Politics

Comment on this storyCommentTOKYO — South Korea’s unification minister and senior Japanese government officials reaffirmed their close cooperation in response to North Korea’s escalating missile threats at a rare meeting on Thursday, a sign of a further thaw in relations that comes only a week after their leaders agreed to work past their troubled history and mend ties so they can better respond together to growing regional threats.Kwon Youngse is in Tokyo for talks with Japanese ministers and top governing party officials, becoming the first unification minister to do so in 18 years. His trip comes on the heels of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week, when they agreed to resume regular visits and launch high-level talks on s...

WASHINGTON — In the nation's capital, the debate over banning TikTok has largely focused on whether the app's Chinese parent company poses a security threat to Americans. But behind closed doors, Democrats are also being forced to weigh whether blocking the popular video platform could come with heavy political costs. In 2020, Aidan Kohn-Murphy used TikTok to rally support for Joe Biden. Now, he's trying to use the platform to stop Biden from killing it. “I’m not defending TikTok as a company, I’m defending my entire generation,” said the 19-year-old Harvard freshman who, as a high-schooler during the 2020 campaign founded a group called TikTok for Biden. It has since changed its name to Gen Z for Change, formally incorporated as a political non-profit, and says it now includes 500 crea...

Comment on this storyCommentThe Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned part of the state’s near-total abortion ban, ruling in a 5-to-4 decision that the procedure would be lawful if there is a reasonable chance that a pregnancy could threaten a pregnant person’s life.Oklahoma’s constitution protects the right to an abortion if “the woman’s physician has determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that continuing “the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life,” the court’s justices said in Tuesday’s ruling. “Absolute certainty” that the pregnancy will be life-threatening isn’t required, but “mere possibility or speculation” is insufficient, they added.Previously, the state allowed abortions only in cases of medical emergencies, requiring the patient to “be in actual and present dan...

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunchIn its latest piece of strategic litigation, the precision-punching European privacy rights campaign group noyb has used data donated by users of the ‘Who Targets me‘ browser extension, which analyzes political microtargeting on Facebook, to build a case against every political party in Germany — for what it alleges is unlawful processing of voters’ personal data via Facebook’s adtech platform during the 2021 federal elections. Today it’s filed six complaints with Berlin’s data protection commission — one apiece for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Alternative for Germany (AFD), SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, DIE LINKE and the Ecological Democratic Party, suggesting the law-breaking behavior cuts across the political spectrum. ...