In addition to today's blog post calling out the need for others to takeover the This Week In Plasma series, KDE developer Nate Graham also published another blog post to highlight the successes of the Plasma desktop over 2025. In particular, the KDE Plasma Wayland transition "nears completion" as i…

"If 60 Minutes had 'explained this' as Weiss described, the segment would have included false or highly misleading information."
The post Fact Checking Bari Weiss: The Stated Reasons for Spiking 60 Minutes “Inside CECOT” appeared first on Just Security.

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For nearly a decade, MAGA and Donald Trump were synonymous.Today, the movement's most consequential fights are unfolding beyond the control of its term-limited president — empowering rival factions to shape MAGA in their own image.Why it matters: MAGA entered the year with a sheen of invincibility, …

Scientists on the ATLAS experiment explored the polarization of W bosons to test the Higgs mechanism and gain a deeper understanding of the first moments after the Big Bang.

CBS News pulled a segment on Trump administration deportations of Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador prison from "60 Minutes," causing staffers and media onlookers to question whether the decision was politically motivated. Why it matters: The decision comes days after President Trump publicly …

Astrobotic said Dec. 19 it has won $17.5 million in NASA and military contracts to develop three new reusable suborbital vehicles for technology demonstrations and other applications.
The post Astrobotic secures contracts for suborbital vehicle development appeared first on SpaceNews.

A first launch of the Long March 12A Chinese state-owned reusable rocket reached orbit late Monday, but attempted recovery of the first stage downrange failed.
The post Long March 12A reaches orbit in first reusable launch attempt, but landing fails appeared first on SpaceNews.

Too much turkey and Baileys? Blow away the Christmas cobwebs on one of our rambles. And if that doesn’t work, they all end at a pub for a hair of the dogDistance 7 milesDuration 5 hoursStart/finish Ditchling village car park Continue reading...

The leaders of Guinea and the Central African Republic aim to consolidate power after Sunday's polls.

The chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee has written to the environment secretary expressing “deep disappointment” at the government’s response to its waste-crime inquiry.
The post Lords write to environment secretary over “complacent” response to waste crime inquiry …

There's been a surge in remittances going back to Honduras amid Trump's immigration crackdown.

A federal judge blocked Trump administration efforts to reallocate Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism and security grants away from states that won't cooperate on the president's immigration enforcement policies.Why it matters: New York's attorney general called the Trump-appointed jud…

The final regulation allows the federal government’s HR agency to delegate its authority to offer recruitment and relocation incentive payments to other agencies.

Drummer Chuck Redd reportedly called off his Christmas Eve performance after a vote by the board to rename the site.

Every day, millions of small-scale fishers set out to sea with simple gear and big purpose. These local fishers sustain coastal communities — casting nets not for large profits, but for meals, livelihoods, and survival. While the definition of a “small-scale fisher” differs across countries, these f…

When we think of snow, we usually think of winter. But did you know that it is always snowing in the ocean? Marine snow isn’t the kind you can sled on — this continuous underwater snowfall sustains life in the deep sea and helps regulate Earth’s climate.  WHAT IS MARINE SNOW? Marine snow is made up …

For more than two decades, amateur photographer Dale Carter has documented the physicists who come to the Black Hills for their research.

The signals intelligence titan and combatant command have been without a permanent leader for months since far-right activist Laura Loomer pushed for the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh in April.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – For 72 years, in order to serve as a shortcut for crude oil from production fields in western Canada to refineries in eastern Ontario, Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline has transported 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily beneath the forests and wetlands of north…

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft took off for its historic first flight on Oct. 28, 2025, at 11:14 a.m. EDT from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. The one-of-a-kind aircraft flew for 67 minutes before landing and taxiing to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in …

PLYMOUTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN — On a warm fall afternoon, dairy farmer Chris Kestell pushes through prairie brambles taller than himself, tracing a path overgrown with thickets and swarming with bees as he hikes toward a hidden waterway. Though the route is unidentifiable to the untrained eye, Kestell,…

The post Fate of Accountability for Undergraduate Certificates to Loom Over Ed Talks appeared first on The Century Foundation.

The demonstration of the first antimatter quantum bit paves the way for substantially improved tests of nature’s fundamental symmetries.

Researchers from the ATLAS collaboration have introduced a new neural simulation based-inference technique to analyse their datasets
The post Neural simulation-based inference techniques at the LHC appeared first on Physics World.

This bargain batch is dangerous in that very specific way where titles you already love suddenly feel like sensible purchases.

A mid-infrared femtosecond laser tuned to the collagen absorption peak can ablate pancreatic cancer while preserving healthy pancreatic tissues
The post Resonant laser ablation selectively destroys pancreatic tumours appeared first on Physics World.

