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Excerpt from www.motherjones.comThe first criminal trial of a former US president is underway, with Donald Trump facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments allegedly made in 2016 to cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Here’s the latest—the key updates and absurd moments—from the historic trial.
Stormy Daniels, the porn star actress whose sexual encounter with Donald Trump is at the center of the former president’s hush-money trial, took the witness stand on Tuesday, offering lurid testimony about their relationship.
Daniels told the jury that Trump had said he and his wife, Melania, do not sleep in the same room. And that the former president compared once compared her to his daughter, Ivanka. “She’s smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” Daniels recalled Trump telling her.
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Excerpt from trendingpoliticsnews.com
Andrew Dudum, the CEO of telehealth company Hims & Hers, is facing backlash after expressing his desire to hire students who protested against Israel on college campuses. In the immediate aftermath of his comments, the company’s stock value plunged, wiping out nearly $210 million in market value.
The controversy began when Dudum, in a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), stated his willingness to employ students who participated in protests against Israel and faced disciplinary action from their universities. He framed the act as “moral courage” greater than a “college degree.” Encouraging protesters to continue their activism, Dudum said that there are many companies and CEOs eager to hire them, linking the post to the company’s job openings.
This caused outrage among many stakeholders, especially as protest actions were often linked to antisemitism and intimidation. The market quickly reacted. Hims & Hers stock fell 8% on May 3, as investors rushed to distance themselves from Dudum’s controversial comments. The company’s market value decreased from $2.62 billion to $2.41 billion in a matter of hours according to The New York Post.
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Excerpt from www.ctvnews.ca
A knife attack at a hospital in southwestern China on Tuesday killed two people and injured 21 others, authorities said.
No motive was given for the attack at Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital in Yunnan province. The suspect is a male from a village in the same county, a Zhenxiong police statement said. The injured were being treated, it said.
A witness told Red Star News, an online outlet, that he had narrowly escaped the attack and that a doctor or doctors were among the injured. Video from the witness showed people who were bleeding and had fallen to the ground, and one older person trying to help another, the Red Star social media post said.
Earlier media reports said 23 people had been injured, but the police statement said the total was 21. A video posted online by Guizhou Province Television showed a man being taken away by police.
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Excerpt from www.theblaze.com
Anti-Israel protesters at the University of Chicago claim that the university has agreed to an initial set of demands put forth by anti-Israel protesters who have set up an encampment at the school, but a statement put out by the school casts doubt on that claim.
In a joint post on Instagram, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, US Palestinian Community Network, and UChicago United for Palestine said the college has agreed to one item in order to start negotiations with the camp.
“As a precondition for meeting with administration, the power of our encampment forced the University to establish a Gaza Scholars at Risk Initiative, which will bring 8 at-risk Palestinian scholars to work and study at UChicago,” the groups’ statement said but added, “We’re appalled to have to pull the University’s teeth for them to protect not only academic freedom but individual human lives.”
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Excerpt from www.nbcsandiego.com
The headline of this story originally stated that protesters had been pepper-sprayed, which has not been confirmed. Video shows people rinsing the eyes out of at least one person, but, if they were hit with pepper-spray, it’s not clear why. — Ed.
After arrests earlier in the morning, a large crowd of protesters gathered near UC San Diego’s Price Center on Monday, where a bus with barred windows that is operated by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department had been brought on campus, likely to transport those whom had been taken into custody.
At least one person was spotted using a water bottle to rinse out another protester’s eyes.
The large crowd, while not surrounding the bus, certainly impeded its departure after several of those in attendance began banging on the sides of the coach.
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Excerpt from www.bbc.com
Columbia University has cancelled its main graduation after weeks of protests on campus over the Israel-Gaza war.
The Ivy League school said it was ditching the 15 May commencement in favour of smaller celebrations to focus on “keeping them safe”.
The New York City university said it had arrived at the decision after consultations with student leaders.
Colleges across the US are bracing for disruptions at graduations amid pro-Palestinian protests.
Columbia University said in a statement on Monday: “Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families.
“They are eager to cross the stage to applause and family pride and hear from their school’s invited guest speakers.
