Italy: Seven Arrested Over Anarchist Network Linked to Winter Olympics Rail Sabotage

Source: US News & World Report

“Italian police have ⁠arrested ⁠seven people accused of ⁠belonging to an anarchist militant network and carrying ​out sabotage on a high-speed railway line during the Winter Olympics in ‌February. In a statement on ‌Tuesday, police said a judge had ordered five suspects to ⁠be ⁠held in prison and two placed under house arrest. The ​charges include terrorist association and subversion of the democratic order. Police said two of those arrested were accused of taking part in a February ​14 attack on the Rome-Florence high-speed rail line. According to investigators, ⁠the sabotage ⁠was carried out using ⁠improvised ​explosive devices, causing severe damage to infrastructure estimated at €455,000 ($528,000). The attack led ​to train delays of ⁠more than an hour during the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, which ran from February 6 to 22.” (06/16/26)

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-06-16/italy-arrests-seven-over-anarchist-network-linked-to-winter-olympics-rail-sabotage

The Last Canadian Politician I’d Trust to Police the Internet

Source: Quillette
by Jonathan Kay

“Marc Miller spread misinformation about unmarked graves and supports the criminal prosecution of residential-school ‘denialists.’ Why would Mark Carney use him to front his new plan for regulating online content?” (06/16/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/06/16/the-last-canadian-politician-id-trust-to-police-the-internet/

Is California Reaching Critical Mass?

Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson

“By any measure, California is a failed state, and a national embarrassment. Taxes? It has the highest income and gas taxes in the nation. Roads? A Reason Foundation survey ranks it 49th among the states. Mass flight? Between 250,000 and 350,000 more Californians leave the state than move in each year. Housing, gas, insurance, and electricity prices? The highest in the continental U.S. Illegal aliens, the poor, the homeless, the foreign-born, and welfare recipients? The largest numbers in the U.S. Public K–12 schools? Test scores in the bottom quartile. Poverty? Twenty percent live below the poverty line. So, what happened to the nation’s most richly naturally endowed — and once best governed — state? The Left took total control — after millions of the embattled middle class fled.” (06/16/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/16/is-california-reaching-critical-mass/

Musk’s SpaceX buys AI coding start-up for $60 billion days after IPO

Source: BBC News [UK state media]

“SpaceX has agreed to buy AI coding start-up Cursor for $60bn (£45bn) just days after its bumper initial public offering (IPO). Elon Musk’s rocket company will take over Anysphere, which makes the artificial intelligence coding agent. The move comes after SpaceX joined New York’s tech-focused Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday in the biggest ever listing, valuing it at more than $2tn and raising $85.7bn. … Like OpenAI and Anthropic, Cursor’s technology uses AI to automate the process of writing code, one of the most prominent current uses for artificial intelligence.” (06/16/26)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgd5g7d7gyo

Green Growth: Data Show Freeing Economies Doesn’t Harm the Environment

Source: The Daily Economy
by Vincent Geloso

“Economic liberalization has often been assumed to have environmental tradeoffs. But decades of data show the incentives of prosperity and preservation are aligned.” (06/16/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/green-growth-data-show-freeing-economies-doesnt-harm-the-environment/

UN-backed court opens trial of former Central African Republic president Bozizé

Source: Seattle Times

“A U.N.-backed court in the Central African Republic on Tuesday opened the trial of former President François Bozizé, who is accused of crimes against humanity for abuses committed by members of his security forces between 2009 and 2013. The trial is the sixth held by the Special Criminal Court, a tribunal created in 2015 with U.N. support to prosecute serious crimes committed during the country’s conflicts. …Prosecutors accuse Bozizé of being responsible as a military commander for crimes committed by members of his presidential guard and other security forces, including ‘murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other inhumane acts.’ Bozizé, 79, is being tried in absentia. He has been living in exile in Guinea-Bissau since 2023, and authorities there have refused to extradite him despite an international arrest warrant issued by the court in 2024.” (06/16/26)

https://archive.is/XYx9N

The King’s Rubber Empire: Democracy at Home, Terror in the Jungle

Source: Antiwar.com
by Michael Holmes

“First published in 1999 and updated in a revised 2006 edition, Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost serves as a stark historical warning at a time when Western politicians and commentators habitually frame global politics as an epic struggle between virtuous democracies and barbarous autocracies. The book shows in forensic detail how one of Europe’s most constitutional monarchies oversaw a regime of forced labor, mutilation, rape, torture and mass death on a scale comparable to the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.” (06/16/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/michael_holmes/2026/06/15/the-kings-rubber-empire-democracy-at-home-terror-in-the-jungle/