Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Thai arrest warrant issued for US academic under ban on insulting royalty
Getty Images Well-wishers celebrate the Thai king’s birthday, in Bangkok on 28 July, 2024. A Thai court has issued an arrest warrant for an American academic under Thailand’s lese-majeste law that forbids insulting the monarchy. The army filed a complaint against Paul Chambers, a lecturer at Naresuan University in central Thailand, under lese-majeste and computer…
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Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings
Mobile phone footage has emerged that appears to contradict Israel’s account of why soldiers opened fire on a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, killing 15 rescue workers. The video published by the New York Times, and said to have been filmed by a Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedic who was killed, shows…
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Trump administration fires National Security Agency chief
Bernd Debusmann BBC News Reporting fromAir Force One Getty Images The Trump administration has fired the head of both the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, the BBC’s US partner CBS has reported. The removal of General Timothy Haugh comes amid what appears to be a wider purge of top security officials at the…
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Trump is taking US-Russia relations on a rollercoaster ride
Steve Rosenberg Russia Editor Getty Images If I was writing a Russian language course for 2025, Lesson One would definitely contain the phrase for rollercoaster: Amerikanskiye gorki. It means, literally, American Hills. How appropriate. After all, with President Donald Trump now operating the ride, and Vladimir Putin pressing some of the buttons, US-Russian relations have…
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How the fall of Yoon fuelled the rise of S Korea’s conservatives
Koh Ewe and Yuna Ku BBC News Reporting fromSingapore and Seoul Getty Images A pro-Yoon fringe movement, stoked by right-wing YouTubers, has become both more energised and extreme Pained cries rang out in front of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s official residence on Friday, as judges of the Constitutional Court judges confirmed his…
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What Trump tariffs mean to Nike’s Air Jordan 1s
Annabelle Liang Business reporter Alamy The Nike Air Jordan 1 is, in some ways, the iconic US shoe. It’s a popular sneaker line by a large American brand, created four decades ago for homegrown basketball legend Michael Jordan. But although Nike sells most of its products in the US, almost all of its shoes are…
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Tariffs get warm welcome in Ohio’s industrial Trump country
Mike Wendling Reporting fromDelta, Ohio BBC/Mike Wendling On a quick drive around the small Ohio town of Delta, you can spot nearly as many Trump flags as American stars-and-stripes banners. And at the petrol station near the Ohio Turnpike, the pumps bear relics of the last administration, with slogans slamming Trump’s predecessor: “Whoever voted for…
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China and US are at each other’s throats on tariffs, and neither is backing down
Stephen McDonell BBC China correspondent Reuters Neither Donald Trump nor Xi Jinping looks like they are going to back down on tariffs soon American companies looking to sell into the huge Chinese market have just taken a big hit. A 34% price increase on all US goods entering the country will knock some out of…
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Journalist arrests fuel fears for democracy
BBC Yasin Akgul, a photojournalist for AFP, was arrested at his home It was early morning on 23 March when the police came to Yasin Akgul’s door in Istanbul – while his children were still in bed. Just hours before, the Turkish photojournalist had returned home from covering mass anti-government protests. Now he was a…
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Trump’s agenda grapples with political and economic reality
Getty Images Donald Trump, in announcing his sweeping new tariffs on US imports on Wednesday, promised that the history books would record 2 April as America’s “liberation day”. After two days of stock market turmoil, however, this may also be remembered as the week the president’s second-term agenda ran headfirst into economic – and political…
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