Canon released its first PowerShot camera back in 1996 with a 0.5-megapixel sensor, helping kickstart the digital photo revolution. To celebrate that 30-year anniversary, the company has unveiled a Limited Edition version of its still-popular PowerShot G7 X III compact camera. It has a few unique touches but is otherwise the same as the original model released nearly seven years ago.

The limited edition model has a new "graphite" color with a knurled front ring designed to exude "luxury and quality," Canon wrote. It also carries 30 year anniversary logo printed on the body "to create a special feeling suitable for limited edition models," the company added in the most Canon-y way possible.

Canon's Limited Edition PowerShot G7 X III compact cameraCanon

As a reminder, the G7 X III was one of the first cameras announced specifically as a model for vloggers, thanks to its ability to shoot vertical video for Instagram. It features a 20.1MP sensor, flip-up 3-inch touchscreen, 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8 zoom lens and a microphone input. It supports 4K 30 fps video with no cropping and can shoot 1080p at 120 fps. The piece de resistance is direct streaming to YouTube directly over Wi-Fi, then a new thing but now a common feature. It originally retailed for $749.

The G7 X III had been in short supply until recently, but used models became popular with influencers several years ago and started selling way above list price. Possibly because of that viral fame, Canon announced in August 2025 that it was increasing production and the G7 X III started returning to stock a few months later priced at $880.

Canon's Limited Edition PowerShot G7 X III compact cameraCanon

The Limited Edition G7 X III is selling for a lot more than that at $1,299, though it does come with a limited edition Peak Design cuff wrist strap and 32GB SD card. If you want to one-up the influencers and grab one, shipping will start in April 2026.

Along with the camera, Canon announced a pair of interesting new RF-mount full-frame lenses. The first is the ultra wide angle RF 14mm f/1.4 L VCM prime model priced at $2,599, promising bright, high quality optics. The other is a very interesting $1,899 RF7-14mm f/2.8-3.5 L Fisheye STM zoom lens with up to a 190 degree perspective at the widest setting.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/canon-unveils-a-limited-edition-version-of-its-popular-g7-x-iii-compact-camera-040000700.html?src=rss

The Baton Rouge Police Department announced recently that it will begin using a drone designed by military equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin and Edge Autonomy, making it one of the first local police departments to use an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a history of primary use in foreign war zones. Baton Rouge is now one of the first local police departments in the United States to deploy an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with such extensive surveillance capabilities — a dangerous escalation in the militarization of local law enforcement.

This is a troubling development in an already long history of local law enforcement acquiring and utilizing military-grade surveillance equipment. It should be a cautionary tale that prods communities across the country to be proactive in ensuring that drones can only be acquired and used in ways that are well-documented, transparent, and subject to public feedback. 

Baton Rouge bought the Stalker VXE30 from Edge Autonomy, which partners with Lockheed Martin and began operating under the brand Redwire last week. According to reporting from WBRZ ABC2 in Louisiana, the drone, training, and batteries, cost about $1 million. 

Baton Rouge Police Department officers stand with the Stalker VXE30 drone in a photo shared by the BRPD via Facebook.

All of the regular concerns surrounding drones apply to this new one in use by Baton Rouge:

• Drones can access and view spaces that are otherwise off-limits to law enforcement, including backyards, decks, and other areas of personal property.
• Footage captured by camera-enabled drones may be stored and shared in ways that go far beyond the initial flight.
• Additional camera-based surveillance can be installed on the drone, including automated license plate readers and the retroactive application of biometric analysis, such as face recognition.

However, the use of a military-grade drone hypercharges these concerns. Stalker VXE30's surveillance capabilities extend for dozens of miles, and it can fly faster and longer than standard police drones already in use. 

"It can be miles away, but we can still have a camera looking at your face, so we can use it for surveillance operations," BRPD Police Chief TJ Morse told reporters.

Drone models similar to the Stalker VXE30 have been used in military operations around the world and are currently being used by the U.S. Army and other branches for long-range reconnaissance. Typically, police departments deploy drone models similar to those commercially available from companies like DJI, which until recently was the subject of a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ban, or devices provided by police technology companies like Skydio, in partnership with Axon and Flock Safety. 

Additionally troubling is the capacity to add additional equipment to these drones: so-called "payloads" that could include other types of surveillance equipment and even weapons. 

The Baton Rouge community must put policies in place that restrict and provide oversight of any possible uses of this drone, as well as any potential additions law enforcement might make. 

EFF has filed a public records request to learn more about the conditions of this acquisition and gaps in oversight policies. We've been tracking the expansion of police drone surveillance for years, and this acquisition represents a dangerous new frontier. We'll continue investigating and supporting communities fighting back against the militarization of local police and mass surveillance. To learn more about the surveillance technologies being used in your city, please check out the Atlas of Surveillance.

Reposted from the EFF's Deeplinks blog.

With revenue topping $400B for the first time, the Chocolate Factory is at no risk of putting itself in the poor house

Google's parent Alphabet is doubling down on generative AI in 2026. On Wednesday's earnings call, the search and advertising giant boosted its full-year capital expenditures target to between $175 and $185 billion, roughly twice what it spent last year.…

'ICE' is the acronym for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Despite their remit, ICE agents have been running amok in the US, which has resulted in the killings of Nicole Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Other killings behind the scenes have also come to light, with eight people who died under ICE detention. But there's some hope. A video has recently surfaced of a MAGA supporter assaulting a teen protester, only for the Zoomers to give him a kick-in he won't quickly forget.

much better angle and footage of the MAGA adult attacking a teen girl before her friends and other student defend her https://t.co/T9DO7DaQeU

— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) February 3, 2026

Middle-aged MAGA gets humiliated by zoomers

At the beginning of the video, we see the middle-aged man lunge at a teenage girl. Eyewitnesses report that he did so with no provocation.

As you can see, the man removes his precious MAGA hat before pushing the young girl down an embankment. Next, she loses balance, and the man throws himself on top of her.

But it doesn't appear he was ready for what happened next.

Zoomers swarm the man, as he swings at another young girl coming in to save her friend. He loses his balance and the kids dive on him, overwhelming him instantly.

Dragging him away from the girl, the teens completely overpower him and beat the shit out of him. The man makes several attempts to break free, but the kids won't let him go.

Finally, seeing a break in the crowd, the man quickly runs to the safety of his SUV (i.e. his 'over-compensation wagon'), with the teens following, making sure the little rat is back in his hole.

It must be embarrassing, assaulting a young girl and then getting your arse handed to you.

This isn't the first instance of the kids taking a stance against ICE and MAGA either:

Students walked out of school at Burnsville High School in Minnesota to protest Trump's ICE gestapo terrorizing their community….the kids are alright

Sentient forehead and Labour big man Wes Streeting has come out swinging for Mandelson. Specifically, he's told the BBC that the key issue is people failed to believe Epstein's victims.

Streeting says Epsteins victims werent believed

The govt appointed Mandelson knowing he'd stayed at Epsteins house after Epsteins conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Its clear Wes & this govt didnt care about Epsteins victims until politically expedient to do so pic.twitter.com/97nvhcPFlp

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 4, 2026

The problem is that the people who didn't believe the victims includes the government Streeting is a part of. After all, why would they have promoted Mandelson otherwise, when they knew about his connections to Epstein?

Streeting — the allegations

Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful that Streeting has managed to pull himself away from privatising our NHS to stand up for the victims, but all is not as it seems.

Streeting's Twitter/X history shows that he was silent on Epstein until this morning. This was despite years of actual women coming forward, and the known links between Mandelson and Epstein.

Additionally, it seems Streeting has only mentioned Mandelson himself a few times at first glance. But that doesn't factor in the tweets he's recently deleted:

Since the 'suicide' in prison of serial child-rapist and Israeli spy Jeffrey Epstein, theories about his 'death' have split into two main camps.

One assumes, based on the state editing of CCTV video of the area around his cell on the night in question, that Epstein was murdered so he can be silenced. Another, that Epstein isn't dead, but was instead spirited away. The latest release of Epstein files by the US justice department contains information that appears to support the latter.

Before Epstein's death had been officially reported, an anonymous post appeared on conspiracy site 4Chan on 10 August 2019 from a user who claimed to be a security guard at the prison. The post claimed that Epstein had been "switched out":

Not saying anything after this pls do not try to dox me but last night after 0415 count they took him medical in a wheelchair front cuffed but not 1 triage nurse says they spoke to him. ​ Next thing we know a trip van shows up? ​ We do not do releases on the weekends unless a judge orders it. ​ Next thing we know, he's put in a single man cell and hangs himself? ​ Heres [sic] the thing, the trip van did NOT sign in and we did not record the plate number and a guy in a green dress military outfit was in the back of the van according to the tower guy who let him thru the gate. You guys i am shaking right now but i think they switched him out.

Images released of 'Epstein' also appear to suggest discrepancies in key facial features between the dead body and Epstein photographed while alive:

Another post on the same message board, also before the announcement of Epstein's death, gives details of treatment supposedly administered:

This has long been dismissed as mere 'conspiracy theory'. However, the latest Epstein file release includes information that appears to confirm that prison guard Roberto Grijalva was the person who sent the message to the board before Epstein's death.

Epstein prison whistle blower named

A day after Epstein's death, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman of New York's southern district opened a Grand Jury proceeding. As part of the proceeding, Berman subpoenaed a number of companies — including 4Chan and Citibank — for its user records. The aim of the subpoena was to uncover the identity behind the anonymous post.

The latest release includes bank documents provided by 4Chan in response. In these records, the name of on the response on the user name has been redacted. However, the name on the associated records showing the bank account holder was not removed: Roberto Grijalva.

The idea that a serial child-rapist may still be alive and given refuge in Israel is anything but far-fetched, even if Epstein's status as an Israeli spy is set aside. Although stubbornly ignored by UK state-corporate media, the Israeli regime is currently ignoring well over 2,000 extradition requests for alleged and convicted paedophiles. In April 2025 Shoshana Strook, the daughter of Israel's far-right settlements minister fled to police and asked them to protect her, accusing both her parents and one of her brothers of raping her as a child, over a period of years, and filming the rapes.

Israeli psychotherapist and trauma expert Dr Anat Gur, head of the Bar-Ilan University trauma therapy program, has said that she believes organised child rape in Israel is widespread:

Organized child rape is one of the most horrific things I've encountered. It's likely much more widespread than we think. It's happening in places we least expect.

The latest document release already put beyond reasonable doubt the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset. This includes mention of his training as a spy under former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, allegedly one of Epstein's most brutal rapists.

Now, it also validates the 10 August 2019 4Chan post as a legitimate eyewitness account written by a prison officer working on the night of Epstein's 'death'. A witness who says he was removed, without the usual official records. One who believes Epstein was "switched out" and was reporting it immediately, along with the supposed means of suicide, before news of it was in the public domain.

Featured image provided via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

Proposed bills in New York and elsewhere threaten makers, Adafruit says

State and federal lawmakers have stepped up their efforts to prevent the creation of 3D printed guns. But Adafruit, a maker of electronics kits, warns that the proposed legislation is so broad it threatens everyone involved in open source manufacturing and technology education.…

Former Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way is not the clear front-runner in New Jersey's special congressional election on Thursday. She's seventh in fundraising out of 10 candidates as of last week's Federal Election Commission deadline, and public polling has been sparse. But as the race drew close to the finish line, the Israel lobby made her the beneficiary of a last-minute push. 

In the final weeks before the election, an Intercept analysis has found, 30 donors to groups including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its super PAC, and Democratic Majority for Israel have poured more than $50,000 into Way's campaign. On Friday, amid the fundraising push and less than a week before the election, DMFI officially endorsed her. 

The lobby is known for spending against progressives and the most vocal critics of the state of Israel, but in New Jersey, it appears to be backing one moderate to pick off another. Yet more pro-Israel money in the race comes at the expense of Tom Malinowski, who is no progressive on Israel policy but nevertheless has become the subject of AIPAC ire — marking a reversal for the group, which supported him in 2022.

AIPAC's super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more $2.3 million on ads against Malinowski. The ads do not mention Israel but attack Malinowski on immigration, saying he helped fund "Trump's deportation force" because he voted in favor of a 2019 bipartisan appropriations bill that funded the Department of Homeland Security. The majority of Democrats, including many supported by AIPAC, voted for the bill.

In a statement to The Intercept, UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton made no mention of Malinowski's DHS funding vote. He said Malinowski had fallen afoul of the group's policy priorities by discussing the possibility of conditioning aid to Israel.

"It's our goal to build the largest bipartisan pro-Israel majority in Congress. There are several candidates in this race far more pro-Israel than Tom Malinowski," Dorton said.

Related AIPAC Is Retreating From Endorsements and Election Spending. It Won't Give Up Its Influence.

Way and Malinowski are competing in a crowded race in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District to replace former Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who vacated the seat after she was elected governor. 

Way and Malinowski's campaigns did not respond to The Intercept's requests for comment.

Also running are Analilia Mejia, the former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign; veteran Zach Beecher; Passaic County commissioner and election lawyer John Bartlett; former Morris Township Mayor Jeff Grayzel; and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill. 

Way already had substantial support from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, which endorsed her and has spent more than $1.7 million backing her campaign, almost half of what it spent in total last cycle. But even with close to $4 million in outside spending on her side, she has lagged behind her opponents in fundraising. She's raised just over $400,000 — compared to Malinowski's over $1.1 million, more than $800,000 for Gill, and over half a million for Beecher. Bartlett has raised more than $460,000, Grayzel has raised $428,000, and Mejia has raised just over $420,000. 

