A recent study shows the voids’ acceleration. Researchers used recent advances in ultrafast electron microscopy to measure voids in phonon-polariton waves zooming around inside a thin flake of boron nitride. Phonon-polaritons are quasiparticles formed from photons (quantized light) coupled with tiny vibrations, and they act like light and sound waves combined.
00x Final Filter
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A Chinese-owned oil and chemical tanker slipped through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, becoming the first vessel to make the crossing since President Trump’s blockade on Iranian ports began Monday and raising fresh questions about how hard Tehran and its trading partners are willing to test U.S. pressure.
Fox News reported the tanker, Rich Starry, successfully transited the strait after being turned back on Monday. The ship made it through on its second attempt, the outlet said.
The Trump administration’s blockade is aimed at choking off traffic to and from Iranian ports, not shutting down the entire waterway. Fox News said the Rich Starry was traveling from the United Arab Emirates, not heading to or departing from Iran, and was therefore allowed to pass.
JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇨🇳 Sanctioned Chinese-linked tanker crosses Strait of Hormuz despite US naval blockade. pic.twitter.com/kMG1g8TfuL
— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) April 14, 2026
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A mob assault on a female journalist during an anti-ICE demonstration in Minneapolis over the weekend is being investigated by the FBI and Department of Justice.
Savanah Hernandez, a reporter for Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was mobbed by violent and unhinged anti-ICE agitators outside the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Saturday as she was filming the protest.
The Whipple Building, the center of federal immigration enforcement activity in the region, has been the site of many demonstrations and riots in the past several months. During the Operation Metro Surge campaign, anti-ICE agitators gathered around the building on a daily basis. Anti-ICE militants have continued to gather outside to protest even after the campaign’s end.
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Tracking data appears to show a number of Iran-linked ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the hours after the U.S. blockade of the waterway began on Monday.
The U.S. military said its blockade would apply to “all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports,” but that it would “not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”
One ship that crossed the strait after the blockade began on Monday – the Christianna – had previously been stopped at the Iranian port of Bandar Imam Khomeini, data shows.
Another ship, the Ladonna, had been at Bandar Imam Khomeini for a week before turning on its transponder Tuesday and journeying into the Persian Gulf.
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For the first time, researchers have detected empty voids moving faster than the speed of light — and they blazed past that cosmic speed limit without breaking the laws of relativity.
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The truth about what top earners pay in terms of all income taxes collected by the US government:
–the top 1% pays 40% of all income taxes
–the top 25% pays 87% of all income taxes
–the bottom 50% pays 2.3% of all income taxes
While Americans scramble to get their tax filings submitted—or at least their extension requests filed by the April 15 deadline—Democrat leaders are pushing to tax the rich even more so than they already do. Wall Street Journal: Tax Day has arrived again, and our April 15 condolences to those who pay the bulk of the nation’s bills. It’s a smaller group than many Americans realize, and those figures bear repeating, as Democrats renew their line that the rich won’t pay their “fair share.” Sen. Cory Booker has a bill to raise the top individual income-tax rate to 43%, from today’s 37%. Sen. Chris Van Hollen wants 49%. Both proposals would also eliminate income taxation for many lower earners…. Yet
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The House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in December 2019 over a phone call he had months earlier with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
While the U.S. Senate ultimately acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43 in early 2020, the stitch-up had by that stage sufficiently muddied the waters and buoyed Democrats’ false narrative in an especially heated election year.
‘It is always worse than we thought.’
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents on Monday revealing that hearsay and erroneous claims from a few politicized bad actors who lacked any firsthand knowledge of the phone call were used as the basis to impeach Trump and that elements of the intelligence community were not only aware but happy to advance the false narrative.
The documents — investigative materials used by former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who got the ball rolling on impeachment, and transcripts of his testimony released as the result of a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence vote last month — show that Atkinson skirted standard IG procedures and, embracing a kind of strategic myopia, leaned entirely on what the ODNI described as “politicized, manufactured narratives” without ever once bothering to access the transcript of Trump’s call.
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on Tuesday that she has suspended her country’s defense cooperation agreement with Israel over the conflicts throughout the Middle East.
Meloni said at an event in the northern city of Verona that her government “has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defense agreement with Israel in consideration of the current situation.”
