On 26 January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents wrestled nurse Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him multiple times in the back. The killing was caught on camera by several bystanders, providing various angles. The Trump regime initially defended the use of lethal force, with key advisor Stephen Miller describing Pretti as an "assassin". Trump and others around him would later backtrack following massive public backlash.

Now, it looks like the ICE agents involved could potentially face consequences:

The doc, obtained by TMZ, lists "multiple gunshot wounds" as the cause of death … and under the section "how injury occurred" medical examiner Dr. Andrew Baker wrote, "Shot by law enforcement officer(s)." pic.twitter.com/E4pPflJ2Zf

— TMZ (@TMZ) February 2, 2026

The shooting is now officially classed as a homicide. The medical examiner has listed the cause of death as "multiple gunshot wounds". Under the section "how injury occurred", Dr. Andrew Baker stated "shot by law enforcement officer(s)".

Pretti was shot by ICE on 26 January 2026, only 11 days after another altercation with ICE in which he suffered a broken rib, with the Canary previously reporting:

about a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when a group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain other individuals.

The conclusion by medical examiners now leaves the door open for prosecution of the agents involved in the killing. This could set a new precedent for further scrutiny of ICE's activities:

Sounds like the federal agents that killed him should go to jail for 25+ years https://t.co/8qnYKeKBci

— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) February 2, 2026

Featured image via France24

By Antifabot

According to doorstep polling from the Green Party, Reform are currently in the lead in Gorton & Denton. While this obviously wouldn't be the desirable outcome, they're also saying Labour are a distant third. And this could mean the Greens will benefit from any tactical voting which takes place:

The Green Party have shared doorstep data with me from across Gorton and Denton.

They say it shows:

Reform - 39%

Greens - 34%

Labour - 21%

Their data shows Reform 5 points ahead and Labour in a poor third place.

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) February 2, 2026

As Owen Jones highlighted, Reform also have Labour in third place:

The Reform Party's own data has the Greens in second place right now:https://t.co/A2Jqo9jSC3

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) February 2, 2026

It's important to remember these things can shift massively in response to a good campaign, with the key example being the 2017 election (the biggest vote share swing in Labour's history).

While the polling we have currently suggests Reform will win, the bookies think the Greens have it:

The bookies currently have the Greens as the strong favourite to win the by-election.

But that'll only pan out if the Greens can convince voters that it's voting Labour which risks a Reform victory. pic.twitter.com/44R7uWR45x

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) February 2, 2026

Polling is a snapshot of the moment; bookies have to to predict the future lest they lose money (not that they always get it right).

Given the polling, the Greens are saying they're the only realistic option for people who want to keep Reform out:

It's all to play for but it's clear Labour have blown it.

Only the Greens can stop Reform. https://t.co/IZ2E8zIqnM

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 2, 2026

This is especially true as both Your Party and the Workers Party have pulled out of the race:

Sounds right enough

Axios: 1 big thing: 3 historic shifts. It begins,

"You can only fully understand politics, business and your own anxiety in 2026 by reckoning with the three, once-in-a-generation shifts unfolding at once, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column:

• The ideologies, tactics and tone of governance.
• The lightning-fast advancements in AI.
• The overnight transformation of how our realities are shaped."

Proton VPN is running a solid deal right now, dropping its two-year Proton VPN Plus plan to $2.99 per month. That works out to $72 billed upfront for the first 24 months, which represents a 70 percent discount compared to its regular pricing. 

We've rated Proton VPN highly thanks to its strong privacy credentials, transparent nonprofit backing and consistently fast performance. It's one of the services we recommend in our guide to the best VPNs, and this deal also shows up alongside other standout offers in our ongoing roundup of the best VPN deals. It's a good option if you're looking to lock in long-term protection at a lower monthly cost.

In our Proton VPN review, the service impressed us with consistently fast performance and strong privacy protections. We measured average download speeds at 88 percent of our unprotected connection and upload speeds at 98 percent, which is more than enough for 4K streaming, gaming and torrenting. It also unblocked Netflix in every region we tested, and while its Mac and iOS apps aren't quite as polished as the Windows and Android versions, the service is still easy to install and largely set-it-and-forget-it across platforms. We gave Proton VPN a score of 90 out of 100.

Proton VPN Plus is the company's premium tier and includes access to its full server network, which now spans more than 15,000 servers across 120-plus countries. A single subscription covers up to 10 devices at once and unlocks features like NetShield ad and malware blocking, Secure Core "double hop" connections, split tunneling, custom DNS controls and priority customer support. Proton VPN Plus also supports fast P2P traffic on nearly all paid servers and includes VPN Accelerator, which helps maintain high speeds over long-distance connections.

Right now, Proton VPN Plus is discounted to $2.99 per month when you commit to two years, billed as $72 upfront for the first 24 months. After that, the plan renews annually at $83.88. That's a 70 percent discount compared to the standard monthly rate. As with Proton's other paid plans, the subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it risk-free if you're not ready to lock in long term.

Like some sort of corporate Russian doll, SpaceX has announced its acquisition of xAI. The merger will "form the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth," according to, well, owner Elon Musk. 

The AI company, arguably best known for its ongoing CSAM-generating chatbot controversy, might seem like a strange fit for a rocket company. But SpaceX is apparently key to Musk's latest scheme to build AI data centers in space. There might be an argument for moving the resource-intensive operations to space — but Musk continued.

He also claimed space-based data centers will eventually enable further advances in space travel. "The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe."

Back on Earth, xAI and X (formerly Twitter) merged last year, which means SpaceX now owns the social network Musk bought in 2022. 

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• iPhone Fold rumors: Everything we know so far, including the leaked design

• Rivian made an electric ambulance for Grey's Anatomy

• TikTok says it's 'back to normal' after winter storm-related outages

Awesome speed and photo quality.

TMAEngadget

The Sony A7 V is an imaging powerhouse that brings the speed and precision of its high-end siblings to the enthusiast tier. Thanks to a new 33MP partially stacked sensor, image quality is where it truly pulls ahead, offering best-in-class dynamic range and low-light performance that outclasses 24MP rivals despite the higher resolution. If your primary goal is capturing the perfect still, the combination of accurate AI autofocus and improved color science makes this arguably the best all-around Sony shooter yet.

However, if you're a video-first creator, the A7 V might feel like it's a little behind. While the 10-bit 4K footage is sharp and benefits from impressive AI auto-framing and stabilization, it lacks internal RAW recording, which competitors like the Canon R6 III and Panasonic S1 II now offer. Make sure you check out the full review.

Continue reading.

After Beats, it's the company's second-biggest ever purchase.

It's the time of AI acquisitions, it seems. Even Apple's doing it. Apple has acquired Israel-based startup Q.ai. Although Apple has not disclosed the terms of the deal, The Financial Times reports the arrangement is valued at nearly $2 billion. 

Apple hasn't shared specifics on how it plans to leverage the startup, but patents filed by Q.ai focus on integrating its technology into headphones or even glasses, using "facial skin micro movements" to communicate without talking.

Continue reading.

Today is the day Azure Storage stops supporting versions 1.0 and 1.1 of Transport Layer Security (TLS). TLS 1.2 is the new minimum.…

Polish authorities have cuffed a 20-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out DDoS attacks.…

Keir Starmer notoriously made Peter Mandelson the ambassador to the US. We say 'notoriously' because at the point when Starmer hired Mandelson, he knew he'd maintained a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after the late paedophile was convicted for sex crimes. As many predicted, this scandal eventually exploded, and in recent days has gone nuclear.

Now, Starmer's MPs are starting to talk about mutiny. As one unnamed MP said to Sky News's Alexandra Rogers:

Consistent failures by Morgan McSweeney have damaged our media operation and left the public unaware of much of what we've achieved in government.

The Mandelson saga has only made things worse, and if Keir doesn't make changes soon, the PLP will.

We've had enough.

Morgan McSweeney is Keir Starmer's chief of staff. As Paul Holden wrote in his book about Starmer's rise to power (The Fraud):

McSweeney is a long-time protégé of Peter Mandelson, the architect of New Labour who, in February 2017, publicly bragged that he was "working every day" to bring down Corbyn's elected leadership.

Holden also reported:

McSweeney joined Labour in the mid-1990s as a receptionist and then a member of the party's media operations. During the 2001 election he was given the task of feeding data into Peter Mandelson's famed Excalibur computer that stored information to be used by the party's rebuttal unit.

This is what Mandelson - the "best pal" of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein - said about McSweeney:

I don't know who and how and when he was invented, but whoever it was . . . they will find their place in heaven.

As Holden detailed, McSweeney used all manner of underhanded tactics to ensure Jeremy Corbyn lost in 2019, and that a malleable alternative took his place. That man was Keir Starmer, and this is what the public think of McSweeney's vision:

Contrary to popular belief, Labour is not struggling in the polls because they're losing votes to Reform. Even if they recovered all the votes lost to Reform they'd still be on just 21%, down double digits since GE2024.

Instead, the bulk of votes lost have been to the LEFT.

— Stats for Lefties

Journalist Don Lemon was arrested as he reported on a gathering protesting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit in Minnesota. The Associated Press reported that:

The charges stem from Lemon's actions while covering a protest, raising concerns among press freedom advocates about the criminalisation of journalistic activity.

Let's be clear. Don Lemon did not call for unrest. He did not incite violence, organise mass resistance, or step outside the bounds of liberal democratic debate. Instead, his arrest while reporting on a protest exposes a far more uncomfortable reality: power has grown brittle and it now reaches for punishment when scrutiny feels too close.

This moment reveals the authoritarian drift of the Trump administration and, more pointedly, who bears the cost when the states legitimacy comes under pressure.

As a former CNN anchor, Lemon is smack bang in the centre of the political spectrum. Historically, his positions would have registered as unremarkable. Opposition to unaccountable force, scepticism towards militarised policing, and concern over immigration enforcement once formed the backbone of liberal democratic critique. These views alighted with constitutional restrain, not rebellion.

However, something has shifted.

Today, the state increasingly treats scrutiny itself - however mild -  as a provocation. As executive power expands and surveillance becomes normalised, even mild dissent now attracts suspicion. Consequently, journalism that merely documents authority - not necessarily agitates against it - is shut down with considerable force.

Crucially, when a Black journalist raises that challenge, institutions rarely interpret it as professional distance. Instead they read it as intent to agitate.

Editorial scrutiny often presents itself as neutral concern: questions about tone, warnings about objectivity and accusations of advocacy. In practice, however, this scrutiny operates as institutional suspicion.

Neutrality, it seems, remains intact only when journalism aligns with power. When reporting destabilises official narratives, neutrality becomes negotiable. As a result, white journalists benefit from an assumption of detachment, while Black journalists must reportedly demonstrate it.

Because of this imbalance, identical actions generate unequal consequences. The determining factor is not behaviour, but who performs it and what their presence exposes.

Lemon's reporting remained measured, legible, and recognisably liberal. Ironically, that restraint made it more threatening, not less. The state does not fear incoherent outrage. It fears critique that cannot be dismissed as extremism.