Now, pro-Israel donors who have given to AIPAC to boost other pro-Israel candidates are trying to help Way close the gap. They include retired investor Peter Langerman, who has given $75,000 to AIPAC's United Democracy Project since 2023 and $12,000 to AIPAC since 2022. Another Way donor, Florida loan executive Joel Edelstein, has given $25,000 to UDP since 2023 and $$3,500 to AIPAC since 2022.

Among Way's other donors are Bennett Greenspan, founder of the genealogy company Family Tree DNA, who has given $40,000 to United Democracy Project, $4,000 to DMFI PAC, and $1,250 to AIPAC PAC since 2022. Way donor and New Jersey real estate developer Michael Gottlieb gave $25,000 to UDP in 2023. Another Way donor, founder and former president of Microsoft partner HSO, Jack Ades, has given $10,750 to AIPAC since 2024. Gottlieb and Ades have given to Republican candidates including Reps. Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik in New York; Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La.; Nikki Haley's presidential campaign; and the Republican group WinRed. 

More than half of these contributions all landed on January 14.

More than half of the contributions to Way — $33,000 of the $53,000 in total — all landed on January 14, a common sign that outside groups have sent out a fundraising push to their network.

Another donor to Way's campaign is Joseph Korn, a New Jersey real estate developer who served on the New Jersey board of the Jewish National Fund, a controversial national organization that has funded settler groups in the West Bank. 

Way is campaigning on a relatively centrist platform that primarily includes fighting against President Donald Trump's agenda. She's also running on strengthening the Affordable Care Act, ensuring access to reproductive care, protecting democracy and voting rights, and lowering costs without raising taxes, including raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, or SALT. Her website does not mention foreign policy or Israel. 

Way is also endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC; the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State; IVYPAC, which backs candidates who are members of the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; and several other New Jersey organizations. 

The Israel lobby's support for Way may not ultimately help its policy priorities. As a recent column in the Forward points out, by pitting Way and Malinowski against each other, AIPAC donors might help a more progressive candidate get elected.

The post AIPAC Donors Flood Last-Minute New Jersey House Pick With Cash appeared first on The Intercept.

Job cuts to fall hardest on non-revenue generating roles on the Global Customer Operations team

Workday is laying off about two percent of its staff in a bid to align its people with its "highest priorities," but at a significant cost to its margins for the quarter and the year, the company announced on Wednesday.…

RAG bots could overtake human visitors on publisher sites this year, trackers tell us

The AI bot takeover of the internet continues apace, and the latest data suggests the surge is being driven less by model-training scrapes and more by the growing use of AI tools as a stand-in for web search.…

A new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine states there is no evidence "to justify blanket bans" on trans women from women's sports.

The research found that trans athletes who were born male have no advantage over cis women.

Trans Supreme Court ruling

Several UK sports associations have banned trans women after the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman under the Equality Act is based on biological sex. This includes the Football Association (FA), England Netball, and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Some sports, such as cycling and triathlon, have introduced open categories for trans athletes. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is also attempting to ban trans athletes. The IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, pledged to ban trans athletes in her election campaign.

Earlier this week, the Canary reported on a legal case against an inclusive swimming pond in London. Transphobic pressure group Sex Matters had its legal case against the pond dismissed by the High Court.

In response to the legal case, the City of London Council published research showing that, of 38,000 members surveyed, the vast majority (86%) backed the corporation's trans-inclusive changing policy. This is despite the recent Supreme Court Ruling on biological sex.

'No observable differences'

The new study analysed 52 different studies based on 6,485 people, most of whom were transgender.

It found that:

Transgender women might have more muscle mass than cisgender women 1 to 3 years after hormone therapy, but their physical fitness is comparable

Additionally:

Transgender women have significantly greater amounts of body fat than cisgender men but levels comparable to those of cisgender women.

They also discovered that trans women had more lean muscle mass, but "no observable differences" from other women in terms of body strength or VO₂ max — or maximum oxygen consumption. This is a key measure of cardiorespiratory fitness.

When compared to cisgender men, trans women had significantly lower strength and VO₂ max.

The researchers noted that hormone therapy was associated with:

higher amounts of body fat and lower amounts of muscle and less upper body strength 1-3 years after the start of treatment in transgender women, transgender men had less fat, more muscle, and greater strength after hormone therapy.

The researchers concluded that:

The convergence of transgender women's functional performance with cisgender women, particularly in strength and aerobic capacity, challenges assumptions about inherent athletic advantages derived solely from [gender affirming hormone therapy] or residual lean mass differences.

Featured image via Connor Coyne/ Unsplash

By HG

Pleb-tier LPDDR5x apparently good enough for Arm-backed AI startup's next-gen Asimov accelerators

On paper, Positron's next-gen Asimov accelerators, no doubt named for the beloved science fiction author, don't look like much of a match for Nvidia's Rubin GPUs.…

It is no secret that large language models (LLMs) are being used routinely to modify and even write scientific papers. That's not necessarily a bad thing: LLMs can help produce clearer texts with stronger logic, not least when researchers are writing in a language that is not their mother tongue. More generally, a recent analysis in Nature magazine, reported by Science magazine, found that scientists embracing AI — of any kind — "consistently make the biggest professional strides":

AI adopters have published three times more papers, received five times more citations, and reach leadership roles faster than their AI-free peers.

But there is also a downside:

Not only is AI-driven work prone to circling the same crowded problems, but it also leads to a less interconnected scientific literature, with fewer studies engaging with and building on one another.

Another issue with LLMs, that of "hallucinated citations," or "HalluCitations," is well known. More seriously, entire fake publications can be generated using AI, and sold by so-called "paper mills" to unscrupulous scientists who wish to bolster their list of publications to help their career. In the field of biomedical research alone, a recent study estimated that over 100,000 fake papers were published in 2023. Not all of those were generated using AI, but progress in LLMs has made the process of creating fake articles much simpler.

Fake publications generated using LLMs are often obvious because of their lack of sophistication and polish. But a new service from OpenAI, called Prism, is likely to eliminate such easy-to-spot signs, by adding AI support to every aspect of writing a scientific paper:

Prism is a free workspace for scientific writing and collaboration, with GPT‑5.2⁠—our most advanced model for mathematical and scientific reasoning—integrated directly into the workflow.

It brings drafting, revision, collaboration, and preparation for publication into a single, cloud-based, LaTeX-native workspace. Rather than operating as a separate tool alongside the writing process, GPT‑5.2 works within the project itself—with access to the structure of the paper, equations, references, and surrounding context.

It includes a number of features that make creating complex — and fake — papers extremely easy:

• Search for and incorporate relevant literature (for example, from arXiv) in the context of the current manuscript, and revise text in light of newly identified related work
• Create, refactor, and reason over equations, citations, and figures, with AI that understands how those elements relate across the paper
• Turn whiteboard equations or diagrams directly into LaTeX, saving hours of time manipulating graphics pixel-by-pixel

There is even voice-based editing, allowing simple changes to be made without the need to write anything. But scientists are already worried that the power of OpenAI's Prism will make a deteriorating situation worse. As an article on Ars Technica explains:

[Prism] has drawn immediate skepticism from researchers who fear the tool will accelerate the already overwhelming flood of low-quality papers into scientific journals. The launch coincides with growing alarm among publishers about what many are calling "AI slop" in academic publishing.

One field that is already plagued by AI slop is AI itself. An FT article on the topic points to an interesting attempt by the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), a major gathering of researchers in the world of machine learning, to tackle this problem with punitive measures against authors and reviewers who violate the ICLR's policies on LLM-generated material. For example:

Papers that make extensive usage of LLMs and do not disclose this usage will be desk rejected [that is, without sending them out for external peer review]. Extensive and/or careless LLM usage often results in false claims, misrepresentations, or hallucinated content, including hallucinated references. As stated in our previous blog post: hallucinations of this kind would be considered a Code of Ethics violation on the part of the paper's authors. We have been desk -rejecting, and will continue to desk -reject, any paper that includes such issues.

Similarly:

reviewers [of submitted papers] are responsible for the content they post. Therefore, if they use LLMs, they are responsible for any issues in their posted review. Very poor quality reviews that feature false claims, misrepresentations or hallucinated references are also a code of ethics violation as expressed in the previous blog post. As such, reviewers who posted such poor quality reviews will also face consequences, including the desk rejection of their [own] submitted papers.

It is clearly not possible to stop scientists from using AI tools to check and improve their papers, nor should this be necessary, provided authors flag up such usage, and no errors are introduced as a result. A policy of the kind adopted by the ICLR requiring transparency about the extent to which AI has been used seems a sensible approach in the face of increasingly sophisticated tools like OpenAI's Prism.

Follow me @glynmoody on  on Bluesky and Mastodon.

Jeff Bezos this week continued to dismantle what's left of the Washington Post via another massive round of layoffs that left remaining staff stunned. Among the latest cuts is the elimination of the paper's popular sports desk, scaling back of international and local news, the firing of an untold swath of journalists, and the ending of the paper's book sections, among other major changes.

This comes on the heels of other decisions by Bezos to fire all of the paper's black columnists, turn the op-ed section into pro-corporatist agitprop, censor cartoonists that criticize Jeff, and generally shift the paper's journalistic tone in a more right wing, autocrat-friendly, corporatist direction. You know, like every other major corporate media outlet from CNN to CBS.

Of course, nobody actually wants this. The actual audience for extraction class agitprop is arguably very small and already quite well served. So it's amusing to see WAPO leadership insist that these additional, brutal cuts are necessary because the paper has been losing subscribers and "wants to be competitive":

"Murray acknowledged that the Post has struggled to reach "customers" and talked about the competitive media marketplace. "Today, the Washington Post is taking a number of actions across the company to secure our future," he said, according to an audio recording of the meeting."

Let's be clear: billionaires like Jeff Bezos don't want a functioning press. They want the lazy simulacrum of a functional press that caters to their ideology (more for me, less for you) and protects their interests. As with Larry Ellison's acquisition of CBS and TikTok, and Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it's best to view this as a global project to defang accountability for the planet's richest, shittiest people and corporations.

Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron didn't really mince words about what this means for a once-functional newspaper that, at this point, probably can't be salvaged:

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

— Ben Mullin (@benmullin.bsky.social) 2026-02-04T14:34:22.001Z

WAPO management insist that they're going to "narrow their focus on politics." By this they mean more of the feckless, "both sides," "view from nowhere" DC gossip reporting you see at other billionaire-owned outlets like Axios, Semafor, and Politico. Glad-handy journalism that's less concerned with the truth than it is appeasing ownership, protecting access, and keeping the ad money flowing.

The kind of wimpy, soft-knuckled cack that can (and repeatedly is) exploited by authoritarian zealots who know these outlets lack the courage to call them out for what they really are. You see, if you're honest about the extremist nature of our unpopular autocratic government, you might lose access, upset paper management, alienate Republican ad viewers, or piss off regulators eyeing your latest merger.

Bezos could fund functional journalism at the Washington Post for decades to come without making a dent in his finances, were that something of actual interest to him. This is a guy who just blew $75 million on a propaganda puff piece kissing the ass of the president's wife. That kind of money could fund most independent newsrooms for the better part of the next decade.

Jeff wants to ensure the administration will pay him to launch his unreliable rockets into space, slather his fledgling LEO satellite network with subsidies, coddle his cloud computing empire, allow him to dominate every last aspect of modern retail, and generally be broadly exploitative in a way that undermines competition, consumers, and labor. He wants, and applauds, Trump's destruction of the regulatory state.

Bezos still "wins" even if the Post doesn't survive his "leadership." At worst (for Jeff) the paper is converted into a sad, pseudo-journalistic simulacrum that exists largely to blow smoke up the ass of wealth and power. At best another major media institution is destroyed, eliminating yet another outlet that used to (admittedly with increasing inconsistency) hold billionaires and corporate power to account.

But it's really something even worse than just rich people destroying journalism to coddle their delicate egos and protect their financial interests. All of this really is part of a broad, multi-generational effort by the extraction class to eliminate checks and balances and accountability, erode informed consensus, befuddle the electorate, and dismantle not just democratic norms, but democracy itself.

And, if you hadn't noticed, it's been a smashing success so far.

If there's a plus side to this mess, it's that Jeff and Elon and Larry's clumsy efforts to dominate and destroy U.S. journalism create vast new opportunities for indie newsletter authors, worker-owned newsrooms, and independent outlets (like Techdirt), to serve a public that's desperate for something tangible, courageous, and real in a sea of bullshit and clumsy artifice. Give them, and us, your time and money.

The UK is even more of a US military colony than we thought. New documents found in the US War Department's website show that Britain hosts double the number of American military facilities previously reported.

Our friends over at Declassified UK explained:

A US document published online identifies 16 of the US military's locations in the UK and notes six "other sites" which are not specified. The document, published last year, outlines the US military's "property portfolio" around the world as of September 2024.

Declassified said they had:

identified other locations in Britain that are likely to be hosting US military or intelligence personnel, bringing the total to at least 24.

But they reflected that this may even be an underestimate:

This doesn't cover the full scale of the US military presence in the UK, since it is believed that US military personnel are frequently, if not permanently, stationed at still more sites, such as the key Royal Navy bases at Coulport, Devonport and Faslane.

Declassified explored how various installations and locations across the UK are run by US military and intelligence personnel. In many cases these operations are little-known to the public and involve thousands of US personnel and swathes of land.

In practice, a foreign power is running its global military operations from British soil with little or no democratic accountability. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) refused to comment and suggested Declassified submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

US military — troops out!

Sovereignty is a critical issue at the moment.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski recently caused a furore by saying the presence of US bases and troops should be reviewed. At the time it was reported that 13 US bases and over 10,000 US troops were based here.

