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Recent Articles
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The Quiet Bravery of the Thai Cave Rescue
In the summer of 2018, while the internet argued itself into exhaustion over everything else, twelve boys and their coach disappeared underground. They were members of the Wild Boars soccer team, ages eleven to sixteen, swallowed by rising floodwaters inside Tham Luang cave. The cave flooded fast, as it always does in monsoon season. What didn’t flood was panic—at least not in the way we’ve come to expect. The world remembers the headlines. What it forgets is the texture of the response. This was not a story driven by billionaires, brand logos, or performative outrage. It was a story powered by farmers diverting irrigation channels, monks opening temples as staging grounds, doctors calculati… |
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Why Brad Pitt and Jude Law are not as cool as they think they are
The two actors and Oasis man Noel Gallagher have far younger partners and bask in it, thinking that it’s somehow avant-garde. But it’s not, says Charlotte Cripps. It’s just what older men have been doing since the dawn of time In case you’ve been living under a rock, Brad Pitt, 62, has a Swiss jewellery executive girlfriend, who is half his age – Ines de Ramon, 33. The couple graced social media in early July after four years together – on her hairstylist’s Instagram page – looking glamorous in matching black outfits ahead of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding ceremony at Madison Square Garden in NYC. They have since been spotted looking loved-up at the quarter-final World Cup match bet… |
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Trump calls justices fools and announces new global tariff after Supreme Court setback
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday lashed out at Supreme Court justices who struck down a key part of his tariffs agenda, calling them “fools” who made a “terrible, defective decision” that he plans to circumvent by imposing new levies in a different way. In a defiant appearance at the White House, Trump told reporters that his administration will impose new tariffs by using alternative legal means. He cast the ruling as a technical, not permanent, setback for his trade policy, insisting that the “end result is going to get us more money.” The president late Friday signed an executive order imposing a n… |
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Danger Lurks In The Bedroom
Danger lingers as a senior couple lie together in an overly warm bedroom. The air does not feel oppressive, only still, the kind of warmth that settles into fabric and skin without protest. He sleeps lightly now, age having thinned the distance between rest and vigilance. She sleeps deeper — until she does not. Her seizures arrive only at night. Grand mal, sudden, violent, disorienting in their aftermath. Daytime offers no clues. Medication remains stable. Diet unchanged. Tests return the quiet ambiguity medicine often delivers: nothing obvious, nothing solved. What remains is pattern. Always sleep. Always night. He has begun noticing the temperature. Seventy-eight degrees. Comfortable, peop… |
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LA Olympics chief Wasserman issues Maxwell apology but denies Epstein ties
Los Angeles 2028 Olympics chief Casey Wasserman has apologized for communicating with whom convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell more than 20 years ago, after the publication of a series of personal emails between the two. New files related to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell’s former boyfriend, published by the United States Department of Justice on Friday, included flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman, who was married at the time, and Maxwell dating from 2003. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty in 2021 by a jury in New York on charges including sex trafficking of a minor. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting tr… |
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Father grieves for his teen daughter who died in devastating flood
18-year-old Chloe Childress was one of the 27 kids and staff who lost their lives as a result of the floods that occurred at Camp Mystic in the previous summer. According to a recent article in New York Magazine, hChloe's father identified her battered body. She was the 18-year-old Camp Mystic counselor who was killed in the tragic flood last year. The Guadalupe River rose 20 feet in three hours due to the torrential rains that swept over Central Texas that morning on July 4th. More than 130 individuals lost their lives as the catastrophic flood destroyed structures and devastated the area. Following the tragic murders of 25 kids and two counselors, including Chloe, the century-old Christian… |
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Karaoke And The Death Of Public Shame
Opinion There are few sounds more spiritually exhausting than a drunk man discovering a microphone near water. The river carries everything. That is the problem. A terrible singer inside a small bar is survivable. The walls absorb part of the damage. Alcohol softens the rest. But once speakers are dragged outdoors and pointed broadly at civilization itself, the laws of acoustics become instruments of psychological warfare. Somewhere across the dark water, usually male, usually already shouting before the music even begins, a man decides that what the entire neighborhood needs at 11:47 p.m. is his interpretation of “Sweet Caroline.” Interpretation is perhaps too generous a word. What follows … |
