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☆ Elon Musk says his daughter who ditched his last name 'doesn't want to spend time with me'
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Elon Musk was "pained" by the fallout with his eldest daughter, his biographer wrote in a new book. Musk told Walter Isaacson that his daughter "doesn't want to spend time with me." Musk's daughter legally changed her name in 2022 and said she didn't want to be associated with him. AdvertisementAdvertisement"She went beyond socialism to being a full communist and thinking that anyone rich is evil," Isaacson said Musk told him. The biographer said Musk told him he'd "made many overtures," but "she doesn't want to spend time with me."

Persons: Elon Musk, Musk, Walter Isaacson, doesn't, Elon, Walter Isaacson . Isaacson, Vivian Jenna Wilson, Jenna, Isaacson, Elon's, Nevada, Justine Wilson, Ashlee Vance, didn't, Tesla, he'd, transphobic, Musk's, Grimes, Wired, Kimbal, Christiana Musk Organizations: Morning, New York Times, Financial, Reuters, Twitter, Pride, Wired Locations: Los Angeles

☆ Jill Lepore Revisits American Myths With an Eye to the Present
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Sloane Crosley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

THE DEADLINE: Essays, by Jill LeporeIn 1636, at the height of the Dutch economic hysteria known as Tulipomania, John Harvard helped found the first college of the American colonies. It’s a good thing I do not have Jill Lepore’s job. The phrase “historical framework” is insufficient when it comes to Lepore, who also provides the picture and the glass. Through these figures Lepore covers American consumerism, literary biography, journalism, intellectual property law and other cultural curiosities. But it’s her inclinations toward misfits and old narratives we have taken for granted that make “The Deadline” glow.

Persons: Jill Lepore, John Harvard, Jill Lepore’s, John Harvard’s, ”, Lepore, Jane Franklin, Lela, Robert L, Ripley, Who ”, Rachel Carson, Mary Shelley, “ Frankenstein, Fredrick Douglass, Joan Didion’s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s, “, Karl Marx, Walt Whitman Organizations: Yorker, Magna Carta, Mattel, Affordable, Lepore

☆ Opinion | Can Liberalism Save Itself?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Samuel Moyn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Yet just a few years later, Cold War liberalism emerged as a rejection of the optimism that flourished before the mid-20th century’s crises. This was a liberalism of fear, as another Cold War liberal intellectual, the Harvard professor Judith Shklar, said. In a way, fear was understandable: Liberalism had enemies. The Cold War changed all that. “We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes,” the Columbia professor and Cold War liberal Lionel Trilling explained.

Persons: Isaiah Berlin, Judith Shklar, Robert Oppenheimer, ” Frustratingly, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Bernie Sanders, Lionel Trilling Organizations: Communist, Oxford, Communists Locations: China, Eastern Europe, overreact, America, Soviet Union, French, Columbia

☆ Fact Check-Video shows attack on Niger party headquarters, not Nigerian embassy
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-18 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Footage of burning buildings is being shared online alongside the false claim it shows Nigeria’s embassy in Niger being attacked amid unrest sparked by a coup. However, the video actually shows an assault on different buildings – the headquarters of the deposed president’s party - in Niger’s capital, Niamey. However, the footage shows the headquarters of the Nigerien – not Nigerian – Party for Democracy and Socialism. The video was addressed in a separate Reuters fact-check amid claims it showed an assault on France’s embassy in Niger (here). The footage shows an attack on Niger’s ruling party headquarters, not the Nigerian embassy in the country.

Persons: president’s, Read Organizations: Nigerien –, Nigerian – Party for Democracy, Nigerien party’s, Getty, Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Reuters Locations: Niger, Niamey, Nigeria, Nigerian

☆ Fact Check-Video shows attack on Niger party headquarters, not French embassy
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Social media users have been sharing footage of burning buildings, saying it shows an attack on France’s embassy in Niger during unrest cause by a coup. Social media users commenting on the embassy attack posted phone footage of crowds picking through wreckage as flames and smoke rise around them (here) and (here). The video also matches images of the attack on the party headquarters on Getty Images (here). The social media clip shows an attack on the Niger ruling party’s headquarters, not the French embassy. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts (here).

