(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Overnight News Digest: Le Pen verdict rocks French far right [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-31
BBC
"Incredible." That was the single word uttered under her breath by Marine Le Pen as she stormed out of a Paris courtroom on Monday morning. She left the court early – just before hearing that she was barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of embezzlement of EU funds – almost certainly ruling her out from standing in the 2027 French presidential election. Without even waiting for the judge to pronounce the full details of the sentence, the head of the National Rally knew that her political goose was cooked. There would be no reprieve pending appeal. The bar on running for office was real and immediate. A four-year prison sentence, of which two will be suspended, will be on hold pending appeal.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
BBC
A missile launcher sends a cloud of brown dust into the air as it hurtles across a field towards the firing line. Moments later comes a soldier's countdown, from five to 'Fire!', before a rocket roars into the sky. The blasts and booms from such military training exercises are so constant that locals in the nearby small town of Munster barely notice anymore. But life here is set to get even louder. Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, recently got the all-clear for a massive increase in investment after parliament voted to exempt defence spending from strict rules on debt. The country's top general has told the BBC the cash boost is urgently needed because he believes Russian aggression won't stop at Ukraine. "We are threatened by Russia. We are threatened by Putin. We have to do whatever is needed to deter that," Gen Carsten Breuer says. He warns that Nato should be braced for a possible attack in as little as four years.
NPR
The Institute of Museum and Library Services has placed its entire staff on administrative leave. The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States. This month, President Trump named Keith E. Sonderling — the deputy secretary of labor — the new acting director of IMLS. This followed Trump's previous executive order shrinking seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. According to a statement from AFGE Local 3403, which represents IMLS workers, the agency's staff was notified by email about being placed on paid administrative leave for 90 days after a "brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership." Employees had to turn in government property, and email accounts were disabled.
x The Trump administration will review $9bn in funding for Harvard over alleged anti-Semitism, after cutting millions from Columbia University, which saw protests over Gaza. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/vkv01x
[image or embed] — aljazeera.com (@aljazeera.com) March 31, 2025 at 5:13 PM
NPR
The White House has concluded its review of how Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included on a Signal message group chat of high-ranking officials discussing impending strikes in Yemen. The Atlantic story, published one week ago, stunned Washington because of the sensitive nature of the information disclosed on the app. The White House has said none of the information was classified. "This case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned," press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday. "There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again, and we're moving forward," she said. Leavitt said Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz — who created the group chat and added Goldberg to it — "continues to be an important part of (Trump's) national security team."
Al Jazeera
Facebook has platformed more than 100 paid advertisements promoting illegal settlements and far-right settler activity in the occupied West Bank, an Al Jazeera investigation has found, raising concerns that the social media giant is profiting from content that may violate international law. Among the advertisements identified were also calls for the demolition of Palestinian homes, schools, and playgrounds, as well as fundraising appeals for Israeli military units operating in Gaza. Facebook’s parent company Meta told Al Jazeera that any advertisements that ran on its platforms were reviewed by the company. While it admitted that some of the advertisements had since been removed for “violating our social issues, elections, and politics policies”, it did not specify whether the promotion of illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land breached those standards.
x NEW: DOGE is trying to gift itself a building worth $500 million, court filings show. It's the culmination of a dramatic battle between DOGE and the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally funded think tank. www.wired.com/story/doge-t...
[image or embed] — WIRED (@wired.com) March 31, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Deutsche Welle
Two high-ranking aides to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, were arrested in a "Qatargate" probe — an investigation into alleged foreign influence and security breaches.
Israel police on Monday said they had arrested two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest aides, Jonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, on suspicion of illicit ties to the Qatari government. The arrests on Monday mark a development in what local media has dubbed as the "Qatargate'' — an investigation probing potential foreign influence, national security breaches and political misconduct. Shortly after the arrests, Netanyahu himself was summoned by police to his office in Jerusalem. He had left his ongoing corruption trial in Tel Aviv earlier in the day to comply with the summons issued by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, according to Israeli media.