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Excerpt from www.newsbusters.org
Last week, a group of heroic Pi Kappa Phi fraternity brothers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill saved an American flag from being torn down a desecrated by a mob of anti-Semitic/pro-Hamas student extremists. But in the week since the incident occurred, the flagship morning and evening newscasts of ABC and CBS ignored the incident, while NBC only gave their heroism in the face of evil anti-Americanism a fleeting eight seconds on NBC Nightly News two nights later.To be fair, the broadcast networks were too busy whining about the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia University being busted by the NYPD. ABC in particular was also busy lying about the UCLA encampment being “largely peaceful.” And CBS was busy worrying that the protests could hurt President Biden’s reelection chances.
ABC and CBS might argue that they thought that the flag-saving incident didn’t rise to a level that would allow it to be considered a national story, but that’s debunked by the fact that at least NBC gave it a few seconds.
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Excerpt from www.lifenews.com
Leftists love to believe that churches should be run like clubs — the majority rules. So they’ll make a big deal out of polls, like the Pew Research Center finding six of ten Catholics disagree with the church’s opposition to abortion. They do not ask self-identified Catholics whether they actually go to church on Sundays, or if they stopped the minute they became an adult. You would get a more conservative result.
On Tuesday, NPR’s newscast All Things Considered brought on reporter Katia Riddle to channel the views of pro-abortion Catholics, but what made it more shocking is touting a pro-abortion nun — someone who is financially supported by the Church, and who should be accepting of all the Church teachings.
KATIA RIDDLE: Today, Missouri is replete with Catholic churches, iconography and people like Sister Barbara.
SISTER BARBARA: I certainly did not intend to, you know, become a sister or a nun.
RIDDLE: She’s standing outside her modest apartment, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She grew up Catholic but wasn’t all that religious. In her 20s, she describes a kind of love affair she fell into with Catholicism.
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Excerpt from redstate.com
If there’s a competition for the most unhinged, unglued, wackadoodle conspiracy theorist in the United States House of Representatives, Maxine Waters has to be, if not in first place, then at least in the top three. And mind you, she’s up against some pretty stiff competition. In the latest episode of “Maxine Waters Gone Wild,” she took to MSNBC to decry the violence that will ensue if former President Trump wins reelection this November – not from the left, but from some shadowy right-wing groups up in the hills.
Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters floats a completely unhinged conspiracy theory that “right-wing organizations” are “training up in the hills somewhere” pic.twitter.com/EIDQgoeA9h
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 6, 2024
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Excerpt from www.wionews.com
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday (May 8) ordered the transfer of former prime minister Imran Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, from the Banigala residence to Adiala Jail, her lawyer said.
In her petition to the Islamabad HC, Bibi accused the authorities of violating her privacy and serving contaminated food in her home cell.
She and her lawyers also said that the Banigala residence, which had been declared a sub-jail, was dominated by men. The prison staff has denied the claims.
Bibi further accused the authorities of detaining her in one room at Khan’s hilltop mansion in Islamabad. The couple has been detained since January conviction on charges of illegally selling state gifts.
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Excerpt from www.ndtv.com
Kim Ki Nam, one of the longest-serving North Korean officials who served all three generations of its leaders cementing their political legitimacy and heading the propaganda apparatus for the dynastic state, has died, official media said on Wednesday.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un visited the bier of Kim at 2 a.m. on Wednesday to pay tribute “with bitter grief over the loss of a veteran revolutionary who had remained boundlessly loyal” to the country until the very end, it said.
Kim died on Tuesday at the age of 94, official KCNA news agency said.
He was part of a core group of loyal officials who had worked to sustain the three generations of Kims by solidifying their legitimacy carrying the blood line of a revolutionary leader who founded the state in 1945.
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Excerpt from thehill.com
A Western New York judge on Tuesday invalidated a ballot measure known as the Equal Rights Amendment that would have codified reproductive rights and protections against other discrimination into the state constitution.
State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Doyle, a Rochester-area Republican, ruled that the state Legislature did not follow correct procedure when it passed the measure last year.
“The constitution is the supreme will of the people,” he wrote. “Its amendment should be undertaken by strict adherence to the will of the people.”
The ruling deals a blow to Democrats’ attempt to bring the issues before voters and boost turnout in November, when New Yorkers will vote on a handful of competitive House seats that could determine control of the chamber.
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Excerpt from www.politicususa.com
Donald Trump had a very bad day in court on Tuesday, so after his trial ended for the day, he claimed that campus protesters are Biden plants and called for their arrest.
Trump said, “It’s Biden backers that seem to be funding the, what’s going on with the Palestinians.