At the same time, those in power insist they value free speech. They repeatedly frame dissent as welcome, provided it remains responsible and measured.

Lemon's met those criteria. Nevertheless, coercion followed.

This contradiction matters. A system that claims to prize reason while punishing those who test it does not defend free speech. Instead, it manages it. Calls for civil discourse function less as invitation and more as constraints, allowing speech only when it reassures power rather than interrogates it.

Ultimately, the response exposes fragility, not confidence. A secure system answers criticism. A brittle one suppresses it.

Another consideration of Lemon's arrest is the spatial context. The fact that his arrest took place around a church, a site the state traditionally treats as morally insulated and symbolically untouchable. Religious spaces have long been leveraged by authority to legitimise control, casting state action as protection rather than coercion. When power cloaks itself in religious sanction, scrutiny becomes easier to criminalise.

This is not about faith. It is about how religious symbolism is mobilised to discipline dissent. By framing the site as sacred and the journalist as disruptive, the state redraws space itself as a boundary of obedience. In doing so, it turns moral authority into territorial control, narrowing where journalism is allowed to exist at all.

In response to Don Lemon's arrest, the Freedom of the Press Foundation said:

Arresting journalists for doing their jobs sets a dangerous precedent and threatens the public's right to know.

Authoritarianism rarely announces itself. Instead it advances through procedure. Laws stretch beyond their original purpose. Reporting blurs into obstruction. Monitoring quietly replaces protection.

When authorities detain or arrest journalists under the language of public order or interference, the message becomes unmistakable: scrutiny itself now constitutes a risk.

This shift intensifies during moments of political anxiety. As legitimacy thins, power prioritises containment over accountability. Accordingly, journalism survives only when it remains predictable, deferential, and safely non-disruptive.

The most serious danger, then, is not radicalisation. Rather, it is anticipatory obedience, the slow internalisation of limits imposed not for accuracy, but for the safety of power.

Lemon has rejected the suggestion that his reporting crossed a line, framing the case as a threat to press freedom:

I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now. In fact there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.

Importantly, this is not an argument about identity politics.

Black journalists operate within a historical framework that has long cast Black presence as disruption in public space, political discourse, and intellectual authority. That history does not disappear inside courtrooms or newsrooms. Instead, it reasserts itself through surveillance, suspicion and unequal enforcement.

As a result, the same behaviour produces different interpretations. Surveillance follows the bodies power has always keened to regulate.

It would be tempting to treat this case as an aberration, a mistake that institutions can quietly correct. That interpretation would miss the point.

This moment signals a narrowing of legitimate journalism itself. When liberal dissent becomes suspect and calm scrutiny triggers coercion, democratic accountability has already begun to erode.

A free press does not exist to reassure authority. It exists to unsettle it. If that function no longer enjoys protection, particularly for those already over surveilled, then free speech becomes a slogan rather than a practice.

The real question, therefore, is not whether Don Lemon crossed a line.

Instead, it is how narrow the space for journalism has become, if measured critique now invites punishment.

When mild opposition registers as a threat, authoritarianism is no longer approaching. It is already operational.

Featured image via the Canary

By Vannessa Viljoen

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is investigating the potential deployment of Live Facial Recognition Technology (LFRT or LFR) in the Northern Ireland. According to a report in The Irish Times:

The force has set up a Facial Recognition Governance Board which is monitoring programmes elsewhere in the UK and engaging directly with industry providers, though it insists no decision has been taken over whether to deploy the controversial technology.

The PSNI haven't exactly been transparent about such plans up to this point, with no public references to the Facial Recognition Governance Board available online prior to today's revelation. LFRT involves the use of cameras combined with automated facial recognition software to scan and identify faces. The system then matches the results against a police watchlist of wanted persons.

The PSNI say they don't currently use the technology, meaning officers manually operate cameras and examine footage collected. However, they say they are:

…monitoring national LFR programmes, including those implemented by the Metropolitan Police, South Wales Police and, most recently, British Transport Police.

At this stage, we are engaging with these programmes and their industry providers solely in order to assess operational feasibility.

A crucial question is whether any of those "industry providers" include Corsight AI, an 'Israeli' firm whose LFRT program has been adopted by British police. This is already a breach of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement's guidelines. They stipulate no economic dealings with the Zionist entity, or even non-'Israeli' companies which support the terrorist land theft project.

Purchasing Zionist tech is one of the worst imaginable cases of this, as it gives a direct boost to the military-surveillance sector of 'Israel's' economy. Further use of Corsight's product provides funding to, and refinement of, a system used to violate Palestinian rights.

The British government is planning to roll out LFRT systems further, moving from 10 vans to 50 that have the technology installed. Al Jazeera outline how even "Israeli intelligence operatives" have "concerns about its accuracy". This appears to be another case of much heralded AI ending up like the fictional Robocop prototypes shooting themselves in the head.

Big Brother Watch have flagged the unreliability of the dodgy tech, saying it:

…discriminates against women and people of colour. 80% of people misidentified by facial recognition in London in 2025 were Black.

This sort of bias is a commonly recognised flaw of AI platforms.

Misidentification is a crucial flaw which would result in potentially illegal surveillance. If a system incorrectly identifies someone as a suspect on a watchlist, it could result in their data being stored in the system. This would be a breach of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, which outlawed the storage of data like DNA and fingerprints from people not convicted of a crime.

Beyond that, use of LFRT in a public space is inherently indiscriminate and likely breaches other laws, such as those relating to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Its use at protests will discourage attendance, especially from minoritised communities. Lancashire police are known to have shared footage of disabled people with the Department of Work and Pensions in an attempt to have their benefits stripped.

The above issues have been cited in a challenge to the Met Police's use of facial scanning which has just been heard in the High Court. Big Brother Watch argued that its use amounted to "stop and search on steroids". They cited the case of a man detained for 20 minutes by the cops, despite providing ID to show he'd been falsely identified.

The Met's justification is that London's scale makes tracking suspects too hard:

Locating these individuals within a vast, bustling metropolis is akin to looking for stray needles in an enormous, exceptionally dense haystack.

Though it may currently make mistakes, AI is steadily improving. Its increasing capacity to sift through enormous amounts of data and make sense of it is amounts to a power too excessive to grant to increasingly authoritarian states. When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the US surveillance apparatus in 2013, he didn't just criticise its immorality. He also lambasted it as ineffective, due to excessive data collection simply adding more hay to the haystack.

In the age of AI, a giant haystack becomes less of an issue. What would previously have required hours of human intervention to interpret can now be churned through and summarised by AI in seconds. Such a power seems too much in the hands of even an accountable state, nevermind an undemocratic and abusive one arresting thousands of innocent people for opposing genocide.

The PSNI has played a role in that. In the last week alone it has been shown to have behaved in a discriminatory manner. Internment and collusion are grim historic examples of what happens when police are granted excessive powers.

We could achieve zero crime, but it would require total surveillance and ensure zero freedom. Mass face scanning is a step too far towards the latter, and the PSNI's secretive Facial Recognition Governance Board should rule out its use.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

Documents in the latest Epstein file release show Keir Starmer's disgraced senior adviser Peter Mandelson engaging repeatedly in likely 'insider trading' with Epstein, who was closely and corruptly linked to big banking and big business. At least, that's according to finance expert and investigative journalist Dan Neidle.

A number of commentators have pointed out that the files show Mandelson boasting of persuading Gordon Brown to resign as prime minister, including the Times's Gabriel Pogrund. But, as Neidle pointed out in response, they show far more than that.

Instead, they show Mandelson providing financially sensitive - and potentially highly profitable - insider information to a Wall Street trader:

Gabriel understates what happened here. We can tell from this version of the same email chain that Mandelson's last email was sent 16:02:52 BST

Brown's resignation was public 19:19 BST.

Implies Mandelson leaked price-sensitive information to a Wall Street insider. https://t.co/bWCjLpaAku pic.twitter.com/nYNLWnENMR

— Dan Neidle (@DanNeidle) February 2, 2026

Knowing that Brown was about to resign - with its likely 'blip' in UK stock market prices - would have given Epstein and anyone else he informed the opportunity to 'sell short'. Short selling involves selling shares a trader doesn't own yet, in the expectation of buying them for a lower price later because of news that shocks the market.

This is not theoretical. In another grossly anti-semitic email thread, Epstein boasts to another Jewish contact that "the Jew make money" by "selling short" while the gentiles - "goyim" - "deal in the real world":

The Times's political editor Steven Swinford and Novara's Aaron Bastani picked up on another email showing Mandelson tipping off Epstein about a coming $500bn bail-out "to save the euro" - and "threatening" then-chancellor Alistair Darling on behalf of a huge bank to reduce a planned tax on bankers' bonuses:

Mandelson was seemingly involved in insider trading, while helping Epstein, and by extension Jamie Dimon, intimidate his colleague, Alistair Darling, over a tax on bankers bonuses.

We've genuinely never seen anything like this in British politics before (on this scale).… https://t.co/nyDCgycEtj

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 2, 2026

The bail-out tip-off would have given Epstein and his coterie the opportunity to buy shares - the opposite of selling short - at the existing price, knowing that news of such a huge bailout would push prices up and create an immediate profit.

Neidle added that the threatening of Darling directly benefited Epstein as well as his banking sponsor:

New Epstein emails show Peter Mandelson secretly advising JPMorgan's CEO on how to fight Labour's 2009 bankers' bonus tax - even suggesting he "mildly threaten" the Chancellor.

Mandelson was Business Secretary at the time.

A year later, he was seeking work with JPM. pic.twitter.com/Nz8o5pN7b4

— Dan Neidle (@DanNeidle) February 1, 2026

Both the short-selling and the bail-out tip-off fall under the category of 'insider trading'. Insider trading is a serious criminal offence. At the time Mandelson was providing this information to Epstein, the criminal penalty was an unlimited fine and up to seven years in prison. The potential prison time has since increased to ten years, but only for offences committed from 2021. The Mandelson emails were in 2009 and 2010.

Police are 'investigating' whether Mandelson's actions are prosecutable. There can be no excuses for failing to charge him.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

AI-pocalypse Barnsley, a town in South Yorkshire, England, best known for coal mining and glassmaking, is being thrust into the limelight as the country's first "Tech Town" - shoehorning AI into everything from local businesses to public services.…

Combined times from morning and afternoon sessions:

• Read more about 2026 Sepang MotoGP Test Day 1 Combined Times - Marc Marquez Kicks Off 2026 On Top Of Timesheets
• Log in or register to post comments

I stared through the windows of the gym at the resort on the shores of Limassol and thought, I don't want to ride today. As I put in time on the treadmill, I watched the wind frantically whip palm tree fronds and pound the surf into the rocks just off the beach, all under a gloomy, dark, foreboding cover of fog and dew. The forecast for the weather up the mountain, where the ride was to take place, was for rain, wind and cold. It was so cold that the photographers were retreating into tents with heaters while waiting for the assembled journalists to ride past.

If I didn't have to ride today, I thought, I probably wouldn't. That was my first thought.

My second thought was, since I do have to ride today, I'm very grateful that I'm riding this bike.

