May 4, 2026

x02 Bellwethers

Pro-Hamas Mob Tries to Breach Hotel in Greece, Police Protect Israeli Tourists Forced to Hide: Reports– www.algemeiner.com

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A man waves a Palestinian flag as pro-Hamas demonstrators protest next to the Greek parliament, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Athens, Greece, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

A mob of pro-Hamas demonstrators attempted to break into a hotel where Israeli tourists were staying in Athens, according to media reports and videos circulating on social media.

The anti-Israel protests against the war in Gaza escalated into riots, with some demonstrators attempting to breach the hotel premises.

Greek police were reportedly dispatched to the scene at Omonia Square, where they deployed gas grenades to disperse the crowd and restore order.

Biden taps Florida judge for Atlanta-based federal appeals court– www.ajc.com

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The 11th Circuit is considered to be one of the most conservative federal appellate courts in the country, in large part because former President Donald Trump was able to appoint six of its 12 current judges.

Biden’s first appointment to the court was Judge Nancy G. Abudu. Her confirmation by the Senate came in May 2023.

Abudu and Wilson are the 11th Circuit’s only Black judges. Kidd is also Black.

Wilson, whose primary chambers are in Florida, will join nine other senior judges of the court. Senior judges can choose to handle a reduced caseload.

Federal appeals court protects religious school’s freedom to hire faithful teachers– www.becketlaw.org

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WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court today protected a Catholic school’s freedom to hire schoolteachers who uphold its religious beliefs. In Billard v. Diocese of Charlotte, a former substitute teacher sued the school and diocese for not calling him back to work as a substitute teacher after he entered a same-sex union and posted about it on Facebook. Today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the diocese’s freedom to choose teachers who will uphold and help pass on the faith to the next generation.  

The Diocese of Charlotte has operated Catholic schools across western North Carolina for more than 50 years. Its 20 schools provide a top-notch education that also helps students grow in the Catholic faith, making the opportunity widely available to students of all backgrounds in part through generous financial aid. To ensure teachers are helping the diocese fulfill its mission, the diocese asks all of its teachers – Catholic and non-Catholic – to uphold the Catholic faith in word and deed. 

“Many of our parents work long hours and make significant sacrifices so their children can attend our schools and receive a faithful Catholic education,” said Assistant Superintendent Allana Ramkissoon. “That’s because we inspire our students not only to harness the lessons and tools they need to thrive, but to cherish their faith as a precious gift from God.”  

Breaking: House Democrats Vote UNANIMOUSLY to Give Illegal Aliens Representation in Congress and the Electoral College | The Gateway Pundit– www.thegatewaypundit.com

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One of the many migrant caravans marching to the open US southern border.

Here we go… House Democrats on Wednesday night voted unanimously to give illegal aliens – including Joe Biden’s 11 million illegal border crossers – representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

Democrats continue to put Americans and American workers in line behind alien invaders.

The House vote was 206 to 202 with 22 representatives 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans abstaining from the vote.

Steven Miller reported: “House Dems just voted UNANIMOUSLY to give illegals representation in Congress AND the Electoral College. House Seats and Electoral College votes WILL BE added to areas with the most illegals (including all Biden illegals) unless Senate passes the bill. Invasion by design.”

Rafah Is in Panic as the Israeli Invasion Begins– www.thenation.com

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Israel’s long-threatened invasion of Rafah has begun. Under cover of intense aerial bombardment Tuesday morning, Israeli forces moved into Gaza’s southernmost city, which has become a shelter for 1.5 million Palestinians with nowhere else to go. This is the moment they most feared, carrying the potential for a catastrophe greater than anything we’ve seen so far. Gazans counted on the world to stop this invasion, and the world let them down.

Residents of Rafah have long been in a state of panic in anticipation of this eventuality. That panic intensified Monday morning, when the Israeli army dropped leaflets from the sky ordering those living in Rafah’s eastern districts to immediately flee to the ill-equipped coastal area of Al-Mawasi.