Restoration Ecology, Volume 33, Issue 8, November 2025.

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Collection of expert analysis on the legality of the U.S. strike on Venezuelan vessels in the Caribbean, the consequences of the strike, and related issues.
The post Collection: U.S. Lethal Strikes on Suspected Drug Traffickers and Operation Southern Spear appeared first on Just Security.

What stories or topics merited more attention in 2025, and which might inform law and policy conversations in 2026?
The post Nine Stories That Deserved More Attention in 2025 – and Might Shape 2026 appeared first on Just Security.

After 25 years of continuous human presence in space, the International Space Station remains a training and proving ground for deep space missions, enabling NASA to focus on Artemis missions to the Moon and Mars. The orbiting laboratory is also a living archive of human experience, culture, and con…

And more pharma news from the Pharmalot campus via the Pharmalittle newsletter

BCI trends to watch in 2026: Better ways of capturing brain signals, brain implants for mental health, and Chinese competition.

A "Cyber Shield" would enable the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies to attribute quickly, act collectively, and stem Beijing’s cyber coercion.
The post America’s Cyber Retreat Is Undermining Indo-Pacific Security appeared first on Just Security.

A provisional agreement between the European Parliament and Council will introduce mandatory recycled-content targets, stronger producer responsibility and tighter controls on vehicle exports, aiming to accelerate the transition to a more circular automotive sector. The European Union has reached a …

Fish 4.3 is out today as the newest update to this user-friendly command line shell. Fish 4.0 released at the beginning of this year in porting the codebase from C++ to Rust and now before closing out 2025 they have out Fish 4.3...

Sadiq Khan’s office blames delay on lack of government guidance on links between gambling ads and harmGambling companies have spent nearly £5m to advertise on the London transport network since Sadiq Khan pledged to stop them from doing so, amid a prolonged impasse between the mayor’s office and the…

Life goes on in a vibrant Greater Manchester neighbourhood after a plan for an attack was thwarted“They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat,” Andrew Walters said.It is an old Jewish joke that’s as relevant as ever in Greater Manchester in the face of today’s threats. Continue reading...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (binutils, curl, gcc-toolset-13-binutils, git-lfs, httpd, httpd:2.4, keylime, libssh, mod_md, openssh, php:8.3, podman, python3.12, python3.9, python39:3.9, skopeo, tomcat, tomcat9, and webkit2gtk3), Fedora (mingw-glib2, mingw-libsoup, and mingw-python3…

Graphite is an effort to unify
illustration, raster editing, desktop publishing, and animation in one
browser-based application. The project has been in development since
2020 and announced its first alpha release in 2022. According to creator Keavon Chambers, the project's mission is to become
"the…

The BPF verifier works, on a theoretical level, by considering every possible
path that a BPF program could take. As a practical matter, however, it needs to
do that in a reasonable amount of time. At the

2025 Linux Plumbers Conference, Mahé Tardy and Paul Chaignon
gave a detailed explanation
(slid…

Linus has released 6.19-rc3 for testing. "Another week, another -rc release.

Except the past week has obviously been the holiday week, and this rc
release is pretty small as a result. Very much as expected."

Arnd Bergmann began his 2025 Linux
Plumbers Conference session on the future of 32-bit support in the
Linux kernel by saying that it was to be a followup to his September talk on the same topic. The
focus this time, though, was on the kernel's "high memory" abstraction, and
when it could be removed…

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, grafana, opentelemetry-collector, and thunderbird), Red Hat (kernel), and SUSE (cheat, libsoup, mariadb, mozjs52, python310, python315, qemu, rsync, and zk).

Another year has reached its conclusion. That can only mean one thing: the
time has come to take a look back at the
predictions we made in January and evaluate just how badly they turned
out. Much to our surprise, not all of our predictions were entirely
accurate. It has been a wild year in the L…

Version
6.20 of the Incus container and virtual-machine management system
has been released. Notable changes in this release include a new
standalone
command to add IncusOS servers to a cluster,
qcow2-formatted
volumes for clustered LVM, and reverse
DNS records in OVN. See the announcement for a ful…

The systemd v259
release was announced on December 17, just three months after
v258. It is a more modest release but still includes a number of
important changes such as a new option for the run0 command
(an alternative to sudo), ability to mount user home directories from the host in virtual
machin…

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (httpd, retroarch, and roundcubemail), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, grafana, httpd, kernel, python3.12, python39:3.9, thunderbird, and uek-kernel), and SUSE (cheat, go-sendxmpp, and kernel).

