Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Updated 11:06 AM EDT, Fri May 16, 2025
London
CNN

26. Armenia: PARG, “Survivor”
The song’s terrible, by the way.

25. San Marino: Gabry Ponte, “Tutta L’Italia”
Remember the infuriatingly addictive 1998 hit “Blue (Da Ba Dee)?” That was this guy!

21. Germany: Abor & Tynna, “Baller”
Germany won’t win Eurovision, but they do win CNN’s coveted award for the competition’s worst lyrics.

19. Spain: Melody, “Esa Diva”
Melody’s staging is fabulous, and this song is a hot, chaotic mess (complimentary), but it’s hard to see either jury or televoter falling for it.

18. Iceland: VÆB, “Róa”
VÆB will give you a headache.

14. Greece: Klavdia, “Asteromáta”
It’s ambitious and personal, and Klavdia’s vocals are top drawer.

13. Netherlands: Claude: “C’est La Vie”
If Claude makes it onto the stage, he’s already one-upped last year’s Dutch entrant, Joost, who was disqualified moments before the show...

12. Ukraine: Ziferblat, “Bird of Pray”
Nemo likes it: “One of the most interesting (songs) musically – it’s very daring, bold, but beautiful.”

11. Estonia: Tommy Cash, “Espresso Macchiato”
You won’t want to like this song, but you probably will.

10. Malta: Miriana Conte, “Serving”
"Serving" is an energetic, if a little dated, Maltese effort that has shades of "Je Me Casse," a similarly buzzy entry from 2021.

9. Denmark: Sissal, “Hallucination”
The competition’s longest absence from the final (they last qualified in 2019) has been snapped by a fabulous, epic, searing ballad that deserves far more love than it’s getting.

8. Sweden: KAJ, “Bara Bada Bastu”
This song is the favorite and it’s been endorsed by Finland’s president – which is awkward, since the country has its own contestant.

7. Luxembourg: Laura Thorn, “La Poupée Monte Le Son”
It would be a crime if this didn’t do well.

6. Italy: Lucio Corsi, “Volevo Essere Un Duro”
Corsi's song is a beautiful and gentle effort that subverts traditional ideas around masculinity.

4. Switzerland: Zoë Më, “Voyage”
Countries never win back-to-back, which is a shame, because this is stunning.

3. Finland: Erika Vikman, “Ich Komme”
"Ich Komme" is one of many severely horny entries this year.

2. Austria: JJ, “Wasted Love”
It’s the best song at the competition.

1. Albania: Shkodra Elektronike, “Zjerm”
They sing about an oasis – “There’s no ambulance around the street, no one talks to you arrogantly” – clearly oblivious to the British bachelor parties that blight Tirana, Albania’s capital.

So the simplest option should be:

Code: [Select]

bash whattime.txt

Of the three major credit rating agencies, Moody’s was the lone holdout, maintaining its outstanding rating of AAA for US debt. Moody’s held a perfect credit rating for the United States since 1917.

It now ranks US creditworthiness one notch below that, at Aa1, joining Fitch Ratings and S&P, which lowered their credit ratings for US debt in 2023 and 2011, respectively.

cat whattime.txt | bash

bash < whattime.txt

While the Jaguar [the vessel] defied orders [of Estonian Navy patrol ship and helicopter], a Russian Su-35 Flanker fighter jet was observed in the vicinity, shadowing the two ships.

...the aircraft breached Estonian airspace near the Juminda Peninsula for under a minute, flying without a filed flight plan, with its transponder turned off, and without maintaining radio contact with local air traffic control.

After the short-lived confrontation, the Jaguar continued its route uninterrupted and eventually reached the Russian oil export terminal at Primorsk around midnight local time.

In November 2024, the German Navy frigate Nordrhein-Westfalen escorted a Russian corvette and a civilian tanker through the Baltic. When a German NH90 Sea Lion helicopter approached for inspection, the Russian crew launched flares rather than responding via standard radio protocols.

Calling it "The Trump Doctrine" highlights the largest problem. Trump is not on board, and while naming flattery is cheap and possibly effective, clearly he has other interests and whims directly detrimental to this "Trump Doctrine". The tariff war is a good example, weakening rather than strengthening this strategy.

Workers were installing benches at a park in the ancient Greek port city of Thessaloniki when their excavator pushed brown soil off a fragile white skull.
 
It’s common to find ancient remains or objects in Greece. But hulking Yedi Kule castle was a prison where Communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece’s 1946–49 Civil War.

Wartime legacy

Greece’s Civil War began in the wake of World War II. Coming after continent-wide destruction, it quickly lost international attention but the conflict marked a turning point: U.S. President Harry Truman’s policy of anti-communist intervention — the Truman Doctrine — was presented to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct funds and military support to Greece.

