Today's Liberal News

Forced Entry: NSO Group Spies Secretly Seized Control of Apple Devices by Exploiting Flaw in Code

Apple has released an emergency software update to fix a security flaw in its iPhones and other products researchers found was being exploited by the Israeli-based NSO Group to infect the devices with its Pegasus spyware. The security exploit exposes “widespread abuse that we have associated with NSO Group and other companies like it,” says Ronald Deibert, director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which discovered the security flaw.

News Roundup: Insurrection echoes; public faith in Supreme Court is tanking

In the news today: A new pro-insurrectionist rally is planned for this Saturday, but it’s likely to be a bust. That doesn’t mean that the danger of domestic terrorism is diminishing, however. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies are launching new attacks on a top military official after a new book disclosed steps the military took to help ensure Trump couldn’t launch a rogue nuclear attack or start a new world war as he spiraled into post-election delusion.

Newsmax host freaks out after veteran points out Donald Trump was ‘fairly weak’ on Afghanistan

Joe Saboe is a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran. He started Team America by chance. The group has been described as “an impromptu network of veterans and citizen volunteers who came together to execute an ad hoc mission to get American citizens and Afghan allies safely out of Kabul before the American airlift ends.” With around 200 volunteers, Team America is one of many groups trying to coordinate and evacuate Afghan allies.

Disgraced Republican Speaker Hastert cuts settlement deal with one of the men he abused as a child

Disgraced former Republican Speaker of the House and convicted child molester Dennis Hastert has reportedly settled one of his ongoing legal issues surrounding his abuse of teenagers during his time as a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, Illinois. The Associated Press reports that a “tentative out-of-court settlement” was reached between Hastert and one of the men he abused as a child regarding hush money Hastert had promised to pay back in 2010.

It’s no wonder police think it’s okay to joke about Black men dying: Courts keep protecting cops

In yet another example of police callousness and insensitivity, a Florida deputy has been fired after not only telling an inmate he looks like George Floyd, but asking him to say, “I can’t breathe,” words the Black father repeatedly told Minneapolis police before he was murdered. Deputy First Class Rodney Payne’s termination was unearthed on Wednesday when an internal affairs report was released to the Fort Myers News-Press.

It Has Come to Subscription Tacos

I like to think of America’s fast-food chains as a bunch of dysfunctional family members. McDonald’s is the golden boy, the kid who’s good at everything and won’t shut up about it. Burger King is the jealous younger brother. KFC is perhaps the cousin who still wears cargo shorts. And then, there’s Taco Bell: fast food’s problem child.The purveyor of fluorescent nacho cheese is just plain weird.

Sorry, a Coronavirus Infection Might Not Be Enough to Protect You

Immune cells can learn the vagaries of a particular infectious disease in two main ways. The first is bona fide infection, and it’s a lot like being schooled in a war zone, where any lesson in protection might come at a terrible cost. Vaccines, by contrast, safely introduce immune cells to only the harmless mimic of a microbe, the immunological equivalent of training guards to recognize invaders before they ever show their face.

El Salvador Becomes First Nation to Make Bitcoin Legal Tender Amid Growing Authoritarianism

Thousands in El Salvador took to the streets Wednesday to protest President Nayib Bukele’s growing consolidation of power and a new law making El Salvador the world’s first country to recognize the highly volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin as legal tender. Protesters in El Salvador are also criticizing a recent court ruling that paves the way for Bukele to run for reelection in 2024.

As Wealthy Nations Debate Giving Booster Vaccine Shots, Calls Grow for Global Vaccine Equity

As the debate over booster vaccine shots heats up in the United States, global health leaders have issued an urgent call for global vaccine equity. The WHO reports vaccination rates on the African continent fall far below its target for 70% of the population of all countries to be vaccinated by mid-2022. “The science is not completely behind the need for booster shots yet,” says Zane Dangor, special adviser to the foreign minister of South Africa, who has called on the U.S.

The Other Afghan Women: Rural Areas Hope Taliban Rule Will End Decades of U.S. & Warlord Violence

Violence in Afghanistan’s countryside has reportedly dropped after the Taliban takeover and the withdrawal of U.S. troops, but the country continues to face an ongoing humanitarian and economic crisis, with millions of children at risk of starvation. Joining us from Kabul, New Yorker reporter Anand Gopal says he was shocked by the “sheer level of violence” Afghan women outside the cities have experienced in the last two decades of war.

The Atlantic Devotes Chapter 3 of ‘Inheritance’ Project to ‘What the Body Holds’

Today The Atlantic is publishing a collection of stories, poetry, and photography that serves as a recognition, a celebration, and a reclamation of the Black body. “What the Body Holds” is the third chapter of “Inheritance,” The Atlantic’s ongoing reporting project to fill the blank pages of Black history: to piece together, through reporting and data, the crucial events and conversations that have been intentionally left out of America’s story.

Joe Biden’s New World Order

A new world is beginning to take shape, even if it remains disguised in the clothes of the old.The United States, Britain, and Australia have announced what is in effect a new “Anglo” military alliance. The basics are these: In 2016, Australia struck a deal with France to buy a fleet of diesel-powered submarines, rejecting an Anglo-American alternative for nuclear-powered vessels.