U.S. and Israel draw up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after elections

U.S. and Israel draw up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after elections

The New York Times reports: The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations. As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S….

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Billionaires want to buy this election. But it isn’t working

Billionaires want to buy this election. But it isn’t working

David Wallace-Wells writes: Two weeks from now, the midterm elections will deliver an explosion of narrative meaning: about the country and its future, the president and his movement and his legacy. But the election cycle has already taught us a couple of very important things about money’s place in our democracy. One, after about a decade of national confusion on this point, the Republicans have shown themselves to be the unmistakable party of wealth, particularly the smash-and-grab kleptocratic variety. And…

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Trump wants to punish Ilhan Omar for exercising her right to free speech

Trump wants to punish Ilhan Omar for exercising her right to free speech

Jamelle Bouie writes: You can understand the Trump administration as, in its essence, a cargo cult devoted to the illiberal tradition in American politics. At every turn, it seeks to instantiate a society where, as the historian Steven Hahn writes, “rights-bearing may be defined or limited by specific rulers or be based on communities of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender” and where “civil and political standing tend to be marked by social and cultural exclusions.” To this end, it uses…

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Military heat ray weapon considered for use at border and also against citizens protesting

Military heat ray weapon considered for use at border and also against citizens protesting

CNN reports: The Pentagon has given the Department of Homeland Security permission to test a military-grade heat ray and develop tactics to potentially use it in operations at the southern US border, according to a memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month and obtained by CNN. The heat ray, officially known as the Active Denial System, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile…

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How ex-cops gained access to a massive surveillance network

How ex-cops gained access to a massive surveillance network

The Washington Post reports: When Andrae Wright left his job as an investigator at the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office in 2021, he handed in his gun and badge. But he kept something powerful: his log-in credentials for Flock, a police tool he used to search a vast network of roadside cameras tracking the locations of passing cars. In the five years after leaving the force, Wright searched the system more than 60 times without being stopped by anyone at the…

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Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case

CNBC reports: Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties by a New Mexico court on Wednesday as part of a data privacy case that stemmed from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal from nearly a decade ago. The penalty, revealed in a court filing, comes after a jury in a Santa Fe courthouse found in September the social media giant liable for misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data and prevents harmful information from flourishing…

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Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination

Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination

Arundhati Roy writes: The auguries are raining down hard. Think or Sink. Comply or Die. Look Up or be Left Out. And so, with these not-so-gentle threats, it has come to pass that the Age of AI – Actual Idiocy, Actual Super Idiocy, Recursive Snowballing-Idiocy – is upon us. Heck, I’ve already used two dashes in this opening paragraph. That, as they say, is a tell. So, perhaps I haven’t written this essay at all. You’d have to use an…

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Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

CBS News reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly visited Israel on Monday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a senior U.S. military official who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A second source involved in the matter in Israel confirmed Tuesday morning that Netanyahu met Hegseth. The unannounced visit came just over a week before Netanyahu’s party faces elections. It also comes after President Trump floated resuming…

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Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court of Israel to protest attempts to disqualify Palestinian citizen candidates from running in the upcoming elections. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images By Tamir Sorek, Penn State Elections are typically framed as a choice for voters. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, however, the country’s national ballots pose more of a dilemma. Constituting about one-sixth of eligible voters in Israel, Palestinian citizens could hold the difference in a race expected to be close. But voting involves…

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EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

Euronews reports: High Representative Kaja Kallas has sharply accused the United States of pressuring Ukraine to capitulate on terms exclusively favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as a new round of peace talks unfolded in Oslo, Norway. “American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for already almost two years, one and a half years now,” she told the European Parliament on Tuesday. “Why Ukraine hasn’t surrendered on Putin’s terms is because Europe has been supporting Ukraine.”…

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How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

By Molly Redden, Avi Asher-Schapiro, William Turton and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting. Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident…

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Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

Start-up claims to use AI-created phage viruses to treat a patient

The New York Times reports: For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient. Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly bacterial infection. Phages attack bacteria, and the hope is that this one will kill the microbes causing the infection. Radical Numerics, the start-up that created the viruses, posted a technical report about them on its…

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Plants can speak using electricity. This startup built an AI model to decipher their language

Plants can speak using electricity. This startup built an AI model to decipher their language

TechCrunch reports: Justin Mast’s life was changed by a cyborg plant. A few years ago, Mast was reading through some scientific literature when he stumbled upon research about a houseplant wired to a motorized stand. When the plant wanted more light, electrical signals flowed through the living tissues. A control board sensed the current and wheeled the plant closer to the light source. “I’m like, what the heck?” Mast told TechCrunch. “That was the entry to the rabbit hole for…

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How did life arise?

How did life arise?

The New York Times reports: Life on planet Earth is a riot of diversity: ants and elephants, frogs and blue whales, tulips and redwoods, even a branch of the great apes known as humans. Uniting it all is biochemistry, in particular the shared biochemistry of genetic inheritance — DNA and RNA, the universal instruction kits of life. Tracing these biochemical threads back through time has convinced many scientists that all life descends from a so-called Last Universal Common Ancestor, or…

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