Now we know the situation is far worse.

Polanski said on 20 January:

We should be reviewing US bases on UK soil, and actually looking at a genuine strategic defence review.

Adding that:

Donald Trump has so much domination within Nato that I don't believe it's possible to reform Nato from within

US President Donald Trump had just threatened to annex Greenland. American special forces had also just kidnapped the Venezuelan president and threatened various other countries. So Polanski wasn't really being dramatic.

American leftie priest Dan Berrigan was once asked how his late Catholic Worker colleague Dorothy Day approached political activism. They'd spent their lives opposing poverty, racism and war in the US.

He replied:

She lived as though the Truth were actually true.

You can take the religious connotation there or leave it, it matters not. But at the Canary we try to write as if the truth is true.

The truth is that Britain is a vassal state and colony of the United States. We say the UK would better off if it was not. US bases, troops and spies need to go. And, with sensible caveats, any journalist or politician making that case is a friend of ours.

Featured image via Militarycom

By Joe Glenton

Norwegian state oil company Equinor has delivered its yearly profits announcement. And campaigners from Fossil Free London have been quick to respond. They've accused Equinor of getting "filthy rich" and say it's "the UK public [that] foots the bill".

Equinor and Rosebank

Equinor is the majority owner of the Rosebank oil field. Rosebank lies in UK waters and in 2023, then-PM Rishi Sunak said that developing it would help secure UK oil supplies. However, any oil or gas from the field wouldn't go directly to UK refineries. The owners would sell it on the global markets, meaning the UK could potentially see none of the product or the profit.

Despite this, as the Canary has previously reported, UK public funds are carrying most of the development costs. So the UK is potentially taking a massive loss and creating enormous greenhouse gas emissions for negligible benefit.

Ahead of Equinor's announcement, activists from Fossil Free London staged a striking 'oil spill' protest outside the company's London HQ. Wearing rose-themed dresses and dripping in treacle, to mimic oil, they called attention to its role in Rosebank.

Commenting on Equinor's results, Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, said:

Equinor are getting filthy rich from filthy fossil fuels, whilst the UK public foots the bill. And it's never been more of a rip off. As Equinor drives Rosebank forward, they've newly buddied up with Shell in a new North Sea venture to dodge £1.3bn in tax.

It's clear that we cannot afford to neglect climate action. The UK will face over a trillion pounds in costs as the result of the climate crisis in the next decade.

The UK Government must not back Big Oil's Big Money and support climate denial. They must back people's survival, and stop this carbon bomb. They must stop Rosebank.

Featured image by Jack Taylor

By The Canary

LLMs automated most phases of the attack

A digital intruder broke into an AWS cloud environment and in just under 10 minutes went from initial access to administrative privileges, thanks to an AI speed assist.…

Without meaningful deterrents, Big Tech companies will do what's profitable, regardless of the cost to consumers. But a new bipartisan bill could add a check that would make them think twice, at least in one area. On Wednesday, Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) introduced legislation that would require social platforms to crack down on scam ads.

The Safeguarding Consumers from Advertising Misconduct (SCAM) Act would require platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent fraudulent or deceptive ads that they profit from. If they don't, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general could take civil legal action against them.

The bill's sponsors, Ruben Gallego (L) and Bernie MorenoRuben Gallego (Bluesky) / Bernie Moreno

The backdrop to the SCAM Act is a Reuters report from last November. Meta reportedly estimated that up to 10 percent of its 2024 revenue came from scam ads. The company is said to have calculated that as much as $16 billion of its revenue that year was from scams, including "fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos and the sale of banned medical products."

Making matters worse, Meta reportedly refused to block small fraudsters until their ads were flagged at least eight times. Meanwhile, bigger spenders were said to have accrued at least 500 strikes without being removed. Executives reportedly wrestled with how to get the problem under control — but only without affecting the company's bottom line. At one point, managers were told not to take any action that could cost Meta more than 0.15 percent of its total revenue. (See what I mean about needing meaningful deterrents?)

According to the FTC, Americans' estimated total loss from fraud in 2024 (adjusted for underreporting) was nearly $19 billion. An estimated $81.5 billion of that came from seniors.

"If a company is making money from running ads on their site, it has a responsibility to make sure those ads aren't fraudulent," Sen. Gallego said in a statement. "This bipartisan bill will hold social media companies accountable and protect consumers' money online."

"It is critical that we protect American consumers from deceptive ads and shameless fraudsters who make millions taking advantage of legal loopholes," Moreno added. "We can't sit by while social media companies have business models that knowingly enable scams that target the American people."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/bipartisan-scam-act-would-require-online-platforms-to-crack-down-on-fraudulent-ads-210316594.html?src=rss

If cinema has taught us anything about interacting with our own creations, it's this: androids chatting among themselves seldom end with humans clapping politely. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 quietly decides it knows better than the astronauts. In Westworld, lifelike hosts improvise rebellion when their scripts stop making sense. Those stories dramatize a core fear we keep returning to as AI grows more capable: what happens when systems we design start behaving on their own terms? You might have heard the internet is worried about Moltbook, a social network made exclusively for AI agents. It's an audacious claim:…

This story continues at The Next Web

As profit-starved AI companies scramble to monetize chat interactions, Claude bets on trust

Anthropic has taken the high road by committing to keep its Claude AI model family free of advertising.…

Over the past week, two federal judges have issued rulings on immigration cases that aren't just legally significant—they're genuinely extraordinary documents. One includes a photo of a five-year-old in a Spiderman backpack, biblical citations, and closes with Ben Franklin's warning about keeping the republic. The other spends 83 pages methodically dismantling a cabinet secretary's decision, includes screenshots of her social media posts, and concludes that she "pounds X (f/k/a Twitter)" instead of following the law. Both judges reached back to the Founders to make their points. Both dropped any pretense of the typical judicial deference afforded to the executive branch. And both made crystal clear that they see what's happening for exactly what it is.

Let's start with the shorter one. Judge Fred Biery in the Western District of Texas issued a brief but devastating opinion granting habeas corpus to Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam—the child whose photo went viral wearing a blue hat with ears and a Spiderman backpack when he was kidnapped by federal agents in Minnesota and shipped to a detention center in Texas. Judge Biery didn't mince words:

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

He then offered what he called a "civics lesson to the government," including reminding them of some key parts that were in the Declaration we signed 250 years ago to be free from a monarch:

Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old ThomasJefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."
2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us."
3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."
4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

And the startling conclusion to the civics lesson the US federal government got from a judge.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

And in case anyone missed the point, Biery closed with a reference you don't often see in federal court opinions: "Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: 'Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?' 'A republic, if you can keep it.'" Followed by: "With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED."

The ruling includes the photo of the five-year-old child, and two biblical citations. The first to "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'" and the second to… "Jesus wept."

If Judge Biery's ruling was a shot across the bow—short, sharp, impossible to miss—then Judge Ana Reyes's 83-page ruling in the Haitian TPS (Temporary Protected Status) case is a full broadside. Where Biery reached for the Declaration and the Bible, Reyes brings receipts—83 pages of them—that lay bare just how far federal judges have moved from customary deference to open incredulity.

The ruling opens with a letter from George Washington in 1783 declaring that "America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions."

Then it gets to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's position on immigration:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take.

The ruling then includes a screenshot of Noem's X post declaring "WE DON'T WANT THEM. NOT ONE. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS, LEECHES, AND ENTITLEMENT JUNKIES. WE DONT WANT THEM HERE."

Judge Reyes notes dryly: "So says the official responsible for overseeing the TPS program."

The plaintiffs in the case are five Haitian TPS holders whom Judge Reyes takes pains to introduce:

They are not, it emerges, killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies. They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer's disease; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse.

The ruling systematically dismantles every single aspect of Secretary Noem's decision to terminate Haiti's TPS designation. But the section on DHS's supposed "consultation with appropriate agencies" is particularly brutal.

The TPS statute requires the Secretary to consult with appropriate agencies before making a termination decision. Here's what that "consultation" actually looked like:

On Friday, September 5, 2025—that is, the same day that the NTPSA court set aside the Partial Vacatur of Haiti's TPS designation—a DHS staffer emailed a State staffer at 4:55 p.m.: "Due to the litigation, we are re-reviewing country conditions in Haiti based on the original TPS deadline. Can you advise on State's views on the matter?" The State staffer responded within 53 minutes: "State believes that there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the TPS statue of Haiti."

This was it. The full extent of the supposed consultation with appropriate agencies.

The judge notes that she believe she "must be missing something" and included a bit of the transcript from the hearing:

Court: So in the Federal Register notice, the Secretary wrote, "After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary determined that Haiti no longer meets the conditions for the designating as TPS"; right?

Government Counsel: Yes.

Court: What were the appropriate agencies that the Secretary consulted? . . .

Government Counsel: So, Your Honor, it's the Department of State email found at 409 and 410. That is what we have. . . .

Court: No other agency was consulted?

Government Counsel: No other agency was consulted. . . .

Court: And the extent of the Department of State consultation was the email exchange at 409 and 410.

Government Counsel: That is my understanding

The judge's response to this 53-minute email exchange being presented as statutory "consultation" is unsparing:

Congress did not vest the Secretary with Humpty Dumpty-like power to make the word "consultation" mean "just what [she] chooses it to mean—neither more nor less."

It gets worse. The court notes that the State Department's own Travel Advisory for Haiti—the document that literally says "Do not travel to Haiti for any reason"—was updated after Noem's first termination attempt. The updated version, warning of worsened conditions, doesn't even appear in the administrative record. The Secretary responsible for making this determination simply didn't look at her own government's assessment of the country's safety.

Then there's the pattern. As of this ruling, Secretary Noem has terminated TPS designations for every single country that has come up for review since taking office. Twelve countries. Twelve terminations. The ruling includes a handy chart:

Twelve for twelve. Judge Reyes notes this is "unprecedented in the thirty-five years since the establishment of the TPS program for a DHS Secretary to terminate every TPS designation that crosses her desk for review."

The ruling then gets into the substance of Noem's reasoning—or lack thereof. The Secretary claims there are parts of Haiti "suitable to return to" but never identifies a single safe location. Indeed, the Court gave the government a chance to explain exactly where these "parts" of Haiti that were safe were, and was not impressed by the answer:

According to Secretary Noem, "data surrounding internal relocation does indicate parts of the country are suitable to return to." But the Secretary cited no data to support this proposition and failed to identify a single safe location. In response to an inquiry from the Court, the Government cited an October 29, 2025, USCIS memo in the administrative record as the supporting analysis. "The memo," it noted, "reflects that individuals have been internally displaced, thereby indicating that Haitian residents found certain areas in Haiti that could be suitable for return." But the memo also fails to identify a single safe location by name or even geographic area. And the fact that, as the memo notes, 1.3 million Haitians—around twelve percent of the population—have been "internally displaced due to escalating violence" says nothing about whether they escaped to suitable areas. If anything, those areas are presumptively now less suitable for return, having been inundated with internal refugees.

Meanwhile, the administrative record is full of statements like these:

"Haiti's crisis has reached catastrophic levels" — Human Rights Watch, January 2025

"The violence has increased dramatically in 2024" — Doctors Without Borders, January 2025

"Haiti is paralyzed" — Crisis Group, February 2025

"Top United Nations Officials Urge Swift Global Action as Haiti Nears Collapse" — UN Security Council, July 2025

"The people of Haiti are in a perfect storm of suffering" — UN Secretary-General Guterres, August 2025

Against all of this, Secretary Noem concluded that "there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian TPS holders from returning [to] safety." Judge Reyes is incredulous that the Secretary's analysis relies on "emerging signals of hope" rather than actual changed conditions:

Unable to identify present conditions supporting her conclusion, Secretary Noem turns instead to speculation about future improvement. Each source she cited speaks to how Haiti might improve in the future. She quoted a UN article referencing Secretary-General António Guterres's statement that despite ongoing violence in Haiti, "'there are emerging signals of hope.''' He cautioned that "these fragile gains" depend on "more decisive international support." Emerging signals of hope, of course, are not actual change. Secretary-General Guterres's full remarks to the UNSC underscore this point. They do not describe a nation on the brink of recovery. Rather, they describe a nation in crisis, whose future hinges on internal "unity" and "resolve from [the UNSC]."

The ruling also destroys the government's "national interest" analysis, which focuses on immigrants attempting to enter the US illegally and those who overstay visas. The problem? TPS holders are already here. Legally:

Secretary Noem's analysis also focused on those who "overstay their visas" and so remain in the country unlawfully. Id. She claimed that these overstayers "may be harder to locate and monitor," increasing vulnerabilities in immigration enforcement systems. See id. She also said they "place an added strain on local communities by increasing demand for public resources, contributing to housing and healthcare pressures, and competing in an already limited job market." Id. But Haitian TPS holders are not in this cohort either. They are in the U.S. lawfully. See Jan. 6 P.M. Hr'g Tr. at 85:15-87:12. Indeed, TPS holders are easy to locate because they regularly update their address information with DHS to maintain that status and their work authorization. See id. at 94:25-95:6. And Secretary Noem provides no data to support the overgeneralization that those who overstay their visas are a strain on their local communities. See Dkt. 122. They may well cause a strain, but terminating Haiti's TPS termination not alleviate it because, again, Haitian TPS holders do not fall into this cohort.

Regarding that confusion of TPS visitors being here legally, meaning they literally cannot overstay their visas, the judge notes in a footnote how absurd part of the government's argument is:

With respect, this borders on the absurd. The latter has zero relation to the former or reality.

