Party on your own dime: "Juneteenth" celebrations adapt after corporate sponsors pull support

Juneteenth celebrations have been scaled back this year due to funding shortfalls as companies and municipalities across the country reconsider their support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Canceled federal grants and businesses moving away from so-called brand activism have hit the bottom line of parades and other events heading into Thursday's federal holiday, which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. The shrinking financial support coincides with many companies severing ties with LGBTQ celebrations for Pride this year and President Donald Trump's efforts to squash DEI programs throughout the federal government. In Denver, for example, more than a dozen companies backed out of supporting the Juneteenth Music Festival, which is one of the city's biggest celebrations of the holiday, according to Norman Harris, executive director of JMF Corporation, which puts on the event.

ICE resumes raids on farms, hotels and restaurants after brief pause pushed by AG Secretary Rollins

The Trump administration is backing away from its earlier instructions to halt immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants, according to reports. Homeland Security officials instructed agency leadership in a call Monday to resume raids at those businesses — which have higher proportions of illegal migrants in their workforce — following the days-long pause, according to the Washington Post and CNN. President Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that his mass deportation campaign was taking its toll on the agricultural and hospitality industries.

Liberal parents devastated after finding Harry Potter books hidden under kid's bed

Liberal parents Krystle and Gary Brennson were devastated yesterday by the discovery of a secret stash of JK Rowling's books underneath the bed of their teenager, Grypheni (they/them). According to the shocked, sorrowing parents, the stack of paperback Harry Potter books looked like it had been secretly thumbed through for at least a year, and the binding was especially creased at pages describing transphobic characters and scenes. "We never thought they'd be exposed to this sort of material," sniffled Krystle, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her "Black Lives Matter" t-shirt. "I just can't believe they would betray our trust by wallowing in this sort of depraved, twisted filth. No child should have experience with explicitly transphobic works like that steaming garbage." According to Gary, the Rowling books seem to have already turned his child's head. "They've been completely corrupted," Gary said. "It's like a gateway drug — first Rowling, and now they're dressing in...

A tangled web of adultery and extortion in medieval England: Reopening a 688-year-old murder case

The sun was setting on a busy London street on a May evening in 1337 when a group of men approached a priest named John Forde. They surrounded him in front of a church near Old St. Paul's Cathedral, stabbed him in the neck and stomach, and then fled. Witnesses identified his killers, but just one assailant went to prison. And the woman who might have ordered the brazen and shocking hit — Ela Fitzpayne, a wealthy and powerful aristocrat — was never brought to justice, according to historical records describing the case. Nearly 700 years later, new details have come to light about the events leading up to the brutal crime and the noblewoman who was likely behind it. Her criminal dealings included theft and extortion as well as the murder of Forde — who was also her former lover.

Residents see dead pelicans fall out of the sky during a thunderstorm in Mobile, Alabama on June 14

Mobile, Alabama, police recently responded to reports of pelican corpses falling from the sky in one neighborhood, which sat there for days, according to NewsNation affiliate WKRG. WKRG spoke with residents, who believe that a lightning strike might've caused the pelicans to fall from the sky. One woman said she heard two loud booms during a thunderstorm and saw birds on the ground after it passed. "Ain't no way, we looked outside, 16 birds just in our yard," resident Destany Williams said. "Nowhere else, just in the yard. This ain't no coincidence... This is the end of the world for real."

Lightning kills 14 in Bihar, India in 24 hours, a day ahead of monsoon entry

Tragedy struck Bihar on Monday as sudden lightning storms claimed 14 lives and left 11 others injured across four districts. The victims, many of them farmers, children, and daily wage workers, were caught off guard by the deadly weather while going about their routine. A Sudden Storm, A Trail of Grief Heavy rains accompanied by lightning swept through Buxar, West Champaran, Katihar, and other districts, turning a routine monsoon day into one of devastation. Among the deceased were four residents from Buxar, three each from West Champaran and Katihar, and one person each from Lakhisarai, Kaimur, Sitamarhi, and Bhagalpur. In West Champaran, three lives were lost in separate incidents in the Ramnagar and Lauriya areas. A woman was among the deceased. Seven others, including four women, were injured in these lightning strikes. Among them, a child's condition is said to be critical.

35-foot blue whale found dead near Makran Coast, Pakistan

A blue whale, measuring about 35 feet, was found dead in Gwatar Bay, Makran Coast at the border Pakistan and Iran. The discovery was made by local fisherman Ahmad Baloch, who spotted the whale floating near Kuntani, Balochistan. It is believed the whale died several days earlier in open waters between the two countries and drifted toward the bay due to rough sea conditions and strong currents. While the exact cause of death remains undetermined, experts suspect the whale may have become entangled in gillnets, commonly used for fishing in the region. The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is one of three baleen whale species in Pakistani waters, alongside the Bryde's whale and the Arabian humpback whale.

