Trump vowed he’d ‘never’ help Europe if it’s attacked, top EU official says – POLITICO

…”You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was also present at a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” Trump also said, according to Breton. “And he added, ‘and by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,'” Breton said about the tense meeting, where the EU’s then-trade chief Phil Hogan was also present…

Source: Trump vowed he’d ‘never’ help Europe if it’s attacked, top EU official says – POLITICO

In the fight over abortion rights, the government bans its first company from tracking medical visits – POLITICO

Lina Khan testifies before the House Judiciary Committee.

Source: In the fight over abortion rights, the government bans its first company from tracking medical visits – POLITICO

Ukraine adds Subway fast food chain to list of ‘war sponsors’ — Meduza (Me: Greed over freedom for Subway?)

…The statement says that more than 500 restaurants remain open in Russia, which pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes to the Russian budget. The agency says that Subway “actively advertises its activities through sanctioned Russian social media and delivers food through Yandex services.” After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the company never announced that it was leaving the Russian market.

According to the NACP, Subway said that all its restaurants in Russia were independently owned and operated by local franchises, which is how Subway has stayed open in Russia. Ukraine says this claim is misleading.

NACP’s statement notes that Subway allegedly hired a Russian law firm to find a legal way to collect royalties from Russian franchises, since Western companies can’t receive royalties due to restrictions imposed by Russian banks. According to the agency’s information, the law firm found mechanisms to legally collect royalties from Russian Subway restaurants.

“There were no attempts to condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine from the company’s management,” said NACP…

Source: Ukraine adds Subway fast food chain to list of ‘war sponsors’ — Meduza

PEN America: Escambia County, Florida, Banned More than 1,600 Books,Including 5 Dictionaries! | Diane Ravitch’s blog

…It has come to this: Escambia County, Florida, schools have banned the dictionary.

Five dictionaries are on the district’s list of more than 1,600 books banned pending investigation in December 2023, along with eight different encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not – all due to fears they violate the state’s new laws banning materials with “sexual conduct” from schools.

Biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshallare on the list, alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Black Panther comics by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Feminism Book was banned along with The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion.

The list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project also includes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. The Princess Diaries and 14 other books by Meg Cabot have been taken from libraries, alongside books by David Baldacci, Lee Child, Michael Crichton, Carl Hiassen, Jonathan Franzen, John Green, John Grisham, Stephen King (23 of them), Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Celeste Ng, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult,and Nicholas Sparks. Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly’s two books, Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan, were also banned pending investigation…

Source: PEN America: Escambia County, Florida, Banned More than 1,600 Books,Including 5 Dictionaries! | Diane Ravitch’s blog