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R.I.P. Harris Yulin, character actor veteran

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Harris Yulin has died. An Emmy-winning veteran of both stage and screen, Yulin’s face will likely be recognizable to anyone who watched sufficient amounts of American TV or film from pretty much the 1970s forward: His nearly 200 credits serve as a tour of a wide swathe of entertainment across that era, whether appearing in mainstream films like Ghostbusters II, giving a scene-stealing performance in Star Trek, or going toe-to-toe with Al Pacino in Scarface. Yulin’s death today, from cardiac arrest, was confirmed by his manager. Per The Hollywood Reporter, he was 87.

Born in California in the 1930s—at least, presumably, since he was left on an orphanage’s steps, by his own account, and adopted at four months—Yulin got his start as an actor on the New York stage, appearing in numerous plays in his 20s and 30s. The ’70s saw him break into film, appearing opposite Stacy Keach and Faye Dunaway in Frank Perry’s revisionist Western Doc, in which he played a murderous Wyatt Earp. The same decade saw Yulin begin what would be a legendary run of TV guest star appearances, making early showings on programs like KojakBarnaby JonesLittle House On The Prairie, and more. Yulin would spend the rest of his life as a staple of TV acting: Law & OrderBuffy The Vampire SlayerStar Trek: Deep Space NineVeepBarettaWonder WomanFrasier—he won the Emmy for Frasier, playing a mob boss who tangles with the Crane boys—and many others. Casting directors knew that if they wanted to bring a certain hard-eyed, world-weary quality to a single-episode character, Yulin was an easy way to do so. (His Deep Space Nine episode, the first season’s “Duet,” remains a fan favorite; Yulin was reportedly so enamored of his character, a meek clerk masquerading as a war criminal in order to bring his own government to account, that he reportedly petitioned to have the episode’s ending change so the character could survive.)

Whether appearing as the cop who (very unsuccessfully) tries to shake Tony Montana down in Scarface, or the judge who reads the Ghostbusters the riot act in Ghostbusters II, Yulin embedded his hard-nosed, quietly funny performances in the brains of whole generations of film and TV fans. He worked relentlessly, while also maintaining a career on the stage (notably on Broadway, where he appeared numerous times from the 1980s onward). He continued to work right up into the 2020s, logging appearances on BillionsDivorceI Know This Much Is TrueFBI: Most Wanted, and more. The “and more,” really, is a constant refrain of Yulin’s career; the man worked relentlessly. When asked about retirement during an interview back in 2010 (when he was already in his 70s), Yulin was clear as day: “Retiring is not a thought that I can ever entertain. You love what you do and feel lucky to be doing it, finally, lucky that other people might want to see it or help you to do it. So it’s great.”



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InShaneee
2 hours ago
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Chicago, IL
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Trump administration tells migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela that their legal status is terminated | CNN Politics

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The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday told hundreds of thousands of migrants that their permission to live and work in the United States had been revoked and they should leave the country, according to a copy of the notice obtained by CNN.

The termination notice was addressed to nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who came to the United States through a Biden-era parole program. More than half a million people from those four countries benefited from the program, though it’s unclear how many have since sought other forms of immigration relief while in the United States. The notice, according to DHS, was sent to email addresses provided by those in the program.

“This notice informs you that your parole is now terminated,” the notice reads. “If you do not leave, you may be subject to enforcement actions, including but not limited to detention and removal, without an opportunity to make personal arrangements and return to your country in an orderly manner.”

The notice also states that work permits linked to the program will be revoked and directs parolees to return those permits to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Thursday’s move is the latest step in the Trump administration’s aggressive and wide-ranging effort to encourage or force millions of migrants out of the country, whether they are in the U.S. legally or illegally.

The Biden administration announced in 2023 that it would grant parole to qualified migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who submitted to review by authorities rather than attempting to enter the country illegally. Applicants were required to have an American sponsor or US-based sponsor who’s lawfully present in the country and clear security vetting.

The program became a political flashpoint as Republicans argued the administration was misusing parole authority and overreached in establishing the program for those countries. At the time, Biden officials credited the program for driving down border crossings by instead providing a path for migrants to apply to legally migrate to the US.

