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Revelations about the use of spying tools sold to governments by NSO Group sparked furious political rows across the world on Monday after evidence emerged to suggest the surveillance firm’s clients may have sought to target their political opponents.

Amid growing concern over the apparent abuse of NSO’s powerful phone-hacking spyware, Pegasus, Amazon confirmed it had already cut some of its ties to the Israeli surveillance company. The stock price of Apple dipped amid worries about the privacy and security of its handsets.

NSO claims its surveillance tools are sold to carefully vetted government clients who are only permitted to use them for legitimate investigations into crime and terrorism. However, the Pegasus project, a consortium of media including the Guardian, revealed that:

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What is in the Pegasus project data?

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What is in the data leak?

The data leak is a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers

Many Iowa Republicans had seen the results of the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, released just days earlier, in which Pence flatlined, drawing no more than 1 percent support. Before that, they’d watched the video of Pence getting heckled and called a “traitor” at a major gathering of conservatives in Florida last month.

“I don’t imagine he’d have a whole lot of support,” said Raymond Harre, vice chair of the GOP in eastern Iowa’s Scott County. “There are some Trump supporters who think he’s the Antichrist.”

Harre said Pence “did a good job as vice president,” and he called the vitriol directed at him “kind of nutty.” Still, he said, “I don’t see him overcoming the negatives.”

Six months after he left the vice presidency, that is the prevailing view at the grassroots and among the GOP political class. By most accounts, both here and nationally, Pence

Sen. Nick Sacco has built a political fortress in Hudson County, and he knows that no one can dethrone him after three decades in power.

So why not take advantage? Why not cast aside all shame and grab as much money as you can, pushing the legal boundaries to the limit?

Sacco just cashed in his chips, taking $270,000 in unused sick time, on top of his $220,000 pension. He’s 74 now, and for decades he’s been engorging himself with three public salaries that brought him over $300,000 in combined pay at his peak – as mayor in North Bergen, as senator in District 32, and as a senior administrator in the public school system, the one job he finally quit.

The superintendent of schools in North Bergen, George Solter, who was in theory Sacco’s boss at the school job, says that Sacco’s plunder in North Bergen is all by

DEAR ABBY: My husband of 20 years constantly blames everything on the political party I lean toward. He tries his best to say hurtful things about them and lure me into a fight.

I try to ignore it, but it’s starting to wear on me, and our kids hear his rants as well.

He has a lot of hateful feelings. He refuses to get counseling and is getting worse. I would appreciate any advice that you would be willing to give.

MISMATCHED IN TEXAS

DEAR MISMATCHED: Draw the line. Tell your husband you will no longer tolerate being the target of his verbal abuse. If he can’t calmly discuss your differences — political or otherwise — you do not want them discussed, particularly in front of the children.

Offer him the “option” of counseling because it appears he has an anger problem he’s projecting onto you. But if

A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows white Evangelicals last year experienced “the most precipitous drop in affiliation” among American religious groups since 2006, shrinking from 23 percent of Americans that year to 14 percent in 2020. Their mainline Protestant peers, however, have enjoyed something of a resurgence, picking up members as Evangelical numbers declined.

There are inescapable political implications to any religious trend, and the fortunes of white Evangelicalism are no different. In particular, they present potential problems for the GOP, which still relies on white Evangelicals as a key portion of its base.

Among Republicans, two-thirds identify as white Christians of some persuasion, according to PRRI, with 29 percent identifying as white Evangelicals specifically, a decline from previous years that reflects the general downward slope of white Evangelical affiliation. People who identify themselves as white Evangelicals remain highly

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Sunday deplored the political split in the country about getting vaccinated against the coronavirus. 

Polls show that Democrats, who generally are more liberal in their support of government programs, are much more inclined to get inoculated than Republicans, who often hold more skepticism about government actions and conservative views supporting individual rights. 

One recent poll showed 93% of people who identify as Democrats say they have been vaccinated or intend to get shots in their arms, while only 49% of Republicans said they have or plan to. 

Fauci told ABC News’s “This Week” show, “We’re trying to put politics aside. Viruses don’t know the difference between a Democrat and a Republican or an independent.” 

“We’ve got to get away from the divisiveness,” said Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser.

WATCH: Biden Admin expanding vaccine efforts

The widow of the murdered Haitian president Jovenel Moïse has accused shadowy enemies of organising his assassination to stop democratic change, as a struggle for power intensified in the Caribbean country.

Haiti has been reeling since Moïse was gunned down early on Wednesday at his home in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Martine Moïse, who was wounded in the attack, said her husband was targeted for political reasons.

“You know who the president was fighting against,” a voice recording posted on her Twitter page said, without naming anybody.

“They sent mercenaries to kill the president at his home with members of his family because of roads, water, electricity and referendum as well as elections at the end of the year so that there is no transition in the country.

“In the blink of an eye, the mercenaries entered my house and riddled my husband with bullets,” Moïse said in the recording, describing

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) — Local school boards around the country are increasingly becoming cauldrons of anger and political division, boiling with disputes over such issues as COVID-19 mask rules, the treatment of transgender students and how to teach the history of racism and slavery in America.

Meetings that were once orderly, even boring, have turned ugly. School board elections that were once uncontested have drawn slates of candidates galvanized by one issue or another.

A June school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, that dealt with transgender students and the teaching of “critical race theory” became so unruly that one person was arrested for disorderly conduct and another was cited for trespassing.

In Rapid City, South Dakota, and Kalispell, Montana, nonpartisan school board races devolved into political warfare as conservative candidates, angered over requirements to wear masks in schools, sought to seize control.

In Pennsylvania, a Republican donor is

Dr. Anthony Fauci has blamed “ideological rigidity” as a deterrent to vaccination efforts in the face of the rising threat of more virulent COVID-19 variants. 

Just under half of all eligible Americans have received full vaccinations against the coronavirus, but the Delta and Lambda variants threaten that progress. The Biden administration has continued to urge Americans to receive the shots as soon as possible, but in some states the demand for vaccines has fallen, even with ample supplies now available. 

Fauci has blamed politics for deterring an otherwise successful vaccination effort, with the majority of U.S. states and territories having administered at or above 75% of their first vaccine doses, according to the CDC. 

AMERICAN’S ‘DO NOT NEED’ COVID-19 BOOSTER SHOT, FDA, CDC SAY

“I mean, it’s ideological rigidity,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think there’s no reason not to get vaccinated. Why are