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Hayley Mills Is Eighty And I Am Not Accepting It
Hayley Mills will turn 80 on April 18, 2026, but I reject this information on instinct. 80 years old? No way. Not in a dramatic, screaming way. In a quiet, stubborn way, like when you reread a sentence because it must be wrong. Eighty doesn’t belong to her. Eighty belongs to politicians who won’t go away. Eighty belongs to men who confuse survival with wisdom. Eighty belongs to people who feel heavy with years. It does not belong to the girl who made optimism look precise, controlled, and—most importantly—earned. I learned this in Saigon, which is calm, structured, and orderly in a way that puts most American cities to shame. There are rules here, and people follow them. There are no guns. T… |
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How to Write and Publish Science Fiction
Science fiction has always been a genre of defiance. From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the best sci?fi stories refuse to accept the world as it is. They imagine what could be, what should be, and sometimes what must never be. Yet for the modern writer, the act of creating and publishing science fiction is itself a rebellion—against shrinking attention spans, against publishing monopolies, against the quiet pressure to write something “safe.” This is not a neutral craft. To write and publish science fiction today is to step into a contested space where art, commerce, and politics collide. 1. The Spark: Writing Against Gravity Every sci?fi story begins … |
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How the fight for public land around Los Angeles hinges on saving one parcel at a time
Over the last year, activists have organized droves of people across the United States to protest and petition Congress over concerns that the Trump administration will sell off our most beloved outdoor spaces. We’ve worried about general threats to public lands, such as whether the 700,000-acre Angeles National Forest or the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area will remain pristine protected landscapes. We’ve also seen specific examples of what activists have cautioned could happen: a large mining operation that could open just outside Joshua Tree National Park and a large housing development proposed at the border of Yosemite National Park. And although that attenti… |
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The Needless Murder of Over 150 Girls in Minab Iran
We remember the small rituals that made the day feel ordinary, because ordinary is what a school is supposed to be. A braid tightened with quick fingers. A scarf adjusted in a hallway mirror. The paper smell inside a notebook when you open it too fast. The soft ache of a backpack strap on a shoulder that’s still growing. We remember the way our teachers tried to make us brave about quizzes, the way we pretended not to care and then cared anyway. We remember laughter spilling down a corridor like marbles—impossible to gather once it’s loose. We walked into Shajareh Tayyebeh believing, with the stubborn faith children are allowed to have, that a classroom is a kind of sanctuary. Not holy, not … |
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AI companies accused of copyrighted infringement
Opinion | Editorial The open letter signed by Scarlett Johansson and hundreds of other creatives didn’t land because it was polite. It landed because it said the quiet part out loud: training commercial AI systems on copyrighted work without permission is theft dressed up as inevitability. The industry has spent years insisting this was a philosophical debate about progress. It isn’t. It’s a business choice—and a corrosive one. The letter, organized through the Human Artistry Campaign, rejects the soothing language that has insulated AI companies from accountability. “Learning,” “absorption,” “transformation.” These words are doing legal work, not descriptive work. They exist to blur a simpl… |
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France ready to summon US ambassador over far right comments
According to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, US Ambassador Charles Kushner will be summoned in response to the US embassy's recent statements regarding the murder of a far-right French activist in Lyon, a city located in the southeastern region of France, earlier this month. On Sunday, Barrot informed the French newspaper Le Monde and public broadcasters France Inter and France Info that he intended to summon the United States ambassador to France due to the US embassy's commentary on the tragedy, which affects the national community. He further stated, "We are opposed to any attempt to exploit this tragedy for political gain." The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs did not sp… |
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Father Guns Down Mother In Front Of Daughter