Colombia struck by wave of bombings and gun attacks

The assaults came days after the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in Bogota. Many Colombians are fearful of a return to the violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when cartel attacks, guerrilla violence and political assassinations were commonplace. Colombia was rocked by a string of coordinated bomb and gun attacks that killed at least seven people across the country's southwest on Tuesday, June 10, as rebel groups detonated bombs near police stations in the city of Cali - the country's third-largest city - and the neighboring Cauca province, hitting police posts, municipal buildings and civilian targets, Colombia's National Police said in a statement. Military and police spokespeople blamed the attacks on the FARC-EMC, a group led by former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who broke away from the group after it signed a peace deal with the government in 2016.

Tourists in Spain 'frightened' after surreal gang shooting

It's less than 36 hours after a gangland double murder in a busy bar on the Costa Del Sol, and there is no sign of the Spanish police - apart from an occasional patrol car gliding by. No cordon, no tape, no forensics in white suits, no officer guarding the front door of Monaghans Bar in Fuengirola. According to a local cameraman, it was the same on Sunday afternoon - the day after Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr were gunned down. In the homeland of the two men who had been shot dead, the case would be classed as a top level "category A" homicide with the bar sealed off and turned upside down for days afterwards.

Massive landslide after heavy rainfall tears through village of Borca di Cadore in Italian Dolomites

A massive landslide unleashed by violent overnight storms tore through the alpine village of Borca di Cadore in Italy's Veneto region early Monday, burying homes and vehicles under tons of mud, rock, and debris. Located just south of Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Dolomites, the village was hit shortly after midnight during a thunderstorm that dumped heavy rainfall across the region. Around 20 houses were damaged, with at least ten residents trapped in their homes as boulders and mud blocked entrances. Ground floors were flooded, vehicles were destroyed, and power outages further complicated rescue efforts. Emergency crews, including firefighters and civil protection, worked through the night to evacuate families and clear blocked roads. The main route to Cortina, the SS51 Alemagna state road, was closed for hours and remains partially obstructed.

Is the Trump Project unravelling?

The Musk versus Trump fallout (at least for now) has a distinct 'made for television' quality to it. But do not be deceived by the entertainment content. The spat illustrates a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the MAGA coalition. It is quite possible that this contradiction will erupt at some further point and may end up triggering the slow decay of Project Trump. A fulcral moment in the last U.S. election was the switch of Silicon Valley's ultra-rich Tech oligarchs from their support for the Democrats to Trump. It brought both money and the potential glittering prize that America could seize a monopoly over global data storage; AI; and what Yanis Varoufakis calls 'cloud capital' - the purported ability to extract rent (i.e. fees) for access to America's putative massive data hoard and to Big Tech's associated platforms. Such a data monopoly, it was believed, would then give the U.S. the ability to manipulate how the world thinks - and to define the products and planforms...

NATO's global proxy wars open a second front with Israeli aggression on Iran

Israel's years-long covert aggression against Iran has now escalated into open war following a massive wave of air strikes overnight in which several Iranian cities, including the capital, Tehran, were targeted with hundreds of missiles and drones. Several of Iran's top military commanders have been killed, as well as dozens of civilians, according to Iranian media. Tel Aviv is warning that the attacks will continue for weeks. U.S. President Donald Trump has gloated about "excellent" strikes and warned of more to come, although he also claimed that he advised Israel against taking military action. The U.S. claims it did not participate but did give "exquisite" intelligence for the attack. Meanwhile, NATO is believed to have provided military support to thwart Iranian retaliatory strikes while the organization's civilian leader, Mark Rutte, deceptively appealed for a "de-escalation". The Iranian leadership is vowing a painful retaliation in the coming days for Israel's "declaration...

US aerial tankers headed ro Middle East

The reported deployment has driven speculation that the US is directly involved in the Israel-Iran war. The US has reportedly deployed more than 30 aerial refueling tankers across the Atlantic toward the Middle East, Military Watch Magazine reported on Monday. The outlet has described the buildup as "unprecedented," claiming it could suggest broader US involvement in the ongoing Israeli-Iranian war. West Jerusalem and Tehran have entered the fourth day of open hostilities. Last Thursday, Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, killing senior military officials and scientists and prompting retaliatory missile barrages on Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa. The US has expressed support for the Israeli strikes, with President Donald Trump calling them "excellent." He has also warned that Washington could become directly involved in the conflict if American interests are threatened but has yet to announce any plans to involve US forces....

Tucker Carlson blasts Trump over Iran attack

The US is "complicit" in Israel's strikes on its archrival's nuclear sites, according to the journalist. US President Donald Trump's support for Israel's strikes in Iran could spark an "all-out war" in the Middle East, American journalist Tucker Carlson has warned. Early Friday morning, IDF jets bombed nuclear and military sites across Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with a barrage of drones and missiles targeting Israeli cities. The escalation threatens ongoing negotiations over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, which Trump revived earlier this year. In what he described as possibly his "final newsletter before all-out war," Carlson - a key Trump ally during the 2024 presidential election - argued that the US was "complicit in the act of war." "While the American military may not have physically perpetrated the assault, years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the US at the center of last...

