Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Elora Mukherjee writes: On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration sweeping power to remove the legal right to live in America for Haitians and Syrians who are here under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. For more than three decades, T.P.S. enabled highly vetted immigrants from countries ravaged by war or natural disaster to remain in America. In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted Haitians the right to apply for T.P.S. after a devastating earthquake….

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Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

The Guardian reports: Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system. Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings. “Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and…

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Iran attacks cargo ship, testing Trump’s deal to reopen Strait of Hormuz

Iran attacks cargo ship, testing Trump’s deal to reopen Strait of Hormuz

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a Singapore-flagged cargo ship Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, according to two senior U.S. officials, testing the deal signed last week by the U.S. and Iran to end the fighting and reopen the vital shipping lane. The attack, which damaged the ship’s bridge but left no casualties, according to U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, took place near the coast of Oman hours after the Iranian paramilitary’s navy warned ships…

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Iran estimates $40 billion windfall from reopening Strait of Hormuz shared with Gulf states

Iran estimates $40 billion windfall from reopening Strait of Hormuz shared with Gulf states

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran is pushing to make billions of dollars from the Strait of Hormuz as the regime positions itself to manage the global oil artery it severed at the start of the war. The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would give Tehran cash flow…

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Beyond denial: How oil industry executives shaped a landmark climate study

Beyond denial: How oil industry executives shaped a landmark climate study

By Katie Worth This story was originally published by ProPublica It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as “Wedges,” published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story.  It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple. It claimed that the world didn’t have to wait for innovation because it had the tools to start work immediately. The trick was to…

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We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

John O’Farrell writes: I first came to America from Ireland in 1984, as a young engineer about to attend business school. I chose Stanford University — partly for the weather and natural beauty, but more for the electrifying entrepreneurial spirit coursing through Silicon Valley. I was riveted by Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad — an athlete hurls a sledgehammer into Big Brother’s screen, shattering IBM’s grip on computing. More than an advertisement, it was a manifesto that technology could dismantle…

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Why science needs the humanities more than ever

Why science needs the humanities more than ever

Xin Fan writes: A narrative has taken hold that science and the humanities are at odds. In universities around the world, investment in cutting-edge technologies often comes at the expense of retrenchment in philosophy, history, literature and the arts. Contraction of the humanities is presented as an unavoidable cost of modernization. But that ‘zero sum’ logic is flawed. As science and technology race ahead, the world needs humanities research to understand the reasons and implications. My experience at ShanghaiTech University…

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U.S. support is Israel’s true weakness

U.S. support is Israel’s true weakness

Yonatan Touval writes: There is a condition that can befall small states kept too long under the protection of great powers. When the protection is generous enough, they can become both militarily formidable but also strategically undisciplined. They grow fluent in force and illiterate in consequence. They acquire the manners of sovereignty without its restraint, because the costs of that sovereignty are borne elsewhere — in arms shipments, guarantees, Security Council vetoes and the patron’s diplomacy. Over time, strategy atrophies….

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Victories by pro-Palestinian Democrats show the party’s shift on Israel

Victories by pro-Palestinian Democrats show the party’s shift on Israel

The New York Times reports: Three Democrats who made criticism of Israel central to their political identities swept to victory in House primary races in New York City on Tuesday, signaling a new era of skepticism in their party toward the Jewish state and its actions. The striking results reflected a fast-moving shift in liberal politics. Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel and its government than they are to be supportive, according to several recent…

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Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban….

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Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

The Wall Street Journal reports: Larry Ellison didn’t join the gaggle of CEOs that traveled with President Trump on his state visit to China. He wasn’t among the guests at a White House dinner Trump hosted with tech titans. He also skipped the UFC event on Trump’s 80th birthday. The Oracle billionaire didn’t need to be at these public events. Ellison, 81, has developed a more-private friendship with Trump that has helped his tech company’s business as well as his…

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Democratic socialists aren’t taking over America

Democratic socialists aren’t taking over America

Adam Serwer writes: Candidates endorsed by New York City’s democratic-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, swept the city’s primary elections yesterday, provoking alarm in both conservative and centrist circles over the future of the Democratic Party. The right-wing New York Post dubbed the winners, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, the “hateful slate.” The Free Press quoted a supporter of one of the defeated candidates warning that it “doesn’t feel safe to be Jewish anymore,” notwithstanding the fact that one…

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‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies

‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies

Zoe Williams writes: A “centaur”, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a “reverse centaur”, hero of Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, is a “human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine”. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn’t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone…

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Advanced AI models suffer a near-total collapse on classic psychology test as cognitive demands increase

Advanced AI models suffer a near-total collapse on classic psychology test as cognitive demands increase

PsyPost reports: New research provides evidence that while advanced artificial intelligence models process language with remarkable skill, they struggle significantly with tasks requiring the kind of sustained focus and conflict resolution seen in human attention. The study, published in PNAS Nexus, indicates that as cognitive demands increase, these programs experience a complete collapse in their ability to override automatic responses. The findings suggest that artificial intelligence systems currently lack the fundamental executive control necessary for developing true artificial general intelligence….

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