An Arkansas Mom Obtained Public Records About a New Data Center. Then She Got Sued.
Seth Stern is the director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Two wealthy lawfare warriors recently failed in their attempts to bury reporting on government-released documents. Both lawsuits — one in state court in California, the other in federal court in Arkansas — were frivolous strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs. Supreme Court precedent couldn’t be clearer that it’s not the journalists’ problem if the government accidentally shares information it’s not supposed to disclose.
But only the California SLAPP victim had any real recourse against the censorial bully who wanted to shut him up — not because that case was any more frivolous than the Arkansas one, but because of the court in which it was filed.
Let’s start with the Arkansas case. Jessica Kivell — a mom, healthcare worker, and concerned citizen — sought to find out who was paying for a data center project in West Memphis. She filed public records requests with the Arkansas Public Service Commission and received documents indicating Google would cover only one-third of the cost of a new solar plant to power the facility, contradicting its promises that ratepayers would not be on the hook. Kivell shared the documents with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which reported on them.
Entergy Arkansas, the utility set to build the solar facility, sued Kivell, the Democrat-Gazette, its reporter, and the Arkansas Times, which said it never even had the records. It claimed the commission erred by releasing the records to Kivell, that they contained trade secrets (sidenote: baselessly invoking the need to protect trade secrets to duck public records laws is also a serious problem), that she and the press should be restrained from discussing them, and the Democrat-Gazette should have to take down what it had already reported. Entergy also disputed the Democrat-Gazette’s math on how Google would share the costs.
There are at least four Supreme Court cases that should have put Entergy’s lawyers on notice that they had no legal leg to stand on. Even in scenarios involving information far more sensitive than a utility’s purported business secrets — and far less newsworthy than the public being misled about what a data center would cost them — the court has rejected “prior restraints” that would claw back records that the government released inadvertently.
One such case, Florida Star v. BJF, involved a newspaper that published the name of a rape victim in violation of state law. The court held the law was unconstitutional to the extent it barred news outlets from publishing information released by the government, regardless of whether the government intended to release it. The red-line rule against holding the press liable for the government’s failure to protect confidences makes sense given that the court has called prior restraints against the press the “most serious” of all First Amendment violations.
There is no economic disincentive stopping Entergy from SLAPPing again the next time a news report interferes with its business.
Ultimately, U.S. District Court Judge Lee Rudofsky rightly denied Entergy’s request for an emergency gag order. Entergy subsequently dropped the case. But it forced the defendants to lose money, time, and sleep. (Kivell, who rushed to court in her work scrubs for the hearing on Entergy’s motion, reportedly broke down sobbing in the courthouse hallway.) The defendants should have been able to at least recover their legal costs but, because they were in federal court, they could not.
Arkansas, like 39 other states and the District of Columbia, has an anti-SLAPP law allowing those hit with frivolous anti-speech lawsuits to recover their attorneys’ fees. But there is no federal anti-SLAPP statute, and district courts in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Arkansas, have declined to apply the state’s anti-SLAPP law. Federal courts in some states, like Florida, apply state anti-SLAPP laws, but many others decline to do so, viewing them as in conflict with federal pleading standards.
That means that other than their own legal fees — likely a drop in a bucket for them — there is no economic disincentive stopping Entergy from SLAPPing again the next time a news report interferes with its business in hopes that an incompetent judge grants it unconstitutional relief (it wouldn’t be the first time, unfortunately), or a scared defendant backs down without a fight.
Now let’s head to California. In 2023, independent journalist Jack Poulson published a story in his news outlet, All-Source Intelligence, about the 2021 domestic violence arrest of Maury Blackman, then CEO of Premise Data, a surveillance tech company that holds U.S. government contracts. Poulson reported on and linked to a police report that Blackman claimed the government never should have released because it was sealed. (Under California law, the records could be sealed because charges were not filed.)
Blackman sued Poulson; Substack, which hosted the article; and others in an attempt to not only punish them for their journalism, but also scrub the articles and police report from the internet. For the same reasons Entergy’s case failed, a judge threw out Blackman’s SLAPP. That decision was affirmed by an appeals court last week.
Leading its opinion with a quote from the Florida Star case, the appellate court also upheld the lower court’s award of attorneys’ fees to the defendants under California’s robust anti-SLAPP law. That means Blackman will need to reimburse his SLAPP target’s legal fees, and that other wannabe SLAPPsters in California might think twice knowing there are consequences for weaponizing the courts against their critics.
While Poulson’s victory was more satisfying than the Arkansas defendants’ win, in both cases, the plaintiffs achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted. The stories they tried to bury became national news as their lawsuits got far more coverage than the records they sought to suppress. It’s a phenomenon Techdirt editor Mike Masnick dubbed the Streisand effect, after a privacy lawsuit by the singer backfired and drove exponentially more publicity than it prevented.
Blackman, whose suit was only one component of a multifaceted censorship and intimidation campaign, went from his sealed arrest report appearing on a single, relatively niche blog to being detailed in an opinion from the California Court of Appeals, not to mention reported on by everyone from the San Francisco Chronicle to Courthouse News. Blackman only made things worse when he or his apparent representatives tried to manipulate Google to keep the articles about his arrest and SLAPP suits out of searches, generating even further bad press.
But public shaming is of little use to people like Kivell, whose lives are interrupted by legal nonsense from companies or governments trying to censor them. That’s why Congress needs to pass a federal anti-SLAPP law that would apply even if states decline to enforce their local versions. That would give defendants in federal court, like Kivell, what Poulson had in California: a quick way to get meritless speech suits dismissed, with plaintiffs paying the price.
