In mid-March, Babak, a 49-year-old Iranian product designer at a tech company in Tehran, was called into his boss’s office and told that his position was being eliminated.
Iran’s government had shut down the internet two weeks earlier, at the outset of U.S.-Israeli war on the country, throwing the country’s tech industry into chaos and making Babak’s job impossible.
“Throughout my career, I have worked hard, continuously learned, and tried to grow,” said Babak, who sent voice messages to The New York Times, and asked to be identified only by his first name to avoid government reprisal. “Yet at this stage of my life, I find myself in an uncertain and ambiguous position,” he said.
Babak’s experience has become increasingly common throughout Iran as companies have instituted round after round of layoffs in recent weeks, according to interviews with businesses and employees and Iranian news reports.
A man pulling a cart filled with boxes at an intersection near a wholesale market in Tehran on Saturday..
For the Trump administration, Iran’s severe economic struggles are part of a strategy to pressure the country into submission. “I hope it fails,” President Trump told reporters this month, of Iran’s economy. “You know why? Because I want to win.”
Iranian officials insist that pressure will not work and that the country will not surrender.
Many of those companies are buckling under wartime pressures. During the war, the U.S. and Israel hit Iranian industrial sites that produce key raw materials, as well as key infrastructure. And a U.S.-imposed blockade on Iran’s ports, in place since a cease-fire last month, has cut off much of its oil exports and disrupted imports of other goods.
An Iranian government official, Gholamhossein Mohammadi, estimated that the war has caused the loss of one million jobs, “and the direct and indirect unemployment of two million people,” in comments reported by the news outlet Tasnim.
On April 25, an Iranian job search platform reported a record 318,000 resumes submitted in a single day, a figure that was 50 percent higher than the previous record, according to the news site Asr Iran.
Even before the war, Iran’s economy had been struggling from years of sanctions, entrenched corruption and mismanagement, while a spiraling currency has eroded Iranians’ purchasing power.
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People at a wholesale shop in Tehran on Saturday..
“A strange and overwhelming vortex of economic problems has emerged, and it continues to grow more complex,” Amir Hossein Khaleghi, an economist in Isfahan, said in an interview. Before the war, Iran was “already in a very poor economic situation, facing a set of mega-crises,” he said.
The private sector’s latest struggles portend a deepening crisis for Iran’s government. Its proposed budget for the year, put forward before the war, already represented a sharp reduction in public spending when factored for inflation, and depended more on taxation than in the past. Now, tax revenues from the private sector are likely to drop significantly.
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Crowds inside the sprawling Grand Bazaar in Tehran on Saturday. Imports of goods have been affected by the war.
242nd story First published: Feb.27.2025 Two thieves entered the house of a rich person. The older thief, Jack, opened the safe box very easily. There was a lot of cash inside the safe. Jack took the money out. He spread it on a nearby table and sat in a chair. Then, he asked Tom: “Take […]
Are you tired? If so, you aren’t alone. An alarming number of the country’s adults are tired most days, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that could have significant implications for public health.
In 2024, the year the data were collected, nearly a third of all U.S. adults slept fewer than the recommended seven hours per night on average. Only a little more than half of U.S. adults said they woke up feeling “well-rested” on most days.
It’s hard to overstate how important sleep is for your health: Research shows that getting enough rest can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, help regulate hormones, and keep blood sugar under control, and that it may even help fight dementia. It can also affect your mood and mental health.
That is why health experts are worried that so many adults seem to be missing out on those z’s. “Our need for sleep parallels our need for air and water,” said Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, in an interview about the report with MedPage Today.
According to the report, around 40 percent of Black adults are getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night on average and are less likely to wake up feeling well-rested than their Asian, white, and Hispanic peers. Asian adults were the most likely to report feeling well-rested—about 62 percent. The report is part of the National Health Interview Survey, a poll involving thousands of U.S. adults.
Men and women reported about the same rates of undersleeping, but men tended to say that they woke up feeling well-rested more often than women did. Women were also more likely than men to say that they found it hard to fall asleep at night—with the experience reported by about 19 percent of women versus about 12 percent of men.
Broken down by age, adults aged 65 and older reported that they woke up feeling well-rested on at least most days, with the impressive frequency of about 64 percent of the time. Adults aged 18 to 34, on the other hand, had the hardest time falling asleep of any age group.
