A few weeks ago, while standing in a crowded Tehran metro station, I found myself facing a public display commemorating children reportedly killed in an airstrike on a school in Minab. The station continued to function around me with mechanical indifference: announcements repeating, passengers moving, bodies circulating through space as if nothing had been interrupted. [...]

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The correspondent filing this dispatch is a law student in Mumbai who must remain anonymous. As India’s student march enters its third consecutive day, the national capital of Delhi has been swarmed by thousands of “cockroaches.” The term is evocative, having been reclaimed by India’s younger generation in response to remarks made by Chief Justice [...]

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Amnesty International on Tuesday called on authorities to immediately release dozens of people detained in Egypt over their alleged involvement with Gen Z002, a Discord-based group used to discuss political issues, criticize government policies, and hold discussions about bringing meaningful change to the country. In January, Gen Z002 organized an online poll titled “Popular Referendum [...]

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French lawmakers on Tuesday passed a bill that would ban social media for youth under the age of 15 in an effort to safeguard youth mental health, eradicate cyberbullying, and prevent extreme screen addiction. Backed by overwhelming support, the bill will also prevent kids from accessing and possessing cell phones in school. For a bill [...]

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A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday granted emergency relief, temporarily blocking portions of Trump administration immigration policies that would have caused tens of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from El Salvador, Sudan and Ukraine to lose work authorization, one day before new government policies were set to take [...]

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The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Tuesday voted to advance a proposal that would end a nearly 60-year-old requirement for millions of employers to report the race and sex demographics of their workforce to the federal government. In 1966, the newly formed EEOC enacted its EEO-1 reporting requirement, mandating that employers with 100 [...]

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The US Department of Justice on Monday opened a compliance review into Harvard University to determine whether financial aid programs funded by China-based sources actively discriminate against American students. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will examine whether Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance [...]

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The US District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday gave its final approval to a $1.5 billion settlement in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which it was alleged that Anthropic had used pirated books as material to train its Claude AI platform. The settlement came after a year in the courts, [...]

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EmDee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The European Commission on Monday has fined Chinese online marketplace AliExpress €550 million for failing to assess and reduce risks related to the sale of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products on its platform, making it one of the largest penalties ever issued under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). In commenting on AliExpress’ non-compliance with [...]

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Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report on Tuesday detailing four attacks on Ecuadorian persons, properties and vessels that they attribute to an intensified counter-narcotics campaign led by the US with the partnership of the Ecuadorian government. The first attack took place in March on the farming community of San Martín, Sucumbíos province, and was [...]

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