Deported to Dachau during WWII, Resistance fighter Jean Lafaurie survived the hell of the concentration camp thanks to the solidarity among prisoners. At 102 years old, he continues to share his story. On France’s National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Deportation, he issues a warning in defence of democracy and freedom.Video by StéphanieTrouillard and Claire Paccalin. Keywords for this article Source link
JAKARTA, April 10 (Reuters) – Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto ordered prosecutors on Friday to file criminal charges against companies that refuse to cooperate with a task force he launched to crack down on illegal activities in the country’s forests. The task force, made up of military personnel, prosecutors and environmental regulators, has since early 2025 been seizing areas controlled by companies and individuals, ordering them to pay fines for what they describe as illegal business operations in designated forest areas. A total of 5.88 million hectares (14.5 million acres) of oil palm plantations and 10,257 hectares of mining concessions have been taken over so far, according to the deputy head of the task force, Attorney General Sanitiar Burhanuddin – nearly twice the size of Belgium. Speaking at a ceremony marking the task force’s efforts, Burhanuddin handed 7.23 trillion rupiah ($423.18 million) of fines paid by implicated companies over to the finance ministry. Prabowo praised the task force’s work and warned that anyone who refused to cooperate would be seen as going against the president himself. …
In May 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice began sending letters to state governments demanding copies of statewide voter registration lists. The request was unprecedented: It demanded not only publicly available voter data, such as names and addresses, but also sensitive information, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers. That data is considered highly sensitive because it can be used to commit identity theft, access financial or government records, and facilitate targeted harassment or intimidation, particularly if the data were mishandled or leaked. Underlying these requests is the Trump administration’s stated goal of rooting out fraudulent and illegal voting. With voter data in its hands, the DOJ seeks to identify ineligible voters and mandate state election officials to remove those voters from the rolls. States have responded in a variety of ways. Some have fully complied with the requests, some partially complied, and many outright refused to provide any voter information. For the latter states, the Trump administration has taken the fight to court and sued to get the information, claiming that federal law requires …
Councils are ignoring explicit instructions to approve planning projects from ministers – as the scale and cost of their resistance to development is revealed for the first time. It comes as tensions between councils of all political stripes are rising with ministers, who are desperate to hit their target of 1.5 million new homes in England by the end of the parliament. Politics Hub: Latest updates from Westminster In one case shared with Sky News, a council northwest of London refused a planning application for a 256-home development despite housing minister Matthew Pennycook directing councillors to approve the case 24 hours earlier. Councillors on a planning committee at Three Rivers District Council rejected the application last week, with 10 votes to refuse and one abstention, on the grounds the plan might harm the green belt, concern over flooding, and the loss of hedgerows. However, the council’s own planning officer had recommended the site be approved for development, concluding it met the government definition of “grey belt” and that while “adverse impacts would arise to the …
The Trump administration’s unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum, as the administration moves to scale up its detention footprint to fuel its campaign to arrest, detain and deport the largest number of immigrants in modern U.S. history. Flush with new cash — $85 billion in new funding, with around $45 billion specifically to expand immigration detention over four years — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving fast to lease and acquire warehouses and buildings across the United States with the aim of retrofitting them into detention spaces. ICE is also expanding contracts with local jails and private prison facilities as it builds out its sprawling detention footprint. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement worker stands outside a warehouse in Williamsport, Md., that’s being converted into an immigration detention center with plans to hold 1,500 people, on March 9. for NPR/Wesley Lapointe for NPR hide caption toggle caption for NPR/Wesley Lapointe for NPR …
