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In recent social media and other online posts the student activists claim to have won concessions from UR to begin the process to academically divest from Israel. Such action might address things like study abroad or research partnerships. However, in a statement Thursday, a university spokesperson disputed those claims, writing:

“University of Rochester leaders need to provide clarification on the details of a meeting yesterday between student protesters and University administrators regarding protester demands. The students were demanding (1) a cease-fire call and (2) divestment from Israeli institutions. University administrators in fact made no commitment to either demand, but in particular made no commitment regarding a University divestment from any academic programs or ties with Israel, as is being inaccurately reported on some social media channels. University administrators made clear that neither demand was on the table. There has not and will not be any commitments about future academic divestment of University programs in Israel.”

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Refugee charities are poised to support individual asylum seekers chosen to take part in the first flight and to challenge their deportation in the courts.

The bill restricts asylum seekers’ abilities to challenge the policy as a whole, or to challenge the notion that Rwanda is safe, but there may be room for a legal challenge based on their own personal circumstances - such as a history of trafficking, or being LGBTQ+.

After being notified of their removal to Rwanda, an asylum seeker would have seven days to seek to appeal their deportation. A proportion of these appeals will go to the upper immigration tribunal, which then must determine each case within 22 days.

The government has recruited a pool of judges to deal with these appeals so that flights can get off the ground in the summer.

These individual challenges could in theory be taken all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), where judges could then issue a ruling that the deportation of that person would be unlawful.

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anti-doxing resources for activists

via Twitter (please rt if you are active there!)

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Saudi Arabia is scheming with Russia to reduce oil production to drive up gas prices before the 2024 election.

They both want Traitor Trump back in office to do their bidding. Putin has undue influence over Trump for reasons yet unknown. Saudi Arabia spends very large sums on Trump properties and businesses and has "invested" billions with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Even more reasons for the one man crime spree to never get anywhere near the Office of the President of the United States of America ever again!

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Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a rule meant to speed up federal permits for major transmission lines, part of a broader push to expand America’s electric grids.

Administration officials are increasingly worried that their plans to fight climate change could falter unless the nation can quickly add vast amounts of grid capacity to handle more wind and solar power and to better tolerate extreme weather. The pace of construction for high-voltage power lines has sharply slowed since 2013, and building new lines can take a decade or more because of permitting delays and local opposition.

The Energy Department is trying to use the limited tools at its disposal to pour roughly $20 billion into grid upgrades and to streamline approvals for new lines. But experts say a rapid, large-scale grid expansion may ultimately depend on Congress.

Under the rule announced on Thursday, the Energy Department would take over as the lead agency in charge of federal environmental reviews for certain interstate power lines and would aim to issue necessary permits within two years. Currently, the federal approval process can take four years or more and often involves multiple agencies each conducting their own separate reviews.

“We need to build new transmission projects more quickly, as everybody knows,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said. The new reforms are “a huge improvement from the status quo, where developers routinely have to navigate several independent permitting processes throughout the federal government.”

The permitting changes would only affect lines that require federal review, like those that cross federally owned land. Such projects made up 26 percent of all transmission line miles added between 2010 and 2020. To qualify, developers would need to create a plan to engage with the public much earlier in the process.

“Federal permitting isn’t the only thing holding back transmission, but if they can cut times down by even a year, and if we have fewer projects that take a decade or more, that’s a big win,” said Megan Gibson, the chief counsel at the Niskanen Center, a research organization that recently conducted two studies on federal transmission permitting.

The rule would not affect state environmental reviews, which can sometimes be an even bigger hurdle to transmission developers who are facing complaints and lawsuits over spoiled views and damage to ecosystems.

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🖕

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When you’re looking to an investment advisor to help roll over your 401(k), you might assume the one you choose has your best interests in mind: They’ll help minimize fees and pick the investments best suited for your age, risk tolerance, and financial goals. Because after all, it’s their job.

