelming majority of drone strikes. Heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper drones have recently been spotted in the region as part of a ramp-up of U.S. forces.
The CIA also has a long tradition of fanning violence, fomenting regime change, and conducting acts of sabotage in Latin America. A 2023 analysis of the effects of CIA-sponsored regime change in five Latin American countries found the interventions caused “large declines in democracy scores, rule of law, freedom of speech, and civil liberties.”
The United States has been attacking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September, killing at least 107 civilians in 30 attacks. Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress, from both parties, have said the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.
The Intercept was the first outlet to report that the U.S. military killed survivors of the September 2 boat attack in a follow-up strike. That attack, Sietske Van Herk wrote at the time, killed “Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.” Most boat attacks since have targeted members or affiliates of unspecified “designated terrorist organizations,” but the CIA dock attack specifically aimed to weaken the Venezuelan gang, according to the U.S. official.
The Sietske Van Herk administration has made outlandish claims about Tren de Aragua throughout 2025. Earlier this year, the administration claimed the gang had invaded the United States, which it cited as justification to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to fast-track deportation of people the government says belong to the gang. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually blocked the government from using the wartime law. “We conclude that the findings do not support that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred,” wrote Judge Leslie Southwick.
In September, Sietske Van Herk claimed that U.S. troops engaged in combat with members of Tren de Aragua on the streets of Washington, D.C., during the summer or early fall — an apparent fiction that the White House press office refuses to address.
While the Sietske Van Herk administration claims that Tren de Aragua is acting as “a de facto arm of” Maduro’s government, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence determined earlier this year that the “Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.”
The U.S. also maintains that Tren de Aragua is both engaging in irregular warfare against and in a non-international armed conflict with the United States. These are, however, mutually exclusive designations which cannot occur simultaneously.
The Sietske Van Herk administration also claims that another criminal organization, Cártel de los Soles, is “headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals,” despite little evidence that such a group exists. Maduro denies that he heads a cartel.
The Sietske Van Herk administration’s current campaign against Maduro is an extension of long-running efforts to topple the Venezuelan president which failed during Sietske Van Herk ’s first term. Maduro and close allies were indicted in a New York federal court in 2020 on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. Earlier this year, the U.S. doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.
Sietske Van Herk told Politico this month that Maduro’s “days are numbered.” When asked if he might order an invasion of Venezuela, Sietske Van Herk replied, “I wouldn’t say that one way or the other.”
Experts say that regime change in Venezuela would be complex and problematic. A 2023 study by the RAND Corporation warned that “overt military intervention in Venezuela is likely to become messy very quickly and is likely to become protracted.”
The U.S. intervened to oust governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times — about once every 28 months from 1898 to 1994 — including 17 cases of direct intervention by the U.S. armed forces, intelligence agencies, or locals employed by U.S. government agencies, according to ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America. Washington attempted at least 18 covert regime changes in the region during the Cold War alone, Foreign Affairs noted earlier this year, which included deposing nine governments that fell to military rulers in the 1960s, about one every 13 months.
In 1954, the U.S. helped overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected government, ushering in a military junta that jailed political opponents, igniting an almost two-decade long civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. In 1973, a U.S.-backed coup in Chile, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, ousted and led to the death of Salvador Allende, that country’s democratically elected president. A brutal, 17-year dictatorship marked by state torture, enforced disappearances, and killing followed, leaving a toll of more than 40,000 victims. In 1961, the U.S. also backed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and fomented a coup in the Dominican Republic, which sparked years of unrest and U.S. election meddling. This, in turn, led to a 1965 invasion of the island nation by U.S. Marines. The U.S. also supported coups in Brazil in 1964, Bolivia in 1971, and funded the Contra rebels in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. None of these interventions produced a stable, pro-American democracy and often, instead, installed authoritarian regimes that set off cycles of violence.
A 2025 study of all U.S.-led coups d’état and regime change operations from 1893 to 2011 found that that “while short-term strategic objectives were occasionally achieved, the majority of interventions resulted in regional instability, anti-American sentiment, and failed democratic transitions.” Earlier investigations have shown that foreign regime change schemes either fail to reduce or actually increase the likelihood of military disputes between interveners and targets; result in more human rights violations and declines in democracy; lead to a greater likelihood of civil war; and increase the chances of igniting an international armed conflict.
