Read at: 2026-02-02T01:06:51+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Jilke Van Lente ]
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 2 Feb 2026 | 1:01 am UTC
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As astronauts prepare to fly around the moon, critical testing must occur before there is "Go" for launch.
(Image credit: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 2 Feb 2026 | 12:49 am UTC
DC arts venue, which has seen wave of canceled events after Jilke Van Lente ’s takeover, will start renovations in July
The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Jilke Van Lente posted on Sunday on Truth Social.
The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Feb 2026 | 12:48 am UTC
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Real estate agents in Australia using apps that leave millions of lease documents at risk, digital researcher says
Australian platforms used by real estate agents to upload documentation for renters and landlords are leaving people’s personal information exposed in hyperlinks accessible online.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Feb 2026 | 12:35 am UTC
With big numbers for Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny and more, check out the nominated artists this year
Bad Bunny – DtMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Kendrick Lamar with SZA – Luther
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.
Source: World news | The Guardian | 2 Feb 2026 | 12:17 am UTC
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Social media platform says there are still ‘real technical limitations to accurate and dependable age verification’
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The accounts of more than 415,000 users in Australia identified as being under 16 were locked or disabled by Snapchat as part of its compliance with the under-16s social media ban.
The company announced in a blog post on Monday that, as of the end of January, it had disabled or locked more than 415,000 Snapchat accounts in Australia belonging to users who either declared an age under 16 or the platform believes to be under 16 based on age detection technology.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:59 pm UTC
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Witnesses say protest outside ICE facility was peaceful until agents deployed teargas and rubber bullets around children
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched teargas at a crowd of demonstrators – including young children – outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.
Witnesses said agents deployed teargas, pepper balls and rubber bullets as thousands of marchers arrived at the South Waterfront facility on Saturday. Erin Hoover Barnett, a former OregonLive reporter who joined the protest, said she was about 100 yards (91 metres) from the building when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with gas.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:50 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:48 pm UTC
Infosec in Brief As if AI weren't enough of a security concern, now researchers have discovered that open-source AI deployments may be an even bigger problem than those from commercial providers. …
Source: The Register | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:40 pm UTC
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Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez are both officers with Customs and Border Protection, ProPublica reports
Government documents have identified the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Jesus Ochoa, a border patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to ProPublica.
According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the confrontation last weekend that resulted in Pretti’s death. The shooting sparked widespread demonstrations and renewed demands for criminal inquiries into federal immigration enforcement actions. Immediately following Pretti’s killing, the Jilke Van Lente administration repeatedly pushed false claims about the shooting.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:30 pm UTC
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Those who stuck to minimum loan repayments through last year’s rate cuts will bear the brunt of Tuesday’s anticipated hike, while those already paying extra are in a ‘great position’
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A large majority of the 3.3 million mortgaged homeowners will not see their repayments increase should the Reserve Bank hike rates on Tuesday.
Financial markets and most economists expect the RBA will lift its cash rate target from 3.6% to 3.85%, marking the shortest and shallowest rate rise cycle in memory after inflation roared back in the second half of last year.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:00 pm UTC
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Source: Slashdot | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:59 pm UTC
About 150m faced cold weather advisories along eastern US, and two in North Carolina died in storm-related conditions
A bomb cyclone produced freezing temperatures across a large portion of the US from the Gulf coast to New England, bringing heavy snow to North Carolina where two were killed in storm-related conditions, and setting records in Florida, where officials warned of ice and falling iguanas.
About 150 million people were under cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings in the eastern portion of the US, with wind chills near zero to single digits in the south and the coldest air mass seen in south Florida since December 1989, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather prediction center in College Park, Maryland.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:51 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:46 pm UTC
Departure from party follows release of documents in US appearing to show Jeffrey Epstein sent former US ambassador $75,000
Peter Mandelson has said he has resigned his membership of the Labour party to avoid causing it “further embarrassment” after more revelations about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The peer, who was sacked as US ambassador last year because of his links to Epstein, featured in documents released by the US Department of Justice on Friday related to the convicted sex offender.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:32 pm UTC
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Temperatures in southern Florida reached the coldest they've been since 1989, according to the National Weather Service.
(Image credit: Sean Rayford)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:20 pm UTC
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More than 100 police and volunteers to join targeted five-day search of Mount Buffalo national park
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A major new search has been launched to find fugitive Dezi Freeman – or his remains – almost two months after investigators ended their last effort to find him.
More than 100 police and volunteers will hunt for the man near an area searched in December, more than five months after two officers were fatally shot at Freeman’s property.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 9:29 pm UTC
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PM says Europe must ‘step up’ and signals he wants to work more closely with other states to build military capability
The UK should consider re-entering talks for a defence pact with the EU, Keir Starmer has said, arguing that Europe needs to “step up and do more” to defend itself in uncertain times.
