All posts tagged: explain

Democrats demand Trump reveal stock managers, explain certain trades

Democrats demand Trump reveal stock managers, explain certain trades

Published by Sam Flores

US President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. Bonnie Cash | Bloomberg | Getty Images Two top Democratic lawmakers are pushing President Donald Trump for answers on the mountain of stock trades made in his name since he returned to the White House. In a 17-page letter sent Wednesday and seen by CNBC, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Robert Garcia of California asked Trump to reveal the money managers he says are in charge of all his investment decisions. They also pressed him to disclose his involvement in or awareness of numerous individual stock trades that have raised concerns due to their potential overlap with government policy, or their proximity to market-moving statements made by Trump himself. “The appearance of numerous conflicts of interest from a President trading in individual stocks – including the potential for insider trading, market manipulation, and policy decisions that benefit the President’s stock portfolio rather than the public interest – …

Italians Explain The Worst Thing You Can Do When Cooking Pasta

Italians Explain The Worst Thing You Can Do When Cooking Pasta

Published by Sam Flores

A woman spoons onto a plate some “spaghetti alla Carbonara” during a cooking competition on the eve of the Carbonara Day, an event created by the the Italian Food Union, in Rome, Friday, April 5, 2019. The traditional Carbonara dish, whose five ingredients accompanying the pasta are pork cheek, pecorino cheese, egg, salt and pepper, has become one of the most famous symbols of Italian cuisine, even though the debate on its origins is still open. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) We’ve already written at HuffPost UK about how much water we’re really meant to use to cook pasta (I’ve been doing it wrong).  Turns out I’ve also messed up meatballs, pasta sauce, my herb selection, and even cutting pizza. And now, it seems Italians are also upset with how some Brits boil that H2O in the first place.  In a YouGov poll published in 2022, Italians were asked which non-traditional cooking behaviours they found “acceptable,” “divisive,” and “unacceptable.”  The Italians polled said it wasn’t OK to omit salt in the liquid, but they were pretty lenient …

Why do some people feel life is so unfair? Understanding this may help explain conspiracy beliefs

Why do some people feel life is so unfair? Understanding this may help explain conspiracy beliefs

Published by skeptic

Most people set out in life wanting to believe the world is fair. They expect people to wait their turn in queues, to be treated equally in their job, and to be rewarded for hard work. These expectations influence how they understand the world around them, and shape their responses to it. But what happens when life repeatedly challenges those assumptions? Psychologists have long been interested in this question. Our new research, published in the British Journal of Psychology, suggests adverse experiences shape both how fair people believe the world is, and how they view their place in society. Over the course of a lifetime, personal setbacks – from illness and bereavement to being a victim of crime – may have a cumulative effect, leading to a growing sense that the world is unfair. We think this is important in the context of today’s increasingly polarised societies, in which trust in institutions has declined severely in the UK and many other countries. Video: TEDxTalks. Adversity and unfairness Our research set out to answer two key …

Experts Explain How Heatwaves Impact Your Health

Experts Explain How Heatwaves Impact Your Health

Published by Sam Flores

FILE – A tourist drinks water on a hot day at the beach in Barcelona, Spain, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File) Yet another heatwave is on the way for parts of England this week, with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issuing an amber heat-health alert for multiple areas of the country.  Amber heat health alerts have been issued for the East Midlands, East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, London, North West, South East, South West, and West Midlands, while a yellow heat health alert has been issued for the North East, from Tuesday, August 11 at 9am until Friday, August 14 at 9pm. Dr Agostinho Sousa, Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection at UKHSA, said: “Sustained periods of warm weather can result in serious negative health outcomes across the population, so it is important that everyone takes sensible precautions while enjoying the sun. “Based on the current forecast, we don’t currently expect the health impacts to be as high as the heatwave we saw at the end of June but older adults …

Underground gases may explain Earth’s most devastating climate changes and mass extinctions

Underground gases may explain Earth’s most devastating climate changes and mass extinctions

Published by Jenni Sidey

A hidden process deep beneath Earth’s surface may have played a powerful role in some of the most dramatic climate swings in history. New research from Florida State University suggests that gases released from heated underground rocks helped drive the environmental chaos linked to ancient mass extinctions. For decades, scientists have pointed to volcanic eruptions as the main cause of these global crises. Massive eruptions released gases that altered the atmosphere and disrupted ecosystems. But the new study, published in Science Advances, shows that another process worked alongside volcanoes, quietly amplifying their impact. “Evidence shows that the process that wipes out species is a climate swing, or an oscillation back and forth between hot and cold climates,” said Emily Stewart, assistant professor of geology. “We found another process that contributes to these events: metamorphism.” A Hidden Source Of Climate-Altering Gases The process begins far below the surface, where heat from rising magma transforms surrounding rock. This transformation, known as metamorphism, changes the structure and chemistry of the rock. LIPs and shale basins. (CREDIT: Science Advances) …

