Today's Liberal News

A Glowing Petunia Could Radicalize Your View of Plants

The gallon pot of white petunias I held on an otherwise ordinary subway train, on an otherwise ordinary Thursday in March, would have looked to anyone else like an ordinary houseplant. But I knew better. An hour before, Karen Sarkisyan, one of the plant scientists responsible for this petunia’s existence, had dropped it off at my office. He warned me that my petunia had spent a while in transit, and might not immediately put on a show. Still, I’d rushed the petunia into a windowless room.

“Unseen”: New Film Profiles a Blind, Undocumented Social Work Student, Humanizing Disabled Migrants

As presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Joe Biden scapegoat and attack immigrants on the campaign trail, stoking racist and xenophobic fears for votes, we speak to the director of a groundbreaking new film, unseen, that aims to reframe the narrative. Using experimental cinematography to promote accessibility for blind and low-vision audiences, unseen follows Pedro, who is blind and undocumented, as he works toward a degree in social work.

“Anarchy & Chaos”: U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti Who Resigned Protesting U.S. Meddling & Deportations

Haiti is being gripped by escalating violence and turmoil as armed groups battle for control in the streets. Last week, unelected Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced he would resign, after a coalition of armed groups opposing the de facto leader declared an uprising. Negotiations to establish a transitional presidential council are being led by the U.S.

Israel’s Ultimate Goal Is Ethnic Cleansing: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti on Growing Famine, Al-Shifa Attack

A new U.N.-backed report has found that famine is imminent in northern Gaza with nearly a third of Gaza’s population experiencing the highest levels of catastrophic hunger. This comes as Israel launches another major raid at Al-Shifa Hospital, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken shelter since the start of the conflict. In the south, daily bombing continues while the Israeli government threatens a full-scale ground invasion on the border city of Rafah.

“Towers of Ivory and Steel”: Jewish Scholar Says Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom

Israeli scholar Maya Wind’s new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, documents how Israeli universities directly constrain Palestinian rights by supporting and even developing the policies of occupation and apartheid used by the Israeli state. “In the West, Israeli universities are considered bastions of pluralism and democracy.

“Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism”: Palestinian Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian on Hebrew Univ. Suspension

Hebrew University in Jerusalem has suspended an internationally renowned Palestinian professor for saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a feminist scholar whose work focuses on the impacts of militarization, surveillance and violence on the lives of Palestinian women and children. She made the remarks in an interview on Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday, where she also said it was time to “abolish Zionism.

Putin’s Nuclear Theatrics

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Last spring, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would station nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. Evidence suggests that this move is imminent, but it is strategically meaningless.

Elon Musk Just Added a Wrinkle to the AI Race

Yesterday afternoon, Elon Musk fired the latest shot in his feud with OpenAI: His new AI venture, xAI, now allows anyone to download and use the computer code for its flagship software. No fees, no restrictions, just Grok, a large language model that Musk has positioned against OpenAI’s GPT-4, the model powering the most advanced version of ChatGPT.
Sharing Grok’s code is a thinly veiled provocation. Musk was one of OpenAI’s original backers.

Kanye’s Creepy Comeback

The funny thing about the concept of cancel culture is that its popularization coincided with the demise of the mechanisms through which a person might truly be exiled from public life. The mainstream is now fractured into pieces; former gatekeepers in the media and entertainment industry are constantly undermined; the internet has created anarchic new routes for public figures to reach an audience.

DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest

When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet. He would ask for it sometimes, poring over the headlines about his birth. Headlines like this: “Mother Deserts Son, Flees From Hospital,” Winston-Salem Journal, December 30, 1973.
The mother in question was 14 years old, “5 feet 6 with reddish brown hair,” and she had come to the hospital early one morning with her own parents. They gave names that all turned out to be fake.

Is the Destruction of Gaza Making Israel Any Safer?

Israeli forces are killing thousands of innocent civilians and badly damaging their country’s standing with its most important partners, including the United States. Israel has also no doubt severely degraded Hamas’s military capabilities, but the question needs to be asked: Is the country’s furious response to the Hamas invasion of October 7 making Israel any safer? At best, it’s still too soon to say—but on balance, what I see worries me.

“A Catastrophe That Cannot Be Described”: Palestinian Poet in Rafah on Daily Hardships Amid Israel’s War

We get an update from Rafah as the World Food Programme warns of worsening catastrophic hunger in the Gaza Strip and Israel continues to block most aid from entering the territory. Despite growing international criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he plans for a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah, where over 1.4 million Palestinians are penned in after repeated forced evacuations from elsewhere in Gaza since October 7. “I’m hoping from the U.S.