This bike was a 2026 Triumph Trident 800, the successor to the company's 765 R naked roadster. And I was grateful because this bike came standard with all of the electronic safety measures that made riding in such nasty conditions so much safer. Multiple power modes, ABS, traction control, wheelie control - I wanted every one of them while riding through the rain, fog and on the wet mountain lanes that criss-crossed the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus.

Almost all of the 100 miles we covered were in actual rain or on rain-slicked roads, and that was mostly good for evaluating how the bike performed in less-than-optimal conditions. The last 10 miles or so, however, the roads were dry and traffic was light and we got to open the throttle for real. And the Trident 800 delivered exactly what Triumph promised it would. It was quick, light, responsive and planted, and I ended the day wanting more - at least, more of what I experienced in the dry!

Tech Overview

The naked roadster market segment is big and important to Triumph, so much so that it has three different models in the category. The Trident 660, aimed more for the less-experienced rider, underwent significant changes for 2026, and the more track-focused Street Triple 765 RS remains in the lineup. The Trident 800 is designed to fill the gap left behind by the departing Street Triple 765 R. The 765 R leaned more toward the 765 RS in terms of ergonomics, suspension and power delivery; Triumph wanted its replacement to be more Trident, less Street Triple.

To do so, Triumph started with the Trident 660 base - the steel frame and the new triple-throttle body induction setup that the 660 got in its recent upgrade. To that, Triumph added better forks, a smaller rear brake, better brake calipers, a better shock and the all-new engine from the Tiger Sport 800. The liquid-cooled, DOHC, three-cylinder Inline-Four has a bore and stroke of 78.0 mm x 55.7 mm and delivers 113.4 bhp at 10,750 rpm, Triumph says, and 61.96 lbs.-ft. of torque at 8,500 rpm.

That's down about five bhp from the 765 R, but up about three lbs.-ft. of torque, and the torque curve is much flatter than on the 765 R, the company says. That's deliberate - the Trident 800 isn't really aimed at track use, but for everyday riding and enthusiastic canyon carving. In this context, a flat, fat torque curve is a lot more useful and exciting than peakier power delivery. The rest of the Trident 800 echoes this zeitgeist. Compared to the 765 R, the bars are wider and closer to the rider; the seat is incrementally lower; the footpegs are lower and further forward. The suspension is slightly less sophisticated. The swingarm is pressed steel instead of the aluminum alloy unit mated to the 765 R's aluminum twin-spar frame.

The Trident 800's tubular steel frame uses the engine as a fully stressed member; there are mounting points ahead of and behind the cylinder head. Showa 41mm Big Piston split-function forks adjustable for rebound and compression handle suspension duties in the front, a single Showa shock adjustable for preload and rebound damping takes care of the rear. Twin 12.2-inch (310 mm) discs in the front are paired with four-piston radial-mount calipers and steel braided lines; an 8.66-inch (220 mm) disc is mated to a single-piston caliper in the rear. Cornering-sensitive ABS helps prevent panic stops from turning into something worse. Other riding aids include three ride modes - Sport, Road and Rain - each with its own traction control setting. The TC can be switched off entirely. A very welcome feature were the heated grips, as well as a single-button cruise control system. The rider just hits a button and the bike maintains that speed. Easiest one to use ever. And for those who don't like using a clutch, the Trident 800 has clutchless up- and down-shifting.

Riding The Trident 800

The first few miles were on dry city streets, and the Sport setting demonstrated an engine that was responsive and powerful in the midrange, just as Triumph promised, and still stout as the revs rose. Further explorations of the power were cut short by the wet roads, which were dealt with by switching to Rain mode and max TC. This made the bike much easier to handle on slick, narrow roads. The Michelin Road 6 tires performed well in the wet, but every mile contained a handful of little twitches through the bars that let you know that the bike had lost traction for a fraction of a second. The heated grips were awesome (although it was so cold that I was still riding with a pair of electric gloves I'd brought along for the occasion).

Even in this environment, I could tell that Triumph had hit several of its targets for the Trident 800 in the bull's-eye. The riding position was sporty but comfortable, the seat supportive. Vibration was minimal, and the dash remarkably intuitive. While there weren't a lot of electronic rider aid options, the ones that were there were easy to access, and I could quickly configure the dash the way I wanted it. And Triumph's engineers played around a bit with the sound of the bike, giving the rider a throaty induction roar and a bit of pop and burble on off-throttle coasting. I like the way triples sound; I like the way Triumph's triples sound a lot; and this was the best-sounding Triumph triple yet.

When we finally got a bit of clear, dry road, at least it was at the part of the ride with the best roads, at least from a sport riding perspective. Here, with the Trident 800 in Sport mode and the balls of my feet on the pegs, the bike snapped into focus. At anything about 6,000 rpm, the thing punched forward. The chassis felt stiff and composed, easily able to handle the forces the Michelins were loading into it. The suspension felt rigid, and even though it wasn't the most sophisticated, it did the job, striking a nice balance of control and comfort. A lot of bikes in this category have decent suspension, but they are right at the limit of their capabilities in rapid street riding. On the Trident 800, it felt like there was more margin before I hit the limit.

The Trident 800 is aimed at someone who likes the Triumph roadster aesthetic and concept, who isn't headed for the track but who isn't averse to a little hooliganism on the weekends or a long ride up the coast. It feels solid, muscular and at a starting MSRP of $9,995, it feels like there's real value here for the rider who knows what they want and wants what the Trident 800 delivers.

The post World Introduction: Triumph's 2026 Trident 800 appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

The Independent teams feature a host of new faces, each eager to leave their mark on the 2026 season

Paris prosecutors announced that a search was underway at offices belong to Elon Musk's X platform as part of an ongoing investigation first launched in January 2025. The raid is being conducted by Paris and national cybercrime units, with support from Interpol, according to post from Paris prosecutors on X. Officials from X have yet to comment on the matter.

At the same time, Paris prosecutors issued summonses to Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino for "voluntary interviews" on April 20, 2026 in Paris. The prosecutors also announced they would no longer use X and would only communicate on LinkedIn and Instagram going forward.

The searches are part of an investigation that has been ongoing for nearly a year over the functioning of X's algorithms that are "likely to have distorted the operation of an automated data processing system," investigators said at the time. Those changes reportedly gave greater prominence to certain political content (especially from Musk) without user knowledge — something that could be a crime under French laws.

An investigation was officially launched in July, with Paris prosecutors adding an additional charge: "Fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system by an organized group." More recently, it also includes "complicity in the possession of images of minors representing a pedo-pornographic character," due to images created by Grok between December 25, 2025 and January 1, 2026.

In July, X said in a statement that the probe "egregiously undermines X's fundamental right to due process and threatens our users' rights to privacy and free speech. [French officials have] accused X of manipulating its algorithm for 'foreign interference' purposes, an allegation which is completely false."

I have now been here a week and I think that I have absorbed enough to attempt a little analysis, as opposed to the simple impressions I gave shortly after arrival.

Those impressions remain valid however: this is not a repressive state. I was on the Randy Credico show live on WBAI New York on Friday, and by chance my friend, the renowned FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley was also on, from Minnesota (where I have stayed with Colleen and her husband in their home).

I was explaining that, in a week of going all round Caracas, I had yet to see a checkpoint, that nobody had at any stage asked me who I am, what I was doing or prevented me from going anywhere, and that the shops, bars and restaurants are all functioning normally.

Colleen reported from Minneapolis that there were checkpoints everywhere, that the streets are full of heavily armed men, that people are frequently stopped, questioned, asked to produce documents, and diverted, and that many shops bars and restaurants are closed because the staff are afraid to venture out into the streets. Colleen is heavily involved in detainee support and in getting supplies to people sheltering in their homes.

Remind me again, which of us is in a supposed dictatorship?

I want to tell you a couple of things to help explain Venezuela. I visited the mausoleum of Simon Bolivar, a genuinely heroic man. He has now been removed from the main Venezuelan Pantheon into a connected dedicated modern mausoleum. The Pantheon itself contains the remains of many of the heroes of the Venezuelan War of Independence, and monuments to all of them.

The Venezuelan War of Independence was, of course, in many respects similar to the United States war given the same name. It was a war between colonial elites and their metropolitan masters. Unlike the founders of the USA, Bolivar himself was genuinely opposed to slavery, but that was not true of many of his key allies.

So the Pantheon as originally conceived in the late 19th century was inhabited by the remains and memories almost entirely of those heroic people of Spanish descent who fought against the colonial control of Spain. This is the great founding ideal of Venezuela.

When Chavez and Maduro came to power, they made a very important change. They added a monument to the liberated slaves who had fought against the Spanish. Then Chavez and Maduro each added an extra monument: to leaders of the Native Americans who had fought against Spanish invasion in the first place.

This caused outrage among right wingers furious that the purity of the Pantheon, the great focus of Venezuelan nationalism, was being desecrated for what they viewed as political purposes. Which brings me to what I think is a fundamental observation. Politics in Venezuela are basically racial.

I am treading on eggshells here, but in 2019 I published this post noticing the contrast between opposition and government group photos. The leadership of the right wing are basically whiter. That is simply who they are.

Of course the divide is not absolute, and individual exceptions exist. But it is there. Politics in Venezuela are strongly class based, and in this post colonial society it is difficult to disentangle race from class.

What the opposition want is simply to turn back the clock and restore economic apartheid in Venezuela. I had a very interesting talk with Ricardo Vaz of Venezuela Analysis. He explained how Chavez' revolutionary policies had brought people into political discourse who had always been ignored in what was historically an extremely unequal society:

"The rulers, now the opposition, suddenly found that their cook, their cleaner, their driver and even their gardener were learning to read and write and starting to get political ideas. They did not like this at all".

They still don't like that. It is not possible for me here now to capture what happened exactly in the 2024 elections. Plainly the opposition performed relatively well, though I do not in the least believe they got 68% of the result. Maduro's closing rally had 1 million people while the opposition's had 50,000.

For the government to remain in power against the will of 68% of the population would require a degree of state repression which simply does not exist here. There is very little surveillance compared to western states, let alone to acknowledged dictatorships. There are no politicised police or militias in the streets. There are no restrictions on people moving around and mingling.

Machado has discredited herself, as effectively as she has discredited the Nobel peace prize. Giving the prize to Trump made her look foolish and suppliant, and praising the bombing of her own country which killed fellow citizens has really not gone down well at all, even with opposition supporters.

But even that has not harmed her nearly as much as her remark to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that 60% of Venezuelans are involved in narcotics or prostitution.  This is not quite what she said, but it is near enough and it really annoyed people here:

We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60% of our populations, and not only involving drug trafficking, but in human trafficking, in networks of prostitution. So this has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas…

Which takes me back to personal impressions. I have, as those who follow me would expect, assiduously been checking out the bars of Caracas. I have found some very beautiful ones - Juan Sebastian Bar is one of the most lovely bars that I have ever seen. A piece of stunning interior design. I took these photos before it opened one evening. It serves mojitos even better than you can get in Havana.

That is not a mirror, those are two grand pianos!

