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Italian foreign minister cancels trip to U.S. over Trump’s offensive comments about PM Meloni

Italian foreign minister cancels trip to U.S. over Trump’s offensive comments about PM Meloni

CNN reports: US President Donald Trump’s comments to an Italian media outlet about the country’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have sparked a fresh diplomatic incident. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced Friday that he was canceling a planned trip to the United States, where he was slated to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in response to Trump’s reported remarks. Tajani called Trump’s claims “offensive,” while Meloni said they were “completely fabricated.” It is the latest dip in the…

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Andy Burnham, ‘King of the North,’ moves a step closer to replacing Keir Starmer as Britain’s PM

Andy Burnham, ‘King of the North,’ moves a step closer to replacing Keir Starmer as Britain’s PM

  John Harris writes: The day before the voters of Makerfield chose their new MP, I stood with my camera-wielding colleague John Domokos on the main road through the post-industrial town of Hindley. Every two or three minutes, a van or small truck drew level with us, and there it was again: a honked horn, and a full-throated shout of “Reform!” But on our side of the street was an augury of the news to come: the house of a…

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Prediction market philosophers got what they wanted. They’re not happy about it

Prediction market philosophers got what they wanted. They’re not happy about it

Brian Kahn writes: On June 11, Kalshi released a buzzy ad featuring noted New York Knicks fan Timothée Chalamet. It was a zeitgeist-capturing moment for prediction markets, akin to the 2022 Super Bowl, when seemingly every commercial featured a celebrity shilling crypto. Yet when I brought Chalamet’s spot up with attendees at Manifest, a recent festival for prediction markets, I was mostly met with blank stares. These conference goers—a mix of academics, startup founders, job seekers, and players in the…

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Speedy, spiraling electrical waves may be key to brain’s information flow

Speedy, spiraling electrical waves may be key to brain’s information flow

Science reports: Like a stadium full of sports fans doing the wave, neurons coordinate their electrical signals in rhythmic patterns that sweep across the cortex, the brain’s outermost layer. Recent studies in humans and animals have shown these patterns, called traveling waves, can take on complex shapes, among them a rotating spiral that has been observed during deep sleep, memory retrieval, and other brain processes. A new study has now captured the fast-spinning waves spanning whole brains, offering clues to…

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Human Rights Watch: Federal government terrorized Minnesota communities

Human Rights Watch: Federal government terrorized Minnesota communities

The Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents to Minnesota between December 2025 and March 2026 led to widespread human rights violations, terrorized residents with long-lasting effects, and spotlighted the deeply abusive patterns in US immigration enforcement, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 180-page report, “‘A Manufactured Crisis’: Minnesota Communities Terrorized by the Federal Government,” comprehensively documents how the US government’s “Operation Metro Surge” caused a human rights crisis in Minnesota, particularly in and…

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Israelis see Trump-Iran deal as ‘catastrophic capitulation’ and ‘diplomatic Oct. 7’

Israelis see Trump-Iran deal as ‘catastrophic capitulation’ and ‘diplomatic Oct. 7’

The New York Times reports: Israel awoke to a frightening new reality on Thursday as it absorbed, with disbelief and largely in silence, the terms of President Trump’s preliminary agreement to end the war with Iran. It accomplishes none of Israel’s war aims, analysts and officials said, and arguably leaves the country in worse shape on each of them. Regime change? The government in Tehran is emerging from the war even more hard-line and emboldened, despite being decapitated at the…

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Vance cautions Israeli critics: Don’t attack ‘the only powerful ally’ you have left anywhere in the world

Vance cautions Israeli critics: Don’t attack ‘the only powerful ally’ you have left anywhere in the world

Politico reports: Vice President JD Vance on Thursday warned Israeli political leaders critical of the Trump administration memorandum of understanding with Iran not to attack “the only powerful ally” they have “anywhere left in the entire world.” It is the latest rebuke of a close ally with which the Trump administration has apparently grown increasingly frustrated as it works to wind down the monthslong war that the U.S. and Israel have waged together against Iran. Cabinet-level officials in Israel have…

