Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Acting AG Todd Blanche was told last year to recuse from DOJ matters involving Trump

Acting AG Todd Blanche was told last year to recuse from DOJ matters involving Trump

CNN reports: It was less than two weeks after Todd Blanche took on his role of deputy attorney general in March 2025 when the Justice Department’s top ethics lawyer delivered some straightforward yet inconvenient news: His recusal from legal cases that involved President Donald Trump in his personal capacity was necessary. The official conducting the briefing, Joseph Tirrell, handed Blanche and his then-top deputy Emil Bove, who was also in the conference room, a printed PowerPoint presentation on ethics, according…

Read More Read More

Meta: What it’s like inside a company where ‘everyone is unhappy’

Meta: What it’s like inside a company where ‘everyone is unhappy’

Wired reports: As Meta employees brace for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many say the vibes are horrifically, historically low. “Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives,” says an employee who works on Instagram. The social media giant plans to cut about 10 percent of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 people, “to run the company more efficiently” and “offset the other investments” it’s making, according to a human resources leader. But the layoffs, which…

Read More Read More

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

The Guardian reports: Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment. The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner. While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable…

Read More Read More

10,000 rulings: The federal courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies

10,000 rulings: The federal courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies

Politico reports: Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece…

Read More Read More

U.S. intelligence indicates Iran retains substantial missile capabilities

U.S. intelligence indicates Iran retains substantial missile capabilities

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities. Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait…

Read More Read More

China gains major edge on U.S. during Iran war, intelligence report finds

China gains major edge on U.S. during Iran war, intelligence report finds

The Washington Post reports: A confidential U.S. intelligence analysis details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the United States across military, economic, diplomatic and other fields, said two U.S. officials who have read the report. The assessment, the officials said, was produced this week for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, and has raised alarm within the Pentagon about the geopolitical costs of Washington’s standoff with Tehran as…

Read More Read More

White House to host 9-hour prayer festival for shameless hucksters promoting Christian nationalism

White House to host 9-hour prayer festival for shameless hucksters promoting Christian nationalism

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival on the National Mall on Sunday that organizers say will reflect the country’s Christian origins and, they hope, spark “a movement of renewal” in America. “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” is partly funded by millions in public dollars earmarked for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, organizers said. It will feature mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, many of whom…

Read More Read More

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urges public to back judicial independence

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urges public to back judicial independence

Politico reports: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urged Americans on Tuesday to defend the judicial system against salvos that jeopardize its independence, warning that such threats have the potential to do serious damage to American democracy. “Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said during an appearance…

Read More Read More

Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

The Guardian reports: A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW…

Read More Read More

What does the Anthropocene look like from below the Earth’s surface?

What does the Anthropocene look like from below the Earth’s surface?

James Dinneen writes: When Soviet engineers began to drain the Aral Sea in the 1960s, they could hardly foresee the scale on which their handiwork would alter the planet. The goal was to irrigate large areas of what is now Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to grow cotton, part of a utopian project stretching back to czarist Russia to civilise the ‘backward’ regions of central Asia. Achieving this meant diverting most of the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, which was…

Read More Read More

Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

Chinese view Trump as an ‘accelerator of American political decay’

The New York Times reports: When President Trump visited China in late 2017, Xi Jinping welcomed him with a grand display of Chinese history and culture: a four-hour private tour of the Forbidden City culminating in a performance by the Peking Opera. Eight years, a pandemic and two trade wars later, Mr. Trump is returning to Beijing, where the theme of future dominance, not ancient majesty, has filled domestic and international headlines with articles about dancing robots, drone swarms and…

Read More Read More

Ukrainian long-range drones are turning Russia’s size into a weakness

Ukrainian long-range drones are turning Russia’s size into a weakness

Peter Dickinson writes: For centuries, Russia’s colossal size has been widely regarded as the country’s greatest asset. From Charles XII of Sweden to Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, a long line of would-be conquerors have invaded Russia only for their armies to swallowed up by the vastness of the country. Ukraine is now attempting to turn this military logic on its head with a strategic bombing campaign that aims to exploit Russia’s immensity and transform it from a key strength…

Read More Read More

U.S. and Iran are locked in a stalemate that’s neither peace nor war

U.S. and Iran are locked in a stalemate that’s neither peace nor war

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. and Iran are locked in a diplomatic stalemate over issues that have bedeviled the two sides for years, as the conflict settles into a gray zone that is neither war nor peace. The cease-fire is entering its second month and, despite sporadic violence, has now lasted almost as long as the fighting which preceded it. There is little to indicate that either the U.S. or Iran is ready to compromise, but neither wants…

Read More Read More