The point is that not in my hotel, not in any bar, not on any street, have I seen a single person who appeared to be operating as a sex worker. Not one - and I might perhaps be viewed as a pretty archetypal target. Similarly I have not seen any sign at all of narcotics abuse. In two days in Salisbury investigating the Skripal hoax I was shocked by how many obvious drug addicts we saw on the streets. There is nothing of the kind in Caracas.

While I appreciate that the allegation is that Venezuela exports narcotics rather than consumes them, you always get clusters of addiction around production points and transit nodes. I just see no evidence that the common tropes about Venezuela and Venezuelans are true: and I am a trained and seasoned observer.

Sanctions against Venezuela did not start after the disputed 2024 election; they have been applied by the Western powers more or less since the very start of Chavez' socialist experiment. The repression of socialism in Latin America has been US policy for a century, and the more Chavez succeeded the more the west sought to suppress it. France refused to provide spares for the Mirage jets of the Venezuelan air force, and equally refused to supply spare parts for the trains of the Metro service.

The gold and foreign currency reserves abroad of the government of Venezuela have simply been stolen by foreign governments, and the blocking of Venezuela from the Swift bank transfer system for a while caused havoc. It has however spurred BRICS to develop an alternative, not fully adopted not finished but working in Venezuela, which accounts for the full stocks in the shops and ultimately might represent a significant moment in international economics.

Slowly, unwillingly, the Socialist Party under Maduro has been forced precisely by the crippling effect of sanctions to allow more space for the private sector and move from a fully socialist to a more social democratic model - though to describe the reforms under Maduro as "neoliberal" is ridiculous. It may theoretically be possible to build socialism in one country, but if the major economic powers join forces to destroy you, it becomes very difficult indeed.

A dangerously simplistic narrative about what has happened in Venezuela has taken hold in the West, fueled by Trump, CIA and Machado/Miami sources.

On this reading, Acting President Delcy Rodriguez is in collusion with Trump, betrayed Maduro and stood down defences on the night of his kidnap, and is now instituting neoliberal policies, including a new petroleum law which states only the USA may ship Venezuelan oil and that payments for it will go exclusively through the US in Qatar.

In fact this is not true at all. Venezuela's new petroleum legislation contains no provisions banning oil exports to China or Russia and no provision for payments to be routed through the USA. The new Petroleum law is in fact legislation which sets out a new commercial basis for the operation of the Venezuelan petroleum sector on the same kind of concession, licensing and royalty basis as pertains in almost every other oil producer.

The key point is that the legislation was drafted under Maduro, with extensive consultation and debate. It came for its first reading to the Assembly literally the day after Maduro was kidnapped. That was already scheduled, not a result of the kidnapping. The notion that Maduro opposed the legislation and Rodriguez had to get rid of him to get it thorough is patent nonsense.

The legislation is unrelated to the United States current hijack of the sale of Venezuelan oil. This is proceeding through simple piracy. Trump decreed that only two companies, Vitol and Trafigura, would be allowed to load Venezuelan oil, and those companies would pay for the oil to the United States, into a special account held in Qatar under Trump's name.

This new scheme has been enforced by simple piracy. Any tankers carrying oil not owned by Vitol and Trafigura from Venezuela have been illegally seized at sea by the US Navy, sometimes assisted by the UK government. The United States has been claiming that Venezuela agrees to this arrangement. That is not true. Or it is true in the sense that a hostage held at gunpoint agrees to stay put, rather than get a bullet through the skull.

The Venezuelan government simply has no physical ability to prevent the United States Navy from seizing oil tankers.

Nor is it true that the Venezuelan government gave the United States information on non Vitol and Trafigura tankers and requested their interception. Obviously the United States could get the information on "rogue" tankers from Vitol and Trafigura.

Trafigura have featured in my writing for decades as the archetypal extremely corrupt western corporation. Their record for deliberate pollution and corruption in Africa is appalling, including in Angola and Ivory Coast. They have frequently been involved in CIA schemes for egime change.

How Vitol and Trafigura came to be the beneficiaries of a duopoly, and what backhanders than may have involved, is another question. In fact this is the one area of domestic pressure that has forced a step back from Trump, and last Friday it was announced that the arrangement will be expanded to include more companies.

It is worth noting that the system has not just been invented for Venezuela. It is almost identical to the sysyem imposed on Iraq after its destruction by the United States and its allies, with payments for Iraqi oil made to the USA and a percentage of them returned to the Iraqi government.

The difference is that the Iraqi revenues were paid to the US Treasury, whereas the Venezuelan funds are going to a Qatar account under Trump's personal control, removed from the reach of Congress. At its most charitable reading, it gives him a massive slush fund to pursue policy outside the United States legal framework. It is like Iran Contra on a massive scale.

To reiterate: none of this sales arrangement has been agreed by Rodriguez and none if it is contained in the new Venezuelan hydrocarbon legislation on concessions and royalties. There are two separate things being widely conflated.

The line that Delcy Rodriguez agrees to both the kidnap of Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia, and to the hijacking of Venezuelan oil sales and revenues, has been deliberately spread by the US and its acolytes, despite Delcy Rodriguez' furious denials.

If Rodriguez really was Trump's placed woman, then boasting about it would fatally undermine her within Venezuela and bring about her downfall - which obviously would be entirely counterproductive were there any truth in the claim.

So why is this rumour being spread? Well the obvious reason is precisely to undermine Rodriguez and destabilise the government of Venezuela.

But perhaps a more important factor is Trump's obsessive need to claim victory. He gathered a massive military force off the coast of Venezuela, and stood in danger of mockery as the Grand Old Duke of York if he simply sailed it away again.

The seizure of Maduro has in fact changed nothing in policy terms within Venezuela, but it has provided a spectacular operation for Trump to claim as a victory. In truth, as a demonstration of the capabilities of the United States' offensive military technology, it was indeed technically impressive.

For the removal of Maduro to be portrayed as a triumph, Trump has to claim that Rodrigues is solidy pro-USA, even though this is plainly not true. It is merely a part of the parade of triumph that is an essential component both of Trump's ego and of the bombastic Trump method.

What now happens to Maduro and Cilia is, on this reading, not really relevant. The entirely false narrative of the non-existent Cartel do los Soles has already been abandoned as part of the prosecution. In the USA's misnamed "justice" system, they have a variety of witness accusations from diverse figures prepared to sign nonsense against Maduro as part of a plea bargain agreement. These include rococo Trump-pleasing standouts such as testimony that Maduro was involved in fixing the 2020 US Presidential election on behalf of Biden.

My prediction is that Trump will "pardon" Maduro before the prosecution gets too silly, and present that as another part of his triumph. But who can predict a madman?

That is precisely the conundrum now facing Delcy Rodriguez. She is dealing with two imponderable equations.

The first was already difficult enough. Historians and ideologues will debate for centuries whether Chavismo could have succeeded economically with its full-on socialist programme, had the western world not determined to destroy it by crippling sanctions.

What is I think beyond dispute is that the sanctions were so crippling that they caused considerable public hardship, and massive inflation. At the same time, the very fact that Venezuela is not highly dictatorial and both Chavez and Maduro broadly allowed debate, free opposition political parties and media, and the operation of western funded NGOs, meant that the Venezuelan population were continually bombarded with western propaganda which blamed the problems caused by sanctions on the Bolivarian Revolution.

This eroded support for the socialist project, which though still intact, has crumbled at the edges. The Bolivarian government has been obliged to try to mitigate the effects of the sanctions which stole the government's own capital, and to seek the removal of some sanctions, by the opening up of more space for capitalist investment and operation in the economy, notably but by no means only in the oil sector.

In other words the government has been forced to concede some ground to the West by inching along the spectrum from socialist to social democratic, while attempting to maintain the massive social gains of the Chavez revolution.

This is an exercise in which Nicolas Maduro himself was fully engaged. I believe that both Maduro and Rodriguez have the intention of inching back from social democracy towards socialism over time, once pressures have eased. Theirs is a game of strategy not of tactics.

To this already extremely sensitive calculation is added the extraordinary factor of Trump. His willingness to simply kill innocent people, to shatter international law, and impose his will by exploiting massive United States military advantage over a small country, changed all the rules of the game.

The pressure to make changes faster to appease somebody who is plainly mentally unstable, the difficulty of understanding his limits and true goals, is an excruciating experience when the lives and deaths of Venezuelans are in your hands. Trump's incredible bombast, his wild claims that Venezuelan land and oil is stolen from the USA, are not contained within the realm of normal diplomatic negotiation.

Delcy Rodriguez is not so much walking a tightrope, as navigating an Indiana Jones tunnel full of traps.

One thing that Trump has in fact got right is his contention that Machado does not have the public support to rule. This seems to me indisputable, and an attempt to impose her would result in civil war. This of course in itself undermines the contention that Machado's team massively won the 2024 election.

Meanwhile life in Venezuela goes on for ordinary people. I had the great pleasure to attend a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra on Sunday. It was very accomplished, and the auditorium was full. The programme was entirely of Venezuelan composers, and I had never heard any of the music before.  The opening sympnonic poem by Juan Bautista Plaza would stand alongside the European repertoire without blushing.

I make no apologies for bringing little slices of ordinary life to you, because the picture we have given of Venezuela is so strangely and massively distorted, it requires multiple points of correction.

Chavez instituted a programme of musical education for working class children that became the envy of the classical music world, known simply as La Sistema. Much more heart-rending examples of western sanctions might be found, involving medical provision. But as an example of the cruel absurdity of the sanctions regime, the youth orchestra of Venezuela has difficulties getting hold of simple consumables - strings, reeds, plectra - because of sanctions.

In bringing violin strings to a child I should be committing a crime in the United States of America. Let that be a testament to the absurdity of using sanctions to crush human spirit.

I am very aware I have not left Caracas yet and of the limitations of my experience so far. But I am already struck of the great advantage of being here over commentators in the West who I see daily, even when well-intentioned, getting it all wrong. The mainstream media of course produce a fake narrative entirely as a matter of policy.

I am delighted to say that today our new videographer and editor are starting and we will be able to bring you video content. I also hope today to conclude rent of an office/studio space.

we now have a Venezuela reporting crowdfunder. I have simply edited the Lebanese GoFundMe crowdfunder, because that took many weeks to be approved and I don't want to go through all that again. So its starting baseline is the £35,000 we raised and spent in Lebanon.

I do very much appreciate that I have been simultaneously crowdfunding to fight the UK government in the Scottish courts over the proscription of Palestine Action. We fight forces that have unlimited funds. We can only succeed if we spread the load. 98% of those who read my articles never contribute financially. This would be a good moment to change that. It is just the simple baseline subscriptions to my blog that have got me to Venezuela, and that remains the foundation for all my work.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of subscription payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

PayPal address for one-off donations: craigmurray1710@btinternet.com

Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:

Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 - 4 0 - 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB

Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a

Venezuela GoFundMe

The post Trump, Pirate of the Caribbean appeared first on Craig Murray.