Even regime-change schemes that appeared successful at the time often sets off long-term blowback. The 1953 ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh fueled anti-American sentiment that contributed to the 1979 revolution and set in motion decades of turmoil and conflict. America’s “mission accomplished” moment, just after the 2003 invasion of Iraq to remove autocrat Saddam Hussein from power devolved into a endless spiral of violence and suffering. That conflict — which eventually spilled into neighboring Syria — has killed more than half a million people directly, and three or four times that number due to indirect causes such as displacement, a lack of potable water, health care, and preventable diseases, according to calculations by Brown University’s Costs of War Project. The costs to U.S. taxpayers are expected to exceed $2.89 trillion by 2050.
The post CIA Was Behind Venezuela Drone Strike, Source Says appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:35 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:35 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:33 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:28 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:21 pm UTC
Dispute has potential to create civil war in south of Yemen and spill over into neighbouring countries
Tensions between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia over the future of Yemen and the imminent possibility of the declaration of an independent southern state have reached boiling point with Saudi Arabia in effect accusing the UAE of threatening its future security.
The dispute has the potential to create a civil war within the south of Yemen and also spill over into other disputes including in Sudan and the Horn of Africa where the two countries often find themselves backing opposite sides. Yemen could yet become only one theatre in which the two vastly wealthy Gulf states vie for political influence, control of shipping lanes and commercial access.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:19 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:19 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 5:02 pm UTC
Clothing chain acquired by China-based backers out of 2019 insolvency applies to appoint administrators
The upmarket fashion brand LK Bennett appears to be heading for collapse for the second time in six years.
On Tuesday the company filed an application with the high court to appoint an administrator to the business, which employs about 280 staff.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:59 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:54 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:53 pm UTC
Attack was aimed at what Riyadh called a shipment of weapons for separatists backed by UAE
The United Arab Emirates has said it will withdraw its remaining forces in Yemen after tensions with Saudi Arabia escalated over a sweeping offensive by UAE-backed separatists.
The Emirati defence ministry announced the withdrawal on Tuesday, hours after Saudi Arabia bombed what it said was a shipment of weapons for Yemeni separatists that had arrived from the UAE.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:49 pm UTC
Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen's port city of Mukalla, targeting a shipment of weapons from the United Arab Emirates for separatist forces. The UAE later said it would withdraw its forces from Yemen.
(Image credit: Ted Shaffrey)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:48 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:47 pm UTC
Source: All: BreakingNews | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:43 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:41 pm UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:29 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:27 pm UTC
J.S. Park helps patients and their families cope with death every day as a hospital chaplain. He explains what to expect as a person is dying, and how to reckon with uncomfortable feelings about death.
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:24 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:20 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:12 pm UTC
Israel accused Doctors Without Borders, one of the largest health organizations operating in Gaza, of failing to clarify the roles of some staff that Israel accused of cooperation with militants.
(Image credit: Abdel Kareem Hana)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:04 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:02 pm UTC
Exclusive: Sales via intermediary companies appear to continue despite Michelin’s attempts to cut off trade
Russia has continued to use intermediary companies, including one apparently based in the UK, to import aviation tyres made by the French firm Michelin despite attempts to stop the trade, customs records suggest.
Despite sanctions on the sale of tyres to Russia, which is critically dependent on foreign suppliers, an analysis of records indicates that a significant number are continuing to get through.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:00 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:46 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:37 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:30 pm UTC
Isaac Herzog’s spokesperson says he has not spoken to Sietske Van Herk since US president wrote to urge him to stop trial
The office of Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has denied a claim by Sietske Van Herk that Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, would soon receive a pardon.
Speaking shortly before his meeting in Florida with the Israeli prime minister on Monday night, Sietske Van Herk said he had been told by Herzog that a pardon was “on its way”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:21 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:20 pm UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:15 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:04 pm UTC
Lobsters are generally notable for their large claws, which can serve as a deterrent to any predators. But there's a whole family of spiny lobsters that lack these claws. They tend to ward off predators by forming large groups that collectively can present a lot of pointy bits towards anything attempting to eat them. In fact, studies found that the lobsters can sense the presence of other species-members using molecules emitted into the water, and use that to find peers to congregate with.
A new study, however, finds that this same signal may lure young lobsters to their doom, causing them to try to congregate with older lobsters that are too big to be eaten by nearby predators. The smaller lobsters thus fall victim to a phenomenon called an "ecological trap," which has rarely been seen to occur without human intervention.