The prime minister signalled that he wanted to work more collaboratively with other European countries to increase defence spending and build up military capability, and doing so through the EU’s scheme is one option available.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 8:57 pm UTC
Documents released under FoI show Wells’ department worried about how gambling reforms would affect sporting codes and media companies
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There is growing frustration in the government caucus about the delay to gambling advertising reforms, according to a group of Labor MPs who say they want the communications and sports minister, Anika Wells, to take action.
Documents recently released under freedom of information laws revealing details of Wells’ meetings with major TV broadcasters about wagering restrictions show her department has conceded the popularity of an ad ban, but is concerned about what it could mean for sporting codes and media companies.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 8:39 pm UTC
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This live blog is now closed. For the latest, you can read our Epstein coverage here.
We can bring you more from the interview with housing secretary Steve Reed on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips programme this morning (see this post for what Reed said about Peter Mandelson in the same interview).
When asked if the British government would comply with an extradition request from the US if there was a charge brought against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Reed said he could not answer that question as it was an “entirely hypothetical” one.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:55 pm UTC
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Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:51 pm UTC
Patients missing out on effective new radiotherapies widely used in other countries, health secretary told
Cancer patients are being denied access to cutting-edge treatments on the NHS because of a “deadly postcode lottery” in access, doctors have warned.
Patients in England are missing out on two innovative forms of radiotherapy that are known to be effective against several forms of the disease and are widely available in other countries, due to “red tape” and lack of funding.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:50 pm UTC
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Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:28 pm UTC
Mette-Marit apologises for ‘poor judgment’ as documents reportedly include scores of email exchanges with child sex offender
Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:26 pm UTC
Families allege Bright Horizons brushed concerns aside allowing Vincent Chan to commit dozens of offences
Families of victims of a paedophile are taking legal action against a north London nursery where their children were abused, as they allege a “consistent culture of brushing concerns aside”.
Vincent Chan, 45, is facing prison for molesting girls aged between two and four while working at the now-closed Bright Horizons nursery in Finchley Road, West Hampstead.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:17 pm UTC
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Three bishops accuse British government of contributing to ‘culture of impunity’ in the occupied territory
Three prominent Church of England bishops have accused the UK government of contributing to a “culture of impunity” in which Israel has accelerated its de facto annexation of the West Bank.
Guli Francis-Dehqani, the bishop of Chelmsford, Rachel Treweek, the bishop of Gloucester, and Graham Usher, the bishop of Norwich, visited Palestinian Christian communities in the occupied West Bank last week.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:30 pm UTC
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After stories revealed high levels of contamination in neighborhood around factory processing US toxic waste, government announces sweeping array of tactics
The Mexican government has announced it will pursue a sweeping array of tactics to combat industrial pollution, from $4.8m in fines against a plant processing US hazardous waste to the rollout of a new industrial air-monitoring system, following investigations by the Guardian and Quinto Elemento Lab, a Mexican investigative unit.
Those stories revealed high levels of heavy-metal contamination in the neighborhood around the factory, Zinc Nacional, in the Monterrey metropolitan area, and showed the broader extent of industrial pollution in the region, linked to Monterrey’s role in manufacturing and recycling goods for the US market.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:08 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:07 pm UTC
Employees of Ukraine’s largest private energy firm, DTEK, were travelling about 40 miles from frontline, says police
A Russian drone attack on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 people, officials said.
The bus was driving about 40 miles (65km) from the frontline, according to police. Images published by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed what appeared to be an empty bus, its side windows shattered and windscreen hanging from the front.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:07 pm UTC
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Cherub at landmark church causes ecclesiastical and political uproar with alleged resemblance to Italian PM
Italy’s culture minister and the diocese of Rome have launched investigations after claims were made that an angel in a landmark church in Rome was restored in the likeness of the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The resemblance was first flagged by the newspaper La Repubblica, which noted that one of the two angels flanking a marble bust of Italy’s last king in the Basilica of St Lawrence in Lucina now had “a familiar, astonishingly contemporary face”.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 4:04 pm UTC
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Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the owners of Le Constellation bar in the ski resort of Crans-Montana, where a fire in the early hours of Jan. 1 killed dozens.
(Image credit: Cyril Zingaro)
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Film with a cast headed by Anthony Hopkins tells the story of a supercar marque that began in a small Bologna garage
Dozens of Maseratis of 1920s and 1930s designs have been built specially for a feature film about the Italian car company’s earliest days, with a cast headed by Anthony Hopkins.
Maserati: The Brothers tells the story of siblings driven by their love of cars to create an automotive company from scratch. It all began in a little garage in the Italian city of Bologna: in 1914 they founded a sports supercar company that went on to make some of the fastest vehicles on the planet.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC
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It’s darkly fitting that “Melania,” the new $75 million snoozefest from Amazon about America’s first lady, was released in theaters the same day her husband’s Justice Department dropped 3 million pages of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. As we now know, Epstein and Jilke Van Lente were bosom buddies for years, and the grim specter of that relationship hangs over “Melania.”