If you are struggling to fall asleep, experts recommend techniques such as getting out of bed to do a calming activity, such as reading or breathing exercises, avoiding phone scrolling and snacking, and seeing a doctor if the problem persists.
A New York judge has released what is alleged to be a suicide note written by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The document was previously sealed as part of criminal investigations into the billionaire’s former cellmate.
The note was reportedly discovered by the cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York in July 2019 after Epstein first attempted suicide weeks before his death.
“They investigated me for month[s] — found nothing!” the note reads. “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye.”
The note continues: “Watcha want me to do — burst out cryin! No fun – not worth it.”
The words “no fun” were also included in a separate note obtained by CBS from Epstein’s cell after his death. In both notes, the words are underlined. Epstein also appears to have used the phrase “watcha want me to do- burst out cryin” in an email from 2016, released by the Justice Department.
Epstein’s first apparent suicide attempt
The note has no signature. TIME has been unable to independently verify if it was written by Epstein, and has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Records released by the Justice Department show that on July 23, 2019, Epstein was found “unresponsive” in his cell, and that Epstein claimed later that same day that Tartaglione, who was awaiting trial in a quadruple murder case, had assaulted him. The sex offender was then put on suicide watch.
The document then shows that Tartaglione appears to have found the note in the days that followed. Epstein was later moved to a separate cell following the alleged assault, where he was later found dead on August 10, 2019. A medical examiner later determined that the cause of death was suicide.
Tartaglione was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in June 2024, one for each murder he carried out.
The push to unseal the document
Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, New York, released the note on Wednesday, after a request from the New York Times for it to be released was sent on April 30.
Democrat Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois also requested for the release of the note, writing to the Justice Department on May 4 calling for it to be unsealed.
“The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein deserve a full and transparent accounting of all pertinent information,” Krishnamoorthi wrote.
Speaking to the Times, Tartaglione said he found the note tucked into a graphic novel after Epstein was transferred from the cell. He said he then gave the note to his lawyers.
The former cellmate of Epstein had already mentioned the note, speaking on a podcast with Jessica Reed Kraus in July of last year.
Tartaglione previously discussed the alleged note
Tartaglione claims on the podcast that the note read along the lines that the FBI had investigated Epstein “for months and found nothing” and “what do you want me to do – cry about it?”
Over the last year, questions about alleged relationships between Epstein and prominent global figures have emerged, including with President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department has released several batches of the so-called ‘Epstein files’, most recently in January, when more than 3 million documents were published.
First Lady Melania Trump is the latest prominent figure to address allegations of association with Epstein. In early April, the First Lady said in an address that “lies” tying her to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell “must end.”
“To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell,” Melania said. “My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note,” she added in reference to a message sent to Maxwell in 2002, released by the Justice Department.
Scrutiny over Epstein associations continues
Since January’s release, several high-profile names have resigned from positions following questions about alleged association with Epstein.
In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced continued scrutiny over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S., despite being aware of continued correspondence between Mandelson and Epstein.
The former ambassador was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office in February, though he maintains no wrongdoing.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, has also been put in the spotlight in recent months after the Justice Department files appeared to show alleged communication between Epstein and the brother of King Charles.
Mountbatten Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office in February, and he has also continuously denied any wrongdoing.
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Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell at the Wall Street Concert Series in New York City on March 15, 2005.
In the balmy cloud forests of Central America, the operatic calls of Alston’s singing mouse, a small, short-tailed rodent famous for its courteous communication, can often be heard echoing through the trees.
These minuscule mice, each of which weighs less than a lightbulb, sing unique, chirp-filled songs to one another that can last as long as 16 seconds. Both sonic and ultrasonic sounds flow from the mouse’s mouth, creating a song reminiscent of the buzzing of a cicada. What’s more, the mice never interrupt each other; they hold their tiny tongues until their conversational partner is done singing.
Scientists have long wondered what enables these mice to have such uncannily complex conversations without the help of human brains. But as it turns out, our brains may not be so different.
In a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers found that a simple expansion of existing neural pathways allowed these mice to broaden their vocal repertoire — the same mutation believed to have paved the way for the development of human language.
By studying the brains of Alston’s singing mice and their non-singing (but closely related) lab mouse cousins, researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island were able to determine what evolutionary changes in the brain had given rise to the singing mouse’s cordial and symphonic songs. Now, scientists are wondering if the same method can be used to figure out the neurological basis for other animal behaviors.