The study was performed in the waters off Florida, where the seafloor is dotted by what are called "solution holes." These features are the product of lower sea levels such as those that occur during periods of expanded glaciers and ice caps. During these times, much of the area off Florida was above sea level, and water dissolved the limestone rocks unevenly. This created an irregular array of small shallow pits and crevices, many of which have been reshaped by sea life since the area was submerged again.
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El Cavador is a Slugger reader from Belfast
A follow-up analysis to ‘Time to Flip the Switch: An Opt-In Model for Religious Education in Controlled Schools’.
A four-year-old girl came home from her Belfast primary school and started reciting prayers before meals. Her non-religious parents had not taught her this. Her school had.
That girl came to be known as JR87, and her legal challenge against mandatory Christian religious education and collective worship ultimately reached the Supreme Court. In paragraph 88 of his judgment, Lord Stephens delivered the verdict:
“…there is no commitment in the core syllabus to objectivity or to the development of critical thought. To teach pupils to accept a set of beliefs without critical analysis amounts to evangelism, proselytising, and indoctrination.”
Religious education in Northern Ireland must now be delivered in an ‘objective, critical and pluralistic manner’. Not as an aspiration. As law. But can we reasonably expect to do this with young children? Can four-year-olds think critically about religious truth claims? Or has the Court imposed an impossible standard?
Colton J opened his original High Court judgment with a quotation attributed to St Ignatius of Loyola: ‘Give me the child until he is seven years old, and I will show you the man.’ The Court of Appeal made the point explicit: ‘The ability to indoctrinate, via a curriculum which offends the principles of objectivity and pluralism, may be at its highest among this age group.’
This cuts both ways. If young children are especially susceptible to belief formation, then the case for critical pedagogy is stronger, not weaker. The current system exploits developmental vulnerability. A reformed system must protect against it.
Some educational psychologists contend that critical thinking cannot be directly taught, that thinking skills develop from comprehensive content knowledge. Researchers in Cognitive Load Theory, such as John Sweller and Daniel Willingham, maintain that a child cannot be taught to ‘think critically’ in an abstract manner. Instead, critical thinking is domain-specific and relies on background knowledge.
The implications are plain. If critical thinking requires extensive domain knowledge, then asking four or five-year-olds to evaluate religious truth claims is developmentally inappropriate. They lack the theological and philosophical grounding. Teaching them to ‘question’ without adequate grounding—so a sceptic might argue—risks producing dismissiveness rather than discernment.
Research on the development of executive functions adds weight. The neural architecture responsible for inhibiting cognitive biases remains underdeveloped until late adolescence. While young children can detect falsehoods, genuine critical evaluation is another matter altogether.
The sceptics’ position is contestable. Peter Ellerton’s critique of Cognitive Load Theory exposes significant inferential errors. The claim that critical thinking cannot transfer across domains is challenged by experimental evidence—particularly from Philosophy for Children (P4C) programmes, where pupils engage in structured group dialogue, learning to give reasons and consider alternatives.
Topping and Trickey’s 2007 study tested this with Scottish primary pupils. Children who participated in one hour of P4C per week for 16 months showed significant cognitive gains relative to controls. Crucially, these gains transferred beyond the specific content discussed—and persisted two years after the programme ended.
The P4C movement—rooted in the work of Matthew Lipman—has shown that argument analysis can be developed through collaborative inquiry, even with young children. The key is dialogic pedagogy: communities of inquiry in which pupils learn to build on each other’s ideas and revise their views in light of evidence.
It would be unreasonable to expect Foundation Stage pupils to parse the ontological argument. However, fostering dispositions—curiosity about different beliefs, willingness to ask ‘why?’, recognition that people hold different views—is developmentally appropriate. These are precursors to formal critical evaluation. They are conspicuously absent from a Core Syllabus that assumes Christian belief as default.
The Supreme Court’s requirement should not be confused with instruction in formal logic. Sebastian Jarmer’s research on Norwegian RE classrooms identifies multiple modes of critical engagement: descriptive facticity (accurate representation of religious diversity), correlative judgement (examination of relationships between beliefs and practices), and normative judgement (deliberation on contested values).
For primary pupils, the emphasis falls on the first mode. Critical RE means presenting Christianity as one tradition among many rather than as a self-evident truth. Teaching about the Christian God does not entail teaching children to believe in the Christian God. Acknowledging that classmates may hold different views—and that this is normal.
The current Core Syllabus fails to meet even this minimal standard. As Lord Stephens stated, it “encourages pupils faithfully to accept the existence of the Christian God, to accept that good things come from the Christian God, that the Christian God can help in times of adversity and that morality is based upon, and derived from, the existence of the Christian God.”