Persons: president’s, Read Organizations: Social, Nigerien Party for Democracy, Getty, European Pressphoto Agency, Reuters Locations: Niger, Niamey

☆ Niger: US State Department orders evacuation of non-emergency personnel
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( Jennifer Hansler | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —The US State Department on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family members from Niger following last week’s military takeover. Subsequent events have severely limited flight options,” the State Department said in an updated travel advisory. “We’re working really, really hard to see if we can turn this around,” a senior State Department official said Monday. On Tuesday, however, the US Embassy in Niger asked Americans who are in the country and wish to leave to register with the US State Department. The State Department created a similar form in the midst of deadly violence in Sudan, when scores of Americans were in need of assistance to depart the country.

Persons: Mohamed Bazoum, “, Matt Miller, ”, ” Miller, Kathleen FitzGibbon, Miller Organizations: CNN, US State Department, Wednesday, “, State Department, Department, Embassy, Nigerien, Nigerien Party for Democracy and, Getty, CNN Wednesday, The State Department Locations: Niger, Embassy Niamey, ”, U.S, Niamey, AFP, West, Sahel, Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, United States, Nigerien, Sudan, France, Italy

It has yet to disburse a $131.5 million loan to Niger that was approved on July 5, it added. The interior minister, transport minister, and a deputy had already been detained, it added. The arrests confirm the "repressive and dictatorial" nature of the coup leaders, the party said in a statement, calling on citizens to come together to protect democracy. The arrests were announced a day after Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby arrived in Niger to try to mediate between the coup leaders and the ousted government. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, last week welcomed the coup in Niger, and said his forces were available to restore order.

Persons: Niger's, Mohamed Bazoum, Mahamane Sani Mahamadou, Issoufou Mahamadou, Mahamat Idriss Deby, Deby, Bazoum, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, Abdourahamane Tiani, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russia's Wagner, Antonio Tajani, Boureima Balima, Abdel, Kader Mazou, Anait Miridzhanian, Bate Felix, Nellie Peyton, Sofia Christensen, Alexander Winning, Bernadette Baum, Andrew Heavens, Nick Macfie Organizations: International Monetary Fund, IMF, CFA, West, African Union, European Union, Islamic, Junta, Nigerien Party for Democracy and, Chadian, ECOWAS, EU, REUTERS, Twitter, French Foreign Ministry, Paris, White, Thomson Locations: NIAMEY, Niger, West, Central Africa, United States, France, Islamic State, al Qaeda, EU, U.S, Nigerien, Niamey, Mali, Burkina Faso, Russia, Niger's

☆ West African leaders meet over Niger coup, junta warns against intervention
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-30 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Niger's military leaders warned against any armed intervention in the country as West African leaders are set to gather in Nigeria's capital on Sunday for an emergency summit to decide on further actions to pressure the army to restore constitutional order. Heads of state of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union could suspend Niger from its institutions, cut off the country from the regional central bank and financial market, and close borders. Niger's eastern neighbor Chad, a non-member of both regional organizations, has been invited to the ECOWAS summit, a statement from the Chadian president's office said on Saturday. The West African leaders could also for the first time, consider a military intervention to restore President Mohamed Bazoum who was ousted when General Abdourahamane Tiani was declared the new head of state on Friday. Ahead of the Sunday summit, the military leaders in Niger on Saturday night, warned in a statement read on Niger national television on Saturday night against any military intervention.

Persons: Mohamed Bazoum, General Abdourahamane Tiani, Amadou Abdramane, Bazoum Organizations: Nigerien, Nigerien Party for Democracy and, West African States, ECOWAS, West African Economic, Monetary Union, Chadian, World Bank, West, Niger, European Union, African Union Locations: Niamey, Niger, Chad, . Niger, France, United States, West, Central

☆ Milan Kundera dies, reclusive literary giant and author of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Ivana Kottasová | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

“Milan Kundera, a Czech-French author who is among the world’s most translated authors, died on July 11, 2023 in his Paris apartment,” the library, a state-funded research organization, said in a statement. The author of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” Kundera was known for his witty, tragicomic tales, which were often intertwined with deep philosophical debates and satirical portrayals of life under communist oppression. Exile in ParisHe spent the rest of his life in exile in Paris, becoming a French citizen in 1981. While his Czech citizenship was restored in 2019, he was by then a French author whose home was in France. Kundera, having spent more than two decades living in seclusion and declining to do interviews, took the unusual step of speaking up.

