DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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Mary, a veteran Silicon Valley marketer who can’t find a job, considers herself a victim of an H-1B visa program run amok.

Her story, a U.S. native replaced by a foreign-born employee who is willing to work at a significantly lower wage, has become commonplace, particularly in the tech industry. Adding insult to injury, she says, her CEO, who hails from India, told her to train the man he selected to replace her before laying her off.

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Another MAGA victory took place earlier this week, but this one has flown under the radar a little bit.

Lee County, Alabama, home of Auburn University, has had the same sheriff since before the turn of the 21st Century. But on Tuesday night, Jay Jones was narrowly defeated, largely because he would not participate in basic illegal immigration enforcement.

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The left-wing U.K. government has claimed it is making real progress in tackling the ongoing migration crisis enveloping Britain after official statistics published on Thursday showed that net migration had decreased to 171,000 last year. However, that figure alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

“I promised to restore control to our borders. My government is delivering,” under-pressure Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote on X in response to the latest publication by the Office for National Statistics.

“Net migration is now at 171,000, down from a high of 944,000 under the Conservatives,” added Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, claiming the government had “restored order” after the unprecedented figures under the last Conservative administration.

Yet, a glance at the broader figures shows the reported number isn’t as impressive as the government would have you believe.

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The Secretary-General said it makes clear Member States’ responsibility to protect their own people from what is an “escalating climate crisis”.

The resolution drawn up by Vanuatu – a Pacific island nation on the frontline of the climate crisis, and several other countries – was adopted after intense discussion including multiple proposed amendments with 141 votes in favour, eight against and 28 abstentions.

The Court also ruled that if States breach these obligations, they are legally responsible and may be legally required to stop the wrongful conduct, offer guarantees that it won’t happen again, and make full reparation, depending on the circumstances.

Although the ICJ’s advisory opinions are not binding, they carry significant legal and moral authority – helping to clarify and develop international law by defining States’ legal obligations.

The Telegraph (UK).

At least 24 people have been killed in a blast targeting a train carrying military staff in Pakistan.

Army servicemen were among the victims in the attack on Sunday in the turbulent south-western province of Balochistan, a senior official said.

The attack in the provincial capital of Quetta had also left more than 50 people injured, the official told AFP news agency.

If Muslims don’t have any Christians or Jews handy, they’ll quite happily kill other Muslims.

The Telegraph (UK).

I see that The Telegraph has adopted the American spellling of ‘jail’.

A girl who was raped by two teenage boys has attacked a judge’s decision to spare them jail sentences as being like a “rock straight in my face”.

The victim was 15 years old when she was raped in an underpass near the River Avon in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

The two defendants, who are now 15, were also convicted of attacking a second victim, who was raped in a field in January 2025 at knifepoint. Another boy, now 14, was also convicted for aiding and abetting the second attack.

The boys filmed the attacks on their phones and later shared some of the footage online.

During sentencing at Southampton Crown Court on Thursday, the judge stressed the “seriousness” of the crimes and said the filming of the assaults had made them even “more serious”.

However, he said he wanted to avoid “criminalising” the “very young boys” and praised their behaviour during the trial.

The Telegraph (UK).

Millions more families could be dragged into paying a “death tax” on their loved ones’ estates under Andy Burnham’s plans to fund social care.

The Greater Manchester mayor supports scrapping the existing inheritance tax and replacing it with a new levy on assets to fund a National Care Service.

Mr Burnham, who is preparing to oust Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister if he wins the Makerfield by-election on June 18, has previously insisted that the wealthiest would contribute the most.

The Telegraph (UK).

Iran has agreed to surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of a “largely negotiated” deal to end the war, according to US sources.

The deal includes an “apparent commitment” to giving up the uranium, but a concrete plan of how this would be done is expected to be established in further rounds of talks, two US officials told The New York Times.

Iran’s nuclear programme has been a sticking point in negotiations since the US and Tehran agreed to a ceasefire in April, and agreeing to give up its uranium would represent a major concession from the Islamic Republic.