They probably not Palestinians, They are agitators, they agitators really bad. And I think our government ought to find out who they are where they’re from and treat them the same way as they do the J6 hostages. You got to treat them the same way. These are agitators. They’re really hurting our country. It’s happening all over the country and cities.”Video:
Stormy Daniels’s testimony was so bad for Trump that he left court and dreamed up a claim that the campus protesters are really Biden plants, “It’s Biden’s backers seem to be funding what’s going on with the Palestinians. They’re probably not Palestinians.” pic.twitter.com/PX428ghW1l
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 7, 2024
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Excerpt from www.shawlocal.com
Gov. JB Pritzker unexpectedly moved away last week from his long-standing opposition to taxing services, saying he didn’t want to start taking ideas off the table as lawmakers search for ways to fund and reform the Chicago region’s mass transit system. A major business group predictably pushed back.
As you may know, Chicago area’s mass transit agencies are facing a $730 million “fiscal cliff” in 2026. The federal government’s COVID-era subsidies will expire that year. Also, ridership has declined as service worsens, operating costs have increased and average fare prices have fallen.
According to a report last year from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, imposing a service tax could be part of the solution. The CMAP report claimed adding a service tax to the state’s existing 6.25 percent state tax rate could generate $1.1 to $1.9 billion in 2026. Some legislators are proposing a $1.5 billion annual funding increase for transit, as part of a consolidation effort.
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Excerpt from www.ndtv.com
The White House said Tuesday the Israel’s closure of border crossings into Gaza was “unacceptable”.
Washington:
The White House said Tuesday the closure of border crossings into Gaza was “unacceptable,” after Israel sent tanks into the southern city of Rafah and seized control of the crossing with Egypt.
“The crossings that have been closed need to be reopened, it is unacceptable for them to be closed,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing, adding that another crossing, at Kerem Shalom, was expected to reopen Wednesday.
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Excerpt from www.sci.news
A team of physicists and chemists has discovered a previously unknown way in which light interacts with matter, a finding that could lead to improved solar power systems, light-emitting diodes, semiconductor lasers and other technological advancements.
Kharintsev et al. found that photons can obtain substantial momentum, similar to that of electrons in solid materials, when confined to nanometer-scale spaces in silicon. Image credit: Kharintsev et al.
“Silicon is Earth’s second-most abundant element, and it forms the backbone of modern electronics,” said Dr. Dmitry Fishman, a chemist at the University of California, Irvine.
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Excerpt from www.bloomberg.com
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Excerpt from uk.news.yahoo.com
Georgia’s ruling party bussed in thousands of people from across the country on Monday for a rally in the capital aimed at countering days of mass anti-government protests over a controversial “foreign influence” bill.
The Black Sea Caucasus nation has been gripped by mass anti-government protests since mid-April, when the ruling Georgian Dream party reintroduced plans to pass a law that critics say resembles Russian legislation used to silence dissent.
The European Union has said that, if adopted, the proposed legislation would undermine Tbilisi‘s long-standing bid for EU membership.
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Excerpt from www.techspot.com
WTF?! As awful as ransomware attacks are, perpetrators have found a way of making them even worse: psychologically attacking victims to make them hand over their money. One of these methods involves calling company executives from phone numbers belonging to their children.
Speaking at a Google Security Threat Intelligence Panel at this year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco (via The Reg), Charles Carmakal, CTO of Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said, “We saw situations where threat actors essentially SIM swap the phones of children of executives, and start making phone calls to executives, from the phone numbers of their children.”
Carmakal noted the psychological dilemma of seeing an incoming phone call from your child only to answer and hear a stranger’s voice. “Sometimes, it’s caller ID spoofing. Other times, we see demonstrated SIM swapping family members,” he said.
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Excerpt from www.latimes.com
Two weeks after his return to the public eye, King Charles III is said to be “very good” amid his cancer battle.
British politician Penny Mordaunt, a minister in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, said during a Tuesday appearance on GB News that the 75-year-old monarch is happy to get back to work.
“He’s very good. And I know that he would have been so pleased to get back to public duties. He would have missed it tremendously,” the speaker of the House of Commons said, sharing details from her weekly meetings with Charles in her role as Privy Council Lord President.
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Excerpt from abcnews.go.com
SURREY, British Columbia — Two of the three men charged in the slaying of Canadian Sikh separatist leader Singh Nijjar in June made a brief first court appearance on Tuesday morning.
