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Trump says ‘we just want to be friends’ as Canada’s prime minister torpedoes 51st state idea

Trump says ‘we just want to be friends’ as Canada’s prime minister torpedoes 51st state idea

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has said he “just want[s] to be friends with Canada” after his first post-election meeting with the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney – who used the gathering to shoot down any prospect of his country becoming the 51st state. Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump praised Carney – whose Liberal party won the federal election last week – for one of the “greatest political comebacks of all time”, and described the prime minister’s visit as…

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Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration earlier this year urged the Ukrainian government to accept an unspecified number of U.S. deportees who are citizens of other countries, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, an extraordinary request of a nation at war and dependent on American military and financial support for its survival. The documents do not indicate how officials in Kyiv responded to the late-January proposal, relayed by a senior U.S. diplomat, that called for sending third-country…

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Trump strikes a ceasefire deal with the Houthis

Trump strikes a ceasefire deal with the Houthis

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the U.S. will stop bombing the Houthis in Yemen, saying that the Iran-aligned group had agreed to stop interrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East. After Trump made the announcement, Oman said it had mediated the ceasefire deal, marking a major shift in Houthi policy since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023. Under the agreement, neither the U.S. nor the Houthis would target the other, including U.S….

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Tesla sales plunge across Europe

Tesla sales plunge across Europe

CNN reports: Tesla’s sales continue to dive across Europe even as car buyers there increasingly buy electric vehicles. Tesla sales were down sharply in April in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal, as well Sweden and France, according to monthly sales figures. Just like in the United States, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s politics has inspired backlash and protests across Europe. Musk has backed some far-right political candidates in Germany and the UK. And given his high-profile role in…

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DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be a security clutz

DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be a security clutz

Wired reports: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts over a period of years, according to leaked records reviewed by WIRED. Following her participation in a Signal group chat in which sensitive details of a military operation were unwittingly shared with a journalist, the revelation raises further questions about the security practices of the US spy chief. WIRED reviewed Gabbard’s passwords using databases of material leaked online created by the…

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A militia says NWS Doppler radars are ‘weather weapons.’ It’s trying to destroy them

A militia says NWS Doppler radars are ‘weather weapons.’ It’s trying to destroy them

CNN reports: National Weather Service offices around the country are on guard after recent threats to agency infrastructure — specifically Doppler weather radars — from a violent militia-style group, emails from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s security office show. The group Veterans on Patrol, which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as an anti-government militia organization, views the NWS’ network of Doppler radars as “weather weapons,” according to an internal NOAA email sent Monday and seen by CNN. A…

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New evidence prompts researchers to rethink humanity’s origin story

New evidence prompts researchers to rethink humanity’s origin story

By Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias This article was originally published on SAPIENS As a university student in the early 2010s, I recall how beautifully simple our origin story was: Homo sapiens evolved in East African savannas around 150,000 years ago. Then, sometime around 70,000 years ago, a mutation occurred that endowed these individuals with the capacity for complex, symbolic behavior. This set them apart from any other species and allowed them to leave Africa and take over the world, replacing all other humans they encountered….

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Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, the far right and ‘End Times fascism’

Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, the far right and ‘End Times fascism’

  ‘The rise of end times fascism‘ by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor was published in The Guardian on April 13. The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med…

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Trump is carrying out a ‘personal vendetta’ against law firms

Trump is carrying out a ‘personal vendetta’ against law firms

  It was nearly impossible to get anyone on camera for this story because of the fear now running through our system of justice. In recent weeks, President Trump has signed orders against several law firms — orders with the power to destroy them. That matters because lawsuits have been a check on the president’s power. Many firms and attorneys have been targeted, among them Marc Elias, a long time opponent of Trump who is the only lawyer the president…

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Presidential reform necessitates diminishing presidential power

Presidential reform necessitates diminishing presidential power

Jack Goldsmith writes: Donald Trump’s wrecking-ball second term has revealed the full latent power of the presidency. His administration has done this most clearly in its comprehensive elimination of legal and norm-based checks inside the executive branch, its systematic disrespect of judicial process, its extortionate abuse of government power to crush foes and its destructive rhetoric and nastiness. Yet it is important to recognize that many of Mr. Trump’s efforts to expand the powers of the office build substantially on…

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Israel plans to occupy and flatten all of Gaza if no deal by Trump’s trip to the Middle East

Israel plans to occupy and flatten all of Gaza if no deal by Trump’s trip to the Middle East

Axios reports: Israel has set President Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week as a deadline for a new hostage and ceasefire deal, with a massive ground operation to commence if no deal is reached, Israeli officials say. Why it matters: Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a plan Sunday night to gradually reoccupy all of Gaza and hold it indefinitely if no deal is reached by May 15. Plans for the operation call for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to flatten any buildings that remain…

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Israel wages war for land and water in Syria’s south

Israel wages war for land and water in Syria’s south

Natacha Danon writes: Early last month, Abed, 45, was harvesting zucchini in the fertile valley of Syria’s southwestern Houran region when military vehicles barreled through the fields, kicking up dust and crushing his crops. “They surrounded us, and of course we couldn’t understand them because they spoke Hebrew. They took us in cars, blindfolded us, and brought us to the Israeli border,” he says, gesturing with his weathered hands toward a hill, its ridge sparsely lined with trees. His name…

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Von der Leyen and Macron launch effort to make Europe a ‘safe haven’ for science

Von der Leyen and Macron launch effort to make Europe a ‘safe haven’ for science

Politico reports: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign against American higher education as she unveiled a half-billion-euro plan to attract foreign researchers. “The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.” Appearing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at Paris’ storied Sorbonne University…

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Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Mariah Blake writes: During the crucial early weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cells knit themselves into a brain and organs and fingers and lips, a steady flow of man-made chemicals pulses through the umbilical cord. Scientists once believed that the placenta filtered out most of these pollutants, but now they know that is not the case. Along with nutrients and oxygen, numerous synthetic substances travel to the womb, permeating the fetus’s blood and tissues. This is why, from their very…

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