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Zelenskyy warns: “We will not prevail” if U.S. backs Russia

18 October 2026 at 22:00

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed Sunday that the United States temporarily interrupted intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, as a Republican congressman demanded an investigation into separate disruptions affecting Ukrainian battlefield communications.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Zelenskyy said American intelligence used to detect incoming Russian missile strikes had been restored after a brief interruption.

“We are very thankful for this,” Zelenskyy said. “Now it works.”

President Donald Trump previously maintained that intelligence-sharing had never stopped, despite Ukrainian officials reporting that some Russian attacks occurred without warning.

Zelenskyy also criticized the administration’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports and waive new sanctions targeting Moscow, warning that Washington’s actions could undermine Ukraine’s defense.

“If the United States will officially take the side of Russia … we will not prevail and we will not be able to stand,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, appearing on the same program, declined three times to directly answer whether the United States considers Ukraine an ally.

“I’m not the secretary of state. I’m not the president,” Bessent said after repeated questioning by moderator Kristen Welker.

Bessent pointed to continued American intelligence and military assistance, arguing that Washington was seeking a negotiated end to the war.


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Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, called for a congressional investigation into disruptions involving SpaceX’s Starshield satellite communications system, which Ukrainian forces rely on for battlefield operations.

On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Turner rejected Secretary of State Marco Rubio‘s explanation that the slowdown occurred without a White House order.

“Absolutely not,” Turner said when asked whether Rubio’s explanation was sufficient. “There needs to be a congressional investigation.”

Turner warned that interrupted communications could endanger Ukrainian lives and urged Trump to reconsider waiving sanctions on Russia.

The tensions also provided material for Saturday night’s “SNL UK,” which spoofed Zelenskyy’s meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

James Austin Johnson, reprising his Trump impersonation from the American “Saturday Night Live,” crashed the meeting as the fictional Zelenskyy pleaded for restored Starlink access. Johnson’s Trump offered to help Ukraine with anything, “provided it’s not help with war.”

The post Zelenskyy warns: “We will not prevail” if U.S. backs Russia appeared first on Salon.com.

Automattic interim CFO resigns just weeks after boardroom shakeup

9 October 2026 at 17:02
Automattic's interim chief financial officer Jeremy Klaperman has left the company less than a month after taking the role, TechCrunch has learned. Sources say his departure followed a demotion back to his previous position, marking another executive exit amid the organization's leadership turmoil.

Trump folds as White house press returns

24 September 2026 at 23:44

President Donald Trump’s war with the press hit a temporary stalemate Thursday as a federal judge restored White House access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico for two weeks. Last Friday, the president banned the three outlets, calling them “fake news,” as their journalists reported being blocked from accessing the White House. 

In response, CNN, MS Now and Politico sued, and the Trump administration launched “Trump TV,” which is essentially a livestream of speeches and other reruns that apparently almost no one is even watching. During this week’s U.N. General Assembly, before giving a speech in which Trump mulled the annihilation of Iran, the president snarled at a reporter for asking him a question.

“You should not be here,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me.” Collins later said on air, “We never said we were never going to cover the president.”

Trump didn’t follow due process in the ban, according to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, who ordered the administration to restore their access as the case is litigated. Reporters from all three outlets thus began reporting at the White House again, but the move has raised questions of whether Trump could try again, this time following due process.

Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told NPR “The White House facility doesn’t need to let journalists in … But once it does … it cannot exclude journalists or news organizations because it doesn’t like what they report.”


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“Certainly, the trajectory has been in the direction of more restraints on press access than less,” Rottman added. “I think the public can easily wrap their head around the danger of the leader of the country retaliating against news organizations, denying them access because he doesn’t like their coverage.”

Trump did not mention the judge’s ruling but decried on Truth Social about CNN and MS Now’s “low ratings” that “have dropped considerably” and criticized their coverage of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. 

“Trump blocking access is bad, but what’s so annoying about Big Media folks’ self-righteous indignation is that the White House and Congress routinely deny credentials to smaller independent outlets and Big Media folks say nothing and show no solidarity,” David Sirota, a journalist and former senior advisor to Bernie Sander’s 2020 presidential campaign, said in a post on X. “They don’t actually care about the press freedom principles they are pretending to care about here. They care about their own access, their own business models, and virtue signaling to their own elite class of media.”

The post Trump folds as White house press returns appeared first on Salon.com.

Not so full of sound, but definitely fury—the fury they left him—signifying nothing

22 September 2026 at 22:04
Mugshots of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump

The Orange Menace made yet another strategic blunder, trying to decide which news sources could cover him, and now he has no microphone.

Now Donnie Diapers just looks ridiculous, yelling into the wind, his comb-over flowing. Attempting to kick CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool; Trump pissed off the whole gang. — Read the rest

The post Not so full of sound, but definitely fury—the fury they left him—signifying nothing appeared first on Boing Boing.

