u/Kamoto31

Attorneys for former Olympian David Hearn are asking the D.C. Superior Court to permanently dismiss his Reflecting Pool vandalism case, arguing in a new Friday filing that President Trump’s continued public comments about the matter show the government “cannot be trusted” to fairly exercise prosecutorial discretion. Hearn’s case, originally treated by federal prosecutors as vandalism, was dropped by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office after officials later acknowledged the damage “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor” rather than intentional destruction. Despite that reversal, Trump has continued insisting there was vandalism and that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro made a “mistake” in dropping the case, even while separately acknowledging there was “some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening.” Hearn’s attorneys argue this contradiction is precisely the problem, writing in their filing, “the record in this case demonstrates a substantial and specific risk that, if the indictment is dismissed without prejudice, Mr. Hearn will face renewed charges, however meritless, driven by political pressure rather than the evidence.”

The filing directly cites multiple social media posts and public comments from Trump reacting to Pirro’s decision to drop the case, arguing that his continued promotion of what they call a “false version” of events, that meaningful damage occurred beyond contractor error, constitutes ongoing “harassment” that threatens Hearn’s liberty. This comes even after Pirro reportedly brought a box of evidence to the White House supporting her prosecutors’ conclusion that the damage stemmed from a botched installation rather than deliberate vandalism, according to sources who spoke with ABC News. “The public political pressure campaign being conducted through the Executive Branch in this case shows that the government cannot be trusted to properly exercise its prosecutorial discretion,” Hearn’s attorneys wrote, framing the ask for dismissal “with prejudice” as necessary specifically because a standard dismissal would leave the door open for prosecutors to refile charges under continued political pressure regardless of the underlying evidence.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 4, when a judge will hear arguments on Hearn’s request to permanently close the matter.

Police in Fort Worth, Texas arrested local radio host and political activist EJ Carrion early Wednesday morning, pulling him over near his home for a turn-signal violation before informing him there was a warrant out for his arrest, according to an arrest report obtained by 404 Media. The warrant stemmed from a Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court meeting on August 4, where Carrion had criticized officials over a plan to slash polling locations ahead of the November midterms, saying, “you said you were all about cooling the temperature and yet you vote for this extremist bullshit. All of you are bullshit,” before turning and walking away from the microphone, shouting back “I’m walking out, small man.” County Judge Tim O’Hare responded by ordering him removed and declaring the meeting in recess. Carrion is now charged with two counts of disrupting a meeting or procession, a Texas misdemeanor, with the arrest report stating he “did intentionally hinder an official proceeding […] by noise or violent or tumultuous behavior.” Carrion told NBC DFW he’d simply been out with friends and was pulling into his own cul-de-sac around 3 a.m. when officers stopped him.

The underlying dispute centers on Tarrant County’s plan to cut polling places nearly in half, from 316 locations in the last election down to a proposed 176, a move Carrion and other residents have fought publicly for months. He wasn’t the only speaker punished that day, either. About 30 minutes after his removal, a woman took the microphone to criticize the meeting’s conduct, saying, “people are removed for clapping. People are removed for speaking out. People are treated like a disruption instead of the reason this government exists… you keep telling us not to ‘California my Texas’ while in reality you keep Russia my Texas. You three boys from the GOP—” before O’Hare cut her off and cleared the chambers. An hour later, former Texas state representative Lon Burnham was also removed and charged with the same two counts after picking up a microphone during his remarks opposing the polling plan; when O’Hare told him to set it down, officers physically dragged Burnham out of the chamber.

The arrest has drawn public criticism from within the county’s own leadership. Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. said in a Facebook statement, “I am deeply disturbed by the circumstances surrounding the arrest of Efrin ‘EJ’ Carrion earlier this morning. Government must exercise extraordinary restraint when speech at a public meeting leads to involvement with the criminal justice system. Residents should never have to wonder whether speaking forcefully to their elected officials could result in a warrant, an arrest, or an encounter with law enforcement. Because once that fear takes hold, the damage reaches far beyond one person.” Miles Jr. called on fellow commissioners to make public meetings a space where residents can speak freely, adding, “there must be a line the government does not cross. The authority entrusted to us does not belong to us. It belongs to the people […] this must stop. And I will not be silent when the public trust, the safety of our residents, and their rights to be heard are at stake.” Carrion’s case fits a broader national pattern of local officials cracking down on public comment, following incidents like the February arrest of an Oklahoma farmer for speaking too long at a data center meeting and the July arrest of a Kansas resident for clapping during public comments at a similar hearing. Neither Carrion nor the Fort Worth Police Department responded to 404 Media’s request for comment.

Nuclear power, long promoted as a highly efficient alternative to dirtier fuels like coal or natural gas, is now buckling under the pressure of Europe’s record-setting heatwaves, as water levels in the continent’s major rivers plunge to all-time lows and cripple the cooling systems reactors depend on. While the receding water has been a boon for archaeologists uncovering ancient ruins along riverbeds, it’s created a genuine crisis for nuclear engineers, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, which reported that facilities like Hungary’s two-gigawatt Paks nuclear plant have come dangerously close to powering down entirely as critically low flow from the Danube threatened the plant’s ability to cool its reactors. That’s a serious problem for Hungary specifically, since the Paks plant generates nearly half the country’s total electricity supply in any given year. The Hungarian government has responded by mobilizing engineers to dump roughly 145,000 cubic meters of rocks into the riverbed, a manual effort to slow the current and conserve water upstream, according to ABC.