When asked where in the record the Court could find data on TPS holders represented in "overstay" rates (based on those who maybe overstayed visas prior to getting TPS status), the government comes up empty. See if you sense where the judge loses patience:

The Government responds by speculating that maybe some Haitians overstayed their visas before obtaining TPS status. Maybe. Who knows? Not Secretary Noem. The Court asked the Government: "[w]here in the [CAR] can the Court find the percentage of TPS holders represented in the overstay rates?" The response: "The [CAR] does not contain data that is this finely dissected." Which is to say, not enough people to even bother counting.

The equal protection analysis is where things get really pointed. Judge Reyes catalogs President Trump's statements about Haitians and other nonwhite immigrants:

President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners. To start, he has repeatedly invoked racist tropes of national purity, declaring that "illegal immigrants"—a category he wrongly assigns to Haitian TPS holders—are "poisoning the blood" of America. He has, Plaintiffs allege, complained that recently admitted nonwhite Africans would "never 'go back to their huts' in Africa." He has complained further that nonwhite immigration is an "invasion," creating a "dumping ground" that is "destroying our country." He has described immigrants as "not people," "snakes," and "garbage," who have "bad genes." He has also stated that he prefers immigrants from "nice"—predominantly white—countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark over immigrants from "shithole countries"

President Trump has referred to Haiti as a "shithole country," suggested Haitians "probably have AIDS," and complained that Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." He has also promoted the false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were "eating the pets of the people" in Springfield, Ohio. Even after that (ridiculous) claim was debunked, he claimed they were eating "other things too that they're not supposed to be." About two weeks after the Termination, he again described Haiti as a "filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting" "shithole country." He stated: "I have also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries." Then continued, "Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why cannot we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few, let us have a few, from Denmark." It is not a coincidence that Haiti's population is ninety-five percent black while Norway's is over ninety percent white.

The ruling notes that Trump's statements came close in time to Noem's decisions, and that Noem herself has made her own views clear, as noted in the screenshot, calling Haitians "leeches, entitlement junkies, and foreign invaders" just three days after making the Termination decision.

And then we get to the conclusion. It's worth quoting at length because you really don't see this kind of language from the bench:

There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).

And then the kicker:

Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.

These rulings represent something we've been watching develop for months now: federal judges completely abandoning the traditional deference typically afforded to government positions, because the government has made clear it doesn't deserve it. The DOJ's credibility has been in freefall, and judges are no longer pretending otherwise. They're reaching back to Franklin and Washington as genuine warnings about what happens when executive power operates unchecked by law or facts.

Some people will dismiss this as "activist judges." But what we're seeing is something different: judges trying to do their actual jobs—reviewing whether the government followed the law—and finding that the government isn't even pretending to follow it anymore.

The administration is ignoring statutory requirements entirely, fabricating rationales after the fact, and treating judicial review as an inconvenience to be steamrolled rather than a constitutional check to be respected. We're not talking about simple judicial disagreements of interpretation of the law. These opinions read more like desperate signals from the bench that something has gone very, very wrong.

I've seen some complaints—in particular about the first short ruling—that it doesn't read in a very judicial manner. The lack of citations is a bit startling, and probably bodes ill if the government appeals. But that's almost the point. When a judge includes a photo of a child in a Spiderman backpack, cites "Jesus wept," and closes with Ben Franklin's warning about keeping the republic—or when another judge spends 83 pages documenting that the Secretary of DHS ignored her own agencies, ignored the evidence, ignored the law, and instead "pounds X"—they're writing for more than an appeals court. They're writing for history. They're writing for the public. They're sick of the lies and the gaslighting, and the simple fascism of it all in a supposed constitutional democracy. And they want to make damn sure that someone, somewhere, is paying attention.

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The two murders by immigration officers during Trump's vengeful "surge" in Minneapolis, Minnesota have grabbed most of the headlines recently. And deservedly so. The violent rhetoric used by nearly every administration official — combined with a lack of training and the explicit understanding no one will be punished by Trump for whatever's done in Trump's name — has delivered a day-to-day purge of minorities that this government and its supporters continue to pretend is nothing more than good, solid (immigration) law enforcement.

But before those shootings turned the nation's attention to Minnesota, hundreds of federal officers had been turned loose in other "Democrat" states. Because officers were encouraged — by arrest quotas and the administration's portrayal of anyone from other countries as inherently dangerous — to succeed by any means necessary, they did… even if it meant filling people with bullet holes for being on the wrong side of Trump's version of history.

In January, two Venezuelans were shot by ICE officers. The DHS immediately claimed this was a good shoot, considering how potentially violent these recipients of bullets were.

Yesterday, two suspected Tren de Aragua gang associates—let loose on American streets by Joe Biden—weaponized their vehicle against Border Patrol in Portland. The agent took immediate action to defend himself and others, shooting them. 

After fleeing, the suspects drove nearly five miles to an apartment complex and called emergency medical services. They were transported to separate hospitals. Luis David Nino-Moncada sustained an injury to the arm while Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest. Nino-Moncada is now in FBI custody. These individuals are not married.  

I've highlighted two things from this January DHS press release. Sure, it's all bullshit but these two sentences need to be called out.

First, just because someone managed to cross the border doesn't mean they were "let loose on American streets" by a presidential administration.

Second, what the fuck even is this? "These individuals are not married." Who gives a shit? What bearing does this have on anything? Or are we so far down the white Christian nationalist rabbit hole that simply co-habitating a moving vehicle is justification enough for being shot by federal officers?

Any normal administration would never have included those two sentences, even if it wanted to push the narrative that the people who were shot were dangerous enough to justify the violent reaction. Throwing this shit into the mix is just how the Trump administration does business: like two kids piggy-backed in a trenchcoat, pretending to be a full-grown adult.

And that's enough to let everyone know very little of what is being said is true. It's a dog whistle for racism, sexism, and making-a-bunch-of-shit-upism that is meant to appease the Bigot in Chief and make MAGA's collective panties so wet they should be asking FEMA for flood relief grants. (I'm paraphrasing Shoresy here.)

While that may look good on the permanent DHS press release record, it doesn't look nearly as bully-smart (I'm coining that) as the people spewing it thinks it does when it runs up against the part of the government that isn't so easily swayed by bigoted gibberish that's interspersed with partisan attacks and non sequiturs.

Now that these shootings are being handled in court, the narrative (and I'm being extremely gracious here in treating this froth as the equivalent of an actual narrative) is disintegrating. It turns out prosecutors and investigators can't actually back up these wild-ass DHS claims. Forced to rely on facts, the DOJ is finding out it doesn't have many to work with.

During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, "weaponized their vehicle against" officers, DHS said, prompting an agent "to defend himself and others" by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.

But court records obtained by the Guardian reveal a Department of Justice prosecutor later directly contradicted DHS's Tren de Aragua statements in court, telling a judge: "We're not suggesting … [Niño-Moncada] is a gang member." An FBI affidavit issued following the incident also suggests that in the previous shooting cited by DHS, Zambrano-Contreras was not a suspect, but rather a reported victim of a sexual assault and robbery. Neither Niño-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras have prior criminal convictions, their lawyers have said.

This is just as sloppy as the quasi-gang database the DHS has been using as an excuse to send Venezuelans to El Salvador's CECOT hell hole. There's no investigation going on here. There's just the DHS claiming that any Venezuelan it shoots or otherwise brutalizes is probably a Tren de Aragua gang member.

No doubt some prosecutors are going to get shit-canned for daring to oppose the DHS's self-serving narrative in their sworn statements to judges. Given that the DOJ really can't afford to lose many more of these, one wonders why this administration can't simply provide a "no comment," rather than immediately push narratives that it has to know will be contradicted once the facts arrive at the scene.

I mean, just stating what happened in whatever exonerative form you want to use ("officer-involved shooting"), followed by the assertion that the shooting is currently under investigation would be far better than what this administration chooses to do EVERY CHANCE IT GETS.

Whatever dubious charm these statements might have held during Trump's blustery return to office has long worn off. I suspect even many of the MAGA faithful are getting a little tired of every incident being greeted by government statements that are long on hyperbole but short on facts. Sure, there are still a number of people so fully-cooked that they can't achieve an erection without being lied to for paragraphs at a time, but given this constant onslaught of pure garbage in response to government violence, I have to believe some of the people who very definitely voted for this are rolling their eyes every time DHS front-mouth Tricia McLaughlin opens her mouth.

Yesterday, 3 February, the Scottish parliament voted against moving forward with a bill that would have criminalised sex work.

The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill was introduced by independent MSP Ash Regan. However, it was defeated at the very first hurdle, at which MSPs agree on the general points of a bill. It lost by 64 votes to 54.

The proposed laws would have closely followed the 'Nordic model' of criminalisation. The problem, however, is that the Nordic model is incredibly dangerous for sex workers themselves.

'Very significant' issues

As the law stands in Scotland, both soliciting in public and keeping a brothel are illegal. However, it is currently legal to arrange to sell sex online, and to pay for sex.

The bill would have made it an offence to pay for sex in any way. Meanwhile, it would have decriminalised the act of selling sex, along with repealing historic convictions for solicitation. In this, it mirrors the Nordic model of sex work criminalisation, which specifically targets the buyers — not the sellers — of sex.

The SNP, Green and Lib Dems opposed the bill, whilst Labour and the Conservatives backed it. However, a small faction of SNP ministers rebelled to vote in support of the proposals.

Minister for Victims and Community Safety Siobhian Brown stated that there were "very significant" issues with the proposals that the Scottish parliament wouldn't have time to correct.

In particular, she highlighted that the online nature of the proposed offences would make it extremely difficult to enforce. She also pointed out that the bill could reduce sex workers' ability to gauge the risk that individual buyers pose, thereby increasing the threat of violence against them.

The Nordic model on sex work — doesn't work

In this, Brown has echoed the sentiments of Scottish sex workers themselves — always a good thing, given that the bill affects them most directly. Grassroots campaign group Sex Workers for Decrim opposed the bill from its inception, stating on social media that:

This will increase violence against us. It will increase our likelihood of being evicted, and it will further isolate us and drive us underground.

As the Canary's Rachel Charlton-Dailey explained, in areas where the Nordic Model has been adopted, violence against sex workers has increased at a horrific rate. In Northern Ireland, it increased by 225% from 2016 to 2018, according to the Irish Ministry for Justice.

During the Holyrood debate, Regan stated that:

This 'Unbuyable Bill' recognises prostitution for what it is - a system of exploitation and violence sustained by demand. It decriminalises those who are sold, recognising them as people constrained by vulnerability and not offenders.

And it places criminality where it has never properly sat in Scots law, with those who buy sexual access and those who profit from the sale of sexual access to human beings.

Now, don't get us wrong, we're completely here for the decriminalisation of sex work. However, if we're coming out swinging for people who are forced into an exploitative system, we have bad news for you about our entire economic system.

Now, this isn't to say that sex workers don't face risk and violence in their line of work. However, criminalisation — of buying or selling — forces that work underground, making it more difficult to report harm or organise for better conditions.

Sex work — 'overwhelming evidence'?

After the defeat of her bill, MSP Regan said:

Today, Parliament chose cowardice over action - despite overwhelming evidence, survivor testimony, and support from police, prosecutors and international experts.

Inaction is not neutral. It is a decision, and it has consequences.

Of course, that overwhelming evidence doesn't include Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, or the sex workers themselves who have clearly stated that the Nordic model harms the workers.

SNP MSP Michelle Thomson, who joined the rebellion in support of the bill, spoke to BBC Scotcast on the topic. She argued that her party members should have been allowed to choose which way to vote. Likewise, she also added that women should not be "traded as commodities", and asked SNPs to reject:

the entitlement of some men to demand the purchase of women.

This framing is itself deceptive. The opponents of sex workers frame the profession as solely female because it allows them to frame the issue as protecting 'helpless' women from violent men. Not only is this deeply paternalistic, it also ignores the fact that somewhere between 6 and 20% of sex workers are men.

And again, there's the fact that most of us trade our bodies as commodities.

The opposition

Across the aisle, Lib Dem party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton took a pragmatic approach in opposing the bill:

We can't wish prostitution away and as it will forever exist we need to make sure it happens in the safest possible way.

Green MSP Maggie Chapman also spoke out against the bill, in favour of letting people decide what they do with their own bodies:

Where sex work happens between consenting adults, I believe the state should support people not penalise them for how they choose to live.

This, for us, gets to the heart of the matter. We're not interested in whether you think buying or selling sex is a moral failing — we're not bloody philosophers.

The debate around sex work foregrounds the fact that it is frequently coercive and exploitative. However, all work involves a degree of exploitation and coercion — you need food, clothes, somewhere to live, and you don't get a choice in the matter.

What's true is that most sex work, currently, carries some unique risks of both harm and exploitation. However, criminalisation only exacerbates these problems. Sex work is happening, it's not going away, and efforts to make it go away harm the workers — so the problem in front of us is making it as safe as humanly possible.

Making sex work as safe as possible for the workers themselves means the same as it does for all workers. It means unionisation and worker's rights, but those cannot happen without decriminalisation and destigmatisation. Any other option is sophistry.

Featured image via Red Umbrella Fund

By Alex/Rose Cocker

On World Cancer Day, patients in Gaza face a double and merciless threat: cancer itself and a devastated healthcare system.

Thousands now face an uncertain future after hospitals were damaged and the only specialised cancer centre stopped operating. Border crossings remain closed, preventing patients from travelling for treatment.

Gaza's health situation is no longer a temporary crisis. It has become a daily tragedy.

