Nigeria has arrested seven Polish nationals for raising Russian flags during anti-government protests this week in the northern state of Kano, Peter Afunanya, a spokesperson for the state security service, said on Wednesday.

Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are clinging to a bygone era, failing to innovate, and letting down their customers.

Election results show AIPAC}s millions helped Wesley Bell beat Rep. Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for a Missouri House seat.

Far-right protestors are trying to share violent rhetoric on social media. For the first time, Telegram is blocking them—while X is giving them a platform.

Brown skuas and south polar skuas, two gull-like species that nest in Antarctica, are sometimes called the “pirates of the Southern seas.” These migratory seabirds are fierce, competitive predators that hunt or scavenge anything, from eggs and adult birds to seafood, mammals or garbage. “They’re really tough animals — and they’re dying,” says Antonio Quesada, director of the Spanish Polar Committee. He gravely recounts why this season’s field work in the Antarctic was like no other: A lethal strain of avian flu, H5N1, breached this fragile ecosystem in February. Only a handful of specially trained researchers were allowed onshore in outbreak sites, garbed in hazmat suits to prevent contagion and spread. The true scale of the event is still unknown, but reports were grim. In the Falkland Islands, H5N1 killed 10,000 black-browed albatross and ravaged a gentoo penguin colony. Scientists discovered a mass skua die-off: 50 carcasses littered a Beak Island nesting colony of 130. Quesada has rarely seen a single dead skua in 20 years’ work in Antarctica. “They’re an indicator species. If they’re dying, what does it mean for other birds?” he asks. The threat posed by H5N1 extends far beyond the frozen South. Few people realize that the world is currently gripped in another serious pandemic — or, to be exact, a panzootic, the animal equivalent. This virus has now infected more than 500 bird and mammal species.

Former President Trump welcomed Vice President Harris’s decision to add Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) to the Democratic ticket, calling it a “shocking pick.”

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department and the Clearwater Police Department are expected to discuss the arrest of a Clearwater Police Department officer for public corruption.

DPS said State Troopers have not been able to identify the driver due to severe burns.

A government official from North Macedonia was arrested for allegedly mass-producing millions of fake €2 coins, the European Union’s law enforcement agency announced Tuesday. A months-long investigation by Macedonian and Kosovar authorities, conducted with the support of the Europol agency, uncovered the apparent forgery operation and led to the 34-year-old suspect’s arrest in Pristina, Europol said in a statement. The man was an employee at North Macedonia’s Ministry of Interior, Europol said, adding that authorities also seized “machines for the production of counterfeit currency, thousands of assembled coins, rings and core blanks” at multiple locations in North Macedonia. Eurojust, the EU’s criminal justice cooperation agency, said in a statement that the man was “suspected of producing around 2 million fake EUR 2 coins, which were about to be circulated into the Kosovar economy.” Kosovo is facing an epidemic of counterfeit coins worth millions of euros, according to authorities. The country is not part of the eurozone, the EU’s currency union, but adopted the euro as its currency in 2002.

He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

For months, I have been documenting the incredible virality of bizarre AI-generated image spam on Facebook, now commonly referred to as “AI slop,” and Meta’s seeming complete apathy toward moderating this type of spam. My investigation reveals that the AI images we see on Facebook are an evolution of a Facebook spam economy that has existed for years, driven by social media influencers, guides, services, and businesses in places like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, where the payouts generated by this content, which seems marginal by U.S. standards, goes further. The spam comes from a mix of people manually creating images on their phones using off-the-shelf tools like Microsoft’s AI Image Creator to larger operations that use automated software to spam the platform. I also know that their methods work because I used them to flood Facebook with AI slop myself as a test.

The two-term governor and former House member has gained notice for folksy rebukes of Trump and support for progressive policies in his state.

What does that $15 billion slash — which will cost us an extra $3 billion on top of that — really mean for transit riders?

A judge ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation.

Australia field hockey player Matthew Dawson took his determination to compete in the Paris Olympics to another level by amputating part of a finger to ensure he’s able to take part. The 30-year-old Dawson severely injured the ring finger on his right hand two weeks ago in practice. Surgery would have required months of recovery time, jeopardizing his likelihood of being ready for the Olympics. Captain Aran Zalewski said teammates were shocked. Dawson’s wife warned against making any “rash choice.” Despite that, Dawson told 7News in Australia he made “an informed decision.”

What a way to miss out on a medal chance.

The First and deputy First Ministers have slammed the night of violence in Belfast after a cafe and shop were set on fire while cars and bins were also torched in the Sandy Row area.

Amber Heard has moved to Spain and changed her name to Martha Jane Cannary. The 38-year-old American actress moved to Spain months after the trial concluded, People reports, but a more recent update details she has reportedly changed her name to Martha Jane Cannary. If the name sounds familiar, it just might be. It’s the real name of American frontierswoman and sharpshooter Calamity Jane. She was portrayed by screen icon Doris Day in the 1953 musical-Western film, Calamity Jane. The publication El Diario de Mallorca reported on the name change, and they suggested it could pique Johnny’s interest for all the wrong reasons.