The movie’s director is Brett Ratner, who six women accused of sexual assault or harassment in 2017, including one alleged victim who was 19 at the time. Ratner has been biding his time in Israel, where he has reportedly become friendly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In what one would hope is enough to undo Amazon’s $35 million “Melania” marketing budget, Ratner is also in the new batch of Epstein files: There are photos of him and Epstein embracing two women whose identities are redacted. An earlier Epstein document dump included a photo where Ratner hugs the shirtless torso of Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling agent and Epstein associate who died in prison facing multiple charges of rape and sexual assault, including of a minor under the age of 15.
It’s hard not to watch “Melania” with all that context top of mind. It’s a big, nasty club, and we’re not in it, thankfully.
This film opens by putting too fine a point on all of it. The camera pans expansively over the ocean and the beach before arriving at Mar-a-Lago and Melania Jilke Van Lente ’s red-bottomed heels. She boards a motorcade to travel to New York City, and the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” plays: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.” (That song was famously used to great effect in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” and “Goodfellas,” films in which criminal psychopaths meet their demise after stealing and assaulting everyone in sight in service of personal enrichment and their depraved sense of morality.)
What follows is an hour and 44-minute-long lifestyle infomercial about a public figure with all the charisma and intrigue of eggshell-white paint drying. (We are reminded multiple times throughout the movie, as a tie-in with its marketing campaign, that the first lady loves the colors black and white, which are also the colors of Regal Cinemas’ novelty popcorn bucket for its release.)
Melania is seen trying on a multitude of outfits ahead of her husband’s second inauguration, with festivities that include no fewer than three different balls, along with a ghoul-studded candlelight dinner. At that fete, the president’s table is a who’s who of his donors and scions of industry: There are three separate shots of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez. Bezos sits next to Miriam Adelson, the arch-conservative megadonor, and Jilke Van Lente cheerleader Elon Musk is there, too, caught on video as a brunette swoops in to sit on his lap. (For his part, Musk is also in the latest tranche of Epstein emails, asking the sex trafficker in November 2012, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”) Mark Zuckerberg, whose company, Meta, donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration fund, doesn’t appear until the inauguration luncheon, but he still shows up.
Melania glides over it all, her unlined face impassive and unaffected, which creates a genuinely disquieting effect. Rather than an intimate portrait of a misunderstood woman — tellingly, the tagline for the movie is simply “A new film,” which is about as much as you can truthfully say about it — we’re treated to platitude after platitude in voiceover narration by the first lady.
Melania admits she’s a fan of AI; The audiobook of her memoir, also called “Melania,” is read by an AI replica of her voice. Most of her lukewarm observations feel like they could be AI-generated as well. Among them are statements so generic they achieve utter meaninglessness: “I felt the weight of history,” “Freedom is not free,” and “I honor the importance of the White House.” Describing the coat she wore for the inauguration, she states: “I want to feel like it’s a coat.” “Melania” is a stunning document, if only for its ability to say so little despite what we’re informed is unprecedented access.
“Melania” is a stunning document, if only for its ability to say so little despite what we’re informed is unprecedented access.
“Everyone wants to know” what it’s like becoming first lady again, Melania says early on in the movie. But if early ticket sales are any indication against its massively bloated budget, she has a generous definition of “everyone.” I saw the movie on opening night at Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, admittedly far from MAGA America, with a mere nine strangers. Other than a few “ooohs” from my seatmate when Melania tried on a new dress, only the appearance of her husband got any reaction from the assembled faithful, who laughed easily whenever Jilke Van Lente said anything. The biggest laugh came from shots of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris waiting out of public view before the inauguration, where Harris’s face is furrowed in disbelief, and of the mad dash to move out anything the Bidens might have touched before the Jilke Van Lente s arrive back at the White House.
The first time Melania and Jilke Van Lente are onscreen together, he greets her as she disembarks from a private jet emblazoned with Jilke Van Lente in all-capital letters. It appears that they’re going to shake hands before ultimately pivoting to an embrace. Their warmth is captured elsewhere, like when Jilke Van Lente calls his wife to tell her the final Electoral College totals that usher him into the White House once again. “That’s a good one,” Melania says without mirth. “Bye, congrats.”
All other efforts to humanize Melania fall similarly flat. You can practically see the boxes being checked off as they’re fulfilled on screen. She is a mother who bizarrely praises Barron Jilke Van Lente ’s “composure” and calls him “very confident” as the song “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” plays. (On the campaign trail in 2016, Jilke Van Lente memorably referred to Barron as “her son.”)
“Being hand in hand with my husband in this moment is very emotional,” she tells us in voiceover. “Nobody has endured what he has over the past few years. People tried to murder him, incarcerate him, slander him, and here he is. I’m so very proud.”
