World, US, Culture, Market, and Sci-Tech News Aggregation from MSM and Independent News
Scientists have squeezed water between two diamonds to create an entirely new form of ice that’s solid at room temperature.
The ice, named ice XXI, forms when water is subjected to extreme pressure to become metastable — a precarious state that is made physically unstable by the slightest disturbance.
The researchers created ice XXI by supercompressing water between two diamonds and detected it with the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL), the world’s largest X-ray laser. The team found that the supercompressed water structurally changes from a high-density state to a very-high-density state.
Earth Is Getting Darker, Which Could Accelerate Global Warming
The planet’s brightness is dimming—changing rainfall, circulation and temperature
By Ryan Green edited by Andrea Gawrylewski
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli
The view of Earth from space is famously familiar—bright blue ocean, swirling gyres of white clouds, touches of terrestrial green. The luminosity of this image is the result of the sun’s rays shining on the planet, where they’re either reflected or absorbed by materials on Earth’s surface and in our atmosphere. But a new study that examined Earth’s overall brightness reveals that something eerie is happening to that familiar picture.
Scientists measure the planet’s brightness by factoring in how much light reaches earth and how much is reflected back out to space (as measured by orbiting satellites). This reflectivity is known as albedo, and Earth’s overall albedo has been decreasing for decades. But according to a new study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, that change isn’t uniform: the Northern Hemisphere is getting even darker than its southern counterpart. This loss of brightness could result in increased warming in the Northern Hemisphere, throwing Earth’s weather systems out of balance.
The AI Chip Wars Intensify: Patent Battles Threaten to Reshape Semiconductor Innovation FinancialContent
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Russia has been subjected to a blistering assault from a new type of Ukrainian missile, affectionately named the Flamingo.
This formidable cruise missile can carry a payload of 1,150kg, making it one of the largest missiles of its kind globally, and boasts a range of 3,000km, nearly double that of the fearsome Tomahawk missiles. This development comes as Trump seems hesitant to supply any US missiles.
Ukrainian weapons manufacturer Fire Point, the brains behind this creation, claim it can land within a mere 14 metres of its intended target.
Judge Orders TikTok to Produce Internal Records in Social Media Addiction Lawsuit Law Commentary
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FRESNO, CA — The Fresno County Board of Supervisors has approved a steep increase in fees for concealed carry (CCW) permits, raising new concerns among Second Amendment advocates that the rising cost of lawful carry is pricing some citizens out of their right to self-defense.
On October 21, 2025, the Board voted to amend the county’s Master Schedule of Fees for the Sheriff-Coroner-Public Administrator’s Office. The changes include a 65% increase for new CCW permits — from $115 to $190 plus state fees — and a 200% increase for renewals, which will now cost $75 plus state fees. The modification or add-on fee remains at $10 per permit.
A Harvard astrophysicist has sparked widespread curiosity online by warning people to “take vacations before October 29,” suggesting that NASA may be withholding critical information about a mysterious interstellar object passing through our solar system. Designated 3I/ATLAS, this visitor has captured global scientific attention due to its unusual size, estimated at roughly 5.6 kilometres across, extraordinary speed, and puzzling trajectory. Unlike typical interstellar objects, it emits nickel tetracarbonyl, a compound previously known only from industrial processes on Earth, and lacks detectable iron, further deepening the mystery.
In eastern Egypt, rows of photovoltaic modules from Chinese solar technology giant LONGi are providing substantial and stable clean electricity for the water pump irrigation systems in the region’s agricultural and pastoral areas. With an installed capacity of 500 kilowatt, it can save over 50,000 yuan ($6,968.4) in electricity costs monthly, effectively reducing agricultural production’s operational costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
During this year’s Solar & Storage Live Egypt, held from April 29 to 30, the company signed framework agreements for the supply of 50 megawatts of photovoltaic modules with Egyptian distribution partners Egypta Group and Reestech. Following this, LONGi, together with Huawei, Egypta Group, and Egyptian project owner Mecca, signed a 30-megawatt project cooperation agreement, the company told the Global Times in a statement.
