Jimmy Carter, longest-lived US president, dies aged 100

“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son, in a statement.

“My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”

The Guardian

How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million

The dance group has accumulated enormous wealth, in large part by getting followers of the Falun Gong religious movement to work for free and pay its bills.

The New York Times (Gift)

Norovirus cases are surging in parts of the US, CDC data shows

The most recent numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show there were 91 outbreaks of norovirus reported during the week of Dec. 5, up from 69 outbreaks the last week of November.

AP News

Real cowboys don’t say ‘yeehaw’

Black country aesthetics are now mainstream. Absent are the rural Afro-Texans who sustain the heritage and traditions of Black cowboy country life

Prism

“I Have Lost Everything”: The Toll of Cities’ Homeless Sweeps

A record number of Americans are living outside. Cities have responded by removing encampments from public spaces, a practice commonly referred to as “sweeps.” In the process, workers often take people’s belongings — including important documents, survival gear and irreplaceable mementos.

ProPublica

‘Would he have lived?’ When insurance companies deny cancer care to patients

Health insurers are increasingly interfering in care, an NBC News investigation found. Doctors say the stakes are highest in cancer care, when delays can be the difference between life and death.

NBC

US location that issued same-sex marriage licenses in 1975 earns landmark status

Do you know when and where the first same-sex marriage licenses were issued in the US?

Although Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, a handful of country clerks had issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples before this time. 

The one that propelled same-sex marriage into the headlines was Boulder County Courthouse in Colorado. In 1975, the new county clerk, Clela Rorex, then 31, issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple named Dave McCord and Dave Zamora. She did so after checking the state’s legislature that there wasn’t a specific law banning her from doing so.  

Queerty

Americans struggling with student debt expect ‘much worse’ under Trump

Joe Biden has pushed during his presidency to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans. Now Donald Trump, who has branded such efforts “vile”, is preparing to succeed him – leaving borrowers at risk of losing relief they received, or had been waiting for.

The Guardian

Kansas once required voters to prove citizenship. That didn’t work out so well

Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there’s one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas.

AP News

Concerning Bird Flu Virus Mutations Found in Severely Ill Patient

Samples from a hospitalized patient in Louisiana show changes that could make the H5N1 virus spread more easily between humans

Scientific American

Y2K seems like a joke now, but in 1999 people were really freaking out

Computer specialist and grassroots organizer Paloma O’Riley compared the scale and urgency of Y2K prep to telling somebody to change out a rivet on the Golden Gate Bridge. Changing out just one rivet is simple, but “if you suddenly tell this person he now has to change out all the rivets on the bridge and he has only 24 hours to do it in — that’s a problem,” O’Riley told reporter Jason Beaubien in 1998.

NPR

He Frantically Called 911 to Revive His Infant Son. Now He Could Face 12 Years in Prison.

Fifteen years later, the diagnosis is still shaping criminal prosecutions and child welfare investigations. Child abuse pediatricians say they do rigorous workups to rule out the possibilities of both natural and accidental causes before they settle on the diagnosis. But doctors — and the police, prosecutors and judges who look to them for guidance — don’t always get it right. Thirty-five people whose convictions rested on the diagnosis are currently listed on the National Registry of Exonerations. Not yet counted is Joshua Burns, whose wrongful conviction was vacated by a Michigan court in November.

ProPublica

How an S.F. man’s 1898 Supreme Court victory established birthright citizenship

As President-elect Donald Trump vows to repeal birthright citizenship, a descendant of Wong Kim Ark reflects on his family’s role in its history.

San Francisco Chronicle

Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration

“I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post in a phone interview. He added: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

The Washington Post (Gift)

AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making Yours Worse

AI data centers are multiplying across the US and sucking up huge amounts of power. New evidence shows they may also be distorting the normal flow of electricity for millions of Americans.

Bloomberg (Gift)

We ‘have our head in the sand’: Health experts warn US isn’t reacting fast enough to threat of bird flu

The US hasn’t learned lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic that it could use to mitigate the threat of pathogens like H5N1 bird flu that keep showing signs of their own pandemic potential, health experts told CNN Friday.

“We kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal-to-human standpoint,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump, said on “CNN Newsroom” with Pamela Brown.

CNN

It wasn’t all bad: Despite election defeat, progressives scored big wins in 2024

Organizers tell Salon how they pulled off major victories in a year marked by the rise of the far-right

Salon

Leonard Matlovich took on the US military to fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the 1970s

After serving in the Vietnam War, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich faced a new battle—this time against the military establishment. In 1975, he gained international attention by openly challenging the military’s ban on homosexuality.

Matlovich’s courageous stand and the legal fight that followed became an important moment in the broader struggle for equality among diverse communities.

War History Online

Secret Assad files show Stasi of Syria put children on trial

Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed

The Times

Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza.

Years before the Gaza war, Israel transformed its intelligence unit into an AI testing ground, triggering a debate among top commanders about whether humans were sufficiently in the loop.

The Washington Post (Gift)

New French guidelines show doctors overwhelmingly support gender-affirming care

The French Society of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetology released a set of guidelines that can be considered the first consensus to come out of France for gender-affirming care. The guidelines were thoroughly conducted: Each section of the review is broken up up into separate categories evaluated by smaller groups of study authors who incorporated input from external experts. The final guidelines were also refined by the broader group of authors.

LGBTQ Nation

Syria: New mass graves discovered in Homs and Sweida

Mass graves discovered in Homs and Sweida are believed to hold the bodies of victims of torture and killings by Assad’s regime.

The New Arab

Protests continue in Georgia after new president is sworn in

For weeks, thousands of people have been demonstrating daily for a return to the country’s pro-EU course and for a repeat of the parliamentary elections in October, in which the national-conservative ruling party Georgian Dream was declared the winner.

dpa International

Jeju Air plane crashes in South Korea with 177 confirmed deaths

A flight operated by Jeju Air crashed at 9:03 a.m. local time on Sunday while the plane was attempting to land at Muan International Airport near the southern tip of South Korea.

UPI

Elon Musk backs Germany’s far-right party ahead of upcoming elections

Musk’s guest opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag —a sister publication of POLITICO owned by the Axel Springer Group — published in German over the weekend, was the second time this month he supported the Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

CBS News

Romania’s government to decree tax hikes and spending cuts to reduce deficit

Romania’s new coalition government will make a series of tax hikes and caps on public sector wages and pensions via emergency decree on Monday, in a move to lower the EU’s largest budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Reuters

Inside a Syrian ‘reconciliation centre’ where Assad’s soldiers give up their weapons

HTS has announced a general amnesty for those who worked for the former regime.

BBC