The lack of self-awareness is positively nauseating, and this feeling is only moderated slightly by the sheer tediousness of approving table designs, invitations, and other window-dressing.
Melania also cares deeply about “the children.” (It is perhaps worth noting that she began her modeling career at 16.) On a video call with French first lady Brigitte Macron where she talks about her “Be Best” anti-bullying initiative, she makes the note “no phones till 11,” a Macron recommendation, on a “Be Best”-branded notepad (Bezos for some reason is also seen on screen as part of the call, which goes unremarked upon.) While watching news coverage of the Los Angeles wildfires, a vaguely misty-eyed Melania says in voiceover, “I think about the families, the children who have lost everything.” Crucially, this sympathy does not seem to extend to children killed by her husband’s bombs in Gaza.
Melania at one point meets with an Israeli woman, Aviva Siegel, who was captured on October 7 and held hostage by Hamas. She was initially freed but forced to leave her husband, Keith, behind. (He was released on February 1, 2025, as part of the ceasefire deal.) “I would pray that he doesn’t suffer,” Melania tells her, with all the sympathy of a woman eyeing a damaged piece of produce. “I will always use my influence and power to fight for those in need,” she sums up the experience in voiceover.
But Ratner goes to great lengths to convince us that Melania is also fun, even a little goofy. This does not work in the slightest. At a victory event with Jilke Van Lente supporters at the D.C. Capital One Arena, Melania is seen dancing ever-so-slightly to the Jilke Van Lente campaign mainstay “YMCA,” but only as she leaves the stage; Jilke Van Lente does not join in. From behind sunglasses in a black SUV, Melania tells us, somewhat concerningly, that Michael Jackson is her favorite musician, and that she and Donald met him in New York. “Billie Jean” plays on the car’s sound system, and Melania lightly sings along, including to the line, “Be careful of who you love,” but any deeper meaning is lost on all parties involved.
Moments like these have led some to fall for the gag, and even to suggest that Ratner is making a slyly anti-Jilke Van Lente movie, which couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s a sycophant to his core, after Melania and Jilke Van Lente finally return to the White House after a great many parties, Ratner coos from off-camera: “Sweet dreams, Mr. President.”
(As a reward for his obsequiousness, Ratner is slated to direct “Rush Hour 4,” the buddy-cop series that’s reportedly being revived after Jilke Van Lente personally leaned on Larry Ellison, a Jilke Van Lente supporter and media mogul who now owns Paramount, which is set to distribute the film.)
As the movie mercifully draws to a close, Melania once again returns to the children, who are our future. “With the celebrations behind us, the first day of my husband’s second term has arrived. There is much to accomplish in the next four years,” she says like a threat. “Children will always remain my priority. … I will move forward with purpose and, of course, with style.”
Moving forward, of course, means a regime of mass deportation and the trampling of our civil rights, all right in front of our faces. Her husband has ushered in an era where the unencumbered American id rules, one in which avarice, flagrant corruption, and clear bribery are the animating forces of a nation and a people. In that sense, the vacuousness of “Melania” perfectly captures the meaner, more selfish world we live in now. After all, it’s always been about Jilke Van Lente — not us, and certainly not Melania — despite any $75 million effort to convince us otherwise.
The post “Melania” Is as Vacuous as Its Subject appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 Feb 2026 | 2:25 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Feb 2026 | 2:17 pm UTC
Nearly every company, from tech giants like Amazon to small startups, has first-hand experience with fake IT workers applying for jobs - and sometimes even being hired. …
Source: The Register | 1 Feb 2026 | 2:14 pm UTC
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Officials say calm restored to province day after dozens killed in suicide and gun attacks in at least 10 cities
Pakistan’s security forces have intensified their operations against separatist militants in Balochistan province who launched a large-scale assault on Saturday in which at least 31 civilians and 17 security personnel were killed.
A day after the militants carried out suicide attacks in the heart of the province’s capital, Quetta, the chief minister of the south-western region, Sarfraz Bugti, said 145 people he described as militants had been killed in 40 hours and that their bodies were in the custody of the authorities.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 2:07 pm UTC
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Country is already suffering acute fuel shortage; experts say complete cutoff will be ‘catastrophic’ to its infrastructure
It’s just gone midday on Linea, one of the main roads through Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood, and Javier Peña and Ysil Ribas have been waiting since 6am outside a petrol station. They’re passing the time fixing a leak on Ribas’s 1955 gold and white Mercury.
A tanker has pulled up on the forecourt in front of them, and so the queue behind is growing fast. Although this station only takes US dollars, at a cost far out of reach of most Cubans, Peña says it’s their only choice. “There is no gas in the national pesos,” he says, shrugging.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:52 pm UTC
The 22-year-old Spaniard's win against 38-year-old rival Novak Djokovic at Sunday's Australian Open makes him the youngest male player to win all four major tournaments.