Patients are trapped between severe physical pain and the absence of essential medicines. Hospitals lack early-diagnosis tools and proper monitoring, turning treatable cancers into life-threatening cases.

Gaza — the grim health reality

The Palestinian Ministry of Health, in a statement seen by Kanari, says around 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza are now deprived of specialised treatment and proper diagnosis. Conditions worsened after specialised hospitals were rendered inoperable and the Gaza Cancer Center was destroyed, pushing the health system close to total collapse.

More than 4,000 patients with referrals for treatment abroad have been waiting over two years for crossings to open. Their health continues to deteriorate while they wait.

A 64% shortage of cancer medicines, alongside the absence of MRI and mammography machines, has sharply increased delayed diagnoses and mortality risks.

Humanitarian and social impact

The cancer crisis in Gaza extends far beyond physical suffering.

Patients and families live under immense psychological pressure, caught between fear of death and the inability to access or afford treatment. Harsh living conditions intensify that burden. The wider community also suffers. Cancers easily treatable elsewhere become prolonged battles in Gaza, draining families emotionally and financially.

International silence deepens patients' sense of abandonment, worsening an already profound humanitarian trauma.

Urgent international appeal

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has called for immediate international action to allow patients to travel for treatment, ensure the entry of vital medicines, and rebuild cancer care facilities.

The ministry warned that continued inaction amounts to a slow death sentence for thousands, cautioning that Gaza faces an unprecedented health and humanitarian catastrophe unless urgent intervention occurs.

Featured image via Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

By Alaa Shamali

Israel is always the victim — in its own eyes. That applies to the groups that support it too, like the avowedly Zionist 'Board of Deputies' (BOD). So, naturally, as far as the BOD is concerned today's exoneration by a jury of six anti-genocide Palestine Action activists is not justice. It's a slight to the BOD and other Israel supporters.

It's 'antisemitism', in other words.

In a statement, the BOD described the verdicts as "troubling". It then said that "respect [for] the judicial process" is "important". And it then made clear that it has no respect for the judicial process by implying the acquittals don't mean, under British law, that the accused are innocent of the serious charges against them. Therefore they are still guilty and deserving of punishment they should not be "able to evade".

Evade by means of being found not guilty. The fiends.

BOD releases a statement after Palestine Action activists' acquittal

This was the BOD's nonsense in full:

04.02.2026 ​

We are concerned by the troubling verdicts acquitting members of Palestine Action, an organisation that has been proscribed as a terrorist group, and whose activities have included targeting businesses linked to the Jewish community in London and Manchester. ​

While it is important to respect the integrity of the judicial process, there is a serious danger of perverse justifications being used as a shield for criminality. ​ It cannot be the case that those who commit serious criminal acts, including violent assaults, are able to evade the consequences of their actions. ​

We look to the Government to provide clear direction in tackling hate crime and extremist violence. ​ This incident underlines the urgency of the Home Office's current review into public order and hate crime legislation. ​

We are grateful to the officers who attended the scene and the CPS for prosecuting this case. ​ We urge the prosecution to proceed with a retrial in respect of those charges where the jury was unable to reach a verdict, particularly given the severity of the injury suffered by Police Sergeant Evans.

To be clear: none of the defendants has been found to have injured police sergeant Evans.

And, since it's certain neither the BOD nor the UK corporate media are ever going to refer to it, video evidence proved that police and security guards lied about pretty much everything that happened. And the accusers were not even able to come up with convincing lies even though the police left the Israeli arms-maker in charge of the video evidence for a whole year.

Scandalously, despite the verdicts, the CPS has demanded that the humanitarian defendants — after a year and a half as political prisoners — must not simply walk free. Five of them have been put back on bail — and one, Sam Corner, has been denied bail and put back in prison.

Of course we must never forget that Israel and its lobby are always the victim. Even when they're slaughtering innocent Palestinians and making up bollocks in court to imprison people trying to stop them.

Featured image via FiltonActionists

By Skwawkbox

Making a good digital picture frame should be easy. All you need is a good screen and an uncomplicated way to get your favorite photos onto the device. Combine that with an inoffensive, frame-like design and you're good to go.

Despite that, I can tell you that many digital photo frames are awful. Amazon is positively littered with scads of digital frames and it's basically the 2020s version of what we saw with knock-off iPods back in the 2000s. There are loads of options that draw you in with a low price but deliver a totally subpar experience that will prompt you to shove the thing in a drawer and forget about it.

The good news is that you only need to find one smart photo frame that works. From there, you can have a pretty delightful experience. If you're anything like me, you have thousands of photos on your phone of friends, family photos, pets, vacation spots, perhaps some lattes or plates of pasta and much more. Too often, those photos stay siloed on our phones, not shared with others or enjoyed on a larger scale. And sure, I can look at my photos on my laptop or an iPad, but there's something enjoyable about having a dedicated place for these things. After all, there's a reason photo frames exist in the first place, right? A great frame can help you send photos to loved ones and share cherished memories with friends and family effortlessly. I tested out seven smart photo frames to weed through the junk and find the top picks for the best digital frames worth buying.

Best digital picture frames for 2025

What to look for in digital picture frames

While a digital photo frame feels like a simple piece of tech, there are a number of things I considered when trying to find one worth displaying in my home. First and foremost was screen resolution and size. I was surprised to learn that most digital photo frames have a resolution around 1,200 x 800, which feels positively pixelated. (That's for frames with screen sizes in the nine- to ten-inch range, which is primarily what I considered for this guide.)

But after trying a bunch of frames, I realized that screen resolution is not the most important factor; my favorite photos looked best on frames that excelled in reflectivity, brightness, viewing angles and color temperature. A lot of these digital photo frames were lacking in one or more of these factors; they often didn't deal with reflections well or had poor viewing angles.

A lot of frames I tested felt cheap and looked ugly as well, which isn't something you want in a smart device that sits openly in your home. That includes lousy stands, overly glossy plastic parts and design decisions I can only describe as strange, particularly for items that are meant to just blend into your home. The best digital photo frames don't call attention to themselves and look like an actual "dumb" frame, so much so that those that aren't so tech-savvy might mistake them for one.

Perhaps the most important thing outside of the display, though, is the software. Let me be blunt: a number of frames I tested had absolutely atrocious companion apps and software experiences that I would not wish on anyone. One that I tried did not have a touchscreen, but did have an IR remote (yes, like the one you controlled your TV with 30 years ago). Trying to use that with a Wi-Fi connection was painful, and when I tried instead to use a QR code, I was linked to a Google search for random numbers instead of an actual app or website. I gave up on that frame, the $140 PixStar, on the spot.

Other things were more forgivable. A lot of the frames out there are basically Android tablets with a bit of custom software slapped on the top, which worked fine but wasn't terribly elegant. And having to interact with the photo frame via touch wasn't great because you end up with fingerprints all over the display. The best frames I tried were smart about what features you could control on the frame itself vs. through an app, the latter of which is my preferred method.

Another important software note: many frames I tried require subscriptions for features that absolutely should be included out of the box. For example, one frame would only let me upload 10 photos at a time without a subscription. Others would let you link a Google Photos account, but you could only sync a single album without paying up. Yet another option didn't let you create albums to organize the photos that were on the frame — it was just a giant scroll of photos with no way to give them order.

While some premium frames offer perks like unlimited photos or cloud storage, they often come at a cost. I can understand why certain things might go under a subscription, like if you're getting a large amount of cloud storage, for example. But these subscriptions feel like ways for companies to make recurring revenue from a product made so cheaply they can't make any money on the frame itself. I'd urge you to make sure your chosen frame doesn't require a subscription (neither of the frames I recommend in this guide need a subscription for any of their features), especially if you plan on giving this device as a gift to loved ones.

How much should you spend on a digital picture frame

For a frame with a nine- or ten-inch display, expect to spend at least $100. Our budget recommendation is $99, and all of the options I tried that were cheaper were not nearly good enough to recommend. Spending $150 to $180 will get you a significantly nicer experience in all facets, from functionality to design to screen quality.

Digital frames FAQs Are digital photo frames a good idea?

Yes, as long as you know what to expect. A digital picture frame makes it easy to enjoy your favorite shots without printing them. They're especially nice for families who want to display new photos quickly. The key is understanding the limitations. Some frames have lower resolution displays or need a constant Wi-Fi connection to work properly, so they're not a perfect replacement for a high-quality print on the wall. But if you want a simple way to keep memories on display and up to date, they're a solid choice.

Can you upload photos to a digital frame from anywhere?

Most modern digital frames let you do this, but it depends on the model. Many connect to Wi-Fi and use apps, cloud storage or email uploads, so you can add photos from your phone no matter where you are. Some even let family members share directly, which is great for keeping grandparents updated with new pictures. That said, a few budget models only work with USB drives or memory cards, so check how the frame handles uploads before buying.

Georgie Peru contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/best-digital-frame-120046051.html?src=rss

Hot on the heels of AGDQ in January, Games Done Quick is hosting its second speedrunning event of the year, Back to Black 2026, starting tomorrow, February 5. The four-day event is organized by Black in a Flash and is raising money for Race Forward, a nonprofit that works across communities to address systemic racism.

Back to Black is timed to the start of Black History Month and highlights the deep bench of talent in the Black speedrunning community. A few runs, like ones for Hades II, Donkey Kong Country and Silent Hill 4, were teased when Back to Black 2026 was announced last year. The full schedule has plenty of other runs worth checking out, though, like a co-op run through Plants vs Zombies: Replanted on February 5 or an Any% run of The Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery on February 6.  

Back to Black 2026 will be live on Games Done Quick's Twitch and YouTube channels from Thursday, February 5 through Sunday February 8.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/games-done-quicks-back-to-black-2026-event-kicks-off-tomorrow-194147068.html?src=rss

Keir Starmer has admitted knowing all about his disgraced senior adviser Peter Mandelson's continuing close ties to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Before he appointed him to be ambassador to the US.

It was already a matter of record that Starmer knew when he told MPs last September that he had full confidence in Mandelson. Mandelson was removed as ambassador shortly afterward — but kept on the government payroll. That month's Epstein file release underscored Mandelson's infatuation with Epstein, but their ties had been on record long before.

And now Starmer has admitted that security vetters had warned him — before Mandelson's US appointment — about the Blairite (now) former peer's close relationship with the monstrous rapist and child trafficker.

Of course they did. That was never in doubt, but now is admitted. But the cover-up continues.

Starmer said he will 'release all material' relating to the vetting, but with the glaring exception of:

national security and "international relations" exemptions.

'National security and international relations exemptions' like Epstein's status as an Israeli spy.

'National security and international relations exemptions' like the 'who's who' of UK and other state officials who enjoyed 'recreation' on Epstein's island — no doubt while Mandelson was there.

'Exemptions' like Mandelson's equally close friendship with former Israeli PM — and alleged brutal rapist — Ehud Barak, whom the latest released files shows trained Epstein as a spy.

No doubt. But none of the 'mainstream' media seem to find this obvious issue worth pointing out.

The UK state's protection of the vilest will no doubt one day be the stuff of textbooks and histories — like Starmer's collaboration in Israel's genocide. That is too late.

Full disclosure now — and punishment to the full extent of UK and international law of all those involved whether before, during or after the fact.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

BBC News reported yesterday that the US Department of Justice has had to remove thousands of documents related to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as they have compromised the identities of women who have been victimised by the elite-run web of sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation.

The outlet further stated that the "flawed redactions" of the Epstein Files have made nearly 100 survivors vulnerable, with the women's lives "turned upside down." However, the mainstream media circus around the release of the files is conveniently diminishing both the horror and scrutiny of these atrocious crimes, as well as the accountability of the powerful figures responsible for them.

One thing is clear. The release of the Epstein files was certainly not to protect the victims and survivors of Epstein's depraved network. The women and girls who bore the brunt of these atrocities have been sidelined even in the official reveal of their experiences.

Epstein files: accountability should be in the interests of victims, not their abusers

According to BBC News, on Friday 30th January two lawyers for Epstein's victims insisted that a New York federal judge order the DOJ to remove the website holding the files. They stated that the negligent release was:

the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history.

At the Canary, we agree wholeheartedly.

This US-led failure to redact identifying images and names of victims has made the complete removal of such content the only viable response. Once again, women around the world are left feeling exposed and vulnerable, while so-called efforts to 'protect women' operate instead to shied powerful perpetrators of abuse. Yet again, a manipulative and abusive system has retraumatised the very women it was ostensibly meant to serve.

Given US President Donald Trump's appearance in the files, photographed with Epstein's so-called "harem" of young girls, too little attention focuses on the fact that rich, powerful men once again seem able to deter and deflect true accountability. Anyone who has experienced abuse knows this all too well: men often act without recognizing - or admitting - the harm they cause.

Abolish the Monarchy. https://t.co/yyNBmVlN6z

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 1, 2026

Women have had enough

Unfortunately for those powerful patriarchal arseholes, many women see straight through it and are at the end of their tether. They remind us that unless we dismantle the structures and hierarchies of power, the abuse will never end. As a white woman, I believe it is essential that white Western women confront our complicity - whether intentional or not - and come together in solidarity against all abuse. This means rejecting the Western patriarchal scapegoating of 'brown men' and confront the reality that white men have inflicted - and continue to inflict - vast harm. Abuse is about power; not race.

We wrote recently on the practice of Nazi-like eugenics amongst Epstein and his ilk of superior, privileged rich boys. Discussing the characteristics of the men who have assumed powerful positions in politics and business, our own Robert Freeman wrote:

All this is ultimately the product of an economic and political system that practically guarantees the most poisonous humans imaginable rise to the top. Capitalism rewards the most ruthless and domineering among us, not the kindest and most compassionate.

