A BRITISH JUDGE ruled Thursday that Prince Harry’s snooping lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Group Newspapers can go to trial, albeit without one of its most damning allegations.

Like his ongoing lawsuit against the Mirror Group’s tabloids — for which Prince Harry testified against in June — the Duke of Sussex had also sued The Sun and the now-defunct News Of The World, accusing the newspapers of hacking his phone over a decade ago. In his ruling Thursday, Justice Timothy Fancourt said that Harry’s lawsuit can proceed to trial, but without the phone hacking charge, since that happened outside the law’s six-year statute of limitations; Fancourt added that Harry was aware of the phone hacking allegations during the period within the statute.

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Harry’s legal team had argued that Buckingham Palace struck a “secret agreement” with NGN to prevent the Duke of Sussex from pursuing legal action against the media group, thus making the charges ultimately fall outside the statute of limitations. Fancourt rejected that theory. (When Prince Harry testified against the Mirror Group in June, he became the first royal in a century to take the stand.)

With the phone hacking thrown out, the crux of Prince Harry’s case against NGN — slated to begin January 2024 — will be on allegations of unlawful information gathering, like the tabloids’ employment of private eyes to specifically unearth dirt on Harry; Fancourt issued a similar ruling in Hugh Grant’s lawsuit against the British media, with the phone hacking charges dismissed from that case.

The last time there was a major slowdown in the mighty network of ocean currents that shapes the climate around the North Atlantic, it seems to have plunged Europe into a deep cold for over a millennium.

That was roughly 12,800 years ago, when not many people were around to experience it. But in recent decades, human-driven warming could be causing the currents to slow once more, and scientists have been working to determine whether and when they might undergo another great weakening, which would have ripple effects for weather patterns across a swath of the globe.

A pair of researchers in Denmark this week put forth a bold answer: A sharp weakening of the currents, or even a shutdown, could be upon us by century’s end.

It was a surprise even to the researchers that their analysis showed a potential collapse coming so soon, one of them, Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics at the University of Copenhagen, said in an interview. Climate scientists generally agree that the Atlantic circulation will decline this century, but there’s no consensus on whether it will stall out before 2100.

Which is why it was also a surprise, Dr. Ditlevsen said, that she and her co-author were able to pin down the timing of a collapse at all. Scientists are bound to continue studying and debating the issue, but Dr. Ditlevsen said the new findings were reason enough not to regard a shutdown as an abstract, far-off concern. “It’s now,” she said.

YAMHILL, Ore. — Before I make an argument about affirmative action, let me tell you how I was a beneficiary of it. I wasn’t a student of color, but I grew up on a farm and attended a small, rural high school where there wasn’t much math and nobody had ever applied to an Ivy League college. My grades and scores were strong but not extraordinary.

But I did have one thing going for me. Elite colleges were looking for farm kids from low-income areas to provide diversity. So a school that I had never visited, Harvard, took an enormous risk and accepted me, and I became a token country bumpkin to round out a class of polished overachievers. In time, Harvard gave me a wonderful education, transformed my life and set me on a path to becoming a columnist — which is why you’re stuck reading this. Yes, indeed: Providing paths to a better education can be life-changing.

So how do we do that for others? I wish the Supreme Court had ruled differently on affirmative action for race, but unfortunately it blocked that path for diversity. My fear is that we will all throw up our hands and sit around blaming the court, rather than actually working to overhaul a disgracefully unequal education system. In fact, there are still ways to broaden educational opportunity. But they may require us liberals to look in the mirror and acknowledge the role of our own institutions in perpetuating inequality.

Elite universities are bastions of left-of-center ideas, yet advantage four groups that are already privileged: children of graduates, recruited athletes for sports like rowing and fencing, children of faculty members and children of large donors.

two days ago, I wrote about Florida’s despicable decision to teach its children about the “positive aspects” of slavery.

there was nothing funny to say about this moral travesty, but I did allow myself one slight ha-ha at the end. I wrote: in Germany, schoolchildren are taught about the Holocaust. it’s mandatory. and they don’t sugar-coat it with stupid fairy tales. they don’t try to pretend that Jews learned useful skills like how to hide in an attic.

it’s a ludicrous notion, but guess fucking what: yesterday, on the Fox News program The Five, Greg Gutfeld went there, saying that Jews survived extermination camps by being “useful.” Greg, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. nobody survived an extermination camp by being useful. do you know who started this bullshit lie? the Nazis.

this is the front gate of the Auschwitz extermination camp. the sign above the gate reads “Arbeit Macht Frei.” that’s German for “work will make you free.”

it’s a lie. not one person imprisoned at Auschwitz — or any Nazi extermination camp — worked their way to freedom.

