UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule

UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule

The Guardian reports: The co-founder of Palestine Action has won a legal challenge to the home secretary’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws. The proscription of Palestine Action, which categorised it alongside the likes of Islamic State, was the first of a direct action protest group and attracted widespread condemnation as well as a civil disobedience campaign defying the ban, during which more than 2,000 people have been arrested. From 5 July last year, being a member of…

Read More Read More

Are the mysteries of quantum mechanics beginning to dissolve?

Are the mysteries of quantum mechanics beginning to dissolve?

Philip Ball writes: None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird, my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are…

Read More Read More

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it’s turned this ‘biological void’ into a carbon sink

China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it’s turned this ‘biological void’ into a carbon sink

Live Science reports: Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world’s largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals. The Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklimakan or Takla Makan) is slightly larger than Montana, stretching across about 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers). It is encircled by high mountains, which block moist air from reaching the desert for most of the year, creating extremely…

Read More Read More

Trump regime erases the government’s power to fight climate change

Trump regime erases the government’s power to fight climate change

The New York Times reports: President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. Led by a president who refers to climate…

Read More Read More

The Epstein files and the hidden world of an unaccountable elite

The Epstein files and the hidden world of an unaccountable elite

The New York Times reports: Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged. In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling…

Read More Read More

‘Outright fascist’: How ICE defies judges’ orders to release detainees

‘Outright fascist’: How ICE defies judges’ orders to release detainees

Politico reports: Courts across the country have overwhelmingly rejected the Trump administration’s effort to round up thousands of immigrants and lock them up without a chance for bond — even if they have no criminal records and have lived in the United States for years. But the Trump administration has slow-walked or outright defied judges’ orders demanding the release of people scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at an increasingly rapid clip. Sometimes, ICE has raced detainees across state…

Read More Read More

Tallying the damage of ICE’s assault on Minneapolis

Tallying the damage of ICE’s assault on Minneapolis

Rolling Stone reports: The federal government is retreating from Minneapolis, Minnesota. White House border czar Tom Homan announced on Thursday that the Trump administration will end the immigration enforcement surge it launched in January after a right-wing YouTuber highlighted allegations of fraud at Minneapolis-based child care centers. Leaders in Minnesota were sober in their response. Speaking to reporters after Homan’s announcement on Thursday, Gov. Tim Walz cataloged the damage. “This surge of untrained, aggressive federal agents are going to leave…

Read More Read More

How the 9/11 terrorist attacks shaped ICE’s immigration strategy

How the 9/11 terrorist attacks shaped ICE’s immigration strategy

Tear gas fills the air in south Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026, after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti. Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune By Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College Stephen Miller’s January 2026 announcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – telling them that they have “immunity to perform your duties” and that no “illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist” can stop them – may seem like an extreme statement outside the political mainstream. And when ICE agents…

Read More Read More

Anthropic puts $20 million into a super PAC operation to counter OpenAI

Anthropic puts $20 million into a super PAC operation to counter OpenAI

The New York Times reports: Silicon Valley’s dueling artificial intelligence start-ups now have dueling super PACs. Anthropic, the safety-focused A.I. company formed by former OpenAI executives, said on Thursday that it was putting $20 million into a new super PAC operation that will be in opposition to super PACs backed by OpenAI’s leaders and investors. The donation effectively kicks off a new conflict between the rivals, with this year’s midterm elections as the battleground. At the heart of the disagreement…

Read More Read More

Affordability and the ‘Epstein class’ will define American politics

Affordability and the ‘Epstein class’ will define American politics

David Wallace-Wells writes: The San Francisco Bay Area is home to at least one-third of the value of the entire U.S. stock market. Late last year, you couldn’t escape a chilling billboard campaign, meant to be cheeky, from an artificial intelligence start-up: “Stop Hiring Humans.” And on Saturday, somebody tried to AstroTurf a trollish Billionaires March through the city in defense of Silicon Valley’s 21st-century robber barons. Only a few dozen people showed up, heckled along the way by passers-by….

Read More Read More

Point of no return: Hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

Point of no return: Hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

The Guardian reports: The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very…

Read More Read More

Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal in bid to revive industry

Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal in bid to revive industry

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump will unveil plans to use government funding and Pentagon contracts to sustain US coal-fired power plants as he seeks to drive domestic reliance on the fossil fuel. The marquee initiative, set to be announced Wednesday, will come through an executive order, as Trump directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to enter into agreements to purchase electricity from coal plants to power military operations, according to a White House official. The move is expected to tap special…

Read More Read More

ICE is crashing the U.S. court system in Minnesota

ICE is crashing the U.S. court system in Minnesota

Wired reports: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota is pushing the United States court system to its breaking point. Since Operation Metro Surge began in December, federal immigration agents have arrested some 4,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result is an avalanche of cases filed in the US district court in Minnesota on behalf of people challenging their imprisonment by federal immigration enforcement agents. According to WIRED’s review of court records and…

Read More Read More

Trump official allies with Europe’s far right in attacks on migration and hate speech policies

Trump official allies with Europe’s far right in attacks on migration and hate speech policies

The Guardian reports: As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks, a senior state department official, Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies, and promoting far-right parties abroad. Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate…

Read More Read More