But until Tuesday, that actually wasn’t a guarantee. Instead, some were able to advise clients to invest in financial products that lined the advisor’s own pockets, rather than what would likely lead to the best returns for clients. Now, though, the Biden administration is requiring more financial professionals to adhere to a higher standard when providing financial advice, a move experts are calling a win for the average retirement saver. In fact, it could help workers keep as much as $5 billion of their own money each year related to one insurance product alone, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.

Called the fiduciary standard, the rule means investment professionals have to act in their client’s best interests rather than their own when advising them on their individual retirement accounts, 401(k)s, and other similar products. It’s meant to prevent conflicts of interest by deterring financial advisors and insurance agents and brokers from promoting products purely because they stand to collect a commission from them.

401(k) plan administrators at companies must already adhere to this standard, and financial advisors typically must as well when recommending certain securities, like mutual funds. The new rule, introduced by the Department of Labor last fall, expands to include advisors and brokers who give one-time advice to savers rolling those employer-sponsored assets into an IRA or annuity.

That’s a big deal given Americans rolled over almost $800 billion from 401(k)s and other employer plans into IRAs in 2022, the White House said when it introduced the rule in October 2023. A rollover typically happens when workers move jobs, retire, or want to combine multiple accounts.

Under the guidance, financial professionals making retirement recommendations must “establish, maintain, and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to … identify and at a minimum disclose, or eliminate, all conflicts of interest associated with such recommendations.”

“These rules are already many of the same standards set for CFP professionals,” says Andrew Fincher, a Virginia-based certified financial planner. “This is great that practice standards will now encompass a wider net to include others within the financial professional industry.”

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Since the start of the full-scale war, Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine have killed at least 107 people and seriously injured at least 100 others, according to a new report from the independent news outlet Verstka.

Using media reports and court records, journalists calculated that Russian soldiers committed 84 violent offenses. Fifty-five of these crimes (resulting in a total of 76 deaths) were prosecuted as murder, while 18 of them (for a total of 18 deaths) were prosecuted as acts causing grievous bodily harm. Soldiers’ traffic violations led to another 11 deaths, and soldiers inducing minors to consume drugs caused two children’s deaths.

Among the 100 people who were injured, 70 were victims of soldiers charged with “inflicting life-threatening grievous bodily harm,” 16 were targeted by murder attempts, 10 were injured in car accidents, three were hurt by soldiers’ “excessive self-defense,” and one person suffered severe injuries due to a soldier’s “negligence.”

Most (91) of the soldiers responsible for these crimes were recruited from prison and granted amnesty for joining the war. Another 84 were volunteer contract soldiers or regular servicemen. Out of the 45 amnestied soldiers who killed people after returning from Ukraine, 24 were repeat offenders before going to war.

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Donald Trump is currently leading the 2024 presidential race, in no small part because voters trust him to combat inflation. This is a bit strange since Trump has for months now been advertising plans to drastically increase consumer prices.

Over the weekend, an NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden nationally by a 46 to 44 percent margin. Yet on the question of which candidate would better handle inflation and the cost of living, the Republican led the Democrat by a whopping 22 points.

Trump’s landslide lead on price management is significant, since inflation was the poll’s single most commonly cited “critical issue” facing the United States.

Unfortunately, Trump does not actually have a bulletproof plan for making Big Macs cheap again. To the contrary, the Republican and his advisers have developed an economic agenda that amounts to a recipe for turbocharging inflation.

The claim that Trump’s policies would increase prices does not rest on a debatable interpretation of their indirect effects. Rather, some of the president’s proposals would directly increase American consumers’ costs by design. Here is a quick primer on the likely GOP nominee’s four-point plan for making your life less affordable:

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western feminists utterly abandoning iranian women, who have been protesting for their rights for a long ass time and who deal with some of the worst shit women anywhere will ever face, is so par for the course i don’t know why i’m even surprised anymore

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This is just one of many ways that Republican oligarchs influence elections with their unlimited dark money. The Koch and Walton families will each spend about a billion dollars supporting every Republican candidate for office in a presidential election year. The Republicans have been doing this since the ‘60s with their political foundations. Democrats have nothing even close to this level of organization or funding.