Nobody’s ability to request public records or publish news should depend on which courthouse a corporation picks.
Saudi-led coalition launches airstrikes on Houthi positions in Yemen’s Sanaa
The Saudi-led coalition launched airstrikes on Tuesday against Houthi positions in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, according to a Yemeni government official and the Houthis, Anadolu reports.
Fayyad Alnoman, a Yemeni government official, said coalition aircraft began carrying out airstrikes on Houthi positions in Sanaa within an area that the joint forces had previously ordered evacuated.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said Saudi forces were targeting Sanaa and that Houthi forces were responding to the attacks.
The Houthis said a strike targeted the Yemen Petroleum Company facility in al-Sabahah, west of Sanaa.
Earlier Tuesday, the Saudi-led coalition ordered civilians to evacuate the company’s central al-Sabahah station ahead of a planned military operation.
The strikes come amid escalating hostilities between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis, with both sides issuing evacuation warnings for potential targets.
READ: Rights groups warn Houthi siege threatens millions in Yemen’s Taiz
He Waited Nine Years in Prison for His Lawyer to File a Single Brief. In This State, There’s No Rule Against It.
Reporting Highlights
Scant Funding, Few Standards: Pennsylvania’s post-conviction issues stem from its failure to invest in or set standards for legal defense for poor people.
Crushing Caseloads: Lawyers hired under a flat-fee structure that’s banned in some states fell months or years behind, stranding dozens of clients in prison.
Infinite Extensions: While prisoners face strict deadlines, their lawyers can typically take all the time they want. Some kept clients waiting as long as a decade.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
In 2020, seven years after he was appointed to represent a client who claimed he was wrongly convicted, attorney Scott Galloway told the judge that he was still looking into the case and needed more time.
“I am still in the process of interviewing individuals,” the lawyer wrote to the judge in Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, who had already granted him 32 extensions.
His client, Nolan O’Neal, had been a 20-year-old high school student when he was arrested for murder by Chester police, who had four eyewitnesses identifying him. At his 2005 trial, those witnesses all recanted, saying police had pressured them to accuse O’Neal.
By the time Galloway joined the case, in 2013, O’Neal had already spent eight years in prison insisting he was innocent. The lawyer’s job was to help him file a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act. That law provided a narrow path to freedom if Galloway could find crucial new evidence or prove that previous lawyers had mishandled the case.
But court records do not show that the attorney did much other than ask for more time.
In 2022, after nine years, one unsuccessful request to access evidence and 41 extensions, Galloway filed a two-page petition addressing just one of the many issues O’Neal had wanted him to raise. It would not be enough to get O’Neal his day in court.
Nolan O’Neal visits with his sister, Erin O’Neal, earlier this year at the State Correctional Institution Chester, where he is incarcerated.Courtesy of Erin O’Neal
For more than half a century, Pennsylvania has promised people who claim they didn’t get a fair trial the right to “effective” post-conviction legal representation, regardless of their ability to pay. That’s more than most states promise people after they have been convicted and lost their appeals.
Yet Pennsylvania has done little to fulfill that promise. The Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica previously reported that Pennsylvania lets lawyers resolve cases quickly using a practice that is discouraged in several states: filing “no-merit” letters, also known as Finley letters, urging judges to reject their clients’ handwritten or typed claims. In Philadelphia, dozens who had received such letters later had their convictions or sentences overturned based on issues their lawyers had rejected or overlooked.
But the problems go deeper than that: The state’s loose rules and its failure to fund post-conviction work have made the type of breakdown O’Neal encountered a recurring feature of this system.
By filing public records requests with courts serving all 67 Pennsylvania counties and analyzing a decade of court dockets, an Inquirer and ProPublica investigation found that the system Pennsylvania set up to protect the right to counsel instead allows, or even encourages, shoddy representation.
The news organizations found that:
Unlike in other types of appeals, attorneys handling post-conviction cases work under no particular timeline and are allowed numerous extensions. The state also has no standards regarding how many cases lawyers should be assigned, and many counties ask lawyers to sign contracts that set no limit on the number of cases courts can assign them. At least 250 people have languished in prison for five years or longer while waiting for their lawyers to act.
Unlike someotherstates, such as North Carolina and New York, Pennsylvania requires no specific training, experience or qualifications for appointed post-trial lawyers, and it holds them to few standards. Lawyers are not required to speak to their clients or take other basic investigative steps before withdrawing from cases by writing no-merit letters.
Pennsylvania, which lags behind almost every other state in funding legal defense for poor people, known as indigent defense, dedicates no money for post-trial work. Instead, it leaves it up to each individual county to set pay rates. A majority of county court systems use flat-rate fee structures that some other states ban.
While almost every county in the state has a public defender office, most post-conviction cases are handled by private lawyers who are paid hourly, by the case or by the year and work with little to no supervision. Our review of court records found pay as low as $500 per case and delays as long as 19 years without a single court filing.
In some counties, contracted lawyers’ backlogs spanned dozens of cases. In Chester County, an affluent region west of Philadelphia, a lawyer left cases untouched for as long as two years before the county ended his contract last fall.
Delaware County, where O’Neal was convicted, relies on a group of part-time lawyers to handle most of its post-trial matters. One is Galloway, who has handled 20 or 30 post-trial cases per year for the county in addition to running his own law practice and, for a time, holding local elected office. Galloway said that his ethical obligation to confidentiality prevented him from commenting on O’Neal’s case. Judge George A. Pagano, who granted him 41 extensions on O’Neal’s case, declined to comment.
In the years Galloway was on the case, O’Neal wrote him dozens of letters from state prison, proposing legal arguments and sending leads to investigate.
