China’s second quarter GDP growth saw a significant deceleration, down to 4.3% year over year from 5.0% in the first quarter and weaker than forecast.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, issued an executive order Tuesday that puts a moratorium on the construction of large-scale data centers.
The pause, which will last up to a year, is the nation’s first statewide ban on data centers, which have drawn increasing concern from lawmakers and citizens based on their impact on electricity prices and the energy grid.
“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul said in a statement.
Technology companies have invested billions of dollars to build data centers all across the country, driven in part by the computing demands from artificial intelligence.
In her executive order, Hochul directed the state Department of Public Service to issue no new permits for large-scale data centers for a year. During that period, the agency will conduct an environmental analysis on the impacts of data centers, along with a proceeding to “require data centers to either pay more for their energy or supply their own.”
New York lawmakers passed a more extensive data center moratorium last month, but Hochul has not said whether she will sign the bill.
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Climate activists take on a new foe: Data centers
Maine Governor Janet Mills, also a Democrat, vetoed a measure earlier this year that would have been the first statewide data center ban.
In a news release, Hochul also directed the state’s economic development agency to develop a framework that local communities can use to negotiate with tech companies that seek to construct data centers. That framework will focus on infrastructure improvements, child care investments, direct financial support, and labor and wage standards.
She also announced plans for a fund that would require data centers to invest in New York’s grid infrastructure and clean energy supply. And she called on lawmakers to repeal the state’s sales tax exemptions for large data centers.
Across the country, data centers have drawn vocal opposition at local public meetings and in state capitols. Several cities and counties will vote on ballot measures this year to restrict the development of new data centers.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New York governor orders first statewide data center moratorium on Jul 18, 2026.
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The church’s action follows resolutions by two other religious bodies at their summer meetings — the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the American Academy of Religion — both of which named Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide.
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Sharon Graham’s former Unite election campaign organiser Matt Smith now supports her opponent, Simon Dubbins.
Having seen Graham in action as general secretary, Smith believes that another five years of Graham would be “an utter disaster for our union”.
But he didn’t only play an extensive role in her 2021 general secretary election campaign. According to senior union insiders, he “wrote her manifesto”.
Smith said that Graham has increased corruption at Unite rather than reduce it. He claimed that she had appointed useless cronies to senior positions and even made up a “ghost job” to buy off a potential rival.
Smith said:
[Graham had] shown all the signs of being insecure, paranoid, and suffering from imposter syndrome from the very start of her term.
Rather than progress Unite, Graham “wasted five years that should have been used to turn this union around”, Smith added.
As the person who wrote her manifesto, who could be better placed to know that she squandered the time instead of implementing her promises?
Smith also left out a lot of Graham’s appalling, anti-union record. For more detail on that, read this.
Featured image via Nurith Wagner-Strauss
By Skwawkbox
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Fifty-one years after victory over Washington’s war machine, Vietnam faces a subtler assault – sanctions, debt, and covert subversion – and answers with a commitment to peace and development.
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This story was produced byHonolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization covering Hawaiʻi that specializes in accountability and in-depth enterprise coverage. For more stories like this,subscribe to their newsletters.
Tia Lewis
Honolulu Civil Beat
Growing up on Oʻahuin the 1950s, Maile Keamoai-Kane learned a lot from her father: how to prepare laulau, gather ʻopihi, and catch and clean fish. He never excluded her.
But being deaf, Keamoai-Kane struggled to learn another key aspect of Hawaiian culture: the language. Her father did the best he could teaching her improvised gestures with his hands to teach her some words, but there was no established sign language based in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language.
Instead, as a student at the Hawaiʻi School for the Deaf and the Blind, Keamoai-Kane said she was forced to read lips. Later in high school, she learned American Sign Language, or ASL, which uses signs based in American and French culture.
“I wanted to learn ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi,” she said. “But at the time, the deaf school did not have a program. That is one of my regrets.”
Today, there is a small but growing effort to establish hand signs rooted in Hawaiian words and cultural values. Called ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima — Hawaiian Language Hand Signs — the community-led initiative is working to create signs that preserve and honor ʻŌlelo and make the islands’ Native language more accessible to the Deaf community.
“We want to ensure that Deaf Kānaka have a meaningful place within the greater lāhui (collective identity),” said Keamoai-Kane, whose married name is Paongo.
The effort was started in 2024 by University of Hawaiʻi student Kekai Kaaumoana-Cummings, who is majoring in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and is the first deaf person at UH Mānoa in Kawaihuelani Ka Hālau ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi — the Department of Hawaiian Language.