Deutsche Welle
Frustrated by the UK's exit from the EU, John Francis no longer wanted his British passport after Brexit officially took place on February 1, 2020. Instead, he applied for German citizenship and was thus able to continue traveling as an EU citizen. Now, he lives in the small German town of Obertshausen, where he runs his own company, Britain.de, which arranges vacation homes for tourists in England, Scotland and Wales. "At times, there was a lot of uncertainty among my customers," he says. "They had many questions, such as: 'What will be required to enter the country in future? Is there a visa requirement? Do you need a passport?" General confusion about new changes has no doubt led to a drop in the number of people choosing to go on vacation in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Yet it's difficult to quantify the consequences of Brexit on the travel industry, since the UK's exit from the bloc coincided with a dip in tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
x Watch actors Oscar Isaac, Kathryn Erbe and Bill Camp perform ProPublica article “I Don’t Want to Die: Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network" by reporter @maxblau.bsky.social. RSVP to attend this FREE event by Theater of War & WNYC on Zoom:
[image or embed] — ProPublica (@propublica.org) March 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
The Guardian
Richard Chamberlain, who has died at 90, achieved exceptional television celebrity by playing devastatingly attractive men whose professions made them unavailable to women. In The Thorn Birds – a 1983 miniseries that achieved huge ratings for ABC in the US and BBC One in the UK – he was Ralph De Bricassart, a Catholic priest whose vow of celibacy is tested beyond breaking point over four decades by Meggie, a young woman whom he meets on an Australian sheep farm. Based on a 1977 bestseller by Colleen McCullough, the drama benefited from finding a way of making attraction dangerous again in a post-60s era of sexual freedom. Watched by almost 60% of the available American TV audience – an extraordinarily high score – it got 16 Emmy nominations, winning six. Unusually, its British TV premiere – on 8 January 1984, between ratings hits Hi-De-Hi! and That’s Life! – was given a standalone preview programme in the previous week. Comprising an interview with Chamberlain, it was a tribute to his fame and the international impact of The Thorn Birds.
The Guardian, US
Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly gained access to a payroll system over the weekend that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across various government agencies, despite warnings from senior staff about the potential risks. According to two people familiar with the situation who spoke with the New York Times, Doge employees had spent about two weeks trying to obtain administrative access to the program, known as the Federal Personnel and Payroll System. Then, toward the end of last week, senior career officials at the interior department reportedly issued a memo highlighting the unusual nature of the request and the associated risks with granting it. The memo, reviewed by the Times, stated that “such elevated access to critical high-value asset systems is rare with respect to individual systems and no single [Department of Interior] official presently has access to all HR, payroll and credentialing systems.”
x BREAKING: @democrats.org sues Trump over his executive order to impose new voting rules. The Democrats claim the order illegally overrides state control of elections, a power the Constitution grants only to states and Congress. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
[image or embed] — Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) March 31, 2025 at 4:52 PM
The Guardian, International
Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said. According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied. The shootings happened on 23 March, one day into the renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border. Another Red Crescent worker on the mission is reported missing.
Reuters
LONDON/NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - As World Liberty Financial raised more than half a billion dollars, President Donald Trump’s family took control of the crypto venture and grabbed the lion’s share of those funds, aided by governance terms that industry experts say favor insiders. Launched last fall, World Liberty’s goal is to allow people to access financial services using cryptocurrencies and without intermediaries like banks in what is called decentralized finance, or DeFi. But it has yet to launch a public platform and has reported only a small staff, a review of the project shows. Even so, World Liberty said in mid-March it had raised $550 million selling so-called governance tokens. Most of those sales took place after Trump’s election win in November, Reuters calculations show. The tokens, which go by the symbol $WLFI, give holders the right to vote on changes to the project’s underlying code and to signal their opinion on its direction and plans. They cannot be traded. As its fundraising got traction, World Liberty disclosed in January that the Trump family had taken control of the business, a review of changes in the fine print on World Liberty’s website shows. Two of its co-founders, crypto entrepreneurs Zak Folkman and Chase Herro, were replaced as the controlling parties of World Liberty by an entity in which the Trump family holds a 60% stake.
x HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has touted vitamin A as a measles treatment, but the side effects of vitamin A overdose are dire. Too much vitamin A can cause acute toxicity that can include nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, irritability, abdominal pain and liver damage. #truthkast
[image or embed] — Dailycast | Truthkast Radio (@dailycast.news) March 31, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Reuters
TORONTO/NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - The "Buy Canadian" movement is sending new ripples of concern through the executive offices of U.S.-based consumer companies that banked on selling their products on Canadian retail shelves. California-based diaper maker Parasol Co had been working since January with a distributor to expand the sale of its diapers and baby wipes to new retailers in Canada, including convenience stores, CEO Jessica Hung said. But, in early March the distributor, who Hung declined to name, halted work on the deal, she said, because of growing anti-American sentiment in Canada. "They were instructed by a retailer to pause any American brand launch," Hung said, referring to the distributor. "They told us they would re-evaluate when market conditions allow." "That's the kind of disruption we would never expect,” said Hung. "I never heard of this happening until now. It’s definitely quite a bit of headwinds." A dramatic reshuffling of Canada's retail shelves illustrates the impact of patriotic consumerism in Canada, which imported nearly $350 billion of products from the United States in 2024, making it its largest trading partner.
x Some 1,900 leading researchers accused the Trump administration in an open letter on Monday of conducting a “wholesale assault on U.S. science” that could set back research by decades and that threatens the health and safety of Americans.
[image or embed] — The New York Times (@nytimes.com) March 31, 2025 at 4:31 PM
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/31/2313714/-Overnight-News-Digest-Le-Pen-verdict-rocks-French-far-right?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
