German soccer federation official wants World Cup boycott considered because of Trump

German soccer federation official wants World Cup boycott considered because of Trump

The Associated Press reports: A German soccer federation executive committee member says it’s time to consider a World Cup boycott because of the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump. Oke Göttlich, the president of Bundesliga club St. Pauli and one of the German federation’s 10 vice presidents, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in an interview on Friday that “the time has come” to “seriously consider and discuss this.” Trump has sowed discord in Europe with his takeover bid for Greenland…

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Science is drowning in AI slop

Science is drowning in AI slop

Ross Andersen writes: On a frigid Norwegian afternoon earlier this month, Dan Quintana, a psychology professor at the University of Oslo, decided to stay in and complete a tedious task that he had been putting off for weeks. An editor from a well-known journal in his field had asked him to review a paper that they were considering for publication. It seemed like a straightforward piece of science. Nothing set off any alarm bells, until Quintana looked at the references…

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Renee Good’s killing is being used by the Trump regime to show they can get away with murder

Renee Good’s killing is being used by the Trump regime to show they can get away with murder

Radley Balko writes: Police agencies in the United States kill more than 1,000 people each year. After many of those deaths, the agencies involved put out statements. Those statements often use what’s known as the exonerative voice to minimize officers’ involvement. The first statement from the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd’s death, for example, said that the officers at the scene “noted that he appeared to be suffering from medical distress.” Quite the understatement. These communications often cast events…

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Autopsy indicates shot to the head that killed Renee Good was fired when Ross was in no danger

Autopsy indicates shot to the head that killed Renee Good was fired when Ross was in no danger

NBC News reports: An autopsy commissioned by the family of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an immigration officer in Minneapolis this month, found that she suffered three clear gunshot wounds, including one to her head, lawyers for her family said Wednesday. One of the injuries was to Good’s left forearm, the lawyers said in a statement, while another gunshot struck her right breast without piercing major organs. Neither of those wounds was immediately life-threatening, the attorneys said. A…

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What images of a detained five-year-old boy reveal about Trump’s brutal ICE crackdown

What images of a detained five-year-old boy reveal about Trump’s brutal ICE crackdown

Robert Tait writes: As symbols of the indiscriminate disproportionality of the Trump administration’s militant anti-immigrant crusade in Minneapolis, the images are hard to surpass. One recent image shows the innocent figure of Liam Ramos, a five-year-old preschooler wearing a blue bobbled winter hat, standing next to a black vehicle with a dark-clad adult figure standing behind him, whose hand is proprietorially placed on his backpack. A second picture depicts the same child at the door of a house, with what…

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The American threat: Three words I never imagined writing

The American threat: Three words I never imagined writing

Nicholas Kristof writes: President Trump pounces on weakness, but retreats from strength. That’s one reason for Europe’s present troubles: For too long it was weak both toward President Vladimir Putin of Russia in the East and toward the new menace arising in the West. That’s certainly Trump’s perception. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said last month of European leaders, and he had a point. They fawned over him and meekly surrendered as he steamrolled them with tariffs. Trump was preying…

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White House propagandists post digitally doctored image of woman arrested after ICE protest

White House propagandists post digitally doctored image of woman arrested after ICE protest

The Guardian reports: The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by attorney general Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found. The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in…

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Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media

Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media

The Guardian reports: Political leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned. The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and…

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Cells that are not our own may unlock secrets about our health

Cells that are not our own may unlock secrets about our health

Tracy DeStazio writes: During pregnancy, maternal and fetal cells migrate back and forth across the placenta, with fetal cells entering the mother’s bloodstream and tissues. They can settle in maternal organs such as the thyroid, liver, lungs, brain and heart—and can persist there for decades. Conversely, maternal cells can enter the fetus and be passed down to future generations, essentially creating a lifelong connection between mothers, their offspring and their descendants. In other words, we all carry little pieces of…

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Warrantless searches: Immigration officers assert sweeping power to disregard the Fourth Amendment

Warrantless searches: Immigration officers assert sweeping power to disregard the Fourth Amendment

The Associated Press reports: Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches. The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move…

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ICE detainee’s death a homicide. DHS claimed he was attempting suicide, then tried to deport witnesses

ICE detainee’s death a homicide. DHS claimed he was attempting suicide, then tried to deport witnesses

The Washington Post reports: The recent death of a detainee at an immigrant detention camp in Texas has been officially deemed a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner. “Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam C. Gonzalez, deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, said in the report. “The manner…

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How Trump turned ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police

How Trump turned ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police

Garrett Graff writes: It’s sometimes hard to capture just how far the looking glass we are in American politics and daily life, but here’s one snapshot: I was on Audie Cornish’s CNN show last Thursday morning, which I always try to do when I’m in Washington, D.C., and at the time I went to bed the night before, we were prepping to talk about some combo of the following: The US takeover of Venezuela and Donald Trump’s meeting with its…

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Trump regime social-media managers have turned official feeds into streams of neo-Nazi xenophobia

Trump regime social-media managers have turned official feeds into streams of neo-Nazi xenophobia

Ali Breland writes: The U.S. Labor Department is embracing Nazi slogans and tropes, the Pentagon’s research office is deploying neo-Nazi graphic elements in its social-media feeds, and the Department of Homeland Security recently posted lyrics mimicking a popular song by a band with ties to an ethno-nationalist social club. The official social-media channels of the Trump administration have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery. The leaders of these departments so far refuse to answer questions about…

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Mark Carney: The rupture in the world order

Mark Carney: The rupture in the world order

  The full text of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, yesterday (with his opening remarks translated from French by Paul Wells): It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world. I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained. But…

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