Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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French jails have come under attack. Are violent drug gangs to blame?
Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris Reuters Cars have been torched in a series of attacks on French jails since Sunday night Officially, all lines of enquiry are still open into a wave of arson and gun attacks at French prisons. That means police haven’t ruled out the extremist left, or a foreign power such as…
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Somali-US airstrike in battle with al-Shabab
The US and Somalia have carried out an airstrike against Islamist militants during a battle for control of a strategic central town, the government says. The “well-coordinated” strike on Adan Yabaal, north of the capital Mogadishu, came hours after al-Shabab raided the town which is used as a key launchpad for military operations. Among the…
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Ex-Russian general jailed for seven years over bribes
A former top Russian general has been jailed for seven years after being accused of taking bribes. Lt Gen Vadim Shamarin was arrested last year during a crackdown on corruption in the defence ministry launched by the Kremlin, and was accused of taking “a particularly large bribe” from a telecommunications company. Russia’s Investigative Committee said…
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Fyre Festival 2 location and dates uncertain, US media reports
The scheduled dates and location of Fyre Festival 2 have been thrown into doubt, according to US media reports. The reboot of the 2017 Fyre Festival, which made international headlines, sparked a hit Netflix documentary and resulted in organiser Billy McFarland going to jail for fraud, was due to take place in Mexico from 30…
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Deported Salvadoran will never live back in US, says White House
Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu BBC News, Washington Watch: White House says man mistakenly deported to El Salvador will ‘never’ live in US again A man who officials have acknowledged was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador “will never live” in the US again, the White House has said. Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García was…
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Could faraway planet K2-18b be home to life?
Scientists have found new, but tentative, evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life. Researchers studying planet K2-18b’s atmosphere have detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms. BBC News science correspondent Pallab Ghosh takes a look at the evidence. Source link
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Aboard the ‘silver train’, China’s retirees do their bit to offset Trump’s tariffs
Stephen McDonell China correspondent BBC/Benjamin Begley The ‘silver trains’ initiative aims to get retirees to visit remote parts of China and boost the local economy Beijing insists it will stand firm in the face of Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. It has been trying to reassure everyone that the country is strong and the…
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Tracing weapons flows from the US
Jacqui Wakefield, Christopher Giles and Joshua Cheetham Global Disinformation Unit, BBC World Service BBC The assault rifles and pistols arrived in Haiti stashed in two cardboard boxes, nestled among packages of food and clothes, on a cargo ship stacked with rust-red shipping containers. They had come from the US, which one expert describes as a…
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Trump administration threatens Harvard with foreign student ban
Getty Images Harvard President Alan Garber has flatly rejected the White House’s sweeping list of demands The US government has threatened to ban Harvard University from enrolling foreign students, after the institution said it would not bow to demands from Donald Trump’s administration. The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make…
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US to hold talks in Paris with Europeans
Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and top diplomat Marco Rubio will hold talks with European counterparts in Paris today to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine. The talks – which UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy will also attend – form the highest level of transatlantic engagement about the war since February. In…
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