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Category: Politics

On the ground in Rafah: UNICEF reports ‘lethal’ lack of water, services

On the ground in Rafah: UNICEF reports ‘lethal’ lack of water, services

  UN News reports: Almost 3,000 malnourished children are at risk of dying before their families’ eyes in Gaza, where the eight-month-long war continues, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as spokesperson James Elder told UN News on Saturday about the situation on the ground in the besieged and bombarded enclave. Speaking from Gaza, Mr. Elder described a dire landscape, with a focus on child malnutrition and the devastating impact of the ongoing conflict amid growing concerns of famine….

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U.S. sanctions Israeli group for attacking Gaza aid convoys

U.S. sanctions Israeli group for attacking Gaza aid convoys

Al Jazeera reports: The United States has imposed sanctions on a “violent extremist” Israeli group for blocking and damaging humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza as the risk of famine increases in the besieged Palestinian territory. The administration of President Joe Biden on Friday targeted Tzav 9, a group whose stated aim is to prevent any assistance from entering Gaza. It accused the group of looting and setting fire to aid trucks. “The provision of humanitarian assistance is vital to preventing…

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Fossil fuel companies are trying to rig the marketplace

Fossil fuel companies are trying to rig the marketplace

Andrew Dessler writes: Many of us focused on the problem of climate change have been waiting for the day when renewable energy would become cheaper than fossil fuels. Well, we’re there: Solar and wind power are less expensive than oil, gas and coal in many places and are saving our economy billions of dollars. These and other renewable energy sources produced 30 percent of the world’s electricity in 2023, which may also have been the year that greenhouse gas emissions…

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Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under political pressure

Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under political pressure

The Washington Post reports: The Stanford Internet Observatory, which published some of the most influential analysis of the spread of false information on social media during elections, has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation. Just three staffers remain at the Observatory, and they will either leave or find roles at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, which is absorbing what remains of the…

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Palestinians want liberation, not recognition

Palestinians want liberation, not recognition

Lana Tatour writes: Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza is one of the worst crises of modern times. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians are dead, and millions are homeless or displaced. The war in Gaza clearly calls for a new and different international response—a break from the past. Yet Western policymakers, including those in Washington, continue to push a sham peace process and a two-state solution that has long been a mirage. Western policies have only made the situation worse…

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U.S. Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels

U.S. Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. Navy prepared for decades to potentially fight the Soviet Union, then later Russia and China, on the world’s waterways. But instead of a global power, the Navy finds itself locked in combat with a shadowy, Iran-backed rebel group based in Yemen. The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels, overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, has turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II,…

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Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Reuters reports: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus. The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the…

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The movie about Trump that Hollywood is afraid of releasing

The movie about Trump that Hollywood is afraid of releasing

Michelle Goldberg writes: This week I finally got to see “The Apprentice,” an absorbing, disturbing movie about the relationship between the red-baiting mob lawyer Roy Cohn and a young Donald Trump. The film, which was received with an extended standing ovation and mostly appreciative reviews when it premiered at Cannes last month, is a classic story of a mentor and his protégé, chronicling how Trump first learned from and later surpassed his brutal, Machiavellian fixer. Its performances are extraordinary. The…

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How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere

How AI surveillance threatens democracy everywhere

Abi Olvera writes: In 2018, Singapore planned to embed facial recognition cameras in lampposts for nationwide monitoring. But rapid advances in battery technology and 5G networks enabled a pivot to an even more powerful and nimble surveillance system—mobile sensors and cameras capable of observing citizens and catching them in the act of littering, with artificial intelligence handling the data analysis. Around the same time, Malaysia partnered with China’s Yitu Technology to provide police with an AI-powered facial recognition system linked…

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Campaigns can now see what you watch on TV. It’s changing everything

Campaigns can now see what you watch on TV. It’s changing everything

NOTUS reports: Political aide turned data guru Jesse Contario works in the shadows. His employer, MiQ, will never be mentioned at the end of a campaign ad, and it won’t show up on the disclosures campaigns must post to keep the public abreast of their work. Yet Contario works with some of the biggest campaigns in the country — and his firm might know a lot about you. MiQ specializes in harvesting data, including for political campaigns, and it increasingly…

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‘Unprecedented scale’ of violations against children in Gaza, West Bank and Israel, UN report says

‘Unprecedented scale’ of violations against children in Gaza, West Bank and Israel, UN report says

The Guardian reports: More grave violations against children were committed in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel than anywhere else in the world last year, according to a UN report due to be published this week. The report on children and armed conflict, which has been seen by the Guardian, verified more cases of war crimes against children in the occupied territories and Israel than anywhere else, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan. “Israel and…

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How Israel’s war has created a neonatal nightmare in Gaza

How Israel’s war has created a neonatal nightmare in Gaza

The New Arab reports: Around 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are living in fear of the fate of their unborn children as Israel’s genocidal war and its deliberately created famine spares no one. Yasmin Abdulrahman fled to southern Gaza in March just days after the death of her newborn baby, who lived only 11 days before succumbing to malnutrition. He had been born after four months of near-famine conditions across the Strip. Yasmin recalls that she spent over 30 hours…

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A majority of Iranians now favor possessing nuclear weapons. Their leaders take note

A majority of Iranians now favor possessing nuclear weapons. Their leaders take note

Peyman Asadzade writes: Iran is currently in a state of nuclear latency; it possesses the necessary materials to develop nuclear weapons should it decide to proceed. However, Iranian leaders have consistently stated that the country has no such intentions. Historically, public opinion polls since the mid-2000s have consistently demonstrated that while Iranians favored a peaceful nuclear program, a majority of them opposed developing nuclear weapons. A recent survey, however, suggests that Iranian citizens are growing more receptive to nuclear weapons….

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Gen Z influencers who supported Biden in 2020 turn against him

Gen Z influencers who supported Biden in 2020 turn against him

The Washington Post reports: In 2020, hundreds of top TikTok content creators banded together in service of a single goal: get Joe Biden elected. They posted videos, hosted online events and spent hours educating followers to help Biden defeat Donald Trump. Four years later, the coalition once known as TikTok for Biden is now called Gen-Z for Change — and so far, it has not endorsed Biden’s reelection. “Biden is out of step with young people on a number of…

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Record share of U.S. electorate is pro-choice and voting on it

Record share of U.S. electorate is pro-choice and voting on it

Gallup reports: A record-high 32% of U.S. voters say they would only vote for a candidate for major office who shares their views on abortion. The importance of a candidate’s abortion stance to one’s vote is markedly higher among pro-choice voters than it was during the 2020 presidential election cycle, while pro-life voters’ intensity about voting on the abortion issue has waned. Also, voters’ greater intensity on the issue today compared with 2020 is explained mainly by Democrats, while Republicans…

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Microsoft chose profit over security and left U.S. government vulnerable to Russian hack, whistleblower says

Microsoft chose profit over security and left U.S. government vulnerable to Russian hack, whistleblower says

By Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke This story was originally published by ProPublica. Microsoft hired Andrew Harris for his extraordinary skill in keeping hackers out of the nation’s most sensitive computer networks. In 2016, Harris was hard at work on a mystifying incident in which intruders had somehow penetrated a major U.S. tech company. The breach troubled Harris for two reasons. First, it involved the company’s cloud — a virtual storehouse typically containing an organization’s most sensitive data….

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