Her announcement came about a week after the Israeli military fired warning shots at an Italian peacekeeping convoy outside Beirut, Lebanon. No one was injured in the incident, which Meloni called “completely unacceptable,” while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani summoned the Israeli ambassador to Rome for a third time since 2024.
The 2003 Memorandum of Understanding was ratified by Italy in 2005 and is renewed automatically every five years.
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Women’s sports advocate and conservative Christian Riley Gaines took the high road late Monday in responding to President Donald Trump.
Earlier on Monday, Gaines had criticized Trump for a controversial post on his social media platform Truth Social that appeared to depict him as Jesus Christ, prompting Trump to lash out and declare himself “not a big fan” of Gaines.
“At the end of the day, I do nothing for the approval of man,” Gaines responded on the social media platform X.
On balance, the former collegiate swimmer stood her ground while adopting a largely magnanimous tone.
“I love the President and I’m so grateful he’s in the Oval Office. Of course, I’ll continue to support him and the America First agenda,” she began.
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Now that Rep. Eric Swalwell has ended his bid for governor of California and plans to resign from Congress amid a scandal that seems to get worse by the day, people are starting to wonder who knew what and when.
Yesterday on C-SPAN, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about this and naturally denied it.
From C-SPAN:
Host: Some Republicans and others say Democrats turned a blind eye and they knew what he was up to?
Pelosi: It is true, they may say that, but it is absolutely not true.
Watch the clip below:
A flustered Nancy Pelosi denies that Democrats knew what Swalwell was doing and turned a blind eye:
Pelosi: “Absolutely not true.”
Interviewer: “You had no idea?”
Pelosi: “None whatsoever.”
Sure thing, Nance. pic.twitter.com/MmVHf3Wt3x
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 14, 2026
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Footage from the scene showed Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst convicted under the Espionage Act, among the crowd.
New York City police arrested dozens of anti-Israel agitators on Monday after they attempted to storm the Manhattan office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) before spilling into the streets and stopping traffic.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) told the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) that “multiple” arrests were made following the disruption, but did not give an exact number.
Oliya Scootercaster captured video showing the radicals, many affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Israel groups, attempting to enter a building they claimed houses offices for Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). After being denied access, several protesters removed outer clothing to reveal their t-shirts branded with the slogan “fund people, not bombs.”
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A further escalation in the Iran war could trigger a global recession, spiralling inflation and a sharp backlash in financial markets, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
Against an increasingly volatile backdrop, the Washington-based fund said the economic damage from the Middle East conflict was steadily rising as it cut its growth forecasts for 2026 based on the impact from the war so far.
In its half-yearly update, the IMF said the UK would suffer the sharpest growth downgrade and joint highest inflation rate in the G7 this year, even if the fallout from soaring energy costs can be contained by the middle of 2026.
However, under a worst-case “severe scenario,” involving a drawn-out war and persistently higher energy prices, it said the world would face “a close call for a global recession” for only the fifth time since 1980.
Oil prices jumped back above $100 (£74) a barrel on Monday amid choppy trading in global markets after crunch weekend talks between the US and Iran ended in stalemate and as a US blockade on the strait of Hormuz began. On Tuesday, Brent crude eased 0.9% to $98.5 a barrel on hopes of further peace talks.
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British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has formed a “special” new Cabinet committee to deal with the Iran conflict. Its efforts behind closed doors will coordinate the national response to the growing Middle East crisis through a series of talks, meetings, and earnest consultations.
Position papers can consequently be expected to arrive at 10 Downing Street along with further sub-committees a possibility all in lieu of immediate action.
The move came as Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced they will be co-hosting a Middle East summit in Paris on Friday to talk about a diplomatic solution to the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
The Independent reports the Westminster group – the Middle East Response Committee – already had its first meeting Tuesday focused on efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping route vital for global oil and gas supplies.
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For decades, Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott has served up cartoonish anti-American hot takes, so it wasn’t a surprise when he admitted in Friday’s print edition he and others supposedly weren’t able to enjoy the Artemis II mission because of Donald Trump being in office and his “language of genocide and apocalypse” towards Iran.
This, Kennicott argued, has “eclipsed” any “allure” of space, “the striking images” sent back, and the “bravery and telegenic decency of the astronauts.”