“It is a daunting and exhausting task to navigate this legal process and be heard,” O’Neal said in an interview. “We at times even have to fight the attorneys who are supposed to represent us.”
In 2020, he received a letter from the brother of the murder victim, admitting that his testimony against O’Neal was a lie. “I want to fix it. I know my brother would want me to. It’s been long enough,” he wrote. O’Neal said he pleaded with Galloway to track down the man.
In 2022, Galloway attached the brother’s signed statement to a sparse two-page brief, which mentioned none of the other issues O’Neal had raised nine years earlier or the other witnesses who’d come forward over the years. The judge started the process of dismissing the claim. One reason: The filing had been made too late. O’Neal is still fighting his case, now with a new court-appointed lawyer.
Delays and Extensions
Before they are assigned a lawyer, Pennsylvania prisoners must write the first draft of their post-conviction filing on their own within a strict one-year deadline. The lawyers appointed to revise their petitions, on the other hand, are not generally held to any timeline. The state courts say lawyers should act “expeditiously so as to reduce unnecessary delays.” Yet judges have granted extensions liberally, court dockets show, and in many cases failed to impose any deadlines at all.
An Inquirer and ProPublica review of court dockets found that hundreds of people have waited two years or longer, only to receive no-merit letters. That analysis is an undercount, since many court clerks don’t clearly label attorney filings on their dockets. In Philadelphia alone, some 65 people have waited three to eight years for lawyers to take action before reaching that same outcome. Similarly, across the state, dockets show that lawyers received seven or more extensions in dozens of cases before filing Finley letters or nothing at all.
In 2017, Lee Mandell, who has been practicing law in Philadelphia for more than 50 years, sent a Finley letter saying that he’d written to but never spoken with his client of four years and did not understand his claims.
“It is entirely unclear as to what the defendant really means,” wrote Mandell. In his own review of the case, Mandell failed to flag an erroneous jury instruction that four years later would lead to the conviction being overturned. Mandell was later formally reprimanded for allowing another client’s hearing to be delayed by six years, during which time two witnesses died. He did not return calls seeking comment.
Judges’ inaction added to lawyers’ delays, leaving matters to stagnate for years on end. In 2023, the state’s Superior Court registered such concerns about a case from Wayne County, where a lawyer filed a “two-page, deficient motion to withdraw, and the PCRA court did nothing in this case for 20 years.”
But in almost 200 post-conviction cases across Pennsylvania in the last 15 years, lawyers were appointed, then filed nothing at all over the span of a year or longer before being replaced with a new appointed lawyer. One of the cases stagnated for almost seven years, only for a new attorney to pick up the file. Another man was appointed five lawyers over eight years, dockets show, none of whom filed anything on his behalf.
Court officials have long been aware of the backlogs wracking this system, even publishing a law review article about it in 2003. The study outlined needed reforms but acknowledged the lack of political will, saying the “low status” of these cases stems from a bias among judges and lawyers who believe “that most post conviction claims are frivolous.”
No Standards for Lawyering
The loose timeline is just one dimension of a system with few standards. The state has published no best practices for indigent defense or guidelines on how many cases a lawyer can take; it has provided no training and instituted virtually no guidelines to ensure that court-appointed lawyers are qualified. As a result, lawyers hold widely diverging views on just what obligations they have to their clients.
“I do not know how you can evaluate trial counsel’s performance, which is the main role of post-conviction counsel, without talking to your client and reading trial counsel’s file,” said Jennifer Merrigan, a co-founder of Phillips Black, a nonprofit law firm. That file would reveal whether the lawyer consulted with experts, received all relevant evidence from the prosecutor and investigated potential witnesses.
The state’s lack of vetting and training stands in contrast with national norms. A majority of other states have centralized defender services or support offices that provide resources, education and oversight. For instance, in North Carolina, appeals lawyers seeking court appointments must apply with the state appellate defender and submit references, work history showing the lawyer is qualified to litigate appeals and legal writing samples. They’re also required to take a training course covering strategy and best practices.
The Delaware County Courthouse, in Media, PennsylvaniaAlejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer
Even without a statewide office, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court could establish minimum qualifications for lawyers handling indigent defense. In August, a state court committee published such a proposal, but it recommends only that lawyers have relevant work experience “to the extent practicable.” Work experience requirements have been enforced in some other states, such as Ohio, for years. But the committee’s proposal argued that work experience is not “possible to quantify” and that “less-than-experienced representation is better than no representation.”
Ted Skaarup, a public defender who has advocated for training and qualification requirements, said inexperienced and untrained lawyers are more likely to default to writing Finley letters. New lawyers, he said, are left to consult with older attorneys who may pass on bad practices. “You go to them for advice and they say, ‘I’ll send you a copy of my [no-merit] letter.’”
Only one of the state’s 67 counties provided written criteria requiring specific work experience for lawyers to be appointed to post-conviction cases in response to records requests. Philadelphia court leadership says that lawyers must complete a training session and show they’ve recently handled three hearings involving disputed evidence. A volunteer panel tasked with approving prospective lawyers there rarely meets and is not empowered to approve or reject candidates based on writing samples, a core part of screening appeals lawyers in some other places.
In Pittsburgh, the nonprofit Allegheny Lawyers Initiative for Justice has urged local court officials to set up a system to screen and supervise appointed lawyers. For now, the organization is running its own voluntary trainings, as well as a resource center with office hours, a library of sample motions and help with social service referrals.
Without such systems, the organization’s executive director, Rob Perkins, said, “There’s no quality control.” Lawyers can get away with “doing a poor job in these cases for years without anyone really paying attention.”
