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Recent Articles
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Laura Lynch of the Dixie Chicks killed
Laura Lynch, one of the original members of the singing group that would become famous as the Dixie Chicks, died in an automobile accident in West Texas. She was 65 years old. The Texas Department of Public Safety said that Lynch was in a head-on crash near El Paso on Friday. The trio, now known as the Chicks, announced on Instagram about Lynch's passing. Musical They've taken "Dixie" out of their name and are about to put out their first album in 14 years. It may be the finest record of the Chicks' troubled history. The band announced in a statement, "We are shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Laura Lynch, a founding member of The Chicks." "We have a special place in our hearts … |
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Abortion is When the State Claims Your Body
Editorial There is a particular cruelty to laws that pretend to be principled while operating as punishment. They arrive draped in solemn language—“life,” “values,” “tradition”—but what they deliver is not morality. It is power, exercised downward, toward the people least able to absorb it. When courts reinstate abortion bans, as they have again, they are not adjudicating an abstract ethical puzzle. They are making a decision about whose pain counts, whose future is disposable, and whose body the state is entitled to commandeer. Abortion is not a thought experiment. It is not a philosophy seminar. It is a medical reality that intersects with rape, poverty, disability, illness, coercion, and … |
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Melania Trump set to make history at UN Security Council meeting
With the United States assuming the rotating presidency of the 15-member council for March, Trump’s office confirmed the meeting would "emphasise education’s role in advancing tolerance and world peace." Children in conflict have been a signature issue for Trump, who previously wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of a summit with Donald Trump, an effort that reportedly led to children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war reuniting with their families. This engagement comes amidst ongoing criticism of the United Nations by Trump, who has repeatedly stated the 193-member body has not lived up to its potential. His administration has withdrawn the U.S. from UN organizations, includin… |
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Is A Human Journey To Mars Feasible
For more than half a century, Mars has functioned less as a destination than as a promise. It is the place we gesture toward when Earth feels politically exhausted, environmentally strained, or philosophically cramped. Mars is invoked when budgets swell, when rockets roar, when speeches reach for grandeur. It has become the cosmic equivalent of a clean slate, a second chapter written in rust-red dust. But promises are easy to make when they sit 225 million kilometers away. The idea of sending humans to Mars has migrated from science fiction to press release to business plan, and now to something like cultural assumption. The question is no longer “Should we?” but “When?” That shift alone sho… |
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Energy Realism. Physics Over Slogans
Opinion | Feature Editorial Energy Realism: Physics Over Slogans The Grid at Midnight Picture a city at midnight. The wind has calmed, solar panels are dark, and the grid leans heavily on backup power. Politicians speak of “green revolutions,” but engineers know the reality: electrons obey physics, not slogans. The global conversation about energy has become strangely unserious for something so foundational to modern life. We cling to absolutes, divide into camps, and prefer moral certainty over physical reality. The result is passion without progress. Part I: Energy as Physics, Not Branding Energy systems are not ideological constructs. They are physical networks governed by constraints: st… |
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The World Is Burning Quietly While We Argue About Nothing
Letters To Editor By Alan Fitpatrik It has become strangely normal to live in a moment where the planet is warming, wars drag on without clear ends, and scientific breakthroughs quietly move forward while political arguments stay stuck in place. We are surrounded by evidence of what humans can do at their best, yet governed too often by systems that reward delay, fear, or brute control. This contrast is not abstract. It shows up in flooded neighborhoods, in families displaced by conflict, and in the widening gap between those who can afford to adapt and those who cannot. When leaders cling to power through force or deception, it is rarely the powerful who suffer first. It is the poor, the yo… |
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Rebecca Grossman murdered 2 boys when she sped through a crosswalk
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Rebecca Grossman murdered two young brothers when she sped through a Westlake Village crosswalk, a jury found two years ago. Now, a state appeals court has upheld that verdict. Grossman, the co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, is serving 15 years to life in state prison for the second-degree murders of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and 8-year-old Jacob Iskander. On Tuesday, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the Feb. 23, 2024, conviction of the wife of renowned surgeon Peter Grossman. Rebecca Grossman’s six-week trial was filled with dramatic testimony and evidence that she struck the bo… |