Persons: Milan Kundera, “ Milan Kundera, ” Kundera, Kundera, ”, “, Daniel Day, Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Respekt, Vaclav Havel Organizations: CNN, Moravian, Communist Party, Czech, Czech Institute Locations: Czech, Paris, Brno, French, Czechoslovakia, Prague, Soviet, France

☆ Opinion | No, ‘Socialism’ Isn’t Making Americans Lazy
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Paul Krugman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, had some negative things to say about his fellow Americans in an interview last December. “Socialism,” he opined, has destroyed the work ethic: “Nobody works. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid.’”You’re naïve if you think his take is exceptional. But everyone else should know that over the past year we have, in effect, conducted a huge test of the proposition that Americans have become lazy. And the robustness of the American work ethic has huge implications for policy.

Persons: Bernie Marcus, ”, —, I’m, we’ve, they’re Organizations: Home Locations: America

☆ China offers closer military cooperation with Vietnam
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BEIJING, June 27 (Reuters) - China is willing to work with Vietnam to strengthen high-level communication and cooperation between their militaries, Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu said on Tuesday as he met his Vietnamese counterpart. Li told Phan that relations between their militaries had developed well, adding that China's military was willing to push relations to a new level. The U.S. navy visit comes amid tension between China and the United States in the South China Sea, most of which China claims, as the two powers jostle for influence in the energy-rich region. Li, appointed defence minister in March, is under U.S. sanctions over his role in a 2017 weapons purchase from Russia's largest arms exporter. As tensions simmer in the South China Sea, where several countries have overlapping territorial claims and also hold military exercises in its waters, any thaw in Sino-U.S. military relations is being closely watched.

Persons: Li Shangfu, Li, Phan Van Giang, Phan, Ronald Reagan, Lloyd Austin, Austin, Nancy Pelosi, Bernard Orr, Kim Coghill, Robert Birsel Organizations: Chinese Defence, U.S, aircraft, U.S . Defence, Beijing, Thomson Locations: BEIJING, China, Vietnam, Beijing, Asia, Pacific, Danang, U.S, United States, South China, Singapore, Taiwan

☆ Kim Jong Un orders North Koreans to stop killing themselves after number of suicides skyrocketed
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Joshua Zitser | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Kim Jong Un banned suicide, calling it an "act of treason against socialism," per Radio Free Asia. The number of suicides in North Korea is believed to be skyrocketing, it said. Kim ordered local authorities to take action to prevent people from killing themselves, per the report. Data was provided on the number of suicides, which included examples of entire families ending their lives, the official said, per Radio Free Asia. In the neighboring province of Ryanggang, another official told Radio Free Asia that suicide was impacting the community more than starvation, while mentioning a similar meeting.

Persons: Kim Jong Un, Kim, —, Kim Jong Organizations: Free Asia, Service, Radio Free Asia, South Korean National Intelligence Service, Radio Free, North Hamgyong, Free, World Health Organization Locations: North Korea, Radio Free Asia, North Korean, North, Ryanggang

☆ Christian Petzold May Be the Best German Filmmaker You’ve Never Heard Of
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( A.J. Goldmann | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Afire” was not the film that Mr. Petzold set out to make. After presenting his 2020 film “Undine” in Paris, Mr. Petzold and Paula Beer, the film’s lead (she also stars in “Afire”) came down with Covid-19. While convalescing in Berlin, he binge-watched films by the French New Wave director Éric Rohmer and read stories by Anton Chekhov. In that first pandemic spring, Mr. Petzold’s thoughts turned to summer and to summer films, a genre that, according to him, has not properly existed in Germany since “People on Sunday” (1930). “And then I thought about the aftermath, National Socialism, which destroyed everything: the German summers, the German youth, the German bodies, the poetry.

