Mike Oldfield's second album, 1974's Hergest Ridge, to be reissued on double vinyl and Blu-ray to celebrate the album's 50th anniversary

More than 50 years on since their last studio album, Faces are preparing to return with a new record in 2026

Music journalist Keith Cameron has written what Manic Street Preachers say is their definitive history

Around 200 pro-Palestinian student protesters gathered on the Yale University campus to oppose an event with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir outside the institute. This comes amid a crackdown on such protesters by the Trump administration. The university gave QR codes to the students, with protest policies on the Yale campus. One witness wrote […] The post Yalies4Palestine Are Back at Yale appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that it would be impossible to give a trial to each one of the millions of migrants who illegally entered the country under former President Joe Biden, adding that he hoped he would get cooperation from the courts for his mass deportation plans. Trump said that he won the election on his promises to deport illegal migrants and that the country would be very “dangerous” if his administration were blocked from carrying out those deportations. Various federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have bogged down the administration’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected gang members. “We’re getting them out. I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.” “A judge can’t say, ‘You know, you have to have a trial.’ The trial is going to take two years,” Trump added. “No, we’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do. And I won an election based on the fact that we get them out.”  Trump also said that there was “virtually” no one crossing the border illegally under his watch, stating that the border was “a tad stronger” than it was during his first term in office. The comments come after Trump made multiple posts on Truth Social talking about how long it would take to give a trial to the more than 10 million illegal migrants in the United States. “How can Biden let Millions of Criminals into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted, with no Legal authority to do so, yet I, in order to make up for this assault to our Nation, am expected to go through a lengthy Legal process, separately, for each and every Criminal Alien. As usual, TWO DIFFERENT STANDARDS, only leading to the Complete and Total Destruction of the U.S.A,” Trump wrote. In a second post, he said it would take 200 years to give trials to everyone. “If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he said. “We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country.” The Trump administration has been locked in a battle with the courts on numerous immigration actions, including the deportation of suspected MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to his home country of El Salvador. A federal judge has ordered that Garcia be returned to the United States due to an “administrative error,” but the Trump administration has so far resisted these orders. The Supreme Court has also limited immigration enforcement, blocking the administration from deporting alleged Tren de Aragua members to Venezuela.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court indicated that it would side with parents who want the option of keeping their children away from LGBTQ-themed books in schools. The justices offered their comments during oral arguments in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor, which revolves around parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. In 2022, the county’s school board approved LGBTQ-themed books for its language arts curriculum. In 2023, the board refused parents the option of having their children excused from such instruction. “One book describes the story of a girl attending her uncle’s same-sex wedding, for example, while another book, Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a Pride parade,” SCOTUSblog noted. A lower court ruled that the school board did not have to notify parents when the storybooks would be used, as such notification would have allowed parents to opt their children out of the curriculum. “A federal appeals court reasoned that on the ‘threadbare’ facts before it, the parents had not demonstrated that exposing their children to the storybooks compelled the parents to violate their religion,” SCOTUSBlog reported. Eric Baxter, an attorney for the parents, told Justice Clarence Thomas that teachers were required to use the books and the school board suggested they do so five times in the school year. Justice Samuel Alito bluntly stated the county’s policy permitted schools to teach children moral principles that were “highly objectionable to parents and they can’t opt out,” and asked simply, “What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?” while pointing out that students could opt out of health classes. Meanwhile, the defendants’ attorney argued there was a difference between “exposure” and “coercion.” Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch contended that the presentation of the curriculum was more than just exposing children to the ideas, making coercion a possibility. Gorsuch asked the attorney for the school board, “The exposure versus coercion line that you ask us to draw, how does that play out in the case of the Mohammed image for the Muslim student?” “In those circumstances, the school is coercing the individual to act contrary to a religious belief,” the attorney replied. “Just being exposed to the image? The exposure there is coercion, in your view?” Gorsuch asked. “I think it’s the difference between exposure to ideas and activity that coerces you to engage in conduct that is in violation of your belief,” the attorney answered. “So the idea is the image of the prophet?” Gorsuch asked. “So it’s the image that makes the difference, rather than an idea?” “I think it’s conduct that makes the difference. … So if there were a book that described someone making an image of the prophet Mohammed, I don’t think the parent would have the ability to object, even given the religious prohibition at issue, on simply being exposed to the idea that people might depict the image of Mohammed. Being required to view the image of the prophet Mohammed in contravention of a religious objection, is being required to engage in conduct,” the attorney replied. “The child is sitting passively and the teacher’s just reading a storybook,” Gorsuch pointed out, prompting the attorney to admit, “I think if the storybook features the depiction of the prophet Mohammed, that is a compulsion to engage in conduct that violates your religious belief.” Gorsuch pointed out, “You say this is only about exposure, but we also have in the records some guidance materials for teachers, one of which is if a students says that a boy says a boy can’t be a girl because if he was born a boy, a teacher is to respond, ‘That comment is hurtful, and we shouldn’t use negative words to talk about people’s identities.’ Is that exposure, or is that something else for a 3 to 5-year-old?” Chief Justice John Roberts declared that even if the school did not require students “to affirm what is being taught in books or lessons,” that may not be “a realistic concept for a five-year-old.” Meanwhile, leftist Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “asked how far the parents’ rule would extend. For example, she inquired, could a parent ask to have her child not placed in a classroom with a gay teacher who has pictures of her same-sex wedding in the classroom?” SCOTUSblog reported.

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