UPDATE: Iran has not agreed to hand over highly enriched uranium stockpile, senior Iranian source tells Reuters

The Times (UK).

The Cabinet Office and the role of cabinet secretary would be abolished by a Reform UK government, according to an 11-page blueprint that reveals plans for an overhaul of Whitehall.

The document, devised by Danny Kruger, the Reform MP who is leading the party’s preparations for government, outlines changes to the civil service, predicting cuts of about 50 per cent to communications, human resources and policy roles.

There were 520,000 full-time civil servants last year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the highest headcount in two decades. One in five are based in London.

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More than 500 years ago in what is now Peru, the Inca Empire relied on one of the world’s most distinctive, and poorly understood, systems for recording information: sets of intricately knotted cords known as khipus. For centuries, archaeologists and historians believed making and reading these cords was a job for the elite, reserved only for men who were literate bureaucrats. Yet a single lock of hair is challenging that picture.

After analyzing a 500-year-old khipu made of human hair, a team of anthropologists found that its creator’s diet did not include foods associated with the Inca upper classes such as maize and meat. The results, published today in Science Advances, suggest the khipu wasn’t made by an imperial bureaucrat, but rather by someone of much lower status, like a commoner.

The finding suggests “that numeracy was much more widespread in the population … [and] probably not just in the hands of men,” says Karenleigh Overmann, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs who was not involved in the study. “Anybody can tie knots and strings.”

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In a new study published today, scientists discovered that keratin, a protein found in hair, skin and wool, can repair tooth enamel and stop early stages of decay.

The King’s College London team of scientists discovered that keratin produces a protective coating that mimics the structure and function of natural enamel when it comes into contact with minerals in saliva.

…

While fluoride toothpastes are currently used to slow this process, keratin-based treatments were found to stop it completely. Keratin forms a dense mineral layer that protects the tooth and seals off exposed nerve channels that cause sensitivity, offering both structural and symptomatic relief.

The treatment could be delivered through a toothpaste for daily use or as a professionally applied gel, similar to nail varnish, for more targeted repair. The team is already exploring pathways for clinical application and believes that keratin-based enamel regeneration could be made available to the public within the next two to three years.

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First Daughter Ivanka Trump was allegedly targeted in an assassination plot by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-trained terrorist seeking revenge for the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, reportedly pledged to kill Ivanka Trump and was found with a blueprint of her Florida home after his recent capture, according to an exclusive report from the New York Post.

The alleged plot traces directly to the January 2020 drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

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The Army successfully hit its recruiting goal for the 2026 fiscal year, more than four months ahead of its deadline.

The Army announced on Saturday that it reached its goal of signing 61,500 people for active-duty contracts. It’s the third year in a row that the Army met its recruitment goal, after falling short in 2022 and 2023. It also is the second year in a row that it beat the deadline by roughly four months; in 2025 the Army hit the milestone in the first week of June. The fiscal year closes at the end of September.

According to the Army’s release on meeting its recruitment goal, the service credited “innovative outreach, enhanced career incentives, and a focus on critical technical skills” with helping to bring in the new soldiers, although the announcement was vague on what those moves were. However the service has continued several programs created over the past few years that have helped to bring in more recruits and assist them in meeting standards for military service.

The guy at the top makes all the difference.

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Since April 14, Morocco has been conducting large-scale deportation operations targeting sub-Saharan Africans migrating to Europe, reportedly arresting over 100 per day, local sources told Middle East Eye.

According to Moroccan human rights groups, around 800 people were detained during coordinated raids in the forests between Fnideq and Belyounech, in the northern tip of the North African state, where many were sheltering before attempting to reach Europe.

The Telegraph (UK).

Andy Burnham is set to bring in a land value tax if he becomes Britain’s next prime minister.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is expected to launch a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer if he returns to Westminster, told The Telegraph he believed land was “under-taxed” and he wanted to introduce a new levy.

While he has vowed to respect Labour’s 2024 manifesto, Mr Burnham has not ruled out campaigning for a land tax at the next general election.

Time to leave.

