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Trump aides sent texts on Signal as member of the group chat was in Russia which has ties to the Houthis

Trump aides sent texts on Signal as member of the group chat was in Russia which has ties to the Houthis

CBS News reports: President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed. Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were…

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Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers

Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers

NPR reports: Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information. “A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application,” begins the department-wide email, dated March 18 and obtained by NPR. The memo continues, “Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations.” It notes that Google has…

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NSA warned of Signal vulnerabilities a month before Houthi strike chat

NSA warned of Signal vulnerabilities a month before Houthi strike chat

CBS News reports: The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News. News of the NSA bulletin comes amid the continued fallout from an explosive article published Monday in The Atlantic. The publication’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, detailed how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth inadvertently disclosed war plans to him in an encrypted Signal…

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The masquerade of ‘America First’

The masquerade of ‘America First’

Danny Postel writes: The term “America First” is just as confusing and misleading as [Walter] Lippmann [in 1952] argued “isolationism” had become. Its advocates would have us believe that they are merely pursuing a realist foreign policy, one of neutrality and restraint, while in actuality they have dogs in various fights, both between warring countries and inside them. In one breath, they profess indifference about “what’s going on” in faraway lands, and in the next breath, they let slip their…

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Tesla’s European sales collapse as anti-Musk backlash grows

Tesla’s European sales collapse as anti-Musk backlash grows

Politico reports: Tesla’s downward spiral is turning into a rout, with its share of European electric car sales falling by 58 percent in the first two months of this year, dropping from 18.4 percent in 2024 to 7.7 percent for the same period this year, according to data from JATO Dynamics, an auto consulting firm. To add insult to injury, Chinese EV brands sold nearly 20,000 vehicles in Europe last month, far outpacing Tesla’s 15,700 units. The American EV company…

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How Musk’s DOGE cuts leave a vacuum that China can fill

How Musk’s DOGE cuts leave a vacuum that China can fill

David Sanger writes: When President Trump announced on Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to contain Beijing’s ability to dominate the skies over the Pacific. But here on earth, the reality has been very different. As the Department of Government Efficiency roars through…

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Silent X chromosome genes ‘reawaken’ in older females, potentially boosting brain power, study finds

Silent X chromosome genes ‘reawaken’ in older females, potentially boosting brain power, study finds

Live Science reports: Dormant genes on the X chromosome may reawaken in old age, potentially giving the aging female brain a boost that the male brain doesn’t receive. This phenomenon may help to explain why, on many measures, females show a higher level of cognitive resilience in old age than males do. The findings come from a new study in lab mice, and the researchers also backed up the results with genetic data from humans. More research is still needed…

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During stunning operational security failure, Hegseth wrote, ‘I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,’

During stunning operational security failure, Hegseth wrote, ‘I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC,’

Jeffrey Goldberg writes: The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require…

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Texts reveal a team of amateurs in charge of national security

Texts reveal a team of amateurs in charge of national security

Following Jeffrey Goldberg’s revelation that he was inadvertently added to a group chat for discussing classified war plans, Garrett Graff writes: Lost amid the headline-grabbing insanity of the classified details is what the principals were discussing on the group chat. It doesn’t take reading too deeply between the lines to see that the principals weren’t entirely clear on what Trump had ordered — someone, apparently Stephen Miller, says, “as I heard it, the president was clear: green light” — which…

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Bernie Sanders is tapping into a deep vein of anger stretching across America

Bernie Sanders is tapping into a deep vein of anger stretching across America

Megan K. Stack writes: They gathered early in North Las Vegas, waiting under the hot sun in a snaking line in the middle of a workday for their chance to see Bernie. With stucco houses and apartment blocks interrupted by strip malls and trash-strewn vacant lots, this is not the Vegas you see in glamorous movies. It was, however, the setting for what Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called the biggest crowd he had ever drawn here. Nevada was the…

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Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump and Musk’s government cuts and Democrats’ resistance

Military veterans are becoming the face of Trump and Musk’s government cuts and Democrats’ resistance

The Associated Press reports: As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans. From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make…

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Canada is Trump’s Ukraine

Canada is Trump’s Ukraine

David French writes: I had a conversation last week with a Canadian journalist about the culture war on American campuses. After we finished talking about that, she had one final question for me. “What the hell is Trump thinking about Canada?” She wasn’t just asking about President Trump’s tariff threats. She was also asking about Trump’s obsession with referring to Canada as the 51st state. The tariffs were somewhat understandable, even if terribly misguided. They are, after all, one of…

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Trump’s predatory advances on Greenland are backfiring

Trump’s predatory advances on Greenland are backfiring

The New York Times reports: For more than 150 years, U.S. officials have been trying, as President Trump puts it, to “get” Greenland. The idea came up in the 1860s, then again before and after the world wars. In a way, the timing couldn’t be better than now, with Greenlanders re-examining their painful colonial history under Denmark and many itching to break off from Denmark, which still controls some of the island’s affairs. But President Trump seems to have overplayed…

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How migrating birds use quantum mechanics to navigate

How migrating birds use quantum mechanics to navigate

The Observer reports: To the seasoned ear, the trilling of chiffchaffs and wheatears is as sure a sign of spring as the first defiant crocuses. By March, these birds have started to return from their winter breaks, navigating their way home to breeding grounds thousands of kilometres away – some species returning to home territory with centimetre precision. Although the idea of migration often conjures up striking visions of vast flocks of geese and murmurations of starlings, “the majority,” says…

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