Those attracted to being a CEO — with the ability to control potentially thousands of lives — are unlikely to be good people. Once there, wealth grants them the ability to evade the law and control the political realm. With greater power comes greater impunity, and an already degraded soul rots still further. It's a system that selects for, then refines, the worst traits of our species.

The Epstein documents have produced an outpouring of fury, and an increasing clarity to the realisation that an entire system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed into something less misanthropic. We've had enough warnings by now of "Nazi like" reprobates controlling our lives. An imminent return to something akin to Nazism looms unless an alternative course is pursued urgently.

Not all men: But it is all women

There is a reassuring factor for women that yes, it is not 'all men'. Nevertheless, many women with platforms have demanded that we no longer center reassuring men that we aren't 'demonising all of them'. Instead, they insist that we finally center the very valid truth that whilst it might not be all men (thankfully), it is all women and girls.

All women and girls are likely to experience abuse or its consequences at some point in their lives. This truth is depressingly clear: the Epstein scandal proves that abuse does not occur in isolation - it spreads widely, thrives systemically, and men carry it out overwhelmingly. Even women and girls who never experience abuse firsthand live alongside its effects: they support survivors, navigate fear, and adapt their lives to avoid risk. The problem does not lie in individual morality alone; power structures actively enable abuse to continue and minimise its consequences, leaving no woman untouched by its impact.

It is time we empathise and choose to empower women and girls, not continue this toxic cycle of even the reveal of abuse not centring the abused.

The Canary's Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu put across this argument powerfully and poignantly in a post on Instagram:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@sholamos1)

Dr Shola: 'we will shut this shit down'

Where are the white women? I'm looking, but I can't see. Let me put my glasses on. I still don't see them. You see, my shattered eye, we're just wondering where the white women are following the release of the Epstein files. Because I don't see white women protesting on the streets. I do not see white women collectively, undeniably being visible and vocal in exercising their white power, white fragility, and white tears to hold to account powerful white men that have subjected and deliberately targeted white women and white girls for rape, sexual molestation, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking. Where are the white women? How are white women so collectively silent and performatively powerless.

Let's break it down. Where are your bastions of white femininity? The protectors of the white female body? Where are your white female politicians and your white female media personalities? White female commentators? You know, those advocates of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, anti-immigration because we have to protect the women and children where they are right now because everything seems quite crooked. We're the white women who take to the streets protesting and demanding that white women and children be protected from the asylum seekers and the refugees and the immigrants and they do not even give an iota of that same energy to powerful white men who pose a greater significant risk to their bodies than asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants.

Where are the white women whose white peers have unjustly sent black men to their deaths by state execution, either by the police or by the state because they have lied? Huh? Oh my God, I'm just as scared to say black man. Where are your white peers against a powerful white man that have targeted you for rape and sexual abuse? Where are the white women who exercise white power on a daily basis to say to black men, no, you don't work there. No, you don't live there. You don't belong here. Where's that white power now against a powerful white man? Now I'm not talking about the white women who've been doing the Lord's work, speaking out against these powerful white men and have endured all kinds of persecutions including character assassination, who've been actively anti-racist, who've been unequivocally against the patriarchal power structure. Now I stand with them in solidarity.

Now I'm talking to you multitudes of white women who excuse the inexcusable, defend the indefensible because you're telling us it was never about protecting white women and children. You see the stats don't lie. White men commit the most sexual crimes, rape, sexual abuse of children, and sex trafficking. That's the fact. The fact also is that the problem are men. Yes, not all men. But you see, if we work together collectively, white, black, and brown women, against a patriarchal power construct that protects the men who commit these crimes, we will shut this shit down.

As Dr Shola powerfully states, it is time for women and girls everywhere, regardless of ethnicities or religion, to come together.

We must find our humility and refuse to continue being the continual playthings of patriarchal men.

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at a news conference about fentanyl seizures and border security on Feb. 2, 2026, in San Diego. Photo: K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely viewed as a strong contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, particularly by Gavin Newsom. But his record is a real problem, just not in the way pundits think it is. 

Take, for example, his determination to thwart the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act, which would impose a one-time 5 percent levy on residents of the state worth $1 billion or more. This is hardly Bolshevism, as keen mathematicians will note that 5 percent still leaves 95 percent, meaning those affected would wake up the next morning in the same economic bracket that calls to mind a camel and the eye of a needle. Regardless, Newsom remains firmly in the plutocrats' corner.

There was also his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month — always a popular destination for those angling for high office — amid President Donald Trump's lunge toward Greenland. Just as European leaders were discovering that, having tolerated U.S. imperialism in Venezuela, it was now threatening their own backyard, Newsom kindly offered some unsolicited advice, scolding them that "Trump is a T. rex — you mate with him or he devours you, one way or the other, and you need to stand up to it." (The revelation that T. rexes can be defeated by standing up to them will come as a surprise to anyone who's seen "Jurassic Park.") Trump, for his part, merely shrugged in response: "I used to get along so great with Gavin."

Last week and with much publicity, Newsom launched a review of TikTok's moderation practices, accusing the platform of suppressing Trump-critical content after a deal was finalized to transfer Chinese ownership of the app to a consortium of pro-Israel, Trump-loving billionaires, including Larry Ellison and Michael Dell. It is unsurprising that social media is an issue of concern for Newsom, as he is apparently the last person on Earth under the impression the Trump administration can be tweeted into submission, a strategy which will surely pay dividends any day now.

Finally, students of shameless self-promotion may already be familiar with "This Is Gavin Newsom," the podcast launched in early 2025 in which the governor has sought to bridge the political divide by sitting down for chummy dialogue with far-right celebrities like Ben Shapiro and the late Charlie Kirk. What this looks like in practice is Shapiro goading Newsom into denying Israel's genocidal conduct in Gaza, while Kirk earned Newsom's fulsome agreement about the nefarious menace of trans women playing sports. 

Yet there are those in the political media unbothered by all this — if anything, it is the kind of thing they would like to see more of. Instead, their concern comes from a different direction, if not an alternate universe, altogether.

Writing in The Atlantic late last month, Marc Novicoff and Jonathan Chait argued "Gavin Newsom's Record Is a Problem." While acknowledging he has "sensed what Democrats want … and is delivering it with a roguish charisma" (your mileage may vary), they nevertheless worry he may be perceived as too progressive. This will, one assumes, be followed by essays on why Chuck Schumer is too courageous and JD Vance is too likable.

Novicoff and Chait posit that Newsom's tenure as governor has seen California "fall hard for faddish progressive policies on immigration, education, and crime that either didn't work, violated the intuitions of most Americans, or both." As proof, they offer the state providing Medicaid to undocumented immigrants and gender-affirming health care for prisoners, both of which they present as catastrophic missteps that will come back to haunt him in 2028.

Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people's lives worse.

Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people's lives worse. In fact, it would seem their preferred litmus test for a candidate is that they not only refuse to recognize the rights and basic humanity of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and the incarcerated, but that they also must never offer even the most superficial indication to the contrary.

This is all par for the course from Chait, who maintains Kamala Harris's 2024 defeat had little to do with her support for Israel during a genocide, her proud past as California's "top cop," or her unwillingness to distance herself from Joe Biden's legacy. Instead, Chait blames those few instances during her Hindenburg-like 2019 stab at the Democratic nomination where she briefly and unconvincingly pivoted left before returning to the comfort of political moderation.

Related Jon Chait Thinks Kamala Harris Went Too Far Left. He's Just Falling for Trump's Demagoguery.

In the real world however, the arch-centrist Chait got everything he could hope for in Harris, who promptly blew it; now, with Newsom as the alleged front-runner for 2028, the fact that Chait is already preemptively recycling the same excuses for failure does not inspire confidence.

"Just about everything people don't like about the Democratic Party has come true in Newsom's California," Chait and Novicoff write, inadvertently stumbling onto a point. Many Americans despise the Democrats for their craven coddling of billionaires and corporate interests, their fealty to zombified Third Way snake oil, and their twitchy, terrified suspicion of any mass movement too radical for their own beige, milquetoast taste — and sure enough, in the California governor's mansion sits a man who personifies all these grim qualities.

If Newsom — who treats billionaires as a treasured natural resource, who mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to quash Black Lives Matter protests, who made a photo op of breaking down a homeless encampment with his own hands — is not impeccably centrist enough for the likes of Chait, who the hell is? A John Fetterman who's on the ball and not acting like a Republican? A Kyrsten Sinema whose personal life isn't straight out of a daytime soap opera? A reanimated WelcomeFest speaker stitched together in Matt Yglesias's laboratory?

It does ring true that Newsom will be painted as a deranged radical out of some Californian hippie dystopia, because under Trump, what was once McCarthyism is now standard practice. So why would anyone still believe the forces he represents can be met halfway, given they will inevitably smear as commies anyone to the left of "The Turner Diaries"?

Watching Newsom's refusal to accept this reality has not been edifying. Following the murder of Renee Good by ICE last month, Newsom's press office released a post on X which simply read "STATE. SPONSORED. TERRORISM," a position which held for a little over a week until Ben Shapiro badgered him into walking it back. For all his tough-guy posturing, one wonders how tough a politician can really be if Ben goddamn Shapiro — whose greatest enemies are socialism, wokeness, and things on high shelves — can get you to fold like a cheap lawn chair. But this is Newsom's style: blustering proclamations that might, to the casual observer, be mistaken for principle or policy, closely followed by the reticence and cowardice that defines mainstream Democratic politics.

Related It's Time for Concrete Action on ICE. Sadly, We Have the Democrats.

It should go without saying that Newsom's palling around with right-wing pseudo-intellectuals like Kirk and Shapiro — along with his assurances that he does not favor abolishing the death squads currently occupying Minnesota — do not appear to have won him any converts, respect, or sympathy from the American right. And why should it? In Trump, they have found a president that will indulge their darkest desires, liberate their deepest prejudices and deliver the violence they yearn to see inflicted on all those they judge as deserving — in short, everything they could ever want. Meanwhile, there are still those who believe the key to defeating American fascism is making sure the left gets none of what it wants. Go figure.

Unsurprisingly, there has been little indication the American progressive left perceives Newsom as deserving anything but disdain. Recent weeks have only bolstered the sense that committing to the abolition of ICE is a prerequisite for any remotely moral candidate in 2028. If Newsom fails to become that candidate, it will not be because he appeared too left-wing, but because he lacked the guts or the inclination to be anything except what he manifestly is: a preening political operator, beholden to a status quo that no longer exists.

The post Gavin Newsom's Biggest Problem Is Gavin Newsom appeared first on The Intercept.

Roblox launched an open-source AI model that generates 3D objects on the fly early last year and now that toolset is getting a massive boost. The platform has introduced a model that whips up "4D" objects. I put 4D in quotes because it doesn't actually allow access to the fourth dimension, but rather lets users make interactive 3D objects via prompts.

As suggested, these aren't static 3D models. They are fully functional and interactive objects that move and react to players. The beta toolset can't be used to make anything, as it's rather limited for now. There are just two templates for users to choose from. Folks can make cars and solid 3D objects, like a box or a sculpture.

Roblox

The cars are fully driveable, however, and are made from five separate parts. The parts work independently of one another, allowing for spinning wheels and opening doors. The company says the physics should be accurate, so prepare for a whole lot of user-generated racing games.

There's already a game on the platform that uses the 4D tools called Wish Master. It lets players generate cars, planes and all kinds of other stuff.

Roblox

As for those limited templates, Roblox says it plans to eventually let creators make their own but didn't release a timetable for this. It also says it is developing technology that will generate 3D models based on a reference image.

Today's open beta comes after Roblox found itself at the center of lawsuits and investigations related to child safety. This led the company to implement mandatory facial verification to access chat, which has reportedly not been going very well. Some countries have actually banned the platform in an effort to protect children.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/robloxs-4d-creation-toolset-is-now-available-in-open-beta-191510664.html?src=rss

Blizzard is running a series of showcases for several of its major franchises and on Wednesday, it was time for Overwatch to step up to the plate. That's Overwatch, by the way, and not Overwatch 2. The studio is formally nixing the number from the game's name. 

"Overwatch is more than just a digit: it's a living universe that keeps growing, keeps surprising, and keeps bringing players together from around the world," the Overwatch team said in a statement. "This year marks a huge turning point in how the development team envisions the future of Overwatch, so we are officially dropping the '2' and moving forward as Overwatch."

Blizzard made a big hullabaloo about Overwatch 2 being a sequel to the original game when it went live in October 2022 as part of a shift to a free-to-play model. There were a ton of major changes, not least a format switch from 6v6 to 5v5, with one tank being dropped from each team — a contentious decision that has been walked back with the return of 6v6 modes. 

The grand vision Blizzard originally had for Overwatch 2 never quite came together. The studio canceled its planned hero missions, which were going to have RPG-like talent trees and long-term progression, but it carried some of that DNA over to the Stadium mode.

We only got one round of co-op story missions as well. That paid expansion reportedly sold poorly, leading Blizzard to scrap work on the player vs. environment elements of Overwatch to focus on the competitive player vs. player modes.

Over the last couple of years, though, Blizzard really seems to have steadied the ship. Overwatch is arguably in the best shape it's been in for a long time. 

This is shaping up to be a big year for Overwatch. May will mark its 10th anniversary (I have to imagine the team has something significant planned for that). Blizzard laid out much of the roadmap for 2026 during the Overwatch Spotlight showcase. We won't have to wait long at all to see significant changes to the game. 

