Joby Aviation (JOBY.N), praised the program, saying, "aircraft in the program can begin operations in select markets ahead of full FAA certification, a critical step in preparing for scaled commercial service."

Air taxi stocks rose on the program first reported by Reuters. Joby shares were up 5% while Archer Aviation was up 3%.

Air taxi firms are racing to secure approvals and commercialize air taxi aircraft to meet the growing demand for faster and more sustainable urban transportation. They tout eVTOLs that can take off and land vertically to ferry travelers to airports or for short city trips, allowing them to beat traffic.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-launches-pilot-program-speed-air-taxi-deployment-2025-09-12/

The cache of more than 18,000 emails directly contradicts Maxwell's recent statements to federal investigators and undermines her longstanding claim that she distanced herself from Epstein after the early 2000s.

In reality, the correspondence shows frequent exchanges through 2008, including over 200 messages in the first half of that year alone.

Reported Emails From Epstein's Private Account Revealed: What To Know

A newly uncovered trove of private emails from Jeffrey Epstein's personal Yahoo account has been released.

^{Theo Burman (Newsweek)}

In disastrous timing for a prime minister already trying to recover from a series of setbacks, Starmer sacked Mandelson on Thursday morning after initially standing by him as details of the ambassador’s friendship with Epstein came out in U.S. document releases this week, arguing that newly leaked emails show his support for Epstein even after his conviction for soliciting sex from a minor went far deeper than known at the time of his appointment in December.

Trump, who has denied apparent evidence that he, too, was fond of Epstein in the past, was irritated by the handling of Mandelson’s dismissal, said one person informed of White House discussions. He was displeased not to have been informed personally by Starmer and is apprehensive about anything that could overshadow his state visit next week, this person said.

How the Epstein scandal claimed Britain’s ‘Prince of Darkness’

Peter Mandelson’s sacking shocked London and Washington just days before a high-stakes state visit.

^{Sam Blewett (POLITICO)}

Federal real estate officials agree that the General Services Administration, the government’s landlord, isn’t keeping up with a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

Under the Trump administration, GSA proposed shedding 50% of its total office space, selling many of the office buildings in its portfolio, and moving much of the federal workforce into leased offices.

That long-term plan, however, doesn’t address the immediate concerns of federal employees who say they’re dealing with mold, rodents and problems accessing safe drinking water in their offices.

Mold, pests and broken elevators: Federal employees wary of return-to-office conditions

The state of the federal building portfolio reflects a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

^{Jory Heckman (Federal News Network)}

A benchmark survey released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows over 900,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months before March of this year.

A deeper look at the data shows African Americans are facing those employment headwinds the most.

The unemployment rate for Black Americans is the highest it's been since October 2021, now sitting at 7.5%. That is more than twice the unemployment rate for white Americans, which is currently at 3.7%.

Black unemployment is historically seen as a bellwether when it comes to the U.S. economy.

Unemployment rate for African Americans reaches highest level since pandemic

There's been a lot of focus lately on the nation's job numbers. So far, the unemployment rate is up only slightly, but for one group of Americans, it's a different story.

^{Cameron Couvillion (News Channel 5 Nashville (WTVF))}

“I think that speaks for itself,” the governor said.

Cox reported that another casing had “Bella ciao” written on it, an apparent reference to a WWII-era Italian anti-fascist song. Another casing had the message, “If you read this, you are gay LMAO,” Cox said.

Additional, unfired bullets had phrases from video games and internet memes written on them. One read “Up arrow, right arrow, and three down arrow symbols,” a possible reference to commands entered on a controller that call in a bomb in the video game “Helldivers.” A separate casing read, “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”

Authorities rebut claim that alleged Charlie Kirk shooter referenced trans "ideology"

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the suspected shooter referenced online memes, but said their motive was unclear

^{Garrett Owen (Salon.com)}

CBS' new corporate owner has taken a series of concrete steps to address the concerns of the news division's sharpest critics — particularly President Trump and his allies.

In recent days, the network selected a new ombudsman for CBS News with strong conservative credentials. It promised to run full, unedited interviews on a key public affairs show after receiving blowback from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And it's in talks to bring on a top news executive who believes the mainstream press is reflexively biased.

All of these decisions have come from top officials at Paramount under the new ownership of Skydance Media. And they represent a grand accommodation to Trump by CBS, known for its rich legacy of journalistic touchstones spanning back to the dawn of television news, including Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and 60 Minutes.

“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote Thursday morning.