“Your Incentive Is to Do the Least Work”
When attorney Corrie Woods took over Washington County’s post-conviction caseload in 2020, he was startled to discover about a dozen files that had been untouched since being assigned to the previous lawyer in 2019 or earlier. In some, the lawyer’s inaction had caused the clients to lose their appeal rights.
Looking back, Woods said, it’s not surprising, given that the western Pennsylvania county was paying him $25,000 a year as a part-timer for up to 24 cases. “These cases are not going to take priority in most law offices,” said Woods, who now handles mostly personal injury cases.
Under such a contract, he said, “Your incentive is to do the least work. You’re not getting more for doing more.”
Not Pennsylvania. The state began contributing any money to indigent defense only in 2023. Today it kicks in just 57 cents per capita; neighboring states, on average, pay $26 per resident. Counties provide the rest as they see fit. A pending American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit claims that has resulted in widespread violations of the right to counsel.
Pennsylvania Spends Less Than Most Other States on Indigent Defense
At 57 cents per resident, Pennsylvania’s state-level contribution toward funding legal defense for poor people is a fraction of what neighboring states pay.
Sources: state budget documents, U.S. Census 2025 population estimates.
About three-quarters of Pennsylvanians live in counties that use flat-fee arrangements or cap the amount a lawyer can bill for a case. Daniel Buzard, the court administrator in the county where Woods held the contract several years ago, said in an email, “This provides financial stability for both parties.”
Some counties pay as little as $500 per case. Based on time estimates from Maine, one of the only states to publish post-conviction workload standards, that would come out to $11 per hour.
Twenty-one Pennsylvania counties offer flat annual pay for part-time lawyers — sometimes then assigning them caseloads that exceed Maine’s standard for full-time work.
“We at times even have to fight the attorneys who are supposed to represent us.”
Nolan O’Neal, Pennsylvania prisoner
Only five of the 18 contracts obtained in response to public records requests included a limit on the number of cases the court could heap onto a lawyer. None of the contracts set deadlines, specified a time commitment or described any oversight mechanism.
Stuart Wilder said his contract to handle post-conviction cases in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, kept the lights on in his office for years. He worked hard for clients, he said, and won several challenging cases. But he said the flat-fee structure did require him to deprioritize cases where he didn’t see merit.
“Being able to file Finley letters gave me the time to work on cases I could fix,” said Wilder, who recently retired.
But in at least three counties, contract lawyers left multiple clients stranded for a year or longer with no progress on their cases, dockets show.
In 2021, the court in Erie County yanked 50 cases from attorney James P. Miller and eventually reported him for discipline, citing extreme delays that cost some clients their appeal rights. Miller, whose law license was suspended as a result, declined to comment. But Erie court administrator Robert Catalde said the debacle spurred the county to double lawyers’ pay to $46,800 and provide benefits.
A similar situation played out last year in Chester County, which abruptly ended its contract with the lawyer handling all its post-conviction cases, Charles Thomas Jr., after discovering that he had been putting in an average of just five hours a week across his roughly 25 cases.
A graduation photo shows Patrick Hickson receiving an associate’s degree from Eastern University in 2025, while incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution Chester.Courtesy of Patrick Hickson
One client, Patrick Hickson, said he spent two years trying to get Thomas to track down evidence that could clear him of a 2018 shooting or at least prove he didn’t get a fair trial. His defense lawyer had failed to call a single witness — admitting to the judge, mid-trial, that he’d wrongly assumed the prosecutor would send a summons to an eyewitness who had told police Hickson wasn’t the shooter.
To raise the issue, Hickson needed Thomas to track down the missing witness. But when he reached Thomas by phone in August 2025, for the first time in months, the lawyer told him he was off the case. “He said the courts told him he was taking too long,” Hickson said. Thomas declined to comment.
Chester County criminal court administrator Jordan Ludwick acknowledged concerns about the delays but said he resolved the problem by finding a qualified lawyer to take over the contract.
That attorney, Shannon McDonald, said it was “not an easy transition.”
“There were many cases that had not been touched at all,” she said.
She cut through the backlog by filing 17 briefs in just over three months. All but three were Finley letters.
“The case has to survive on the merits,” she said, “and, frankly, the deck is stacked against overturning a case.”
This March, she also sent Hickson a Finley letter. McDonald said ethics rules prevented her from discussing Hickson’s case, but in the letter she blamed Hickson for failing to track down the would-be witness and said his trial lawyer had a strategic reason for not sending the subpoena.
Reading the letter, Hickson said, “I felt defeated.”
Since McDonald asked to drop the case, he is pursuing exoneration alone.
How the ‘geopolitical stigma’ associated with Putin’s Russia is affecting ordinary Russians
Russia’s international standing collapsed within weeks of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions swept across Russian banks, businesses and political elites, while western companies exited the country en masse. For those living inside Russia, it was the everyday, tangible shifts that made this feel real.
Western goods disappeared from supermarket shelves, direct flights to Europe stopped and getting visas to travel abroad became more difficult. Russian athletes, artists and scholars, meanwhile, were excluded from international competitions, cultural platforms and academic events.
For Russians living elsewhere in Europe, the change was often more subtle. Questions about their nationality in job applications, negative media coverage and offhand comments about Russia all contributed to a growing sense that being Russian now meant carrying a stigma. Russia’s changing international reputation had suddenly become personal.
I have seen this transformation in my own research on Russian masculinities, which has involved interviewing Russian men living in Russia and abroad. When I first interviewed my 40 participants in 2013-14, most viewed Russia positively and had a relatively secure sense of national identity.