A man used his vehicle to trap his former girlfriend before shooting her twice with a twelve gauge shotgun as their ten year old daughter watched, turning what began as a confrontation between former partners into a killing that has stunned the local community and left a child at the center of an unthinkable trauma. The woman had no clear path to escape once the suspect positioned his vehicle to block her movement. Witness accounts and charging documents indicate the shooting unfolded in front of the couple’s daughter, who saw her mother killed in broad daylight before emergency responders arrived at the scene. Authorities arrested the suspect shortly afterward. Prosecutors are expected to p… |
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Rail regulators accused of ignoring safety recommendations
More than 3,000 rail accidents, causing 23 deaths and nearly 1,200 injuries over the past decade, have been attributed to human error and track defects. Yet, federal railroad regulators have largely ignored most safety recommendations arising from these investigations, according to a new study. An analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland reveals a powerful industry behind these failures, using its influence to thwart federal safety reforms. It is accused of actively lobbying President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce track inspection and repair requirements and loosen rules aimed at preventing crew fatigue. The center’s analysis of data … |
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Pope Leo not afraid of Trump and we should not be either
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. “I’m not afraid.” With these three words Sunday morning, Pope Leo XIV offered as powerful a rebuke of President Trump and everything he has wrought on the world as anyone ever has. Three words to inspire all good people to fight against Trump — because if a mild-mannered man of God such as Leo isn’t afraid, no one should be. Pope Leo’s words thrilled me as an American—becauseially as a Catholic. His quiet, confident witness since becoming pontiff in May had already reignited a spiritual light in me to adhere closer to the faith I was brought up in. Rather than cower before a despot who makes the Pharaoh in … |
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Why AI firm is taking on Trump administration
A row is simmering between the United States government and Anthropic, one of the tech companies that develops artificial intelligence (AI) tools for defence and civilian uses. According to recent reports, Anthropic’s Claude software was used in a US military operation, which resulted in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro in January this year. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given the company until Friday to loosen its rules about how its AI tools can be used by the Pentagon, or risk losing its government contract, The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed sources. But Anthropic is refusing to back down over safeguards which … |
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A NATION THAT KILLS ITS OWN
Americans kill their citizens with guns at a rate no other developed nation would accept. Long ago, we should have settled the debate and silenced opposition. Instead, it became mere background noise. Twenty-six children in one classroom, six-year-olds, were slaughtered, shot to death while hiding from a gunman. There was no battlefield, no riot, no civil war. There was only a young man with a gun in a country that had come to accept death as an inevitable risk. As a nation, many of us declared “never again,” yet Americans have consistently overlooked the lives of children in favor of guns, barroom cowboys, road rage, bloodshed, and death. This preference has fostered an environment where th… |
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Laura Lynch of the Dixie Chicks killed
Laura Lynch, one of the original members of the singing group that would become famous as the Dixie Chicks, died in an automobile accident in West Texas. She was 65 years old. The Texas Department of Public Safety said that Lynch was in a head-on crash near El Paso on Friday. The trio, now known as the Chicks, announced on Instagram about Lynch's passing. Musical They've taken "Dixie" out of their name and are about to put out their first album in 14 years. It may be the finest record of the Chicks' troubled history. The band announced in a statement, "We are shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Laura Lynch, a founding member of The Chicks." "We have a special place in our hearts … |
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President Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi
President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi in the middle of an escalating international conflict, removing the nation’s top law enforcement authority at the exact moment legal clarity matters most. There was no transition window, no easing into change—just a sudden rupture that leaves a sharper question than the conflict itself: who is enforcing the law now, and on whose terms? A sitting president has dismissed his attorney general in the middle of an escalating international conflict. Not after resolution, not during a lull, not at the clean edge of a policy cycle—but in the thick of it, when legal clarity and institutional steadiness are not luxuries but requirements. That tim… |