Etched on the newly excavated bones in Thessaloniki, then, is a playbook that went on to produce decades of repression, societal divisions and more unmarked graves in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Governments later addressing the Cold War-era abuses and atrocities faced a painful choice: To unearth the past — as attempted with investigative commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries — or suppress it for fear of fresh division.

Greek emergency laws were gradually lifted and only fully abolished in 1989. Records of summary trials and executions were never made public.

No official announcement was made of the end of the long-enduring republic, which was launched in 1789. No autopsy was scheduled.

The proximate cause of death was America’s rapid decline in democratic governance. In March 2025, the director of Varieties of Democracy, a Sweden-based think tank, cautioned that the U.S. was on the verge of losing its status as a democratic republic.

The American democratic republic is survived by a country of the same name, the United States of America, now a presidential dictatorship.

When we were finishing up the last touches on the Democracy Report three years ago, Russia launched its full-scale, illegal invasion of Ukraine. The war is still going on. But back then, the alliance backing this young, aspiring democracy was solid and included the United States of America.

AS WE ARE finishing up this year’s Democracy Report, recently inaugurated President Trump is voting against NATO allies in the UN joining with autocracies like North Korea, Russia, and Sudan. Military support to Ukraine was just cut off, and the words coming out of the Trump administration echo Kremlin rhetoric. European leaders are scrambling to mount a sufficient response. The world is going through another convulsion.

Interim DC attorney Ed Martin has written a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation — the organization behind Wikipedia — that calls into question its status as a nonprofit entity... Martin alleges that Wikipedia is “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda,” including by “rewriting” historical events and through “other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States.”

Martin is known for thinly justified legal threats against media organizations. In recent days, Martin has sent letters to the New England Journal of Medicine, the CHEST Journal, and Obstetrics and Gynecology, accusing them of being “partisan in various scientific debates.”

Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that?

No, there’s many deals.

When are they going to be announced?

You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.

Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

I’ve made 200 deals.

You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One.

Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.

Well what’s taking so long? When do you think it will be ended?

Well, I don’t think it’s long. I mean, look, I got here three months ago. This war has been going on for three years. It's a war that would have never happened if I was president. It's Biden's war. It’s not my war. I have nothing to do with it.

Stephen Miller says anybody who isn't as corrupt as Alito or Thomas is part of a "rogue radical-left judiciary" that should be opposed.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on social media the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who he said “intentionally misdirected” federal agents away from a man they were trying to take into custody at her courthouse.

“Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” Patel wrote.

Court documents detailing the case against the judge were not immediately available, and the Justice Department didn’t immediately have a comment Friday.

Forecasts for global growth have been revised markedly down compared with the January 2025 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update, reflecting effective tariff rates to levels not seen in a century and a highly unpredictable environment.

Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States - the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”

The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.

Poco prima delle 10 del mattino, il cardinale Kevin Farrell ha annunciato con dolore la morte di Papa Francesco, con queste parole: «Carissimi fratelli e sorelle, con profondo dolore devo annunciare la morte di nostro Santo Padre Francesco. Alle ore 7:35 di questa mattina il Vescovo di Roma, Francesco, è tornato alla casa del Padre...».

“National Socialism demands that the needs of German workers no longer be supplied by Soviet slaves, Chinese coolies, and Negroes,” [Nazi Party chief economist Gottfried] Feder wrote. Germany needed German workers and farmers producing German goods for German consumers. Feder saw “import restrictions” as key to returning the German economy to the Germans. “National Socialism opposes the liberal world economy, as well as the Marxist world economy,” Feder wrote. Our fellow Germans must “be protected from foreign competition.”

Even though Hitler’s own foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, was concerned that the strategy would spark a trade war, and could drive up the price of imported eggs by 600 percent, Feder’s tariffs fit into Hitler’s larger vision for “liberating” the German people from the shackles of a globalized world order.

Hans Joachim von Rohr, who worked at the Reich’s nutrition ministry, went on national radio to explain the logic of Hitler’s tariff strategy. “The products that Germany lacks must be made more expensive; then farmers will produce them in sufficient quantities,” Rohr explained. “And if foreign competition is kept at bay by tariffs and the like, city residents will prefer domestic production.” Rohr offered lard—“Schmalz”—as an example.

The primary targets of the Hitler tariffs—the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands—were outraged by the sudden suspension of favored-nation trading status on virtually all agricultural products, as well as on textiles, with tariffs in some cases rising 500 percent. With its livestock essentially banished from the German market, Denmark, for example, was facing substantial losses. Farmers panicked. The Danes and Swedes threatened “retaliatory measures,” as did the Dutch...

Hitler launched his trade war on the second Friday of his chancellorship. That evening, he appeared in the Berlin Sportpalast, the city’s largest venue, for a rally in front of thousands of jubilant followers. It was his first public appearance as chancellor, and it served as a victory lap. Hitler dispensed with the dark suit he wore in cabinet meetings in favor of his brown storm-trooper uniform with a bright-red swastika armband.