When I returned to interview 27 of them between 2022 and 2023, this picture had changed dramatically. Only two of the men still described Russia in unambiguously positive terms.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, observes military exercises in Chelyabinsk, Russia, on October 2.Alexander Kazakov / Sputnik / Kremlin Pool
One of the questions I asked participants in the second round of interviews was: “How would you define Russia’s role in the world today?” Their answers were striking.
My respondents described Russia as “only a pawn in a big game”, “a bully with the nuclear baton” and “a pariah country like North Korea”. One participant even likened Russia to Voldemort, the main villain from the Harry Potter book series.
Two others called Russia a “backward, defective, sick country”, and “the state that uses violence to be loved”. Even those who supported Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war admitted that Russia’s standing in the world had deteriorated significantly since the full-scale invasion.
The intensity of the stigma – and, in some cases, the shame associated with being Russian – was palpable. Across the interviews, being Russian had become something that many felt they had to explain, defend, distance themselves from or rethink.
Managing the stigma
How my interviewees managed the geopolitical stigma was deeply entangled with ideas about masculinity, power and competition between world powers.
*Dmitry, a Russian man living in the UK, said: “I talk less about being Russian now.” He blamed the “incompetent” Russian authorities for the war and expressed sympathy for Ukrainians, yet still wanted Russia to win.
“Russia needs to win,” he said, because a victory would benefit Russian-speaking people around the world. “The victors are not judged – the winner writes history, as we know.” He feared that a Russian defeat would leave Russians as “outcasts” and argued that Russia should be able to “join the ranks of leading world powers like the US and Britain.”
Dmitry was distancing himself from the Russian state while simultaneously hoping that Russia’s status – and, with it, the status of Russians – would be restored through victory. His response drew on an idea of international power centred on strength, victory and the ability to command respect.
Petr, who was living in Russia, managed the stigma differently. “I’m not a political scientist or a military expert,” he said, adding: “I don’t have any plans for offensive military operations on my desk, I don’t know what’s really going on there. Maybe we’re victims of propaganda.” Disclaiming his agency helped him distance himself from the decisions of the Russian state.
But that distancing also became uncomfortable for his sense of himself as a man. He added: “I’m still a man. I am still a father, a defender of my family.” For Petr, masculinity offered a way to navigate this uncomfortable position. He could say he did not understand the war and was not responsible for it, while still claiming the identity of a man who protects his family.
Pavel, a respondent temporarily residing in a Mediterranean country at the time I interviewed him, took yet another route. He opposed the war and criticised Russia’s imperial violence. Pavel was particularly troubled by what he saw as Russia’s failure to acknowledge its past imperial crimes. He contrasted Russia with the “big guys” such as Germany and Japan, which he argued had already “repented” their imperial pasts.
Pavel was rejecting Russia’s imperialism. But he was also comparing Russia with other powerful states that he regarded as having become more modern and civilised. By positioning Russia as an empire that had failed to learn from its past, he could distance himself from the stigma of Russianness and align himself with a supposedly more legitimate international order.
As UK-based researchers Imogen Tyler and Tom Slater have argued in their work, stigma is not simply a label attached to those who are seen as deviant or discredited. It is a mechanism for producing and stabilising social hierarchies and unequal relations of power.
The men I interviewed did not simply accept the geopolitical stigma. They distanced themselves from it, challenged it or tried to overcome it. But in doing so, they often drew on the very ideas of power, victory, civilisational hierarchy and inevitability of violence that underpin imperial and masculine domination in the first place.
*The names of the interviewees have been changed to ensure their anonymity.
PTI opposition jailed as Trump embraces Pakistan’s Asim Munir
As US President Donald Trump deepens his ties with Pakistan’s powerful military chief Asim Munir, the nation’s government has detained the elected leadership of the last province controlled by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s opposition party – a move critics have condemned as a coup.
Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, declared a state of emergency on Sunday in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, suspending its elected government and transferring authority to a federally appointed governor. Hundreds of members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, including its provincial chief minister, Sohail Afridi, have been arrested, as have Khan’s three sisters, according to The Guardian.
The emergency measures come after days of protests calling for the release of Khan – who was forced to step down from power in 2022 by a parliamentary vote of no confidence under heavypressure from the US government, then led by President Joe Biden. Khan was subsequently imprisoned by Pakistani authorities and accused the military of orchestrating his ouster.
Pakistan’s government said it declared the state of emergency after local leadership failed to stop escalating attacks from Islamist terrorist groups. But PTI leaders described it as a thinly veiled pretext to squash protests, including a planned march on Islamabad to demand Khan’s release.
Mehlaqa Samdani, the director of the Community Alliance for Peace and Justice – a group advocating against US support for political repression in Pakistan – described Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as “the last remaining province where the military regime had been unable to take control.”
“The government has now declared a state of emergency and imposed governor’s rule in the province, effectively removing its elected government from power,” Samdani said in a video. “Just think about what that means: Millions of people voted for their representatives, only to see their elected government stripped of its authority.”
“Everyone saw these pro-democracy protests,” she added. “This is a very transparent attempt to crush them by a military regime that is terrified of its own people.”
Amid mass protests calling for his release, Amnesty International has argued that Pakistani authorities have weaponized criminal proceedings to keep Khan out of power and crack down on dissent.
After the emergency measures went into effect this weekend, the internet monitoring organization NetBlocks reported major disruptions to internet service in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Mobile phone networks have reportedly been disrupted, public transit closed, and several roads across the province shut down.
“Reports of arbitrary detentions of key leaders – including the provincial chief minister – and internet disruptions across the province raise concerns about the proportionality of these emergency measures,” Babu Ram Pant, Amnesty International’s deputy director for South Asia, said on Sunday following news of the emergency declaration.