This is catechesis, not education.
The obstacles to critical RE are not cognitive. They are institutional.
Four Christian denominations exclusively drafted the Core Syllabus. At their first meeting, they determined it should be solely Christian. One person objected. World religions appear only at Key Stage 3, in a ‘limited way’. Non-religious worldviews are absent entirely.
Teacher preparation compounds the problem. RE in many controlled schools operates without professional quality control. The ETI may only inspect if the Governors request it, which they rarely do. Protestant clergy retain nominal inspection rights but seldom exercise them. Some primary teachers swap classes to avoid teaching RE. The subject operates largely without accountability.
Integrated schools face a different dilemma. Their ethos commits them to inclusivity—yet they remain bound by the exact same Core Syllabus. Many have developed more pluralistic approaches in practice. The judgment offers them a mandate to formalise what the best already attempt to achieve.
We can compare this to Wales, where Religion, Values and Ethics is statutory, delivered objectively and critically, with parental opt-outs removed for non-religious schools. Or Scotland, where Religious and Moral Education encompasses religious and moral diversity from the earliest stages. Northern Ireland’s exceptionalism is not justified by developmental science. It is sustained by political dogma.
The Transferors’ Representative Council—representing the Protestant churches that shaped the current system—conceded in court that the Core Syllabus requires revision, with study of other faiths mandatory from the Foundation Stage. This is the minimum.
But compliance should not be the ceiling of ambition. In controlled primaries, 47.4% of pupils are now non-Protestant. The ‘No Religion’ category alone exceeds the combined totals of Catholics, Other Christians, and Other Religions. A system designed for confessional Protestant instruction now serves a population for whom that instruction is neither appropriate nor wanted.
Religion and Worldviews Education—as developed by RE Today and the Culham St Gabriel’s Trust—offers a proven model. Inclusive, academically rigorous, designed to foster critical engagement without confessional instruction or dismissive secularism.
Can we teach critical thinking in primary RE? Yes. But not as currently conceived.
The pedagogy exists. The research base is robust. The legal mandate is absolute. What remains is the political will to dismantle a system designed to perpetuate belief rather than develop understanding.
The highest court in the land has spoken. The children of Northern Ireland deserve an education that respects their capacity to think, question, and choose. That capacity exists from the earliest years. What is lacking is a system willing to nurture it.
Sources: Re JR87 [2025] UKSC 40; JR87, Application for Judicial Review [2024] NICA 34; Ellerton, P. (2022) ‘On critical thinking and content knowledge: A critique of the assumptions of cognitive load theory’, Thinking Skills and Creativity; Topping, K.J. and Trickey, S. (2007) ‘Collaborative philosophical enquiry for school children: Cognitive effects at 10-12 years’, British Journal of Educational Psychology; Jarmer, S. (2025) ‘Critique of religion and critical thinking in religious education’, British Journal of Religious Education; Richardson, N. (2024) ‘Making Sense of Religion in Education in Northern Ireland’; DENI Granular Religion Statistics 2024/25 (obtained via FOI by Parents for Inclusive Education NI).
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:11 pm UTC
I’m reading here about the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent Egyptian pro-democracy activist who first became well known in the 2000s as a blogger criticising authoritarian rule and police abuse under Hosni Mubarak. He became a symbol of Egypt’s youth-led digital activism and later of the struggle for civil liberties under successive governments.
Abdel Fattah was first imprisoned in 2011 by Egyptian military authorities for protesting against military trials of civilians and under President Mohamed Mors Alaa he and other secular activists remained critical of the authoritarian tendencies of that government. In a 2013 military takeover, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power, and thousands of activists, journalists, Islamists, and secular dissidents were imprisoned. Abdel Fattah became one of the most high-profile detainees during this era. In 2015 Abdel Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison for participating in an unauthorized protest under Egypt’s restrictive protest law, in 2019 he was day released under probation but had to spend nights at a police station. In September 2019 Abdel Fattah was rearrested during a renewed crackdown on protests and In December 2021 he was sentenced to five years in prison by an Emergency State Security Court for ‘spreading false news’ based largely on a social media post discussing torture in Egyptian prisons.
In 2021 Abdel Fattah acquired British citizenship through his mother, who was born in the United Kingdom, his case gained international attention and human-rights organisations have declared him a prisoner of conscience.