Kaaumoana-Cummings hopes to become a teacher and bridge the gap so Deaf Native Hawaiians have greater access to learning their Indigenous language.
“The project aims to develop new programs for Hawaiian immersion education that are academically accessible and community-based, providing opportunities for future growth,” he wrote in messages with Civil Beat.
The group has already created and discussed dozens of signs, but the system is still unofficial and developing. Some signs focus on everyday vocabulary, Hawaiian cultural concepts and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi grammar structures.
Kaaumoana-Cummings shared that they are still organizing and developing the signs carefully before publicly releasing an official list. However, simple words such as no, yes, house, land and mountain have been established.
In ASL, “house” is signed as though you were to outline the shape of a house with both hands, starting from the tip of the roof down to the sides of the walls. In ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima, “hale” is signed with fingertips touching to form the shape of a roof, tapping them together.
“ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima continues to evolve,” Kaaumoana-Cummings wrote, “laying a foundation for future generations to learn, use, and expand our language visually.”
Sign Languages In Hawaiʻi
Similar to spoken languages, sign languages vary by country, according to Keane Nakapueo-Garcia, a hearing PhD student at UH Hilo who is currently doing his own research into the signs historically used by Deaf Native Hawaiians to communicate.
For example, American, British, Australian and New Zealand sign languages are all distinct despite those countries sharing English as a spoken language. And American Sign Language (ASL) is not as simple as English communicated through hand movements. It is an independent language with its own culture — Deaf culture.
There is evidence that hand signs were used in Hawaiʻi prior to the introduction of ASL in the islands in the 1940s, and University of Hawaiʻi researchers in 2013 declared the existence of a Hawaiʻi Sign Language. But those signs don’t have a foundation in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi or Native Hawaiian culture, according to Kaaumoana-Cummings and Nakapueo-Garcia.
HSL is based on different cultures and spoken languages that were prevalent during the plantation-era — including Chinese, Japanese and Filipino — and is more akin to Pidgin. For example, in HSL the sign for “yellow” is related to cutting pineapple, a reference to plantation work that has no relation to ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi.
The work of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima is about protecting Native Hawaiian history and identity, Keamoai-Kane wrote in messages with Civil Beat.
“Our group came together because we saw an urgent need to give a clear and primary voice to Deaf Kānaka Maoli,” she said. “To tell our own stories, on our own terms.”
Similar to how ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi was banned in schools in 1896, Nakapueo-Garcia said Indigenous sign languages were also often discouraged or erased as Native communities were pressured to adopt English and other dominant forms of communication such as ASL or learning how to speak or read lips.
Therefore, much about how Deaf people communicated in decades past is unknown. Throughout his interviews with Deaf kūpuna, Nakapueo-Garcia observed signs he did not recognize.
“As they share their stories, I’m extrapolating different signs that they use. I recognized they are not ASL, and I recognized, from my time with HSL, that those signs are not HSL either,” Nakapueo-Garcia said. “I’m just trying to gather all the Indigenous signs that are out there, that are spread out across the pae ʻāina (archipelago).”
ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi signs are now being developed by ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima as other Native communities make similar efforts on the U.S. continent.
Melanie McKay-Cody is a deaf assistant professor of Cherokee, Shawnee, Powhatan and Montauk descent who is advising Nakapueo-Garcia. Her initial research revitalizing endangered Indigenous sign languages started with Navajo sign language in 1993 at the University of Arizona. She has since expanded her studies to various tribes working alongside an authentic signer of North American Indian Sign Language.
“We are at the point where we are almost complete with a video dictionary that features all the now 14 tribes of American Indians, and there are some differences,” she said, through an interpreter.
This work is important, she said, because “this is a part of their identity and their heritage.”
Blending Hawaiian And Deaf Cultures
An ʻŌlelo-based sign language would mean a lot to people like Nikki Kepoʻo, a Native Hawaiian mom of two in Kahaluʻu.
Her hearing daughter Rebekah Pualokomaika’i Kepoʻo, 17, is enrolled at Ke Kula ‘o Samuel M. Kamakau, a Hawaiian immersion school in Kāneʻohe. Her deaf son, Caleb La’aikeakua Kepoʻo, 14, goes to the Hawaiʻi School for the Deaf and the Blind in Honolulu.
Kepoʻo always planned for her son to enroll in the same Hawaiian immersion program as his sister. When her son was identified as deaf as a baby, she wanted to ensure he was fully immersed in both Native Hawaiian and Deaf culture.
