The North Carolina Supreme Court published a ruling Friday that a Black man on death row should not be given a new trial despite that he’d been sentenced to death by an all-white jury after prosecutors used a handout to strike Black people from the jury pool. Russell William Tucker was sentenced to death in 1996 for killing a security guard outside a Kmart in Forsyth County. He has since challenged that conviction, arguing that prosecutors relied on racist jury strikes to send Black jurors home and ensure that those who decided his death sentence were all white. The North Carolina Supreme Court disagreed. In a ruling written by Justice Phil Berger Jr., the son of the president pro tempore of the state Senate, the high court determined that their analysis of Tucker’s case was limited because he hadn’t raised juror discrimination issues in earlier appeals, and that his “newly discovered evidence” was insufficient to clear a procedural hurdle that could allow them to grant him a new trial. Friday’s state Supreme Court ruling was rooted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision published in 1986, Batson v. Kentucky, which found that prosecutors picking a jury in a criminal case could not use peremptory challenges — dismissing jurors without valid cause — to exclude prospective jurors solely on the basis of race. North Carolina’s Supreme Court was the last in the South to find a Batson violation. The first time it did so was in a in a May 2020 decision — written by the then-Democratic majority — that gave lower courts guidance on how to better assess racial discrimination claims in jury selection. In 2022, for the first time in state history, the high court struck down a conviction because of discrimination against a Black juror. Advocates worried those wins would be reversed under the conservative majority that has assumed control of the court, a fear that looks increasingly well-founded as Republican justices continue to issue rulings that find no racial discrimination in jury selections.

A south St. Louis bar owner is now facing charges stemming from an incident that began when police crashed an SUV through the front wall of his business. The incident happened in the city’s Carondelet neighborhood around 12:30 a.m. today, when a police SUV traveling northbound on South Broadway swerved across multiple lanes of traffic and into Bar:PM just as the LGTBQ bar was closing up. The police probable cause statement associated with the charges against Bar:PM co-owner Chad Morris (who also goes by Chad Wick) alleges that Morris began to "scream obscenities" in the wake of the collision. The officer writes that Morris "struck me hard in the chest with an open hand, causing me to temporarily lose my balance." Morris then allegedly tried to flee into a gangway between the bar and another building, closing a gate on an officer as he did, according to the statement.

Labor activists say a scandal-plagued construction company is taking advantage of Biden’s climate plan. The excitement was in the air at this year’s Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Washington, D.C., in late September. About a year earlier, the Inflation Reduction Act had been signed into law by President Joe Biden, establishing new tax benefits to boost green-friendly construction. Vendors at the world’s largest green building symposium were buzzing. The expo featured rows of exhibitions on the environmental virtues of companies involved with every stage of the construction process, from insulated concrete manufacturers to wastewater management companies. Lectures and panel discussions peppered the sprawling convention center hall, featuring industry luminaries waxing poetic about the challenges and promises of green capitalism. Many of these companies will likely benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA); the federal government is expected to spend about $369 billion on green building investments because of the law’s tax provisions... Kingspan is a textbook example of a corporation greenwashing its own harmful environmental practices while also glossing over criticism of its safety and labor practices. Now, as an ostensibly “green” operation, the company is likely to receive lucrative U.S. tax benefits. Kingspan’s most controversial moment came in December 2020, when British parliamentary investigators shed light on the company’s indifference toward fire safety while investigating the role its insulation materials played in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, the deadliest residential fire in Britain since the end of the Second World War. As public scrutiny over Kingspan’s role in the Grenfell Tower fire intensified in the U.K., in the months leading up to the bombshell revelations Kingspan launched a new long-term strategy: a sustainability campaign called “Planet Passionate.”

Warehouses and freight trucks take a toll on residents, while corporate "community engagement" plans do little but silence local voices.

A New York jury on Monday found actor Jonathan Majors guilty of assault and harassment of his former girlfriend during a domestic dispute.