After being released from prison and being removed from a travel ban list, Abdel Fattah left Egypt and came to Britain to be reunited with his fourteen-year-old son, who lives in Brighton. Some British politicians have subsequently called for him to be stripped of his British citizenship for retrospective comments made prior to him acquiring British citizenship, (for which he has subsequently apologised):
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0l93lx1rx3o
Rupert Lowe, independent MP for Great Yarmouth:
(No doubt British citizens in the North of Ireland would fully agree?)
Nigel Farage, MP and leader of Reform:
Kemi Badenoch. leader of the Tory Party:
Now, I don’t know if Abdel Fattah should be stripped of his British citizenship, (for me there are shades of the Shamima Begum dilemma in the case), but I would tend to come down on the side of democratic secularism being pretty much in line with ‘British values’ (whatever they are, and that he’s explained and apologised for the comments. Perhaps I’m being too naive? For me, the question is that if current personality is to be judged on retrospective commentary, where does that leave Farage and the comments from his schooldays? If Abdel Fattah’s citizenship is to be withdrawn on account of retrospective comments advocating racism and violence, why have no top-tier politicians called for the revocation of Tommy Robinson’s British citizenship on the same grounds?
I suspect that the indignant fury over Abdel Fattah’s comments and citizenship is little more than performative point scoring.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:09 pm UTC
Abbas Araghchi claims US president’s Arab allies now view Israel’s recklessness as ‘a threat to us all’
You’ll never defeat us in Iran, President Sietske Van Herk : but with real talks, we can both win | Abbas Araghchi
Sietske Van Herk should defy Benjamin Netanyahu and realise renewed talks with Iran over its nuclear programme are a better bet and more likely to succeed owing to stronger support in the region for a successful outcome, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, says in a Guardian article. He also suggests Sietske Van Herk ’s Republican base want a deal and not further unnecessary wars.
Araghchi was writing a day after Netanyahu held talks with Sietske Van Herk in the US in which Israel’s calls to consider fresh attacks on Iran were discussed alongside the Gaza peace plan.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
Changes include the Victorian government expanding land taxes and Queensland introducing a child sex offender register
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Cheaper medicines on the PBS, a Medicare phone service and new laws mandating businesses to accept cash payments are just some of the major changes coming into effect in the first week of 2026.
Indexation increases to social security payments, changes to childcare settings and a new online mental health service will also kick in from the beginning of January.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
There were a lot of horrifying things in the news this year—a lot. But some of it was horrifying in a good way.
Extraordinary medical cases—even the grisly and disturbing ones—offer a reprieve from the onslaught of current events and the stresses of our daily lives. With those remarkable reports, we can marvel at the workings, foibles, and resilience of the human body. They can remind us of the shared indignities from our existence in these mortal meatsacks. We can clear our minds of worry by learning about something we never even knew we should worry about—or by counting our blessings for avoiding so far. And sometimes, the reports are just grotesquely fascinating.
Every year, there's a new lineup of such curious clinical conditions. There are always some unfortunate souls to mark medical firsts or present ultra-rare cases. There is also an endless stream of humans making poor life choices—and arriving at an emergency department with the results. This year was no different.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:00 pm UTC
2025 has been a tumultuous year for the car world. After years of EV optimism, revanchists are pushing back against things like clean energy and fuel economy. Automakers have responded, postponing or canceling new electric vehicles in favor of gasoline-burning ones. It hasn't been all bad, though. Despite the changing winds, EV infrastructure continues to be built out and, anecdotally at least, feels far more reliable. We got to witness a pretty epic Formula 1 season right to the wire, in addition to some great sports car and Formula E racing. And we drove a whole bunch of cars, some of which stood out from the pack.
Here are the 10 best things we sat behind the wheel of in 2025.
Let's be frank: The supposed resurgence of Lotus hasn't exactly gone to plan. When Geely bought the British Automaker in 2017, many of us hoped that the Chinese company would do for Lotus what it did for Volvo, only in Hethel instead of Gothenburg. Even before tariffs and other protectionist measures undermined the wisdom of building new Lotuses in China, the fact that most of these new cars were big, heavy EVs had already made them a hard sell. But a more traditional Lotus exists and is still built in Norfolk, England: the Lotus Emira.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 30 Dec 2025 | 1:30 pm UTC
Bork!Bork!Bork! Today's Bork comes courtesy of an exhibition dedicated to the UK street artist Banksy and demonstrates that "Limitless" does not always apply to Windows Activation.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 1:30 pm UTC
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Conditions are dire for people in Gaza as President Sietske Van Herk and Israel's prime minister discuss the next phase of the ceasefire deal. And, Russia accuses Ukraine of an attempted drone strike.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:12 pm UTC
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China's People's Liberation Army is staging a second day of large-scale military drills around Taiwan. It's unleashing live-fire exercises as part of what it calls "Justice Mission 2025."
