Saturday, August 31st, 2024
Brazil shutters X amid judge’s feud with Elon Musk
Brazil started blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X early Saturday, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through its mobile app after the company refused to comply with a judge’s order. X missed a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the suspension. It marks an escalation in the months-long feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. To block X, Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, told internet service providers to suspend users’Read more
Harris’s first campaign interview a spring cleaning for her political resumé
Kamala Harris’s first sit-down interview as a presidential candidate won’t be the sort of television moment history remembers for better, or for worse. History rarely recalls a closet decluttering. Thursday’s exchange with CNN included her tossing out old bits of her political resumé that risk hampering her current run, as she faced her first questions about past positions and why they shifted. Does she still support a ban on oil fracking? Nope – not anymore. When asked what changed, it wasn’t quite clear. Decriminalize illegal border-crossings? Against that too now. WhatRead more
2024 U.S. election: Will faster ballot counting prevent a 2020-style meltdown?
A young state senator in Michigan foresaw trouble before the last U.S. presidential election, warning of looming chaos in the counting of votes. In fairness, this hardly required clairvoyance: the potential for problems was apparent, even months before the 2020 vote, with analysts, including CBC News, predicting near-certain bedlam. It would take days to properly count Democrats’ votes because they tended to vote more often by mail, especially during the pandemic, and those mailed ballots would take longer to process; and Donald Trump would exploit that delay to delegitimize the election.Read more