Mozilla has decided that if AI is going to live in your browser, you should at least be able to kill it when it gets annoying.…

Afternoon session results:

• Read more about 2026 Sepang MotoGP Test Day FP2 Times - Marc Marquez Quickest On First Day
• Log in or register to post comments

NASA has concluded a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Artemis II, but recurring liquid hydrogen leaks forced the test to be halted short of completion, prompting the agency to delay the mission's launch to at least March 2026.…

Huge thanks to my February sponsor, John Rember, author of the three-book series Journal of the Plague Years, a psychic survival guide for humanity's looming date with destiny, shaped by his experiences living through the pandemic in his native Idaho. Thoughtful, wry and humane, Journal 1 is a pleasure.

"Ocean Heat Goes Ballistic…

"In 2025 alone, the ocean gained 23 Zetta Joules …equivalent to every power plant, every car, every light bulb, and every device on Earth continuously in use for 37 years. This is how much extra heat the oceans absorbed in 2025, in one year!"

https://countercurrents.org/2026/02/ocean-heat-goes-ballistic/

"Natural variability exists, but Global Sea Surface Temperatures being already above pre-2023 records and the daily anomaly now being 0.15°C higher than in 2023 worry me a lot.

"Especially with the main El Niño region still at -0.57°C… Global warming has accelerated!"

[Leon Simons]

https://x.com/LeonSimons8/status/2017630307738890520

"Meteorologists Warn of an Unusually Early Arctic Breakdown Forming in February…

"Why Is This February Event So Unusual? Arctic disruptions typically occur later in winter or early spring. A breakdown forming in February is unusually early, and scientists say the atmospheric signals triggering this event are rare."

https://vocal.media/earth/meteorologists-warn-of-an-unusually-early-arctic-breakdown-forming-in-february

"Greenland's 'green mining' row highlights the key tensions in the energy transition.

"Green finance is built on a promise: that capital can be redirected to support the transition to a low-carbon economy while avoiding the environmental mistakes of the past. That promise is getting harder to keep."

https://theconversation.com/greenlands-green-mining-row-highlights-the-key-tensions-in-the-energy-transition-274336

"January rainfall in parts of UK breaks more than century-long record…

"With 70% more rain than average Northern Ireland experienced the wettest January for 149 years. Culdrose in Cornwall recorded two and a quarter times its average, while Aboyne in Aberdeenshire had nearly four times its January average of 68.9mm."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cx2lz3k65w5o

"Flood warnings as motorists stranded in deep water [Isle of Wight].

"Flooding was being reported extensively across the island on Sunday evening, with people posting on social media that they were having to abandon their vehicles. Homes in Whitwell and Carisbrooke were the among those flooded…"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98p0l8750lo

"Mini-tornado damages nearly 200 homes in southwestern France.

"According to ICI Gironde, a violent gust of wind lasting several seconds hit the area around midday, ripping off roofs, collapsing walls, and uprooting trees… Emergency services said around 150 firefighters have been deployed to assist affected residents."

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/mini-tornado-damages-nearly-200-homes-in-southwestern-france/3816593

"Portugal counts multi-billion euro damage after Storm Kristin.

"Hundreds of homes in central Portugal were left without roofs after last week's storm, and tens of thousands of people lost power as residents queued for basic building materials. The storm struck early on Wednesday (28 January) with wind gusts hitting 200 kph [120mph]…

https://anewz.tv/green/climate/17771/storm-kristin-damage-across-portugal/news

"Spain braces for floods as Google launches real-time risk map…

"The launch comes at a moment of heightened meteorological tension, with the Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) warning of several days of potentially severe rainfall and elevated flood risk across large parts of the peninsula."

https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/02/02/spain-braces-for-floods-as-google-launches-real-time-risk-map/

"As Sicily's Niscemi crumbles, families race to save what the Earth hasn't taken…

"Despite warnings of instability, nothing was done to shore up the town's fragile foundations, and on January 25, following a ferocious storm that drenched the land, a four-kilometre-long (2.5-mile) stretch of hillside collapsed."

https://www.reuters.com/world/sicilys-niscemi-crumbles-families-race-save-what-earth-hasnt-taken-2026-02-02/

"Severe Weather Batters Greece, Causing Floods and Widespread Damage.

"Heavy rain, powerful winds and flooding have hit large parts of Greece, leaving homes and farmland underwater, disrupting transport, and prompting emergency alerts as authorities warn of more extreme weather."

https://www.tovima.com/society/severe-weather-batters-greece-causing-floods-and-widespread-damage/amp/

"Heat wave in Turkey threatens traditional summer vacations.

"Periods of uninterrupted heat waves in the Mediterranean region have become significantly longer - the number of heat stress days has increased by more than two weeks compared to the 1950s - which could significantly affect familiar summer vacations."

https://logos-pres.md/en/news/heat-wave-in-turkey-threatens-traditional-summer-vacations/

"NORTH AFRICA HEAT WAVE:

"Unseasonal heat from Central to North Africa. In ALGERIA Tindouf with 30.0C [86F] tied its hottest January day in history. Next days will be crazy: Up to 35C in Algeria and Libya and even some tropical nights."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2017672619164938327

"Relentless rains and floods leave Africa reeling as UN seeks help.

"Severe flooding has intensified across northern and southern Africa since last October. Extreme rainfall has affected many regions, intensifying sharply in January and leading to widespread emergencies. As the situation continues to unfold, the United Nations is appealing for international assistance."

https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20260202-relentless-rains-and-floods-leave-africa-reeling-as-un-seeks-help

"Severe weather warnings issued for thunderstorms and heatwaves across South Africa…

"A high fire danger warning has been issued for parts of the Northern Cape, western parts of both the Free State and North West as well as extreme northern parts of the Eastern Cape and Beaufort West Municipality in the Western Cape."

https://sundayindependent.co.za/news/weather/2025-02-03-severe-weather-warnings-issued-for-thunderstorms-and-heatwaves-across-south-africa/

"Cyclone Fytia: 7 dead and over 54,000 affected in Madagascar.

"The humanitarian crisis in Madagascar has escalated significantly as updated reports from the National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC) now confirm at least seven deaths following the passage of Tropical Cyclone Fytia."

https://apanews.net/cyclone-fytia-7-dead-and-over-54000-affected-in-madagascar/

"Somalia Seeks Global Aid to Tackle Crippling Water Shortages.

"The federal government and regional states on Sunday called on international partners to support efforts to address water shortages linked to prolonged drought conditions. The call was made at the conclusion of a two-day Federal-State Energy and Water Coordination Conference held in Dhusamareb."

https://www.dawan.africa/news/somalia-seeks-global-aid-to-tackle-crippling-water-shortages

"Weather forecast: after record February heat, temperatures drop as rain and thunderstorms return [Israel].

"After February opened with record-breaking heat for the period, cooler weather is expected along with thunderstorms and strengthening winds that will gradually ease tomorrow afternoon."

https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/bkvwp5puzl

"Water as a Strategic Resource: Kazakhstan Tightens Control Over Water Use.

"As water scarcity intensifies, the issue is no longer confined to environmental policy or agriculture alone - it has become a matter of food security and social stability. This was the key message of an interagency meeting on water resource use chaired by Prosecutor General Berik Asylov."

https://dknews.kz/en/articles-in-english/383732-water-as-a-strategic-resource-kazakhstan-tightens

"Why China and Europe should care about Central Asia's water crisis…

"…its rivers underpin Eurasian trade corridors, sustain global food markets and power regional energy systems. As water stress worsens, this is no longer just an environmental issue but a strategic threat across Eurasia."

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3341896/why-china-and-europe-should-care-about-central-asias-water-crisis

"Confronting a catastrophic water crisis as millions forced to return to Afghanistan.

"When Arshad Malik visited Kabul earlier this month, a glance up at the Hindu Kush mountain range that surrounds the Afghan capital would fill him with concern. "The amount of snow on the mountains that surround the city was far, far less than I have seen before," the regional director for Save the Children Asia tells The Independent."

https://www.aol.co.uk/articles/confronting-catastrophic-water-crisis-millions-100000186.html

"Some tropical land may heat up nearly twice as much as oceans under climate change, sediment record suggests…

"…in a region where temperatures are already very high, any increase could push it beyond the threshold of what people and wildlife can tolerate."

https://phys.org/news/2026-02-tropical-oceans-climate-sediment.html

"RECORD HEAT IN SOUTH ASIA:

"Record heat is sweeping nearly all world tropical countries. Between Myanmar and Bangladesh (Southeast Asia and South Asia) records for January highest Temperatures were broken: 32.4 [90.3F] Teknaf BANGLADESH; 34.6 Sagaing MYANMAR; 25.2 Tiddim MYANMAR."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2017587007594369267

"Prolonged dry weather in Gyeongsang heightens concerns over drought, wildfires [S Korea]…

"According to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), the winter drought has intensified in Gyeongsang, with little rain or snow falling so far this season."

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2026-02-02/national/environment/Prolonged-dry-weather-in-Gyeongsang-heightens-concerns-over-drought-wildfires/2514367

"Scientists express concern about the ocean's behavior: "I don't even know if 'surprised' is the right word".

"The ocean surrounding Japan is changing at a rate that baffles experts, with consequences affecting local fishing and culture… The northernmost edge of the Kuroshio has shifted as much as 480 kilometers toward the pole, creating unprecedented warm-water conditions in the region."

https://en.as.com/latest_news/scientists-express-concern-about-the-oceans-behavior-i-dont-even-know-if-surprised-is-the-right-word-f202602-n/

"Endless record heat in the PHILIPPINES:

"Scorching hot nights continue and records fall every day. Catarman just recorded its February hottest night in history with a Minimum Temperature of 25.8C [78.4F]. In Just 2 days of February, hundreds of heat records have fallen all over the tropics."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018529404197142720

"Watch: Indonesia Storm Rips Roof Off School; Students Scramble.

"An episode of sheer terror occurred this weekend in East Java province, Indonesia, with the country still reeling under the wrath of severe weather. Dozens of young students scrambled for their lives as the roof of the Nuris Jaban Boarding School was sheared off…"

https://www.saptashwatv.com/news/international-news/watch-indonesia-storm-rips-roof-off-school-students-scramble-3948.html

"Death toll in Indonesian landslide reaches 80 after 10 days of searching…

"The landslide struck the Cisarua area in West Bandung regency on Jan. 24, affecting 158 people, displacing 564 individuals from 164 families, and damaging 48 homes."

https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/death-toll-in-indonesian-landslide-reaches-80-after-10-days-of-search/

"Endless record heat in INDONESIA - 36.5C [97.7F] at Manokwari, West Papua ALL TIME RECORD pulverized.

"Eastern Indonesia has been breaking heat records no-stop for years EVERY SINGLE DAY and some areas have never seen a colder than average month for over 10 years!"

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018299901059465652

"Queensland expecting storms and winds up to 90km/h after heatwave, flooding up north could last for weeks.

"Queensland is set for another week of extreme weather as thunderstorms and severe winds of up to 90 kilometres per hour break through the heatwave, while the flooding in north Queensland could last for weeks."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-02/queensland-facing-storms-after-heatwave/106292962

"Deep Inside an Antarctic Glacier, a Mission Collapses at Its Final Step.