Security updates have been issued by Debian (gst-plugins-good1.0, postgresql-13, and python-urllib3), Fedora (chezmoi, docker-buildkit, ov, and subfinder), Oracle (httpd:2.4), Slackware (net), and SUSE (apache2, buildah, kernel, and mariadb).

Version
8.1 of elementary OS has been released. Notable changes in this
release include making the Wayland session the default, changes to
window management and multitasking, as well as a number of
accessibility improvements. The 8.1 release is the first to be made
available for Arm64 devices, which…

The judge in the Vizio GPL-compliance lawsuit has ruled, in a
summary judgment, that the GNU General Public License, version 2,
does not require the provision of signing keys needed to install modified
software on a device.


Read as a whole, the Agreements require Vizio to make the source
code av…

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:


Front: 2025 retrospective; Dirk and Linus talk; successful open-source documentation projects; verifier-state pruning in BPF; Linux 32-bit timeline; BPF state visualizer; systemd v259.
Briefs: linux-next maintainer; 2025 TAB;…

Once again there is a brand-new release under the tree from the
Ruby programming-language project: Ruby 4.0
has been released with many new features and improvements. Notable
changes include the experimental Ruby Box
feature for in-process isolation of classes and modules, a new
just-in-time compile…

Police say the suspects raised around €7m (£6m) for the militant group over more than two years.

The meteor could be seen blazing through the night sky over Japan's Mount Fuji

The annual food fight festival ''Els Enfarinats'' has left the Spanish town of Ibi covered in flour and egg shells.

The Iran Human Rights (IHR) group says it has verified at least 1,500 executions up until the start of December.

Western sanctions have failed to turn the uber-rich into opponents, and Putin's policies have turned them into silent backers.

The French actress redefined cinematic allure, captivating the world before championing animal rights.

Police detained the male suspect after shooting him in the leg, while two others are seriously injured.

The sisters, who were the first known quintuplets to survive past infancy, became a global phenomenon after their 1934 birth.

Scientists say volcanic activity at the site, which frequently erupts, had intensified this week, with craters continuously emitting ash.

The French model and actress has died at the age of 91.

The Coral Adventurer is under investigation for the death of Suzanne Rees, who was found dead on a remote island after being left behind by the ship.

Pope Leo calls for an end to conflicts around the world in Christmas speech.

The frog has become a frequent symbol at protests against the Trump administration.

Powerball's $1.817 billion Christmas Eve jackpot was won by a single ticket sold in Arkansas, lottery officials said Thursday.Why it matters: The win caps one of the largest jackpot runs in U.S. lottery history and delivers a rare Christmas Eve payout — turning a $2 ticket into a life-changing windf…

Arctic air blasted the Plains Sunday, as forecasters warned an "intense cyclone" system would threaten parts of the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. with heavy snow and blizzard conditions this week, while New England faces freezing rain.The big picture: The National Weather Service said other potenti…

Data: National Employment Law Project; Map: Kavya Beheraj/AxiosWashington will raise its minimum wage to $17.13 an hour on Jan. 1, making it once again the state with the highest minimum wage in the country. The big picture: 19 states are raising their wage floors next month, according to the Nation…

Let's explore what's next for the year's surprise odd couple: Trump Media's merger with TAE Technologies, a company trying to commercialize fusion.Why it matters: The deal injects new cash into TAE as fusion — long more science fiction than energy reality — moves closer to commercial scale. The merg…

George Conway, the prominent Republican lawyer-turned-prolific critic of President Trump, filed paperwork Monday to run for an open U.S. House seat in New York as a Democrat.Why it matters: Conway is one of several candidates with a large online presence and national profile running to succeed retir…

President Trump said Thursday he'll sign an executive order to relax federal restrictions on cannabis, instructing agencies to reclassify it as a less dangerous drug. The big picture: Democrats and advocates have long pushed for the change. But the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Trump, …

ICE has turned green card interviews into nightmares for some families, as immigrants leave in handcuffs instead of with paths to legal status.Why it matters: For years, people felt safe showing up for court cases and green card interviews as ICE targeted "the worst of the worst" for arrests. But fe…

Venezuela is testing President Trump's blockade of sanctioned oil tankers by letting two crude-laden vessels motor out from the South American nation's ports — including one with a military escort.Neither tanker has been sanctioned by the U.S., so technically they're not running Trump's blockade.Why…

House Democrats responded with swift fury on Thursday after the Kennedy Center board purportedly voted unanimously to rename the performing arts center to the "Trump-Kennedy Center."Why it matters: Democrats argue the name change can't be done without an act of Congress, and they're vowing to fight …

