Just the other day, I had to read the manual. I’d borrowed my neighbor’s hammer drill to make some holes in a masonry wall, and I didn’t know how to swap the bits. Fortunately, the drill’s carrying case came with a booklet of instructions, which I followed with great success. Many holes were thus produced. This got me thinking: I used to read the manual fairly often; now I almost never do.
My dad likes to fish, and he likes to read books about fishing. My mom is a birder; she reads about birds. There are plenty of books on both subjects, I’ve found, when browsing in a gift-giving mood. These presents don’t just prove I’m familiar with their interests. They’re a way to acknowledge that we read about our pastimes to affirm our identity: Fly-fishers are contemplative sorts who reflect on reflections; birders must cultivate stillness and attention.
Political unrest in Kenya erupted into violence Tuesday as authorities opened fire on protesters in Nairobi who oppose President William Ruto’s controversial tax bill. Hundreds of people stormed the legislature and burned part of the building. Meanwhile, inside, lawmakers voted to pass the tax measure, which will raise the cost of many everyday items to pay down government debt.
As Julian Assange returns to his native Australia, press rights advocates warn that his case could cast a long shadow over journalists’ work to investigate and expose government secrets. The WikiLeaks founder has pleaded guilty to one charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act as part of a deal with the Justice Department that lets him avoid further prison time following five years behind bars in the U.K. awaiting possible extradition to the U.S. He had been facing a possible 175 years in U.
We speak with Australian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, a prominent supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who says the publisher’s case is “a big deal” in the country that cut across political divisions. “It’s taken a really big campaign, a really big grassroots campaign by thousands of people in Australia — indeed, millions of people around the world — to bring this to the attention of politicians.
Julian Assange has landed in Australia a free man, reuniting with his family Wednesday after pleading guilty to one charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act as part of a deal with the Justice Department. The WikiLeaks publisher entered his plea on the Pacific island of Saipan, part of the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, which lets him avoid further prison time following five years behind bars in the U.K. awaiting possible extradition to the U.S.
A federal plan to promote treatment and distribute overdose reversal drugs showed promise. Communities are trying to keep it going.
Leaders of the coalition say they want to make the procedure more accessible and affordable than ever before.
Mark Lyons, a senior USDA animal health official, said federal officials are “still working closely to understand the breadth” of the bird flu outbreak in the nation’s dairy herds.
Trump’s closed-door advice represents a gamble not only for him, but for the Republicans in Congress.
Here are three takeaways from POLITICO’s discussion of these topics on Thursday.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.
Friday’s government report showed that last month’s hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March.
The easiest explanation for why Representative Jamaal Bowman lost his Democratic primary in New York today is that he alienated the Jewish voters in his district with his denunciations of Israel. That explanation is reasonable, as far as it goes. Indeed, the race was the most expensive House primary in history largely because a pro-Israel group inundated the district with TV ads attacking Bowman. But that’s not the whole story.
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The teen summer job was falling out of favor, until the funky economy of the past few years turned the trend around.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Once again, originalism’s hollow core is revealed.
It’s all catching up to Bibi Netanyahu.
The big new character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is Anxiety, which makes sense, given how much pressure was being loaded onto the film before its release. In a Time feature, Pixar’s creative head, Pete Docter, candidly admitted as much: “If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.
Julian Assange is not a simple man, for all that people wish otherwise. The WikiLeaks founder is portrayed as a transparency hero, an enemy of the United States, a master tactician, and a thin-skinned narcissist. None of those descriptions quite fits the bill. But whatever you think of him, for the first time in almost 14 years, Assange is set to be a free man.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is showing all the signs of heading for an early election, probably next spring. The leaders of coalition parties are already openly campaigning, Netanyahu’s Likud party is beginning to crack, senior military and civil-service figures are clashing openly with the prime minister, and Netanyahu remains broadly unpopular, despite overall public support for the war.
Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul has shocked constituents this month with a surprise decision to cancel New York City’s congestion program plan just weeks before it was set to start. Hochul had previously supported the plan, which would have charged drivers $15 to enter parts of Manhattan in order to fund the city’s public transportation budget.
We discuss the plea deal and release of Julian Assange with Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein, and the reaction in Assange’s home country of Australia to his release and WikiLeaks’s legacy, which he says helped open the door to whistleblowers and leakers in the era of digital journalism. Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, also discusses the state of press freedom in Israel’s war on Gaza.
We discuss the plea deal and release of Julian Assange with press freedom advocate Trevor Timm. “Thankfully, Julian Assange is finally going free today, but the press freedom implications remain to be seen,” says Timm, who explains the U.S. espionage case against Assange, which was opened under the Trump administration and continued under Biden. Timm expresses disappointment that Biden chose to continue prosecuting Assange rather than demonstrating his stated support of press freedom.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed from Belmarsh Prison in London, where he has been incarcerated for the past five years, after accepting a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. After a decade-plus of legal challenges, Assange will plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material for publishing classified documents detailing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks.
Vivek Murthy hopes the growing number of victims, both direct and indirect, will persuade Congress to do more.
Mark Lyons, a senior USDA animal health official, said federal officials are “still working closely to understand the breadth” of the bird flu outbreak in the nation’s dairy herds.
Trump’s closed-door advice represents a gamble not only for him, but for the Republicans in Congress.
Here are three takeaways from POLITICO’s discussion of these topics on Thursday.
Four ways the Supreme Court decision could serve the anti-abortion movement.
Friday’s good jobs numbers may be a boost. But boosts haven’t yet materialized into political benefits.
The president is getting more micro in his economic sales pitch as the landscape loses its luster.