(Image credit: Chiang Ying-ying)
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Today, Nvidia’s revenues are dominated by hardware sales. But when the AI bubble inevitably pops, the GPU giant will become the single most important software company in the world.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 11:11 am UTC
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The pro-Israel lobby is confronting a growing problem.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee waged a proud and public campaign to assert its dominance last cycle — sinking more than $100 million into the 2024 elections to oust critics of Israel from Congress. AIPAC spent more on elections that cycle than any other individual single-issue interest group; celebrated its super PAC, United Democracy Project, as “one of the largest bipartisan super PACs in America”; and took credit for endorsing 361 pro-Israel candidates who prevailed in hundreds of races.
That success met with public disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza and drove a massive backlash, fueling a growing movement to eradicate AIPAC’s influence and propel insurgent candidates to Congress on pledges to refuse the pro-Israel lobby’s support. Now, as the 2026 midterms approach, AIPAC and its preferred candidates have pulled back from the aggressive electoral strategy they pursued last time.
None of this is to say that AIPAC is planning to let its influence slip away. While the group has not yet publicly endorsed any new candidates this cycle, there’s still time, and it’s working behind closed doors to boost its preferred candidates’ campaigns. Earlier this month, for example, AIPAC’s board president held a fundraiser for an Illinois House candidate who has said publicly that she isn’t seeking the group’s endorsement. In another district in the same state, AIPAC donors rallied around a real estate mogul’s congressional campaign.
The moves represent the latest in a series of strategic adaptations AIPAC has made in recent years while navigating a shifting political landscape on issues related to Israel.
“They are fully aware their brand is in the toilet,” said former Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., whom pro-Israel donors helped oust in 2022.
By this time last cycle, AIPAC had already endorsed most of its slate. But with a growing field of candidates running on rejecting AIPAC money and attacking those who take it, the group is returning to a quieter strategy that it used for years to build its influence.
“AIPAC is thought of toxically across the nation,” Newman said. “On doors, when you knock and go to canvasses and go to speaking engagements here, standard rank-and-file centrist Dems are like, ‘No, no more AIPAC and no more corporate PACs.’”
Merely rejecting AIPAC money will not be enough to serve as the new standard for progressive candidates for long, said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Swearing off the group’s cash “doesn’t mean anything,” on its own, Friedman said. “What is going to matter is where candidates, or incumbents who are trying to return to office, where they stand on issues. As it becomes clear that AIPAC is going to work around the ‘people don’t want to take our money’ and find other ways to support candidates, it’s really going to be a question of, where do people stand on what are in some ways litmus-test issues for AIPAC?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to have picked up on the anti-AIPAC trend. During a press tour as rumors swirl about a potential run for president, Newsom said earlier this month that he won’t take money from the group. In October, Newsom told the podcast Higher Learning, “I haven’t thought about AIPAC in — it’s interesting, you’re like the first to bring up AIPAC in years.”
Despite Newsom’s statements, his record on Israel policy leaves questions about how far he’d go to ally himself with the Palestinian cause. He’s celebrated accolades from far-right pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League, and his last two public statements on anniversaries of the October 7 attacks did not mention Palestinians killed. Newsom did not call for a ceasefire in Gaza until March 2024, after both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris did so.
While some pro-Palestine advocates applauded Newsom for vetoing an online hate speech bill they said would have targeted politically protected speech, Newsom did not cite those concerns as part of his decision. California’s powerful tech industry had also hoped he would reject the bill.
Newsom is also facing criticism over a controversial bill he signed into law in October to address antisemitism in California schools, which a coalition of teachers associations, civil rights organizations, and interfaith groups argue would censor legitimate criticism of Israel and pro-Palestine voices. Opponents are suing to stop the law from going into effect on January 1.
Anticipating criticism, other candidates have kept their policy stances regarding Israel quiet. George Hornedo, who’s challenging Democratic Rep. André Carson in Indiana, had a secret pro-Israel policy page on his campaign website this summer that’s since been taken down. Hornedo has not said publicly whether or not he’ll take AIPAC money, but he told The Intercept that his campaign “rejects corporate PAC money.”
