The US Department of Health and Human Services last month laid off almost the entire office that administers Title X, the nearly $300 million government program providing birth control and other family planning services to 2.8 million low-income patients a year. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/u...

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports a spike in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank. There have been more than 120 attacks across at least 70 villages since the start of the olive harvest on Oct 9. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_gQ...

Her sister wrote my favorite essay about her. She points out that RF would have been famous even if she'd never looked at DNA www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Although Raymond Gosling credits Watson as having “a very lively mind,” it is Rosalind Franklin whom he remembers as “a great experimentalist”: "She was very workmanlike in the laboratory & had fierce powers of concentration.” My essay, The American Scholar: theamericanscholar.org/double-stand...

Same.

"Dick Cheney is an EVIL ROBOT." Photographed (by me) at a protest marching past the 2004 Republican National Convention, New York City. Dick Cheney, January 30, 1941 – November 3, 2025, Vice-President of the United States, "considered by many to be the architect of the Iraq War."

Facial prosthesis, c.1917. THREAD for #RemembranceSunday🧵 From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. /1

More than 100 nations were poised last month to approve a historic deal to slash pollution from cargo ships. The deal was effectively killed after what foreign diplomats called “nasty” and “very personal” threats made by State Department officials. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/c...

In 1958, peering through her microscope at tissue she had cultured from children with Down syndrome, Dr. Gautier saw that every cell had an extra chromosome. “I was alone, but I shouted out, ‘Yes!’” she told New Scientist magazine in 2014. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/h...

Physician-researcher Dr. Marthe Gautier discovered that people with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome; a fellow doctor stole the credit. Dr. Gautier died on April 30, 2022. She was 96. For some reason the New York Times published her obituary yesterday. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/h...

“This is something I experienced as a woman, but it is something that all women in our country experience,” said Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. “If I do not file a complaint, where does that leave all Mexican women? www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

“This was predicted and predictable,” said Kate Ferguson, co-director of Protection Approaches. “We knew this would happen. I don’t think that there can be a head of state or foreign minister who wasn’t warned and didn’t know that this was a serious likelihood.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

"The Latvian Parliament votes in favor of withdrawing from the treaty against violence against women."

my god, what a paragraph (from tonight's @hcrichardson.bsky.social)

"She'd be so proud. He's just Andrew." The family of the late Virginia Giuffre, who accused ex-Prince Andrew of sexual abuse, have celebrated his title of 'prince' being stripped from him as a victory which is "unprecedented in history". www.bbc.com/news/article...

Extraordinary. Cancer patients who received either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy were more than twice as likely to be alive after three years compared with those who didn’t receive either vaccine. theconversation.com/covid-19-mrn...

Physician-researcher Dr. Marthe Gautier discovered that people with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome; a fellow doctor stole the credit. Dr. Gautier died on April 30, 2022. She was 96. For some reason the New York Times published her obituary yesterday. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/h...

“We thought [...] that the radical right was always going to become bigger — that they were bulletproof,” said Kristof Jacobs, a political scientist at Radboud University. “Not so bulletproof after all.” Center-left party in the Netherlands staged major gains: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/w...

Casey Means, whose Senate hearings for Surgeon-General begin on Thursday, is a strange choice for the job. She is simultaneously boastful of her academic accomplishments and insistent on their uselessness. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/o...

A tiny spider thought to have vanished for ever from the UK has been rediscovered. Aulonia albimana, "the white-knuckled wolf spider" was found on the Isle of Wight in a spot grazed by a flock of Hebridean sheep. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

According to a new report by the Arava Institute, an environmental research institute based in Israel, Gaza is covered with an estimated 61 million tons of rubble, much of which contains asbestos, unexploded munitions, and unburied human remains. grist.org/internationa...

The risk that Gaza now faces is that predictable clashes over security and governance not only slow the roll-out of the next phase but make it unachievable. One possible result is that the first phase simply lingers on. @crisisgroup.org reports www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

Utah’s Weber State University canceled a 2-day conference on censorship after administration claimed that they risked running afoul of a state law unless the event itself was censored. "We are censoring discussions of censorship," Jonathan Friedman @penamerica.bsky.social pen.org/organizers-o...

A federal judge in the Eastern District Court of Virginia today ordered the Department of Defense to restore all books banned in five schools at U.S. military installations, a ruling @penamerica.bsky.social called a victory for the freedom to read. pen.org/press-releas...

The Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), one of the most elusive small cats, was photographed for the first time in Arunachal Pradesh. Its documentation in the northeast Indian state extends the species’ known range in the eastern Himalayas. @mongabay.com india.mongabay.com/2025/10/surv...

