Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter Account Has Been Permanently Suspended

Twitter has Greene is the first member of Congress to have her personal political account banned from Twitter.

Buzzfeed News

With fascism coming, America responds: LOL who cares? Let’s Netflix and chill

As the threat of authoritarian takeover grows, most Americans have lost interest. They’ll have nobody else to blame.

Salon

CDC Director Says COVID Isolation Rules Were Changed to ‘Encourage People to Do the Right Thing’

“We really do need people to follow these recommendations for them to work. But I would also say that those people who are not masking, who are out and about are probably not the ones isolating either,” she noted. “So what we really wanted to do is make sure that these recommendations were more easily followed. We don’t want them out and about when they are maximally infectious.”

People

Wastewater samples reveal record levels of Covid-19 across U.S.

“Wastewater is going to be a leading indicator for what’s going on in a given community and what’s to come,” said a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

NBC

A program for cheaper internet for low-income Americans launches today

Starting today, eligible US residents can apply for help with their internet bills under the new Affordable Connectivity Program. The program launched today with $14.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in November.

The Verge

The Covid-19 case surge is altering daily life across the US. Things will likely get worse, experts warn

“Omicron is truly everywhere,” Dr. Megan Ranney, a professor of emergency medicine at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told CNN on Friday night. “What I am so worried about over the next month or so is that our economy is going to shut down, not because of policies from the federal government or from the state governments, but rather because so many of us are ill.”

CNN

Americans seeking to renounce their citizenship are stuck with it for now

As many as 30,000 citizens living abroad have been unable to secure a ‘loss of nationality’ interview during the pandemic

The Guardian

Turned Tables: In Presidential Polls, Brazil’s Lula Leads Judge Who Locked Him Up

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Jair Bolsonaro, and Sergio Moro, three major candidates in Brazil’s 2022 election, have a turbulent and intertwined past.

The Intercept

Ottawa reaches agreement on First Nations child welfare compensation

The federal government has reached an agreement to settle a long-standing dispute over the First Nations child welfare system, CTV News confirmed Saturday.

CTV News

Desperate Afghan families consider selling their children amid starvation, economic crisis

Aziz Gul’s husband sold the 10-year-old girl into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Without that money, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest.

Many of Afghanistan’s growing number of destitute people are making desperate decisions such as these as their nation spirals into a vortex of poverty.

USA Today

They grew up surrounded by racism. But early on they chose a different path

Matt Hawn has become a focal point of one of this past year’s biggest racial controversies. The former public high school teacher in Tennessee was thrust into the national spotlight after he was fired from his tenured job for the way he taught students about White privilege.

Hawn became one of the most prominent casualties in an ongoing debate over how racism and history should be taught to students in the US. His plight has divided people in his conservative, heavily White city near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

CNN

Mexico Announces It Will Issue Its Own Digital Coin by 2024

The government of Mexico announced that the country’s central bank will issue its own digital currency. The statement of the official account of the presidency of Mexico informed that the development should be ready towards 2024, and remarked about the importance the technology has for the future of the financial structure of the country.

bitcoin.com

France to make birth control free for women aged 18-25

After making birth control free for underage girls, France is now expanding the program to include women aged 18 to 25.

Deutsche Welle

Hungary election: outsider from the right backed by left to beat Viktor Orbán

Six opposition parties have united behind Péter Márki-Zay for crucial spring vote

The Guardian

The DC Punk Scene Relied on the Local Latinx Community

How this predominantly white youth subculture interacted with the process of Latinx neighborhood building and community making has often been left out of the story of DC’s legendary punk and hardcore scene of the 1980s. In previous decades, the neighborhoods — Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights — surrounding the church had become anchor points for working-class Black and brown residents who were making do in redlined, disinvested areas. Yet the relatively poor economic conditions of the area’s immigrants, coupled with city neglect, made these neighborhoods optimal spaces for suburban punks to enjoy loud music and violent slam dancing — something that was impossible in more upscale neighborhoods.

Teen Vogue

Humor: A modest proposal: Let’s heal America’s wounds — with reparations for white people

Don’t white people deserve compensation for injustice too? OK, maybe not — but bribing them is another story.

Salon

Amazon’s Machine Bosses Are Targeted in California Legislation

Politicians at the federal and state level are waking up to the potential perils of algorithms that hire, fire and manage workers.

Bloomberg

‘There is no money left’: Covid crisis leaves Sri Lanka on brink of bankruptcy

Half a million people have sunk into poverty since the pandemic struck, with rising costs forcing many to cut back on food

The Guardian

Israel hits Gaza with airstrikes

Israel’s military said early Sunday it launched strikes against militant targets in the Gaza Strip, a day after rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled territory.

CBS News

President welcomes Irish becoming full official language of EU

President Michael D Higgins has welcomed what he called a “significant day” for the Irish language as it achieved full status as an official language of the European Union from midnight last night.

RTE

LGBTQ+ Leaders Pay Tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Tutu, perhaps best known for being a leading figure in the decades-long struggle against apartheid, also supported a wide range of global liberation struggles, decrying the Iraq war as “immoral,” playing a powerful role in the response to HIV/AIDS, and drawing parallels between “the plight of the Palestinians” and the injustices endured by Black South Africans.

It should be no surprise that his keen sense of justice extended to LGBTQ+ equality as well.

them.

30,000 People Volunteer To Act As Stand-In Parents For LGBTQ+ Couples Whose Family Disowned Them For Getting Married

A viral TikTok video, which offers families to stand in as parents for same-sex couples on their wedding day, has led the creation of an LGBTQ+ Facebook support group, TikTok Stand in Families.

YourTango

January 1, 2022, is Public Domain Day: Works from 1926 are open to all, as is a cornucopia of recorded music: an estimated 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923!

On January 1, 2022, copyrighted works from 1926 will enter the US public domain, 1  where they will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The line-up this year is stunning. It includes books such as A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Felix Salten’s Bambi, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues, and Dorothy Parker’s Enough Rope. There are scores of silent films—including titles featuring Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Greta Garbo, famous Broadway songs, and well-known jazz standards. But that’s not all. In 2022 we get a bonus: an estimated 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 2  will be entering the public domain too!

Center for the Study of the Public Domain

In Wake of Buffalo Victory, More Starbucks Workers Are Forging Unions

Capping off what organizers and other labor rights advocates have dubbed “the year of the worker,” employees at two more Starbucks stores are seeking to unionize.

truthout

‘Next to Impossible to Escape’: Omicron Is Like Nothing We’ve Seen Before

The United States is shattering new case records, and that’s almost certainly an undercount.

Vice News