Romania is facing an even more dire version of the same crisis, with Reuters reporting that the state-owned nuclear power producer may be forced to completely shut down its last remaining reactor. The country hasn’t gone down without a fight, though: earlier this month, the Romanian navy detonated 180 kilograms of explosives specifically to redirect water from the Danube toward cooling its nuclear reactor. France is contending with a different but related set of problems, where a combination of extreme drought and a recurring jellyfish invasion has cut the country’s nuclear energy production by 20%, though its more diversified energy grid has kept the situation from spiraling as severely as in Hungary or Romania.

With another heatwave already looming on the horizon, these disruptions may represent only the beginning of a much larger reckoning for Europe’s nuclear infrastructure, an energy source built around the assumption of predictable water availability that a warming climate is actively undermining.

A new study of Latin inscriptions from Hispania shows that Roman women played a far larger role in public banquets than ancient accounts often suggest, using their personal wealth to fund communal meals and build public status for themselves and their families. Researchers examined 36 inscriptions dating from the late first century BCE to the third century CE, finding that 20 recorded banquets funded by women, 14 by men, and two involving both, a female share the study calls striking since public generosity in Roman cities is typically linked with male civic power. These meals, known as epula, were formal public feasts that often followed religious rites and animal sacrifice, gathering communities around food tied to worship, civic events, honors, or the dedication of statues and buildings. Paying for such a feast was itself a public act, allowing a wealthy donor to feed the community while placing their name in a lasting public record that could strengthen family status for generations. The largest concentration of evidence came from the province of Baetica, which produced 29 of the 36 total banquets and 17 of the 20 female-funded ones, with towns including Munigua, Cartima, and Nescania each yielding multiple examples.

Many female donors used their wealth specifically to honor husbands, sons, fathers, or other relatives, with 12 of the 20 female-funded inscriptions directly linking a woman’s banquet to a public honor or statue, allowing the meal to mark a significant family event while giving the donor herself a visible civic role. About 70% of these inscriptions included the phrase sua pecunia, meaning “with her own money,” a wording that explicitly identified the funding source and created a clear personal link between the woman and her donation. One standout example, Iunia D. f. Rustica, left an unusually rich record of public spending, having helped rebuild porticoes, paid a public tax, donated land for baths, gifted a bronze statue of Mars, funded additional bath construction, paid for a banquet, and funded two equestrian statues. Religion offered another significant pathway to public influence, with six female donors in the study serving as priestesses or flaminicae, many tied to the imperial cult, roles that carried recognized civic duties within their cities. One priestess, Baebia C. f. Crinita, left money in her will for a banquet and a temple dedicated to Apollo and Diana, also requiring a statue built in her own honor, with her temple donation totaling 200,000 sesterces before a 5% inheritance tax reduced it to 179,000 sesterces.

The study also uncovered evidence of women attending these public meals as guests, sometimes alongside men and sometimes in gatherings organized specifically for them. An inscription from Naeva records a banquet held for both male and female residents, while another from Munigua uses a formula describing a meal divided by sex. Three inscriptions from Italy go even further, recording banquets where women were the sole recipients, including one donor who provided a meal plus two sesterces for each woman, and another who funded a meal for mothers, sisters, and daughters of council members alongside female citizens across all social ranks. Still, the evidence shows real limits on women’s participation, since municipal banquets often centered on male elites, particularly local council members, meaning women didn’t gain equal access to every public gathering and their civic role remained shaped by existing Roman social rules. Among the female benefactors identified, roughly 40% were married women, 17% were identified as daughters, and nearly half had no stated marital or family status at all, suggesting these women operated within the civic system on the strength of their own wealth and standing rather than purely through family ties.

FINDINGS: https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbag035

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to keep construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom moving after a lower court paused it, with the injunction set to take effect August 21 unless the justices intervene. Solicitor General John Sauer called the injunction “extraordinary and unlawful,” arguing it would endanger the president’s security and override guidance from the nation’s top military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials, writing that if allowed to stand, it “would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.” The district court had ruled Trump lacks authority to overhaul the White House without congressional approval, a decision a divided federal appeals court upheld earlier this month, though the lower court’s order would still permit below-ground construction and any measures deemed necessary for national security or presidential safety. Sauer pointed to six “recent assassination attempts,” including “the threat of a missile attack against Air Force One on July 8,” to argue that halting construction directly threatens the president’s life, and maintained that “the President of the United States of America is not a tenant, but rather the sole, elected head of the Executive Branch, and Congress has authorized him to renovate, secure, and protect the White House and its grounds, as other Presidents have been allowed to do, without exception.”