"Scientists lost their instruments within Antarctica's most dangerously unstable glacier, though not before getting a glimpse at the warming waters underneath… Scientists fear that if Thwaites sheds too much ice, it could cause more of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet to start sliding rapidly into the sea, swamping coastal communities worldwide…"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/climate/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-drilling.html

"Microplastics in fish found in one-third of samples from remote Pacific islands.

"About one-third of fish living in the coastal waters of Pacific Island Countries and Territories contain microplastics, with particularly high contamination levels found in Fiji, according to a recent scientific analysis."

https://www.globalseafood.org/advocate/microplastics-in-fish-found-in-one-third-of-samples-from-remote-pacific-islands/

"Fires in Patagonia continue: with four national parks under threat, more than 50,000 hectares have already been devastated.

"Currently, the fires in Patagonia are simultaneously affecting four protected areas. In Chubut, besides Los Alerces, there are also hotspots in Lago Puelo, where new fires were started by lightning strikes."

https://noticiasambientales.com/environment-en/fires-in-patagonia-continue-with-four-national-parks-under-threat-more-than-50000-hectares-have-already-been-devastated/

"Flooding caused by heavy rain and hail this Saturday in Santiago [Chile].

"The phenomenon was captured by social media users, where several flooded streets could be observed, especially in Maipú and on the road to Melipilla, due to the rains that fell in a short period of time."

https://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2026/01/31/1190235/lluvias-santiago-inundaciones-anegamientos.html

"The intense rains that fell on Friday marked one of the most severe weather events in Mendoza in the last three decades [Argentina].

"In just a few hours, the rainfall far exceeded the historical averages for January , causing flooding, downed trees, damage to homes, and serious traffic disruptions in various parts of the province."

https://www.ambito.com/informacion-general/tormentas-e-inundaciones-mendoza-aunque-se-recuperan-los-servicios-permanece-la-alerta-naranja-y-hay-rutas-cortadas-n6240976

"The São Francisco River exceeds the alert level, causing flooding in cities in Minas Gerais and Bahia [Brazil]…

"Approximately 150,000 people live in the four affected cities. With the São Francisco River and its tributaries overflowing, the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters (Cemaden) assesses the possibility of flash floods…"

https://agorarn.com.br/ultimas/rio-sao-francisco-supera-cota-de-alerta-e-provoca-alagamentos-em-cidades-de-mg-e-da-bahia/

"'Pure apocalypse': a photographer's journey through the Pantanal wildfires…

"I had seen many fires in the Amazon, but nothing compared to this. The saddest thing was seeing the number of animals killed by the fire. Even worse were the injured, burned and orphaned animals. 2020 was a tragedy."

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/feb/02/lalo-de-almeida-photographer-journey-through-pantanal-wildfires-brazil

"Amazon deforestation may rise 30% as major traders exit historic soy pact…

"The coup de grâce to the 20-year-long soy moratorium, under which companies voluntarily agreed to ban soy grown in areas deforested after 2008, came from the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries."

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/amazon-deforestation-may-rise-30-as-major-traders-exit-historic-soy-pact/

"Harsh heat wave in NE Brazil with Temperatures up to 40C in The States of Rio Grande do Norte, Parnaiba and Piaui…

"1 February a new monthly record of highest Temperature was set in Rio Grande do Norte State with 40.0C [104F] in Caicò.."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018496306176573705

"CARIBBEAN is splits between very cold in the Northwest and Record heat in The South and East.

"Exceptional warm nights with widespread Minimums 25C/28C TYPICAL OF AUGUST. Charlotte Amalie had another Min 81F/27.2C - US VIRGIN ISLANDS FEBRUARY HOTTEST NIGHT IN HISTORY."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018333798421987688

"This is something you don't see every day… Actually, hardly ever…

"Last night was a record cold night in Guantanamo Bay US Military station and a record hot night in US Virgin Islands (St Thomas AP)."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018353944209277051

"[1 Feb] Max 10.8C/51.4F Freeport LOWEST MAX. TEMPERATURE EVER RECORDED IN THE BAHAMAS.

"Min. 5.4C [41.7F] Gallon Jug lowest Temperature in BELIZE since 1968; lowest in February since 1895. 57F/13.9C Guantanamo Bay Military Base - All time low tied."

https://x.com/extremetemps/status/2018347331842957518

"Florida colder than Iceland after record low temperatures and all flights grounded at major international airport.

"…in the Sunshine State, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area saw snow flurries, while temperatures dropped to the low 20s on Sunday. That was colder than Iceland which saw temps of up to 39 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Met Office."

https://www.the-sun.com/news/15876072/florida-weather-airport-grounds-flights-snow-forecast/

"Bomb cyclone brings freezing temperatures and snow to millions in US…

"…the bomb cyclone, known to meteorologists as an intense, rapidly strengthening weather system, contributed to nearly a foot (30cm) of snow in and around Charlotte, North Carolina's largest city… North Carolina's governor, Josh Stein, said that more than 1,000 collisions on snowy roads had resulted in two fatalities."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/01/bomb-cyclone-snow-cold-weather-storm-us

"Record Warmth for First Week of February [Montana].

"Thursday will likely be the warmest day this week, and maybe one of the warmest days ever recorded in Montana in February. Numerous locations will likely set daily highs, but some towns like Great Falls and Lewistown could set their all-time warmest February temperature ever record with afternoon temps near 70."

https://www.ktvh.com/weather/record-warmth-for-first-week-of-february

"Snow Drought in the West Reaches Record Levels.

"In many places famed for deep natural snow, including Park City, Utah; Vail, Colo.; and central and eastern Oregon, much of the ground is bare or blanketed with mere inches rather than feet of snow. The extent of snow-covered ground is at a record low."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/science/snow-drought-climate-change-west.html

"Some companies claim they can 'resurrect' species. Does that make people more comfortable with extinction?

"Less than a year ago, United States company Colossal Biosciences announced it had "resurrected" the dire wolf, a megafauna-hunting wolf species that had been extinct for 10,000 years."

https://theconversation.com/some-companies-claim-they-can-resurrect-species-does-that-make-people-more-comfortable-with-extinction-273583

I rely on donations and tips from my readers to to keep the site running. Every little bit helps. Can you chip in even a dollar? Buy me a coffee or become a Patreon supporter. A huge thank you to those who do subscribe or donate.

You can read the previous "Climate" thread here. I'll be back tomorrow with an "Economic" thread.

The post 3rd February 2026 Today's Round-Up of Climate News appeared first on Climate and Economy.

OpenClaw, the AI-powered personal assistant users interact with via messaging apps and sometimes entrust with their credentials to various online services, has prompted a wave of malware and is delivering some shocking bills.…

Finding the best iPhone 17 case or the best iPhone 17 Pro cases is about more than basic drop protection. The best iPhone cases add useful features like MagSafe compatibility, grippy finishes and protection for camera lenses, all without adding unnecessary bulk to your new iPhone.

Whether you prefer slim, scratch resistant designs, matte finishes or leather cases that feel a bit more premium, there are plenty of strong top picks to choose from. We've rounded up the best picks for both the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, so you don't have to waste time scrolling through endless listings.

There is no one "most protective" brand of phone cases, but rather there are many that tout extra security for your handset. Some of the most protective phone cases we've tried come from Otterbox; most of the brand's cases have a bit more protection than your standard phone case, even the ones that are designed to be on the slim side. Otterbox also makes a wide variety of phone cases, so there's a good chance you'll find one that suits your style and provides the level of protection you're looking for. Otterbox's Defender series is one of the best you can get if you care first and foremost about making sure your phone survives all kinds of accidents (save for a dunk in a pool).

Neither silicone nor hard cases are better than the other. Silicone cases tend to be thinner and feel soft to the touch, and they're often easier to put on and take off of phones. Hard cases can be on the thicker side, but they provide a bit more drop protection than silicone cases. Which type of case is best for you depends on the type of experience you want from your phone. It's also worth nothing that both silicone cases and hard cases come in a variety of colors, designs and styles, so you have plenty of choose from to match your personality on both sides.

The iPhone 17 features Apple's tough Ceramic Shield 2 front, which is definitely more durable than standard glass — but it's not invincible. If you want to avoid scratches from keys, drops onto pavement or just the wear and tear of daily use, a screen protector is still a smart move. It adds an extra layer of defense without getting in the way of touch sensitivity or Face ID. So, while it's not absolutely essential, using one is a good idea if you want to keep your screen looking flawless for the long haul.

The iPhone 17 is built to be tough, with Ceramic Shield 2 on the front and a sturdy aluminum or titanium frame (depending on the model), but it's not completely drop-proof. It can handle the occasional bump or short fall, especially if it lands on a flat surface — but drops on concrete or at awkward angles can still cause cracks or damage. If you're prone to butterfingers, pairing your iPhone 17 with a durable case and maybe even a screen protector is the best way to play it safe.

Georgie Peru contributed to this report.

Britain's defense personnel will be given the authority to neutralize drones threatening military bases under measures being introduced in the Armed Forces Bill, currently making its way through Parliament.…

John Owen, one of the last veterans of the French and Indian War, posed for this photograph shortly before his death in 1843 at the age of 107. He was born on April 16, 1735 — making him one of the earliest-born humans ever to be photographed. — Read the rest

The post One of the earliest-born humans ever to be photographed appeared first on Boing Boing.

Sociable weaver birds in the Kalahari Desert have adapted to the scarcity of trees by building their massive communal nests on telephone poles instead. Some of these nests appear to be as large as a truck. These photos from Lostfoundartny on Instagram look like something out of a Dr. — Read the rest

The post These massive bird nests on telephone poles look like Dr. Seuss art appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ice volcanoes are short-lived formations that appear along very cold lake shorelines, most commonly near the Great Lakes. This video shows what they look like when they "erupt." They resemble small volcanic cones, but there's no lava — just freezing temperatures and powerful waves. — Read the rest

The post Watch ice volcanoes spray frozen water along the Great Lakes appeared first on Boing Boing.

How I Experience the Web Today is a simulation of what it's like to complete a simple Google search in 2026. Accept or deny cookies. Enter your email. Allow notifications? Watch your sanity crumble.

The site responds to whatever you click, just like a real webpage would. — Read the rest

The post This site simulates the nightmare of modern web browsing appeared first on Boing Boing.

My colleague and fellow RAW fan, Tom Jackson, has done some valuable work in tracking down and interviewing four editors who had a hand in getting Illuminatus! published and who worked with Robert Shea and RAW on that project.1 One of the most striking things, to me, is the report that RAW was one of the most difficult writers to work with. Feldman told Jackson about RAW, "I don't think he was happy .... I seem to remember it was a struggle to get him to get on board with the way we were going to produce the books." RAW didn't want Illuminatus! divided into a trilogy, but the publishers were worried about investing that much in what must have been a 2000 page manuscript. David Harris, who worked at Dell, said, "I do clearly remember Bob Wilson as one of the most difficult authors I ever worked with. He seemed to think of me as his enemy, rather than his ally in getting the book into print." To his fans, RAW was kind, funny, a delight. This was not so for most of the editors and publishers he worked with. Why?