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HR departments were originally created as a means of monitoring compliance with state and federal laws to avoid liability. In many cases this revolved around “sexual harassment” or “discrimination” in the workplace, but it ended up becoming a progressive crusade to make women, LGBT and minority groups a protected class of workers that are difficult to fire because HR is more concerned with lawsuits.

This lack of accountability based on gender and minority privilege reached its peak during the height of the woke era and DEI. Companies were rife with useless employees who did little work while raking in six-figure salaries.

Today, the situation is changing rapidly. A wave of layoffs has hit the white collar sector since 2025. The end of DEI is leading to mass cuts which are largely affecting women, with minority women making up the bulk of the job losses.

One company CEO, Ryan Breslow of Bolt, saved his company from implosion by a simple change which allowed him to more easily make a number of other changes: He fired his entire HR department.

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Like Jeff Bezos? Or George Soros?

There’s a reason why the PDF that was shared says in red letters “Sourcing not provided for many claims in this section.” Start with the evidence that newspaper endorsements for president in 2024 were 54 for Kamala Harris and six for Trump, and that’s factoring in that the left-tilting Los Angeles Times and Washington Post were prevented by their owners from endorsing Harris as they had wanted.

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People set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo on May 21 after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, witnesses and police said.

“The police intervened to try to calm the situation, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful,”Alexis Burata, a local student who said he was in the area, told The Associated Press.

“The young people ended up setting fire to the center. That’s the situation.”

An Associated Press journalist saw people break into the center at Rwampara Hospital and set fire to objects inside, and also to what appeared to be the body of at least one suspected Ebola victim that was being stored there. Aid workers fled the treatment center in vehicles.

The crowd set fire to two tents fitted with eight beds run by a medical charity called The Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), said Deputy Senior Commissioner Jean-Claude Mukendi, head of the public security department in Ituri Province.

Welcome to the Turd World. Be careful not to step in the Diversity.

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A shocking video making the rounds shows the reality of life under Los Angeles bridges: a sprawling setup of makeshift homes complete with lighting tapped into the city power grid, tables of items, and a self-contained community living off public resources.

Paul Graham.

How do you convert between wealth and income tax? If a government imposes a wealth tax of 1%, what’s the equivalent in income tax?

It’s clear from the way most politicians talk about the subject that they not only don’t know the answer, but don’t even realize there’s such a question.

In fact the conversion rate between them is about 20. A wealth tax of 1% is equivalent to an income tax of 20%.

To convert between wealth and income tax rates, you have to divide by the rate of return on capital. The conversion rate of 20 comes from assuming that the risk-free rate of return is 5%. Historically that’s an optimistic assumption. 4% might be more realistic. But 5% will do. [1]

If we run through an example it will be clear how this works. Suppose you have $100, you’re getting a 5% rate of return on this capital, and there’s a 20% income tax. The 5% rate of return means at the end of one year your $100 has made you another $5. But you have to pay 20% of that, or $1, in income tax, so your after-tax income is $4. At the end of the year, after paying taxes, you have $100 + $4 = $104.

Now suppose instead of a 20% income tax, there’s a 1% wealth tax. At the end of the year your $100 has made you another $5, as before. But that year you had to pay 1% of your $100, or $1, in wealth tax. So at the end of the year you have $99 + $5 = $104.

Each 1% of wealth tax is equivalent to 20% of income tax.

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Olabode Soniregun is a Nigerian man who migrated to Las Vegas and got U.S. citizenship (because in 2026, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter).

He then “fled” to the UK in November 2024, claiming he feared for his life because he is black and identifies as both Mormon and Jewish. No, really, that’s what he says.

You can’t make this shit up.

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You can’t make this shit up.

Naval News.

Needless to say, the U.S. Navy has nothing like this.

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Germany spent €24.8 billion on migration-related costs in 2025, according to the federal government’s “Refugee Cost Report,” cited by the finance ministry. Although this represented a decline of €3.2 billion compared to the previous year, the overall financial burden remained high.