Within hours, tens of thousands packed up what remains of their lives—many of them for the third, fourth, or fifth time since October—and headed northwest to what Israel is calling an “expanded safe zone.” But if Palestinians have learned anything from the past seven months, it is that nowhere in Gaza is ever safe from Israel’s onslaught.

Transgender support is crumbling over controversies around men competing in women’s sports– www.lifesitenews.com

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(LifeSiteNews) — Female sporting events remain one of the key conflicts in the transgender culture war touching nearly every aspect of public life.

On May 4, a trans-identified male won two National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) events at the Liberty League track and field championships, the 400 meters in 55.07 seconds and the 200 meters in 24.14 seconds. Sadie Schreiner, a male who previously went by the name Camden, earlier in the season set the “women’s school record” in the 300 meters at Nazareth Alumni Opener Invitational with a time of 41.80 seconds.

Schreiner was representing the Rochester Institute of Technology. Both of his times would have put him dead last in the men’s events at the same meet but instead were women’s school records, with the 200 time becoming a Liberty League women’s record, exceeding only Schreiner’s previous time of 24.50 from this same season. Schreiner previously competed against fellow males.

Schreiner insists, however, that he has no advantage over female competitors, posting that “Out of all the hate that’s been shared of me ‘cheater’ is the most common word used… In my eyes, the discussion of trans inclusion in athletics shouldn’t even be a debate… As more research is done the more evident this becomes. There’s a reason I’m only as fast as I was in middle school, and the only variable that’s changed over my 9 years of running is my medication.”

US overtakes China as Germany’s top trading partner– www.deccanherald.com

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Berlin: The United States overtook China as Germany’s most important trading partner in the first quarter of this year, according to Reuters’ calculations based on official data from the German statistics office.

Germany’s trade with the United States – exports and imports combined – totalled €63 billion ($68 billion) from January to March, while the figure for China was just under 60 billion euros, the data showed.

In 2023, China was Germany’s top trading partner for the eighth year in a row, with volumes reaching 253 billion euros, although that was only a few hundred million ahead of the US.

“German exports to the US have now risen further due to the robust economy there, while both exports to and imports from China have fallen,” said Commerzbank economist Vincent Stamer, explaining the first quarter shift.

Biden: I’ll Cut Off Arms Shipments If Israel Invades Rafah– crooksandliars.com

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Biden is talking specifically about a ground invasion, not the bombing Israel is doing in Rafah right now. Via CNN.com:

President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin Burnett OutFront,” referring to 2,000-pound bombs that Biden paused shipments of last week.

Hemispherical Solar Cells Unleash Unmatched Absorption– scitechdaily.com

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A hemispherical-shell-shaped organic active layer for photovoltaic application, to improve energy efficiency and angular coverage; (left bottom) spatial distribution of electric field norms. Credit: D. Hah, doi 10.1117/1.JPE.14.018501

New research suggests redesigning organic solar cells with a hemispherical shell structure to provide broader angular coverage, which is particularly beneficial for devices that need adaptable light absorption, like wearable electronics.

The search for sustainable energy solutions places a high priority on developing more efficient solar cells. Organic photovoltaic cells have become an appealing choice compared to conventional silicon-based cells, thanks to their flexibility and lower costs. Nonetheless, enhancing their performance continues to be a major hurdle.

Once-Hidden Hydrogen Gas Deposits Could Be a Boon for Clean Energy– www.scientificamerican.com

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Laurent Truche, a geochemist at Grenoble Alpes University in France, has been searching for naturally occurring hydrogen for nearly a decade. This year, in a chromite mine in Albania, he and his colleagues struck gold, or rather another element on the periodic table. Nearly a kilometer below the surface, they discovered a hydrogen seep so strong it turned a murky drainage pond into something resembling a Jacuzzi. Truche had never seen hydrogen bubbles that big. “It was really intense,” he says.