But in her opinion, the immersion school isn’t equipped to serve her son with adequate resources and educators steeped in Deaf culture.
She expressed the hope for a formal bilingual-bicultural experience within immersion schools — a system where both ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and Native Hawaiian culture, and ASL and Deaf culture, can be integrated.
“Had there been an option, I would have loved that, because then both my kids would grow up in that same environment, same culture,” she said.
Unlike immersion schools, Hawaiʻi School for the Deaf and the Blind has a more American-focused education centered in ASL and American History, according to Nakapueo-Garcia. Kepoʻo currently sits on the school’s community council and has been a strong advocate for providing the Deaf students with cultural opportunities.
After he earns his PhD, Nakapueo-Garcia’s goal is to create a program in Hawaiian immersion schools for Deaf keiki and support families like the Kepoʻo ʻohana. He hopes to expand access to immersion education and create a repository of Native signs and have them available for the community to use.
“When they develop a sign language, they canhave it in both the deaf school, so deaf kids can learn it as a second language,” Kepoʻo said, “and then at Hawaiian immersion, so that hearing kids can also have the option of signing in their Native language.”
Aunty Keamoai-Kane hopes future generations of deaf children in Hawaiʻi will receive the education, support and opportunities that were often unavailable to her generation.
“My dream is for Deaf people to no longer be left out or left behind,” she said. “And that young and old generations become more comfortable in communicating via ‘Ōlelo Hawai’i Kuhi Lima.”
The post Deaf And Native Hawaiian: ʻŌlelo Sign Language Offers A Cultural Connection appeared first on ICT.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 26 triumphantly announced the “signing of the Trilateral Framework between Lebanon, Israel and the United States.”
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Mexico has intensified diplomatic efforts with the United States, calling on immigration authorities and the private operator of the Adelanto detention center in California to comply with established protocols and uphold the human rights of people held in custody.
RELATED: ICE Custody Deaths Reach Record High Levels
The renewed appeal follows the U.S. government’s decision to return formal letters in which Mexico raised concerns about immigration enforcement operations and the treatment of Mexican nationals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The dispute escalated after the death of Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on July 7.
The Mexican Embassy in the United States reiterated its request that the private company managing the Adelanto detention center fully comply with applicable protocols and respect the rights of those under its custody.
According to the information provided, four Mexican nationals have died at the facility.
El día de hoy, el embajador Roberto Lazzeri sostuvo una reunión en el Departamento de Estado, en Washington, D.C., como parte de los acercamientos diplomáticos que el Gobierno de México ha impulsado esta semana con autoridades estadounidenses —incluidos el Departamento de…
— Embassy of Mexico in the U.S. (@EmbamexEUA) July 17, 2026
Text Reads: Today, Ambassador Roberto Lazzeri held a meeting at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., as part of the diplomatic outreach that the Government of Mexico has promoted this week with U.S. authorities—including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—regarding the deaths of Mexican nationals in immigration custody at the Adelanto detention center in California.
In the meeting, Ambassador Lazzeri specified the scope of the cease-and-desist letter issued in recent days: it is a communication addressed to the private company operating said facility, in which it is urged to adhere to applicable protocols and to fully respect the human rights of persons under its care. The letter was issued in exercise of the consular protection function recognized by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, of which both countries are parties, and with full respect for the laws, authorities, and institutions of the United States.
Mexico takes note of the return of said communication and confirms that the concerns that motivated it have been formally raised through diplomatic channels, both in today’s meeting and in the encounters held during the week with the DHS and ICE.
Mexico will continue to provide close follow-up to each case and to work in coordination with U.S. authorities under the principles of respect for sovereignty, shared responsibility, mutual trust, and collaboration without subordination.
The embassy said Ambassador Roberto Lazzeri met with U.S. State Department officials as part of diplomatic engagements conducted this week with U.S. authorities, including ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, following the deaths of several Mexican nationals in immigration detention at the center.
During the meeting, Lazzeri explained that the cease-and-desist letter sent to the private company operating the Adelanto facility was “a communication urging it to comply with applicable protocols and fully respect the human rights of the people under its custody.”
According to the newspaper La Jornada, the Adelanto detention center is operated by GEO Group, one of the largest private immigration detention companies in the United States.
The U.S. State Department confirmed it had returned the cease-and-desist letters Mexico had sent to the department and other privately operated immigration detention facilities working under ICE.
Michael Kozak, a senior official at the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, met with Ambassador Roberto Lazzeri in Washington and returned the letters, which the U.S. government viewed as attempts to direct the operations of government personnel within its sovereign territory.
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