The U.S. launched a Wednesday strike on another alleged drug boat traveling through the eastern Pacific, resulting in the death of two people. U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) said the vessel was operated by designated terrorist organizations but did not specify which ones or provide additional evidence of the boat’s intent to transfer narcotics. “Intelligence confirmed… Source link
Pacific Fusion took the wraps off its latest pulser module prototype on Tuesday, a piece of equipment that allows the company to move ahead with its demonstration fusion power plant. Construction on the fusion power plant is expected to begin this summer. Results from the shipping container-sized prototype were good enough to unlock another tranche of Pacific Fusion’s Series A round, which exceeds $1 billion, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The company did not disclose the size of the tranche. Pacific Fusion is among the best-funded fusion startups. The tranche-based model is more widely used in biotech, where it saves startups time on fundraising, allowing them to remain focused on hitting technical milestones. The funding arrangement has allowed the company “to keep our heads down,” Pacific Fusion CTO Keith LeChien told TechCrunch. “It means that we can lean into the future without spending 20% to 50% time constantly looking for the next piece of capital.” Pacific Fusion is pursuing a form of fusion power known as inertial confinement. Its reactor will use 156 pulser modules …
President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in Washington, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, looks on. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide caption toggle caption Jacquelyn Martin/AP WASHINGTON — The U.S. military said it carried out another strike Saturday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the fourth attack this week and putting the total death toll at 205. U.S. Southern Command announced the strike with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence for the allegation. It’s the latest in a monthslong campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific. Video released by the military on social media shows a small vessel floating in the ocean before it’s hit and engulfed in a fireball. The attack brings the death toll to 205 in a series of U.S. strikes that began in early September, with other attacks announced on Tuesday, Wednesday …
As a follow-up to my recent post about Asian American historical fiction for AAPI Heritage Month in the U.S., I now want to focus on Pacific Island historical fiction. The Pacific Islands comprise three major ethnogeographic groups according to Britannica: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The term does leave out several significant islands located in the Pacific Ocean, including Australia, and sometimes the term Oceania is used to include the area more broadly. These are the Pacific Islands as listed out by the AAPI Heritage Month website: “Melanesia (New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands), Micronesia (Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island).” While I couldn’t find an English-language historical fiction novel from every Pacific Island (or even close to it, really), the nine novels featured below span numerous islands and cultures throughout the Pacific, from Samoa to the islands of Hawai’i. The stories …
Below is the audio recording of Seana Shiffrin’s presidential address, “Democratic Representation as Duty Delegation,” given at the 2022 Pacific Division Meeting. The full text is available on the APA website (member sign-in is required) as well as on JSTOR. The audio of the lecture is available here: “Democratic Representation as Duty Delegation,” by Seana Shiffrin Seana Shiffrin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice at UCLA, where she has taught since 1992. She is the cofounder and codirector of the UCLA Law and Philosophy Program. Shiffrin received her BA from UC Berkeley, where she was the University Medalist. She attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and received the BPhil with distinction and the DPhil in philosophy. She earned her JD from Harvard Law School. Shiffrin teaches courses on moral and political philosophy as well as contracts, freedom of speech, and legal theory. Her recent book, Democratic Law (OUP, 2021), addresses the intimate connection between law and democracy and traces the implications of a democratic legal approach …
While they are in the Arctic, the whales typically feed for four to six months, Stewart said. Then, for the next six to eight months, they largely fast. That means the Arctic feeding grounds are their most important source of food. Why food is less available in the region is complex, and scientists are still untangling it. What they know, according to Stewart, is that the system used to work like this: Algae would grow on the bottom of sea ice, then fall to the seafloor as the sea ice melted. The algae would dissolve and fertilize a productive seafloor, feeding amphipods in the sediment. Whales would suck up the dirt and find the nutritious critters inside. Now, researchers think sea ice is melting earlier in the year, allowing sunlight to reach the water column earlier. That promotes the growth of phytoplankton and other species, which take in some of the nutrients that used to reach the seafloor. Scientists think that is reducing the overall amount of prey available to the whales. For gray whales, …
Model minority. Perpetual foreigner. The centuries-old stereotypes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as passive bystanders in American culture and politics still persist, despite U.S. history being full of examples to the contrary. The way to change that, scholars believe, is by teaching younger generations that history. A free, digital textbook overseen by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center aims to be a high-caliber guide to help high school and college educators nationwide teach more effectively about AAPI experiences. “Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook” is the culmination of years of work by 100 contributors, from curriculum developers to illustrators. “Our presence, our practices, our cultural rituals and things like that are not deemed as ‘American,’” Karen Umemoto, a co-editor and the Center’s director, told The AP exclusively before the $12 million project’s official launch Saturday. “The actual putting together of this textbook also became our fight for inclusion and represents our right to be seen, our right to speak.” The textbook covers a wide breadth of AAPI communities and their …
It’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, which means now is a great opportunity to discover your new favorite AAPI horror authors. Perhaps this is when you can dive into more books by Asian American and Pacific Islander horror authors you already know and love. Here are AAPI horror authors you definitely should be reading, along with the books you don’t want to miss! Alma Katsu This author is well-known for her creepy historical horror novels. Her 2018 novel The Hunger reimagines the Donner Party, infusing it with supernatural elements that drive the travelers to madness and cannibalism. Katsu followed that up with 2020’s The Deep, a ghost story about the Titanic. The Fervor takes inspiration from Japanese yokai and the real-life horrors of Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II. For her latest novel, Fiend, Katsu goes contemporary to tell the story of a powerful family that is entangled with ancient evil forces. Monika Kim The Eyes Are the Best Part had the horror world abuzz in 2024, especially with that …
Subduction zones can look permanent on a map. They run for hundreds or thousands of miles, haul oceanic crust into the mantle, feed volcanoes, and store the strain that drives some of Earth’s most dangerous earthquakes. But they do not last. That basic fact has left geologists with a stubborn question. If subduction keeps pulling plates downward with such force, what actually stops it? A new study points to an answer off Vancouver Island, where part of the Cascadia subduction system appears to be coming apart in real time. Instead of shutting down in one dramatic break, the research suggests, a subduction zone can fail by tearing itself into smaller pieces, losing strength segment by segment until the larger system grinds toward a halt. “Getting a subduction zone started is like trying to push a train uphill, it takes a huge effort,” said Brandon Shuck, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, who conducted the research while he was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “But …
Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech After spending two and half years pondering a “golden orb” found at the bottom of the ocean, scientists have finally figured out what in the thundering typhoons it actually is. The aureate object looked like some sort of alien relic when it was first discovered clinging to a rock over two miles underwater in the Gulf of Alaska, before collapsing into a blob resembling molten leafs of gold when it was recovered. Now, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Smithsonian Institution reveal that the baffling object is a remnant of what was once a giant anemone — though it took considerable detective work to reach that conclusion. “This turned into a special case that required focused efforts and expertise of several different individuals,” said Allen Collins, a zoologist and director of NOAA Fisheries’ National Systematics Laboratory, in a statement. “This was a complex mystery that required morphological, genetic, deep-sea and bioinformatics expertise to solve.” …
