Government
Diarrhea slowed down Roman soldiers
Intestinal parasites that still plague us today were all over Roman Britain. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The soldiers guarding the Roman Empire's northwestern frontier had a real parasite problem. Scientists analyzing the sewer drains from the Roman fort Vindolanda (near Hadrian's Wall in northern England) found three types of intestinal parasites --roundworm,whipworm, and . The findings published in the journal mark the first time that has been documented in Roman Britain.
CauSTream: Causal Spatio-Temporal Representation Learning for Streamflow Forecasting
Wan, Shu, Shah, Reepal, Sabo, John, Liu, Huan, Candan, K. Selçuk
Streamflow forecasting is crucial for water resource management and risk mitigation. While deep learning models have achieved strong predictive performance, they often overlook underlying physical processes, limiting interpretability and generalization. Recent causal learning approaches address these issues by integrating domain knowledge, yet they typically rely on fixed causal graphs that fail to adapt to data. We propose CauStream, a unified framework for causal spatiotemporal streamflow forecasting. CauSTream jointly learns (i) a runoff causal graph among meteorological forcings and (ii) a routing graph capturing dynamic dependencies across stations. We further establish identifiability conditions for these causal structures under a nonparametric setting. We evaluate CauSTream on three major U.S. river basins across three forecasting horizons. The model consistently outperforms prior state-of-the-art methods, with performance gaps widening at longer forecast windows, indicating stronger generalization to unseen conditions. Beyond forecasting, CauSTream also learns causal graphs that capture relationships among hydrological factors and stations. The inferred structures align closely with established domain knowledge, offering interpretable insights into watershed dynamics. CauSTream offers a principled foundation for causal spatiotemporal modeling, with the potential to extend to a wide range of scientific and environmental applications.
Terrifying New Photos Emerge From the Jeffrey Epstein Estate
The latest photo dump from Democrats in the House Oversight Committee includes more famous men and upsetting quotes written on a woman's body. Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform published additional photos they received from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous financier and convicted sex offender. The release follows another one from last week, which committee Democrats said were pulled from a set of over 95,000 photos. The photos include more candid shots of powerful and famous men, including Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks, film director Woody Allen, professor and author Noam Chomsky, and Steve Bannon . The release did not include information about where or when the photos were taken.
Instacart settles Federal Trade Commission's claim it deceived US shoppers
Instacart settles Federal Trade Commission's claim it deceived US shoppers Instacart has agreed to pay $60m in refunds to settle allegations brought by the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the online grocery delivery platform deceived consumers about its membership programme and free delivery offers. According to court documents filed in San Francisco on Thursday, Instacart's offer of "free delivery" for first orders was illusory because shoppers were charged other fees, the FTC alleged. "The FTC is focused on monitoring online delivery services to ensure that competitors are transparently competing on price and delivery terms," said Christopher Mufarrige, who leads the FTC's consumer protection work. An Instacart spokesperson said the company flatly denies any allegations of wrongdoing, but that the settlement allows the company to focus on shoppers and retailers. "We provide straightforward marketing, transparent pricing and fees, clear terms, easy cancellation, and generous refund policies -- all in full compliance with the law and exceeding industry norms," the spokesperson said.
How America Gave China an Edge in Nuclear Power
Though the two countries are now in a race to develop atomic technology, China's most advanced reactor was the result of collaboration with American scientists. This April, in a speech given at the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the physicist Xu Hongjie announced a breakthrough. For over a decade, his team had been working on an experimental nuclear reactor that runs on a lava-hot solution of fissile material and molten salt, rather than on solid fuel. The reactor, which went online two years ago, was a feat in itself. It is still the only one of its kind in operation in the world, and has the potential to be both safer and more efficient than the water-cooled nuclear plants that dominate the industry. Now, Xu explained, his team had been able to refuel the reactor without shutting it down, demonstrating a level of mastery over their new system. As dazzling as that was, the timing of Xu's speech also freighted the topic with geopolitical import. Only a few months earlier, DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial-intelligence company, had set alarms ringing through the U.S. tech world when it became clear that the relatively small Chinese startup, operating under U.S. export controls, had created a large language model that rivalled anything devised by the behemoths of Silicon Valley.
Trump Media to merge with nuclear fusion company to power AI
Has Trump failed to sell the Iran war to the world? Are US-Israeli attacks against Iran legal? Why did Trump fire Kristi Noem as DHS secretary? United States President Donald Trump is getting into the fusion power business through a $6bn merger of his social media firm and Google-backed TAE Technologies, just days after industry representatives urged federal funding. The all-stock deal, announced on Thursday, is an ambitious bet on the power boom spurred by artificial intelligence (AI) data centres and adds to the Trump family's growing roster of diverse ventures from cryptocurrency to real estate holdings and mobile services.
UK to ban deepfake AI 'nudification' apps
The UK government says it will ban so-called nudification apps as part of efforts to tackle misogyny online. New laws - announced on Thursday as part of a wider strategy to halve violence against women and girls - will make it illegal to create and supply AI tools letting users edit images to seemingly remove someone's clothing. The new offences would build on existing rules around sexually explicit deepfakes and intimate image abuse, the government said. Women and girls deserve to be safe online as well as offline, said Technology Secretary Liz Kendall. We will not stand by while technology is weaponised to abuse, humiliate and exploit them through the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes.
Leaked footage shows slaughterhouse workers shooting and beating cows for amusement
MAGA diehard who was pardoned by Trump offers scathing assessment after his speech: 'He's stuttering... we can't lie anymore' Chilling new video of Nick Reiner making disturbing comments about murder... as friend reveals dad Rob's tragic failed attempt to save him: 'I'm going to kill that f***ing dog' The tiny diet change that brought down my sky-high cholesterol WITHOUT statins or drugs. Mike was told he risked a heart attack or stroke. Reiner family bombshell as insiders reveal who is paying for Nick's celebrity lawyer... their secret motive... and who will REALLY inherit $200m fortune Corey Feldman claims he was molested by the late Corey Haim while making 1987's The Lost Boys Knives out for Susie Wiles after Vanity Fair calamity... as insiders reveal full-blown MAGA meltdown: 'She might have lost one of her nine lives' I sneakily looked at my perfect son's phone... What a terrible mistake! HGTV star David Bromstad shares devastating substance abuse journey: 'I've had really hard times' Tara Reid speaks out for the first time since THAT video emerged... and tells KATIE HIND why she is convinced she was spiked after watching CCTV Brown's $3m-a-year president faces ire for'shifting blame' after shooter unleashed havoc on campus Cruel rosacea blighted Rebecca's life and made her nose swell. Her doctor said she just'had to just put up with it'.
UK actors vote to refuse to be digitally scanned in pushback against AI
Thu 18 Dec 2025 09.44 ESTFirst published on Thu 18 Dec 2025 09.15 EST Actors have voted to refuse digital scanning to prevent their likeness being used by artificial intelligence in a pushback against AI in the arts. Members of the performing arts union Equity were asked if they would refuse to be scanned while on set, a common practice in which actorsâ likeness is captured for future use â with 99% voting in favour of the move. The general secretary, Paul Fleming, said: â Artificial intelligence is a generation-defining challenge. And for the first time in a generation, Equityâ s film and TV members have shown that they are willing to take industrial action. Over three-quarters of artists working on them are union members.