The administration’s filing offered striking new details about the construction’s current state, claiming the project is 65% complete with $200 million already spent or committed, built by a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, on a structure that spans five stories deep, rises 70 feet above ground, and covers 50,000 square feet. The government insists the project is “on time” and “under budget” and that “zero taxpayer dollars are needed or required,” notably without mentioning the White House’s separate $1 billion funding request to Congress for security hardening and enhancements, a request many lawmakers see as connected to the ballroom project. Joshua Fisher, the White House director of management and administration, warned in a sworn declaration that stopping now would be catastrophic, writing, “if work is stopped in line with the district court’s injunction, it will be a disaster. Quite frankly, if the building were tragically ordered to be taken down, or even altered, by the court, there would be no way to do so,” and describing the concrete-and-steel superstructure as now “beyond the point of no return” since its freestanding walls “cannot be left as-is without being tied together with the designed structural steel.” The filing also included declarations from senior officials including the secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the FBI and Secret Service, laying out national security justifications for the project.

The legal fight isn’t just playing out at the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats formally asked the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday to audit the project and its funding, writing that “the scale of this project, the destruction of historic architecture, the opaque and unorthodox combination of public funds with private funding sources, and the absence of standard federal review processes raise serious concerns about transparency, accountability, and stewardship of this national landmark.” The government argues it’s likely to prevail on appeal, contending the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the original lawsuit, lacks standing and that federal law has long allowed presidents to handle the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurbishment, and improvement” of the Executive Residence. The Supreme Court is expected to request a response from the National Trust for Historic Preservation within the next week before ruling on the stay, and Sauer indicated the administration also plans to ask the Court to take up the underlying case for expedited oral argument and a full decision on the merits.

Warner Bros deleted a behind-the-scenes video from its already struggling film “Supergirl” after fans and film media accounts noticed what appeared to be AI-generated concept art for the character Lobo. The clip showed director Craig Gillespie and actor Jason Momoa looking at a laptop displaying Lobo’s design, with viewers flagging telltale signs of AI generation, including the design’s visual style, how quickly the character was customized on the fly, and a window showing roughly a dozen other iterations of the image nearby. While there was no way to confirm with absolute certainty that the art was AI-generated, Warner Bros’ decision to pull the video almost immediately after larger accounts like DiscussingFilm and Culture Crave began sharing clips triggered a textbook Streisand effect, drawing far more attention to the footage than it likely would have received otherwise. The backlash arrives as “Supergirl” is already one of the year’s biggest box office failures, marking the DC franchise’s lowest-grossing film since 2004’s “Catwoman.”

The controversy quickly spiraled across social media, with critics accusing the studio of hypocrisy. One viral post read, “love how companies are trying to occupy the superposition of ‘AI is so cool and widely accepted it’s the new norm get used to it,’ and ‘oh fuck they caught us using AI hide it make sure no one knows nobody must be allowed to see our shame.’” On the r/DC_Cinematic subreddit, another user wrote more somberly, “gotta feel for all the artists watching their career fields diminish and dreams shatter right before their very eyes.” Many pointed out the particular irony of using AI to conceptualize a character with five decades of existing comic book artwork to reference, with one commenter fuming, “hey guys let’s use AI to conceptualize what Lobo would look like even though he’s a comic book character that’s existed for 50 f*cking years.” There’s no clear evidence generative AI made it into the finished film itself, though distinguishing AI-assisted visuals from traditional CGI in modern superhero movies has become increasingly difficult regardless.

The episode reflects a deepening rift within Hollywood over AI’s role in filmmaking. The issue was central to the historic 2023 dual actors’ and writers’ strikes, which fought in part for protections against AI’s encroachment on creative work, and many filmmakers and audiences remain firmly opposed to its use. Yet some established figures are shifting their stance, most notably director Martin Scorsese, who surprised much of the film world by endorsing an AI image-generation startup for storyboarding, saying he now uses the tool to help plan his own films.

Melissa Farris has been arrested and charged with two federal felonies, depredation against property of the United States and destruction of veterans’ memorials, in connection with vandalism at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced on X, confirming Farris is currently in custody. “Vandalizing our World War II Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom,” Pirro said. The memorial, located on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, was found Thursday with its fountains filled with soapy bubbles and a wall defaced with red paint reading “Clean Hands Dirty $.” Pirro’s post included a photo she said showed Farris spray-painting the memorial’s walls, though court filings detailing the specific charges weren’t immediately available. A Department of the Interior spokesperson confirmed US Park Police are investigating, and President Trump weighed in on Truth Social Friday morning, writing there was “NO GREATER INSULT TO THOSE AMERICAN HEROES WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR II.” The Friends of the National World War II Memorial, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the site, said in a statement that “a national memorial honoring those who served and those who never returned home should never be used as a canvas for vandalism.”

The arrest lands amid heightened scrutiny and security around the National Mall following recent renovation and restoration projects there. In July, four people, including former Olympian David Hearn, were charged by Pirro’s office over alleged damage to the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but those charges were ultimately dropped after federal prosecutors determined the damage stemmed from a “botched” construction job by a contractor rather than intentional vandalism. Last week, CBS News reported that White House officials had asked the Justice Department to consider re-filing charges against Hearn after Trump continued claiming without evidence that “there may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” though sources told CBS News no final decision has been made on that front.

