EU and South America to form a 700 million-strong free-trade zone in ‘a world without America’

EU and South America to form a 700 million-strong free-trade zone in ‘a world without America’

The New York Times reports: The European Union, overcoming deep dissension among its members, gave the green light to a sweeping trade pact with four South American countries on Friday that would create one of the largest free-trade zones in the world, connecting markets with more than 700 million people. The agreement offers a stark contrast to the amped-up aggression on display this week from the Trump administration. As Europe worked to extend an era of economic collaboration, the United…

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Will protests bring down the Iranian regime?

Will protests bring down the Iranian regime?

Borzou Daragahi writes: I and others have written Iranian protests lacking organization and leadership mostly fail to amount to significant political shifts. But Iran’s waves of street actions can nevertheless push change. The 2009 uprising likely convinced Khamenei to stop fiddling brazenly with election results. The “woman, life, freedom” marches ushered unmistakable cultural changes and the abandonment of the enforcement of dress codes on women. But except for those in 2009, Iran’s protests have not offered any possible roadmap to…

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AI companies’ large language models don’t learn. They steal

AI companies’ large language models don’t learn. They steal

Alex Reisner writes: On Tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books. In fact, when prompted strategically by researchers, Claude delivered the near-complete text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and Frankenstein, in addition…

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The liars are negating the crime and the grief

The liars are negating the crime and the grief

Adam Serwer writes: There’s a lot we don’t know about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed yesterday by federal immigration agents deployed to Minnesota. But in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one thing became immediately clear: The Trump administration was lying about what happened. Shortly after news began circulating about the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement on X that “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these…

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Videos disprove Trump regime’s false narrative about ICE shooting in Minneapolis

Videos disprove Trump regime’s false narrative about ICE shooting in Minneapolis

  NYT: An analysis of footage from three camera angles shows that the motorist was driving away from — not toward — a federal officer when he opened fire. The Washington Post reports: Thousands of people in Minneapolis gathered for a candlelight vigil Wednesday evening to mourn and protest the killing of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE officer in the city hours earlier as she appeared to try to drive away in her vehicle…

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The Trump doctrine exposes the U.S. as a mafia state

The Trump doctrine exposes the U.S. as a mafia state

Jan-Werner Müller writes: When a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded like he was reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national security strategy published in December, the move on Venezuela can be understood as advancing a vision for carving up the world into what…

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Trump team develops sweeping plan to control Venezuelan oil for years to come

Trump team develops sweeping plan to control Venezuelan oil for years to come

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump and his advisers are planning a sweeping initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come, and the president has told aides he believes his efforts could help lower oil prices to his favored level of $50 a barrel, according to people familiar with the matter. A plan under consideration envisions the U.S. exerting some control over Venezuela’s state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, including acquiring and marketing…

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How Delcy Rodríguez courted Trump and rose to power in Venezuela

How Delcy Rodríguez courted Trump and rose to power in Venezuela

The Associated Press reports: In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening. Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was…

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Hundreds of judges reject Trump’s mandatory detention policy, with no end in sight

Hundreds of judges reject Trump’s mandatory detention policy, with no end in sight

Politico reports: Federal judges are increasingly exasperated by the Trump administration’s effort to lock up nearly everyone facing deportation proceedings — a draconian expansion of decades-old policies that hundreds of courts have rejected as illegal or unconstitutional. More than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have now rebuffed the administration’s six-month-old effort to expand its so-called “mandatory detention” policy, according to a POLITICO analysis of court dockets from across the country. Those judges have ordered…

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All living things emit a visible light that vanishes at death, surprising study says

All living things emit a visible light that vanishes at death, surprising study says

Science Alert reports: Life truly is radiant, according to an experiment conducted by researchers from the University of Calgary and the National Research Council of Canada. An extraordinary experiment on mice and leaves from two different plant species has uncovered direct physical evidence of an eerie ‘biophoton’ phenomenon ceasing on death, suggesting all living things – including humans – could literally glow with health, until we don’t. The findings might seem a little fringe at first glance. It’s hard not…

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Murder in Minneapolis

Murder in Minneapolis

The murder of Renee Nicole Good:   Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey:   Minnesota Governor Tim Walz:   Jennifer Brooks writes: Renee Nicole Good. George Floyd. Different tragedies, but the same grief for a community betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect and serve. Crowds gathered again in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, marching through the same streets where some of them were protesting five and a half years ago after Floyd’s murder. The full force and fury of…

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Stephen Miller’s fascism on full display

Stephen Miller’s fascism on full display

The Atlantic reports: Stephen Miller runs his daily 10 a.m. conference calls—yes, even on Saturdays—less like a government adviser and more like a wartime general. His is the dominant voice, as he plays the role of browbeater, inquisitor, and bully. He accepts no excuses, entertains no dissent. Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy ruthlessly pursues the president’s vision, especially when it comes to pushing immigrants out of the country, and he runs a tight, efficient meeting. Consensus is…

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Europe draws red line on Greenland after a year of trying to pacify Trump

Europe draws red line on Greenland after a year of trying to pacify Trump

Steve Hendrix writes: For the past year, European friends-turned-frenemies of the United States have delicately navigated one shock after another, hoping for the best as President Donald Trump threatened to lay waste to the global order. When Trump scolded NATO allies, lambasted Ukraine’s president, laid on tariffs and framed ratified treaties as conditional deals, the go-to play by European leaders was to placate — with military spending pledges, trade concessions, disciplined summits, in language scrubbed of morality or judgment. It…

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Europe needs an ally against Russia and Trump: China

Europe needs an ally against Russia and Trump: China

Dean Baker writes: It’s clear to all but the determinedly ignorant that Europe and the United States under Donald Trump are no longer allies. Trump is prepared to go to war to extend his racist vision of the world. Trump is not using euphemisms or code words; he wants white power and as long as European countries are open to immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, they will be on his enemies list. The prospect of a hostile United…

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