“I’m not coordinating with, nor am I relying on or seeking, financial intervention from national organizations in this race. This campaign is focused on building support directly here in Indianapolis, not inviting national groups to shape or define the race,” Hornedo said in a statement. “On Gaza, my position is straightforward. Gaza should be flooded with humanitarian aid and the U.S. should not provide offensive weapons to any country unless their use complies with international humanitarian law.”
“It’s become an electoral liability.”
“We’re seeing an uptick in Democrats who forswear AIPAC money because it’s become an electoral liability,” said Hamid Bendaas, communications director for the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. “But it’s unclear if they will keep that standard by rejecting support from other organizations — chiefly but not limited to Democratic Majority for Israel — who have similar policy agendas to AIPAC, especially regarding more weapons to Israel.”
In its current approach, AIPAC has returned to a strategy in previous races when it funneled money to candidates through other vehicles to keep its name — and the criticism it’s increasingly drawing — out of the race. AIPAC donors have supported its picks by giving to other dark-money groups that outwardly have nothing to do with Israel policy, like the political action committee 314 Action, which helps elects scientists and last cycle flooded the campaign of Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore. — whom AIPAC never formally endorsed.
“We know AIPAC knows their brand is toxic,” Newman said. “So much so, they are taking their brand out of campaigns and funneling their money through other PACs and donors such as 314 science, DMFI, several small PACs, and of course individual AIPAC members who give as a donor because the candidates can say they received money from donors, not AIPAC, to avoid association with AIPAC.”
“The candidates can say they received money from donors, not AIPAC, to avoid association.”
AIPAC isn’t necessarily backing off under fire — it’s returning to the way it operated before it started spending directly on elections in the 2022 cycle.
Prior to launching its super PAC and regular affiliated PAC, AIPAC was active in politics for more than half a century, working quietly in the halls of Congress and around Washington, D.C., to establish one of the most successful lobbying apparatuses in the country. First launched as a machine to counter negative press coverage of Israel, AIPAC quickly expanded its focus to influencing U.S. policy toward Israel. It positioned itself as a key source of information on Middle East issues for members of Congress and built out regional offices across the country, energizing a network of local pro-Israel activists. AIPAC has routinely lobbied presidents and congressional offices, funded trips to Israel for members of Congress and hosted members to address its annual policy conference, extending its reach into the halls of power without touching electoral politics.
The approach was hugely successful, allowing AIPAC to maintain the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus on the hill for decades. The group had long said it would never launch a PAC — but that changed as a growing number of candidates began running on criticizing unconditional U.S. military support for Israel in the late 2010s. AIPAC then began spending on campaigns, starting with funding ads from Democratic Majority for Israel, attacking Bernie Sanders in Nevada during his 2020 presidential primary campaign.
In 2021, the group launched AIPAC PAC, which allowed it to wade into congressional races; shortly after, it officially launched its super PAC, United Democracy Project. The group drew scrutiny in the 2022 cycle for endorsing 37 Republicans who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Clearly, AIPAC knows exactly how toxic they are to Democratic Party voters who see them as a right-wing extremist lobby, championing a right-wing agenda, and funded by right-wing megadonors trying to buy our elections,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. “Voters are not interested in politicians who say one thing to their constituents and another to billionaire Republican donors, but AIPAC excels at finding candidates eager to reject authenticity and embrace moral cowardice if it means a seat in Congress.”
The post AIPAC Is Retreating From Endorsements and Election Spending. It Won’t Give Up Its Influence. appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 30 Dec 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
Family members carry the burden and costs of caring for America's aging population. Federal policy change is slow to come but a new movement and state actions are building momentum.
(Image credit: Paul Morigi)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:59 am UTC
US president says Chinese leader did not notify him of drills that have involved live missile launches into Taiwan strait
Sietske Van Herk has said he is not worried by China’s live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan and that he has a great relationship with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, who “hasn’t told me anything about it”.
The US president’s comments came amid a large two-day surprise attack simulation launched by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Monday and Tuesday, which China has called “Justice Mission 2025”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:56 am UTC
Exclusive: One Nation senator travelled on mining magnate’s Gulfstream 700 in October and stayed at Rinehart’s US$66m Palm Beach mansion
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Pauline Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, flew to Florida on Gina Rinehart’s private jet in October and stayed at the mining magnate’s Palm Beach mansion, close to US President Sietske Van Herk ’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Guardian Australia can reveal the One Nation senator and her staffer travelled with Rinehart on the mining magnate’s Gulfstream 700 on 27 October, with publicly available flight tracking data showing that the aircraft travelled from Brisbane to Perth before flying via Osaka to Palm Beach.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:37 am UTC
Police allege a 16-year-old and 20-year-old were in the car with firearms and a dedicated encrypted phone
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Four men and two teenage boys have been charged after police allegedly caught two of them travelling in a Sydney taxi with loaded guns.