“I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Landau added. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the State Department can protect the American people.”

Lawyers swiftly stressed that the comments Landau is aiming to track down would be “fully protected speech under the First Amendment” to the US Constitution.

State Dept. Official Signals Review of Foreigners 'Praising, Rationalizing, or Making Light of' Kirk Killing

"The US government seeking to punish those who make light of the incident is a complete betrayal of the First Amendment and spits in the face of the principle of free speech and debate," said one lawyer.

^{jessica-corbett (Common Dreams)}

Last month, the newsrooms reported that Musk’s tunneling company, The Boring Co., has been lobbying elected officials for months to allow it to build tunnels under Houston for flood mitigation. Boring has proposed digging two 12-foot-wide tunnels beneath Buffalo Bayou — the main waterway running through central Houston — to carry stormwater out of neighborhoods and toward the Gulf of Mexico during major storms. Experts say, however, that larger tunnels, closer to 30 to 40 feet in diameter, could carry far more water and be more effective.

Musk’s proposal carries a lower price tag than the estimated cost of the larger system the flood control district has spent years and millions of dollars studying. But that’s partly because the two are strikingly different proposals.

Flood control experts also maintained that the reduced price is somewhat proportional to the reduced capacity of Boring’s narrower tunnels. Two 12-foot tunnels would provide less than one-fifth of the volume that a single 40-foot tunnel offers.

That means they would divert less water from vulnerable areas than one large tunnel.

Fact-Checking Elon Musk’s Response to Our Investigation on Boring’s Houston Flood Tunnel Plan

Musk said his proposal to build tunnels to address Houston’s chronic flooding woes would work, after an investigation raised questions about the plan’s effectiveness. But experts say his plan has key technical and logistical challenges.

^ProPublica

TL;DR:

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) revealed that the US Treasury is finalizing a ban on privacy tools, specifically private cryptocurrency transactions, by expanding the PATRIOT Act to digital assets.

therage.co/us-government-to-br…

FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki confirmed that the Treasury is working on finalizing the so-called mixer rule, which uses the PATRIOT Act to prohibit private transactions in cryptocurrency.

We are seeing more and more illegal transactions being done in crypto,” Representative Liccardo claimed in the hearing, citing a study which found that out of 111 examined fraud cases, 91% allegedly involved so-called decentralized finance, or 'DeFi'. The concern here, according to Liccardo, arises from the pseudonymity of transactions.

While Gacki stated that FinCEN was working with blockchain analysis companies to deanonymize pseudonymous transactions, Liccardo countered that software like mixers would allow users to evade even sophisticated detection techniques.

What is the "Mixer Rule"?

The Treasury's mixer rule is not so much a mixer rule rather than a blanket ban on any software and even behavior that would grant users of public blockchains transactional privacy.

Notably, the mixer rule's suggestions on cryptocurrency swaps, transaction delays, "splitting," and the creation of single-use addresses, wallets, and accounts, would even put users under suspicion with the authorities, potentially ending in criminal liability – similar to how transaction structuring, sometimes also known as "smurfing," is deemed a federal crime in traditional finance, referring to the intentional breakup of transactions to fall below the $10,000 currency transaction reporting requirement.

In traditional finance, smurfing carries a federal prison sentence of up to 5 years, even if the money transferred did not stem from illicit origins.

Banning All Cryptocurrency Transactions for non-US Jurisdictions

The Special Measures to Fight Modern Threats Act, originally introduced in 2022 by Representative Himes of Connecticut as part of the COMPETES Act, would effectively grant the Treasury the power to ban any type of transaction it deems a concern without public notice or input under PATRIOT Act authority.

"one likely scenario is that the Treasury would use this authority to prohibit U.S. banks from being involved with cryptocurrency transactions validated by miners located outside of the United States."

US Government To Bring PATRIOT Act to Digital Assets

FinCEN Director reveals that the Treasury is finalizing a ban on privacy tools, Representatives revive Special Measures to Fight Modern Threats Act

^{L0la L33tz (The Rage)}

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/right-wing-anger-surges-kirks-killing-fuels-calls-vengeance-2025-09-12/

NEW DELHI - Trade talks between India and the European Union have entered a crucial phase and negotiators are working intensively to meet a year-end deadline for signing the free trade pact, a top European Union Official said on Tuesday.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/straitstimes…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

India, EU trade talks enter crucial phase, aiming to seal deal by year end

^ST

Richard Hermer denied telling the chief crown prosecutor Isaac Herzog was granted immunity, as judge said mistake should have been disclosed earlier

Judge criticises UK attorney general as top prosecutor admits Herzog immunity 'error'

The UK's attorney general, Lord Richard Hermer, has accused the chief crown prosecutor of giving a campaign group false information on why Hermer blocked its arrest warrant bid for the visiting Israeli president.