President Donald Trump signed an order on his first day in office seeking to unilaterally end the program. That move prompted legal challenges that eventually made their way to the Supreme Court, which allowed Trump to strip protections for beneficiaries of the parole program.

“Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN in a statement.

Though the emergency decision from the Supreme Court is not final – the underlying legal case will continue in lower courts – the order allowed the administration to expedite deportations for an estimated 530,000 migrants who had previously benefited from the program.

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that its decision to terminate parole status for the migrants at issue was one of the “most consequential immigration policy decisions” it has made. Lower court orders temporarily blocking its policy, the administration said, upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry, vitiating core executive branch prerogatives, and undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election.”

This article has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Devan Cole and John Fritze contributed to this report.

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acdha
4 hours ago
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Good job all of the tias who spent 2024 circulating agitprop on WhatsApp saying Harris was going to require your kids to be trans.
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Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: ‘Morale is not great’ | Los Angeles Ice protests | The Guardian

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California national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.

Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions.

“The sentiment across the board right now is that deploying military force against our own communities isn’t the kind of national security we signed up for,” said Sarah Streyder of the Secure Families Initiative, which represents the interests of military spouses, children and veterans.

“Families are scared not just for their loved ones’ safety, although that’s a big concern, but also for what their service is being used to justify.”

Chris Purdy of the Chamberlain Network, whose stated mission is to “mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy”, said he had heard similar things from half a dozen national guard members. “Morale is not great, is the quote I keep hearing,” he said.

The marines and the California national guard did not respond to invitations to comment.

Trump has taken the unusual step of ordering 4,000 national guard members to Los Angeles without the consent of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, saying that the city risked being “obliterated” by violent protesters without them. Earlier this week, he also activated 700 marines from the Twentynine Palms base two hours’ drive to the east, describing Los Angeles as a “trash heap” that was in danger of burning to the ground.

In reality, the anti-Trump protests – called first in response to aggressive federal roundups of undocumented immigrants, then in anger at the national guard deployment – have been largely peaceful and restricted to just a few blocks around downtown federal buildings. The Los Angeles police has made hundreds of arrests in response to acts of violence and vandalism around the protests, and the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has instituted a night-time curfew – all with minimal input from the federal authorities.

At the largest demonstration since Trump first intervened, last Sunday, the national guard was hemmed into a staging area by Los Angeles police cruisers and played almost no role in crowd control. Since then, its service members have been deployed to guard buildings and federal law enforcement convoys conducting immigration sweeps. The marines, who arrived on Wednesday, are expected to play a similar function, with no powers of arrest.

Newsom has described the deployment as “a provocation, not just an escalation” and accused the White House of mistreating the service members it was activating. A widely circulated photograph, later confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon, showed national guard members sleeping on a concrete loading dock floor without bedding, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the troops arrived with no lodging, insufficient portable toilets and no funds for food or water.

A pair of YouGov polls published on Tuesday show public disapproval of both the national guard and marines deployments, as well as disapproval of Trump’s immigrant deportation policies. A Washington Post poll published on Wednesday came up with similar findings, but with slightly narrower margins.

Active service members are prohibited by law from speaking publicly about their work. But Streyder, of the Secure Families Initiative, said she had heard dozens of complaints indirectly through their families. She had also seen a written comment passed along to her organization from a national guard member who described the assignment as “shitty” – particularly compared with early secondments to help with wildfire relief or, during the Covid pandemic, vaccination outreach.

“Both of those experiences were uncomplicatedly positive, a contribution back to the community,” Streyder described the message as saying. “This is quite the opposite.”

According to Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine Corps veteran who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, the feeling was similar among some of the troops being sent from Twentynine Palms.

“Among all that I spoke with, the feeling was that the marines are being used as political pawns, and it strains the perception that marines are apolitical,” Goldbeck said. “Some were concerned that the Marines were being set up for failure. The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”

The advocates said it was important to draw a distinction between the personal political preferences of service members, many if not most of whom voted for Trump last November, and the higher principle that military personnel should not get involved in politics or politically motivated missions that blur lines of responsibility with civilian agencies.

“We tend to be uniquely apolitical, as an institution and with each other,” Streyder said. “The military is a tool that should be used as a last resort, not a first response… It does not feel that the tool is being calibrated accurately to the situation.”