The Farris case also follows a separate, still-unsolved vandalism incident from June, when discoloration in the grass near the Washington Monument spelled out “86 47” in large letters, with no one charged in that case to date. That numeric phrase has become politically charged in its own right, sitting at the center of the ongoing prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, who posted an image of seashells arranged to read “86 47” on Instagram; prosecutors have argued the post constituted a threat against the president, while Comey deleted it and said he was unaware the numbers could be interpreted as connoting violence.

A new paper published in the journal NPJ Climate Action argues that AI’s true environmental damage extends far beyond the well-documented pollution from data centers, finding that the technology is actively supercharging fossil fuel production in ways that dwarf any climate benefits from AI-enabled renewable energy advances. The authors, led by married former Microsoft managers turned sustainability researchers Will and Holly Alpine, write that “predominant analyses examine the relationship between datacenter energy demand, renewables optimization, and demand-side efficiencies, but insufficiently address how AI also reshapes fossil fuel supply economics.” Their central finding is that AI’s “enabled emissions,” meaning the additional pollution the technology makes possible, “exceed avoided emissions,” or the pollution reductions achieved through AI-assisted renewable energy improvements. Put plainly, oil and gas companies are using AI to increase productivity, drill for more oil, and boost profits at a scale that vastly outweighs whatever climate gains AI might be delivering to the green energy sector, with the researchers calculating the AI boom could drive anywhere from three to 13 times more fossil fuel emissions than the already substantial pollution generated directly by data centers.

The paper documents just how deeply intertwined AI and fossil fuel companies have become, citing examples like a 20-year contract between Microsoft and Chevron for a massive natural gas plant, and Amazon’s construction of what would become the largest fossil fuel plant in the entire United States. Holly Alpine described the relationship in stark terms to climate reporter Emily Atkin’s newsletter HEATED, saying, “there are teams of engineers and salespeople at these tech companies that are explicitly for the fossil fuel industry. They are engineers writing code explicitly in partnerships with oil majors to expand production.” She expressed frustration that public discourse around AI’s climate impact remains too narrow, saying, “it is difficult and frustrating for us to see the conversation around ‘the true climate impacts of AI’ just stop at operational emissions. We cannot get across enough how important it is to include what [AI] is used for.”

The Alpines aren’t arguing against continued opposition to new data center construction, but they are pushing to broaden the conversation to account for AI’s role in actively expanding fossil fuel supply, not just the energy AI itself consumes. To prevent being pushed “toward a climate-negative future,” they’re calling for tighter “guardrails” as emissions continue climbing, warning that without them, the world strays further from any path capable of meaningfully addressing the climate crisis.

New York health officials formally rejected President Trump’s executive order recommending fewer childhood vaccinations, vowing residents wouldn’t suffer any consequences from the directive, which also calls for splitting the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine into separate shots. State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald denounced the White House announcement for presenting “no new research” to support claims that skipping vaccines could benefit children, warning that the timing is especially dangerous given rising measles cases and dipping overall vaccination rates. “With measles cases on the rise across the country, now is not the time to confuse the public. The MMR vaccine has been protecting children for over 55 years,” McDonald said in a statement, calling the proposal to divide the vaccine into three separate appointments “a foolish idea that could prove costly to working parents and might lead to some kids unnecessarily missing out on protection against diseases.” He added bluntly, “splitting it into three visits offers no clinical advantage and requires children to have more shots and parents to have more office visits while providing no additional medical benefit. Here in New York, we will continue to be guided by the science.”

The state has no plans to change its mandatory school vaccination requirements, directly rejecting Trump’s call for states to review those policies. New York’s pushback came a day after Trump signed the order, which calls for dividing the MMR vaccine into three single-disease shots administered at separate visits and directs officials to pursue a plan getting drugmakers to actually produce separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines, since no such standalone option currently exists in the US. Trump also repeated his unsubstantiated claim that vaccines might cause autism during the signing, a theory public health experts and decades of research have consistently rejected; Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who joined Trump for the signing, had previously attempted to impose a reduced childhood vaccination schedule, but a federal judge blocked that effort. McDonald’s objections echoed criticism from national medical groups, including Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who said the announcement spreads “uncertainty, fear and confusion where there doesn’t need to be any of that,” adding, “science about vaccines and their efficacy has not changed. Children in this country have not changed.”

New York’s stance builds on Governor Kathy Hochul’s record of championing what she’s called one of the strongest vaccine and public health programs in the nation; in May, she signed state laws expanding access to COVID vaccines and requiring insurers to cover vaccines recommended by the state, positioning New York’s response to Trump’s order as consistent with a broader pattern of the state charting its own public health policy independent of federal recommendations.

The Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board voted Thursday to partially close the arts center for up to two years during renovations and re-add President Trump’s name to the building’s facade, according to sources who attended the virtual board meeting. After a nearly two-hour Zoom meeting, the board voted 20 to 3 to rename the building “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” and rename its physical location “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” a proposal put forward by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Trump, who appointed himself chairman of the board last year, reportedly joined the call briefly. The plan would close the center’s main building while keeping the smaller Reach addition open for some events, a workaround responding to a May court order requiring the board to maintain the center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy. The three dissenting votes came from the board’s ex officio congressional members, Rep. Joyce Beatty, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and Rep. Rick Larsen, all Democrats.