^{Imran Mulla (Middle East Eye)}

Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely.

404 Media

2025-09-11 17:44:39

Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way

Thursday morning, Ezra Klein at the New York Times published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.” Klein’s general thesis is that Kirk was willing to talk to anyone, regardless of their beliefs, as evidenced by what he was doing while he was shot, which was debating people on college campuses. Klein is not alone in this take; the overwhelming sentiment from America’s largest media institutions in the immediate aftermath of his death has been to paint Kirk as a mainstream political commentator, someone whose politics liberals and leftists may not agree with but someone who was open to dialogue and who espoused the virtues of free speech.

“You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him,” Klein wrote. “He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it.”

“I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness,” Klein continued.

Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely. In the New York Times, Kirk was an “energetic” voice who was “critical of gay and transgender rights,” but few of the national pundits have encouraged people to actually go read what Kirk tweeted or listen to what he said on his podcast to millions and millions of people. “Whatever you think of Kirk (I had many disagreements with him, and he with me), when he died he was doing exactly what we ask people to do on campus: Show up. Debate. Talk. Engage peacefully, even when emotions run high,” David French wrote in the Times. “In fact, that’s how he made his name, in debate after debate on campus after campus.”

This does not mean Kirk deserved to die or that political violence is ever justified. What happened to Kirk is horrifying, and we fear deeply for whatever will happen next. But it is undeniable that Kirk was not just a part of the extremely tense, very dangerous national dialogue, he was an accelerationist force whose work to dehumanize LGBTQ+ people and threaten the free speech of professors, teachers, and school board members around the country has directly put the livelihoods and physical safety of many people in danger. We do no one any favors by ignoring this, even in the immediate aftermath of an assassination like this.

Kirk claimed that his Turning Point USA sent “80+ buses full of patriots” to the January 6 insurrection. Turning Point USA has also run a “Professor Watchlist,” “School Board Watchlist,” and “Campus Reform” for nearly a decade.

“America’s radical education system has taken a devastating toll on our children,” Kirk said in an intro video posted on these projects’ websites. “From sexualized material in textbooks to teaching CRT and implementing the 1619 Project doctrine, the radical leftist agenda will not stop … The School Board Watch List exposes school districts that host drag queen story hour, teach courses on transgenderism, and implement unsafe gender neutral bathroom policies. The Professor Watch List uncovers the most radical left-wing professors from universities that are known to suppress conservative voices and advance the progressive agenda.”

These websites have been directly tied to harassment and threats against professors and school board members all over the country. Professor Watchlist lists hundreds of professors around the country, many of them Black or trans, and their perceived radical agendas, which include things like supporting gun control, “socialism,” “Antifa,” “abortion,” and acknowledging that trans people exist and racism exists. Trans professors are misgendered on the website, and numerous people who have been listed on it have publicly spoken about receiving death threats and being harassed after being listed on the site.

One professor on the watchlist who 404 Media is granting anonymity for his safety said once he was added to the list, he started receiving anonymous letters in his campus mailbox. “‘You're everything wrong with colleges,’ ‘watch your step, we're watching you’ kind of stuff,” he said, “One anonymous DM on Twitter had a picture of my house and driveway, which was chilling.” His president and provost also received emails attempting to discredit him with “all the allegedly communist and subversive stuff I was up to,” he said. “It was all certainly concerning, but compared to colleagues who are people of color and/or women, I feel like the volume was smaller for me. But it was certainly not a great feeling to experience that stuff. That watchlist fucked up careers and ruined lives.”

The American Association of University Professors said in an open letter in 2017 that Professor Watchlist “lists names of professors with their institutional affiliations and photographs, thereby making it easy for would-be stalkers and cyberbullies to target them. Individual faculty members who have been included on such lists or singled out elsewhere have been subject to threats of physical violence, including sexual assault, through hundreds of e-mails, calls, and social media postings. Such threatening messages are likely to stifle the free expression of the targeted faculty member; further, the publicity that such cases attract can cause others to self-censor so as to avoid being subjected to similar treatment.” Campus free speech rights group FIRE found that censorship and punishment of professors skyrocketed between 2020 and 2023, in part because of efforts from Professor Watchlist.