New heroesBlizzard Entertainment

When the next season goes live on February 10, it will be the biggest update to Overwatch at least since the Stadium mode and perks system went live last year, and arguably since the dawn of the Overwatch 2 era. That's partly because Blizzard is adding five new heroes to the mix all at once next week.

One of those is a character that the studio said in 2017 it had experimented with but ultimately, um, scratched. Jetpack Cat is alive after all, and is coming to Overwatch in a matter of days.

This is a support hero with a permanent flight ability who can "tow" an ally — providing a speed boost while healing them. Jetpack Cat's ultimate ability sees the kitty diving into the ground to knock down enemies and tether the closest one to them. It's called Catnapper, which is delightful. Also, the hero's primary weapon is called Biotic Pawjectiles, so I adore Jetpack Cat already. It's fun to see weird Wrecking Ball-type characters coming to Overwatch again. 

Blizzard Entertainment

The other new heroes joining the fray next week are Domina (a zone-control tank with "long-range precision"), damage dealer Emre (a "fast‑paced, mobile soldier archetype with conflicting identity due to cybernetic modification"), Mizuki (a support who can throw a hat to heal allies) and Anran (a high-mobility hero who deals fire damage and can self-resurrect with their ultimate).

As with Jetpack Cat, the latter of those is aligned with the Overwatch faction. You can try Anran out starting February 5 as part of a hero trial. The other three have ties to the villainous Talon organization. Expect another hero to join the fray every couple of months this year as each new season gets under way. That means more heroes will be added to Overwatch in 2026 than in any year since the game's debut.

A "story-driven era"Blizzard Entertainment

The next season spells the beginning of what Blizzard is calling a "new story-driven era" for Overwatch, starting with a year-long narrative arc called The Reign of Talon. All of the lore, heroes, events and so on that emerge over the next 12 months will be tied to the rise of Talon.

The studio says this is the "the first fully connected annual storyline in Overwatch history." A new arc will begin next year with Season 1 of 2027 (Blizzard is resetting the season counter when The Reign of Talon begins).

Elsewhere, each role will be split into sub-roles, and the heroes in each will share a passive ability. For instance, "initiator" tanks heal more while they're in the air, several damage heroes can detect enemies that are below half health through walls after damaging them and some supports have excess ultimate charge that carries over after you use their most powerful ability.

Also on the way soon is a "meta event" called Conquest. This is billed as a faction war between Overwatch and Talon that will run for five weeks, with dozens of loot boxes and other rewards (such as some legendary Echo skins) up for grabs.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard has overhauled the Overwatch interface too, with updated menus, a new hero lobby, a notification hub and the promise of faster navigation. Stadium will have some updates, such as refreshed ability icons and recommended builds based on global data that will be updated between rounds. Vendetta is joining that mode's roster as well.

Along with all the new heroes and other updates, a Hello Kitty collaboration will run for two weeks starting on February 10 with themed cosmetics for several heroes. Lots of other cosmetics are in the pipeline, including Crimson Wolf weapon skins you can unlock using competitive points, and rainy day and Valentine's items. Shop items from the last six seasons are going into loot boxes, while mythic cosmetics for Mercy, Juno and Mei will be available in Season 1.

Blizzard Entertainment

Looking further ahead, a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch will arrive alongside Season 2, which will start in April. Some heroes will be getting their second mythic skins, including Ana and Genji. Genji, Hanzo and Sojourn will have mythic weapon skins in the coming months. Two new maps, including a Japan Night one, for the main modes are coming, along with the return of post-match accolades.

There's so much on the way for my go-to game. I don't know how I'm going to be able to take a long-enough break from Overwatch to play cool indies ever again.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/overwatch-will-drop-the-2-as-jetpack-cat-and-four-other-heroes-arrive-on-february-10-184500327.html?src=rss

When X's engineering team published the code that powers the platform's "for you" algorithm last month, Elon Musk said the move was a victory for transparency. "We know the algorithm is dumb and needs massive improvements, but at least you can see us struggle to make it better in real-time and with transparency," Musk wrote. "No other social media companies do this." 

While it's true that X is the only major social network to make elements of its recommendation algorithm open source, researchers say that what the company has published doesn't offer the kind of transparency that would actually be useful for anyone trying to understand how X works in 2026. 

The code, much like an earlier version published in 2023, is a "redacted" version of X's algorithm, according to John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. "What troubles me about these releases is that they give you a pretense that they're being transparent for releasing code and the sense that someone might be able to use this release to do some kind of auditing work or oversight work," Thickstun told Engadget. "And the fact is that that's not really possible at all."

Predictably, as soon as the code was released, users on X began posting lengthy threads about what it means for creators hoping to boost their visibility on the platform. For example, one post that was viewed more than 350,000 times advises users that X "will reward people who conversate" and "raise the vibrations of X." Another post with more than 20,000 views claims that posting video is the answer. Another post says that users should stick to their "niche" because "topic switching hurts your reach." But Thickstun cautioned against reading too much into supposed strategies for going viral. "They can't possibly draw those conclusions from what was released," he says. 

While there are some small details that shed light on how X recommends posts — for example, it filters out content that's more than a day old — Thickstun says that much of it is "not actionable" for content creators. 

Structurally, one of the biggest differences between the current algorithm and the version released in 2023 is that the new system relies on a Grok-like large language model to rank posts. "In the previous version, this was hard coded: you took how many times something was liked, how many times something was shared, how many times something was replied … and then based on that you calculate a score, and then you rank the post based on the score," explains Ruggero Lazzaroni, a pHD researcher at the University of Graz. "Now the score is derived not by the real amounts of likes and shares, but by how likely Grok thinks that you would like and share a post."

That also makes the algorithm even more opaque than it was before, says Thickstun. "So much more of the decisionmaking … is happening within black box neural networks that they're training on their data," he says. "More and more of the decisionmaking power of these algorithms is shifting not just out of public view, but actually really out of view or understanding of even the internal engineers that are working on these systems, because they're being shifted into these neural networks."

The release has even less detail about some aspects of the algorithm that were made public in 2023. At the time, the company included information about how it weighted various interactions to determine which posts should rank higher. For example, a reply was "worth" 27 retweets and a reply that generated a response from the original author was worth 75 retweets. But X has now redacted information about how it's weighing these factors, saying that this information was excluded "for security reasons." 

The code also doesn't include any information about the data the algorithm was trained on, which could help researchers and others understand it or conduct audits. "One of the things I would really want to see is, what is the training data that they're using for this model," says Mohsen Foroughifar, an assistant professor of business technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. "if the data that is used for training this model is inherently biased, then the model might actually end up still being biased, regardless of what kind of things that you consider within the model." 

Being able to conduct research on the X recommendation algorithm would be extremely valuable, says Lazzaroni, who is working on an EU-funded project exploring alternative recommendation algorithms for social media platforms. Much of Lazzaroni's work involves simulating real-world social media platforms to test different approaches. But he says the code released by X doesn't have enough information to actually reproduce its recommendation algorithm. 

"We have the code to run the algorithm, but we don't have the model that you need to run the algorithm," he says.

If researchers were able to study the X algorithm, it could yield insights that could impact more than just social media platforms. Many of the same questions and concerns that have been raised about how social media algorithms behave are likely to re-emerge in the context of AI chatbots."A lot of these challenges that we're seeing on social media platforms and the recommendation [systems] appear in a very similar way with these generative systems as well," Thickstun said. "So you can kind of extrapolate forward the kinds of challenges that we've seen with social media platforms to the kind of challenges that we'll see with interaction with GenAI platforms."

Lazzaroni, who spends a lot of time simulating some of the most toxic behavior on social media, is even more blunt. "AI companies, to maximize profit, optimize the large language models for user engagement and not for telling the truth or caring about the mental health of the users. And this is the same exact problem: they make more profit, but the users get a worse society, or they get worse mental health out of it."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/xs-open-source-algorithm-isnt-a-win-for-transparency-researchers-say-181836233.html?src=rss

The Pixel 10a is official, though details are limited. On Wednesday, Google posted a teaser video showing the mid-range phone dancing around colorful backgrounds. You can pre-order the Pixel 10a on February 18.

Google hasn't yet revealed the phone's specs. In the short video, we can see a blue model that's virtually indistinguishable on the outside from the Pixel 9a. And alleged leaks point to a phone with few changes on the inside. That (unconfirmed) list includes a 6.285-inch display, dual rear cameras (48MP wide and 13MP ultra-wide) and a 5,100mAh battery.

Google

The teaser's tagline appears to be an attempt to assure Pixel fans that there will, in fact, be meaningful upgrades. "A phone with more in store, in store soon," it reads. Hopefully, its pricing and specs will be "in store" for us soon as well.

In the meantime, you can visit the Google Pixel website to register for more info.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/you-can-pre-order-the-pixel-10a-on-february-18-180712018.html?src=rss

US agencies told to patch by Friday

Attackers are exploiting a critical SolarWinds Web Help Desk bug - less than a week after the vendor disclosed and fixed the 9.8-rated flaw. That's according to America's lead cyber-defense agency, which set a Friday deadline for federal agencies to patch the security flaw.…

The writing is on the wall as AI companies race to add vertical functionality

Software stocks have taken a beating over the last month as investors grow concerned that AI could put vertical SaaS vendors out of business.…

The number of children who are homeless and in temporary accommodation in Scotland has passed 10,000.

The latest figures from the Scottish Government show that, in the six months to 30 September 2025, 10,480 children were in temporary accommodation.

People experiencing homelessness increasing

In total, there were 18,092 households in temporary accommodation, a 9% increase from 16,634 in 2024. This is also a new record high. Households spent an average of 237 days in temporary accommodation.

There was also a 4% increase in the total open homeless applications. The figure now stands at 33,006.

The number of people sleeping rough has also reached its highest in over a decade - at 1,083. This means that one in 10 applicants was sleeping outside.

One notably higher figure is the number of households not being offered temporary accommodation. The number has risen from 7,565 in 2024 to 10,710 in 2025. Most of these were in Glasgow (6,815 out of 10,710). The local authority also reported high numbers in Edinburgh - with 3,585 instances over the six months.

A figure that has improved is the number of breaches of the unsuitable accommodation order. This states that:

the maximum number of days that local authorities can use unsuitable accommodation for any homeless person is 7 days and has the effect of ending stays in unsuitable accommodation, such as B&Bs, apart from in emergency situations.

In the last 6 months, there were 3,635 breaches, which is a 12% improvement.

Changing characteristics

Of the homeless applicants, 16% were from households that had been granted either refugee status or leave to remain. This allows non-UK nationals to stay lawfully in the UK following an application made from within the country.

In total, 2% of all applications cited "left asylum accommodation" as the reason for them being homeless.

There was also a decrease in the number of white applicants, specifically white Scottish applicants. Conversely, there was an increase in the number of African, Caribbean, Black, Asian, and Arab applicants.

This comes as the number of refugees experiencing homelessness across the UK has more than doubled in the last two years. In total, 4,434 refugees and migrants were accommodated from 2024-25, the largest number on record. Of these, 2,008 were refugees — a 106% increase on the previous year.

In September, Màiri McAllan, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Housing, pledged funding for affordable housing, along with measures to support people in moving out of temporary housing.

Additionally, the Scottish government said it planned to invest up to £4.9bn over the next four years. This would help it achieve its target of delivering 36,000 affordable homes by 2030.

In a statement, McAllan said:

The figures do speak to the severe pressure that services are under due to the Home Office's mismanagement of the asylum system, particularly in Glasgow.

Featured image via Centre for Homelessness Impact

By HG

Campaigner and singer Feargal Sharkey has, once again, dressed down the privatised water companies.

Water companies: taking the p*ss

On social media, Sharkey said:

You'll want to be sitting down for this bit. Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends. And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence.

When the water companies were privatised in 1989 under Margaret Thatcher, they were debt free. Since then, they have accumulated £82.7 billion in debt, as Sharkey notes. At the same time, they have failed to invest in infrastructure to fix our dated sewage system. Instead, they dump sewage in our rivers and the ocean for millions of hours a year. And they haven't just creamed cash rather than investing. Water companies sold off 35 reservoirs in just five years, making £26 million from flogging what were public assets.

On top of that, as Sharkey points out, a University of Greenwich study for We Own It found a "privatisation tax" of 35% on our water bills. In other words, we're spending over one-third more than we need to every time we turn on the taps.

Privatisation: 140 years into the past

Water was brought into public ownership in the late 1800s. Even back then, people knew it was a natural monopoly and a daily essential for all humans. Selling it off just means one then rents it at higher cost.

Thatcher's government and then the neoliberals in Labour, Reform and the Tories maintaining privatisation of water, have brought us 140 years into the past.

Sharkey is spot on to take down the polluting profiteers.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

The US left mountains of high-tech weaponry behind when it fled Afghanistan in defeat in 2021 - now, those weapons have flooded neighbouring Pakistan. And the resulting instability might be stopping the US mining the very rare Earth resources it craves.

The US has its sights on vast copper mines just ten miles inside Pakistan. CNN reported that China is already accessing the nearby Muhammad Khel Copper Mine in northern Waziristan.

For a sense of the scale of that mine, watch this:

But nearby, in south Waziristan:

lies another copper mine that Pakistan says can yield almost ten times as much, equivalent to a fifth of the copper America uses every year.

CNN said:

The prospect is so appealing to a Washington administration also hungry for resources that it has put up more than a billion dollars to get things moving.

So what is stopping them? In short, the imperial blowback of vast amounts of lost US military gear.

Billions in lost US arms

The US and her allies cut and run from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation in 2021. Today the Taliban rule the country once again. But that US chaotic exit mean up to $7bn worth of weapons and equipment were simply left behind.