A large share of federal spending went toward refugee and integration courses, as well as fixed payments to states and municipalities for asylum seekers. This included a lump sum of €7,500 per initial asylum application, transferred to the states through adjustments to value-added tax revenues. In 2025, advance payments totaled around €1.25 billion, though the federal government expects to reclaim approximately €250 million from the states afterward.

Despite these contributions, several federal states argued that their actual migration-related costs far exceeded federal reimbursements. Bavaria said its support for municipalities covering accommodation, care, and integration “significantly exceeds” the federal compensation payments. Hamburg also called for increased federal funding.

The report highlighted rising costs linked to unaccompanied minor migrants. In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, spending on accommodation and care for unaccompanied minors reached around €667 million in 2025, an increase of roughly €320 million compared to the previous year. State authorities warned that a rapid reduction in costs was unlikely because of the continuing high number of arrivals. Hesse also reported higher spending, with costs rising by around €30 million to €234.9 million.

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A new Johns Hopkins University survey shows that more than half of Baltimore respondents expect to move out of their current neighborhoods within three years, as the one-party-ruled state of Democratic Party queens and kings has failed taxpayers on affordability, law and order, and other basic issues commonly standard in red states.

The Hopkins survey, conducted from September to November 2024, found that 42% of Baltimore City residents want to leave the city entirely. Of those, 27% expect to stay somewhere else in Maryland, while 15% expect to leave the state, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The Great Sort proceeds apace.

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Alberta will hold a referendum on whether the province should remain in Canada or begin the legal process toward a future binding vote on separation, marking the first major test of Canadian unity in decades.

Thursday’s announcement by Premier Danielle Smith follows growing pressure from separatist groups after a citizen-led petition calling for independence gathered more than 300,000 signatures earlier this year. A separate petition supporting Alberta remaining in Canada reportedly gathered more than 400,000 signatures.

The independence movement has gained traction in the oil-rich province, driven by a long-standing belief among many Albertans that Ottawa overlooks the province’s interests, particularly over energy policy and natural resources. Despite this, opinion polls suggest most Albertans would vote against separation.

The referendum is scheduled for 19 October. Voters will be asked whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada or whether the provincial government should begin the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding referendum on separation.

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Europe’s largest mosque is under construction in Strasbourg, France.

The €25 million project is mostly funded by the “Islamic Community National View” (IGMG), a Turkish Islamic organization that manages 518 mosques and 2330 branches across Europe as well as in Australia and Canada.

In 2025, French MEP Marion Maréchal said that the organization was accused of “promoting a separatist, Muslim Brotherhood-style Islam”:

This radical organization is being used by [Turkish President] Erdo?an’s regime to maintain control over Turkish immigrant communities here in our country.

Maréchal added that French and European politicians, on both the Left and Right,

have rolled out the red carpet for Islamic communities with subsidies, building permits, loans, and land—all to buy their votes in elections. This compromise, openly embraced on the left, sometimes concealed on the right, comes at the cost of our security, and our identity, secularism, national cohesion, and, of course, the fight against Islamism.

This major mosque project in Strasbourg is the Eyyub Sultan Mosque (also referred to as the Grand Mosque of Strasbourg). Work on the project began in 2017. It is being constructed by the Germany-based “Islamic Community National View” or “Islamische Gemeinschaft Mili Görü?” (IGMG), which is reportedly supported through funding from Turkey and Qatar.

The Telegraph (UK).

Sergei Krajev, 64, who was described by his family as a “wonderful husband, father, and grandfather”, died following the incident on Battersea Bridge.

Police were called to the scene at 12.33am on Monday. Officers performed emergency first aid on Mr Krajev, who was then taken to hospital by London’s Air Ambulance.

The Transport for London bus driver died on Tuesday. His family are being supported by specialist officers.

Gary Jones, 32, of Twickenham, was arrested at the scene.

The Telegraph (UK).

Labour is planning a £1bn tax grab on family holidays even as Rachel Reeves unveils summer cost of living support for households.

HMRC officials are drawing up plans to impose VAT of 20pc on top of the fees that airports charge airlines to use their runways and terminals.