WHEN ASKED TO describe Mick Jagger, Keith Richards has famously replied, “He’s a nice bunch of guys.” On this birthday, let’s celebrate all of them. There have been so many Mick Jaggers over the years, with their different highs and lows. Here’s a salute to the 80 Coolest Mick Jagger moments: a mere 80 of the countless moments when Mick reminded us all why he’s the ultimate rock star. He’s always been the most visible of rock stars — but also the most mysterious, the most slippery, the one you’ll never figure out no matter how hard you try. This is Mick at his most seductive. Mick at his most decadent. Mick at his most comical. But it’s all Mick defining the outer limits of rock & roll cool. Let it bleed, now and forever.

LONDON/TOKYO/BENGALURU, July 25 (Reuters) - People around the world are getting their eyeballs scanned in exchange for a digital ID and the promise of free cryptocurrency, shrugging off concerns among privacy campaigners and data regulators.

Founded by Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, the Worldcoin project says it aims to create a new "identity and financial network" and that its digital ID will allow users to, among other things, prove online that they are human, not a bot. The project launched on Monday, with eyeball scans taking place in countries including Britain, Japan and India.

At a crypto conference in Tokyo, people on Tuesday queued in front of a gleaming silver globe flanked by placards stating: "Orbs are here." Applicants lined up to have their irises scanned by the device, before waiting for the 25 free Worldcoin tokens the company says verified users can claim.

Users told Reuters they weighed concerns over data collection against their curiosity about the project, which says it has issued IDs for more than two million people in 120 countries, mostly during a trial period in the last two years.

The Internal Revenue Service said on Monday it would curb the practice of sending agents to make surprise visits to homes and businesses, scaling back a policy that for decades has been central to its efforts to collect unpaid taxes amid political backlash and increasing threats to its employees.

The change comes as the I.R.S. embarks on a multibillion-dollar modernization project that aims to upgrade technology, ramp up enforcement of the tax code and improve customer service. It also coincides with increased scrutiny of the tax collection agency, which has faced criticism from Republicans over perceptions of political bias and from taxpayers who claim that its tactics are overly aggressive.

“We are taking a fresh look at how the I.R.S. operates to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a common-sense step,” Daniel Werfel, the I.R.S. commissioner, said in a statement. “Changing this longstanding procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall safety for taxpayers and I.R.S. employees.”

The agency has been trying to project a more customer-focused approach to taxpayers while Republicans have been fanning fears that the tax collector is hiring an army of 87,000 new agents to shake down small businesses and the middle class. The antipathy toward the I.R.S. has made the work of its agents more dangerous; last year, the agency initiated a comprehensive security review after misinformation and false postings on social media led to threats directed at employees.

By Beto O’Rourke
Mr. O’Rourke served as the U.S. representative for Texas’ 16th Congressional District from 2013 to 2019.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s escalating political stunts have killed migrants at the Texas-Mexico border. Operation Lone Star — the dangerous, illegal and ineffective border mission that Mr. Abbott has been running separately from the federal government for over two years — must be stopped. It’s time for President Biden to step up.

The Supreme Court has consistently upheld that immigration enforcement is a power exclusive to the federal government — not the states. Elements of Mr. Abbott’s border operations have been found unconstitutional, violate federal law and conflict with U.S. treaty obligations to Mexico. Mr. Biden has every right — in fact, every responsibility — to intervene and enforce the federal government’s clear authority to regulate the border without state interference.

The lawsuit that the Department of Justice filed on Monday calls on Mr. Abbott to remove the dangerous floating barrier of buoys that he has installed in the Rio Grande. It is a good first step, but it is far from sufficient. Mr. Abbott has made clear that he does not intend to comply and isn’t going to wait for litigation to move through the courts to add to the gantlet of misery he’s constructed on the border.

Every day that Mr. Biden fails to stop Mr. Abbott leads to unnecessary, preventable suffering — and often death. Last week, a medic with the Texas Department of Public Safety blew the whistle on the governor’s deadly border operation, reporting that troopers have been ordered “to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande.”

this is just fucking horrifying.

[Quote] A pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain.

in the latest of far too many episodes of “cruelty is the point,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered his private army of border goons to string razor wire along and under the surface of the Rio Grande, to prevent migrants in seeking legal asylum from entering the United States.

holy shit, razor wire, much of it submerged under water.

and the horror stories just keep coming, one after another.