The discontent may not be limited to California. In Texas, where the governor, Greg Abbott, called out the national guard on Wednesday in San Antonio, Austin and other cities expecting anti-Trump protests, guardsmen have a history of feeling poorly treated in the workplace if not outright misused, Purdy of the Chamberlain Network said.

After Abbott requisitioned the guard in 2021 to help police the Mexican border – a controversial policy codenamed Operation Lone Star – there were bitter complaints among guard members about the length and nature of an assignment that largely duplicated the work of the federal Border Patrol. Several guardsmen took their own lives.

The LA operations are also sparking safety concerns because of complications inherent in pairing military and domestic police officers, advocates say, since they are trained very differently and use different vocabulary to handle emergency situations. In one infamous episode during the 1992 Los Angeles riots – the last time the military were called out to restore order in southern California – a police officer on patrol turned to his marines counterparts and said “cover me”, meaning be ready with your weapon to make sure I stay safe.

To the marines, though, “cover me” meant open fire immediately, which they did, unloading more than 200 M16 rounds into a house where the police had a tip about a possible domestic abuser. By sheer luck, nobody was hurt.

CJ Chivers, a New York Times reporter who was with the marines in Los Angeles in 1992 and witnessed the tail-end of this near-calamity, wrote years later of his mixed feelings about the assignment: “The Marines’ presence in greater Los Angeles… felt unnecessary,” he said. “I’d like to say we understood the context of the role we were given … But domestic crowd control had never been our specialty.”

Streyder and the other advocates concurred. “Domestic law enforcement and the military are entirely separate functions, manned by separate people who have been given separate training, who come from different cultures,” Streyder said. “As military families, we rely implicitly on that separation being honored and remaining clear.”

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acdha
6 hours ago
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If we’re lucky, this is just a waste of $150M.
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How Should Journalists Call Out Lies in the Age of Trump and AI?  - Columbia Journalism Review

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Perhaps the most basic task of journalism is to distinguish truth from falsity. To identify the facts, and to present those facts to a readership eager for information. Journalists may once have believed that their responsibility stopped there—but in today’s media environment, it’s become clear that delivering facts to the public is not so straightforward. Distinguishing true from false, which often entails calling attention to false information, risks amplifying and even legitimizing that information. There is no better contemporary example of this problem than the media coverage of Donald Trump. 

Trump’s brazen dishonesty in his public comments is without political precedent in this country. During his first term, the Washington Post’s fact-checking database clocked 30,573 untruths. That rate shows no sign of slowing during his second term, and now he seems to be combating accusations of lying by simply manipulating who is allowed in the press pool.

“Our norms and conventions of how we cover politics and politicians were not created for a president like Donald Trump,” Rod Hicks, director of ethics and diversity at the Society of Professional Journalists, says. 

Hicks questions the utility of “both sides” journalist protocol in covering politicians who’ve taken cues from Trump on manipulating the press to their advantage. “Every side doesn’t deserve equal weight,” he said. “It’s actually misleading your audience if you give too much weight to something that evidence says is not valid. We think that we’re doing our jobs by following this both-sides rule, but we really aren’t.”

Newsrooms have struggled to find a way to hold Trump accountable. Initially, media outlets were hesitant to use the word lie, preferring falsehood so as to ward off accusations of bias or personal attack. To lie denotes an intention to deceive. 

“I don’t know that we’ve called him a liar in so many words,” said Tony Cavin, the managing editor for standards and practices at NPR. Cavin prefers descriptions over labels, he said. 

Seth Lewis, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon, believes that journalists shouldn’t be wary of calling out lies and racism. Otherwise, he says, they unwittingly become mouthpieces for untruthful speech. 

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“There are more efforts that can be made in getting better at simply telling things as they are rather than, in some cases, hiding behind objectivity as an excuse to not be fully engaged in portraying reality,” Lewis added.

Stephen J.A. Ward, a media ethicist and lecturer at the University of British Columbia, recalled Trump’s 2019 tweet telling Black US Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The tweet was widely reported as containing “racially charged” language.  

”It’s not ‘racially coded.’ It’s racist. Please,” Ward said.  

Steven Springer, who was for years the editor of standards and best practices at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, notes that while it’s difficult for news organizations to counter the quantity of misinformation found on social media, this is now also a vital part of a journalist’s work. 

