News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45602792

Thomson Reuters, the technology and content conglomerate that owns the Reuters media agency but also owns and operates the investigative CLEAR database, fired a longstanding employee after they spoke out about the company selling data products to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

The lawsuit and firing come after more than 200 employees wrote a letter to Thomson Reuters leadership about the company’s contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“For nearly two decades, I helped Thomson Reuters build the legal resources that lawyers and law enforcement trust. When I saw evidence that our products were being used to harm people and undermine the law, I did what anyone should do—I raised the alarm. Thomson Reuters’ response was to fire me,” Billie Little, who was a senior attorney editor at Thomson Reuters, said in a statement shared with 404 Media by her attorneys.

Archive: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/ZcLRx

County officials review whether ICE’s warrantless raid and forced transport of a St Paul US citizen broke law

Authorities in Minnesota are investigating the detention by federal immigration officers of a US citizen as a possible kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment.

The arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in January became symbolic of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s brutal crackdown in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul.

It came the same month as American anti-ICE protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by government agents.

Masked ICE officers broke down the door of Thao’s house in St Paul – without a warrant, according to his family – and dragged him into the street in his underwear while he clutched a blanket in sub-freezing conditions.

Measure by Jamie Raskin follows statements by Trump about annihilating Iran and post depicting himself as Jesus

House Democrats on Tuesday proposed creating a commission that would work with JD Vance to remove Donald Trump from office under the 25th amendment, should they determine he is no longer fit to serve.

The measure, introduced by Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, follows a series of statements from Trump, including his recent warning that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if it did not capitulate to his demands, and a social media post that depicted him as Jesus Christ.

Democratic lawmakers and other opponents, including the former CIA director John Brennan, have seized on those comments to argue that the 79-year-old president is no longer competent to lead the country, and that the US vice-president should work with Trump’s cabinet to remove him.

• Left Out: The failure of a hospital chain that provided its own malpractice insurance threatens to leave injured patients with no recourse.
• Absent Oversight: States give little scrutiny to “self-insuring” health care companies. Agency officials say laws allow them to dodge normal safeguards.
• Physician, Pay for Thyself: Doctors promised malpractice insurance have discovered they have no coverage for defense expenses and claims. One met with a bankruptcy lawyer.

• A Prosecutor’s Calling: Tim Robinson said God told him to start a drug treatment program in hard-hit Kentucky, which grew to the largest in the state.
• The FBI Investigates: Former staff and investigators allege the drug treatment center falsified invoices to bill Medicaid for millions.
• The State Acts: After years of warnings about excessive billing the state instituted reforms, but damage had been done.

Blair’s mom had been cautious when she first brought her 6-year-old to the LGBTQ clinic at Cleveland’s MetroHealth hospital, “trying to figure out why he felt different inside,” as she puts it. She didn’t want to rush her child into treatment. So she was grateful to find the clinicians there took a slow and careful approach to Blair’s health care. Over the years they provided open-ended counseling, monitored his hormone levels and bone development, and only progressed with puberty blockers when it was clear that transitioning was making him happier and more confident. “That was my barometer for doing the right thing,” she tells me.

Today, at 16, Blair (a pseudonym to preserve his privacy) has been going to the clinic for a decade, and, by his mom’s account, thriving. Even when Ohio banned transgender medical treatments for minors in 2024, he could stay on his medication thanks to a grandfather clause in the law. But a few months ago, his mom got a message from MetroHealth alerting the family to a new threat.

On December 18, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a declaration that rebranded transgender medical care as “sex-rejecting procedures” and claimed, erroneously, that the treatments “fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care” when given to minor patients. That same day, his agency proposed a pair of regulations that would curtail access nationwide. The first would forbid federal insurance programs that cover kids in low-income families from paying for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and the surgery used in rare cases to treat gender dysphoria. The other would deliver an ultimatum to hospitals: Stop providing the treatments to trans kids, or else get kicked out of the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs.

Governments desperate for cash to protect their citizens from the growing impacts of the climate crisis are being put in a “beyond absurd” situation this week at global finance talks: they are being urged not to mention the climate, even as they address the current oil crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) spring meetings take place this week amid a fragile ceasefire in Iran and upended geopolitics. One of the priorities was to forge a new “climate change action plan” (CCAP) for the world’s biggest provider of funds to developing countries to replace the current strategy, which expires in June.

Now, it looks like the new plan may be shelved, along with substantive discussion of the climate crisis.

With the oil crunch still biting, the delegates from up to 189 countries at the conference in Washington, DC, might have been expected to discuss investments in renewable energy, which many see as crucial to energy security and an antidote to volatility. Climate finance is also a pressing issue for poor countries already paying billions each year to repair the damage from droughts, floods and storms.

If these discussions are instead largely confined to whispers in corridors, the reason is clear: the US president, Donald Trump. Insiders have told the Guardian the White House is forcing countries to choose between opening up a potentially unbridgeable rift or playing down the climate crisis and trying to squeeze in green priorities by the back door.