There are dozens of other Republican oligarch mega-donors doing the same; Mercer, Crow, DeVos, Prince, Thiel, Leo, Mellon, Stephens, Navarro, Buckley, Brodie, Murdoch…all donating millions each and these are just some of the better known right-wingers. Many siphon money through right-wing political foundations to cover their tracks.

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A bill that would strengthen oversight of Tennessee’s juvenile detention centers has failed, despite a concerted push for reform after multiple county-run facilities were found to be locking children alone in cells.

The bill was introduced in the state legislature in January after a WPLN and ProPublica investigation last year reported that seclusion was used as punishment for minor rule infractions like laughing during meals or talking during class. One facility, the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville, was particularly reliant on seclusion, in violation of state laws and standards that banned the practice as a form of discipline.

“If we can’t get behind independent oversight and transparency as a good thing in the juvenile justice system, there will never be meaningful accountability and our system can’t change for the better,” Zoe Jamail of Disability Rights Tennessee said. “So it is frustrating and disappointing.”

The oversight bill aimed to give an independent agency the power to require changes at facilities that violate state standards, effectively forcing Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services to act.

Currently, the ombudsman at that agency, the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, responds to family complaints about DCS but doesn’t have enforcement power. Under the bill, if a facility didn’t follow those recommendations, the department would have been required to suspend the site’s license or stop placing kids there until the violations are fixed.

It was sponsored by two prominent Republicans and one Democrat, and a version of the legislation had the department’s backing. It wouldn’t have cost the state any money, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

Usually in Tennessee, that would be a recipe for a bill to become a law. But the legislation was sent to what is called “summer study,” a maneuver that allows lawmakers to continue working on the legislation but is typically used to effectively kill a bill. Its sponsors and child welfare advocates are baffled as to why.

“I can’t think of a reason for not wanting oversight unless there’s something to hide,” Jamail said.

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for several weeks now this tweet has been causing wars on twitter

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Burkina Faso’s military summarily executed 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in a single day in late February, according to an investigation into one of the worst abuses by the country’s armed forces for years. The mass killings have been linked to a widening military campaign to tackle jihadist violence and happened weeks after Russian troops landed in the west African country to help improve security. The massacre may amount to crimes against humanity, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which urged Burkinabè authorities to launch an urgent UN-backed investigation.

Continue Reading.

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Russia’s Justice Ministry has filed a lawsuit with the country’s Supreme Court requesting that it designate the “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement and its subdivisions” as an “extremist organization” and ban it on Russian territory. 

Who or what constitutes the “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement” is unclear. It appears never to have been previously mentioned in media reports, and the human rights and legal aid group OVD-Info said that it was unable to find any record of such an organization.

According to the Justice Ministry’s announcement of the lawsuit, the entity in question is an “international movement dedicated to the destruction of Russia’s multinational unity and territorial integrity.” The Supreme Court is set to hear the suit on June 7.

This isn’t the first time the Russian authorities have sought the ban of a movement with no formal structure and no official members. In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court outlawed the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremism organization,” despite there being no such group registered in Russia. The ruling had a chilling effect on Russia’s already-vulnerable LGBTQ+ community and has been used as the basis for felony charges against at least one gay bar.

In late December 2023, authorities in three Russian regions created new headquarters for the prevention of “separatism, nationalism, extremism, mass riots, and crimes of an extremist nature.”

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Chechen Muslims are used as cannon fodder in Putin’s war on Ukraine (source)

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Senator Sanders — one of America’s highest-profile Jewish lawmakers — responded in a statement on Thursday in which he directly refuted Netanyahu’s accusations and addressed him by name.

“No, Mr Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population,” Mr Sanders said.

The Vermont Senator — an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats — continued that it was “not antisemitic” to say that the Israeli government “has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, and sewage” or “to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers”.

“It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine,” he continued.

Sanders closed the statement by again addressing the Israeli leader directly and calling antisemitism “a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people”.

“But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions,” he said.