While the newly released files do not appear to show that he was an active participant in Epstein's inner circle, <em>Paste</em>’s comprehensive timeline of Branson’s presence in the documents makes the Virgin Group CEO's claims of ignorance hard to believe.
The NBA star’s recent praise for Israel, as the genocide continues, was as bewildering as it was shameful. What happened to his support for social justice?
Three activists — Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole — featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution were placed in solitary confinement last month in what advocates believe is retaliation for their role in exposing the abuses of the state’s prison system and for helping to organize a prison labor strike. We’re joined by three guests who worked on the documentary: director Andrew Jarecki, investigative journalist Charlotte Kaufman and Tiffany Johnson Cole, a childhood friend of and attorney for Robert Earl Council. Johnson Cole has filed a lawsuit against her client’s transfer. She says Council, Ray, Poole and other incarcerated activists have “put themselves in harm’s way in an effort to bring about change in a system that is truly cruel and inhumane.” The Alabama Solution features footage clandestinely shot on contraband cellphones wielded by men incarcerated by the fifth-largest state prison system in the United States. The footage includes the apparent cover-up of the beating death of an incarcerated man by prison guards. “Any authoritarian administration does not want you to see what’s going on inside,” says director Andrew Jarecki. “They can’t really continue to do what they’re doing if there’s enough public pressure, which is one of the reasons why Alabama is so anxious about this film.” Kaufman adds that the problem extends throughout the country. “We spend $80 billion a year on prisons and jails and incarcerate 2 million people, and yet the public’s not allowed to see in and evaluate whether the system is fulfilling its mandate.”
The sector generated about $656 billion in direct revenue, and supported 91,000 jobs, in 2024.
The zero-tarriff policy will come into effect on May 1.
Valterra Platinum told Semafor the reduction in power rationing had enabled the firm to invest more money into the business.
Mali’s military junta is trying to secure a larger share of profits from the country’s mineral resources against a backdrop of rising gold prices.
Thirty-three-year-old Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia will soon mark one year trapped in ICE detention. Kordia, who was born in East Jerusalem, first came to police attention when she was arrested during the 2024 Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University. Those charges were dropped, but Kordia was later detained at routine immigration check-in in New Jersey. Federal immigration officers said her student visa had expired, and sent her to an ICE detention center in North Texas, where she’s been incarcerated ever since. Under what she describes as torturous conditions, she suffered her first-ever seizure, which led to a multiday hospitalization. For three days, ICE refused to inform her family and legal team about her status and whereabouts. “She’s been a relatively healthy person physically until she was detained … [but] her health is at great risk if she remains in custody,” says Kordia’s attorney Sarah Sherman-Stokes. Kordia has lost more than 200 family members to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and a judge has ruled that she cannot be repatriated to Israel because of risk of persecution there, but the U.S. government has refused to release her on bond while her legal battle crawls along. “Leqaa should never have been detained,” in the first place, says Sherman-Stokes.