How much do the political elites hate freedom of speech?
How much do the political elites hate the freedom of speech? Enough to pull out all the stops to prevent self-professed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk from taking over Twitter. Now the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is stepping in to “review” Musk’s purchase of Twitter, looking into whether or not the takeover violates antitrust laws.
Bungled data is leaving us in the dark on a crucial issue
Going in to November’s midterms, the American public is deeply concerned about crime. After record-setting increases in homicide in 2020, three in four called crime a “major problem” in the United States, 61% believe it’s getting worse, and 81% expect it be a major issue in the upcoming election.
How crime has changed in Joe Biden’s second year, then, is a hugely important question. Just one small problem: we won’t really have any idea how much crime actually happened in America last year.
A Ukrainian village councillor has been arrested by elite special forces after she was accused of being a Russian collaborator.
Nadiya Antonova, from Kutuzivka near Kharkiv, was swarmed by Alpha Force troops and secret intelligence agents who led her away in handcuffs – and she now faces life behind bars.
The secretary of the local council is accused of betraying her country’s defenders by giving away the identities of police, soldiers and counter-terrorism specialists to Putin’s invaders.
Most “Theatrical” war ever!
A complacent West underestimates just how low the Kremlin could go.
Too many among Britain’s political and media class are in danger of taking Russia’s defeat for granted.
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said this week that the Kremlin’s operational capability in Ukraine ‘falters further every day’. Even Michael Clarke, a sober military expert, has insisted that Putin now faces ‘only different kinds of defeat’.
This may well be true. But there is a risk of complacency about what lies ahead.
#Ukraine: Russian forces sustained remarkable losses from the failed bridging attempt over the Siverskyi Donets River.
We count 6x T-72B-series MBT, 14x BMP-1/2 variants, 7x MT-LB, a tugboat & 5+ other armoured vehicles destroyed/abandoned/damaged. Note precise ID is very hard. https://t.co/py48JvXWUG pic.twitter.com/cqX60F0KPT
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 11, 2022
The vegan pet food industry is now worth billions. But can plant-based meals really meet a dog or cat’s nutritional needs?
Father Terry Martin, a Catholic priest in West Sussex, became a vegan almost three years ago. The transition was fairly abrupt: he was alone eating a roast dinner with his dog Pepe on his knees (“I know,” he says. “Terrible.”) when he was struck by the realisation that the animal he was eating had been “just as sentient as the one sitting on my lap”.
I don’t know about arrested but horsewhipped certainly.
The Canadian government has directed its military to take a more “assertive” stance in cyberspace in anticipation of electronic warfare becoming a more central component in conflict, documents obtained by Global News suggest.
A “cyber playbook” prepared by the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence comes as Ottawa pushes for international rules and norms around cyber espionage and warfare.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have returned to a double-digit lead over the Ontario Liberals in provincial voting intentions, after a strong first week of the election campaign, according to a new Leger/Postmedia poll released Wednesday.
Just as worrying for Liberal leader Steven Del Duca is the poll’s finding that less than half of declared Liberal voters think that he is the best choice for premier.
COMPILATION: TikTokers discuss the ethics of bringing babies into this world because of climate change. pic.twitter.com/MGfI8aDdZ3
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 11, 2022
Conservative leadership candidates prep for first official party debate
EDMONTON – Six candidates competing to become the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada will meet on stage tonight for the first of two official debates.
The event in Edmonton comes less than a week after five out of the six contenders put on a feisty performance during an unofficial debate in Ottawa, where much focus was paid to fighting COVID-19 mandates and the recent convoy protest in the nation’s capital.
COPENHAGEN/LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) – For many people worldwide, having cotton swabs thrust up their nose or down their throat to test for COVID-19 has become a routine and familiar annoyance.
But two years into the pandemic, health officials in some countries are questioning the merits of repeated, mass testing when it comes to containing infections, particularly considering the billions it costs.
Chief among them is Denmark, which championed one of the world’s most prolific COVID testing regimes early on. Lawmakers are now demanding a close study of whether that policy was effective.
The longer the war in Ukraine carries on, the worse the consequences will be for the climate, the US presidential envoy John Kerry has warned.
Many countries are struggling with an energy crisis while also urgently needing to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating to 1.5C, he said.
“If it’s a long period of time, obviously that makes [staying within 1.5C] very complicated,” Kerry said. “It depends on what happens with the war, where the war goes and how long it lasts. If miraculously we can somehow find a way to resolve some of the fundamental problems in the next six months, then maybe we could just accelerate everything together. I think we can make up some distance [in progress on tackling the climate crisis].”
In the wake of an unprecedented leak from the Supreme Court of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, national Democrats have taken to social media appearing to encourage violence. Earlier this week, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a tweet calling on “friends in the LGBTQ+ community” to recognize this moment as “a call to arms,” stating in a second tweet that “we will not surrender our rights without a fight.”
Multiple verified Twitter accounts, including a senior correspondent at Vox, have tweeted calls to “burn it down,” referring to both the country and the Supreme Court itself.
The Palestinian terrorists who used axes to murder three Israeli Jewish men in the city of Elad on May 5 have cited the recent violence at the Aqsa Mosque compound (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem as their main motivation for the attack. The violence began when Palestinian rioters attacked Israeli police officers at the compound with fireworks, stones and other objects during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The goal of the rioters: to prevent Jews from conducting peaceful walking tours of the Temple Mount, as has long been officially agreed.
The rioters attacked the police because Palestinian leaders had told them that Jews were planning to “storm into the mosque” during the Jewish holidays.
The Value of Foreign Degrees by Source Country
Whether assessing the education level of recent arrivals or designing a “high-skill” system for selecting future immigrants, analysts should be careful not to treat foreign degrees as equivalent to U.S. degrees. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates, this report shows not only that foreign degrees as a whole are less valuable in the U.S. than U.S. degrees, but also that their value varies substantially depending on the specific country or region where the degrees were earned.