When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, the Israeli government had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A carnivorous “death ball” sponge is among 30 previously unknown deep-sea species found by scientists in one of the most remote parts of the planet. Scientists found new iridescent scale worms, new isopods and amphipods, and rare gastropods and bivalves. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“With less than a month before Thanksgiving, no federal worker should have to turn to a food pantry to help prepare the family table,” said Everett B. Kelley, head of the American Federation of Government Employees. Federal employees continue to go without pay. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/u...

Anti-immigrant rhetoric of rising Tory star Katie Lam sounds a lot like the 1930s, writes @arusbridger.bsky.social @prospectmagazine.co.uk She says her family became “totally assimilated into British life.” Many German Jews felt similarly assimilated. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

This horror isn’t what a ceasefire looks like, and it’s clear that our fight is still ahead of us. We’ll be talking about our Palestinian-Jewish grassroots struggle for an end to the violence and bloodshed in cities on the East Coast starting next week. Please join us. 🔗⬇️ (1/2)

SNAP benefit freeze will leave millions nationwide struggling to pay for food – including 472,711 people in Philadelphia @us.theconversation.com Félice Lê-Scherban theconversation.com/snap-benefit...

Governments spent US$956 billion on net fossil fuel subsidies in 2023, more than triple the annual amount pledged to support climate-vulnerable countries. Fifteen countries spent more subsidizing fossil fuels than on their entire national health budgets. @thelancet.com www.who.int/news/item/29...

On Nov 3, 2025, at 5:30 PM (EST), I’ll join a panel at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs on Human Rights & World Sports: The Saudi Arabia Case and Sport-washing. We’ll discuss how investigative journalism and international law can challenge state power.

Mayor Adams compared pro-Palestinian protests to ‘Ku Klux Klan’ protests,” the suit continued. At one point in the meeting, the suit claims Adams stated: “I don’t know the difference between a Palestinian, Pakestinian [sic], Arab, Muslim, I have no idea.” www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/28/l...

Katie Lam's maternal grandmother came to Britain in 1937, aged 13, a refugee from Nazi Germany. Her great-great-grandfather, social democratic politician Paul Heide, imprisoned by Hitler in 1933, escaped, fled to Czechoslovakia, & found refuge in England. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

UN says aid groups have established 20 new nutrition centers and 20 mobile health teams in Gaza. They have also delivered 32,000 jars of baby food and enough therapeutic food to treat more than 1,200 children suffering from acute malnutrition. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/n...

Roughly one in eight people in the United States receive food stamps, which average around $187 a month. More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its recent refusal to fund food stamps during the government shutdown. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/u...

Consolidating Gaza’s truce amid allegations of breaches on both sides and flares of violence is an immediate need. Outside powers must pressure and incentivise Israel and Hamas to hold to the ceasefire. www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-...

“I want to sing for you songs that will take you back to Afghanistan and give you love for one another.” After living for decades in exile, chased by war and religious bans, Afghan singer Naghma persists in singing to her people. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/w...

“All our tech businesses are turning awful,” Doctorow writes in his book, "Enshittification". “And they’re not dying. We remain trapped in their carcasses, unable to escape.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/b...

After years of research, scientist Leonid Pshenichnov concluded Russia + China cannot continue fishing krill, the main food source of many marine creatures, at current rates without risking breakdown of entire ocean ecosystems. Russia had him arrested: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Lovely story about football players who choose nursing after retiring from the field. A football career is actually solid preparation for nursing; players learn “mental toughness and resiliency.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/w...

"Ay invader you don’t care that this forest is our home it is our mother and daughter we know every inch of her skin..." [You came with strangers to trample the grass] Irma Pineda Translated from the Didxazá & Spanish by Wendy Call @poetrydaily.bsky.social poems.com/poem/You-cam...

Ten people went on trial in Paris on October 27, charged with sexist online harassment of Brigitte Macron. Macron filed a defamation lawsuit in the US at the end of July, linked to a rumor amplified and repeated online that Brigitte Macron was assigned male at birth. www.lemonde.fr/en/france/ar...

The Taliban have gutted Afghanistan’s media since taking control of the country in August 2021, @hrw.org says.They have subjected the remaining news outlets to surveillance and censorship, and punished journalists and other media workers for any perceived criticism. www.hrw.org/news/2025/10...

Wind power has cut £104 billion from UK energy costs since 2010 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

In his only interview before next month’s Cop30 climate summit, UN secretary-general António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"Contrary to what the far-right populists claim, people are convinced of the reality of climate change and believe it is primarily due to human activity. People expect their governments to act to limit warming, but they demand that such action be effective and fair." www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/a...

Saulo Jennings was asked to cater a climate event for Prince William and 700 guests. But omitting the famous Amazonian fish was like “asking Iron Maiden to play jazz.”