News Organizations Band Together in White House Boycott

21 September 2026 at 23:58

Trump Manages to Silence Himself

The news outlets that make up the TV pool that covers the White House and the president’s schedule joined together on Monday to announce that they would not be “designated as pool coverage of the president” until further notice after President Trump banned CNN from the White House.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who is also the chair of the TV pool, wrote in a memo to journalists in the White House press corps. The memo was obtained by the Washington Post and others on Monday.

“There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country,” it said.

The news comes after President Trump announced last week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House — and journalists from those outlets were turned away from the White House grounds. Lawyers for the banned news outlets and individual journalists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, alleging violations of the news organizations’ First Amendment rights.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three news organizations said in a statement on Monday, per CNN.

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The members of the TV pool news organizations announced their boycott on Monday morning as well.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media and NBC News, the five cable networks that make up the rotating White House TV pool, wrote in a statement on X Monday.

The pool is a system that news outlets have been using for decades to help split the cost of having cameras follow the president’s moves on a daily basis. Per WaPo:

The assigned network records and distributes a live feed that other news outlets can use. Without a TV pooler, there will be scant video coverage of Trump unless news outlets take their own video or use feeds provided by the White House.

The Washington Post also announced it would not publish any photos of any presidential events on Monday until midnight ET.

There are legitimate concerns about the vacuum created by the news outlets’ absence — and what this White House might do to fill the void. A year ago, Trump’s White House blocked the White House Correspondents’ Association from choosing members of the White House press pool, effectively taking control over which news outlets could send reporters to cover White House events.

But for today, at least, Trump managed to silence himself. His attempt to unveil his new White House helipad was not televised live on the usual cable news channels Monday. Here’s footage from Newsmax of the event. You can’t hear him.

LMFAO — Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-21T17:51:50.189Z

Kickstarter collects Denis Kitchen's underground comics in three risograph books

18 September 2026 at 22:37
Denis Kitchen comics Kickstarter — Denis Kitchen / J.T. Yost (via Kickstarter)

Here's a cool Kickstarter project featuring the comic book art of Denis Kitchen, an underground comics publishing legend, founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and agent for both Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. Kitchen is best known as the publisher of Kitchen Sink Press, but he is also a great cartoonist. — Read the rest

The post Kickstarter collects Denis Kitchen's underground comics in three risograph books appeared first on Boing Boing.

Get my new book ready for dessert…now available!

By: David
8 April 2025 at 16:03

It’s almost ready!

Coming this Fall is the new, completely revised edition of Ready for Dessert: My Best Recipes.

[It’s now available at ==> Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and at the links below.]

When my publisher told me they wanted a new edition of the book, I decided to revise the book completely, from top to bottom. Ready for Dessert is a compilation of my favorite recipes, so I knew that I wanted to keep my signature Chocolate chip cookies, the Chocolate-cherry biscotti accented with black pepper, and classic Black & white cookies, along with everyone’s favorite, the Fresh ginger cake, as well as a tangy Lemon semifreddo, and the recipe for the Coconut layer cake I made for Alice Waters’ father on his birthday every year.

Order Ready for Dessert now!

To sweeten the pot, I added brand-new recipes to Ready for Dessert, favorites culled from my kitchen in Paris, including Île flottante (inspired by the version I always order at a favorite local bistro), a very special Riz au lait (rice pudding) topped with crunchy, candied nuts and salted butter caramel sauce, buttery Palets Breton cookies, and my version of the iconic, and irresistible (truly!), Maple tart from Tapisserie in Paris, the pastry shop of the highly-regarded restaurant Septime, so you can make it at home.

One of my favorite pictures (and recipes) from the new edition of Ready for Dessert is the Marjolaine cake. We made several of these cakes for the photo shoot and gave leftovers to the local butcher shop – and now I’m their favorite customer.

Award-winning photographer Ed Anderson, who photographed my books, My Paris Kitchen, Drinking French, and The Perfect Scoop, returned to Paris to shoot the pictures for the book, in my kitchen and backyard, as well as out-and-about in the city. Another bonus was that I got to work with two of my favorite food stylists, Elisabet der Nederlanden and George Dolese. We had a blast shopping in Paris for ingredients, and making the recipes in my kitchen, then eating them as well.

When the food stylists end up devouring your recipes during a photo shoot, that’s the highest compliment a cookbook author can have. They bake and cook food all day long, so are picky about what they eat. (And boy, did they eat!) I also invited friends to come by and join us, so you’ll find guests shots in the book as well.

The all-new edition of Ready for Dessert is now available at your local independent bookseller and online.

Below are some bookstores and online retailers where you can order the book:

| Amazon | Bookshop.org | Now Serving | Barnes & Noble | Omnivore | Book Larder | Kitchen Arts & Letters | Bold Fork | Books are Magic | Amazon France | Powell’s
| RJ Julia | Strand | Smith & Son Paris | Amazon UK | Archestratus | Politics and Prose | Vivienne Culinary Books | Book Passage | Elliot Bay | Village Books | East End Books | Indigo Canada | Amazon Australia | Shakespeare and Company Paris |

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