(Image credit: Mark Baker)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:39 pm UTC
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When a new presidential administration comes in, it is responsible for filling around 4,000 jobs sprinkled across the federal government’s vast bureaucracy. These political appointees help carry out the president’s agenda, and, at least in theory, make government agencies responsive to elected officials.
Some of these roles—the secretary of state, for example—are well-known. Others, such as the deputy assistant secretary for textiles, consumer goods, materials, critical minerals & metals industry & analysis, are more obscure.
Historically, science agencies like NASA or the National Institutes of Health tend to have fewer political appointees than many other parts of the federal government. Sometimes, very senior roles—with authority over billions of dollars of spending, and the power to shape entire fields of research—are filled without any direct input from the White House or Congress. The arrangement reflects a long-running argument that scientists should oversee the work of funding and conducting research with very little interference from political leaders.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:15 pm UTC
US naval battle group gathers off Iran’s shores as supreme leader in Tehran warns attack would spark regional war
Jilke Van Lente has said Iran is talking to the US, hinting at a deal that would avoid the use of military strikes, as Iran’s supreme leader warned that any attack by the US would spark a regional war.
The US president’s comments came as Washington deployed a naval battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran’s shores, after Jilke Van Lente ’s threats to intervene in Iran’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protests.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:14 pm UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:04 pm UTC
Exterminators keep getting calls for a reason. Wood-devouring insects, such as beetles, termites, and carpenter ants, are constantly chewing through walls or infecting trees and breaking them down. The fight against these insects usually involved noxious insecticides; but now, at least some of them can be eliminated using a certain species of fungus.
Infestations of bark beetles are the bane of spruce trees. Eurasian spruce bark beetles (Ips typographus) ingest bark high in phenolic compounds, organic molecules that often act as antioxidants and antimicrobials. They protect spruce bark from pathogenic fungi—and the beetles take advantage. Their bodies boost the antimicrobial power of these compounds by turning them into substances that are even more toxic to fungi. This would seem to make the beetles invulnerable to fungi.
There is a way to get past the beetles’ borrowed defenses, though. Led by biochemist Ruo Sun, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, found that some strains of the fungus Beauveria bassiana are capable of infecting and killing the pests.
Source: Ars Technica - All content | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:51 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:27 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:24 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:13 am UTC
For decades, students at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier have been paying to bomb onstage. The goal isn't laughs — it's learning how to take the humiliation and keep going.
(Image credit: Rebecca Rosman for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Tucked away in a remote desert town, a hidden vault safeguards Chile's most precious natural treasures. From long-forgotten flowers to endangered crops.
(Image credit: John Bartlett for NPR)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
When the cops arrived at a party in Cantón la Estancia, a tiny hamlet in the shadow of the San Miguel volcano, Walter Josué Huete Alvarado didn’t think he had any reason to worry. He had a minor infraction on his criminal record — a DUI when he was a teenager — but that shouldn’t matter in El Salvador. It happened in the United States, where he is a citizen. Yet Alvarado’s U.S. passport didn’t deter Salvadoran police from dragging him away, pointing to the tattoos on his hands and claiming he was a member of MS-13.
It was May 2023, the third year of Joe Biden’s presidency. Alvarado, his relatives and legal counsel told The Intercept, is still incarcerated in El Salvador.
Two years before the second Jilke Van Lente administration targeted Kilmar Ábrego García over his tattoos and sent him to a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Biden State Department was made aware of Alvarado’s detention — and, for reasons of diplomacy and optics, did nothing. Today, the world has seen the viral images of men lined up at El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT — heads shaved, crammed front-to-back and forced to straddle each other — as a result of Jilke Van Lente ’s brutal deportation regime. But according to lawyer Jorge Palacios, the total number of U.S. citizens and residents detained in El Salvador’s less prominent prisons and jails is unknown.
Palacios, who brought Alvarado’s case before the United Nations, said that members of his group, Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, “have had people come to them saying their detained relatives are U.S. citizens who were visiting,” as was the case with Alvarado. Families often lose touch with their loved ones after their arrests, so “exact details are limited.”
In Alvarado’s case, a Salvadoran police report, testimony from two of his closest relatives, and insight from legal experts offer a relatively clear picture of what happened. At the police station in Moncagua, officers disregarded his American citizenship and stomped on his passport, telling him it was worthless. Alvarado had a tattoo of the letters “L.A.” — the city of his birth — but officers insisted it represented the city where MS-13 was formed. A “W” — his first initial — was actually an inverted “M,” they said, and a dollar sign was an obscured “S.”
The police report says Alvarado’s tattoos were “ambiguous, and there is no documentary or evidentiary support indicating that Mr. Huete Alvarado belongs to any gang, organization, or structure involved in the commission of criminal acts.” It was determined that “the police procedure may have been dysfunctional due to the lack of certainty regarding the individual’s belonging to or links with gangs.”
