A campaign group seeking to overturn Denver’s ban on flavored tobacco sales in the November election has far outraised supporters of the prohibition, campaign finance records show.

The opponents of the ban, a coalition of Denver vape store owners organized as a group called “Citizen Power!,” raised $410,000 through the end of August, according to campaign finance reports filed this month. The campaign group supporting the ban, “Denver Kids vs. Big Tobacco,” raised about $245,000.

In December, the Denver City Council near-unanimously approved a ban on sales of most flavored tobacco and nicotine products after public health and children’s advocates argued the products could lure young people into a life of addiction.

The council approved the ban, which applies to any sales within city limits, despite heavy lobbying from tobacco companies and vape stores. Mayor Mike Johnston signed it.

Tobacco companies aid vape shops in push to repeal Denver flavored tobacco ban, outraising law's backers

The president of the campaign group opposing the ban said that instead of creating a new prohibition for adults, Denver should better enforce its earlier ban on sales of the products to children.

^{Elliott Wenzler (The Denver Post)}

"Echoes of Gaza" is a protest song but also a piece of literature. The lyrics are metaphorically charged:

"History writes with a broken hand" summarizes distortion of accounts.

"Phantom voice, a dream you shed" symbolizes lost humanity.

"Ghosts in the wars you weave" judges global complicity in silence.

Echoes of Gaza: A Soundscape of Resistance and Memory

Explore "Echoes of Gaza," a unique track by Ali Taha Alnobani that uses AI to create a soundscape of resistance and memory.

^{www.thebirdali.com}

Nearly 2 million people in southern China were evacuated as a powerful typhoon hurtled into one of the world’s most densely populated coasts, having already unleashed deadly flooding in Taiwan.

Typhoon Ragasa, which a few days ago was the strongest storm on earth so far this year, brought finance hub Hong Kong and swathes of southern China to a standstill on Wednesday, after barreling through remote islands in the Philippines and mountainous regions of Taiwan.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/23/asia/typhoon-ragasa-hong-kong-southern-china-impact-intl-hnk

Lawmakers and activists across the political spectrum called on American tech firms to stop selling surveillance equipment to Chinese police and for Congress to examine the issue after The Associated Press reported that U.S. technology had played a far greater role than previously known in enabling human rights abuses by Beijing.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told AP he wanted to summon tech companies before Congress to address how their technology exports were used. Hawley, a longtime critic of U.S. technology companies, bemoaned Silicon Valley’s general lack of cooperation with Congress on that and similar inquiries.

“I think eventually we’re going to have to subpoena these people,” Hawley said.

In a post on the social media site X this month, Hawley vowed that “Big Tech must cut ties with the CCP - or face my committee,” referring to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Hawley sits on several Senate panels that might have jurisdiction to examine technology issues

An AP investigation published this month revealed that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Companies named in AP’s reporting said they complied with all export control laws.

Yang Caiying, who told AP for its investigation about how her family was targeted by Chinese surveillance using American technology because of their activism in rural Jiangsu, said she was “shocked by the pivotal role that major U.S. tech companies have played” in her family’s ordeal. Yang is now collecting signatures for petitions urging Washington to bar U.S. firms from selling to Chinese police, both online and on the street.

Other lawmakers from both parties urged Congress to beef up export laws to prevent more American technology from being used to fuel human rights abuses abroad.

“China has been utilizing partnerships with U.S. tech companies to build malignant ‘smart cities’ that are used for mass surveillance and human rights abuses against millions of innocent Chinese people,” said Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. The panel is charged with examining the strategic global competition between the U.S. and China.

“As executives at Nvidia and other American tech companies chase business in China, they cannot deny that their technology will be used to commit atrocities, strengthen China, and weaken America,” Moolenaar said.

Moolenaar called for American companies to work with Congress to write new laws that restrict the export of technologies that enable oppression. and work harder to keep their products from being smuggled into China.

https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-valley-uyghurs-tech-xinjiang-60df0358dff99e326c16c9ea48dae82c

Police records and witness accounts from a Chicago suburb where a man was fatally shot by a federal immigration enforcement agent earlier this month complicate the picture of the event presented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which said the agent fired his weapon after the man drove his vehicle toward agents.

Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, 38, was pulled over and eventually shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Franklin Park, Illinois on September 12, just after dropping off his two children at Passow Elementary School and Small World Learning Center, a daycare located blocks away from the incident.

Bodycam footage, which Reuters obtained on Tuesday, captures an interview with the truck driver, named in police records as Josue Hernandez-Rodriguez.

“He was trying to escape from them,” Hernandez-Rodriguez said.

In multiple statements, DHS has said the agent, who has not been identified, responded with lethal force because he was "fearing for his own life." But in bodycam footage, the agent, in a bullet-resistant police vest and torn jeans, described his injuries as “nothing major.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/police-records-witness-accounts-complicate-dhs-narrative-fatal-chicago-area-ice-2025-09-24/

In 2004, political campaigns spent 9 cents of every dollar raised on fundraising operations. By 2024, that number had reached 30 cents. American political campaigns are raising more and more money less and less efficiently. I’ve analyzed data from FEC disbursement records, using an algorithm I developed to classify expenditures by spending category. It reveals that campaigns are now spending 38 cents of every dollar raised just to raise more money—a fourfold increase from the 9 cents spent in 2004. In raw terms, campaigns burned through $3 billion on fundraising operations in 2024 alone.

