With foreign backing, Israel’s solar energy boom is powering apartheid

With foreign backing, Israel’s solar energy boom is powering apartheid

Sofia Fani Gutman, Carolina Pedrazzi and Andrey X report: “How do you charge your phones?” we asked. “With the sun,” Ahmad replied, nodding toward the small cluster of solar panels behind him. For 47 years, the tiny hamlet of Naba’a Al-Ghazzal, part of the community of Al-Farsiya, has survived on the northern edge of the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Home to around 20 members of the Daraghmeh family — including Ahmad, the community’s informal leader — all…

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Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Climate physicists face the ghosts in their machines: clouds

Charlie Wood writes: In October 2008, Chris Bretherton lifted off from the coast of northern Chile in a C-130 turboprop plane. It was too dark to see the sandy hills of the Atacama Desert below, but the darkness suited Bretherton just fine. The researcher wasn’t going sightseeing. Seated directly behind the pilots, he kept his focus entirely on the sky. The plane was stuffed with instruments, and its wings bristled with sensors and other devices. Bretherton’s immediate mission was to…

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DOJ cases against protesters keep collapsing as federal officers’ lies are exposed in court

DOJ cases against protesters keep collapsing as federal officers’ lies are exposed in court

The Guardian reports: Department of Justice prosecutors across the US have suffered a string of embarrassing defeats in their aggressive pursuit of criminal cases against people accused of “assaulting” and “impeding” federal officers. In recent months, the federal government has relentlessly prosecuted protesters, government critics, immigrants and others arrested during immigration operations, often accusing them of physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties. But many of those cases have recently been dismissed or ended in not guilty verdicts. In…

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As corporate America stayed silent, a small wine importer risked his business to challenge Trump’s tariffs

As corporate America stayed silent, a small wine importer risked his business to challenge Trump’s tariffs

CNN reports: When President Donald Trump announced plans to raise the nation’s effective tariff rate to levels not seen since 1930 last year, most CEOs were silent. They’d seen how opposing the president’s ambitions – let alone his signature economic policy – could prove even more costly than the policies he enacted. With billions in annual revenue at stake, the leaders of multinational corporations generally stood still. But Victor Schwartz, the owner of small New York-based wine importer VOS Selections,…

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Democrats demand Trump issue $1,700 tariff refunds to Americans after the Supreme Court ruling

Democrats demand Trump issue $1,700 tariff refunds to Americans after the Supreme Court ruling

Business Insider reports: President Donald Trump previously promised Americans tariff dividend checks, but if Democrats have their way, he could be issuing refunds instead. After a Supreme Court ruling on Friday struck down Trump’s tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Democratic lawmakers were quick to demand that the president repay Americans through tariff refunds. “Donald Trump should return that money immediately. He has an obligation,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday. “$1,751 per family that were…

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From ‘buy America’ to ‘bye-bye America’, Wall Street investor exodus gathers pace

From ‘buy America’ to ‘bye-bye America’, Wall Street investor exodus gathers pace

Reuters reports: U.S. investors are pulling money out of their own stock market at the fastest pace in at least 16 years as Big Tech returns fade and better-performing overseas markets look more attractive. In the last six months, U.S.-domiciled investors have pulled some $75 billion from U.S. equity products, with $52 billion flowing out since the start of 2026 alone, the most in the first eight weeks of the year since at least 2010, according to LSEG/Lipper data. The…

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While fighting against regulation of social media, tech billionaires shield their own children

While fighting against regulation of social media, tech billionaires shield their own children

The New York Times reports: In November, Kim van Sparrentak, a Green Party lawmaker from the Netherlands, grabbed her headphones and headed for the exit of the European Parliament building. Moments earlier, she had participated in a heated debate over whether to bar young teenagers in Europe from social media platforms. Then a statement on a podcast she was listening to stopped her cold. It was a message from Meta opposing the social media ban proposal, Ms. van Sparrentak said…

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Technology is eroding the learning capabilities of children

Technology is eroding the learning capabilities of children

Fortune reports: In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-Governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information. By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to…

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The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs marks a turning point

The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs marks a turning point

Noah Feldman writes: It took almost a decade, but Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court finally found a way to stand up to President Donald Trump’s executive power overreach, striking down the tariffs that are the signature initiative of his presidency. Not since the Supreme Court struck down the first New Deal in 1935 has the court reversed a policy of comparable importance to a sitting president. The 6-3 decision gives Trump two options. He can accept the…

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Even after losing at the Supreme Court, Trump has plenty of ways to reconstruct his trade regime

Even after losing at the Supreme Court, Trump has plenty of ways to reconstruct his trade regime

Rogé Karma writes: The Trump tariffs are dead. Long live the Trump tariffs? This morning, in a 6–3 opinion, the Supreme Court struck down the bulk of the president’s sweeping global tariffs. The majority ruled that the law Donald Trump had used to carry out most of his trade policies does not, in fact, allow the president to impose tariffs at all. This is a major setback for Trump’s trade agenda, but it is far from a fatal one. The…

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WSJ: The embarrassing truth about tariffs

WSJ: The embarrassing truth about tariffs

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: The White House this week opened a new front in its war on the Federal Reserve: a fight about Fed research on the consequences of President Trump’s tariffs. If the tariffs are such an unambiguous economic and political winner, why is the Administration so defensive about them? The flap concerns the analysis we told you about last week by four economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They found that…

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Trump employs authoritarian icons as his image glowers down from federal buildings

Trump employs authoritarian icons as his image glowers down from federal buildings

Philip Kennicott writes: Most of the buildings in the Depression-era Federal Triangle development have an irregular geometry. The Federal Trade Commission office, known as the Apex Building, is a right-angled triangle with its sharpest point rounded off. The Ronald Reagan Building, added in 1998, looks a bit like a stumpy meat cleaver. And the Justice Department building, named for the slain senator, former attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, is a four-sided polygon with corners beveled flat. It…

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U.S. plans online portal allowing hate speech and terrorist propaganda to be spread across Europe

U.S. plans online portal allowing hate speech and terrorist propaganda to be spread across Europe

Reuters reports: The U.S. State Department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, a move Washington views as a way to counter censorship, three sources familiar with the plan said. The site will be hosted at “freedom.gov,” the sources said. One source said officials had discussed including a virtual private network function to make a user’s traffic appear to originate…

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