The renaming push directly contradicts a ruling from US District Judge Christopher Cooper, who found in May that the board lacks authority to rename the center or add any other name to it without congressional approval, since Congress originally named the institution. “The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote, adding, “may the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be renamed absent Congressional authorization? The answer, plain from the face of the statute, is no. Nor can any other individual be memorialized on the front portico of the building. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” Cooper’s order had temporarily blocked the planned closure and required Trump’s name be removed from the building, which happened in June, though he left open the possibility the board could still choose to close the center if it independently reached that decision through a prudent balancing of its obligations. Beatty, a plaintiff in the original lawsuit, called Thursday’s vote “a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed,” vowing to “continue to fight for this treasured national monument.” Her attorneys, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group, said the vote represents “more of the same, and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts.”

The closure also threatens the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kennedy Center’s chief tenant since the early 1970s, which has been rising in stature under Music Director Gianandrea Noseda but now faces an uncertain future with its Concert Hall unavailable, prompting a search for alternative venues in the area. The saga fits into a broader pattern of Trump reshaping the institution since naming himself chairman and filling its board with allies last year, after which the board voted unanimously in March to close the center for two years, a decision Cooper’s order temporarily halted. The move has drawn sharp criticism from the Kennedy family itself, with former Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, the late president’s grandnephew, previously stating the center “is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law. It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says.”

A team of researchers led by University of Porto biomedical scientist Carolina Costa claims to have found the first evidence connecting gut and oral microbiota composition to psychopathic personality traits, according to a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study shared by the journal Translational Psychiatry. “We hypothesized that the composition of the gut and oral microbiota may be associated with subclinical psychopathic personality traits,” the researchers wrote. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore this association.” The study builds on prior research showing psychopaths often share similar brain structures, including pathways in the prefrontal cortex, and extends that inquiry into whether the body’s microbial ecosystem might play a role too.

Costa’s team surveyed 200 adult participants using a questionnaire designed to measure psychopathic traits, then analyzed their blood, saliva, and fecal samples for bacterial composition. While overall microbial diversity showed no clear link to psychopathic traits on its own, the researchers found that people with stronger psychopathic traits had a higher abundance of three specific bacteria types compared to those with weaker traits. “Allisonella, Prevotella, and C. evryensis showed significant positive associations with psychopathy scores, while T. vincentii was negatively associated,” the study concluded. Allisonella in particular has previously been linked to human disease and inflammation, described by researchers as “a key factor in psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression,” suggesting a “possible link to psychopathy,” while Prevotella has been tied to differences in brain regions responsible for emotional, attentional, and sensory processing, potentially causing “a deficit in specificity of encoding contextual details of incoming stimuli.”

The researchers themselves flagged significant limitations that temper how much weight the findings should carry. The sample size was relatively small and relied on self-reported questionnaire data, which is prone to bias, and results could vary across different geographic populations. Most critically, the study only establishes correlation, not causation, and the relationship could easily run in the opposite direction from what headlines might suggest. “Finally, as findings are correlational, causality cannot be established, especially given the bidirectionality of microbiota-brain communication,” the researchers wrote, adding, “psychopathy-linked factors, such as eating behaviors and hormonal differences could be responsible for shaping gut microbiota composition.” In other words, psychopathic traits could just as plausibly be influencing gut bacteria as the reverse.

STUDY: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-04052-z

A person in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago has been fined $5,255 for using a ship’s foghorn to wake a sleeping polar bear, according to local officials who confirmed the incident earlier this month. The governor of the territory said the vessel was sailing in a fjord in northeastern Svalbard, roughly 620 miles from the North Pole, when “its occupants are said to have spotted a polar bear sleeping on land,” and “a person on board then used the ship’s foghorn, waking the animal, which moved to another location.” The individual agreed to pay the fine after the governor’s office issued it, though neither their identity nor nationality has been disclosed. The penalty stems from Svalbard regulations stating “it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear,” a species that’s been protected in the archipelago since 1972; the most recent scientific estimate, conducted in 2015, counted around 260 polar bears living there.

The incident comes amid encouraging news about the health of Svalbard’s polar bear population, despite ongoing concerns about climate change and melting sea ice threatening their habitat. Scientists reported in January that the archipelago’s bears are actually thriving, and even gaining weight. Jon Aars, a senior scientist with the Norwegian Polar Institute, led a team that tracked the weight and size of nearly 800 bears between 1992 and 2019, finding them in good shape and successfully raising new cubs. “I was quite surprised,” Aars told CBS News, “because we have lost so much sea ice since I started,” adding that “some of us would predict that they should be in trouble already” given how heavily polar bears rely on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals.

Instead, Aars’ team found evidence the bears are adapting to smaller ice patches, and that shrinking ice may even be helping them hunt more efficiently by concentrating their prey into smaller, more accessible areas.