RAW's entire oeuvre, including interviews, is teeming with snide remarks about publishers and editors. It got to the point where he published a large number of non-fiction books with a publisher, Falcon Press/New Falcon, who barely edited his work at all, which was what RAW wanted. A laissez faire publisher. A team of volunteer editors at Hilaritas Press has since gone over those books when they were re-printed and reissued with better bindings, artwork, and paper quality.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

(Robert Anton Wilson)

Falcon/New Falcon books were usually not reviewed in the mainstream, and this seems to have hurt Wilson's reputation. Why didn't he publish with a more reputable publisher? It seems complicated to me, and I want to link RAW's adversarial views about editors and publishers to his very close reading of Ezra Pound, begun when RAW was a teenager, until his death a week away from his 75th birthday. But also: RAW gives reasons why he thinks he'd had a rough time as a writer and I think quite lot of it holds up. Still…let us say that he and Pound were not quiet about the adversarial nature of writers vs. publishers.

When I first plowed through Pound's works I was struck by how cantankerous he was toward academics and universities ("beaneries") and publishers and editors.

Pound wrote a letter to his parents in 1908, age 22-23, in which he complained about commercial publishing and bookselling and "the curious system of trade and traders which has grown up with the purpose or result of interposing itself between literature and the public."2

When Pound's artist and writer friends died in WWI for no good reason at all, he decided he had to figure out what was behind the War, and soon he seemed to have found the reason: it was economics, banking and money loaned at interest. When he tried to get certain publishers to invest in those works, he had a rough time, largely because of the antisemitism in those works. Pound was convinced the Jews ran all the banks. Yea, that old noisy saw again. Farrar and Rinehart were publishers who shied away, being two examples.

In assessing Wilson's love of Pound's work, I see this as very complex, but I don't think we should underestimate the odd cranky tone of Pound, who was clearly a mad genius. Here's a couple of lines from 1931-1932, on publishing and Pound's cantankerousness:

Some months ago and off and on for some time I tried and have tried to stimulate the publication in the outer occident of a series of brochures that would serve as communication between intelligent men, proposing to print such books in America! "dollar impracticable" "fifty cents impossible" undsoweiter can be imagined by 30 percent of my readers; and the conclusion, i.e, that the idea that publishing is a profession not a trade, and the idea of using a publishing house as a focus of enlightenment are both alien to our national sensibility, will come as a surprise to, no one.3

The idea that publishers won't do what Pound thinks needs to be done, for cheap, is a typical riff from Ezra. What I think RAW got from Pound was that books and literature are absolutely vital to the health of the citizens, or at least the ones who are interested in learning. This seems a conceit of all writers of substance: damn the business and profit motive, these are good ideas! Get them out to the people and stop looking at your bottom line! I also think this attitude of Pound's formed part of RAW's identity as a writer, one who would not shrink from speaking out about money issues on behalf of not only his own interests as a writer, but for all writers, especially freelancers.

"We live in a vile age when it is impossible to get reprints of the few dozen books that are practically essential to competent knowledge of poetry." Pound writes this in 1933. He was forever complaining (and I have been doing this, too, for the last 15 years, in my own way) that books are allowed to not only go out of print, but libraries are weeding and discarding books "of substance" at an alarming rate. When Pound is engaged here in railing against "microcephalous bureaucracy" the members of which are "sick with inferiority complex," and which infect American universities with "academic bacilli" and an "inferiority complex directed against creative activity in the arts," I feel quite uneasy: this is Pound sounding completely nuts, but I also…gotta admit…I kinda see his point. I doubt American academia was that bad in 1933, but now?4 In these fulminating passages Pound seems to be hinting that there's a conspiracy between editors and publishers to dumb down the students.

Pound and Wilson seem to think there are legions of readers and writers just like themselves. I have never perceived this in my lifetime as a reader, and I never even stuck it out in academia, but continued to read omnivorously. I think their kind of reading and intellectual interests - and they were both outsiders and not academics - to be fairly rare. This brings up the idea of the writer's perceived audience, and Ideal Readers, which I can't go into here.

In Machine Art, Pound effuses about the lag in getting Ernest Fenollosa's work before the public, and calls out one "P. Carus" as being particularly egregious in this.5 As if the public was going to begin fomenting a revolution against current human perception, the syllogism, the problematic in subject-predicate structure in Indo- European languages, or even interest rates after they got hold of Fenollosa's ideas about Chinese writing and the ideograms. While I am one who does go ga-ga over this stuff, I never believed the public at large would be the least bit interested. Oh, but it was for people like RAW (and me'n you) to Spread the Word. Nouns don't exist, things are placed in relation and are filled with action, etc: I love this stuff; at the same time every week there's some article about incoming collegiate freshman who are functionally illiterate.

Who did get excited over Pound's various enthusiasms and obsessions? Probably at least 50% of those we call "Modernist" writers. Pound's influence has been humongous, and we're all influenced by Pound at least second-hand. As Wilson thought about Pound: Ezra resolved to cause a revolution in the arts, and he succeeded.

In what ways is that World now lost?

There's an inexhaustible list of quotes from artists complaining about "the suits," and just the other day I ran across a quote from Katherine Anne Porter that could have been by Wilson.6 When William S. Burroughs writes about the relationship between heroin dealer and junky, the isomorphisms here seem troublingly apt to me. Charlie "Bird" Parker saw the people who booked gigs for him like dealers: "judges" and "robbers" who had control over his life.7 Sam Peckinpaugh and Erich von Stroheim have similar quotes about the purse-string holders in the film biz. I won't even go into Orson Welles here…Check out Vladimir Nabokov, on his dealings with Olympia Press and the notorious Maurice Girodias:

I began to curse my association with Olympia Press not in 1957, when our agreement was, according to Mr. Girodias, "weighing heavily" on my "dreams of impending fortune" in America, but as early as 1955; that is, the very first year of my dealings with Mr. Girodias. From the very start I was confronted with the peculiar aura surrounding his business transactions with me, an aura of negligence, evasiveness, procrastination, and falsity. I complained of these peculiarities in most of my letters to my agent who faithfully transmitted my complaints to him but these he never explains in his account of our ten-year-long (1955-1965) association.8

American writers seem right to complain about the Big Five New York-based conglomerates9, who are like the movie studios after Jaws and Star Wars: they only want blockbusters, and have almost entirely neglected daring literary works. But the late Slavic writer Dubravka Ugrešić asserted that, despite her high status as a literary figure, in 2017, she couldn't get published in Croatia, her home country, because she had left it for Amsterdam. In a 2017 essay, "Artists and Murderers"10 she relates how war criminals, thugs, and other PsOS were getting published, selling art, and opening galleries in Croatia. It's mordant, dark stuff and sounds utterly believable.

Finally, in a July 3rd, 1986 letter to Kurt Smith from Wilson's residence in Ireland, RAW goes into minute detail about how publishers in England, France, and Poland have interests in publishing his books there, and he winds up this line of discourse with, "I am owed money by no less than seven publishers right now, all of them over a month late." To quote David Byrne: same as it ever was.

An anecdote about editors that Wilson repeated a few times in interviews and at least once in a book was this one:

Nervous editors are always trying to guess the publisher's prejudices from minimal clues and they often guess wrong, which, of course, makes them more nervous in the future. That's probably why Gene Fowler uttered the immortal aphorism, "Every editor should have pimp as an older brother, so he'd have somebody to look up to."11

In 1977 Wilson sat down for an interview with two erudite fans, D. Scott Apel and Kevin Briggs. Early in the interview they ask RAW about his relationship with publishers, and he didn't hold back. I feel Pound lurking here, but you be the judge:

Well, by and large, I am not madly in love with publishers. Publishers are businessmen, and businessmen are really not my favorite type of human beings. James Joyce went into business briefly, and after a while he said to Italo Svevo, "You know, I think my partners are cheating me." Svevo said, "You only think they're cheating you? Joyce, you are an artist!"

RAW tells Apel and Briggs he was employed for seven years in engineering, but the rest of his life he wrote advertising, and worked in magazines and books - "the whole publishing field" - and he thinks businessmen "have no more morals than a scorpion." On with RAW on publishers:

There are two types of predators. There are predators who just go out and grab what they want and take their chances on getting caught. If they spend a little time in jail, that's all part of the game. They lose a few points. As soon as they get out they try to win again, at the same primitive level. And then there is the second type of predator, the type who has figured out that you can do all that grabbing without risking jail. There's a great novel about this, JR, by William Gaddis. It's one of my favorite books. JR keeps saying that anybody who steals is a fool; you can get as rich as you want in this country by using the laws creatively. Businessmen are people who know that. They've got the same mentality as pirates. When they think they can get away with it, they break the law as boldly as thieves.

Then RAW repeats the Gene Fowler line about editors, but replaces "editor" with "publisher." Then:

At this point, nothing a publisher does would amaze me. If a publisher came in the door and shit on the table and said, "You've got to accept that because I'm a publisher and you're a writer," I'd be awed, but I wouldn't be surprised. Nothing they could do would startle me at this point. If a publisher was caught the way Nixon was caught it wouldn't surprise me. In fact, I wonder why none of them have been caught yet. Sometimes I puzzle about things like the Clifford Irving12 case. I don't know how guilty Irving was, but certainly the whole ambience of the publishing business is to incite people to behave that way. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the publishers were ten times guiltier than Irving himself.

I guess I sound uncharitable or unforgiving…(raucous laughter), but as you go around interviewing writers, you'll hear this from all of them.13 This is what writers always talk about when they get together.14

In a wide-ranging 1983 interview, RAW was asked about non-linearity and montage in film and how literature seems to have fallen behind in the 20th century:

Well, I think it's certainly true that writing is regressive compared to other arts in our time. I'm inclined to blame the publishers. I think writers would be a lot more innovative and experimental and would catch up and become contemporary with the other arts except that it is so difficult to get anything published that's at all experimental. And so, even people who have done very experimental work, like William S. Burroughs, tend to write more conventionally as they go along because they just discover it's hard to get their experimental works into print. There is a new anthology of Burroughs' work that just came out recently which has an introduction in which the introducer says that Burroughs has stated quite frankly that it was commercial considerations that led him to cut down the amount of cutups in his books. Publishers have always been chiefly mercantile, of course, but it's getting worse as the cost of printing goes up and book production gets more expensive. They are less and less interested in anything chancy. What publishers are most interested in is a guaranteed bestseller. The further you depart from the formula, the more nervous they get and the harder it is to get published. So writers, in so far as they have any sense of survival at all, tend to become more cautious and less experimental. And it's happened to me; I have made efforts to be more conventional. Of course, it does not always work. If you have an unconventional mind, your books tend to be unconventional no matter how hard you try to be conventional. But it is hard to sell anything that's the least bit avant-garde or experimental.15

So here we have Wilson referring to publishing problems and his own unconventional mind. The idea that writing must keep pace with film seems Ezratic to me. Wilson in other places extended this to a total view of Science and Literature and the Arts: they must keep pace with each other.

