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• ‘The odds are not in our favour’: who sets the Doomsday Clock – and what can they tell us about the future of humanity

  The Earth is getting hotter. Conflicts are raging, in the Middle East and Ukraine, each increasing the chance of nuclear war. AI is infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives, despite its unpredictability and tendency to hallucinate. Scientists, tinkering in labs, risk introducing new, deadly pathogens, more destructive than Covid. Our pandemic response preparedness has weakened. The Doomsday Clock – a large, quarter clock with no numbers, keeps ticking, counting down the seconds until the ap...

• Black lung surges in coal country as Trump slow-walks protections

  Coal mining has always been a hazardous occupation. But today’s miners face a new danger because they’re inhaling something worse than the coal dust that settles in lungs, triggering immune cells to form nodules, masses, and scarified black tissue. Most of the large coal seams in the mountains of Appalachia are gone now. To reach smaller seams, miners must cut through much more rock with high levels of quartz, which gets pulverized into crystalline silica. When tiny particles of silica are inh...

• Cyber-crime increasingly coming with threats of physical violence

  A few years ago, Tim Beasley opened his front door to discover that a small package had been left on the step. “I was like ‘what the heck is this?’. I opened the box, and went ‘oh!’, and I immediately threw it away.” Inside the box was a threatening note, alluding to physical violence if he didn’t back off. Beasley works for a US security firm called Semperis, and at the time he was involved in ransom negotiations on behalf of a US government organisation that had been hit by a cyber-attac...

• WestJet accused of tricky manoeuvre to deny dozens of passengers compensation after flight cancellations

  According to flight data, WestJet replaced the aircraft scheduled for Vanderwilk’s route with a different plane — one that had already been grounded for two days. Then, in the same minute, the flight was cancelled. After a previous Go Public report into similar complaints, dozens of passengers came forward with nearly identical stories. Go Public analyzed flight data tied to those complaints and identified 34 cases where passengers were denied compensation after their aircraft were swapped —...

• Researchers find 42% drop in Canadians visiting US metro areas amid Trump 2.0

  A new research tool that tracks cell phone activity has found a 42% drop in visitors from Canada to big metropolitan areas in the US that is much higher than official border-crossing data, suggesting Canadians during the second Trump administration are avoiding US cities in particular. Researchers from the University of Toronto said the tool showed a “year-over-year median decline of approximately 42% in Canadian visits to US metropolitan areas – significantly higher than official border-cross...

• The Iran War May Be the Best Argument Against Buying US Weapons | The Walrus

  Millennium Challenge was the name of a $250 million (US) war game, perhaps the most expensive in history, organized in 2002 by United States Joint Forces Command. It was designed to evaluate the new generation of American military technology—weapons, sensors, battlefield systems—in which the United States fought against a Middle Eastern adversary, either Iran or Iraq. Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper of the Marine Corps was given command of the enemy force. Riper, who, in later interviews,...

• Global race under way to trace passengers who left hantavirus ship before outbreak confirmed

  Authorities around the world are racing to trace dozens of passengers who disembarked from the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak before isolation measures were implemented. It emerged for the first time on Thursday that at least 29 passengers of 12 nationalities left the MV Hondius on 24 April after the first fatality, prompting a scramble to identify and track their movements since then. However, the World Health Organization ruled out any Covid-scale crisis. “This i...

• Ukraine war briefing: Distant strike on Russian missile ship in Caspian Sea

  Ukraine’s military has struck a Russian Karakurt-class small missile carrier on the Caspian Sea off Russia’s distant Dagestan region, the Ukrainian general staff said on Thursday. The port of Kaspiysk where the ship was reportedly located is more than 1,500km from Kyiv – and closer to Tehran, the Iranian capital. The extent of the damage was being assessed, the Ukrainian general staff posted online. Among its armaments, the Karakurt class can fire Kalibr cruise missiles which Moscow has used to...

• Senators press US military on Israel’s displacement campaign in Lebanon

  Democrats in the United States Senate have raised questions about the US military’s potential role in establishing vast “evacuation zones” in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran. In a letter addressed to Brad Cooper, head of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), 12 legislators said mass displacement orders “likely contravene international laws the United States has helped develop around humane warfare”. “The declaration of military evacuation zones has been used to permanently displace people and...

• Republicans claim widespread food stamp fraud. What's missing? Evidence.

  The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles. “In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand P...

• Epstein-linked billionaire accused of rape privately reached out to federal judge to defend his ‘good name’

  Lawyers for Leon Black, the billionaire investor who has been accused in a civil lawsuit of raping a teenage girl inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New York townhouse in 2002, reached out to a powerful federal judge in 2024 to raise doubts about the alleged victim’s claims, a Guardian investigation found. The move set off a months-long court proceeding, which was conducted outside of public view and led US district judge Jed Rakoff to reverse a $2.5m award that had been granted to the alleged victim in...

• New York real estate titan likens the phrase ‘tax the rich’ to racial slurs

  The phrase “tax the rich” can be “just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs”, according to the New York City billionaire Steve Roth, who said that the top 1% should be “praised and thanked”. Speaking on his company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, expressed his support for fellow billionaire and the CEO of Citadel, Ken Griffin, who was singled out in the 15 April announcement by New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, of the state’s first “pied-à-ter...

• Trump’s Killing Spree Isn’t Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into the U.S.

  The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both. “The administration has failed to explain the long-term objectives of this mission or provide an...

• UAE reports large fire at oil port as it accuses Iran of missile and drone attacks

  UAE reports large fire at oil port after drone attack from Iran We’re also hearing from local officials in Fujairah, who say a large fire has broken out at the key UAE oil port after it was hit by a drone attack from Iran. Fujairah is the Emirates’ biggest port and oil storage facility. Before the ceasefire, it was also targeted in drone attacks. In a statement shared on social media, the Fujairah Government Media Office says civil defence teams are working to contain the fire.

• Trump news at a glance: six in 10 Americans say president is doing a bad job

  Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit its worst level during his two terms in office, with more than six in 10 Americans disapproving of the president’s job performance. Trump’s rating is at its worst on the cost of living and other economic issues since launching his deeply unpopular war against Iran in February, which has plunged the global economy into an oil crisis and sent gas prices rocketing to a four-year high. Two-thirds of Americans now feel the country is headed in the wrong dire...

• Meta in row after workers who say they saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

  Meta is under pressure to explain why it cancelled a major contract with a company it was using to train AI, shortly after some of its Kenya-based workers alleged they had to view graphic content captured by Meta smart glasses. In February, workers at the company, Sama, told two Swedish newspapers they had witnessed glasses users going to the toilet, and having sex. Less than two months later, Meta ended its contract with Sama, which Sama said would result in 1,108 workers being made redunda...

• A financial crisis may be coming - it won't be like last time

  In 2007, investments in risky US mortgages went sour as homeowners struggled to pay. Funds run by Bear Stearns, BNP Paribas and other banks either had to freeze the ability of investors to take out their money, or liquidate the funds completely. These problems were the canaries in what proved to be a very deep financial coal mine. As nervousness spread, even banks eventually stopped lending to each other for fear of not getting their money back, creating a so-called “credit crunch”. That cause...