In March​ 1960, Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor of West Germany, met his Israeli counterpart, David Ben-Gurion, in New York. Eight years earlier, Germany had agreed to pay millions of marks in reparations to Israel, but the two countries had yet to establish diplomatic relations. Adenauer’s language at their meeting was unambiguous: Israel, he said, is a ‘fortress of the West’ and ‘I can already now tell you that we will help you, we will not leave you alone.’ Six decades on, Israel’s security is Germany’s Staatsräson, as Angela Merkel put it in 2008. The phrase has been repeatedly invoked, with more vehemence than clarity, by German leaders in the weeks since 7 October. Solidarity with the Jewish state has burnished Germany’s proud self-image as the only country that makes public remembrance of its criminal past the foundation of its collective identity. But in 1960, when Adenauer met Ben-Gurion, he was presiding over a systematic reversal of the de-Nazification process decreed by the country’s Western occupiers in 1945, and aiding the suppression of the unprecedented horror of the Judaeocide. The German people, according to Adenauer, were also victims of Hitler. What’s more, he went on, most Germans under Nazi rule had ‘joyfully helped fellow Jewish citizens whenever they could’. West Germany’s munificence towards Israel had motivations beyond national shame or duty, or the prejudices of a chancellor described by his biographer as a ‘late 19th-century colonialist’ who loathed the Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser and was enthused by the Anglo-French-Israeli assault on Egypt in 1956. As the Cold War intensified, Adenauer determined that his country needed greater sovereignty and a greater role in Western economic and security alliances; Germany’s long road west lay through Israel. West Germany moved fast after 1960, becoming the most important supplier of military hardware to Israel in addition to being the main enabler of its economic modernisation. Adenauer himself explained after his retirement that giving money and weapons to Israel was essential to restoring Germany’s ‘international standing’, adding that ‘the power of the Jews even today, especially in America, should not be underestimated.’

These days, every online retailer you can think of has some kind of chatbot. Classically, these were about as intelligent as old-school phone systems, able to pull out a few keywords and direct you (maybe) where you wanted to go. Auto dealerships have more recently been implementing advanced AI chatbots that can do more to help customers in greater detail. Hilariously, though, in one case, a dealer chatbot looks to have gone far beyond answering car questions—and into coding help and beyond. The apparent flaw in the AI chatbot used by Chevrolet of Watsonville was raised by a number of people. Chris White appears to have been the first to discover it, sharing it on Mastodon. The hilarious find was then shared by documentingmeta on Threads, and it spread across the Internet thusly. Screen captures show an AI chatbot that says it is “Powered by ChatGPT” answering questions on how to code Python scripts to solve the complicated Navier-Stokes fluid flow equations. Another user posted a long chat in which the ‘bot appeared to recommend the Ford F-150 as a capable truck.

After a transformative year on the picket lines, the United Auto Workers’ ambitions for building worker power don’t stop at the US border.

Interviews and newly unearthed documents reveal that Thomas, facing financial strain, privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees.

An irresistible trend took hold 50 years ago, and we’re all paying the price. ust after noon on Nov. 27, 2022, a few days after Thanksgiving, Neal Greenfield and his daughter Kimberly Karsen were heading toward their car in Des Plaines, Illinois, outside Chicago. As they walked, a driver lost control of a Honda SUV. The vehicle jumped the sidewalk, striking Karsen and Greenfield before smashing into a building. Karsen was later pulled from under the vehicle; Greenfield was found nearby on a sidewalk. Both were killed. The force of the impact was so powerful that it destroyed a storefront and triggered a gas leak. Now imagine if that crash had involved a sedan instead of an SUV. A lighter vehicle could have braked faster. The impact could have conveyed less force. A lower hood would have created a smaller blind spot, and been less likely to strike a pedestrian’s torso. Research suggests that SUVs may be two to three times more likely than sedans to kill pedestrians in a collision. There is no way to know for certain that this particular crash would have been less catastrophic if the driver had been in a smaller car. But the trends are clear. Karsen and Greenfield were two of the 7,508 pedestrians killed last year—the most since 1981. Something else happened over that 40-year period: car bloat. In 1977, SUVs and trucks together represented 23 percent of American new car sales; today they comprise more than 80 percent. Meanwhile, the models themselves keep getting larger. These four-wheeled behemoths started as niche vehicles, meant to allow certain groups of people to accomplish specific tasks. Today they have become a fixture of everyday American life. They are also linked to myriad societal ills, from crash deaths to climate change to social inequality. Bigger cars make each of those problems harder to solve.

