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Israel passes law shielding Netanyahu from being removed amid protests over judicial changes

Israel passes law shielding Netanyahu from being removed amid protests over judicial changes

CNN reports: Benjamin Netanyahu resisted calls to drop his controversial overhaul of Israel’s judiciary in a fiery televised address Thursday, hours after his government passed a law that was condemned by critics as an effort to protect his position. Israeli opposition politicians earlier condemned the new law, which would limit the ways a sitting prime minister can be declared unfit for office, describing it as a way to protect Netanyahu, who is facing an ongoing corruption trial. By a 61-to-47…

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Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

BBC News reports: Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been sentenced to two years in prison in a criminal defamation case. The Congress MP was convicted by the court in Gujarat state for 2019 comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname at an election rally. Mr Gandhi, who was present in court for sentencing, remains out of jail on bail for 30 days and will appeal. His party said he was being targeted for exposing the government’s “dark deeds”. Elections…

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Matt Taibbi doesn’t get there are reasons to study propaganda information flows, so he insists this must be nefarious

Matt Taibbi doesn’t get there are reasons to study propaganda information flows, so he insists this must be nefarious

Mike Masnick writes: Over the last few months, Elon Musk’s handpicked journalists have continued revealing less and less with each new edition of the “Twitter Files,” to the point that even those of us who write about this area have mostly been skimming each new release, confirming that yet again these reporters have no idea what they’re talking about, are cherry picking misleading examples, and then misrepresenting basically everything. It’s difficult to decide if it’s even worth giving these releases…

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America is in a disgraced class of its own

America is in a disgraced class of its own

Matthew Desmond writes: The United States has a poverty problem. A third of the country’s people live in households making less than $55,000. Many are not officially counted among the poor, but there is plenty of economic hardship above the poverty line. And plenty far below it as well. According to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for government aid and living expenses, more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021,…

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‘Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich’ — Russian conscripts decry ‘criminal orders’

‘Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich’ — Russian conscripts decry ‘criminal orders’

The Washington Post reports: In a dimly lit room, a dozen or so men in Russian military uniforms, their faces concealed by dark balaclavas, stood around a man reading out a letter addressed to President Vladimir Putin. “As of today, we still have not received weapons and ammo,” the man said, identifying his group as soldiers from the 580th Separate howitzer Artillery Division from Serpukhov, a city 62 miles south of Moscow — a unit he said is now stationed…

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Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting

Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting

David Ignatius writes: Pentagon strategists have always divided the world into East and West, with U.S. regional forces under European Command or Indo-Pacific Command. But looking at the embrace of Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin this week, you wonder whether we may need a single “Eurasian Command” to handle an integrated threat. A strong China is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week between the two countries’ leaders. The…

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TikTok ban would be ‘a slap in the face’ to young Democratic voters, activists warn

TikTok ban would be ‘a slap in the face’ to young Democratic voters, activists warn

NBC News reports: In the nation’s capital, the debate over banning TikTok has largely focused on whether the app’s Chinese parent company poses a security threat to Americans. But behind closed doors, Democrats are also being forced to weigh whether blocking the popular video platform could come with heavy political costs. In 2020, Aidan Kohn-Murphy used TikTok to rally support for Joe Biden. Now, he’s trying to use the platform to stop Biden from killing it. “I’m not defending TikTok…

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Manhattan DA takes on Trump in perilous legal fight

Manhattan DA takes on Trump in perilous legal fight

Politico reports: As an indictment looms for Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is poised to become the first prosecutor ever to bring criminal charges against a former American president. It’s a distinction that puts him in a high-profile but perilous spot. Having occupied the district attorney’s office for only 15 months, Bragg has already endured a firestorm sparked by a progressive overhaul of criminal justice policies and a public rebuke from two prominent prosecutors who resigned during the…

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How Europe’s first wild river national park saw off the dams

How Europe’s first wild river national park saw off the dams

The Guardian reports: The fast-moving Vjosa River in Albania curves and braids, sweeping our raft away from the floodplain towards the opposite bank, and back again. The islands that split the waterway in two are temporary, forming, growing, then dissipating so that this truly wild river, one of the last in Europe, never looks the same. “There’s a saying, ‘you can’t step in the same river twice’,” says Ulrich Eichelmann, the head of Riverwatch, a Vienna-based NGO for river protection,…

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Why are most of us stuck with a belief in the soul?

Why are most of us stuck with a belief in the soul?

David P Barash writes: Few ideas are as unsupported, ridiculous and even downright harmful as that of the ‘human soul’. And yet, few ideas are as widespread and as deeply held. What gives? Why has such a bad idea had such a tenacious hold on so many people? Although there is a large literature on the costs and benefits – psychological and economic – of traditional religion, there is a dearth of comparable research on religion’s near-universal handmaiden, the soul….

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Putin kowtows to Xi as Russia submits to its role as China’s junior partner

Putin kowtows to Xi as Russia submits to its role as China’s junior partner

The Associated Press reports: Like a salesman buttering up his best customer, President Vladimir Putin gushed about China’s economic success as he welcomed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the Kremlin. “We even feel a bit envious,” Putin said Monday as Xi grinned. That was more than idle flattery. China isn’t just Moscow’s diplomatic partner in opposing what they see as U.S. domination of global affairs. Its thriving economy is the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas exports, pumping billions…

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Why Ukraine is finally getting new fighter jets from NATO

Why Ukraine is finally getting new fighter jets from NATO

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Ukraine is now getting warplanes, although not the coveted U.S.-made F-16s it has been pushing for. In what counts as another milestone in the West’s willingness to increase security assistance to the war-ravaged nation, Poland and Slovakia, both NATO members, announced last week they will jointly be donating their entire inventory of Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine. Speaking alongside newly elected Czech President Petr Pavel in a press conference in Warsaw on Thursday, Polish President…

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Make no mistake, the investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels scheme is serious

Make no mistake, the investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels scheme is serious

Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann write: Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant. Prosecutors are trained to consider whether a case…

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Inside the 3 months that could cost Fox $1.6 billion

Inside the 3 months that could cost Fox $1.6 billion

The New York Times reports: Since 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip. That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before. There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled…

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