“While states may, in strictly limited circumstances, derogate from their human rights obligations to respond to a public emergency that threatens the existence of the nation, emergency measures are not a blank cheque to crack down on human rights, silence dissent, or concentrate power,” he said.
The tyrannical crooks in charge of Pakistan continue to dismantle democracy, now arresting the elected chief minister of KPK.
The world must see what’s happening. Repeated disgraceful and cowardly acts from Munir to stifle the voice of the people to cling onto power.… https://t.co/lFKKKVgeFA
Trump has warmly embraced Munir, the military chief who has overseen the crackdown on Khan and his opposition party, spent recent years consolidating control over Pakistan’s armed forces and secured immunity from criminal prosecution.
Munir has regularly been heaped with praise by Trump, who hosted him for an unprecedented two-hour Oval Office meeting last year without any other Pakistani officials. Trump has referred to Munir as “my favorite field marshal,” “a very important guy” and an “exceptional human being.”
In December, the Trump administration approved a $686 million sale to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets. Trump has also tapped Munir as a key intermediary between Washington and Tehran amid the US war with Iran.
Hussain Nadim, a Pakistani political analyst and lecturer at George Washington University, has argued that Munir has made himself useful to Trump because it “confers international legitimacy as his military rule faces deep questions at home.”
“Pakistani generals have long understood how to capitalize on American fears, anxieties, and domestic political needs of a wide range of American presidents,” Nadim wrote in August. “Military rulers position themselves around political changes in Washington, knowing urgent American political and security needs can override concerns about democracy and governance in countries like Pakistan.”
Opponents of US intervention, including Samdani, have renewed calls for the US to cut off support for Pakistan’s government.
“The US continues to train and work closely with the very military regime that is now attacking its own people,” she said. “Members of Congress should speak out immediately. They should tell Pakistan’s peaceful pro-democracy protesters that the world stands with them and tell the military dictatorship that we are watching and will not allow this repression to go unanswered.”
“American taxpayers do not want to be involved in training a corrupt military regime that’s oppressing its own people, including relatives of around one million Americans of Pakistani descent,” said Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy – a member of the Coalition to Change US Policy Towards Pakistan.
“If the Pakistani regime cannot allow its own people to protest and vote in free elections, they should not be receiving any training or support from the United States military or intelligence services,” he told Common Dreams.
“The US is harming its relationship with the Pakistani people by continuing to side with the military regime that fraudulently stole elections and is now attacking its own people,” he said. “There’s a chance for the United States to stand up for freedom and democracy and build a genuine partnership with the people of Pakistan by siding with them as they fight for their freedom from military rule.”
Apple HomeView smart home hub opens for preorders at $299
Apple opened preorders for the HomeView smart home hub today.
The HomeView is a 7-inch smart display and speaker that aims to be a central access point for up to six members of a family to access and control Apple’s ecosystem of devices, apps, and the Siri AI generative AI chatbot.
Users can speak to HomeView to control smart home devices, such as, for example, telling Siri to close the smart blinds or activate smart locks. HomeView can also show a livestream for up to nine video feeds simultaneously.
“With a supported iCloud+ subscription, HomeView works with compatible cameras to deliver intelligent, end-to-end encrypted recognition of people, familiar faces, pets, packages, and vehicles, notifying the household the moment someone arrives at the front door. With video descriptions for HomeKit Secure Video footage, HomeView helps users quickly understand what happened in a video clip without even watching it,” Apple’s announcement said.
The HomeView serving as a smart home hub.
Credit: Apple
The HomeView serving as a smart home hub. Credit: Apple
Competing with devices like the Amazon Echo Show, HomeView uses its integrated camera to identify who’s using it and show them their profile, which users can personalize with their preferred apps and widgets. Users can connect their HomeView profile to their Apple Intelligence-supporting iPhone or iPad and use the hub to access their Messages, Calendar, Reminders, and FaceTime.
“With an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad, Siri AI does more for each person — taking action across apps and surfacing relevant information from Messages and Calendar, playlists on Apple Music, and more by drawing on their personal context,” Apple’s announcement says.
Apple is also marketing the HomeView as a way to leverage Siri AI, including asking it about “virtually any topic.”
“With Siri AI built into HomeView, users without an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad will benefit from Siri AI’s broad world knowledge; ability to have rich, natural conversations; and improved music discovery,” Apple said.
The HomeView runs Apple’s A18 chip.
Credit: Apple
The HomeView runs Apple’s A18 chip. Credit: Apple
Apple said that Siri requests can run locally or via Private Cloud Compute, where “data is not stored nor made accessible to Apple or anyone else.”
Apple’s first smart display uses a Liquid Retina (LCD) screen that Apple says has a brightness range of 0.3 to 500 nits. You can also set the screen to automatically adjust its brightness level based on how bright the room is.
“The HomeView interface intelligently adjusts based on the user’s distance, showing simpler information that’s viewable from across the room and richer detail as they step closer,” Apple’s announcement said.
The screen connects to the speaker base and tilts using a stainless steel hinge. The speaker base holds the device’s USB-C charging port.
Mounting the HomeView to a wall requires a specific model that only comes in two (instead of four) colors, space gray and silver, and paying extra (starting at $60) for a wall connector for power. Apple says that it created “two custom drivers and computational audio tuned specifically” for wall-mounted HomeViews.
It comes in (from left to right): silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray.
Credit: Apple
It comes in (from left to right): silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray. Credit: Apple
Apple started taking preorders for HomeView today. It launches on November 13 for $299.
NATO vows to adjust defences after drones hit 2 ships off Bulgaria
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Tuesday the alliance will adjust its defenses “as needed” after two ships were struck in the Black Sea off Bulgaria.
