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Category: Politics

Vladimir Kara-Murza’s last statement to Russian court: A reckoning will come

Vladimir Kara-Murza’s last statement to Russian court: A reckoning will come

At the closing session of his trial in Moscow, Vladimir Kara-Murza delivered these remarks: Members of the court: I was sure, after two decades spent in Russian politics, after all that I have seen and experienced, that nothing can surprise me anymore. I must admit that I was wrong. I’ve been surprised by the extent to which my trial, in its secrecy and its contempt for legal norms, has surpassed even the “trials” of Soviet dissidents in the 1960s and ’70s….

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Inside Rupert Murdoch’s succession drama

Inside Rupert Murdoch’s succession drama

Gabriel Sherman writes: On the afternoon of July 2, 2022, Rupert Murdoch’s black Range Rover pulled up to a 12th-century stone church in Westwell, a storybook Cotswolds village 75 miles west of London. The then 91-year-old Fox Corporation chairman traveled to the Oxfordshire countryside to attend his 21-year-old granddaughter Charlotte Freud’s wedding. Invitations instructed the 70 guests to wear “formal theatrical” attire. Murdoch emerged from his SUV looking like Tom Wolfe in a white suit, red suede shoes, and red…

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Judge imposes sanction on Fox for withholding evidence in defamation case

Judge imposes sanction on Fox for withholding evidence in defamation case

The New York Times reports: The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said on Wednesday that he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had deliberately withheld evidence, scolding the lawyers for not being “straightforward” with him. The rebuke came after lawyers for Dominion, which is suing for defamation, revealed a number of instances in which Fox’s lawyers had not turned over evidence in a…

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NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’

NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as ‘state-affiliated media’

NPR reports: NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries. The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn,…

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From Discord to 4chan: The improbable journey of a U.S. intelligence leak

From Discord to 4chan: The improbable journey of a U.S. intelligence leak

Bellingcat reports: In recent days, the US Justice Department and Pentagon have begun investigating an apparent online leak of sensitive documents, including some that were marked “Top Secret”. A portion of the documents, which have since been widely covered by the news media, focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while others detailed analysis of potential UK policies on the South China Sea and the activities of a Houthi figure in Yemen. The existence of the documents was first reported by…

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The leaked documents on the Ukraine war are chilling

The leaked documents on the Ukraine war are chilling

David Ignatius writes: Intelligence is always about what philosophers call epistemology — the study of how we know what we know. But let’s try to focus on facts, by examining some baseline themes in the documents that accord with information from other sources. By restricting ourselves to this subset of information supported by collateral evidence, we can make out some basic themes. First, Ukraine is facing a severe shortage of air defense weapons that could cost it the war. We…

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New details on intelligence leak show it circulated for weeks before raising alarm

New details on intelligence leak show it circulated for weeks before raising alarm

The Wall Street Journal reports: In total, just over 50 documents with Secret and Top Secret classification markings have surfaced so far, and have been viewed by the Journal and a variety of independent intelligence analysts. A critical question is who had access, and when, to the hundreds of others that were posted in the original group between January and March, and how significant are the secrets that these files contain. The U.S. intelligence community is expected to take measures…

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Egypt secretly planned to supply rockets to Russia, leaked U.S. document say

Egypt secretly planned to supply rockets to Russia, leaked U.S. document say

The Washington Post reports: President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi of Egypt, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East and a major recipient of U.S. aid, recently ordered subordinates to produce up to 40,000 rockets to be covertly shipped to Russia, according to a leaked U.S. intelligence document. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine. A portion of a top secret document, dated Feb. 17, summarizes purported conversations between Sisi…

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Mifepristone should not only remain in use, but it should be easier to get

Mifepristone should not only remain in use, but it should be easier to get

Elizabeth Janiak writes: Even before [U.S. District Court Judge Matthew] Kacsmaryk’s decision, existing federal regulations on mifepristone also reinforced abortion stigma. The drug, which works by blocking a hormone needed to sustain pregnancy, held promise of improving access to abortion care when it was introduced over 20 years ago. Before mifepristone’s approval, most pregnancy terminations in the U.S. used vacuum aspiration, a brief and safe procedure with high patient satisfaction, but one that requires specific clinical training many clinicians do…

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Research with exotic viruses risks a deadly outbreak, scientists warn

Research with exotic viruses risks a deadly outbreak, scientists warn

The Washington Post reports: Some of the workers received booster shots to prevent infection by common rabies, and none of them reported illness, according to their supervisor. But the incidents raised disturbing questions about the research: What if they encountered an unknown virus that killed humans? What if it spread to their colleagues? What if it infected their families and neighbors? As if to underscore the risks, in 2018 another lab on the same Bangkok campus — a workspace built…

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Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party?

Is the GOP becoming the American fascist party?

Robert Reich writes: I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity toward authoritarianism. Okay, fascism. What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the…

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GOP embraces a new foreign policy: Bomb Mexico to stop fentanyl

GOP embraces a new foreign policy: Bomb Mexico to stop fentanyl

Politico reports: A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has discussed sending “special forces” and using “cyber warfare” to target cartel leaders if he’s reelected president and, per Rolling Stone, asked for “battle plans” to strike Mexico. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at…

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U.S. deems WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich ‘wrongfully detained’ by Russia

U.S. deems WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich ‘wrongfully detained’ by Russia

The Wall Street Journal reports: The State Department on Monday designated Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested by Russian security services last month, as ”wrongfully detained,” launching a broad U.S. government effort to exert pressure on Russia to free him. Mr. Gershkovich is held on an accusation of espionage that the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny. His case now shifts to a State Department section known as the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy…

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The U.S. Army increasingly lets soldiers charged with violent crimes leave the military rather than face trial

The U.S. Army increasingly lets soldiers charged with violent crimes leave the military rather than face trial

ProPublica reports: Stationed at Army posts thousands of miles apart, two soldiers faced a flurry of criminal charges after they allegedly assaulted women within days of each other in early 2017. One soldier was accused of physically assaulting his wife and firing a gun as she tried to flee their home near Fort Hood in Texas. Police later found a bullet hole in a window screen. The other told investigators in Alaska that he’d had sex with a fellow soldier…

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China sentences leading human rights activists to 14 and 12 years in prison

China sentences leading human rights activists to 14 and 12 years in prison

The New York Times reports: Two of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers were sentenced on Monday to 14 years and 12 years in prison, some of the lengthiest such sentences in recent years and an indication of how the space for expression has evaporated under China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, had been charged with subversion for promoting what they called a “New Citizens Movement,” which encouraged ordinary Chinese to exercise the rights such…

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‘A whole appeasement psychology’: How America let Putin off the hook after Crimea

‘A whole appeasement psychology’: How America let Putin off the hook after Crimea

Politico reports: Jack Hanick spent years openly helping a Russian mogul who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014 set up a pro-Kremlin TV empire, raising suspicions about whether the American was violating U.S. law. And yet, for most of the past decade, the Justice Department didn’t appear to consider the ex-Fox News staffer too important a target, at least not enough to indict him. But Hanick’s luck — and that of numerous other people suspected for years of violating U.S….

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