Natural hydrogen is hydrogen gas in its molecular form (H2) that is generated through natural processes. Formed deep within Earth, it may get trapped on its way to the surface, creating accumulations of gas. Confusingly also called “gold,” “white” or “geological” hydrogen, natural hydrogen could offer us an energy source cleaner than other types of hydrogen because there is no carbon involved in the process that generates it (although drilling and distribution would still involve some carbon dioxide emissions, of course). A recent study estimated the greenhouse gas intensity of natural hydrogen to be 0.4 kilogram of CO2 equivalent per kilogram (kg CO2eq/kg), far less than the 22-26 kg kg CO2e/kg of black hydrogen (produced from coal) or the 10-14 kg CO2e/kg of blue hydrogen (produced from natural gas).

MTG’s Efforts to Remove Mike Johnson Fails as Democrats Vote to Save Him– www.westernjournal.com

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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was booed on the House floor Wednesday afternoon after she tried to force a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.

Greene first vowed to force a motion to force Johnson from power in March, citing deals the speaker had cut with Democrats to fund foreign wars and governments.

Each of those deals ignored the ongoing crisis at the country’s border with Mexico, irking Greene and eventually a number of other House Republicans who supported her plan to oust Johnson.

The Hill reported Greene moved to force a vote on the matter Wednesday. A C-SPAN camera caught the moment Greene introduced her resolution to vacate Johnson.

Speaker Johnson Survives Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Ouster Attempt– www.dailysignal.com

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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can breathe a little easier now that more than 80% of his House colleagues put an end to the latest drama gripping Capitol Hill.

Six months after ascending to the speakership, a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voted to table a motion to vacate the chair—the House’s terminology for removing its leader. The final vote was 359-43; seven voted present and 21 others didn’t cast a vote. (See how your representative voted.)

“Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress,” Johnson said after Wednesday’s vote. “It’s regrettable. It’s not who we are as Americans and we’re better than this. We need to get beyond it.”

Don’t count on it.

BREAKING: Biden vows to withhold congressionally approved military aid to Israel if invasion of Rafah proceeds | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com

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President Joe Biden has said that he will withhold approved shipments of military aid to Israel if Israel invades Rafah in the southern part of Gaza. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu had already vowed to undertake that offensive.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden said to CNN in an interview. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” he said.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” he continued.

Aid has been approved through bipartisan Congressional bills which were then signed by Biden. Biden has now refused to deliver that aid amid growing dissent to Israel’s fight against Palestinian terror group Hamas from his left flank in the Democratic Party.

Biden Threatens to Withhold Weapons to Israel Over Rafah Invasion– time.com

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U.S. President Joe Biden said he would halt additional shipments of offensive weapons to Israel if the country launched a ground invasion of Rafah, decrying the potential loss of civilian life as “just wrong.”

“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” Biden said in an interview Wednesday with CNN, referring to air-defense weaponry. “But it’s, it’s just wrong. We’re not going to—we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”

The remarks came after the U.S. paused delivery of about 3,500 bombs to Israel—including 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) explosives that could cause massive damage in the densely packed southern Gaza city of Rafah—amid mounting frustration over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza. The move marked the Biden administration’s most serious signal of displeasure over the conduct of the ongoing war against Hamas.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said.

Media Scorn Protestors for Distrust of Corporate Reporters– www.truthdig.com

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An emerging complaint the corporate media have against the nationwide—and now international—peace encampments is that many student protesters won’t speak to them. The problem, pundits and reporters say, is that these encampments have designated media spokespeople, and other protesters often keep their mouths shut to the press.

Conservative pundit Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal, 5/2/24) said of her trip to the Columbia University encampment:

I was at Columbia hours before the police came in and liberated Hamilton Hall from its occupiers. Unlike protesters of the past, who were usually eager to share with others what they thought and why, these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press, or, as they say, “corporate media.”