These fees are typically passed on to customers in full, meaning the move would heap more costs on holidaymakers and businesses. At Heathrow, the measures could add almost £5 to the current standard charge of about £24.

One airline industry insider said the Labour plan amounted to a “stealth tax” on families at a time when the cost of living crisis meant many people were already struggling to afford a holiday.

The Telegraph also understands that ministers are exploring the possibility of backdating the tax by as many as four years – the maximum permitted under current legislation.

The TImes (UK).

ergey Frolovichev, 46, is describing his “bat cave”. It is beneath the garden of his mansion in Hampstead, north London, which he has just spent £15 million — and more than five years — dismantling and rebuilding.

The room, the Anglo-Russian software supremo explains, can be accessed via a staircase from a corner of the living room, concealed by retracting floorboards — with the design inspired by his favourite film, The Dark Knight.

“It [the 2008 Batman film] was amazing, amazing special effects, everything,” says Frolovichev, who made a windfall by developing dating apps with his billionaire business associate, Andrey Andreev.

Vote Pattern Analysis.

In the early hours of November 4th, 2020, Democratic candidate Joe Biden received several major “vote spikes” that substantially — and decisively — improved his electoral position in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Much skepticism and uncertainty surrounds these “vote spikes.” Critics point to suspicious vote counting practices, extreme differences between the two major candidates’ vote counts, and the timing of the vote updates, among other factors, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of some of these spikes. While data analysis cannot on its own demonstrate fraud or systemic issues, it can point us to statistically anomalous cases that invite further scrutiny.

This is one such case: Our analysis finds that a few key vote updates in competitive states were unusually large in size and had an unusually high Biden-to-Trump ratio. We demonstrate the results differ enough from expected results to be cause for concern.

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A new study on the Shroud of Turin, the fabric that some Christians believe was wrapped around Jesus Christ after his death, could support a long-held belief about the biblical account of his burial.

Dr. Kelly Kearse, an immunologist who studied at Johns Hopkins University and now works as a chemistry teacher at Knoxville Catholic High School, found in a study of the shroud that the “washing hypothesis” that forensic pathologist Dr. Frederick Zugibe proposed in 1998 is contradicted by evidence collected from the shroud itself.

In her research, Kearse examined human blood samples to see how blood transfers to cloth and found that serum halos, or clear rings that form around blood clots, are visible on parts of the shroud.

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Aircraft manufacturing is on the cusp of its most profound transformation since the dawn of powered flight. The assembly line, a staple of industrial production for over a century, is about to be replaced by a far more efficient and cost-effective alternative — swarm robotics.

Swarm robotics is a manufacturing system in which autonomous robots work with a common “consciousness” guided by generative artificial intelligence, or “genAI,” to self-program a large-scale manufacturing process.

The assembly-line system, invented by Ransom Olds in 1901 and refined by Henry Ford in 1913 to make his cars, has dominated manufacturing. However, swarm robotics could transform the way large, complex structures such as airplanes and aerospace assets are built. The use of AI-driven, self-coordinating robots could enable faster, lower-cost production while delivering higher precision and enhanced safety.

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I usually focus on the building science of homes, HVAC, and indoor environmental quality. Today, though, I’m going to cover a topic of outdoor environmental quality. I’ve had mosquitoes in my backyard since we bought the house in 2019. This year, however, the yard is practically uninhabitable all the time because the constant rainfall has kept the yard wet and overpopulated with mosquitoes. That’s about to change because last week, I heard about the perfect solution: the Mosquito Bucket of Death.†

So, for the past few days I’ve been setting them up and putting them out in my yard. I’ve got four out there now and may add more. I wish I had started them in April because it takes a while for them to do their thing. And their thing is using an otherwise harmless bacterium to kill the mosquito larvae after the female mosquitoes lay their eggs in the bucket. Here’s a video showing a bit about how they work and how to set them up.

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Perhaps the greatest example that good policymaking intentions go awry is the minimum wage. Proponents of increasing the minimum wage argue that doing so will help the poor.