Many more professors who Turning Point USA added to their watchlist have spoken out in the past about how being targeted upended their lives, brought years of harassment down on them and their colleagues, and resulted in death threats against them and their loved ones.

At Arizona State University, a professor on the watchlist was assaulted by two people from Turning Point USA in 2023.

“Earlier this year, I wrote to Turning Point USA to request that it remove ASU professors from its Professor Watchlist. I did not receive a response,” university president Michael Crow wrote in a statement. “Instead, the incident we’ve all now witnessed on the video shows Turning Point’s refusal to stop dangerous practices that result in both physical and mental harm to ASU faculty members, which they then apparently exploit for fundraising, social media clicks and financial gain.” Crow said the Professor Watchlist resulted in “antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic attacks on ASU faculty with whom Turning Point USA and its followers disagree,” and called the organization’s tactics “anti-democratic, anti-free speech and completely contrary” to the spirit of scholarship.

Kirk’s death is a horrifying moment in our current American nightmare. Kirk’s actions and rhetoric do not justify what happened to him because they cannot be justified. But Kirk was not merely someone who showed up to college campuses and listened. It should not be controversial to plainly state some of the impact of his work.

ASU President: Turning Point USA crew accused of 'bloodying' ASU professor's face

Arizona State Police released footage of an incident between an ASU English professor, a reporter and cameraman from Turning Point USA that happened on Oct. 11. University president Dr. Michael Crow released a statement calling the men "cowards."

^{Jessica Johnson (FOX 10 Phoenix)}

Judges at the the United Nations’ top court sided with France in a long-running legal tug-of-war with Equatorial Guinea over the sale of a mansion on one of Paris’ poshest avenues

UN court rules in favor of France in Equatorial Guinea mansion dispute

^{Molly Quell (The Independent)}

President makes remark on Fox & Friends after Memphis mayor said he requested financial resources instead

Trump says he will send national guard to Democratic-run Memphis

President makes remark on Fox & Friends after Memphis mayor said he requested financial resources instead

^{Joseph Gedeon (The Guardian)}

Indigenous groups and other minorities praise ‘breath of justice’ while US officials issue warnings of possible sanctions

Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Brazilians take to the streets to celebrate Bolsonaro conviction

^{Tom Phillips (The Guardian)}

This is a discussion topic for the aforementioned FEP.

FEP 7888 (trwnh@mastodon.social) defines the use of context to group reply-associated objects together.
FEP f228 (silverpill@mitra.social) defines how a context resolves to a collection of posts or activities, and how this can be used to backfill a conversational context.

This proposal aims to extend these guidelines further by codifying:

1. That a context declares an owner via context.attributedTo.
2. The situations where a context may be inherited by new objects.

This FEP is a descendant of 7888 and sits alongside f228.

Until it is merged into the main repository, this FEP can be viewed here:

codeberg.org/devnull/feps/src/…

feps/fep/11dd/fep-11dd.md at fep-11dd

feps - Fediverse Enhancement Proposals

^Codeberg.org

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/story/millennial-disaster-preppers-survivalist

Despite being the somewhat crispied face of (extremely limited) unrest in Los Angeles in response to ICE activity, Waymo hasn’t suddenly decided it’s time to get snitchin’.

Waymo Tells Cops: ‘Get A Warrant’

Despite being the somewhat crispied face of (extremely limited) unrest in Los Angeles in response to ICE activity, Waymo hasn’t suddenly decided it’s time to get snitchin’. In fac…

^Techdirt

Slovakia is vetoing new Russia sanctions, again, while demanding more EU cash, despite corruption scandals.

Archived version: archive.is/20250912074352/euob…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Pro-Putin Slovak PM vetoes sanctions, wants more EU money

^{Andrew Rettman (EUobserver)}

One Jewish anti-genocide protester told cops they shouldn't be angry at protesters but at the government for criminalising protest

Jewish anti-genocide protester puts cops in their place

^{Ed Sykes (The Canary)}

Sian Berry spots outlawed cluster bombs on display at arms fair - but pensioners protesting genocide are the ones being dragged away by cops

Green MP spots banned cluster bombs at London arms fair - Canary

^{Joe Glenton (The Canary)}

Prince Harry made a surprise visit to Kyiv to support wounded service members and met with the Ukrainian prime minister, aiming to aid the country's recovery process.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/euronews.com…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Prince Harry visits Kyiv to support wounded Ukrainian soldiers

^Euronews.com