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The billionaire hidden behind the curtain inside Trump’s Pentagon

The billionaire hidden behind the curtain inside Trump’s Pentagon

The Guardian reports: The only available video over the last 15 months of the official who really wields power in Donald Trump’s Pentagon is a cartoon animation. Released in May on X by the US government, it shows a silver haired figure in a grey suit lighting up a cigar and sitting at a massive wooden desk with a nameplate: DEPSECWAR FEINBERG. Stephen Feinberg, the 66-year-old billionaire founder of the private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management, has served as the…

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$352 million in Secret Service funds redirected to pay for Trump’s ballroom

$352 million in Secret Service funds redirected to pay for Trump’s ballroom

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration’s budget office has redirected $352 million that was intended in part for Secret Service training and recruitment to what it described as security measures at the White House, a government database shows. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget did not specify the purpose of the unusually large shift in response to questions on Wednesday. But a person familiar with the Secret Service budget, speaking on the condition of anonymity…

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Trump administration backs off plan to end critical ocean monitoring

Trump administration backs off plan to end critical ocean monitoring

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill. The National Science Foundation had said in May that it would begin removing hundreds of underwater instruments this month that collect data on coastal flooding, marine heat waves and other climate and weather events. But the agency announced on Thursday that it will pause…

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Moscow oil refinery struck in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on city since start of war

Moscow oil refinery struck in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on city since start of war

The Guardian reports: Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow in Kyiv’s biggest air raid on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, setting a major ⁠oil refinery on fire and forcing evacuations at the country’s largest airport. Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a response to Russia’s strike on a historic Kyiv monastery complex earlier this week. “We do not want this war and never did,” the Ukrainian president said in a voice message to journalists….

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Abdullah Ibrahim — 1934–2026

Abdullah Ibrahim — 1934–2026

A Brother With Perfect Timing is a 1987 documentary, directed by Chris Austin, about musician Abdullah Ibrahim and his struggle against apartheid in South Africa:   Abdullah Ibrahim crafted a magnificent new culture for South Africa By Henning Melber, University of Pretoria Adolph Johannes Brand was born on 9 October 1934 in Cape Town. He would become better known as Dollar Brand and then Abdullah Ibrahim, an artist of mixed ethnic descent who personified the city’s multiculturalism and represented it on…

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Trump went to war triumphant and leaves in defeat

Trump went to war triumphant and leaves in defeat

Jonathan Lemire writes: President Trump lost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally. The war, which the United States fought alongside Israel, accomplished none of the goals that Trump named at the outset. Instead, it only empowered the hard-liners in Tehran and arguably emboldened them to someday seek a nuclear weapon. Despite…

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Iran is returning to nuclear talks no longer afraid of America

Iran is returning to nuclear talks no longer afraid of America

The Wall Street Journal reports: After more than three months of bombing and blockades, the U.S. and Iran are back to square one, preparing for what promises to be difficult negotiations over limits to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. This time, the Iranians will come to the table armed with valuable knowledge: They can survive the worst the Americans can throw at them. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that their fierce campaign of airstrikes, launched on Feb. 28…

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MAGA hawk mutiny deepens Trump’s isolation on Iran

MAGA hawk mutiny deepens Trump’s isolation on Iran

Axios reports: President Trump’s Iran deal has opened an explosive second front in MAGA’s civil war, waged by hawkish allies who view U.S. concessions as an existential betrayal of Israel. Why it matters: Across two terms and 11 years in the political spotlight, no issue has divided Trump’s base more than the Iran war. When U.S. strikes began, leading isolationists — from Tucker Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene — were excommunicated for suggesting Trump had abandoned “America First” principles on behalf of Israel. Three months later, with an…

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