Father and son released by ICE. Parts of the South get snowed in. History at the Grammys. CBS News Correspondent Cami McCormick has those stories and more on the World News Roundup podcast.
In January, five states enacted laws restricting people who receive food aid from buying sugary beverages and snacks. About a dozen more will follow suit later this year. This morning, we'll learn about how that affects SNAP recipients and grocery stores. Plus, last week, gold and silver had their worst declines in decades. Then, as part of Marketplace's "AI and You" coverage, we'll look back at when the dot-com boom led to a rapid expansion of internet infrastructure — similar to what we're seeing today with AI.
From the BBC World Service: After a historic rally, gold has seen its biggest drop in more than a decade. Silver is also down after sharp swings in Asian trading. The rapid decline comes after President Donald Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his nomination for Federal Reserve chair, a pick many hope can continue to preserve Fed independence. Then, we head to Japan, where local tech firms are helping seniors living with dementia.
With all the fanfare surrounding AI these days — the utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares — it can be hard to see the technology as simply a tool that anyone can use to improve their lives.
That's what tech columnist Christopher Mims at the Wall Street Journal focuses on his new book "How to AI: Cut Through the Hype. Master the Basics. Transform Your Work.” In it, he outlines two dozen “AI Laws” for how consumers and organizations should think about AI.
Plus: Democrats pushing for immigration-enforcement changes say they won’t help GOP pass funding measures to end a partial shutdown. And President Trump says the Kennedy Center will close for two years of renovations. Daniel Bach hosts.
A.M. Edition for Feb. 2. Volatility is gripping global markets as jittery investors sell off everything from gold to bitcoin. WSJ markets reporter Chelsey Dulaney helps us assess whether a broader correction could be in store. Plus, the U.S. government begins the week partially shut down, with a tough battle looming in the House as lawmakers debate immigration-enforcement changes. And Israel reconnects Gaza to Egypt in a major test of President Trump’s peace plan. Luke Vargas hosts.
A lawyer, artist and curator discuss different examples of censorship and self censorship in Radio 4's weekly discussion of ideas to kick off the week. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are:
Ai Weiwei: a major name in contemporary art and for decades a leading voice for freedom of expression in his native China – and the wider world. In 2011 he was detained for eighty-one days in a secret location, unable to communicate with the outside world. His new book, On Censorship moves from authoritarian regimes to the pervasive influence of corporate power, social media and dominant interest groups in democracies.
Baroness Helena Kennedy has written the introduction to collected writings of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was murdered outside her home in Moscow twenty years ago. With continued attacks in Russia on press freedom, the way she spoke truth to power remains inspirational for Baroness Kennedy.
The figure of the Samurai is often associated with ideas about discipline, sacrifice and war but a new exhibition at the British Museum (on until May 4th) looks at the way this warrior class became consumers and patrons of culture. Rosina Buckland has co-curated the show.
A key insight social anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee had while observing electoral behavior in a Bengali village was that -- at least in the India of that moment -- elections were sacred. This was not a religious epiphany but a cultural one; at the center was not a figure, religious or political, but an ideal - democracy.
Banerjee has explored her insights in the years since in a variety or formats, but academic and popular, ranging from her written work like 2021's Cultivating Democracy: Politics and citizenship in agrarian India or 2014's Why India Votes? to a 2009 radio documentary for the BBC specifically titled "Sacred Elections." In this Social Science Bites podcast, the professor at the London School of Economics reviews much of the underlying scholarship behind those works, then explores with host David Edmonds the de-sanctification of democracy in both India and the Global North in the years since.
"I think what has happened ... in the US and in the UK," she explains, "is a complacency that regardless of whether you do your little bit, whether it is literally just turning up to vote or learning to organize and be informed politically, is going to happen regardless of whether you do it or not. And because of this complacency, is precisely why these degenerations of democracy have happened."
Banerjee is the founding series editor of Routledge's Exploring the Political in South Asia and is also working on a grant from the Indo-European Networking Programme in the Social Sciences on Explanations of Electoral Change in Urban and Rural India. This year, courtesy of a British Academy-Leverhulme Senior Fellowship, she is on a research sabbatical studying the nexus of democracy and taxation.
A partial government shutdown is under way after Congress missed its funding deadline, with lawmakers advancing a plan to reopen most agencies while negotiations over Homeland Security and immigration enforcement continue. A federal judge ruled the Trump administration can keep its immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis going, even as plans to draw down agents haven’t materialized and residents see ongoing arrests and protests. And President Trump says the performing arts center built as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy will close for two years for a massive renovation.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Russell Lewis, Mohamad ElBardicy and Adrianna Gallardo.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ava Pukatch and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. Our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
(0:00) Introduction (01:54) House Shutdown Vote (05:34) Minneapolis Immigration Operations (09:16) Trump Kennedy Center Closure
Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar, traveled to Minneapolis a few days ago with a message: the faster local officials cooperate with federal immigration agents, the faster those agents will leave.
Hamed Aleaziz and Ernesto Londoño, New York Times reporters, explain why that kind of cooperation is so difficult to pull off.
Guest:
Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy in the United States for The New York Times.
Ernesto Londoño, a reporter for The New York Times based in Minnesota.