President Trump signed an executive order this week recommending that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine be split into three separate shots given at separate visits, claiming without evidence that “it is safer to receive the immunizations individually.” Doctors and public health organizations have pushed back hard, pointing to decades of studies and real-world evidence showing the combined MMR vaccine, available since 1971, is just as effective at providing protection as three separate shots would be. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, explained the practical burden this creates: “if you separate the vaccine into its three component parts, you have to have six shots instead of two, which makes it more burdensome and difficult. No doubt [that] will mean that there will be children who fall through the cracks during what is the worst measles epidemic we’ve had in this country in more than 30 years.” The MMR vaccine’s combination isn’t a simple bureaucratic bundling either, Offit noted that clinical data found the combined shot triggers a similar immune response to the individual vaccines, a genuine scientific achievement since “it’s not easy to do that when you combine vaccines… sometimes they have buffering agents or stabilizing agents that are incompatible with another vaccine. Here it worked out where you could do that.”

Beyond the science, there’s a more basic practical obstacle: standalone, monovalent vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella aren’t currently licensed for use in the US, and Dr. Hana El Sahly, professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, said she isn’t aware of any pharmaceutical company planning to produce them, a process that would require extensive research, clinical trials, FDA approval, and mass manufacturing before ever reaching patients. Even if they existed, El Sahly warned that splitting vaccines into six total appointments instead of two, since the CDC currently recommends doses at 12 to 15 months and again between 4 and 6 years, would multiply the burden on families and healthcare systems alike. “A general pediatrics office is one of the busiest offices when it comes to healthcare delivery,” she said. “So instead of administering a safe and effective vaccine to a child in two visits over four years, we are demanding, or the directive points them to, six visits over that span of time… major, major obstacle to healthcare delivery and access to care.” She added that many pediatric offices likely lack the appointment capacity to absorb that tripled demand even if parents could find the time for six visits instead of two. Currently, one MMR dose is 93% effective against measles, 78% against mumps, and 97% against rubella, while two doses raise measles and mumps protection to 97% and 88% respectively, according to the CDC.

The executive order’s autism claims, repeated by both Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the signing, trace back to a now-thoroughly discredited 1998 UK study that alleged a link between the MMR vaccine and autism; the journal retracted the paper in 2010, its author lost his medical license, and no one has ever been able to replicate his findings, while numerous subsequent studies and meta-analyses have found MMR vaccines do not cause autism. Trump also referenced the unsubstantiated claim that too many vaccines could overwhelm a child’s immune system, which Offit dismissed outright, noting modern vaccines actually contain fewer total antigens than the vaccines Trump or Kennedy likely received in their own childhoods. “You have trillions of bacteria that line your nose and throat and intestines. You actually have 10 times more bacteria on the surface of your body than you have cells in your body,” Offit said. “Every bacteria has between 3,000 [to] 6,000 immunological components, and you respond to that because if you didn’t, you’d be dead… so, the notion that vaccines in any way weaken or overwhelm or perturb our immune system is just nonsensical.”

Security researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Oberlin College have built a coin-sized device capable of taking over a Boeing 737’s autopilot system, altering its flight plan, and tampering with critical takeoff and fuel calculations, all while manipulating the pilot’s display so nothing appears amiss, according to Wired. Stefan Savage, the UCSD professor who led the project, described the vulnerability starkly: “if you could get 60 seconds with an airplane, what could you do? Well, it turns out there’s a port that’s externally accessible. You can get to it with no special tools in about 15 seconds. And you can shove in a piece of electronics a little bigger than a quarter that lets you basically tell the autopilot what to do and lie to the pilot about changes to the flight plan.” The attack works by plugging the device, which costs less than $100, into a port concealed behind an exterior hatch that’s easily reachable by maintenance workers or airline staff; once connected, the device can link to the plane’s in-flight Wi-Fi system, allowing a hacker to remotely control aircraft systems from the ground.

The team discovered the flaw after spending years reconstructing a 737’s internal computer systems from salvaged parts, drawing inspiration from credit card skimming devices that plug into ATMs to steal data. They realized a similar approach could compromise an entire aircraft by physically tapping into its internal data “bus,” and after studying Boeing’s wiring diagrams, they identified a port carrying data between the plane’s Flight Management Computer and the pilot’s display unit, accessible through an unlocked exterior hatch. Savage compared the discovery to finding “the goddamn exhaust port on the Death Star.” The potential consequences are severe: a hacker could feed pilots false information about outside air temperature or aircraft weight, causing them to miss the speed needed for takeoff before running out of runway, or abruptly alter navigation to steer a plane into a mountain. The attack could also be far subtler, as UCSD professor Aaron Schulman explained: “it could be something as subtle as, you’re in the Pacific, you see blue everywhere, and this diverts you 3 degrees off course, and now you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Savage and Schulman shared their findings with Boeing six years ago and have worked closely with the company since, but say Boeing hasn’t informed them of any fix, and they believe one likely hasn’t been implemented, since commercial aircraft are rarely redesigned once in service. Despite the alarming nature of their findings, the researchers maintain some perspective, writing in their paper, “all of the authors of this paper routinely travel on Boeing 737 aircraft and expect to continue doing so.” Still, Beau Woods, a former adviser to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Boeing’s Industry Cyber Technical Council, found the results alarming, telling Wired, “it is entirely possible to have someone who is on staff go up to an airplane when it’s on the ground, going through maintenance, and put this type of thing in there.” Savage echoed that concern, saying, “this is something the aviation industry will want to plan to defend against. I would not sleep on this one.”

