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U.S. and Russia to explore closer cooperation after Ukraine talks in Riyadh

U.S. and Russia to explore closer cooperation after Ukraine talks in Riyadh

The Guardian reports: Top US and Russian officials have agreed to continue planning an end to the Ukraine war and to pursue closer cooperation amid concerns in Kyiv and across Europe that Donald Trump could push for a settlement favouring Vladimir Putin. After the talks at Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in three years, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the two sides had agreed to create a high-level team to…

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Egypt says Trump backs its Gaza plan, convinced by Jordan’s King Abdullah

Egypt says Trump backs its Gaza plan, convinced by Jordan’s King Abdullah

Middle East Eye reports: Egypt and Jordan believe they have successfully dissuaded US President Donald Trump from backing a forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and that the US has gotten behind an Egyptian post-war plan for the enclave, a senior Egyptian official told Middle East Eye. “This will be an Egyptian plan adopted and supported by the Arabs,” the official said. “That is what Trump has agreed to.” The Egyptian official, speaking to MEE on the condition of anonymity…

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The many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse

The many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse

George Monbiot writes: Because there is little public understanding of how complex systems operate, collapse tends to take almost everyone by surprise. Complex systems (such as economies and human societies) have characteristics that make them either resilient or fragile. A system that loses its diversity, redundancy, modularity (the degree of compartmentalisation), its “circuit breakers” (such as government regulations) and backup strategies (alternative means of achieving a goal) is less resilient than one which retains these features. So is a system whose…

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How Trump’s federal funding and hiring freezes increase risk of catastrophic wildfires

How Trump’s federal funding and hiring freezes increase risk of catastrophic wildfires

By Mark Olalde This story was originally published by ProPublica President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal government, launched as the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires burned across Los Angeles, have left the country’s wildland firefighting force unprepared for the rapidly approaching wildfire season. The administration has frozen funds, including money appropriated by Congress, and issued a deluge of orders eliminating federal employees, which has thrown agencies tasked with battling blazes into disarray as individual offices…

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Not even its employees know who is legally running DOGE

Not even its employees know who is legally running DOGE

Wired reports: President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have repeatedly affirmed Musk’s leadership of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But according to a new court filing from the White House, the administrator of DOGE isn’t Elon Musk after all. Who is? No one knows. The White House won’t tell the public, an administration lawyer has reportedly said he had no idea, and even people who work for the US DOGE Service can’t get a straight answer. On Monday…

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Musk and his DOGE jackasses are providing a real-time case study on mismanagement

Musk and his DOGE jackasses are providing a real-time case study on mismanagement

Don Moynihan writes: Sam Rayburn, the Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying: Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. Rayburn was talking about policymaking, but the point extends to more broadly to governing. Trashing government agencies is easy. Making them work is hard. DOGE, and the husk of the Office of Personnel Management that has become a DOGE zombie, are a good example. Elon…

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Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons employees fired by Musk’s ignorant DOGE operatives

Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons employees fired by Musk’s ignorant DOGE operatives

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that DOGE’s blind cost cutting will put communities at risk. Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday, with some losing access to email…

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Elon Musk is an outlaw

Elon Musk is an outlaw

Mother Jones reports: According to Elon Musk’s posts on X, the social media platform he acquired through allegedly illegal tactics, Musk is discovering lawbreaking everywhere as he rampages through government. “Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day,” he claimed. USAID, the agency that has saved millions of lives under its mandate from Congress? “A criminal organization.” The federal bureaucracy? “Unconstitutional.” But as elementary school kids have known for time immemorial, whoever smelt it, dealt it….

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Judge Tanya Chutkan needs more evidence to justify a temporary restraining order on Musk

Judge Tanya Chutkan needs more evidence to justify a temporary restraining order on Musk

Politico reports: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday appeared poised to reject an effort to immediately bar Elon Musk and his allies from accessing data or causing firings across a broad swath of the federal government. The judge said an effort by Democrat-led states lacked enough concrete evidence to justify that extraordinary restriction. Chutkan, a Washington-based appointee of former President Barack Obama, agreed that Musk’s operations through the “Department of Government Efficiency” were taking place in troubling secrecy. And…

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Trump administration wants to help get ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate out of Romania

Trump administration wants to help get ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate out of Romania

Gizmodo reports: Off in the depths of the QAnon and PizzaGate corners of the internet, conspiracists swear Donald Trump is quietly preparing charges to bring down notorious sex trafficking circles operated by celebrities. Back in reality, the Financial Times reports the Trump administration is pressuring Romanian authorities to let Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate travel freely despite facing charges of sexual misconduct and human trafficking. Per the report, Trump officials have been pushing for Romania to return the Tates’ passports and lift…

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Trump wants to ‘punish universities’ in every way possible

Trump wants to ‘punish universities’ in every way possible

Michelle Goldberg writes: In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, a gathering of Trumpist thinkers and politicians, titled “The Universities Are the Enemy.” It contained the usual complaints about critical race theory and gender ideology, but it went much further, arguing for a frontal attack on the power and prestige of higher education writ large. Comparing universities to the sci-fi totalitarianism of “The Matrix,” in which parasitic machines have seized control of reality itself, he…

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How humanity moved from eternal to finite time

How humanity moved from eternal to finite time

Thomas Moynihan writes: Do you recall the first time you knew you would die? It’s a milestone, realising your time is limited. That things happened before you, and will happen afterward, in your absence. As we grow up, the understanding of death comes in stages, but it culminates in acknowledgment of one’s own – unavoidable yet unpredictable – mortality. Sometime between the ages of six and 10, children become aware that their time is inescapably bounded. Roughly the same might be said…

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Trump delivers ‘massive victory for China’ as he weakens Western alliance

Trump delivers ‘massive victory for China’ as he weakens Western alliance

The South China Morning Post reports: The world shook this weekend as deep cracks appeared in the transatlantic alliance during a glitzy security summit in Munich. One guest was ready to capitalise: China. Top officials from the United States and Europe spent a chaotic weekend trading barbs over values, Ukraine and democracy, with US Vice-President J.D. Vance clashing with a series of German leaders over his courting of the far-right ahead of next week’s federal election. “The threat that I…

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Former WTO chief says China-EU ‘united front’ can counter Trump trade curbs

Former WTO chief says China-EU ‘united front’ can counter Trump trade curbs

The South China Morning Post reported in November: China and the European Union should address their disagreements and form a united front against a “triumphant” Donald Trump, said a former chief of the World Trade Organization, calling the incoming US president a threat to global trade. The assessment from Pascal Lamy – director general of the Geneva-based multilateral trade organisation between 2005 and 2013 – comes as worries mount over the future of globalisation after the US presidential election last…

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