“We can’t stand on the mountaintop and say, ‘You must listen to me because my organization tells the truth,’” he says. He believes the best way to combat falsehood and misinformation is to “do your job as ethically and as smartly as possible. And then, hopefully, people will find your organization’s work. And they’ll come and start to see what you have to say. It’s the only thing I can hope for.”

What about when misinformation and disinformation come from official channels? 

In March 2024, to commemorate Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, Kate Middleton, the princess of Wales, released a self-portrait with her children via Kensington Palace. It was the first image the public had seen of her since she’d undergone unspecified abdominal surgery a few months prior. 

Royal watchers were almost immediately skeptical of the image. Professional photographers and amateur sleuths scrutinized the photo, pointing out inconsistencies. Within hours of the photo’s release, four major news agencies had retracted the image. One of them, the AP, noted that the image had been digitally manipulated and therefore didn’t meet the AP’s standards.  

In a tweet from Kensington, Middleton issued an apology, explaining that she was simply trying her hand at photo editing. No one believed it. The moment typifies the current era in more ways than one. The direct access that politicians, celebrities, and people in positions of power have to the public via social media allows them, to an extent, to bypass journalistic media. Of course, that relationship works both ways, with readers also able to comment on and react to public statements without the mitigating eye of the editor.

So when the exclusive ability to publish is taken away from them, what purpose do journalism institutions serve? “The one thing that sets us apart, I would argue, is our standards, our ethics,” Cavin said. 

Consider another situation in which a manipulated photo slipped by media professionals: the viral 2023 photo of Pope Francis wearing a designer white puffer jacket. The photo initially convinced many that the pontiff was decked out in Balenciaga, but was later shown to be an AI-produced image. The digital media marketplace demands that writers and editors publish quickly, potentially sacrificing accuracy for speed. But when misinformation of the type apparent in the Kate Middleton photo, and the Pope Francis photo, is uncritically republished by reporters and editors, journalists risk losing their credibility. In cases like these, newsrooms that cover the fakes need to be smart in their sleuthing and clear in their language as they describe what happened. 

“Our policy that we do kind of ram into everyone’s throats is that accuracy is first, and fast—you know, the timing—is second,” Eileen Drage O’Reilly, Axios’s managing editor of standards and training, said.

As technology gets better at producing fake content, other tech tools are being created to help suss them out. For example, the NewsGuard browser extension is a paid service that provides “reliability ratings” for thousands of websites. The ratings are determined by a pool of dozens of journalists who look at the sites’ ownership, content, and operations. Similarly, researchers are exploring the use of watermarks—visible or invisible, buried in pixels—as a way to label images that have been created or manipulated by AI. But a review of the options by the Center for Data Innovation indicates that watermarking is “fraught with significant challenges,” and instead advocates  media-literacy training, enforcement of creators’ intellectual-property rights, and the possible adoption of technology that would allow users to trace the origin of digital content. 

Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.

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acdha
6 hours ago
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“Every side doesn’t deserve equal weight. It’s actually misleading your audience if you give too much weight to something that evidence says is not valid. We think that we’re doing our jobs by following this both-sides rule, but we really aren’t.”
Washington, DC
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Texas governor deploys National Guard to help control protests against immigration crackdown | AP News

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acdha
6 hours ago
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“They hate us for our freedoms!”
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The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris

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acdha
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AOSP Isn't Dead, But Google Just Landed a Huge Blow To Custom ROM Developers

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Google has removed device trees and driver binaries for Pixel phones from the Android 16 source code release, significantly complicating custom ROM development for those devices. The Android-maker intentionally omitted these resources as it shifts its Android Open Source Project reference target from Pixel hardware to a virtual device called "Cuttlefish."

The change forces custom ROM developers to reverse-engineer configurations they previously received directly from Google. Nolen Johnson from LineageOS said the process will become "painful," requiring developers to "blindly guess and reverse engineer from the prebuilt binaries what changes are needed each month." Google also squashed the Pixel kernel source code's commit history, eliminating another reference point developers used for features and security patches.

Google VP Seang Chau dismissed speculation that AOSP itself is ending, stating the project "is NOT going away." However, the changes effectively bring Pixel devices down to the same difficult development level as other Android phones.
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jepler
8 hours ago
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google steadily erasing reasons to actually choose a pixel phone.
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