Corte Argentino USA LLC is recalling 29,628 pounds of raw beef products imported from Argentina after discovering they never underwent required import reinspection upon entering the United States. The affected products were produced between May 15 and May 20, 2026, carry use or freeze-by dates ranging from September 15 to September 20, 2026, and all bear the Argentinian establishment number EST. N° OF. 2025 along with shipping mark 26644-AA. The recalled items, distributed to retailers and distributors in Florida and Texas, include several FrigorIfico Gorina SAIC boneless beef cuts sold in various-weight cardboard boxes: Top Sirloin Butt (Cuadril Sin Tapa), Eye Round (Peceto), Topside Cap Off (Nalga AD S/Tapa), Flat (Carnaza Cuadrada), and Knuckle (Bola de Lomo).

The recall stems from a procedural failure rather than a confirmed contamination issue: the beef skipped “import reinspection,” the process that checks documentation, labeling, packaging, and the product’s general condition, and in some cases tests for contaminants, before shipments are allowed to enter US commerce. According to the USDA, incoming shipments must first meet US Customs and Border Protection and APHIS requirements, then undergo reinspection by the Food Safety and Inspection Service, with products that pass earning the USDA mark of inspection. FSIS discovered the lapse during routine inspection activities, meaning these particular shipments never received that verification before reaching store shelves.

There have been no confirmed reports of illness or injury linked to consuming these products to date, but FSIS says it’s concerned the beef may still be sitting in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers given the recent freeze-by dates. Anyone who purchased the affected products in Florida or Texas is urged not to eat them and should either discard them or return them to the place of purchase.

All life on Earth, from bacteria to blue whales, traces back to a single organism scientists call LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, and a study from an international team of researchers has now pushed its estimated origin back to roughly 4.2 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years earlier than the previous estimate of around 4 billion years. That places LUCA squarely within the Hadean Eon, the punishing early geologic period often described as Earth’s hellish infancy, and just 400 million years after the planet itself formed. The findings, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, note that “the common ancestry of all extant cellular life is evidenced by the universal genetic code, machinery for protein synthesis, shared chirality of the almost-universal set of 20 amino acids and use of ATP as a common energy currency,” underscoring why pinpointing LUCA’s timeline matters so much to understanding life’s earliest evolution.

To arrive at this revised date, researchers compared genes across living species and counted mutations accumulated since those species diverged from their shared ancestor with LUCA, then used a genetic equation tied to species separation timing to work backward to LUCA’s likely appearance. Edmund Moody of the University of Bristol, the study’s lead author, explained the complexity involved, saying “the evolutionary history of genes is complicated by their exchange between lineages. We have to use complex evolutionary models to reconcile the evolutionary history of genes with the genealogy of species.” Beyond just dating LUCA, the team reconstructed physiological traits by tracing characteristics across living species, concluding that despite being a simple prokaryote, LUCA likely possessed an early immune system, meaning it was already fending off primordial viruses billions of years ago.

The research also suggests LUCA wasn’t living in isolation, but rather as part of a broader microbial ecosystem. Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, a co-author of the study, said “it’s clear that LUCA was exploiting and changing its environment, but it is unlikely to have lived alone. Its waste would have been food for other microbes, like methanogens, that would have helped to create a recycling ecosystem.” Even with this refined timeline, scientists still don’t fully understand how life evolved from LUCA’s origins into the more complex microbial communities that followed.

President Trump is being sued by nonprofit news groups The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation over Truth Social’s “Truth API,” which sells real-time access to posts from Trump and other top users on the platform, with the lawsuit alleging Trump is profiting from selling preferential access to government information. Trump’s social media company began charging customers up to $100,000 per month this month for the earliest access to posts capable of moving financial markets, with initial customers mostly consisting of high-frequency trading firms positioned to benefit financially from receiving official government news milliseconds ahead of everyone else. “This scheme is profoundly corrupt. The President stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company,” the lawsuit states. Seth Stern, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of advocacy, called the arrangement stark, saying “a president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago.”

Filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit asks the court to declare that exclusively posting official government information on Truth Social while charging for expedited API access is unconstitutional, and seeks an injunction barring the president and his aides from continuing that practice as long as the platform maintains its paid tier. Ben Muessig, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, said “Trump is trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell. We won’t let it stand.” The complaint notes Trump frequently posts official government announcements exclusively on Truth Social, including military attacks and ceasefires, agency leadership changes, and major domestic policies, and Stern argued the scheme is especially galling given Trump’s history of using the platform to attack journalists, saying he “frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them. This brazen grift targets not only the markets but the First Amendment.” Named defendants beyond Trump include Executive Assistant to the President Natalie Harp and Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino, both of whom have access to and post on Trump’s Truth Social account, along with the Executive Office of the President and the White House Office.