Elon Musk now controls two thirds of satellites as 10,000th Starlink launches The Independent
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Scientists have uncovered a “hidden order” in drylands across the planet, where plants follow disordered hyperuniformity — a layout that looks random and disorganized up close but adheres to a clear pattern when viewed from farther away.
The findings explain phenomena like “tiger bush” in West Africa, where bands of plants look like tiger stripes from above, or “fairy circles” in Namibia that look like spots from far away but are actually clumps of plants. These plants are self-organized in a way that helps them cope with drought and function in extreme conditions.
In a new discovery outlined in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers have identified a mysterious celestial body known as Companion Candidate 1 (CC1), orbiting within the young WISPIT 2 system. Initially observed during a study focused on the protoplanet WISPIT 2b, this intriguing object may represent either a dense dust clump reflecting long-wavelength light or possibly a low-mass star enveloped in a dusty disk. The detection, made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, has sparked fresh scientific curiosity about how planetary systems form and evolve. CC1 may be the missing piece that reveals more about the complex processes occurring within transitional disks around young stars.
Our Milky Way is constantly in motion: it spins, it tilts, and, as new observations reveal, it ripples. Data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope show that our galaxy is not only rotating and wobbling but also sending out a vast wave that travels outward from its center.
For about a century, astronomers have known that the Milky Way’s stars orbit its core, and Gaia has precisely tracked their speeds and trajectories. Since the 1950s, scientists have also recognized that the galactic disc is not flat but warped. Then in 2020, Gaia uncovered that this warped disc slowly oscillates over time, similar to the motion of a spinning top.
Astronomers have found that Earth has acquired a new cosmic partner, a tiny asteroid named 2025 PN7, which will orbit with our planet for approximately 50 years. Though described by some as a “mini-moon,” scientists clarify that it is not actually a satellite like our Moon. Rather, it’s a quasi-moon, an uncommon variety of asteroid that moves in almost the same orbit and velocity as Earth around the Sun, giving the illusion that it is orbiting our planet. Measured to be roughly 19 metres in diameter, 2025 PN7 was discovered in August 2025 and is set to continue being close to Earth’s orbit until some time after 2083 before slowly moving away into outer space.
The fight against euthanasia reached a new level yesterday, as Fox News published an article that blows the lid off the sinister nature of the industry.
Reporter Asra Nomani has just published an investigative report detailing the predatory-like behavior of what she calls “Assisted Suicide Inc.”
“A Fox Digital investigation reveals … opponents of euthanasia face a multimillion-dollar global lobby that could be called Assisted Suicide Inc., a sprawling network changing laws worldwide, developing euthanasia services for funeral parlors, selling ‘suicide pods,’ promoting ‘suicide tourism’ and even training ‘doulas for death,’” she writes.
President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement to counter China, which is holding tight to its own rare earth metals.
According to Bloomberg, Australia “holds the world’s fourth-largest deposits of rare earths.”
With China trying to control the rare earths and critical minerals market, Australia hopes to become “a viable alternative” for countries.
Australia has these key elements:
The United Nations (UN) is facing backlash after reports confirmed that around 100,000 trees were cut down in the Amazon rainforest to build new roads and infrastructure for its upcoming COP30 “climate change” summit.
The conference is set to take place in the Brazilian city of Belém in November.
It will bring an estimated 70,000 delegates and activists to the region to discuss “saving the planet” and “protecting biodiversity.”
This Guy Is Making DIY ‘Gasoline’ Using Old Plastic and Solar Power The Drive
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Scientists have developed a promising cancer therapy that uses LED light and ultra-thin flakes of tin to eliminate cancer cells while protecting healthy tissue. Unlike traditional chemotherapy and other invasive treatments, this new method avoids the painful side effects patients often endure.
The breakthrough comes from a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Porto in Portugal, made possible through the UT Austin Portugal Program. The collaboration aims to make light-based cancer therapies more accessible and affordable. Current versions of these treatments rely on expensive materials, specialized lab setups, and powerful lasers that can sometimes damage surrounding tissue. By switching to LEDs and introducing tin-based “SnOx nanoflakes” (“Sn” is the chemical symbol for tin), the researchers have created a safer and potentially low-cost alternative.