This represents a fundamental shift in how political money flows through our democracy. Twenty years ago, fundraising operations were a necessary but modest expense, like renting office space or printing yard signs. Today, it has metastasized into the primary activity of most campaigns. In 2022, 31% of total expenditures were for fundraising expenses. This came close to exceeding the 33% of total expenditures going towards advertising. If current trends hold in 2026, it’s likely that fundraising costs will for the first time exceed what is spent on advertising, thus becoming the biggest spending category.

The Fundraising-Industrial Complex Is Eating American Politics

New data reveals campaigns burn about a third of donations raised just asking for more donations

^{Adam Bonica (On Data and Democracy)}

The city office that oversees land use and zoning notified the owner of the building that Ice leases on 18 September that the federal agency had violated a conditional use permit approved in 2011. The permit limits the number of detainees Ice can hold at the facility each day to fewer than 15, and the duration for which they can be held, to less than 12 hours. The permit also bars the agency from “housing” anyone overnight.

But Ice data the city obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, included in the official notice, shows 25 instances since January in which Ice held a person for more than 12 hours. On 26 January alone, agents held 16 people – listed as citizens of Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and other countries – for over 27 hours before transferring them, according to public records obtained by Street Roots and the Guardian.

The city’s notice also said the building was illegally altered when exterior windows were boarded up without proper approval. An Ice spokesperson did not respond to a question asking when the wood was installed, but photos and video taken at protests and posted on social media show the boarded up windows first appeared around 16 June.

Ice is illegally detaining immigrants in a Portland field office, mayor says

Records obtained by Street Roots and the Guardian back claim from Oregon city’s mayor that Ice violated a land use permit to detain people overnight

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

Most of the tax dollars used to launch and implement the nation’s only Medicaid work requirement program have gone toward paying administrative costs rather than covering health care for Georgians, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan agency that monitors federal programs and spending.

The government report examined administrative expenses for Georgia Pathways to Coverage, the state’s experiment with work requirements. It follows previous reporting by The Current and ProPublica showing that the program has cost federal and state taxpayers more than $86.9 million while enrolling a tiny fraction of those eligible for free health care.

The GAO analysis, which does not include all the Pathways administrative expenses detailed by the news outlets, shows that as of April the Georgia program had spent $54.2 million on administrative costs since 2021, compared to $26.1 million spent on health care costs. Nearly 90% of administrative expenditures came from the federal budget, the report concluded, meaning that Georgia’s experiment is being funded by taxpayers around the country. Federal spending will likely increase given that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved $6 million more in administrative costs not reflected in this report because it was published before the state submitted invoices.

Georgia’s Medicaid Work Requirement Program Spent Twice as Much on Administrative Costs as on Health Care, GAO Says

Republican lawmakers cite Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage as a national model for federal Medicaid work requirements that are set to take effect in 2027. A new report shows the program has spent at least $54 million on administrative costs alone.

^ProPublica

https://www.orizzontescuola.it/quando-i-cartoni-degli-anni-90-cambiano-i-bambini-lesperimento-di-una-madre-che-fa-riflettere/

https://perchance.org/ai-chat

Italia e Polonia si sfidano nella semifinale dei Mondiali di pallavolo maschile 2025. Ecco programma, orari e dove vederla in tv e streaming.

L’Italvolley torna a incrociare la sua rivale storica, la Polonia, nella semifinale dei Campionati del mondo di pallavolo maschile 2025. In palio, c’è la finale di Pasai City (Filippine) e la possibilità di difendere il titolo iridato vinto tre anni fa.

LEGGI L'ARTICOLO: Italia – Polonia: semifinale Mondiali 2025, programma, precedenti e diretta tv

Italia-Polonia Mondiali volley 2025: orari e dove vederla in TV e streaming

^{Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)}

L’NBA sbarca ufficialmente su Prime Video. A partire da ottobre 2025, il campionato di basket più importante del mondo entra nell’offerta sportiva del colosso streaming di Amazon, senza costi aggiuntivi per gli abbonati Prime. L’accordo, valido per 11 anni, rappresenta una delle più grandi operazioni globali sui diritti sportivi e promette di rivoluzionare l’esperienza di visione per i fan italiani, grazie al doppio commento in lingua italiana e inglese.

I DETTAGLI DELL'ACCORDO: NBA su Prime Video: accordo globale da 11 anni. Dal 25 ottobre inizia la stagione in streaming

NBA su Prime Video: accordo di 11 anni per le partite in diretta

Prime Video trasmetterà l’NBA per 11 anni. Dal 25 ottobre partite in esclusiva: Regular Season, Playoff e Finals. Scopri orari e dettagli.

^{Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)}