Israel should be sending Palestinian Gazans fleeing the fighting to refugee camps in Lebanon, with the entire Gaza Strip being emptied and leveled and turned into a museum like the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Metula Council head David Azoulai told 103FM. "After October 7, instead of urging people to go south, we should direct them to the beaches. The Navy can transport them to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps. Then, a security strip should be established from the sea to the Gaza border fence, completely empty, as a reminder of what was once there. It should resemble the Auschwitz concentration camp," he said in an interview with Ben Caspit and Yinon Magal. "Tell everyone in Gaza to go to the beaches. Navy ships should load the terrorists onto the shores of Lebanon. The entire Gaza Strip should be emptied and leveled flat, just like in Auschwitz. Let it become a museum, showcasing the capabilities of the State of Israel and dissuading anyone from living in the Gaza Strip. This is what must be done To give them a visual representation.

US Postal Service (USPS) employees are sounding the alarm over postmaster general Louis DeJoy's 10-year plan to gut the agency, saying it will put people out of work and delay mail service for millions of Americans. According to the Guardian, DeJoy — whom then-President Donald Trump appointed to head the USPS in 2020 — is in the midst of enacting a 10-year plan to consolidate mail sorting facilities dubbed "Delivering for America," which he claims will reduce costs. As of December 2023, there are currently 30 mail processing facilities that are being considered for consolidation, which the Guardian estimates could cost 25 jobs per consolidation. DeJoy is ultimately aiming to consolidate approximately 400 over the course of the strategic plan. "It will eliminate jobs, good jobs," said Pennsylvania Postal Workers Union president Mike Stephenson. "It’s one more process in the 10-year plan that DeJoy put in when Trump appointed him to destroy the postal service."

In Brazil, workers protest nasty customers with bikes, horns, and fireworks.

Mississippi was forced to grant religious exemptions from vaccines. Now, doctors and public health officials brace for the fallout.

Personal note: Where was this policy when I was sandwiched between (middle seat) two sizeable gentlemen on a Southwest flight a few years ago? Such an uncomfortable and hot flight for me and I doubt they thought the experience was great as well

"They're all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it. The soldier feels threatened and opens fire. He declares that they're terrorists. They (the Israeli forces) open fire. Two (hostages) are killed immediately," the official told reporters in a phone briefing. The third hostage was wounded and retreated into a nearby building where he called for help in Hebrew, the official said. "Immediately the battalion commander issues a ceasefire order, but again there's another burst of fire towards the third figure and he also dies," the official said. "This was against our rules of engagement," he added.

A grand jury in Mississippi determined that there was no criminal conduct on behalf of the officer who shot and wounded an 11-year-old boy in his home who had called authorities for help.

In 2021 and 2022, two conservative, billionaire-funded legal interests sent more than 100 federal judges on 251 trips to conferences and seminars in cushy locations around the country and overseas, according to a Lever review of hundreds of federal financial disclosure forms.

MindSift, a small New Hampshire-based company, is part of a new push that aims to target ads by listening to peoples’ everyday conversations through microphones in their smart devices, according to a review of recently deleted sections from MindSift’s website and comments made on a podcast unearthed by 404 Media. MindSift has been deleting details about its technology from the internet in recent days, but two of the three founders of the company go into detail about their technology on a small podcast they cohost called “Real Business Roundtable” where they give advice to entrepreneurs. In an episode about “Messaging,” Andy Galeshahi, one of the cofounders of the company, says when discussing MindSift to potential clients. “I’ll say like, ‘Hey, have you ever talked about something and saw an ad for it?’ We’re the guys. That’s us. We distribute the tech. The technology has been around for a while but the torch has been passed.” Most episodes of the podcast have under 50 views on YouTube. MindSift claims they get access to this type of data through another vendor, who they do not name: "Thankfully, we were able to get our hands on it from a very long-standing relationship that we had with a technology group, and now we are bringing this to small, medium, and even large businesses," Galeshahi said in an October, 2022 episode of the podcast called “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.”

In his first term, Trump’s plans to send troops to “war” on the border were thwarted. This time, he’s talking about sending up to 300,000 there