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AI companies accused of copyrighted infringement
Opinion | Editorial The open letter signed by Scarlett Johansson and hundreds of other creatives didn’t land because it was polite. It landed because it said the quiet part out loud: training commercial AI systems on copyrighted work without permission is theft dressed up as inevitability. The industry has spent years insisting this was a philosophical debate about progress. It isn’t. It’s a business choice—and a corrosive one. The letter, organized through the Human Artistry Campaign, rejects the soothing language that has insulated AI companies from accountability. “Learning,” “absorption,” “transformation.” These words are doing legal work, not descriptive work. They exist to blur a simpl… |
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Trump to raise US global tariff to 15 percent after Supreme Court ruling
United States President Donald Trump has doubled down on his new global tariffs, raising them from 10 percent to 15 percent, days after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping levies on imports. The move on Saturday came as businesses and governments around the world sought repayment for the estimated $133bn that Washington has already collected. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump announced the raise “effective immediately” and said the move was based on a review of the “ridiculous, poorly written and extraordinarily anti-American decision” issued by the Supreme Court on Friday. By a six-to-three vote, the court had ruled that it was unconstitutional for Trump to unilaterally s… |
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The exodus of California tech billionaires from the Golden State to Florida Gold Coast
This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. MIAMI and PALM BEACH, Fla. — Last December, a large coterie of Silicon Valley billionaires descended upon Miami to attend Art Basel, the ritzy, contemporary art fair that marks the end of the moneyed set’s yearly social calendar. Much of the buzz surrounded the spectacle of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, among the world’s richest men, docking his 466-foot, $450-million yacht, the Dragonfly, in Biscayne Bay while he stepped ashore to view the art installations. But the chatter pivoted quickly among a contingent of a dozen California billionaires. Weeks earlier a new ballot measure — backed by the SEIU-United… |
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Gemini 3 Flash frontier intelligence built for speed
Gemini 3.5 Flash delivers intelligence that rivals large flagship models on multiple dimensions, at the speeds you have come to expect from the Flash series. It’s our strongest agentic and coding model yet, outperforming Gemini 3.1 Pro on challenging coding and agentic benchmarks like Terminal-Bench 2.1 (76.2%), GDPval-AA (1656 Elo) and MCP Atlas (83.6%), and leading in multimodal understanding (84.2% on CharXiv Reasoning). When looking at output tokens per second, it is 4 times faster than other frontier models. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the latest model with frontier intelligence built for speed that helps everyone learn, build, and plan anything — faster. Google is releasing Gemini 3 Flash, a f… |
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Kids Used To Walk Home Alone
It was late afternoon when the school doors opened and the children spilled into the street like a sudden bright tide. Their uniforms flashed white and blue in the sun, their voices rose and fell in quick laughter, and in a moment the quiet pavement was alive with movement. Some mounted bicycles that seemed almost too large for them; others set off on foot in loose wandering groups, swinging their schoolbags as though the weight of the day had already been forgotten. My daughter stood beside me watching them. She is seven years old, an age at which the world is still full of small astonishments. A stray cat slipping beneath a plastic chair can hold her attention as firmly as any grand specta… |
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The Iran strikes could become a midterm reckoning for Trump and Israel
It is clear that the latest United States-Israel-Iran war stands to fundamentally reshape the politics of the Middle East. Less obvious is its immediate impact on US politics, especially the 2026 midterm elections and the durability of US support for Israel. While the core of US President Donald Trump’s base has come out in support of the joint US-Israel strikes, some influential figures on the American right have denounced them. These condemnations have heightened tensions already at play within the MAGA (Make America Great Again) base, and dovetail with conservative concerns about Israel’s influence over US foreign policy. With the midterm elections approaching, this is not a good time for… |
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Spielberg and Coppola and Lucas is the toxic friendship that built modern Hollywood