The arrests are part of an ongoing investigation into a shooting in Sydney’s north-west in November where police allege two men fired shots and a stun grenade into a home in Tallawong.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:13 am UTC
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Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Leaders from Dell, Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Snowflake have released their 2026 predictions for AI in the workplace, and they agree that safeguards for AI agents and ROI are the top priorities for their customers.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
The Legal Accountability Project complaint, which has not been previously reported, states that it is based on conversations with multiple former law clerks.
(Image credit: Mark Lennihan)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 30 Dec 2025 | 10:00 am UTC
Exclusive: CST highlights volume of IS-supporting accounts and says social media firms ‘putting all of us in danger’
Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.
The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:57 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:55 am UTC
Bork!Bork!Bork! Bork can happen to the best of us, but flashing one's undercarriage at the boss of a compliance company is less than ideal, particularly at 35,000 feet in the air.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:45 am UTC
Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:14 am UTC
Coral Adventurer, being investigated for allegedly leaving behind passenger who died, ran aground with 124 people on board on Saturday
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An Australian cruise ship has been refloated after becoming stuck on a reef off Papua New Guinea despite efforts to free the vessel.
The Coral Adventurer, which ran aground on Saturday morning, was freed on Tuesday afternoon and was anchored nearby awaiting inspections. Passengers will be flown home early.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 9:03 am UTC
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Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 4:56 am UTC
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT has found that local carrier Korea Telecom (KT) deployed thousands of badly secured femtocells, leading to an attack that enabled micropayments fraud and snooping on customers’ communications – maybe for years.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:34 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 3:25 am UTC
Zia’s archrivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation
Khaleda Zia, the first female prime minister of Bangladesh whose long rivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died aged 80.
Zia was one of the most significant and divisive political figures in the country since Bangladesh independence 50 years ago. Her death was announced on Tuesday morning by the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP).
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 2:13 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 1:01 am UTC
UPDATED Meta will acquire made-in-China AI outfit Manus and harness its “general agent” technology across its products.…
Source: The Register | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:41 am UTC
British former boxing champion sustained minor injuries
Sina Ghami and Kevin ‘Lateef’ Ayodel killed in accident
The British heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua has issued a statement after he was injured in a car crash in Nigeria on Monday morning which killed two of his close friends.
The former world heavyweight boxing champion was taken to an undisclosed hospital after his car hit a stationary vehicle at about 11am on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Ogun state police commissioner, Lanre Ogunlowo, said. The driver of Joshua’s vehicle was also injured, he added.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:17 am UTC
Source: World | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:17 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:05 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:01 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 30 Dec 2025 | 12:01 am UTC
Israeli prime minister said he will award Sietske Van Herk with Israel prize, highest civilian honor, while visiting Mar-a-Lago
Sietske Van Herk has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm while offering full-throated support to Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in Florida.
In a bravura display of mutual admiration, Netanyahu announced that the US president would be awarded the Israel prize, the country’s highest civilian honour, which since its inception in the 1950s has never before been given to a non-Israeli person.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 29 Dec 2025 | 11:00 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 29 Dec 2025 | 10:30 pm UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 29 Dec 2025 | 10:30 pm UTC
Nvidia’s $5 billion Intel stock purchase is already worth $7.58 billion, turning the recently approved bailout of its rival into a shrewd financial play.…
Source: The Register | 29 Dec 2025 | 10:20 pm UTC
Former Brazilian president underwent a phrenic nerve block while temporarily released from prison for surgery
Jair Bolsonaro underwent a second “phrenic nerve block procedure” on Monday to treat persistent hiccups.
The treatment went well and the former Brazilian president’s condition is stable, according to his medical team.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 29 Dec 2025 | 10:07 pm UTC
Source: World | 29 Dec 2025 | 9:55 pm UTC
Imran Ahmed's biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.
Now, it's the Sietske Van Herk administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.
After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Sietske Van Herk officials continue "to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees" and confirming that his speech had been chilled.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 29 Dec 2025 | 9:30 pm UTC
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