I was on a bench taking notes as a group of young women, all in sunglasses, masks and kaffiyehs, walked by. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” I called. They marched past, not making eye contact, save one, a beautiful girl of about 20. “I’m not trained,” she said. Which is what they’re instructed to say to corporate-media representatives who will twist your words. “I’m barely trained, you’re safe,” I called, and she laughed and half-halted. But her friends gave her a look and she conformed.

Elon Musk Aims To Deploy Tesla Robotaxis In China: Report– news.abplive.com

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, aims to implement his company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology into robotaxi services in China, according to a report by staterun China Daily. Last month, the Tesla CEO made an unexpected trip to China, where he had a meeting with Premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-highest-ranking politician.

According to news agency Bloomberg, Musk, whose company is facing sluggish sales, received a significant boost when Chinese officials gave their initial approval for Tesla to introduce its FSD technology in the country. However, according to the report from China Daily, that wasn’t the sole topic of discussion.

The report, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that the Chinese government also offered partial backing to Musk’s proposal to integrate Tesla’s FSD technology into the country’s taxi services.

Musk’s wager on fully autonomous vehicles isn’t particularly unexpected, given the recent shifts he’s made to reorient the automaker as a software company.

Facebook will now let your business create entire ad campaigns using AI– www.techradar.com

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In an effort to give businesses the best tools for success (but more importantly, to keep up with the likes of Google), Meta has unveiled new generative AI features for advertisers on its platforms.

The upgrades, which are set to roll out over the course of this year, will include full image and text generation capabilities.

Besides improving efficiency by automating certain parts of the ad creation process, Meta also says that its GenAI features will help to improve ad performance by offering up more creative variations.

The most eye-catching addition will be Meta’s image generation tool, which offers advertisers the ability to generate full image versions inspired by their original ad content. The tool includes text overlay capabilities and a handy image expansion feature to make adjusting the aspect ratio of an image easier.

‘I don’t see any evidence of aliens.’ SpaceX’s Elon Musk says Starlink satellites have never dodged UFOs– www.space.com

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Elon Musk isn’t convinced that aliens have ever visited Earth.

The SpaceX CEO and founder sat down for a panel titled “How to save the human race and other light topics” at the 2024 Milken Institute Global Conference held in Los Angeles on Tuesday (May 7). During the conversation, the institute’s chairman, financier Michael Milken, began by asking Musk how he feels about the well-known opening monologue to many “Star Trek” series, in which it is stated that the starship Enterprise’s mission is to “seek out new life forms and new civilizations.” Musk replied, “Yeah, that’s the idea.”

Musk elaborated, stating that if we send probes out into the universe, we might find “remains of long-dead alien civilizations.” He then launched into an explanation about why he doesn’t feel aliens have ever visited our planet.

Federal cyber leaders proceed with caution on AI as a defensive tool– fedscoop.com

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Three years ago, chief information security officers couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about zero trust. Today, artificial intelligence is the defensive measure du jour for those same government IT leaders.

With a healthy dose of skepticism formed through years of protecting digital infrastructure from advanced threats, many federal cybersecurity practitioners have significant concerns about AI, viewing it as a technology that needs corralling. That’s especially true for large language models and other data sources, they say.

“It’s garbage in, garbage out,” said Paul Blahusch, CISO for the Department of Labor. “If our adversary can poison that data, well, we’re going to start getting the wrong information back out from our artificial intelligence. It’s going to say, ‘Day is night, night is day. Black is white, white is black.’ And are we going to just take that and say, ‘Oh well, that must be what it says because the AI said so?’”

Speaking during an Advanced Technology Academic Research Center webinar last week, Blahusch and other government and industry cyber experts painted AI as a technology that’s not entirely new, having found itself in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to ChatGPT. But it’s one that can and will be put to better use.

Google DeepMind unveils next generation of drug discovery AI model– www.aol.com

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LONDON (Reuters) – Google Deepmind has unveiled the third major version of its “AlphaFold” artificial intelligence model, designed to help scientists design drugs and target disease more effectively.