A new book captures how Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg went from allies to rivals, driving a filmmaking revolution in the process. By Patrick Smith Removed from bookmarks I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice George Lucas should have died. It was 1962; the 17-year-old had just crashed his yellow Autobianchi convertible into a walnut tree, in Modesto, California. The car rolled, bounced and came to rest – it was “beyond mangled, flipped upside down and twisted like a crushed Coke can against the tree”, writes Paul Fischer in his new book, The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and the … |
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The Lost Promise of MSN News
There was a time when MSN felt like a gateway to the world. It offered curated access to reporting, a sense of connection to serious journalism, and the promise that a portal could simplify the chaos of the internet. For many readers, MSN was the homepage that greeted them each morning—a digital front page that seemed to carry authority. But that promise has been abandoned. What remains today is a hollowed-out shell of journalism, a site that has traded substance for tricks, rewrites, and endless clickbait. The decline of MSN is not just a story about one portal—it is a warning about what happens when corporate media prioritizes ad impressions over trust. The Mechanics of Decline The tactics… |
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Oscars security tighter than ever with 1 mile police buffer amid Iran war
It’s been more than two decades since the Oscars were celebrated as the United States was launching a war in the Middle East. In 2003, the Academy Awards ceremony at the Dolby Theatre occurred just days after U.S. troops invaded Iraq, elevating security concerns surrounding Hollywood’s biggest night so much that they tightened security like never before. This time around — with concerns heightened not only because of a war with Iran, but also a recent shooting at a university in Virginia and an attack on a synagogue in Michigan — security is going to be even more ironclad, authorities said. The dialed-up security, law enforcement and Oscars officials emphasize, is precautionary and there are… |
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Democrats fear rising that too many candidates in governor race could lead to a Republican victory
SAN FRANCISCO — Leaders of the California Democratic Party, along with liberal activists and loyal power brokers, are openly expressing fear that their crowded field of candidates running for governor may splinter the vote and open the door to a surprise Republican victory in November. Because of those concerns, the Democrats lagging at the bottom of the pack are being urged to drop out of the race to ensure that the party’s political dominance in statewide elections survives the 2026 election. “California Democrats are prepared to do what’s required,” state party chairman Rusty Hicks told reporters at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention on Friday. “We are ready and willing a… |
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Vance says he believes progress is being made in negotiations with Iran
United States Vice President JD Vance has said he believes progress is being made in negotiations with Iran, despite President Donald Trump rejecting Tehran’s latest proposal as unacceptable. The comments come as diplomatic efforts continue to prevent a collapse in the fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. Meanwhile, Brigadier-General Mohammad Akrami Nia says Iran’s military remains at “the highest level of readiness”, warning that “there is no room for retreat” as tensions with the US persist. Iranian officials have continued to signal they are prepared to respond to any escalation. Separately, Israel says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a “secret” visit to the United Arab… |
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Father Guns Down Mother In Front Of Daughter
A man used his vehicle to trap his former girlfriend before shooting her twice with a twelve gauge shotgun as their ten year old daughter watched, turning what began as a confrontation between former partners into a killing that has stunned the local community and left a child at the center of an unthinkable trauma. The woman had no clear path to escape once the suspect positioned his vehicle to block her movement. Witness accounts and charging documents indicate the shooting unfolded in front of the couple’s daughter, who saw her mother killed in broad daylight before emergency responders arrived at the scene. Authorities arrested the suspect shortly afterward. Prosecutors are expected to p… |
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Project Hail Mary Breaks Box Office Gravity
There is a moment—quiet, almost easy to miss—when a theater stops behaving like a marketplace and starts breathing like a single organism. Not the usual roar, not the hollow thunder of spectacle, but something tighter, more intimate. A held breath. A calculation unfolding in real time behind hundreds of eyes. That is where Project Hail Mary found its audience. Not in noise. In attention. And attention, in today’s box office economy, is the rarest currency left. The numbers came in like a contradiction. Week after week, the film refused to taper off the way industry models insist it must. Not a spike and collapse, not a front-loaded surge engineered by hype, but something steadier, stranger—l… |