Iran now first line of defense of BRICS and the Global South

This is as serious as it gets. Let's survey the chessboard - from micro to macro. The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera. T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton Israel's shock'n awe on Iran - straight from the trademark US playbook - essentially failed, despite the initial combination of speed, meticulous military planning and the element of surprise, including hacking the Iranian electronic communications within the military grid; decapitation of the vertical IRGC nomenklatura; the spiderweb drone attack playbook; and bombing - ultimately ineffectual - of key nodes of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. It took hours for top Iranian technicians to get their grid back. And once that happened, the tide began to turn, to the point that after surgical missile volleys deep in the night on Sunday, the IRGC announced its capability to seriously disrupt Israel's command and control systems using "enhanced intelligence", thus breaching Iron - or Paper -...

Tectonic plates can spread subduction like a contagion — jumping from one oceanic plate to another

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world's most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents evidence that subduction can spread like a contagion, jumping from one oceanic plate to another — a hypothesis previously difficult to prove. This result "is not just speculation," says University of Lisbon geologist João Duarte, who was not involved in the research. "This study builds an argument based on the geological record." Because subduction drags crust deep into the earth, its beginnings are hard to examine. The new study provides a rare ancient example of potential subduction "infection." Its authors say they've discovered evidence that neighboring collisions triggered East Asia's "Ring of Fire," a colossal subduction system currently fueling earthquakes and volcanoes from Alaska to the southern Indian Ocean.

Bright nova lights up Lupus Constellation

A newly-discovered nova in Lupus is on the rise and approaching naked-eye visibility. Here's how to see it. Exciting news! On June 12th (June 12.9 UT), the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) discovered a new 8.7-magnitude stellar object in Lupus. Not long after, Yusuke Tampo, with the South African Astronomical Observatory (University of Cape Town), obtained a spectrum of the "new star" and identified it as a classical nova based on its spectral features and dramatic increase in brightness. The nova went through a slew of temporary names — AT 2025nlr, ASASSN-25cm, and N Lup 2025 — until receiving its official designation V462 Lupi on June 16th. Since discovery, the nova has brightened rapidly. As of 8 p.m. Eastern Time June 16th, it's at magnitude 6.4 and flirting with naked-eye visibility. The magnitude rise has been phenomenal when you consider that prior to the explosion, the progenitor star was approximately magnitude 22.3 (in the blue band) according to American...

China is building a constellation of AI supercomputers in space — and just launched the first pieces

China has launched the first cluster of satellites for a planned AI supercomputer array. The first-of-its-kind array will enable scientists to perform in-orbit data processing. China has launched its first cluster of satellites for a planned artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer constellation in space. The 12 satellites are the beginnings of a proposed 2,800-satellite fleet led by the company ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab that will one day form the Three-Body Computing Constellation, a satellite network that will directly process data in space. The satellites, which launched on board a Long March 2D rocket from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center May 14, are part of a plan to lower China's dependence on ground-based computers. Instead, the satellites will use the cold vacuum of space as a natural cooling system while they crunch data with a combined computing capacity of 1,000 peta (1 quintillion) operations per second, according to the Chinese government.

Tusk calls out Chapel Hill for heinous role in global Covid death and misery

Readers of the Tusk know I've spent the better part of my life digging into heretical science — research that the mainstream either refuses to look at or pretends doesn't exist. From the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis to the possibility of pre-Ice Age high technology, we've always asked the forbidden questions and followed the data wherever it leads. This week, I've taken that same instinct — what some would call a contrarian reflex — and pointed it in a new direction: one that hits close to home. I've published an op-ed in the Carolina Journal on the subject of UNC-Chapel Hill's virology program, and the deeply troubling evidence that it played a central role in creating the SARS-CoV-2 virus that killed over 20 million people globally. Yes, you read that right. And no, it's not hyperbole. This isn't just speculation. Thanks to court-ordered documents pried loose by the nonprofit watchdog US Right to Know, we now know that Ralph Baric's lab at UNC: Engineered novel SARS-related...

Residents picking up after tennis-ball-sized hail hits Winnett, Montana

Residents in the Winnett area are picking up the pieces Monday, following a chaotic storm that brought tennis-ball sized hail to the area. Residents told MTN that majority of the larger hail was found outside of town, while golf-ball sized hail hit downtown. Watch this video to see the damage: That larger hail hit hard at the Kiehl Ranch, about 20 minutes southwest of Winnett. "It was so loud," said Haley Kiehl on Monday afternoon. "We saw one fall right out, and I thought a bird fell out of the sky, it was so big." Kiehl said the storm interrupted her family's work around the property, as they quickly hid for cover in their shop. She said that the hail fell for the next 10-15 minutes and that it was hard to hear anything. "That was hands down the biggest hail I've ever seen," Kiehl said.