In 2020, the company made a significant advance in molecular biology by using AI to successfully predict the behaviour of microscopic proteins.

With the latest incarnation of AlphaFold, researchers at DeepMind and sister company Isomorphic Labs – both overseen by cofounder Demis Hassabis – have mapped the behaviour for all of life’s molecules, including human DNA…

“With these new capabilities, we can design a molecule that will bind to a specific place on a protein, and we can predict how strongly it will bind,” Hassabis said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

“It’s a critical step if you want to design drugs and compounds that will help with disease.”

Apple’s iPad Ad Boasts Of Replacing The Real With The Fake– thefederalist.com

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If nothing else, Apple’s horrible ad announcing the new iPad Pro has the virtue of being brutally honest. The one-minute clip opens with an old vinyl playing Sonny and Cher’s “All I Ever Need Is You,” and then shows an industrial press slowly crushing an eclectic assortment of old musical instruments, paint and art supplies, and Gen X-era toys and tchotchkes.

In other words, it destroys a bunch of stuff that makes life fun, unique, interesting, and fully human.

After all that old stuff — the quirky objects and sentimental artifacts of the pre-digital era — has been flattened under the inexorable weight of machine technology, the press lifts up to reveal the new iPad Pro. The message is so obvious it hardly needs to be spelled out: This thin digital tablet is supposed to replace — and supersede — all these clunky, analog, obsolete things. All you need, we are made to understand, is this new piece of digital technology, this iPad. The rest, the detritus of the real world, can simply be destroyed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the ad on X and commented, “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.” (An odd comment, after just showing us all the things it’ll be used to destroy.)

Jury finds Activision Blizzard liable in $23.4M patent infringement case– arstechnica.com

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A jury has found Activision Blizzard liable for $23.4 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit first brought to court in 2015.

The case centers on patents first filed by Boeing in 2000, one that describes a “distributed game environment” across a host and multiple computers and another that describes a simple method for disconnecting from such a network. Those patents were acquired in 2015 by Acceleration Bay, which accused Activision Blizzard of using infringing technology to develop World of Warcraft and at least two Call of Duty titles.

Those accusations succeeded in court earlier this week, as a jury found a “preponderance of evidence” that the patents were infringed. The decision came following a one-week trial in which Activision Blizzard argued that its networking technology works differently from what is described in the patents, as reported by Reuters.

“While we are disappointed, we believe there is a strong basis for appeal,” an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said in a statement to the press. “We have never used the patented technologies at issue in our games.”

30,000 years of history reveals that hard times boost human societies’ resilience– www.livescience.com

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The old saying may be true: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. At least that’s the case for human civilizations across 30,000 years of history, according to a new analysis published May 1 in the journal Nature. The study found that, across the globe, ancient human societies that experienced more setbacks were also quicker to bounce back from future downturns.

“The more often a population experiences disturbances or downturns, the more likely it is to be able to recover faster the next time around,” study leader Philip Riris, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in the U.K., told Live Science.

This seesaw between vulnerability and resilience was particularly strong among early farmers and herders, Riris and his colleagues found. Agricultural communities throughout history experienced more downturns overall than other societies, such as hunter-gatherer groups, but they also recovered from these downturns more quickly than other groups.

“It’s an important paper,” said Dagomar Degroot, an associate professor at Georgetown University who studies how climate change influenced human history and who was not involved in the research. “There is a lot of really influential work on the collapse of societies faced with climate change,” Degroot told Live Science, “but a focus on resilience and only resilience is significantly rarer.”

Ozempic Face to Ozempic Breasts– people.com

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  • Ozempic — the diabetes drug that’s become a trendy weight-loss tool — works in the brain to impact satiety
  • Patients have reported side effects like sagging breasts and butt, decreased libido and increased fertility
  • Experts say that some of these side effects are the result of rapid weight loss and suggest losing weight more gradually to combat any negative effects