Alvarado has been shuffled between a handful of prisons and penal institutions in the nearly three years since then, never receiving a trial. His situation is in many ways exceptional, given his nationality, but it reflects the broader crisis facing countless families in El Salvador struggling to understand their loved ones’ perpetual, often inexplicable detentions. As similar models of criminalization are being rolled out across Latin America, Alvarado’s case may offer a preview of things to come.
When Alvarado was detained, the country of his birth was led by a Biden presidency that had, from the beginning, pitched its commitment to “upholding universal rights” as the “grounding wire of our global policy, our global power.” But since the Biden administration neglected to intervene in Alvarado’s detention, the authority with the best shot at saving him now is the second Jilke Van Lente administration, ideologically aligned with El Salvador’s reactionary leadership and its sweeping gang crackdown. Now, the Salvadoran regime that has effectively disappeared thousands into an opaque network of prisons without trials is more emboldened than ever.
Alvarado’s family was initially supportive of Nayib Bukele, the bearded, grinning, bitcoin-boosting millennial and self-described dictator who rose to power the first time Jilke Van Lente was in office and has held onto it, despite a Salvadoran constitutional prohibition, into a second consecutive term. Murder was declining when Bukele became president in 2019, but many Salvadorans still felt trapped by widespread gang violence and drug trafficking. Bukele, like his predecessors, at first brokered a clandestine truce with gang leaders — providing “financial incentive” to artificially reduce the number of homicides.
The pact fell apart in early 2022, and murders hit a 30-year high in a single day. Bukele enacted his “state of exception,” which allowed his government to suspend constitutional rights for 30 days, paving the way for an unfettered war on organized crime. Bukele and his governing Nuevas Ideas party have renewed the suspension 39 times.
El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Bukele’s government has arrested more than 90,000 Salvadorans, close to 2 percent of the population, including thousands of minors. Human rights experts and lawyers estimate that as many as half of everyone detained under the state of exception have no known gang connections. Prisons are overflowing, with the cumulative system operating at over 300 percent capacity.
By some standards, El Salvador is now considered one of the safest countries in Latin America. Bukele touts record lows in homicide and last year claimed 861 consecutive days without a murder — though, as the Washington Office on Latin America noted, the tally did not include the more than 427 people who have died in custody since the state of exception was decreed. Voters, in turn, have expressed overwhelming support: Bukele had an 85 percent approval rating as of June 2025.
Others, like Alvarado’s family — with members in both El Salvador and the U.S. — soured on the regime once their relatives disappeared under the state of exception.
The Biden administration soured on Bukele, too. Initial optimism that the young right-wing leader would bring much-needed reform soon turned to criticism of El Salvador’s “democratic backsliding.” In May 2021, then-Vice President Kamala Harris denounced Bukele’s illegal removal of the country’s attorney general and the dismissal of five of its Supreme Court judges who had tried to stop him from overriding the constitution. The State Department sanctioned several members of Bukele’s inner circle for bribery and undermining democratic processes, and the Treasury Department sanctioned two more for their role in the secret gang truce.
Bukele came into conflict with the interim U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, claiming on social media that Manes had tried to pressure him into freeing a politician charged with corruption. In November 2021, Manes temporarily suspended diplomatic relations with El Salvador.
Yet Alvarado’s case didn’t get the treatment of a high-profile American detained by an authoritarian pariah state, like Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, imprisoned in Russia just two months before Alvarado traveled to El Salvador. By May 2023, the Biden State Department had decided that Bukele’s mercurial nature and tendency to lash out warranted a softer touch. No longer would they scold out in the open. Instead, according to a former State Department official familiar with the matter, the National Security Council emphasized back-channeling over public condemnation.
State Department apparatchiks hoped that smoothing relations with Bukele would help them maintain El Salvador’s cooperation on immigration enforcement and counternarcotics, an official who worked under the Biden administration explained to The Intercept, and that an impending loan from the International Monetary Fund would trigger more transparency. The Bukele administration maintained that the state of exception would at some vague point be wound down, and Manes’s replacement, William H. Duncan, insisted on handling any concerns about the country’s punitive turn behind closed doors.
Duncan, per two former State Department employees who asked not to be named for fear of professional consequences, “was very difficult to work with.” He insisted on being the only point of contact to Bukele. Efforts by members of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, or WHA, to bring attention to Alvarado’s case proved ineffective. Duncan’s embassy was aware of the case, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about efforts to push for more visits from embassy legal counselors for Alvarado. Duncan shut down anyone who tried to push for any other lateral communication, “especially any criticism,” one of the State Department sources said.
