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Sinn Féin to attend King Charles’ coronation in sign of changed times

Sinn Féin to attend King Charles’ coronation in sign of changed times

Politico reports: The Irish republicans of Sinn Féin — who once supported Irish Republican Army attacks on British royals — announced Wednesday they will send senior representatives to the coronation of King Charles III in a sign of radically changed times. Michelle O’Neill, the party’s deputy leader and first minister-designate for the mothballed Northern Ireland government, said she would represent Sinn Féin at the May 6 ceremony at Westminster Abbey. O’Neill, who wants the Democratic Unionists to end their year-long…

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Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk

Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk

Rest of World reports: It’s been exactly six months since Elon Musk took over Twitter, promising a new era of free speech and independence from political bias. But Twitter’s self-reported data shows that, under Musk, the company has complied with hundreds more government orders for censorship or surveillance — especially in countries such as Turkey and India. The data, drawn from Twitter’s reports to the Lumen database, shows that between October 27, 2022 and April 26, 2023, Twitter received a…

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Monist philosophy and quantum physics agree that all is one

Monist philosophy and quantum physics agree that all is one

Heinrich Päs writes: ‘From all things One and from One all things,’ wrote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus some 2,500 years ago. He was describing monism, the ancient idea that all is one – that, fundamentally, everything we see or experience is an aspect of one unified whole. Heraclitus wasn’t the first, nor the last, to advocate the idea. The ancient Egyptians believed in an all-encompassing but elusive unity symbolised by the goddess Isis, often portrayed with a veil and worshipped…

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Trump could definitely beat Biden

Trump could definitely beat Biden

Eric Levitz writes: Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 Republican primary is not certain. But it now looks more than merely likely. The former president boasts more than twice as much support as Ron DeSantis, leading the Florida governor by a 51-to-24 percent margin in FiveThirtyEight’s average of GOP primary polls. No other candidate is polling above 6 percent. And the gap between Trump and DeSantis has been growing steadily wider for weeks. Indeed, the Viktor Orbán of the Sunshine State appears to be wilting beneath the…

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This is what the right-wing takeover of a progressive college looks like

This is what the right-wing takeover of a progressive college looks like

Michelle Goldberg writes: When I first met Matthew Lepinski, the faculty chair of New College of Florida, he was willing to give the right-wingers sent to remake his embattled progressive public school a chance. This was in January, a few weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed six activist conservatives, including the culture war strategist Chris Rufo, to New College’s board of trustees. Rufo, the ideological entrepreneur who made critical race theory a Republican boogeyman, was open about his…

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Inside Russia’s environmental influence operation targeting the Baltic Sea

Inside Russia’s environmental influence operation targeting the Baltic Sea

Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: In the first few days of October 2022, a group of Russians and Belarusians gathered in the Kaliningrad resort town of Svetlogorsk. The politicians, academics and activists discussed how the two countries, “truly striving for stability across the planet,” might resist the suite of international sanctions hitting both Russia and Belarus after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. One of the Svetlogorsk event’s most authoritative speakers was Alexander Dynkin, president of the prestigious Primakov National Research…

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Russian pilots tried to ‘dogfight’ U.S. jets over Syria, U.S. Central Command says

Russian pilots tried to ‘dogfight’ U.S. jets over Syria, U.S. Central Command says

CNN reports: Russian pilots tried to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, according to a spokesman for US Central Command, part of a recent pattern of more aggressive behavior. The attempts have happened in several of the most recent instances of aggressive behavior from Russian pilots, Col. Joe Buccino said. The Russian pilots do not appear to be trying to shoot down American jets, a US official told CNN, but they may be trying to “provoke” the US and “draw us…

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Finding the origin of a pandemic is difficult. Preventing one shouldn’t be

Finding the origin of a pandemic is difficult. Preventing one shouldn’t be

W. Ian Lipkin writes: In 1999, the New York State Department of Health asked me to test ‌brain samples from‌‌ people in Queens experiencing encephalitis, or brain inflammation. Surprisingly, we found they were infected with West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne virus that had never been reported before in North America. How did a virus endemic in Africa and the Middle East end up in Queens? At the time, ‌scientists posited that there were stow‌away mosquitoes on a flight from Tel…

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Ancient-human genome count surpasses 10,000

Ancient-human genome count surpasses 10,000

Nature reports: In 2010, researchers published the first genome sequence from an ancient human, using tufts of hair from a man who lived around 4,000 years ago in Greenland. In the 13 years since, scientists have generated genome data from more than 10,000 ancient people — and there’s no sign of a slowdown. “I feel truly gobsmacked that we have gotten to this point,” says David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. His team maintains…

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Just like humans, other apes enjoy spinning

Just like humans, other apes enjoy spinning

The New York Times reports: In 2011, a gorilla named Zola gained internet fame when the Calgary Zoo posted a video that showed him spinning in circles on his knuckles and heels with what appeared to be a huge grin on his face. Zola, the so-called break-dancing gorilla, returned in 2017, this time in a video showing him whirling around a kiddie pool with a level of wild enthusiasm rivaling the most committed human dancer at an all-night rave. Humans’…

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Chief Justice’s wife, Jane Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show

Chief Justice’s wife, Jane Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show

Insider reports: Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms. Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge…

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Biden’s ‘freedom’ campaign taps into broad opposition to book banning

Biden’s ‘freedom’ campaign taps into broad opposition to book banning

Politico reports: Presidential campaigns often are waged on whether or not the country is ready to “turn the page.” President Joe Biden wants his reelection bid to hinge on whether or not there is a page to turn. The president’s team has made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaign’s opening salvos. He referred to GOP efforts to restrict curriculum — Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” was the third most banned title in America last…

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In NH stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case

In NH stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump told the woman, Micki Larson-Olson, who was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of resisting police efforts to clear the grounds after the insurrection by a pro-Trump mob. “You guys are gonna be okay.” Trump, who was campaigning here in New Hampshire, then agreed…

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Denied a gun license over school threat, accused leaker Jack Teixeira later got top-secret clearance

Denied a gun license over school threat, accused leaker Jack Teixeira later got top-secret clearance

The Wall Street Journal reports: As a high-school student, the Air National Guardsman charged with leaking classified intelligence documents admitted he made violent threats that prevented him from getting a firearms license. Two years later, however, he secured a top-secret security clearance. The episode, which was reported to local police, was one of several that Airman First Class Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard admitted had been problematic—to authorities weighing his application for a gun license, to investigators…

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