Author: Reporter

College endowments: Student protests of Israel-Hamas War exposes political grip of University donors

“NYU arresting all of their own faculty tonight rather than divest from Zionism basically proves the point that they are a private equity firm and not a university …” – Kareem Estefan “Divest from death” read the bubble letters written in chalk on the sidewalk on April 23 outside of The New School in New York City. The slogan articulates one of the demands of the antiwar protests on campuses which call on colleges or universities to divest their endowments from companies profiting from the Israel-Hamas war. Campaigns to pressure universities to divest for political or ethical reasons go...

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Trump downplays violent Charlottesville rally in 2017 by comparing it to campus protests over Gaza war

Donald Trump on April 25 claimed the fatal 2017 White Nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “nothing” compared to ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests. It was his latest burst of rhetoric designed to minimize a bloody and racist incident that was one of the most criticized moments of his corrupt presidency. Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the end of his criminal conspiracy and a cover-up trial involving “hush money” payments, Trump spouted accusations against federal authorities. He criticized the Biden Administration – at his criminal trial – for allowing student protesters to set up encampments as they call...

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Tammy Baldwin returns to “go everywhere” strategy to keep Senate seat against Trump-backed millionaire

Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, whose “go everywhere” 2018 campaign strategy became a model for how to win in battleground Wisconsin, knows her road to victory this year against a multimillionaire Republican supporter of former President Donald Trump goes through places like New Glarus. The bucolic village of 2,200, founded by Swiss immigrants and famous for its Spotted Cow craft beer, is a world away from the urban Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee and Madison, where Democrats like Baldwin and President Joe Biden rack up massive margins of victory. “Look, in a state like Wisconsin, a 50-50 battleground state, you don’t...

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Wartime Entrepreneurs: Ukraine ramps up development of homemade weapons to help repel Russia

Ukraine needs any edge it can get to repel Russia from its territory. One emerging bright spot is its small but fast-growing defense industry, which the government is flooding with money in hopes that a surge of homemade weapons and ammunition can help turn the tide. The effort ramped up sharply over the past year as the U.S. and Europe strained to deliver weapons and other aid to Ukraine, which is up against a much bigger Russian military backed by a thriving domestic defense industry. The Ukrainian government budgeted nearly $1.4 billion in 2024 to buy and develop weapons...

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Security Blunder: Why the Moscow concert massacre was the result of Putin’s leadership failure

Hours before gunmen carried out the bloodiest attack in two decades on Russian soil, authorities made an addition to a government register of extremist and terrorist groups: They included the international LGBTQ+ “movement.” That addition to the register followed a Russian Supreme Court court ruling last year that cracked down on gay and transgender people in the country. While the register also lists al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, an affiliate of which claimed responsibility for the concert hall attack, the inclusion of LGBTQ+ activists raised questions about how Russia’s vast security services evaluate threats to the country. The...

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Putin mocks Ukraine conference while floating latest ploy for peace talks using 2022 draft document

A draft peace agreement that Russia and Ukraine negotiated in the early days of the conflict could serve as a starting point for talks to end the fighting, the Kremlin said recently, reviving a proposal that Ukraine had rejected. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the draft document that was discussed in Istanbul in March 2022 could be “the basis for starting negotiations.” At the same time, he noted that the possible future talks would need to take into account the “new realities.” “There have been many changes since then, new entities have been included in our constitution,” Peskov...

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