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Trump’s deportation campaign has harmed scores of kids with tear gas, pepper spray

Trump’s deportation campaign has harmed scores of kids with tear gas, pepper spray

By Lisa Song, Maya Miller and Melissa Sanchez, with research reporting by Mariam Elba This story was originally published by ProPublica The children were walking to school in Broadview, Illinois, or leaving a shopping center in Columbus, Ohio. They were at home in Minneapolis, or sitting in a stroller in Chicago, or at an afternoon protest in Portland, Oregon, alongside dogs on leashes and older people pushing walkers. They were mostly going about their days when federal immigration agents shot…

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Inside a MAGA influencer’s sharp turn against the right-wing machine

Inside a MAGA influencer’s sharp turn against the right-wing machine

The Washington Post reports: Few MAGA influencers were as committed to the digital cause as Ashley St. Clair. The 27-year-old former brand ambassador for the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA published an anti-transgender children’s book, appeared prime-time on Fox News and posted selfies from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. On X, where St. Clair has more than 1 million followers, she had become a legend: a young conservative woman fighting back against the perceived liberal excesses of “brain rot”…

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Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies

Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies

Likam Kyanzaire writes: Ron Eglash was not looking for a revolution when he stumbled across one. The American ethnomathematician, who tracks mathematics embedded in culture, was studying African settlement patterns in the 1980s when he noticed something strange in aerial photographs and village layouts. The settlements weren’t laid out randomly. They had a pattern – and not just any pattern. The same shape seemed to repeat at every scale: a cluster of homes that echoed the arrangement of a larger…

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Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show

Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show

The Washington Post reports: Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported. The threat of air attacks rendered some…

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Gulf states fear an emboldened Iran is taking advantage of a hesitant U.S.

Gulf states fear an emboldened Iran is taking advantage of a hesitant U.S.

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump chose to look the other way after Iran launched three salvos of missiles and drones into the United Arab Emirates, one of America’s main Middle Eastern partners, despite a cease-fire he negotiated nearly a month ago. The likely conclusion in Tehran, Gulf governments fear, is that further escalation pays off because Trump is so intent on extricating himself from the war that he will ignore renewed Iranian attacks on America’s regional allies. European…

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How fertilizer shortages caused by the energy crisis threaten food security

How fertilizer shortages caused by the energy crisis threaten food security

Meihua Yang et al write: Since March, war in the Middle East has disrupted global fertilizer markets. Urea prices jumped by nearly 46% in a month, as geopolitical and energy shocks hit nitrogen supply chains. The disruptions caused by blocked maritime bottlenecks, including the Strait of Hormuz, limiting tanker movements and flows of oil and liquefied natural gas, underscore the coupled nature of global energy and food systems. As a result of the crisis, the World Food Programme has warned…

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Trolling, memes and deepfakes: How AI is thickening the fog of war

Trolling, memes and deepfakes: How AI is thickening the fog of war

Gretel Kahn reports for Reuters Institute: War has never been fought only on the ground. Clausewitz’s concept of the “fog of war” once described the uncertainty and confusion that cloud battlefield decision-making. Errol Morris’ 2003 documentary made the phrase a shorthand for the moral and informational ambiguities of modern conflict. But in the digital age, where war is also filmed, edited and promoted online, the fog is getting thicker and wars, more difficult to cover. The conflict between the United…

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John Roberts believes in an America that doesn’t exist

John Roberts believes in an America that doesn’t exist

Jamelle Bouie writes: Descriptive representation, as it is known, is not perfect; race alone does not guarantee that a lawmaker will act in the interest of his or her community. But the record suggests that in places where racial polarization is the norm, where the legacy of Jim Crow segregation shapes the political and social landscape, the opportunity provided by a majority-minority district can mean the difference between some representation and none at all. For the Roberts court, however, these…

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FBI investigating leaks to journalist who wrote explosive article on Kash Patel: Sources

FBI investigating leaks to journalist who wrote explosive article on Kash Patel: Sources

MS NOW reports: The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation focusing on an Atlantic magazine journalist who wrote a deeply unflattering account last month of Director Kash Patel’s work habits, two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW. The sources said the so-called insider threat investigation is highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information and because it is focused on leaks to a reporter. The agents involved are part of an insider…

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Using AI for just ten minutes might make you lazy and dumb, study shows

Using AI for just ten minutes might make you lazy and dumb, study shows

Wired reports: Using AI chatbots for even just for 10 minutes may have a shockingly negative impact on people’s ability to think and problem-solve, according to a new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA. Researchers tasked people with solving various problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension, through an online platform that paid them for their work. They conducted three experiments, each involving several hundred people. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant capable…

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As oil prices stay high, China extends its domination of the wind power industry

As oil prices stay high, China extends its domination of the wind power industry

The New York Times reports: As the war in Iran threatens to choke off oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf, China is seizing the moment to extend its dominance in wind power. Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast. Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as…

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Gasoline costs 50% more in the U.S. than it did before the Iran war

Gasoline costs 50% more in the U.S. than it did before the Iran war

The Associated Press reports: The price of a gallon of regular gasoline climbed 31 cents in the past week, spiking to an average of $4.48 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA, hitting the wallets of drivers after rising 50% since the war with Iran began. The main reason drivers are paying more at the pump is because of the global energy crisis caused by the Iran war. The price of crude oil, which is the main ingredient in gasoline, has…

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Trump accuses Pope Leo of endangering Catholics by opposing war against Iran

Trump accuses Pope Leo of endangering Catholics by opposing war against Iran

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump escalated his public feud with Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of endangering Catholics by opposing U.S. military action against Iran. The president’s latest broadside against the pope could complicate Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Rome later this week, where he is due to meet with Pope Leo in a bid to reset U.S.-Vatican relations after months of growing tensions. The Chicago-born pontiff has become one of the most outspoken critics…

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VA conducted internal investigations into employees who attended vigil for Alex Pretti

VA conducted internal investigations into employees who attended vigil for Alex Pretti

CNN reports: For days after the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, fellow workers for the Department of Veterans Affairs held vigils at health centers nationwide, partly in protest and partly to pay their respects. Becky Halioua, a recreational therapist and union leader at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, said she felt “it was important to acknowledge him, as a brother of our organization.” “It’s scary for me to think about a…

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