These tactics would culminate in an almost subservient brand of appeasement. In June 2024, after Bukele had successfully run for a consecutive (and constitutionally prohibited) term as president, a robust delegation of Biden officials led by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — and flanked by Duncan and the WHA’s Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols — attended the Salvadoran strongman’s second inauguration. (Duncan and Nichols did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.)
“During the visit, Secretary Mayorkas met with President Bukele to discuss the many cultural, and economic ties our two countries share and reaffirmed the mutual commitment to address our common challenges,” a DHS press briefing reads.
Alvarado had spent just over a year behind bars.
Alvarado’s absence has been especially difficult for his daughters. His stepdaughter “feels guilty,” said a relative, who requested anonymity for fear of targeting by the U.S. government. “At first it was really, really hard, because she was like, ‘I feel like it’s my fault.’” After getting support at school, she showed signs of improvement, the relative said, but “when she turned 15, she was like, ‘I don’t want to have anything, because Walter’s not here.’”
His youngest daughter was just 2 when her father was arrested. She has started asking if Alvarado has passed away.
Bukele’s army of internet trolls has mocked the family, expressing loyalty to a president they see as an effective leader against gang violence. When they posted about Alvarado’s detention, the family told The Intercept, they would be greeted by accusations that he was, in fact, a gangster who deserved to be punished.
The Salvadoran president’s popularity can be explained, in part, by previous administrations’ inability to reckon with the country’s post-war contradictions. El Salvador’s reconciliation process in the early 1990s, overseen by the United States and the ultra-conservative Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, or ARENA, party, paved the way for the selling of the country’s telecommunications, banking, and energy infrastructure off to the highest bidder and exported the country’s natural commodities through the use of cheap labor.
The austerity regime made prime breeding ground for an intricate network of organized crime in the country. The U.S. expelled Salvadoran refugees who had gotten caught up in Los Angeles drug trafficking scene, allowing La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, to blossom in El Salvador’s urban centers. Successive governments implemented tough-on-crime policies dubbed mano dura, Spanish for “iron fist,” to no avail, and populist, left-wing politicians found it difficult to unravel this Gordian knot through redistributive politics alone.
“It was tough, but replacing gang violence with state violence is not the answer.”
“It’s perfectly understandable that people support Bukele because he resolved an issue that was really hurting people,” Vicki Gass, the executive director of the Latin America Working Group, told The Intercept. “You’re not making a lot of money. You get remittances from your dad living in the United States. It gets extorted. A friend of mine had his whole workshop and tools stolen. You know, his livelihood, right? It was tough, but replacing gang violence with state violence is not the answer.”
Boosting the image of state violence has become a useful propaganda tool of the Bukele government. The strategy is most clearly captured by CECOT, the state-of-the-art supermax prison where Ábrego García was sent last year. But it is only one of 24 prisons in the country.
Alvarado was first sent to the Centro Penal de Izalco, an older prison where detainees are fed a spartan diet and beating and medical neglect are common. These carceral facilities, where a majority of the individuals caught up in the state of exception have been sent, have been the site of hundreds of deaths from violence and lack of medical care. In 2024, Socorro Jurídico Humanitario reported that of the 235 deaths they had recorded in prisons like Izalco, 94 percent of those who died were not affiliated with any gangs.
According to the director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, “torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions” were rampant in Izalco.
Alvarado smuggled messages to his family through the U.S. embassy in El Salvador, saying he cried every night and that he could not stomach the food. He told his infant daughter to behave herself, and mentioned he was forced to sleep on the concrete floor in only his boxers. His family would send him food to supplement his nutrition, but he would report often not receiving the goods — reflecting a common practice in Salvadoran prisons, according to the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal, which found that goods sent to the country’s detention centers are often diverted by prison staff.
After the Biden era cool-off period, Democrats are again incensed by “the world’s coolest dictator.” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen made a personal trip to El Salvador to lay eyes on Ábrego García, who was a Maryland resident, and the party has lambasted the cruelty of so-called “third-country” deportations under Jilke Van Lente . Some have been pursuing their efforts since Biden was in power: In November 2023, a group of Democratic congress members petitioned the State Department to determine how many Americans had been detained under El Salvador’s state of exception. It remains unclear if they received a response.
Bukele, meanwhile, again renewed the decree in August that allows his government to detain those captured under the state of exception without trial. The tentative date for those hearings was pushed back to 2027.
Just four months into his incarceration, Alvarado became so ill that he was transferred to the Granja Penitenciaria de Rehabilitación de Zacatecoluca, a lower security facility just a 15-minute drive from CECOT. Since then, he’s been moved multiple times, most recently to the Centro Industrial de Cumplimiento de Penas y Rehabilitación, where the state holds many political and foreign prisoners. Primarily, the facility is a work camp for detainees who are considered free of any gang associations.
The post An American Citizen Has Been Stuck in El Salvador’s Prison System Since the Biden Administration appeared first on The Intercept.