Overall, this may be the main reason he remained as a hero in the marginals milieu, with his "difficult" relationship with editors and publishers as secondary. We as fans of marginally noted writers all must contend with: how come my favorite writer seems so neglected? Are we weird?16 Are other readers stupid for going for that NYT best-seller? What are we missing? At least we have the books and damn the publishing machine anyway.17

Wilson also thought about persecution and esotericism regarding publishing, in ways that Pound didn't seem to articulate much. RAW published Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits, in 1972. You'd think with this title it would sell well, but RAW thought Playboy must have issued the book on "a need-to-know basis, or something of that sort."18 He also saw his status as known accomplice of Timothy Leary as probably a publishing liability. Finally, RAW often remarked that his style of mixing fact with fiction and genre-mixing in order to make the reader think, was a problem with a lot of publishers:

Dr. Jeffrey Elliot, asks RAW about Illuminatus!: Im what sense is the book science as opposed to science fiction?

RAW: I wanted to write a book that combined several different literary genres. As a result, Illuminatus! is a combination detective story, occult thriller, political satire, and science-fiction work, with overtones of a porno novel, a dissertation on politics, and an occult fantasy. It constantly keeps changing. Whenever the reader thinks he knows where it's going, it turns into another type of novel. That was part of our problem in selling it. Publishers don't like that; they like a novel they can easily label. I'm still struggling with this problem in my present writing. My next book, Masks of the Illuminati, is something the publisher is going to have a hard time finding a label for, because it deliberately starts out as one kind of novel and turns into an entirely different type of novel. This, to me, is realism. After all, life doesn't fall into categories. People don't live their whole lives in detective stories or gothic thrillers or soap operas or science-fiction novels or Hitchcock dramas. People's lives change from day to day, from hour to hour. I've always wanted to write novels in which the reader doesn't know what kind of script he's living in. Publishers can't stand this approach. They want to put a label on a story, and I keep trying to break that restriction. This is all part of my insidious campaign to undermine the minds of readers who think they know what they're reading. I want people to realize that literature isn't always what they think it is. Then they might realize that life isn't what they think it is.19

For decades now I've thought about RAW and publishers needing a label and how it may have hurt him, and I still waffle all over the place about how accurate I think this is. He frequently told interviewers that when Dell advertised Illuminatus! as science fiction or bookstores placed it in their science fiction area, that this harmed the status and/or potential for the book(s). At the same time, he had argued that his Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy predated William Gibson's Necromancer as the first "cyberpunk" book. There he did a trilogy on his own, without pressure from the publisher, and though the framing device is different interpretations of quantum mechanics for each novel, it doesn't read as science fiction to me, much less cyberpunk. So I'm not sure about that, either. If you have an opinion, I'd like to hear it!

Part 2, on RAW's publishers, will be here soon. Stay in touch!

Go to RAWIllumination.net, scan the right hand side of the page and scroll down until you see "Illuminatus Resources" and find interviews with Dell editors Fred Feldman and David M. Harris, Bob Abel, and Jim Frenkel. Also see Jackson's interview with Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who edited The Widow's Son. Also see Jackson's edited book on Robert Shea's writings, Every Day Is A Good Day, pp.12-13 (RAW against Dell dividing Illuminatus! into a trilogy); 129 (RAW's and Shea's agent, Al Zuckerman); 334-338 (Jackson on Paul Krassner's friend Bob Abel, who helped Illuminatus! get published)

Italics mine. I'm not kidding when I assert you can collect 300 comments from Pound on just this topic: the perfidiousness of the entire industry. This even though he dealt extensively with more mainstream publishers. Those who haven't read much Pound but who know of his famous off-the-rails and revolting antisemitic stance in the 1930s through the early 1960s will be excused for assuming this constant leitmotif against publishing, academics, and editors was a concealed Jew-baiting, but I don't see it. Not much. He came at this distrust of publishers honestly: I think it was a simple dislike of anyone as "middleman," which does inform much of his economic thought, but there isn't much antisemitism toward publishers. Nothing close to his problems with bankers, about who…whew! 'Nuff said here, for now! I nabbed this quote from a 1908 letter to his parents from Greg Barnhisel's delightful, scholarly, riveting James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound, p. 21. Those interested in Pound and the 20th century in publishing are advised to check out Barnhisel's work.

Selected Prose, 1909-1965, p.54. Originally in The New Review, winter, 1931-32. This feels like Pound really gone off the deep end to me. He's batty, possibly manic-depressive, but I've never figured him out satisfactorily. He's writing this from Italy, where, RAW thought Pound so naive he convinced himself that Mussolini was the second coming of Thomas Jefferson, and Ez was going around the neighborhood feeding the stray cats.

Selected Prose, 1909-1965, pp.392-393.

Machine Art & Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian Years, Pound, ed. by Maria Luisa Ardizzone, p.110.

Writers At Work, 2nd series, ed. George Plimpton, p.156 for Porter quote. From a series of books collecting interviews with writers from the Paris Review.

Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, ed. Robert. G. Reisner, pp. 40-41

Strong Opinions, Nabokov, p.272, but see the entire chapter 5, "Lolita and Mr. Girodias," pp. 268-269. Nabokov's imputations of "haggling maneuvers" and "abstruse prevarications" rival Pound's invective on the same sort of subject. This was a book in which I realized Nabokov wasn't someone I would have wanted to try to hang out with; he seems quite unpleasant but unassailably genius as a writer. And, to be fair along the lines of Girodias, many other writers had similar takes on him.

Penguin-Random House; Harper Collins; Hachette; Simon and Schuster; Macmillan. RAW and many other West-Coast-based writers have noted the divide between New York and the big publishing houses, and their seeming antipathy to West Coast aesthetics, and it probably goes back at least to Kenneth Rexroth in the late 1940s. Wilson complained that the big mainstream publishers seemed to think they were hip but they were hopelessly behind the times, and in the 1970s still thought Marx and Darwin were the hottest topics around.

The Age of Skin, Ugrešić, pp.97-111

Sex, Drugs & Magick, Wilson, p.12, Hilaritas ed.

Irving got busted for convincing a publisher that he had a hotline to Howard Hughes for a biography about the wealthy recluse, but he was faking it. Irving also wrote a book on the art forger, Elmyr de Hory, and Orson Welles made a documentary, F For Fake (1973), about Elmyr's and Irving's fakery, but Welles's play with footage was all a fake itself, which delighted Wilson no end.

One writer I haven't heard complain is Dan Brown, whose agent was the same one RAW had: Al Zuckerman. When Brown did a book tour for Angels and Demons, writers in the audience would ask him advice on how to sell their books, and Brown often referred them to Zuckerman's book, Writing The Blockbuster Novel, with his "seven points." The irony here with regard to Wilson's lingering "cult writer" status vs. Brown's wealth…is too thick to go into here. Suffice to say that RAW's "unconventional mind" and not being able to write a bestseller seems completely on the mark for me, and that we have met the avant garde literary enemy, and it is us. (Not us-us, but everyone else, of course!)

Beyond Chaos and Beyond, ed. by D. Scott Apel, pp.15-16. (2019) Wilson and Apel put out a magazine, Trajectories, and this is mostly parts from that, although there are some transcripts.

Coincidance: A Head Test, Wilson, p.323. This interview is only found in the Hilaritas Press ed. of this book, not in the New Falcon version.

I confess that, yea, personally, I'm weird AF.

I saw a documentary on this topic once that I now cannot locate. It was called The Stone Reader, and was by weirdo filmmaker and inveterate reader of literary fiction and modernism, Mark Moskowitz, and how he loved a fat novel titled The Stones of Summer, by Dow Mossman. Why was Mossman so obscure? He's great! Etc. Hey, a lot of us have been there. I felt a kinship with Moskowitz after seeing this film; I have not read Mossman yet.

Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits, Wilson, p.12, Hilaritas ed. RAW thinks by 1972 Nixon's war on the counterculture may have stifled the reception of a book with such a title. he'd give talks and fans hadn't even heard about the book, much less seen it. Others reported it hard to find. For a discussion on Wilson and Giambattista Vico and protective and defensive esotericism in history, especially regarding their own works, see my "Notes on Wilson, Vico, Language, and Class Warfare" in TSOG: The Tsarist Occupation Government by Wilson, pp. 245-293. (2022)

Literary Voices #1, interview with Dr. Jeffrey Elliot, Borgo Press, pp.50-64; this section pp.56-57. (1980) A much shorter version of this was included in Email To The Universe, pp.213-217, New Falcon ed; 229-234 of Hilaritas ed. Elliot died in 2009 at age 61 or 62.

(graphic art work by Bobby Campbell)

The teams took an extended break after lunch, to avoid the extreme heat in the middle of the day and to save tires for the last two days of the test. That means running has been limited so far this afternoon. Pecco Bagnaia was fastest at 4pm, which would have put him 3rd fastest overall on the day. Joan Mir was second quickest, though still half a second slower than he was this morning, while Fabio di Giannantonio, again still some time off his best lap.

• Read more about 2026 Sepang MotoGP Test Day FP2 4pm Times - Bagnaia Quickest As Test Resumes After Lunch
• Log in or register to post comments

The original Switch just became Nintendo's best-selling console ever with 155.37 million units as of December 31, 2025, overtaking the DS which sold 154.02 million units from 2004-2011. It was part of a holiday surge that saw the company move 7.01 million Switch 2s (and 17.37 million through Q3 of its fiscal year), making it the "fastest-selling dedicated video platform released by Nintendo to date," the company said in its earnings report.

Despite being supplanted by the Switch 2, the Switch keeps selling decently (1.36 million units in Q3 fiscal 2026), due to its relatively cheap price. Nintendo reported last year that it was just trailing the DS in sales and would likely surpass it after Christmas. The Switch is now just 5.27 million units behind Sony's PS2, the best-selling console of all time — so Nintendo would have to keep selling it for at least a couple more years to get the record.

The Switch 2, meanwhile, has been a sales machine. With high holiday sales that exceeded expectations, Nintendo should easily reach its 19 million sales goal for fiscal 2026 ending March 31 this year. The company has already (easily) busted through its original sales forecast of 15 million consoles set earlier in 2025.

Game sales were also strong, with Mario Kart World hitting 14 million units and Donkey Kong Bananza selling 4.25 million since the Switch 2's launch. With all that, the company saw 803.32 billion yen in sales for Q3 ($5.2 billion), up 86 percent over last year but a bit less than expected, and 159.93 billion yen in profit ($1.03 billion), 20 percent higher than the same period last year.

Whether the company can continue that may depend on the strength of its upcoming game lineup. Two of those key titles are Mario Tennis Fever expected on February 12 and Pokemon Pokopia arriving in March.

Ministers' proposals to tackle 'forever chemicals' fail to match tougher stance taken in Europe, say experts

Environmental campaigners have criticised a "crushingly disappointing" UK government plan to tackle "forever chemicals", which they warn risks locking in decades of avoidable harm to people and the environment.

The government said its Pfas action plan set out a "clear framework" of "coordinated action … to understand where these chemicals are coming from, how they spread and how to reduce public and environmental exposure".