Persons: ”, Petzold, Georges Simenon’s, Paula Beer, “, Mr, Éric Rohmer, Anton Chekhov, Rohmer’s, Pauline Organizations: French New, “ Locations: Paris, Berlin, Germany, Wannsee, Weimar

☆ Opinion | What Americans Don’t Understand About China
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Peter Coy | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It sometimes comes as a surprise to Europeans and Americans that Chinese people who have seen and enjoyed the best of the West nevertheless prefer China. Jin doesn’t ignore China’s faults and failings in “The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism,” which was published on Tuesday. But she tells a nuanced story that deserves attention at a time of extreme tension between China and the United States. Consider this, for example: The United States is a democracy, and China isn’t, of course. Similarly, 93 percent of Chinese participants valued security over freedom; only 28 percent of Americans did so.

☆ Bernie Sanders doubled his income last year by writing a best-selling book that condemns capitalism
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote a book called "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism." Per new disclosures, he made $170,000 in book royalties in 2022, nearly as much as his $174,000 salary. Coupled with another $170,000 royalties payment from publisher Penguin Random House in 2020, Sanders has so far made $340,000 from the book. Sanders, a two-time runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination and a proponent of Democratic Socialism, has long drawn scrutiny for the wealth he's managed to amass while in office. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a fellow progressive and 2020 presidential candidate, made even more than Sanders in book royalties in 2022, according to her own recently-filed financial disclosures.

☆ Opinion | Even China Isn’t Convinced It Can Replace the U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Jessica Chen Weiss | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Assessments of China based on cherry-picked phrases from party propaganda overlook the frequent gap between rhetoric and reality. Leading Chinese intellectuals openly acknowledge the difficulty of reconciling what China says with what it does. “Even we don’t believe much of what we say,” the Chinese economist Yao Yang, who is known for his pragmatic views, has said. But it is presently far from clear that it can — or even seeks to — replace the United States as the world’s dominant power. apparently see the United States as trying to keep China perpetually subordinate and vulnerable, opposing whatever China does or advocates in an international system that Beijing believes favors the United States and developed democracies.

☆ Opinion: Why Britain is so weirded out by pledging allegiance to Charles
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Opinion Laura Beers | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

In a break with tradition, the public will be invited to pledge allegiance to King Charles III during the coronation ceremony on Saturday May 6. While many Brits I’ve spoken to are simply indifferent to the proposed pledge, there has also been an unprecedent degree of public vitriol over the scheme. Yet, objections to the proposed pledge are as much about its content as its form. The proposed coronation pledge, in contrast, invites Britons to pledge their loyalty to the King, and to his “heirs and successors” – a positively undemocratic pronouncement. That complexity cannot simply be smoothed away by inviting people to pledge allegiance to the crown.

☆ Hakeem Jeffries is enjoying an early honeymoon leading House Democrats. But one day, he'll have to make 'hard commitments.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

House Democrats say Hakeem Jeffries is a better listener and is more consensus-oriented than Pelosi. There's one big reason for it: House Democrats can't pass any of their own bills right now. Pelosi and Jeffries on the House floor after she announced she would step down from party leadership on November 17, 2022. 'He gets it'Jeffries, 52, has enjoyed a rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic caucus. "There were always very different views within the Democratic caucus on people who voted their district," said Slotkin.

☆ A Cuba Without May Day? Here’s What Happened.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Emiliano Rodríguez Mega | Ed Augustin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The NewsSevere fuel shortages have forced the Cuban authorities to cancel the widely celebrated International Workers’ Day parade, which had been set for Monday. But Havana’s Revolution Square, which features a giant statue of the island’s national hero, José Martí, will look nothing like that this May Day. In recent weeks, Cuba has struggled with fuel shortages across the island caused by supplier nations not delivering, according to its president. Cuba usually consumes between 500 and 600 tons of fuel daily, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, said earlier this month. Now, he said, the island has less than 400 tons a day.