The print headline denoted a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome: “Artemis II’s view of a dark horizon; President Trump’s menacing rhetoric toward Iran eclipses the new wonders of the Space Age.” Over online, the headlines warned of “dark rhetoric eclipsing” NASA’s “new wonders.”
Kennicott started with the 1969 moon landing and even that wasn’t something he was keen on acknowledging as a monumentally positive and thrilling human achievement. The reason? He didn’t use the words jingoism or nationalism, but he called it “propaganda” as part of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Additionally, he claimed “[t]he euphoria of the first moon landing was directly connected to our ambivalence about the science that made it possible” because such early days of rocket technology also brought about the power to destroy humanity via “hurl[ing] hydrogen bombs across the planet.”
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Back in January, President Trump dropped a one-liner worthy of the usually inimitable Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, who said of his long-ago romance with then-District Attorney Kamala Harris: “She loved me, I loved me. It was the perfect relationship.” Trump’s version, offered in an interview with NBC News, was about the…
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Learn how ancient DNA and archaeogenetics are reshaping what we know about family and revealing that kinship in early societies was often built through shared lives, not just shared genes.
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And so it happened, my first real-world AI vibe coding horror story, one that affected me personally. –> Deutsche version
I went to a medical appointment and was greeted by a friendly person. Shortly after the warm welcome, they mentioned watching a video explaining how easy it is for anyone to build software with AI these days. That sparked an idea: why use an industry-proven solution when you could just build your own patient management system?
So they did exactly that. They fired up a coding agent, built a custom patient management application, imported all their existing patient data into it, and published it to the internet. They even added a feature to record conversations during appointments and send the audio to not one, but two AI services for automatic summaries. No more manual note-taking.
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Today we’re bringing people together in Washington D.C. to discuss how AI will impact the economy and jobs. At our inaugural AI for the Economy Forum, co-hosted with MIT FutureTech, we’re starting with a simple premise: neither the benefits nor the risks are automatic or guaranteed. How AI impacts our lives, jobs and economy is something we as a society can shape – and fully realizing AI’s economic potential will require a new era of partnership between companies, workers, governments, researchers and more. At the forum, economists, industry leaders, policymakers and experts will gather to share information, identify gaps in current understanding, and lay the foundation for ongoing collaboration.
Google has a long-standing commitment to helping positively shape this transition. Today, we’re building on that commitment in two critical ways. First, we are making new investments in research to ensure governments, companies, researchers, and civil society have the information required to make smart decisions. Second, we are providing training opportunities to equip people with the skills needed to navigate a changing economy.
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MANILA, Philippines — More than 17,000 American and Filipino military personnel will participate in one of their largest annual combat exercises in the Philippines that underscore the United States’ staunch commitment to Asia despite its preoccupation with the Middle East, a U.S. military official said Tuesday.
During the April 20-May 8 maneuvers, called the Balikatan, Japanese forces will fire a missile in a ship-sinking exercise in northwestern Philippine waters facing the disputed South China Sea. Japan’s defense chief has been invited to witness the live-fire drill, Philippine military officials said.
The large-scale combat drills between the U.S. and Philippines, which are longtime treaty allies, will expand this year to include other friendly forces, including those from Japan, France and Canada, which have signed visiting forces agreements with Manila, the Philippine military said.
“Our message is our dedication and commitment to our alliance and regional security,” Col. Robert Bunn, a spokesperson for U.S. forces, said in a news briefing when asked what message the U.S. military wanted to send with its large Balikatan deployment despite the war in the Middle East.
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Former Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson admitted under oath that he personally ordered a secret rewrite of the whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 that was used as the basis for a phony impeachment operation against President Donald Trump, going so far as to admit changing the form looked “suspicious.”
Newly unveiled testimony from October of 2019 shows that Atkinson conceded the change he ordered to the whistleblower complaint form “looks suspicious” but said the timing was merely “unfortunate.”
“So the timing is unfortunate. It looks suspicious, I get that,” Atkinson testified. Atkinson said that after several media inquiries highlighted that the then-current form required first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in order for a complaint to meet the urgency threshold to be sent to Congress, he ordered his staff to secretly change the rules so that second-hand hearsay complaints could be a legitimate basis for expedited processing.
“What I should have done was I should have explained when we changed the form why we were changing it,” he said. “I should have been more transparent about the reasons and the motivations for the change in the forms.”