Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

At the end of an election campaign that was nasty, brutish and short, British voters punished Prime Minister Theresa May at the polls on Thursday, depriving her Conservative Party of its governing majority in Parliament, and forcing her to rely on the support of a small party of extremists from Northern Ireland to stay in office.

One month ago, the award-winning journalist Javier Valdez was pulled from his car and killed in broad daylight near his office in Culiacán, in Sinaloa state in Mexico. Valdez is the sixth journalist to be assassinated in Mexico this year, and his killing has sparked outcry and sent new shockwaves of fear through the country’s media. The journalists being targeted in Mexico have something in common: a commitment to documenting political corruption and state links to drug trafficking.

Wars are rarely announced in advance, but President Trump provided an abundance of warning about his intention to wage anassault on journalism. During the election campaign, he called journalists an “enemy of the people” and described media organizations he didn’t like as “fake news.

Five civilians includinga child were killed and another five were wounded in the latest U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Yemen, according to eyewitness accounts gathered by The Intercept. The raid by U.S. commandos in the hamlet of al Adhlan, in the Yemeni province of Mareb on May 23, also destroyed at least four homes. Navy SEALs, with air support from more than half a dozen attack helicopters and aircraft, were locked in a firefight with Yemeni tribesmen for over an hour, according to local residents.

A shadowy internationalmercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S.

An examination by The Intercept oflobbyist disclosuresfiled with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act shows that Saudi Arabia has greatly expanded its spending on influence peddling during the past two years. Since 2015 the Kingdom has expanded the number of foreign agentson retainer to 145 individuals, up from 25 registered agents during the previous two year period.

Swedish prosecutors announced this morning that they were terminating their seven-year-old sex crimes investigation into Julian Assange and withdrawing their August 20, 2010, arrest warrant for him.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has yet to say anything about Monday’s heinous, nihilistic suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. According to current reporting, the attack has been claimed by ISIS and was carried out by a 22-year-old man born in Manchester to Libyan refugees. But when Blair does speak, we can be certain he won’t mention one key fact: Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the U.S. and U.K.

In a phone call from the White Houselate last month,U.S. President Donald Trump heaped praise on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte,one of the world’s most murderous heads of state, fordoing what Trump called an“unbelievable job” in his war on drugs.

Residents of Hoosick Falls, New York, recently took comfort in EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s announcements that the agency will be prioritizing the Superfund program.

The Republican Party wasn’t always an organization dominated by the ultra-wealthy. While today most of its federal representatives in Congress are trying to pass a gigantic tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill, it was once a party that liberated American slaves, established the Environmental Protection Agency, and broke up enormous business monopolies. That’s the GOP that 42-year-old Arkansas pastor Robb Ryerse is trying to revive.

Thousands of miles from his home and family, Jose Escobar lives in a small rural community in La Unión, El Salvador, amid fields of sugar cane and corn, bordered by the Chaparrastique volcano and the Gulf of Fonseca. Escobar, 31, is desperate to leave El Salvador but feels trapped. He was deported from the United States on March 2. Escobar immigrated to the U.S. with his mother as a teenager and built a life there.

Every year, Facebookgathers hundreds of developers, corporate allies, and members of the press to hear CEO Mark Zuckerberg’svision of our sharednear future. The gathering is known as “F8,” and this year’s iteration included some radical plans, one of which could’ve been pulled from a William Gibson novel: Facebook is working on a means of using your brain as an input device.

For most of his four years as chair of the Science Committee, Republican Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas has served up more spectacle than policy. As arguably the showiest climate denier and opponent of environmental regulations in Congress, Smith has orchestrated climate change hearings that are the scientific equivalent of pro-wrestling matches. Stacked with skeptics who mocked mainstream climate science, they offered virtually no chance for significant dialogue.

Twelve hours after his national security adviser called a Washington Post report that he had shared highly classified information with Russia “false,” President Donald Trump chose not to do so, arguing instead that his office gives him “the absolute right” to share “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety” with even an adversary.