☆ Opinion | In Defense of Nostalgia
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The Columbia University professor Mark Lilla, a perspicacious liberal critic of the contemporary right and left, has an essay in the latest issue of Liberties Journal analyzing the appeal and perils of nostalgia. Lilla illustrates this peril with a long discussion of the role that nostalgia and imagined pasts played in the rise and shape and savagery of National Socialism in Germany. The fascists were heirs to Augustan Rome not because of an affinity between their worldviews, but because Augustan Rome had a lot of would-be heirs. And it had all those heirs and imitators because the phenomenon Lilla describes, the redirection of nostalgia for past greatness toward a vision of the future, is an essential part of human civilization-building. Or alternatively, nostalgic rediscoveries are often necessary to humanize and tame the excesses of progress, to maintain continuities that might otherwise be shattered by social or technological shifts.

BERLIN, April 26 (Reuters) - Germany's domestic spy agency on Wednesday classified the youth organisation of far-right party the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist entity that threatens democracy, as authorities seek to combat a widespread rise in extremism. Germany's spy agency on Wednesday classified two other organisations, the Institute for State Policy and "One Percent", as extremist entities pursuing aims against the constitution. The spy agency said that the Young Alternatives wanted a society that was as ethnoculturally homogeneous as possible, designated migrants of non-European origins as fundamentally impossible to integrate and warned of the destruction of "organically grown European peoples". It is now Germany's most successful far-right party since World War Two and is currently polling just a few percentage points behind the Greens and the ruling Social Democrats (SPD). "We have seen that the whole discussion about extreme right tendencies has not hurt the AfD," said Guellner.

☆ George Santos insists he's donating his congressional salary, but he won't say where it's going: 'I owe you no explanation'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Bryan Metzger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Rep. George Santos has pledged several times to donate his entire congressional salary. "I owe you no explanation to what I do with my salary," he told Insider at the Capitol on Thursday. Two weeks ago, spokeswoman Naysa Woomer told Insider that "updates will be available at a later time," declining to provide further details. Pointing out that he's not legally required to disclose his salary donation details, Santos said that he still planned to make a salary donation announcement, but without any details. In May 2021, he again wrote on Twitter that he would "not accept a congressional salary at all."

☆ Opinion | Why Is Democracy Under Such Stress Now?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Thomas B. Edsall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

From Turkey to Hungary, from India to the United States, authoritarian leaders have gained power under the protective cloak of free elections. Instead, they have doubled down on even more extreme and broadly unpopular leaders and policies, from Trump to abortion and guns. As a minority seeking to exercise control of government, it is actually necessary that the Trumpist G.O.P. If enough voters, Goldstone wrote,are deeply anxious or frightened of some real or imagined threat (e.g. If the same political party controls the House, Senate, judiciary and presidency, and disregards the principles of democracy and independence of officials, then sadly none of the institutions of democracy will prevent arbitrary and autocratic government.

☆ North Korea celebrates building 10,000 modern homes in Pyongyang
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SEOUL, April 17 (Reuters) - North Korea held a ceremony on Sunday to celebrate the completion of 10,000 new modern homes in the newly built Hwasong District in Pyongyang, state media KCNA reported. The milestone comes two months after Kim broke ground in February on another housing project that has been described as "another luxurious street of socialism full of the people's happiness" by KCNA. In 2021, North Korea announced plans to build 50,000 new apartments in the capital over the course of five years. Since then, North Korea said it has moved forward with a series of construction projects, some of which are still ongoing amid foreign suspicion of food shortages. Reporting by Hyunsu Yim; Editing by Sandra MalerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Trump dismisses criticisms about Biden's age, saying when people 'do the age thing' they're coming after him as well
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Former President Trump said anything "wrong" with President Joe Biden has nothing to do with age. Whether you like him or not, he's 100% sharp," Trump said of his fellow 2016 presidential candidate, adding "so it's not an age thing." Trump also levied criticisms at President Joe Biden, saying he could not see Biden running for president in 2024 — but made clear that he did not think what was "wrong" with Biden had anything to do with him being 80 years old. "I think they do the age thing because I'm 4-5 years behind. In October, Biden addressed the concerns, saying they were "legitimate" but said that voters should judge him not by his age, but by his health.

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