The killing of the prominent activist became the center of a diplomatic spat after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement
Canadian police said Friday they arrested the three Indian nationals in Edmonton, Alberta for shooting and killing the 45-year-old in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple over which he presided in the city of Surrey.
Kamalpreet Singh, 22, Karan Brar, 22, and Karanpreet Singh, 28, have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
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Excerpt from scitechdaily.com
Recent archaeological research in Arabia has unveiled significant insights into the historical and cultural evolution of the region through the study of caves and lava tubes, highlighting ancient lifestyles and the global significance of Arabia’s archaeological heritage. Credit: Green Arabia Project
Recent advancements in interdisciplinary archaeological research in Arabia have revealed new insights on the development and historical progression of regional human populations. This research has also shed light on the shifting patterns of cultural change, migration, and adaptation to environmental variations.
Despite the challenges posed by the limited preservation of archaeological assemblages and organic remains in arid environments, these discoveries are reshaping our understanding of the region’s rich cultural heritage.
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Excerpt from www.france24.com
TikTok challenges potential US ban in court FRANCE 24 English
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Excerpt from www.washingtonexaminer.com
A new report from the World Bank called for resources to be allocated away from producing red meat and dairy and instead focus production on low-carbon foods, which could lead to an increase in prices for some foods.
In a new paper, the World Bank noted wealthy nations should switch from high production of red meat and dairy, which produce high levels of carbon dioxide and are dangerous for accelerating climate change, to producing more foods such as chicken, fruits, and vegetables. It argued the switch to chicken and plant-based production is one of the more cost-effective ways to curb climate change.
“We have to stop destroying the planet as we feed ourselves,” Julian Lampietti, the World Bank’s manager for global engagement in the bank’s agriculture and food global practice, told Politico.
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Excerpt from www.theblaze.com
Litigation against pharmaceutical giant Merck regarding one of its common childhood vaccines has lingered in the court system for more than a decade even though there has been seemingly little dispute about the veracity of the fraud claims against it.
Blaze News reviewed court documents related to the Merck cases and spoke with one attorney as well as several individuals who have put together a feature film, “Protocol 7,” about the allegations made in them. According to this evidence, it appears that Merck knew about problems with the mumps component of its measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, often referred to as MMR II, in the 1990s and has spent significant resources in the decades since to cover up those problems rather than admit the truth or improve the vaccine’s quality.
Merck’s attorneys did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
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Excerpt from amp.scmp.comMicrosoft is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI, the Information reported on Monday.
The new model, internally referred to as MAI-1, is being overseen by recently hired Mustafa Suleyman, the Google DeepMind co-founder and former CEO of AI start-up Inflection, the report said, citing two Microsoft employees with knowledge of the effort.
The exact purpose of the model has not been determined yet and will depend on how well it performs. Microsoft could preview the new model as soon as its Build developer conference later this month, the report said.
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Excerpt from amp.theguardian.comJack Dorsey Twitter co-founder’s decision to leave rival social network he helped start was apparently unexpected
The Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has left the board of Bluesky, the decentralised social network he helped start, and encouraged users to remain on his first site, now owned by Elon Musk and called X.
Dorsey confirmed he had cut ties with Bluesky on Sunday, telling a user on X that he was no longer on the social network’s board. The announcement was apparently unexpected, since Bluesky still listed him as a board member until late on Sunday evening.
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Excerpt from www.sciencedaily.com
Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder and Princeton University have, for the first time, employed a tool often used in geology to detect the atomic fingerprints of cancer.
In a case of medicine meets earth science, the researchers discovered that cancer cells may be made from a different assortment of hydrogen atoms than healthy tissue. The findings could give doctors new strategies for studying how cancer grows and spreads — and may even, one day, lead to new ways to spot cancer early on in the body.
The team, led by CU Boulder geochemist Ashley Maloney, will publish its findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This study adds a whole new layer to medicine, giving us the chance to look at cancer at the atomic level,” said Maloney, a research associate in the Department of Geological Sciences.
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Excerpt from scitechdaily.com
Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich have found that a high single dose of creatine can temporarily enhance cognitive functions impaired by sleep deprivation, specifically improving processing capacity and short-term memory. The study cautions against excessive creatine intake due to potential health risks, although it suggests future potential for cognitive enhancement with lower doses.
Creatine, a widely used supplement among athletes to enhance physical performance, has been found to also temporarily boost cognitive abilities affected by sleep deprivation. This discovery was made in a scientific study conducted by researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich, with the results published in the journal Scientific Reports.