“In a landmark German case targeting chocolate ‘shrinkflation’, a court has found that the manufacturer of Milka’s classic Alpine Milk bar cheated consumers and broke competition law. Cutting back on the amount of chocolate while having the same kind of wrapper meant that customers were being misled, Bremen regional court ruled. The three-week court case was brought by Hamburg’s consumer protection office (VZHH), which accused manufacturer Mondelēz of deceiving consumers by cutting the weight of the ‘Alpenmilch’ bar from 100g to 90g. Reacting to the ruling Mondelēz told the BBC it was ‘taking the decision of the court seriously’ and would ‘look at it in detail now’. ” (05/13/26)
“Mayor Zohran Mamdani boasted Tuesday that he plugged the city’s multibillion-dollar budget gap for the coming fiscal year — but it’s only ‘balanced’ with gimmicks that guarantee oceans more red ink in the years ahead. With a late assist from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s own flim-flammery, the new, $124.7 billion Mamdani spending plan relies on one-time cash infusions, postponed payments and dubious calculations of future tax windfalls and theoretical savings. The day began with Hochul boldly announcing yet another of her trademark cave-ins: After weeks of insisting she’d given the mayor as much help as she could, the gov magically found another $4 billion for him just hours before he presented his plan. Yet half the windfall comes down to new debt, much of the rest is pretty vaporous — and all of it amounts to just telling the spending addict he can keep on shooting up.” (05/13/26)
“Republican senators in Louisiana advanced a plan Wednesday to eliminate one of two majority-[b]lack, Democratic-held congressional seats following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s U.S. House map as an illegal racial gerrymander. The early morning Senate committee vote came after hours of impassioned testimony from [b]lack residents and Democrats opposed to the move. Republicans opted not to pursue a more aggressive approach, which could have targeted both Democratic seats for elimination. … The redistricting efforts to undo minority districts are the latest variation in a 10-month-long national redistricting battle that already has involved about one-third of the states.” (05/13/26)
“The war in Ukraine has been defined by periodic bursts of certainty that Russia is on the back foot, if not close to collapse, and that Ukraine, conversely, is inches away from victory. We appear to be in the middle of one of these moments of euphoria now. Finnish President Alexander Stubb has declared that Ukraine is ‘on top’ and ‘in a much better place than it has been at any stage in this horrific war’, charging that Russia is unable to recruit enough soldiers to make up for those it’s losing. Ukrainians have ‘a growing self-confidence’ on account of the territory they have supposedly retaken, as one former U.S. ambassador put it, and their growing confidence over military advances ‘is strikingly higher today than a year ago’, charged another. A spate of reports have it that the walls are closing in on Russian President Vladimir Putin.” (05/13/26)
“The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the murder conviction of Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted in March 2023 of double homicide of his wife and son. The court ordered a new trial, saying that Mary Rebecca ‘Becky’ Hill, who served as the court clerk in Colleton County, exercised ‘improper external influences’ during Murdaugh’s first trial. Murdaugh’s attorney Dick Harpootlian said in a statement that Murdaugh will remain in custody. The state supreme court voted unanimously on the decision. ‘Although we are aware of the time, money, and effort expended for this lengthy trial, we have no choice but to reverse the denial of Murdaugh’s motion for a new trial due to Hill’s improper external influences on the jury and remand for a new trial,’ their ruling said.” (05/13/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“The late 19th century was a dismal time in American politics. Corruption ran rampant. Congress was governed by staunch partisan loyalties and nail-biting majorities. And redistricting, instead of being confined to after the census every 10 years, was a tool of manipulation and partisan hardball. ‘From 1872 to 1896,’ a political scientist reports, ‘at least one state redrew its congressional districts each year.’ Of course, that era was marred by another phenomenon — one too familiar to us today. It saw a swift rollback in voting rights and representation for the newly freed Black population of the South. In 1875, after the Civil War and the adoption of the 15th Amendment, seven Black men served in the House, and one sat as a senator. Terrorism, political cowardice, and racial backlash ended Reconstruction. By 1902, Congress was once again all white.” (05/13/26)
“Doctors who examined Nobel Peace laureate and activist Narges Mohammadi more than a week after she collapsed at a prison in Iran say she needs months of treatment, her foundation said Wednesday. An angiography procedure showed two of her main arteries have significant blockage and that her vascular disease has significantly deteriorated since she last had the procedure in 2024, the foundation said in a statement. Mohammadi, 53, was urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran on May 1 after she fell unconscious. She was released on bail nearly 10 days later and transferred to a hospital in Tehran where her specialists examined her. The attending physician said her blood pressure continues to fluctuate, in part due to damage to part of the brain that is responsible for such regulations. The doctors recommended an eight-month treatment course in an environment ‘free from external stressors, where she can receive permanent care and long-term treatment.'” (05/13/26)
“On April 1, 114 guests and 61 crew members, unaware of the presence of a killer virus among them, boarded the MV Hondius. That ship has earned the moniker ‘Ship of Fools.’ Because of the top brass’s reckless disregard of infection control principles, the ship’s passengers and thousands of people around the world have been exposed to the rare Andes strain of the hantavirus, a disease found in rat urine and feces, and which has a 40% mortality rate. Among the passengers who boarded that day was a 70-year-old birdwatcher who had spent his final days ashore traipsing through an Argentinian dump covered with rat feces and looking for rare birds. He was looking for species, not feces, but it’s the feces that did him in.” (05/13/26)
“A survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse has told how the late sex offender sexually abused her while he was under house arrest for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Roza, who was recruited from Uzbekistan as a teenager by Epstein’s associate and modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, spoke publicly for the first time alongside a number of victims in a field hearing that was organised by House Democrats. She told the session that she was introduced to Epstein by Brunel in July 2009, was offered work by Epstein ‘to help me with my financial troubles,’ and he later subjected her to rape over a period of three years. Democratic lawmaker Robert Garcia said the unofficial hearing was held in West Palm Beach, Florida, because it was ‘where Epstein’s crimes first came to light.'” (05/13/26)
“‘It just shouldn’t be this hard,’ Abdul El-Sayed, the insurgent candidate for Michigan’s open Senate seat, says to a packed Mumford High School auditorium in Detroit’s northwestern corner. ‘Shouldn’t be this hard to afford a second bag of groceries … to get your kid to a doctor or to pay your taxes and know that that money’s gonna be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on other people and their kids’. El-Sayed is here with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s passing through town on his ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney. El-Sayed is locked in a tight three-way race with establishment picks for Michigan’s open seat, a must-win for Democrats hoping to reclaim the chamber, while McKinney is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Shri Thanedar (MI-13), one of the body’s richest members, whom McKinney has called a ‘cardboard cutout of a congressman.’ Sanders has endorsed both.” (05/13/26)
