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Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

The Guardian reports: Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days, in defiance of US and other international pressure to maintain the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country’s Palestinian population. In a 92-10 vote late on Monday, the Knesset banned the agency, which operates in Israel according to a 1967 treaty, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East…

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Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

The Times of Israel reports: A poll published by Channel 12 TV shows that Israelis massively favor Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris, in the upcoming US presidential elections. Asked who they prefer to be the next US president, 66 percent chose the former president, while only 17% say they want to see the US vice president win the election. A further 17% said they did not know. The channel noted that US President Joe Biden was briefly favored…

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Kama muta: the powerful emotion you didn’t know how to name

Kama muta: the powerful emotion you didn’t know how to name

David Robson writes: I am about 20 minutes into my conversation with the psychological anthropologist Alan Fiske when he starts talking about a lost kitten. “If you saw it outside, you would go pick it up and stop it getting run over by a truck, check if it’s hungry, and make sure it’s warm and safe,” he says. “Your heart goes out to it.” I’m not an ardent cat lover, and I don’t consider myself to be an especially soppy…

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What Elon Musk really wants from Trump

What Elon Musk really wants from Trump

Franklin Foer writes: Musk’s public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interests—namely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASA’s core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politico’s tabulation, both companies…

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Billionaire cowards at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are obeying fascism in advance

Billionaire cowards at the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are obeying fascism in advance

Will Bunch writes: In a famous monologue [in the Watergate movie, All The President’s Men], [Washington Post executive editor, Ben] Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar) tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that “nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country,” adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, “not that any of that matters.” Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene occurs…

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Jeff Bezos killed WaPo Kamala Harris endorsement through ‘quid pro quo’ with Trump, asserts ex-columnist

Jeff Bezos killed WaPo Kamala Harris endorsement through ‘quid pro quo’ with Trump, asserts ex-columnist

The Daily Beast reports: The Washington Post’s outgoing editor-at-large and longtime columnist has made explosive claims that its owner Jeff Bezos struck a deal with Donald Trump in order to kill the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazon founder killed a plan to…

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Agents of foreign powers may gain major positions in Trump administration

Agents of foreign powers may gain major positions in Trump administration

The New York Times reports: A memo circulating among at least half a dozen advisers to former President Donald J. Trump recommends that if he is elected, he bypass traditional background checks by law enforcement officials and immediately grant security clearances to a large number of his appointees after being sworn in, according to three people briefed on the matter. The proposal is being promoted by a small group including Boris Epshteyn, a top legal adviser to Mr. Trump who…

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Republican battleground-state legal blitz falters ahead of election

Republican battleground-state legal blitz falters ahead of election

Reuters reports: Donald Trump’s Republican allies have suffered a string of courtroom setbacks in battleground U.S. presidential election states as Election Day draws closer, losses which could boost voter turnout and speed certification of the eventual winner. In the past three weeks, Trump’s allies have been dealt at least 10 court losses in battleground states that could decide the outcome of the Nov. 5 contest between Republican former President Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. On Friday,…

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Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas. The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology…

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Relying on AI could reshape your entire identity without you realizing

Relying on AI could reshape your entire identity without you realizing

Muriel Leuenberger writes: Your phone and its apps know a lot about you. Who you are talking to and spending time with, where you go, what music, games, and movies you like, how you look, which news articles you read, who you find attractive, what you buy with your credit card, and how many steps you take. This information is already being exploited to sell us products, services, or politicians. Online traces allow companies like Google or Facebook to infer…

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Trump has a ‘For Sale’ sign around his neck

Trump has a ‘For Sale’ sign around his neck

The New York Times reports: On a Friday in late September, Donald J. Trump took time off the campaign trail for a closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago with officials representing the vaping industry. The vaping emissaries talked about loosening regulations and told the former president he had “saved” the industry in the past. The group — including Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, and another 2016 campaign aide, Michael Rubino — showed him mock-ups of mailers they were sending out…

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Jeff Bezos overrode his own publisher to kill Washington Post’s Kamala Harris endorsement

Jeff Bezos overrode his own publisher to kill Washington Post’s Kamala Harris endorsement

The Daily Beast reports: Multibillionaire Jeff Bezos alone made the decision to block The Washington Post, the newspaper he owns, from endorsing a presidential candidate. The Daily Beast has learned that even Will Lewis, Bezos’ hand-picked publisher, fought Bezos “tooth and nail” to prevent him from squelching the prepared editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. It’s a surprising twist, given that it was Lewis who announced the paper’s decision. The news organization’s most senior opinion columnists Friday night fired back…

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Harris earns an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders

Harris earns an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders

The New Republic reports: More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. “We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads. “Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel…

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Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally

Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally

The Washington Post reports: Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post. Musk in recent months has amplified the Republican presidential candidate’s claims that “open borders” and undocumented immigrants are destroying America, broadcasting those views to…

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