Star trails over the lava field

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Star trails over the lava field

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新宿御苑

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Labour fends off Green party to win Holborn and St Pancras byelection

Victory by Sagal Abdi-Wali in north London seat will be a relief for Andy Burnham in high-stakes battle for the left of British politics

Labour has won the Holborn and St Pancras byelection in a high-stakes battle for the left of British politics.

The byelection, called after the former prime minister Keir Starmer resigned the seat in September, was considered a two-horse race between the Labour candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali, and the Green party leader, Zack Polanski. Abdi-Wali recieved 12,292 votes to Polanski’s 8,928.

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India’s ‘Cockroach’ party accuses government of mass detention of members ahead of weekend protest

Thousands expected to march in Delhi on Saturday, as anger mounts over controversial changes to voter lists in world’s largest democracy

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which began as a satirical movement but is now emerging as a political force among gen Z’s, says authorities have begun detaining its members en masse days before a major anti-government protest in Delhi.

Opposition parties, their student units, and the “Cockroach” youth movement have been holding almost daily demonstrations seeking the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a controversial revision of ⁠voter lists.

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Anthropic bans users from ‘needless abusive or cruel behavior’ towards Claude

A spokesperson behind the tech company’s AI chatbot has not yet specified what counts as abusive or cruel content

Anthropic has barred users from exhibiting “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its models, as the company’s leaders continue to ponder machine consciousness.

The Verge first reported the change in policy.

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Millions on alert as Hurricane Isaias set to bring dangerous storm surge

Residents in areas from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Florida urged to ‘evacuate if told to do so’

Millions of people from Louisiana to Florida were under hurricane warnings on Thursday as Hurricane Isaias heads toward the US Gulf coast, with weather officials warning of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, heavy rainfall and flooding.

Isaias intensified from a tropical storm into the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season on Wednesday night, and has prompted state of emergency declarations in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, as well as evacuation orders and school closures in several Florida counties as officials urge residents to prepare for its arrival.

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Execution TV? Pete Hegseth has taken the once ‘greatest democracy’ to a horrific new low | Paul Daley

A proposal to livestream the killing of Nidal Hasan by firing squad opens a window ever wider to the Trump administration’s complete moral vacuity

More fool me! Here I was thinking nothing that America’s Trump administration could do or say, no matter how politically and morally bankrupt, no matter how venal or violent, was capable of shocking me any longer.

Then I woke to today’s news that one of the Trump cabinet’s bigger boofheads – the uber Christian nationalist, crusader-fantasist and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth had announced that America would have a public firing squad execution of murderer Nidal Hasan.

Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

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Fokke & Sukke

F & S

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

US Bars Microsoft, Adobe, and Major IT Firms From Green Card Program

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and several other technology companies from a program that helps skilled foreign workers obtain permanent residency in the United States, accusing the companies of fraud. "Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers," U.S. Vice President JD Vance said in a news conference on Thursday, Reuters reported.

The other firms being suspended from the program include Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata, and Wipro. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling said the government would not accept any new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies. H-1B visas are designed for highly skilled positions that employers may struggle to fill with qualified U.S. workers. Tech companies are among the largest users of the program, with nearly three-quarters of approved visas going to workers from India, according to The Associated Press.

Vance also said during the news conference that the administration would investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, over allegations they're abusing a program that allows international students to come to the U.S. and were using the program to undermine wages for American workers. "We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "That is why the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans. We look forward to providing the Administration with additional information. For example, of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees."

"These were not to hire new people. The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gemeenteraad Terneuzen stemt na lange politieke strijd toch in met komst azc

Met een nipte meerderheid stemde de raad donderdagavond in met het verlenen van een vergunning voor een asielzoekerscentrum in een voormalig kantoorpand van Neckermann. Omwonenden zeggen naar de rechter te stappen.