At a recent meeting of California’s high school sports governing board, two seniors from Arroyo Grande High School spoke out against a transgender peer competing on their track and field team and allegedly “watching” them in the girls’ locker room. One of the Central Coast students said she is “more comfortable” changing in her car now. The other cited a Bible verse about God creating men and women separately, and accused the California Interscholastic Federation of subjecting girls to “exploitative and intrusive behavior that is disguised through transgender ideology.” “Our privacy is being compromised and our sports are being taken over,” she said. During the same meeting, Trevor Norcross, the father of 17-year-old transgender junior Lily Norcross, offered a starkly different perspective. “Bathrooms and locker rooms are the most dangerous place for trans students, and when they are at their most vulnerable,” he said. “Our daughter goes to extreme lengths to avoid them. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t.” Lily Norcross with her parents, Trevor and Hilary Norcross. (Owen Main / For The Times) Norcross said Lily’s …
Driving to St. Paul from the airport you pass under Fort Snelling, an enormous limestone structure from the early nineteenth century. In November 1862, following the bloody conclusion of the US–Dakota War, 1,700 people from the Dakota tribe were forced to march to Fort Snelling and kept in a concentration camp on the river flats below. The next month thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota—the largest mass execution in US history. Between one hundred and three hundred people died in the camp. When I was a kid, growing up in St. Paul, we didn’t learn about any of this, but we did regularly go to Fort Snelling on field trips to see historical reenactors light fake cannons. The rock candy in the general store was a big draw. Today Fort Snelling is across the highway from a new detention operation, at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, which serves as the local headquarters for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In the past St. Paul, across the river, has largely been immune to the …
It’s common knowledge that we are awash in misinformation that can have severe negative consequences for society. When people hold false beliefs about the safety of vaccines, the outcomes of elections, or the causes of climate change, it is much more difficult for them to make responsible decisions on behalf of their families and communities. It is tempting to respond to this challenge by insisting that expert scientists know best and to dismiss those who challenge the experts. Scholarship by philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science suggests that this solution is too simple. There are numerous cases where nonspecialists have drawn on “local knowledge” gleaned from their own life experiences in order to challenge erroneous or misleading claims made by expert scientists. This sometimes occurs when community members identify threats from environmental pollution that experts initially dismiss, such as in Flint, Michigan or Woburn, Massachusetts. It can also happen when patients with poorly understood diseases question how medical experts diagnose, treat, or conceptualize their illnesses. In some cases, the dismissal of nonspecialist perspectives could even …
In 2021, a crew of self-described free speech martyrs announced they were founding a university to save American higher education from the scourge of cancel culture. They called it the University of Austin, or UATX — and though it lacks accreditation, they boasted that it would be a place where controversial ideas could breathe free, and students wouldn’t live in fear of the woke mob. Pretty much from the jump, critics of UATX suspected the project was less about “freedom of speech” and more about building a right-wing echo chamber for aggrieved libertarians. It operated out of a former retail store in downtown Austin, with funding from “anti-woke” philanthropists like Palantir co-founder Joseph Lonsdale. Over the next few years, those critics would be proven correct in spectacular style. According to comprehensive reporting by Politico, in April of 2025 Lonsdale called an all-staff meeting that threw the entire project into a tailspin. Per the reporting, the billionaire told faculty and staff they must all subscribe to the “four principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics, and anti-Islamism.” …
.image-caption { display: none; } .pod-stream-buttons { display: flex; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; } .post-thumbnail { display: none; } .stream-button { flex: 1 1; margin-right: 0.5rem; } .stream-button:last-child { margin-right: 0; } .stream-button a { display: flex; } .stream-button object, .stream-button img { width: 100%; height: 100%; } .wp-remixd-voice-wrapper { display: none !important; } .pod-stream-buttons { display: flex; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; } .stream-button { flex: 1 1; margin-right: 0.5rem; } .stream-button:last-child { margin-right: 0; } .stream-button a { display: flex; } .stream-button object, .stream-button img { width: 100%; height: 100%; } There’s even an ICE Nativity. Baby Jesus in zip ties. Mary and Joseph in gas masks. Roman centurions wearing ICE vests. This December, nativity scenes are getting political. Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois sparked national attention with their ICE-themed nativity. Sean Hannity called it “woke” and a “war on Christmas.” The Daily Show covered it. But it’s just one example of clergy around the country participating in immigration activism — getting arrested outside detention centers, accompanying people to immigration hearings, taking food …