“We have already strengthened our posture along the eastern flank and will continue to monitor the security environment,” Rutte wrote on X.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said earlier Tuesday that drones hit two ships, sinking one and prompting emergency rescue operations. The strikes occurred 27 to 29 kilometers (about 17 to 18 miles) from the Bulgarian coast.
Rescuers evacuated all 15 crew members from the Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3, Radev said in a video posted to social media. Five received treatment for minor injuries. The crew included seven Ukrainians and eight Azerbaijanis, who reported that three aerial drones hit the ship’s deck and hull.
Radev said one crew member from the sunken vessel was rescued but gave no details on the others aboard. At least 11 sailors remain missing at sea.
At an emergency meeting of Bulgaria’s Security Council, Radev called the attacks “absolutely unacceptable” and said Bulgaria is seeking NATO and European Union assistance.
Authorities do not have clear evidence of who was responsible, Radev said. But he said “logic” points to Russia as the beneficiary. He said he would summon the Russian ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, later Tuesday.
Russia did not immediately comment.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha blamed Russia on X, saying Moscow was showing deliberate disregard for civilian lives and maritime security. He urged Ukraine’s partners to increase pressure on Russia, strengthen sanctions and protect freedom of navigation. “The Black Sea is a lifeline for global food security,” he wrote.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “strongly condemned” the attacks and said the Black Sea “has become another front of escalation” in Russia’s war in Ukraine. She said the EU stands with Bulgaria and called for those responsible to be held accountable.
The strikes came exactly a week after sea and aerial drones attacked two other commercial vessels in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. A Togo-flagged ship sank, and a Bulgarian ferry evacuated the 18-member crew of a Pulau-flagged vessel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military conducted no operations near the site of those strikes and pointed to Russia.
Separately, a Turkish-owned cargo ship carrying corn caught fire after a drone attack and sank off the coast of Romania, Romanian authorities said. Two people died and 11 crew members were rescued.
Black Sea security
The incidents have renewed scrutiny of Europe’s ability to protect shipping and critical infrastructure in the region. The EU launched a Black Sea Security Strategy in May 2025, when EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called the region “the prime target for hybrid actions.”
The strategy aims to secure the maritime corridor and protect assets such as offshore installations and subsea cables. It also promised a Black Sea Maritime Security Hub to coordinate support and boost coast-guard cooperation. The hub would analyze seabed sensor data and alert allies to potential threats.
Michael Douglas Faces Backlash Over ‘Photoshopped’ Memoir Cover
Hollywood legend Michael Douglas is facing unexpected controversy just days after releasing his highly anticipated memoir, with questions emerging about everything from his youthful-looking cover photograph to the authenticity of signatures in special editions of the book.
The two-time Oscar winner, who turned 82 in September, released One Helluva Ride on October 6, offering readers a revealing look at his decades in Hollywood, complicated family relationships, past romances and personal struggles.
But instead of focusing entirely on the actor’s extraordinary life, some of the attention has shifted to how the book is being marketed.
According to RadarOnline, questions have been raised about whether Douglas’ photograph on the memoir’s cover was digitally altered to make him appear younger.
A Hollywood publicity insider told the outlet that the actor looks noticeably different on the cover than he does during recent interviews and public appearances.
The source suggested that Douglas’ face appeared smoother and fuller in the promotional image, with fewer visible signs of aging.
“There’s nothing remotely wrong with looking your age, particularly when you’ve had a career as extraordinary as Michael’s,” the insider said.
However, the source questioned whether the image had been extensively retouched, arguing that the polished presentation seemed at odds with a memoir intended to offer an honest account of the actor’s life.
Professional lighting, makeup and photo editing are common in celebrity publicity campaigns, and differences between photographs do not necessarily establish that an image has been significantly altered.
There is currently no independent confirmation that Douglas’ photograph was digitally manipulated to make him appear younger. Neither the actor nor his publisher has publicly detailed the editing process behind the cover.
The questions come as a separate controversy has emerged surrounding special signed editions of the autobiography.
Autograph collectors have been comparing photographs of signatures appearing in copies sold through major retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and international booksellers.
According to RadarOnline, some collectors believe the autographs display unusually consistent lettering, curves and connecting strokes, raising suspicions that certain copies may have been signed using an autopen.
An autopen is a mechanical device capable of reproducing a person’s signature, sometimes making multiple signatures appear nearly identical.
The distinction matters to collectors because books personally signed by a celebrity can carry greater value than editions featuring mechanically reproduced autographs.
One collector told RadarOnline that some signatures appeared to follow remarkably similar patterns, while others showed noticeably different versions of Douglas’ name.
Another prospective buyer expressed doubts about whether a copy ordered through British retailer Waterstones would contain an authentic handwritten signature.
However, similarities between autographs do not establish that an autopen was used. People frequently develop consistent handwriting patterns, and differences between signatures can occur naturally.
No independent forensic examination establishing the use of an autopen has been made public, and there is no verified evidence that Douglas or his publisher misrepresented how the books were signed.
The controversy has created an unusual distraction from what was supposed to be a celebration of the actor’s remarkable Hollywood career.
Published by Grand Central Publishing, One Helluva Ride explores Douglas’ childhood as the son of legendary actor Kirk Douglas, his difficult path toward establishing his own identity and his eventual rise to international stardom.
Douglas became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men through films including Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and The American President.
He won an Academy Award for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976 and another for his performance as ruthless financier Gordon Gekko in Wall Street in 1988.
His memoir also revisits his complicated relationship with his father, who died in 2020 at age 103, and his marriage to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom he wed in 2000.