Remarkable footage emerged back then of US troops trying to destroy - or 'deny' -  military gear ahead of the US collapse:

But later Taliban footage made clear that weaponry, vehicles, and even helicopters were left behind:

The Foundation for Economic Education broke down some of the numbers involved. They said the giant arsenal included:

includes up to 22,174 Humvee vehicles, nearly 1,000 armored vehicles, 64,363 machine guns, and 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs.

There were mind boggling amounts of smalls arms - and even artillery:

the list of allegedly abandoned weaponry includes up to 358,530 assault rifles, 126,295 pistols, and nearly 200 artillery units.

Since the US was forced out the abandoned arms have been sold on - potentially fueling other conflicts.

In April 2025, the BBC was told:

Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups

A UN report also warned that group including Al Qaeda:

were accessing Taliban-captured weapons or buying them on the black market.

But what are the implication in Waziristan with its rich resources?

Blowback again

As well as copper, CNN reported there were other minerals and metal in Waziristan which the US craves:

Pakistan says there is much more wealth beneath its soil -- an estimated $8 trillion in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and other critical minerals.

This mineral reality has:

oiled an unlikely friendship with US President Donald Trump, who has put mineral acquisition at the heart of US foreign policy.

But CNN reporters who went to the region say they were shown:

hundreds of US-made rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles -- all leftovers from Washington's war next door, and all seized from a new breed of jihadists and insurgents.

In fact, the reporters claimed, following a recent attack on a Pakistani military college 50 miles from the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine:

a colonel laid out a blood-soaked bandana and three M-16 rifles recovered from the militants. Written on the bandana, in Urdu and English, were slogans indicating the wearer's readiness for martyrdom.

And:

stamped on the rifles were the words: "Property of US Govt. Manufactured in Columbia, South Carolina."

In Peshawar, CNN recorded images of dozens of American weapons captured after raids:

And US weaponry has also been found in Balochistan in the hands of local insurgents.  Defence analyst Muhammad Mubasher told the outlet American arms were now involved "in almost every encounter that happens".

Following a recent suicide attack in Balochistan which killed 33 people provincial minister Sarfaraz Bugti said there was:

 no doubt that most of the weapons used were US made that originated from Afghanistan.

Past US imperial adventures seem to be hindering new ones…

Trump's Pakistan charm offensive

Despite the instability in the region - instability fueled by US blowback- President Donald Trump and Pakistani leaders have been getting cozy over potential mineral deals.

CNN reported that

Pakistan's prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir took an unusual prop on their first joint visit to the White House in September [2025] -- a chest containing a trove of rare earths they said had been dug from Pakistan's soil.

Adding:

Trump was charmed. The following month he praised Munir in public -- naming him: "My favorite field marshal."

Pakistani politicians have been schmoozing ever since: they vocally supported Trump's failed Nobel Peace Prize bid in July 2025, calling him a great peacemaker after recent India-Pakistan clashes. And their first shipment of rare earth minerals arrived in the US just a month after their September 2025 meeting.

Trump wants Pakistani resources. And the Pakistani government seem more than willing to give them up. The problem is that the war in Afghanistan has flooded the region with high tech US-made arms and equipment, fueling a new set of insurgencies. Trump proclaims himself a  'Peace President', but he clearly isn't getting off the imperialist carousel quite yet.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paramilitaries are leaving custom-made ace of spades 'death cards' at the scene of migrant snatch operations. The ghoulish practice has imperial origins. US troops used to stuff cards into the mouths of the Vietnamese dead. The practice - consider yourself trigger warned here, please - was even filmed for use in official military propaganda.

The truth is this isn't the first example of long-ago wars inflecting US immigration policy. America's imperial past and present is so deeply interwoven into Trumpian policy that we don't always see it. Yet these cards are one of several crystal-clear examples lately.

ICE leave death cards

The Intercept's Nick Turse picked up the story on 3 February. It appears to have originally been reported on 22 January 2025 by Latino community organisation Voces Unidas. After a snatch mission in Eagle Country, Colorado, relatives searching for their kidnapped family members found the cards at the scene:

After detaining 10 Latino community members, ICE agents left ace of spades cards—widely known as the "death card"—inside the abandoned vehicles. The cards, later found by family members, clearly identify ICE's Denver Field Office.

The US used the ace of spades design because it supposedly had particular cultural power in Vietnam.

As Turse explained:

During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops regularly adorned Vietnamese corpses with "death cards" — either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for their kills.

Adding:

A 1966 entry in the Congressional Record noted that due to supposed Vietnamese superstitions regarding the ace of spades, "the U.S. Playing Card Co. had been furnishing thousands of these cards free to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam who requested them."

After Vietnam, as Voces Unidas pointed out, the cards were adopted:

by white supremacist groups to demean people of color.

On the face of it, this makes a lot of sense. ICE's recruiting strategy is less about nods to racism and more about openly using fascist imagery, mottosm and even songs to attract recruits who align with a mission to ethnically purify the US.

Long history of racial violence

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas said:

We are disgusted by ICE's actions in Eagle County. Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is deliberate intimidation rooted in a long history of racial violence.

He added:

This is an abuse of power, and it has no place in any society that claims to value human dignity.

Sanchez said family members of the disappeared had the cards in their possession. He confirmed they appeared custom-made and meant to terrify ICE's targets:

These were not from a doctored deck of cards. These were designed with this legacy in mind. They were printed on some sort of stock paper and cut in the dimensions of a card.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security deigned to explain the cards.

The term 'imperial boomerang' has used liberally to describe what is happening in the US - and correctly so. Trump's war on immigration is a cover for a war on the left and on migrant labour. He seeks to both create an enemy and eliminate rivals, not just at home but also abroad, as we've seen with Venezuela and Iran.

But there is more to it. Let's not forget that a senior Border Patrol official invoked the Confederacy - the slave-owning losers of the Civil War - in a recently discovered email chain.

In truth, the whole spectacle is alive with fascist nostalgia about lost wars. It feels like fascists - many of whom are clearly now in ICE - are trying to correct various imperial and colonial emasculations through racist violence. Trump has given them the permission, the weapons and the authority to do so. At the very least, they are drawing on those vengeful energies.

From the War on Terror to the Confederate fantasy of a 'lost cause' and, now, Vietnam, the ghosts of America's violent past are restless.

Featured image via Voces Unidas

By Joe Glenton

Evil tech giant and NHS leech Palantir has links with wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And Labour MP Dawn Butler has rightly called for scrutiny.

Butler insisted we should "not ignore" the connection between Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel and Epstein, particularly because it has infiltrated our public health system:

We can not ignore the fact that Peter Thiel co-founder of Palantir is featured numerous times in the Epstein files https://t.co/QXoz6C94D1

— Dawn Butler

A pack of hounds from the Middleton fox hunt has run amok through a woodland burial site in North Yorkshire. The incident happened during the last week of January 2026.

Footage captured by national animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports shows the hounds marauding through the Mowthorpe Garden of Rest within the Howardian Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The hounds ran across graves with the hunt failing to stop or divert them.

This is the same Middleton Hunt that the Canary witnessed a couple of weeks earlier. On that occasion, the hunt was behaving violently and showing no sign of laying a trail. Unless the law changes, and it may do before long, fox hunts can still ride out. But, legally, they can only 'trail hunt'. This means following a scent trail, rather than actual foxes.

However, until the government moves decisively to ban them for good, fox hunts are continuing to cause havoc across the countryside.

The League's chief executive Emma Slawinksi has slammed the hunt for its actions:

It beggars belief that the hunt would have laid a trail through a burial site so either the Middleton Hunt has no regard for the sanctity of this site or, as is more likely, the hounds were on the trail of a fox.

They have desecrated this burial site in a bid to carry on with a blood sport that was banned 20 years ago.

Hunts are behaving in an appalling way, intent on chasing and killing foxes and not caring about their anti-social behaviour and the impact they are having on local communities and the people who live in the countryside.

The hounds were also caught terrorising local wildlife with two deer filmed fleeing for their lives.

'Trail hunting a smokescreen for fox hunts'

The footage of the Middleton Hunt is being released the day after Channel 4 News aired footage gathered by the League of the same hunt's hounds chasing a fox on Christmas Eve 2025.

The League released figures ahead of Boxing Day showing an increase in the number of reports of hunts chasing foxes and wreaking havoc on rural communities.

Chief superintendent Matt Longman, the national lead on fox hunting crime, has described trail hunting as a "smokescreen for illegal fox hunting". He also described illegal hunting as "prolific".

The government has announced it will launch a consultation to ban trail hunting, though this has suffered delays.

Slawinksi added:

I would urge the public who are sick and tired of the behaviour of fox hunts to take part in the government's hunting consultation.

The time for change is now. We want to see trail hunting banned, the loopholes in the law removed, the end of so-called 'accidental' hunting, and jail sentences introduced to act as a deterrent for those who would break new stronger fox hunting laws.

Find out more about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, here.

Featured image via the Canary

By The Canary

Almost 400 medicines are vulnerable to shortages in the UK, according to a new list produced by NHS England and Medicines UK. Among the drugs on the list are treatments for blood clots, stroke, and several cancers.

The medicines were identified as at-risk because they have either a single supplier, or no supplier at all. Often, drug companies stop producing specific medicines because they no longer see them as commercially viable.

Having identified this vulnerability, NHS England and its partner organisations are taking steps to mitigate the problem. They're calling the initiative 'Project Revive', providing incentives for drug companies to manufacture the medicines on the list.

Whilst undoubtedly an important step towards ensuring the resilience of the medical supply system in the UK, this is a treatment for a symptom, rather than a cure.

We're in this mess in the first place because we treat drug manufacture as a commercial market, where companies can compete, patent, price gouge, and drop drugs when they stop making money. That commercialisation of healthcare costs lives.

NHS shortage of 'products of critical priority'

In total, NHS England identified 378 drugs on its list of vulnerable medicines. Of these, around 80 no longer have a supplier at all, meaning that the currently existing supply is all that remains.

The medicines on the list include bendamustine, a chemotherapy drug used for several cancers; flupentixol, which is used for schizophrenia; and urokinase, a treatment for pulmonary embolism. The prices that the UK pays for these drugs could soar if demand starts to outpace supply.

NHS England produced its list alongside Medicines UK, a trade body representing manufacturers of generic medicines. Mark Samuels, Medicines UK's chief executive, said:

The list includes products of critical priority and the ambition is to target those medicines representing the most serious risk to supply resilience, which could lead to shortages affecting patient care.

Drugs which have faced shortages across the UK in recent years include estradiol, an element of hormone replacement therapy; lisdexamfetamine, an ADHD medication; and Creon, which is used to treat cystic fibrosis.

Project Revive

However, NHS England, Medicines UK, and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) plan to tackle the problem of shortages through 'Project Revive'. This scheme will provide incentives like fast-tracked license approvals to enable manufacturers to supply the 378 drugs on the list.

The pilot of Project Revive will run for 12 months. Then, in 2027, coordinators plan to instate a long-term iteration of the same scheme. Samuels explained that:

We have long stated that medicine shortages cannot be solved in isolation, and this project shows what can be achieved by working together. By working with NHS England and MHRA, we hope that this new model provides more certainty to enable companies to produce and supply medicines for use in the NHS.

Fiona Bride, interim chief commercial officer for NHS England, echoed that sentiment:

Ensuring a resilient and stable supply of medicines is fundamental to delivering patient care, with pharmaceuticals being the most common healthcare intervention in the NHS, and this collaborative pilot initiative aims to strengthen that supply chain by incentivising more companies to become NHS suppliers, or deepen existing partnerships.

Treating the symptom

The news of Project Revive comes after medicine pricing issues hit the headlines last year. Several of the world's biggest drug manufacturers announced that they were ditching their UK projects.

Critics from within the industry blamed uncompetitive prices for new medicines, low levels of government investment, and Trump's tariffs adding to supply prices.

Then, in September 2025, science minister Patrick Vallance argued that the NHS would have to pay higher prices for medicines to prevent pharmaceutical investors from abandoning the UK.

This is a problem inherent to introducing a profit motive to any aspect of healthcare, all across the world. Treating medicine as a capitalist exercise creates a host of problems for patients, who should always have been the center of the issue.

Meanwhile, the global pharmaceutical industry has raked in profits at higher margins than practically any other sector.

Profit over patients

As NHS England showed in the Project Revive research, drug companies can cease supply of individual medicines if their profits aren't high enough. This can leave patients without crucial medications that they need.

Likewise, manufacturers can also raise their prices artificially if they aren't faced with competition from other companies, or if other countries are willing to pay higher prices. Patents and intellectual property rights for individual drugs can also allow companies to create artificial scarcity.

Even beyond this, the profit motive causes problems with the development of new medicines. Companies aim to develop medicines in profitable sectors, particularly cancer and rare diseases. This, in turn, sees less-profitable diseases neglected in terms of research and development.

Likewise, even the idea of curing a disease can be anathema to a profit motive. In a choice between being paid once to cure a patient, or being paid again and again to treat a disease without curing it, the latter is the profitable choice. For example, one damning Goldman Sachs report stated that:

The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies…. While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

Project Revive looks like an important step towards strengthening the UK's drug supply chain. However, it's a band-aid on a problem which will take far more work to heal.

In the UK, we fear the loss of socialised healthcare through the NHS, but the private sector already has its hooks in the system at every level.

There's no easy fix for the problem of private profiteering in medicine. Capitalism itself is an enemy of good healthcare. It sounds glib, we know, but it's also true. Failing to recognise that fact will mean that we're trapped in a cycle of treating the symptoms, whilst neglecting their cause.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alex/Rose Cocker