The Conversation

The FBI warned in a May 15 alert about an “ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign” in which “malicious actors have impersonated senior US officials.” The alert noted that the campaign includes “vishing” attacks. Vishing is a portmanteau of the words voice and phishing, and refers to using voice deepfakes to trick victims into giving information or money, or compromising their computer systems.

Australia has joined 28 international partners in calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and a lifting of all restrictions on food and medical supplies. Gazans, including malnourished mothers denied baby formula, face impossible choices as Israel intensifies its use of starvation as a weapon of war. In Gaza, survival requires negotiating what the United Nations calls aid “death traps”.

Over time, what started as a baseless conspiracy on obscure platforms has migrated into the mainstream. It has influenced rhetoric and policy debates, and even reshaped the American political landscape. To some, the delay in the release of the Epstein files feels like a betrayal, or even the possibility of his wrongdoing. Others are trying to reinterpret Trump’s actions through increasingly baseless conspiracy logic.

Accusing the media of liberal bias has been a consistent conservative complaint since the civil rights era, when white Southerners insisted news outlets were slanting their stories against segregation. But those charges of bias rarely survive empirical scrutiny. That independence in the United States – enshrined in the press freedom clause of the First Amendment – gives journalists the ability to hold government accountable, expose abuses of power and thereby support democracy. That’s what GOP lawmakers call a liberal bias.

In some parts of Russia, schoolgirls who become pregnant are being paid nearly $1,200 for giving birth and raising their babies. This new measure, introduced in the past few months across ten regions, is part of Russia’s new demographic strategy, widening the policy adopted in March 2025 which only applied to adult women. It is designed to address the dramatic decline in the country’s birthrate.

U.S. charitable giving increased 3.3% to US$593 billion in 2024, lifted by the strength of the economy. The annual report from the Giving USA Foundation, produced in partnership with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, found that this was the second-highest level on record after adjusting for inflation.

The appeal of carbon capture and storage, in theory, was that it could be bolted on to an existing factory with minimal changes to the core process and the carbon pollution would go away. Without the expectation that carbon capture will help them meet regulations, this may create space to focus on materials breakthroughs that could revolutionize manufacturing while solving industries’ emissions problems.

It’s not certain what the ABC and CBS settlements portend, but many are predicting they will produce a “chilling effect” within the network news divisions. Such an outcome would arise from fear of new litigation, and it would install a form of internal self-censorship that would influence network journalists when deciding whether the pursuit of investigative stories involving the Trump administration would be worth the risk.

As he has done since the 1980s, Grover Norquist continues to exert outsized influence over the GOP. For more than four decades, Norquist has been a relentless advocate for fiscal conservatism. He is the living embodiment of an ideological thread that stretches from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to current GOP leadership.

If you were to ask most people what causes cancer, the answer would probably be smoking, alcohol, the sun, hair dye or some other avoidable element. But the most important risk factor for cancer is something else: aging. That’s right, the factor most associated with cancer is unavoidable — and a condition that we will all experience.

The nearly 900-page bill that the president signed slashes incentives for wind and solar energy, batteries, electric cars and home efficiency while expanding subsidies for fossil fuels and biofuels. That will leave Americans burning more fossil fuels despite strong public and scientific support for shifting to renewable energy.

Iran is weakened and vulnerable after a 12-day war with Israel. Hezbollah, Tehran’s main ally in Lebanon, had already lost a lot of its fighters, arsenal and popular support during its own war with Israel in October 2024. Changing regional dynamics give the Lebanese state an opening to chart a more neutral orientation and extricate itself from neighboring conflicts that have long exacerbated the divided and fragile country’s chronic problems.

Research shows little connection between a shortfall of housing and rental affordability problems. Even a massive infusion of new housing would not shrink housing costs enough to solve the crisis, as rents would likely remain out of reach for many households. However, there are already subsidies in place that ensure that some renters in the U.S. pay no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The most effective solution is to make these subsidies much more widely available.

Texas Hill Country is known for its landscapes, where shallow rivers wind among hills and through rugged valleys. That geography also makes it one of the deadliest places in the U.S. for flash flooding.

Sea turtles ingest plastic debris of a variety of shapes and sizes, which can include pre-production pellets, foam, plastic bags, sheets, fishing gear and food wrappers. Their ingestion of plastic can come with a slew of negative impacts, some of which include starvation, emaciation and damage to the gut lining. Sea turtles can also become entangled in plastic nets and rope.

Many people who explicitly endorse egalitarian ideals, such as the notion that all Americans are deserving of the rights of citizenship regardless of race, still implicitly harbor prejudices over who’s “really” American. White and Asian participants in a study responded most quickly in matching the white faces with “American,” even when they initially expressed egalitarian values. Black Americans implicitly saw Black and white faces as equally American – though they too implicitly viewed Asian faces as being less American.

Top Republicans and Democrats alike are talking about the sudden rise of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a state representative who won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York on June 24, 2025, in a surprising victory over more established politicians. Some establishment Democratic politicians say they are concerned about how the democratic socialist’s progressive politics could harm the broader Democratic Party and cause it to lose more centrist voters.