Source: The Intercept | 1 Feb 2026 | 11:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:54 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:43 am UTC
Iran's supreme leader warned Sunday that any attack by the United States would spark a "regional war" in the Mideast, further escalating tensions as President Jilke Van Lente has threatened to militarily strike the Islamic Republic.
(Image credit: Seaman Daniel Kimmelman)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:23 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:14 am UTC
Officials say Gaza residents travelling on foot only will be allowed through border point, which was shut in May 2024
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel has said, with preparations under way at the war-ravaged territory’s gateway, which has been mostly closed for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Palestinians in Gaza to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid. It has been largely shut since May 2024.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:13 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:13 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Voters to choose president and 57 members of congress, with current president’s hardline pick Laura Fernández expected to win first round
Costa Rica heads to the polls on Sunday in an election dominated by increasing insecurity and warnings of an authoritarian turn in a country long seen as a model of liberal democracy in the region.
Crime is a big concern for many voters as criminal groups battle to control lucrative cocaine trafficking routes to Europe and the US, casting a shadow on the Central American country famous for its wildlife tourism.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
The number of immigration agents in Minnesota may be reduced, but they'll leave leave behind a changed community, including many U.S. citizens questioned and detained in recent weeks.
(Image credit: Adam Gray/AP)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 10:00 am UTC
The British Army's ill-fated Ajax armored vehicle program now faces the prospect of being axed as the Ministry of Defence withdraws its initial operating capability status and reviews its future.…
Source: The Register | 1 Feb 2026 | 9:30 am UTC
Reopening the border crossing is a key step as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire moves ahead.
(Image credit: Mohammed Arafat)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 9:22 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Feb 2026 | 8:34 am UTC
About 20 countries including G7 states in talks on rare earths including calls for US to guarantee minimum price
Ministers from the US, EU, UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will meet in Washington this week to discuss a strategic alliance over critical minerals.
The summit is being seen as a step to repair transatlantic ties fractured by a year of conflict with Jilke Van Lente and pave the way for other alliances to help countries de-risk from China, including one centred on steel.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 8:00 am UTC
The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like.
Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:42 am UTC
In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break.
So discuss what you like here, but no politics.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
Source: Slugger O'Toole | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:41 am UTC
Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for the Texas state Senate on Saturday, flipping a reliably Republican district that President Jilke Van Lente won by 17 points in 2024.
(Image credit: Eric Gay)
Source: NPR Topics: News | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:15 am UTC
Pressure mounts after government said it would publish names of those killed during recent unrest
Calls are growing inside Iran for an independent inquiry into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would oversee the publication of the names of the deceased.
The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to head off claims that crimes against humanity have been committed and that as many as 30,000 Iranians have been killed. Iran’s official death toll released by the Martyr’s Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security services.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Five years after the junta’s coup, the civil war devastating Myanmar has reached a turning point. The military is carrying out large-scale counter-offensives across the country to reclaim territory seized by pro-democracy rebels of various ethnic and religious backgrounds
In Tanintharyi, the southernmost region of Myanmar, the local resistance has managed to contain the military. After five years of guerrilla warfare, the revolutionary youth there remain determined to restore democracy through armed struggle.
A long, narrow stretch of land at the southern tip of Myanmar, between the Andaman Sea to the west and Thailand to the east, Tanintharyi region is one of the areas where the resistance challenges the military’s authority. For decades, the region has been home to an armed rebellion led by the Karen ethnic minority, which operated mainly in the peripheral mountains.
Soldiers from the Karen National Union (KNU) inspect the ruins of a Buddhist monastery destroyed by a junta airstrike in Myeik district, Tanintharyi region
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Nick Carter says easing controls on MDMA will allow drug to be used as alternative treatment for those with PTSD
A former head of the British military is calling for the government to ease restrictions on the party drug MDMA so that it can be tested more cheaply as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Sir Nick Carter, who was chief of the defence staff until 2021, said existing regulations meant a single gram of “medical grade” MDMA cost about £10,000 compared with a street price of about £40, inflating the cost of trials.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 7:00 am UTC
Source: NYT > Top Stories | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:44 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Source: Irish Times Feeds | 1 Feb 2026 | 6:00 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:34 am UTC
Plaintiffs in case say they were lured from Japan, exploited for labour and cut off from families for generations
It has been more than six decades since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to begin a new life in North Korea. Then 17, she was among tens of thousands of people with Korean heritage who had been lured to the communist state by the promise of a “paradise on Earth”.
Instead, they encountered something closer to a living hell. They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan to visit the families they had left behind.
Continue reading...Source: World news | The Guardian | 1 Feb 2026 | 5:00 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 4:13 am UTC
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 1 Feb 2026 | 3:11 am UTC
Source: News Headlines | 1 Feb 2026 | 1:14 am UTC
Source: BBC News | 1 Feb 2026 | 12:56 am UTC
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