"Vice-president effectively tells Leo to stay in his lane after the pope criticized the White House over the Iran war"

The new research is the first to measure community water fluoridation exposure during childhood and any potential impact on cognition up to age 80.

The paper is here

The ⁠United States military has ⁠carried out another attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing two people, in the latest deadly strike by US forces on boats that Washington alleges have links to Latin American drug trafficking cartels.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for Washington’s military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, confirmed the attack in a post on social media late on Monday, claiming to have killed two “male narco-terrorists”, without providing any evidence.

SOUTHCOM claimed that, based on intelligence reports, the boat was “⁠transiting along known narco-trafficking routes ⁠in the ⁠Eastern Pacific” and was targeted with “a lethal kinetic strike” on the orders of US Commander General Francis L Donovan.

A grainy video clip released with the statement shows a stationary boat with outboard engines and what appear to be floats from fishing nets nearby. The boat comes under attack from the air and explodes into flames.

The United States is waging a pressure campaign against the leading inter-American human rights watchdog to squash a potential investigation into illegal U.S. attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

After a recent meeting of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the State Department pushed the organization to shift its focus to other issues instead of the monthslong campaign of extrajudicial killings by the U.S. military.

Though the president of the IACHR disputes that the U.S. is pressuring his organization, the State Department responded to questions about the meeting with a statement urging the commission to move onto other matters. A past IACHR president said the organization may fear the “wrath” of the United States, which is the largest financial contributor to the commission’s parent organization, if it launches an investigation.

U.S. lawmakers and experts say an investigation by the IACHR could be an important mechanism to hold the Trump administration accountable for the lethal strikes. Scores of civilians have been killed in the campaign, which has seen families of victims petition the IACHR and sue the U.S. government, accusing it of wrongful death and extrajudicial killings.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45590354

An 86-year-old French woman who moved to the US last year after rekindling a 1960s romance is being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) centre in the state of Louisiana.

The son of Marie-Thérèse, from the city of Nantes, sounded the alarm after his mother was arrested in Anniston, Alabama, earlier in April.

"They handcuffed her hands and feet like she was a dangerous criminal," he told French outlet Ouest-France.

Most Americans still think their taxes are too high, according to recent polls, even after last year’s tax law fulfilled several of Donald Trump’s tax-related campaign promises.

In fact, a new Fox News poll indicates people are more upset about taxes than they were last year.

The findings from the survey, which was conducted in late March, are another sign that Americans are on edge about their personal finances as the U.S. experiences a spike in inflation and sluggish economic growth.

Other polling finds that frustration goes beyond personal tax obligations, with many believing that wealthy people and corporations are not paying their fair share, while others worry about government waste.

Prices are rising for many Americans, with 65% of consumers saying the increases are outpacing their income, according to a J.D. Power survey of 4,000 U.S. adults conducted in February 2026.

Recent inflation data adds to that pressure, with the annual rate rising from 2.4% in February to 3.3% in March, according to consumer price index data released Friday. The increase was driven largely by a surge in energy costs as gasoline prices spiked amid the Iran war. Gasoline prices rose 21.2% in March, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the overall increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even as a triumphant moon flyby primes agency for a 2028 landing, Trump’s proposed budget cuts cast pall on US space program

Even as Integrity, the mission moniker for the Orion capsule of Artemis II, ascended into the heavens days ago, Donald Trump was announcing his intention to slash NASA’s budget by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives.

And the Artemis program that has run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget offers no guarantees that the next, far harder stages will run as smoothly.

The former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan has added his name to growing calls for the president to be ousted on grounds that he is unfit for the job, arguing that the US constitution’s 25th amendment addressing involuntary removal from office was “written with Donald Trump in mind”.

Brennan, who served as head of the spy agency during Barack Obama’s presidency, told MS Now on Saturday that Trump’s recent volatile remarks about destroying Iranian civilization and the danger he posed to so many lives merited his removal from the Oval Office.

“This person is clearly unhinged,” he said. “I think the 25th amendment was written with Donald Trump in mind.”

Brennan added that Trump was too much of a liability to be allowed to continue to be commander in chief. He had immense firepower at his disposal, including the US nuclear arsenal.

Young people have grown increasingly skeptical of artificial intelligence, even those who use it daily, according to a new Gallup poll of more than 1,500 people aged 14 to 29.

There is no decline in AI use among Gen Zers, but there is also no increase since the same poll was conducted in 2025. The latest poll found that AI use was plateauing among young users, accompanied by rising concern about the technology’s consequences.

The findings are significant because Gen Z is “the generation most likely to enter or grow within the workforce over the next decade,” the report notes, meaning that their adoption could determine the trajectory of broader societal AI adoption. Gen Z has already overtaken Boomers in the workforce. Right now, the AI world is preparing for a massive jump in expected demand, and the top tech and financial companies are investing billions upon billions of dollars into building out the supply. Experts have warned that if demand does not pan out exactly as expected in the short term, then it could have disastrous consequences for the economy.