Having the freedom to choose your own health care provider is something many Americans take for granted. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority ruled on June 25, 2025, in a 6-3 decision that people who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance don’t have that right.

The Canadian government advanced the controversial Strong Borders Act covering a wide swath of proposed legislative changes, from intensified border security measures to more restrictive immigration and asylum policies. Embedded within the proposed legislation are significant risks to digital privacy, along with increased executive authority — also known as “warrantless” powers — without judicial or civilian oversight. In these respects, the proposed Canadian legislation could be considered more worrisome than American travel bans.

Israel, with the assistance of U.S. military hardware, bombs an adversary’s nuclear facility to set back the perceived pursuit of the ultimate weapon. We have been here before, about 44 years ago. In 1981, Israeli fighter jets supplied by Washington attacked an Iraqi nuclear research reactor being built near Baghdad by the French government. It didn’t work. Had Saddam not invaded Kuwait over a matter not related to security, it is very possible that Baghdad would have had a nuclear weapon capability by the mid-to-late 1990s.

Europe’s decision-making processes are sub-optimal. Indeed, they were built for a different age. There is no shared voice on foreign policy – the EU has been able to say far less on Gaza than individual countries like Spain or the UK, for example. This may have the practical consequence of eroding the “moral leadership” that should still be Europe’s soft advantage.

Two simple notes – E and F – have become synonymous with tension, fear and sharks, representing the primal dread of being stalked by a predator. And they largely have “Jaws” to thank. Fifty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film – along with its spooky score composed by John Williams – convinced generations of swimmers to think twice before going in the water.

Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warning – and resistance.

This is not the first time Israel has advanced a broad interpretation of self-defence. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, which was under construction on the outskirts of Baghdad. It claimed a nuclear-armed Iraq would pose an unacceptable threat. The UN Security Council condemned the attack. As international law stands, unless an armed attack is imminent and unavoidable, such strikes are likely to be considered unlawful uses of force.

Large-scale protests have made Barcelona synonymous with social resistance to the negative impacts of predatory and extractive tourism, but it is far from alone: popular destinations such the Canary Islands, Málaga, and the Balearic Islands have all seen massive protests against the excesses of tourism over the last year.

The threat of domestic violence and terrorism is high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color. extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.

Israel’s conflict with Iran represents far more than another Middle Eastern crisis – it marks the emergence of a dangerous new chapter in nuclear rivalries that has the potential to reshape global proliferation risks for decades to come. What began with Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets has spiraled into the world’s first full-scale example of a “threshold war” – a new and terrifying form of conflict where a nuclear weapons power seeks to use force to prevent an enemy on the verge of nuclearization from making that jump.

Democratic leaders and a lone Republican senator decried the treatment of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California and called for an investigation after he was removed from a press conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Political polarization and a shift in American political decorum may have contributed to the shocking moment of an American senator being forcibly removed from a press conference.

Saturday’s military parade will occur amid bleak times for the U.S. military, as it experiences a multiyear decline in recruitment numbers. In the face of a pandemic and a strong civilian job market, the Army, Air Force and Navy all missed their recruitment goals in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the Army missed its quota by 25%.

Getting federal approval for permits to build bridges, wind farms, highways and other major infrastructure projects has long been a complicated and time-consuming process. Despite growing calls from both parties for Congress and federal agencies to reform that process, there had been few significant revisions – until now. In one fell swoop, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed a big part of the game.

When most people think of how governments stifle free speech, they think of censorship. That’s when a government directly blocks or suppresses speech. In the past, the federal government has censored speech in various ways. It has tried to block news outlets from publishing certain stories. It has punished political dissenters. It has banned sales of “obscene” books. Today, however, the federal government rarely tries to censor speech so crudely. It has less blatant but very effective ways to suppress dissent.

Adolf Hitler turned his birthdays into massive national events with military parades, mass rallies and highly estheticized scenes of domestic cheer. These displays blurred dominance and intimacy, fatherliness and force — an approach revived today in the digital era, where curated imagery and social media entangle leadership with affective spectacle.

Responding to street protests in Los Angeles against federal immigration enforcement raids, the president has ordered 2,000 soldiers from the California National Guard into the city on June 7 to protect agents carrying out the raids, and authorized the Pentagon to dispatch regular U.S. troops “as necessary” to support the California National Guard. The actions chillingly echo those that led up to the Kent State shootings. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are trained today to respond to riots and violent protests – but their primary mission is still to fight, kill, and win wars. It is not policing.

About 1 in 4 U.S. children – nearly 19 million – have at least one parent with substance use disorder. This includes parents who misuse alcohol, marijuana, prescription opioids or illegal drugs. Our estimate reflects an increase of over 2 million children since 2020 and an increase of 10 million from an earlier estimate using data from 2009 to 2014.

Diversity training is more effective when it’s personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology. This personalized approach worked especially well for one particular group: the “skeptics.” When skeptics received training tailored to them, they responded more positively – and expressed a stronger desire to support their organizations’ diversity efforts – than those who received the same training as everyone else.

Five factors often decides whether local newspapers survive: Newspapers follow the money, not community needs. Newspapers don’t adequately serve diverse communities. Population growth doesn’t always save newspapers. Left or right? Local papers die either way.