The actor discusses his struggles with substance use, past affairs, family difficulties and his battle with advanced throat cancer, which was diagnosed in 2010.
In a recent interview with People, Douglas acknowledged that the book forced him to revisit painful chapters of his life, including difficult periods in his first marriage and his son Cameron’s struggles with addiction.
The memoir also includes candid recollections involving Hollywood stars such as Kathleen Turner and Jeanne Tripplehorn.
Douglas has spent more than five decades in the entertainment industry, building a career that spans acclaimed dramas, box-office hits and award-winning television performances.
At 82, he remains one of the industry’s most recognizable figures, with his latest book attracting attention from longtime fans eager to hear his side of Hollywood history.
Whether the current questions surrounding the memoir’s presentation will lead to any clarification from the publisher remains to be seen.
For now, the allegations involving the cover photograph and signatures remain unproven, even as they add another layer of publicity to Douglas’ revealing autobiography.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he does not believe China or Russia is helping Iran in its war with the United States and Israel, rejecting allegations of outside assistance in a Truth Social post as tensions persist across the Middle East.
Responding to critics who accused Beijing and Moscow of supporting Tehran, the US president said any assistance would be minimal.
“If they are, it’s at a very low level, but I don’t believe they are at all,” President Trump wrote. He argued that both countries had too much to lose by aiding Tehran and that Washington would quickly detect such assistance.
His comments contrast with allegations raised by his own administration. In May, the US State Department sanctioned China-based companies it accused of supplying satellite imagery that enabled Iranian attacks on American forces. Beijing rejected the allegations as unsupported.
Other reports have raised questions about Iran’s access to foreign military technology. Reuters reported in July that Iran expected deliveries of Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense launchers. In September, Reuters described arrangements through which Tehran used oil revenues to acquire Chinese goods, including military equipment, while bypassing sanctions.
The Financial Times reported last month that Russian specialists had worked with Iran on advanced cruise missile technology. Such reports do not establish the extent of any assistance authorized by the Chinese or Russian governments.
During a September meeting in Washington, President Trump warned Chinese President Xi Jinping against helping Iran. US Ambassador to China David Perdue subsequently said Beijing had assured Washington it would not provide such support.
The war began February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran, followed by Iranian attacks on Israel and Gulf countries hosting American forces. China has criticized the strikes on Iranian territory, while Russia has warned of wider regional consequences.
President Trump also downplayed a September report alleging Chinese entities provided satellite imagery before a July attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. The report did not allege that Beijing itself directed the assistance.
High-speed video reveals how honey bee stingers pump venom
Credit: Ramirez-Esquivel et al 202
Honey bees are known to leave their stingers embedded in tender flesh once they sting you and fly away. Scientists have now determined that the stinger is able to continue pumping venom into its unfortunate victim even after the bee flies away, thanks to a unique double-piston pump-like mechanism, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Different species have evolved different mechanisms for delivering venom, which involves piercing the skin and then pumping venom from a gland or reservoir. Spiders, for instance, have muscles surrounding their venom glands, which contract and eject venom through hollow fangs. Bees, wasps, and ants deliver venom via their stingers, either by contracting muscles around the venom reservoir or through stiff elements called lancets working together to pump venom.
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) add a unique feature: Worker bees fly away after inserting their stingers in the target, leaving the stinger behind. The stinger continues to penetrate the tissue and pump venom on its own, a rare phenomenon known as autotomy. A honey bee’s stinger has three main interlocking elements that form the venom canal: a stylet that widens to form the main pumping chamber and two sharp-tipped lancets that slide back and forth, piercing the tissue and pumping venom into the target. But the precise mechanism by which the pumping action is achieved has never been directly observed.
The authors of this latest paper sought to capture the venom-pumping kinematics of honey bee stingers in order to identify the underlying biomechanics. They collected live worker bees and removed the stingers with forceps just prior to filming. Then they partially inserted those stingers into blocks of artificial gel and captured the pumping action using stereomicroscopy and high-speed color videography. This was followed by a frame-by-frame analysis to better track the movement, which is visible because the structures are semi-translucent.
That footage revealed that the valves attached to each lancet—both of which sit inside the venom pumping chamber—change shape during pumping as they slide back and forth. They inflate like a parachute on the downstroke, creating a seal via a piston-like action that applies downward pressure in the chamber to push out the venom. They deflate on the upstroke. And the valves change their shape again when they meet in the middle in order to push past each other.
“The unique geometry of the valves is the key; they act as collapsible pistons and—by pumping in opposite directions—they’re able to deliver a continuous flow of venom,” said co-author Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel of Macquarie University. “The double piston design adds complexity, but it’s the key to the stinger being able to deliver venom continuously in a compact, autonomous unit.” The dual motion also minimizes backflow.
Those results were consistent with the authors’ preliminary flow visualization experiments. To verify the initial findings, the team took micro-CT scans and used that data to create a 3D-printed scaled prototype model to mimic the observed pumping behavior. This pumping motion, too, was filmed and analyzed frame by frame. The artificial pumping model showed the same pumping kinematics as the biological stingers.
Future research may focus on a closer examination of the material properties of the valves, since the team’s artificial polymer valve shows extremely high elasticity is key to replicating the necessary valve deformations, along with low friction between the valves. It would also be useful to investigate whether capillary action plays a role, given the small size of the venom-pumping elements. Capillary action could help draw venom into the venom canal, or alternatively, the venom may need to counter capillary action working to draw fluid up from the tissue.
Prior research has used bee stinger structure as an inspiration for the design of microneedles, tissue transport devices, and drilling devices. The authors believe their own work will eventually find similar medical and microfluidic application, such as for artificial pumps.