Wikipedia Sees 8% Drop In Human-Driven Traffic Due To AI, Social Media NDTV Profit
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A special class of immune proteins protect us from pathogens but also drive inflammation and cell death
By Viviane Callier edited by Tanya Lewis
A model showing proteins called death fold domains (green) telling a caspase enzyme (blue) to kill the cell after it has been compromised by pathogens.
Stowers Institute for Medical Research/Tayla Miller
The immune system has a tough job: When a tiny virus invades one of our cells, that cell must detect it and, within minutes, decide what to do. If the cell quickly self-destructs, that will prevent the virus from spreading throughout the body. But such a response to a false alarm will mean the cell will die unnecessarily.
In the early 2010s, nearly every STEM-savvy college-bound kid heard the same advice: Learn to code. Python was the new Latin. Computer science was the ticket to a stable, well-paid, future-proof life.
But in 2025, the glow has dimmed. “Learn to code” now sounds a little like “learn shorthand.” Teenagers still want jobs in tech, but they no longer see a single path to get there. AI seems poised to snatch up coding jobs, and there aren’t a plethora of AP classes in vibe coding. Their teachers are scrambling to keep up.
“There’s a move from taking as much computer science as you can to now trying to get in as many statistics courses” as possible, says Benjamin Rubenstein, an assistant principal at New York’s Manhattan Village Academy. Rubenstein has spent 20 years in New York City classrooms, long enough to watch the “STEM pipeline” morph into a network of branching paths instead of one straight line. For his students, studying stats feels more practical.
President Trump Threatens ‘Retribution’ with China Over Soybean Trade RFD-TV
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China’s New Lithium Export Controls Impact Global Battery Markets Discovery Alert
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EU turns tables on China, adopts Beijing’s playbook to demand tech transfer Cryptopolitan
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Nuclear stocks rallied Wednesday after the U.S. Army launched a program to deploy small reactors.
Shares of NuScale, a small reactor developer, soared 17%. Oklo and Nano Nuclear were up nearly 7% and 4%, resepectively. The uranium company Centrus was up 13%.
The U.S. Army on Tuesday launched a program to build micro nuclear reactors in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit. The microreactors will be commercially owned and operated with the goal of helping developers scale up their businesses, according to the Army.
On Sept. 30, hours before the federal government shut down, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had a baffling act to fit in. The FDA stealthily approved a new generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone.
Mifepristone, a drug the FDA itself admits sends as many as 1 in 25 women to the emergency room even under strict use conditions, is not only responsible for the deaths of countless unborn children, but also has taken the lives of too many mothers along with it.
Ironically, the approval came barely a week after the administration warned pregnant women to reconsider taking Tylenol to avoid harm to their unborn children.
Are you the kind of person who likes to spend $4 for every $3 you take in? If so, your financial management “skills” might qualify you to run for Congress. With people like that running the show, is it any wonder that interest costs on our national debt surpassed $1 trillion last year for the first time ever?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) review of the fiscal year that just concluded on Sept. 30 provides one of many reasons why Republicans should reject Democrats’ demands to end the “Schumer Shutdown” — namely, a permanent extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies as part of $1.5 trillion in spending. While most Republican lawmakers won’t win any awards for fiscal rectitude, on this issue at least, they’re exhibiting the courage not to make a bad situation worse.
From The Guardian: “The use of artificial intelligence in healthcare could create a legally complex blame game when it comes to establishing liability for medical failings, experts have warned.
The development of AI for clinical use has boomed, with researchers creating a host of tools, from algorithms to help interpret scans to systems that can aid with diagnoses. AI is also being developed to help manage hospitals, from optimising bed capacity to tackling supply chains.
But while experts say the technology could bring myriad benefits for healthcare, they say there is also cause for concern, from a lack of testing of the effectiveness of AI tools to questions over who is responsible should a patient have a negative outcome.
Life expectancy almost returned to pre-pandemic levels, but mortality among teenagers and young women is rising – study AKIpress News Agency
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