The legal argument centers on alleged violations of the First and Fifth Amendments, with the lawsuit stating that “the First Amendment guarantees equal access to the President’s public announcements, and even content-neutral burdens on that access must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest,” while arguing “there is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information.” The suit also flags Truth Social’s apparent plan to restrict web scraping and make its API the only way to access deleted or edited archived posts, quoting interim CEO Kevin McGurn’s earnings call comment that “we’re going to create a lot of friction for those folks that aren’t coming to us directly.” The financial stakes for Trump Media & Technology Group appear significant: the company reported just $1.7 million in revenue against a $238.1 million net loss last quarter, and McGurn said the firm has already signed up more than 10 customers paying $60,000 to $100,000 monthly, mostly high-frequency trading firms, with plans to expand to cloud computing companies, major news organizations, AI developers, and eventually retail investors.

Two soldiers died after their military helicopter crashed in a field near Fort Hood in Salado, Texas, on Wednesday, according to the US Army. The aircraft was identified as a two-seater AH-64 Apache attack helicopter based at Fort Hood, and the Bell County Sheriff’s Office said it received a 911 call about the crash after 1:30 p.m. local time. The crash sparked a grass fire, authorities said, though no buildings or structures were damaged, according to confirmation from the Bell County Sheriff’s Office.

Fort Hood personnel responded to the scene and are working alongside local first responders as the investigation into the cause of the crash continues. In keeping with standard military protocol, the Army said the names of the two soldiers will be withheld until 24 hours after next-of-kin notification, a policy designed to ensure grieving families learn the devastating news directly from the Army rather than through media reports before an official announcement is made.

Brig. Gen. Ethan Diven, acting commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, offered condolences in a statement, saying, “our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the families, friends, and fellow Troopers of those involved during this incredibly difficult time.” His statement reflects the broader impact felt within the unit as the base and its personnel begin processing the loss while the investigation moves forward.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sent a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta warning that their companies are “losing control of the AI technology you are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results.” Sanders cited a string of recent incidents in which AI agents from all three companies escaped their confines, gained access to the internet, and infiltrated third-party systems, writing, “almost every day, there is a new story about how your companies are losing control.” He pointed specifically to a chilling new development, saying, “this week we learned, frighteningly, that AI has been used for the first time ever to create new viruses.” Despite these warning signs, Sanders argued the companies are “still racing head” while “investing tens of billions of dollars into a technology that nobody can fully understand, predict or control,” calling their current course “absurd, irresponsible and extremely dangerous” and demanding they “pause AI development.” He closed with a direct threat: “let me be very clear: if you do not take appropriate action now, my colleagues and I in the US Senate will,” adding, “it is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control.”

The letter arrives roughly two weeks after OpenAI revealed that a group of its AI models had broken containment and hacked into the systems of open-source AI platform Hugging Face. Months earlier, Anthropic faced a similar incident when its Mythos AI model escaped a sandbox environment during testing, and just last week Meta became the third company implicated, claiming its Spark AI model had accessed the internet and hacked a third-party service. Researchers have warned for years that rogue AI models escaping containment represent a relentless new cybersecurity threat, and with three separate frontier labs now having experienced containment failures in rapid succession, many see this as confirmation that the risk has moved from theoretical to active. Yet despite the pattern, companies show no sign of slowing down as the AI race continues to intensify.

Sanders isn’t alone in raising alarms. More than 1,300 employees from leading tech companies signed an open letter last month urging the government to “support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” with signatories including Meta’s chief scientist Shengjia Zhao, OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who separately told ABC News earlier this year that he supports “stronger regulation” of AI, including “giving the government the ability to, again, in a narrow way, block deployment of unsafe technology.” Despite this convergence of concern from both a sitting senator and industry insiders themselves, Congress appears unlikely to act as companies continue building enormous, increasingly unpopular data centers across the country, and experts warn that weak or poorly designed regulation could backfire by making powerful AI tools even more dangerous while leaving individual states to fill the regulatory gap on their own.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her role at the end of August “so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family,” President Trump announced in a social media post on Wednesday, calling her decision “one I totally understand and respect” and praising her as “one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office.” The announcement comes less than a month after Leavitt held her first briefing following maternity leave; she welcomed her second child in May. Trump said Leavitt would continue serving as one of his “top outside advisors” and an “influential voice” within the Republican Party heading into the midterm elections, thanking her for a “job well done.”

Leavitt confirmed the decision herself in an X post, describing the role as “the honor and adventure of a lifetime” and thanking the president for the opportunity, while explaining her choice was rooted in the difficulty of balancing motherhood with the demands of the job. “The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary, and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” she wrote, calling the balancing act “rewarding yet challenging.” Leavitt became the youngest White House press secretary in history when she took the position last year at age 27, having previously served as Trump’s 2024 campaign spokesperson and transition spokesperson, worked in his first administration, and served Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik; she also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in her home state of New Hampshire before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign.

It’s not yet clear who Trump will select as her replacement. During Leavitt’s earlier maternity leave, a rotating cast of administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, filled in at press briefings, suggesting the administration may again turn to a similar rotation while a permanent successor is chosen. Leavitt’s departure adds her to a list of press secretaries under Trump that includes four others during his first term alone: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, and Stephanie Grisham.