Another day, another messy news story to come out of X, or Twitter, or whatever

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Mike Pence cheered the end of affirmative action in US colleges and universities on Sunday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling outlawing the practice. The former vice president discussed the issue on CBS’s Face the Nation and said that the time for policies aimed at improving outcomes for minority students in general had passed. A candidate for the presidency in 2024, Mr Pence is gunning for the GOP nomination against his own former boss, Donald Trump, and other conservatives like Florida Gov Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. His comments came as activists and authorities in the higher education field vowed to keep fighting to ensure that diversity would remain a core value in student recruiting. “Fundamentally, do you believe that there are racial inequities in the education system in the United States?” asked host Margaret Brennan. “I really don’t believe there is [racial inequality in US schools]. I believe there was,” Mr Pence said. “I mean, it’s — there may have been a time when affirmative action was necessary simply to open the doors of all of our schools and universities, but I think that time has passed.” His response drew immediate backlash on Twitter, with many questioning whether Mr Pence’s children had attended schools and colleges with diverse student bodies. The three Pence children, Michael, Charlotte and Audrey, attended Purdue, DePaul, and Yale Universities. The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that universities and colleges may not consider race as a specific factor when choosing to admit individual students. They may, however, continue to take into account how race plays into the individual experiences that those prospective students describe in their applications, such as in personal essay prompts. “[T]he student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority. The suit was brought on behalf of a group of Asian American students who argued that they were discriminated against by admissions staff at Harvard University. Critics of the ruling say it will gut efforts to improve representation of minority students in college classes. College enrollment rates remain noticeably lower among Black and Hispanic students compared to white and Asian American students. In addition, an analysis of US education data has shown that about 40 per cent of Black children attend schools where 90 per cent or more of the students are nonwhite. President Joe Biden responded to the ruling on Thursday after news of the decision broke, telling reporters simply: “This is not a normal court.” Read More Biden reveals ‘new path’ to student debt relief after Supreme Court strikes down president’s plan The Supreme Court risks inflaming the prejudices that America sought to banish In 370 days, Supreme Court conservatives dash decades of abortion and affirmative action precedents Mike Pence claims Biden is rehabilitating the Iran nuclear deal Trump returns to campaign rallies, draws thousands to small South Carolina city ahead of July 4 Biden blames GOP for student loan ruling as 2024 political consequences loom

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By Hadeel Al Sayegh, John O'Donnell and Elizabeth Howcroft LONDON/DUBAI Palestinian militant group Hamas uses a global financing

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Microsoft is killing off WordPad, its decades-old text editor in Windows. The company will no longer update the software. It will then remove it from a future version of Windows. WordPad has been around since Windows 95. It has stood somewhere between Word, its more fully-featured text editor, and the simplicity of Notepad. “WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows,” Microsoft wrote in a support note. “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.” WordPad has always been offered for free, in contrast to Microsoft Word, which requires the payment of a fee or subscription. But it lacked many features of Word such as a spellchecker, too, and is unable to save into some key formats. The support note did not explain why it would be removing the software. It added to a page of deprecated software that notes that “new versions [of Windows] also remove features and functionality, often because they’ve added a newer option”. Microsoft’s announcement came soon after it released new updates for Notepad, which also comes free but does not offer the same formatting or features as WordPad or Word. It will be getting autosave and other new features, after the recent addition of dark mode and other changes. As well as coming under competition from its more full-featured and more simplistic siblings, other third-party options such as Google Docs also offer many of the same tools – and much more besides. WordPad on the other hand has been barely touched in years. It was last updated with Windows 8, more than ten years ago, and even then received only a small redesign. Read More Microsoft makes big changes to takeover of Activision Blizzard SpaceX smashes rocket launch record as Musk eyes historic Starship mission Vodafone users say they can’t call people

Elon Musk has left his Twitter followers stumped with a bizarre comparison of Taylor Swift and Napoleon Dynamite. You'd think the tech mogul would have bigger things on his mind, but on Friday, it seemingly wandered elsewhere. Musk tweeted a picture of Swift and the awkward teen character, asking: "How do we know for sure they’re different people?" The caption above the photo collage of the two read: "When you realise Taylor Swift is actually Napoleon Dynamite." The tweet soon went viral across Twitter, with many flocking to the responses. "As both a Musk fan and a Taylor Swift fan, this is not the crossover I wanted," one person hit back, while another added: "Someone come get the owner of Twitter's phone, please. Now I can’t unsee it." Meanwhile, one person had enough and brutally wrote: "Elon pls go tend to ur baby DU-139X# before even coming on this shi**y app you wasted money on." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Now, this isn't the first time Musk has turned his attention to the 'Shake It Off' singer. In March, the Tesla founder complimented the star by saying her "limbic resonance skill is exceptional." Everyone was just as confused as each other, but it apparently means "a state of deep emotional and physiological connection between two people. The limbic system in the brain is the seat of emotions." He didn't stop there either. Under a series of photos from Swift's hotly-anticipated Eras Tour, Musk responded with a cigarette emoji which most people interpreted as him calling the singer smoking. When one Twitter user asked whether Musk and Swift would make a cute couple, he simply responded with a crying laughing face. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.