The lead Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees said they are "exploring all legal options" after a top Justice Department official signaled the agency won't produce all its documents on Jeffrey Epstein by the statutory Friday deadline.Why it matters: The so-called "Epstein files"…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had a "very good" Christmas Day call with Trump advisers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on ending the Russia-Ukraine war, per a post to X Thursday that Kushner reposted.The big picture: Zelensky, President Trump's son-in-law Kushner and Witkoff discuss…

The U.S. will build "Trump-class" military vessels that the president on Monday suggested are new-age battleships, inching the country closer to construction of what the administration is advertising as "the Golden Fleet."The big picture: President Trump has in his second term obsessed over seapower…

A Democratic member of Congress filed a lawsuit Monday aimed at stopping the Trump administration from renaming the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts the "Trump-Kennedy Center."Why it matters: Democrats have raged against the name change, which they argue cannot be done unilaterally by …

Christmas doesn't end at the tree — for many, it ends at the return counter.Why it matters: Americans return tens of billions of dollars' worth of unwanted Christmas gifts every year, turning good intentions into one of retail's biggest annual money sinks. The post-Christmas return rush typically pe…

Some U.S. churches are reimagining Nativity scenes — surrounding the Holy Family with ICE agents or separating Jesus from Mary and Joseph — to protest the Trump administration's intensifying immigration crackdowns.Why it matters: The displays have become one of the most visible acts of Christmas dis…

Last Christmas, we showed you how people would use AI in their daily lives. This year, to save you from tears, we're telling you how they're choosing not to use it. Why it matters: AI is reshaping how people work and create, but many are making deliberate choices about when to leave it on the sidel…

The prediction markets battle is unfolding on multiple fronts as sportsbooks, trading platforms and regulators test the boundaries of U.S. betting law.Why it matters: DraftKings, one of the nation's largest sportsbooks, launched its long-anticipated prediction market Friday, embracing a fast-growing…

What inspired you to study marine mammals? MC: Ever since my childhood growing up in Spain, I’ve been interested in animals. Once a chair went missing in our house, and my parents found it on the roof because I had been sitting up there, observing cats moving across the houses. I’ve been especially …

The race to mine the deep sea — and what’s at stake  About 1,000 meters below the ocean’s surface, the last traces of light from the sun and moon disappear into inky black. Among the ocean’s strongest divers, sperm whales and leatherback sea turtles can swim to the threshold, but rarely do they ente…

Chances are, you’ve consumed a seafood dinner that wasn’t all it claimed to be. The fish on your dinner plate may have led a more complicated life than most international spies. Before sizzling in your skillet or getting tucked into your tacos, it could have crossed oceans, swapped identities more t…

Standing in the harbor of California’s Marina del Rey on a cool day in January 2005, actor and Oceana Board Member Ted Danson smashed a bottle of champagne to celebrate Oceana’s new “eyes and ears in the oceans”: a freshly-painted, double-masted ship christened the Oceana Ranger. Today, despite bein…

When you picture the ocean, you might imagine peaceful blue waters and an underwater world full of calm and quiet. But beneath the surface, the ocean is actually far from silent — a full-blown symphony of calls, clicks, and crashing currents. From the popping sounds of snapping shrimp to the piercin…

For 15 years, Patrice Etlin has embarked on expeditions around the world as a freediver and spearfisher — a passion he inherited from his father, a pioneer of spearfishing in Brazil. During these expeditions, Etlin plunged into waters populated by sharks, carpeted with vibrant corals, and swirling w…

Marbled electric rays set themselves apart from more traditional rays that have venomous barbs or scales. These rays have a fascinating way of hunting prey or deflecting predators — by using specialized electric organs, they can deliver a shock of up to 200 volts. That’s enough electricity to start …

It might be hard to imagine, but manatees are believed to have inspired sailors’ tales of mermaids and sirens. These gentle giants are far from mythical, but just as captivating.  A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO WEST INDIAN MANATEES West Indian manatees are also known as sea cows – for good reason! These sl…

Agency will “ask tough questions” of those workers even as administrator concedes agency has “a retention issue” among controllers.

The Technology Transformation Services has lost 67% of its staff since Jan. 25.

The order is set to impact around 700 workers at four agencies.

The unsigned order, which prompted no public dissents, suggested the Trump administration could return to the high court if the federal district court’s factfinding mission commences before justices consider whether to formally take on the case.

In a protected disclosure to Congress, an agency employee claims that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services since 2024 has been finding ways to reject Freedom of Information Act requests from migrants in order to make it seem like the agency is complying with a court order.

The president also tasked OPM Director Scott Kupor with analyzing whether to provide federal law enforcement officers with a 3.8% pay increase, in line with what military service members are set to receive next month.

Defense firms will be notified of potential links to blacklisted Chinese-military companies a year before the contracting ban goes into effect, the assistant defense secretary for industrial policy said.