If we could snap our fingers and make the poor suddenly rich, there would be no reason to object. Unfortunately, in a world of scarce resources, this is not a possibility. The minimum wage actually tends to make many poor workers worse off and increases unemployment. A recent study on California minimum wage increases demonstrates that fact (yet again).

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Traditionally, prefabricated construction has meant large fixed factories churning out modules or panels that get shipped to building sites. The siren song is industrial-esque economies of scale in an industry that’s long evaded affordability and efficiency. But those centralized models, made infamous by companies like Katerra, General Modular Homes, and Skender, have faced challenges due to large up-front capex requirements and the hefty cost of shipping fabricated products to construction sites.

The emerging microfactory model flips that script. Instead of shipping bulky housing components from a distant plant, why not ship the factoryitself to the project? In other words, take a compact, automated production unit (often the size of a shipping container) and set it up right next to the jobsite. The factory becomes a portable product, and the building components are made where they’ll be used—a true inversion of the old “fixed factory, shipped goods” paradigm.

By making factories shippable and goods more locally produced, microfactories aim to capture the benefits of off-site fabrication (automation, efficiency, indoor conditions) without the drawbacks of centralized production.

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Seattle’s socialist-in-chief is no longer laughing about chasing away businesses and wealthy residents. But the attitude adjustment may be too little, too late.

Just a few weeks ago, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson infamously giggled when asked if she was concerned about wealthy residents fleeing Seattle because of her policies.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if—the ones that leave, like, bye,” Wilson said to applause at Seattle University.

As I wrote at the time, this flippant attitude toward a potential wealth exodus was remarkably foolish.

Businesses and the “rich” were already leaving Seattle, but hitting the accelerator on leftist policies is causing a full-blown economic meltdown. The result will be a loss of hundreds of millions—likely even billions—of dollars in future tax revenue.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a political program based on taxing the rich doesn’t even begin to work if there are few rich to tax. But here we are. Reality is setting in.

Now for the consequences.

FA, FO.

New Scientist.

We have known of magnets for millennia. Today, they are at the heart of a raft of modern technologies, from electric generators and smartphones to loudspeakers and hospital scanners. And yet for 100 years, we have been missing something about them. We always assumed there were only two types. It was Šmejkal’s art-inspired insights that finally gave the lie to that in 2022.

Fast-forward to today, and we know that what Šmejkal called “altermagnets” aren’t just an idea. We have discovered real examples and are working out how to make this new kind of material in practical and useful ways. There is even a possibility that these magnets could help us build a completely new kind of computer. “Altermagnets could actually have all the functionalities of current devices, but much faster, with less energy consumption, and smaller,” says Šmejkal.

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Ask yourself why all American universities follow a German model rather than a British model for how they operate.

In fact, a university structured on the British model would invariably fail accreditation in the U.S.

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The Western world lives under the rule of law and holds sacred the institutions that enforce them. We believe in contracts, in due process, and in a system of justice that is fair, at least in theory. But what happens when that system frays? What happens when there is a growing class that is above the law?

The unsettling answer is that an older, more brutal set of rules re-emerges. It’s a system of power that has governed humanity for nearly all of its history called tribalism.

Of course, tribalism is still thriving in the non-Western world. We see its effects in what we might call corruption, in political systems where votes are merely a show, and in societies where power, not law, is the final arbiter. From a Western perspective, we tend to disdain these systems as a moral failing. We don’t see a rational, time-tested system of power operating according to its own logic; we see a deviation from our own sacred ideals. This misunderstanding is a luxury, because when we mistake a power play for a moral lapse, we are left trying to appeal to a non-existent conscience, playing a game we don’t even know has begun. And in the emerging conflicts of the 21st century, those who don’t understand the rules of the tribe will be the first to fall.

Astral Codex Ten.

The mid-20th century was the golden age of nurture. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s convinced most experts that parents, peers, and propaganda were the most important causes of adult personality.

Starting in the 1970s, the pendulum swung the other way. Twin studies shocked the world by demonstrating that most behavioral traits – including socially relevant traits like IQ – were substantially genetic. Typical estimates for adult IQ found it was about 60% genetic, 40% unpredictable, and barely related at all to parenting or family environment.