Team Trump believes questioning Harris’ racial identity is smart politics — and is behind him “100 percent,” says a person close to Trump Donald Trump’s comments on Wednesday questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is Black were not an off-the-cuff expression of racism, but part of a broader campaign strategy that Trump and many of his key lieutenants plan to make a heavy focus of their final three-month sprint to retake the White House. Asked on Wednesday about Republicans accusing Harris of being a “DEI hire” or “DEI candidate,” Trump responded by questioning Harris’ racial identity. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” he said, adding: “She made a turn, and she became a Black person, and I think somebody should look into that.” As unhinged as this sounds — and is — Team Trump believes this is a politically smart message, according to three people on and close to the 2024 Trump-Vance campaign. In their private conversations, Trump and some of his closest advisers appear to believe that leveling this attack as loudly as they could help sell the idea that Harris is a “phony” in the minds of independent voters. Trump believes he wins battles when he gets to define the messaging terrain and have Democrats and his media nemeses fight him on his terms (hence, Trump’s deep annoyance at Harris and Democrats’ relentless drive to call him, J.D. Vance, and other conservative leaders “weird”). So, Trump and his allies have been reveling in this line of racial-identity sniping, hoping to bait Democratic leaders into a mud fight. Some Trump advisers have even argued — including long before Trump began this Harris-isn’t-Black crusade — that painting Harris as inauthentically Black could potentially resonate with certain Black voters, particularly disaffected, young men — who are already skeptical of Harris and President Joe Biden. Popular on Rolling Stone The sources stressed that Trump’s comments were not — as has been the case numerous times in his campaigns and during his administration — a situation in which the former president has gone rogue on the stump and indulged his own lack of political impulse control. (These sources in the past have generally had no trouble privately admitting it when that has been the case.) Rather, this is a case of Trump and an array of his aides and influential allies settling on a race-baiting strategy that they are, for the time being at least, convinced will work out well for them in this presidential election. Editor’s picks “It’s not by accident; it’s intentional. We’re behind the [former] president, 100 percent,” a person close to Trump tells Rolling Stone. In that sense, it is similar to the relatively new, extreme Republican Party-wide policy aim of bombing or invading Mexico. What sounds like an unhinged, errant Trump thought is a mainstream conservative view and plan of action. The line of attack, of course, has its share of critics among the conservative elite. As Politico reported last month, House Republican leadership practically begged their own rank and file during a private meeting to avoid talking about Harris’ race. Those entreaties clearly aren’t sticking. On Thursday, Vance — the Ohio senator who Trump tapped for his 2024 vice-presidential slot — swooped in to further buttress the Team Trump tactic. “She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of,” Vance told CNN. “I think it’s totally reasonable for the president to call that out, and that’s all he did,” Vance said.” The latest round of Trumpian gutter politics appears to be motivated by a sudden sense of urgency within the upper echelons of MAGAworld — a sense that did not exist just weeks ago, when Republicans thought Trump was cruising to a landslide against Biden, before he bowed out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris. According to two sources familiar with the matter, behind closed doors, Trump has expressed bewilderment — or genuine surprise even — at Harris’ uptick in the polls, her latest fundraising hauls, and the ease with which her party rallied to her, as opposed to devolving into a disastrous intra-party power struggle ahead of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Indeed, almost immediately after Biden dropped out, close allies and trusted associates to Trump started directly warning him not to underestimate Harris as a general election rival.) Related Harris responded to racist Trump’s comments Wednesday evening at an event in Houston. “It was the same old show: the divisiveness, and the disrespect,” she said. “And let me just say the American people deserve better.” Trump delivered his broadside against Harris, questioning her racial identity, during a remarkably hostile Q&A before the National Association of Black Journalists convention. It soon became apparent that this was not just Trump being himself, but a coordinated campaign message. The former president posted a video on Truth Social of Harris cooking with the actress Mindy Kaling, and talking about her South Asian heritage. He wrote: “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!” Before Trump arrived at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a Business Insider headline was projected on screen at the event that read: “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian-American U.S. senator.” Trump did not specifically repeat his attack on Harris at the rally, though his legal spokeswoman and lawyer Alina Habba certainly tried. “Unlike you, Kamala, I know who my roots are,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I know where I come from.” Trending In a throwback to Trump’s incessant demand to see President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, far-right activist Laura Loomer posted an apparent copy of Harris’ birth certificate online, writing that the document “proves she is NOT BLACK.” The attack on Harris has been bubbling up in pro-Trump circles for years. Ali Alexander, the far-right Trump supporter who organized the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, tweeted in 2019: “Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves. She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

Federal investigators found that the state agency excessively used pepper spray on children, employed dangerous restraint techniques and kept children isolated for days or weeks on end.