States push DHS to explain its noncitizen voter claims

States push DHS to explain its noncitizen voter claims

Published by Sam Flores

State officials are pushing back on the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that it found tens of thousands of noncitizens on their voter rolls, asking the department to explain how it arrived at its conclusion. Ahead of President Donald Trump’s primetime speech from the White House earlier this month in which he made sweeping claims of voter fraud, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to officials in Nevada, Pennsylvania, California and New Jersey, saying he believed the four states had more than 250,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls combined. During a news conference the day after Trump’s speech, Mullin threatened officials with potential prison time if they do not “secure their elections.” Ahead of Mullin’s requested two-week deadline for response, officials in California, Nevada and Pennsylvania sent back letters questioning where DHS got its data. All three states have declined to share private state voter roll data that includes personal identifying information like Social Security numbers. “The American public deserves transparency in how their private information is being used at the federal level,” Nevada Secretary …

A NASA rover just discovered something strange on Mars – and scientists can’t explain it

A NASA rover just discovered something strange on Mars – and scientists can’t explain it

Published by Sam Flores

NASA’s Curiosity rover just made a strange discovery. The vehicle stumbled upon honeycomb-like patterns of polygons on the surface of the Martian valley known as “Valle Grande” last month. While this isn’t the first time the mission has seen the polygonal shapes, scientists have never seen so many of the features in one place before. They also still don’t know how they formed – though they hope to determine the cause. “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” Curiosity mission project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. “We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.” NASA’s Curiosity rover made a curious discovery on the Martian surface in June (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) The Martian terrain is covered in mysterious polygons in this panoramic image from the rover (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) The polygons are between 1.3-3 inches in diameter and wrap around the sides of …

biologists are returning to an older theory to explain anomalies in evolution

biologists are returning to an older theory to explain anomalies in evolution

Published by skeptic

Evolution is a fact of life. So much so that even the theory of evolution is evolving. Lately, a centuries-old discredited idea has been making a strong comeback. It helps us explain scientific observations that according to standard evolutionary theory should be impossible. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA I’m referring to Lamarckism, named after theoretical proposals from French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1809. Lamarckism stands for the hypothesis that parents of a given organism may acquire or improve certain characteristics during their lifetimes in response to the demands of their environment. And they then somehow transmit those characteristics to their offspring, making those better able to cope with the same demands too. Lamarck sought to explain why organisms and their environments fit so well together, and how organisms change over time, as observed in the fossil record. Of course, an alternative explanation was provided by Charles Darwin (and others) half a century later. Darwin’s ideas were built around natural selection, which says that some individuals within a species are born with differences that lead them …

Lettuce explain: Cyclospora outbreaks test Trump administration messaging

Lettuce explain: Cyclospora outbreaks test Trump administration messaging

Published by Sam Flores

The Trump administration is facing a key messaging test as it tries to stop potentially multiple outbreaks of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic illness.  Two months in and thousands of cases later, the outbreak has become a communications nightmare.    Experts say confusing messages and a lack of central leadership have left the public in the dark about… Source link

People in the UK favour harsher punishment than Norwegians – belief in free will may help explain why

People in the UK favour harsher punishment than Norwegians – belief in free will may help explain why

Published by Sam Flores

Ongoing problems in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, from overcrowding in prisons to court backlogs, have raised fundamental questions about how and why we punish people. Advocates for a more rehabilitative, less punitive system often point to Scandinavian prisons as a model for how things could be done better. My colleagues and I wanted to find out how beliefs about free will and crime may influence different approaches to punishment. In a recent study of 328 people across the UK, Norway and Sweden, we found that the more strongly someone believed in free will – that people freely choose how they behave – the harsher the punishment they favoured. The effect was modest but consistent. Behind our research is an age-old question: do people commit crimes because they freely choose to, or because their lives are shaped by factors such as upbringing, poverty, trauma, mental health, neurological differences and circumstance? Research suggests that belief in free will is widespread, but that people’s views about choice, causation and responsibility are often more mixed …