By the early 2000s, genetic science reached a point where scientists could start pinpointing the particular genes behind any given trait. Early candidate gene studies, which hoped to find single genes with substantial contributions to IQ, depression, or crime, mostly failed. They were replaced with genome wide association studies, which accepted that most interesting traits were polygenic – controlled by hundreds or thousands of genes – and trawled the whole genome searching for variants that might explain 0.1% or even 0.01% of the pie. The goal shifted toward polygenic scores – algorithms that accepted thousands of genes as input and spit out predictions of IQ, heart disease risk, or some other outcome of interest.

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Every March and November, Americans dread the notification in their inbox or on the news to “Remember to change your clocks!” Most of us rely on the adage “Fall back in fall—spring forward in spring” to sort out the confusion of which way the clock is moving. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who gets excited about the biannual shift.

However, many Americans do love the later hours of sunlight daylight saving time affords. With equal fervor, others, particularly older people, dislike the thought of getting up in the dark that accompanies it.

It is this lack of consensus, as well as significant pushback from health experts, that has stalled the “Sunshine Protection Act” (H.R. 139) in the House Energy and Commerce Committee since the beginning of 2025. The broader effort to pass similar versions of the bill has been ongoing since 2018.

Now, it looks as if the sun will rise again on an amendment to make DST permanent for all states, and without much notice.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce late Tuesday night announced a markup meeting for Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. On the agenda was a proposal to fold the language of the Sunshine Protection Act into the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act (H.R.7389).

This latest attempt would mandate permanent daylight saving time in all states that don’t self-exempt before its effective date, and it would prevent self-exemption after its effective date.

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A Brussels court has granted Mohamed Bakkali, a convicted terrorist involved in the murderous 2015 Paris attacks, temporary release from prison.

According to the Belgian outlet La Libre, Bakkali is permitted six periods of leave from his cell of up to 36 hours each in duration. The judiciary justified a decision, citing his good behaviour. While the public prosecutor’s office strongly opposed these furloughs, it was reportedly denied the opportunity to appeal.

Bakkali, who helped plan the Paris atrocity and arranged accommodation for the perpetrators, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2022. He also received a 25-year sentence for a foiled separate railway attack.

After conviction in France, he was transferred to Belgium, his country of citizenship.

The Belgian justice system allows inmates to apply for temporary release after serving just one-third of their sentence, significantly earlier than the two-thirds requirement in France. Expected to be permanently released in 2040, Bakkali has already received five previous furloughs since last July.

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The deportation of Syrian citizens from Germany has been virtually paralyzed despite the political announcements made by Berlin in recent months. A key reason is that Damascus has stopped issuing replacement travel documents for Syrian nationals facing deportation.

According to recently published information, since the end of January no German federal state has received the type of documentation required to carry out forced returns of individuals lacking valid passports or complete identity documents.These replacement documents are an essential requirement in deportation procedures. Without them, authorities may face serious legal and operational difficulties in carrying out returns even when a final deportation order exists.

German federal authorities have not officially confirmed the blockage, although they have not denied it either.

The issue currently affects around 11,000 Syrian citizens who are under an immediate legal obligation to leave Germany, according to data from the German Federal Police.

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The Supreme Court determined that a U.S.-based company—Havana Docks—can recover damages from four major cruise lines that used its docks previously confiscated by the Cuban government.

Havana Docks, a U.S. company, built docks in Havana’s port before the Cuban Revolution. The Castro regime revoked the company’s legal right to the docks, and the company later sued cruise lines that used the docks, claiming they were liable for trafficking in confiscated property. The cruise lines argued that the company’s legal right to the docks would have expired by then, regardless of confiscation.

In an 8-1 ruling issued on Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas found that Havana Docks “did not have to prove that the cruise lines interfered with a property interest that would have existed in the counterfactual scenario in which the Cuban government did not confiscate it.”

“The cruise lines’ use of the docks is sufficient to establish that they used ‘property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government,’” Thomas wrote.