Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Paige Collings
“In late September, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government’s plans to introduce a new digital ID scheme in the country to take effect before the end of the Parliament (no later than August 2029). The scheme will, according to the Prime Minister, ‘cut the faff’ in proving people’s identities by creating a virtual ID on personal devices with information like people’s name, date of birth, nationality or residency status, and photo to verify their right to live and work in the country. This is the latest example of a government creating a new digital system that is fundamentally incompatible with a privacy-protecting and human rights-defending democracy.” (11/28/25)
“President Donald Trump announced Friday that he was canceling executive orders signed using President Joe Biden’s autopen. Like other presidents, including Trump, Biden used an autopen to sign certain official documents. Republicans have claimed the autopen was used by the people around Biden to circumvent a mentally declining president. … There’s no public record of how many documents were signed by autopen during Biden’s presidency.” (11/28/25)
“On November 18, the UN General Assembly, which represents all 193 member states of the UN, overwhelmingly passed a worthy resolution affirming ‘the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,’ including ‘the right to their independent State of Palestine.’ … Shamefully, however, just the day before, on November 17, eleven of the countries that voted for the General Assembly resolution — the UK, France, Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia and South Korea — voted for a Security Council resolution introduced by the US which, as the international lawyer Itay Epshtain explained on X, explicitly ‘aims to extinguish, suspend, or condition’ the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine.” (11/28/25)
“Israeli forces on Thursday killed a pair of Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank after they appeared to surrender to troops, drawing Palestinian accusations that the men were executed ‘in cold blood.’ The Israeli military said it was investigating. … In a video shown on Palestine TV, which has no sound, the two men come out of a garage holding their hands up and lifting their shirts to show they are not carrying explosives. They are ordered to the ground and kicked by one of the policemen. They are then ordered back to the garage. In a video shown by Egyptian TV station Al-Ghad, the men are ordered back to the entrance of the garage. As they are on the ground and surrounded by troops, gunshots are heard and the men slump down, apparently lifeless. At least one soldier is seen firing his weapon.” (11/27/25)
Source: Orange County Register
by Agustina Vergara Cid
“I’ve been asked a few times why I chose to become an American at this juncture — after witnessing the decline of our institutions, freedom and values at the hands of leaders across the political spectrum. I still chose to become an American because I know that what’s been happening in many realms in this country is not what America is about. I know that forcing businesses to close, as happened during the pandemic, is not the essence of America, but a betrayal of it. I know that cracking down on freedom of speech and having masked agents roaming the streets is anathema to our core values. … Every attack on freedom and individual rights that we see in our country (now and historically) is not a consequence of American founding values, but of the deviation from them.” (11/27/25)
“Venezuela has banned six major international airlines from landing in the country after they failed to meet a 48-hour deadline to resume flights there. The airlines had temporarily suspended their routes into the capital, Caracas, after the US warned of ‘heightened military activity’ in the area. Angered by this, the Venezuelan government issued the carriers with an ultimatum that expired on Wednesday. While a number of smaller airlines continue to fly to Venezuela, thousands of passengers have been affected. The US has deployed a large force to waters off Venezuela, which it says is to combat drug trafficking but which Venezuela’s leader has denounced as an attempt to overthrow him. Venezuela’s civil aviation authority, which reports to the country’s ministry of transport, announced on Wednesday that Iberia, TAP Portugal, Gol, Latam, Avianca and Turkish Airlines would lose their landing and take-off rights with immediate effect.” (11/27/25)
“Every two years, the 183 Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) meet for the Conference of the Parties (COP). This is the treaty’s governing body: a closed-door diplomatic forum where decisions are made on global tobacco policy, regulatory guidelines, technical documents, and the political direction of the treaty system. … The most revealing episode from COP11 was not about taxes or liability. It was the campaign against a small group of countries—Saint Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, New Zealand, the Philippines, and others—that dared to raise an uncomfortable but obvious point: safer nicotine products exist, millions use them, and the treaty should look honestly at the evidence.” (11/27/25)