“This is relevant far beyond singing mice,” said Mirjam Knörnschild, a behavioral ecologist who studies bioacoustics at the Museum of Natural History Berlin. Dr. Knörnschild, who was not involved with the study, said it could “inform work on vocal turn-taking, vocal learning and vocal flexibility in other mammals, including bats, primates and humans.”
In 2019, Arkarup Banerjee, a biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and his colleagues discovered that the back-and-forth serenades of Alston’s singing mice sound strikingly similar to our conversations. But at the time, he couldn’t make sense of it. Dr. Banerjee had examined the brains of Alston’s singing mice and non-singing lab mice, and they seemed more or less identical.
Scientists once believed that complex behaviors, such as tool use and peer-to-peer communication, required specialized neural circuitry. But when Dr. Banerjee went looking for such dedicated neural hardware in Alston’s singing mice, he didn’t find any.
“It didn’t seem like things were that different,” Dr. Banerjee recalls.
This prompted Dr. Banerjee and colleagues to set out in search of what gave these singing mice their vocal prowess. In their effort to find out, the researchers used a technique called Multiplexed Analysis of Projections by Sequencing, or MAPseq. This method allows scientists to map thousands of individual neurons by infecting them with a virus that delivers unique RNA bar codes into each cell. When scientists genetically sequence tissue from across the brain, the bar codes reveal a detailed map of where each neuron connects throughout the brain.
When the researchers used MAPseq on the brains of dozens of mice from both species, the differences became clear. The singing mice had approximately three times the number of neurons sending signals from the motor cortex to two specific downstream regions of the brain. While that may sound like a stark difference, the scientists say it’s more akin to “a relatively subtle change in brain wiring,” said Anthony Zador, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co-author of the study.
According to Dr. Zador, the fact that such subtle neural changes can result in the development of a whole new vocal behavior “raises interesting questions about how much rewiring was involved in the evolution of human language.”
In addition to challenging our understanding of the evolution of our most novel behavior, the findings of this study may help scientists learn more about the neurological basis for many animal behaviors.
“This work hits on an important unanswered question in neuroscience: What gives some animals exceptional abilities that others don’t have?” said David Schneider, a professor of neuroscience at New York University who was not involved with the study.
Before this study, scientists had never used MAPseq to compare the brains of two closely related species with remarkably different behavior. Experts say their success in doing so has opened up a world of scientific possibilities.
“This study gives us a road map for how to think about and quantitatively test ideas about the evolution of brain structure,” said Steven Phelps, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin, who was not involved with the study.
As the study came to a close, Dr. Banerjee said he couldn’t get a quote from Charles Darwin’s 1871 book “The Descent of Man” out of his head: “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”
“There’s increasing evidence that there may be some profound truth to this idea,” Dr. Banerjee said. As his study has demonstrated, even tiny changes in the brain can have profound impacts on behavior. When you keep that in mind, he said, “suddenly the development of things like language in humans doesn’t seem that mysterious.”
Explore the Animal Kingdom
A selection of quirky, intriguing, and surprising discoveries about animal life.
Birds of a Feather Learn Together: In a study, Australian cockatoos figured out that a new food was OK to consume by observing one another, a vivid example of “social learning” in animals.
Swimming With Orcas: Only two places in the world allow tourists to enter the water with the ocean’s apex predator. But the safety of both species is a growing concern.
Legal Protection for Snails?: Scientists are debating the classification of threatened mollusks that an Indigenous community in Mexico relies on for their way of life.
Salmon High on Cocaine: Scientists in Sweden made an unexpected discovery when they exposed the fish to the illegal drug as well as another substance.
Bruce the Parrot: In 2021, a disabled parrot made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. Now, he has become the alpha male of his group by learning to joust.
Female Anglerfish: The deep-sea fish ended up with glowing lures not just to snag meals, but also to attract mates, a new study finds.
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Scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island mapped the neurons of two species of mice to better understand how their brain wiring helps them vocalize. CreditCredit…Isko et al., Nature 2026
Iran has a drinking water crisis. And the war with the U.S. is making matters worse for Iran—and the entire Gulf region. That’s in part because of threats not only to water infrastructure, including dams and reservoirs, but also to desalination facilities, which millions in the broader region depend on for their drinking water.
For years, Iran’s reserves of potable water have been dwindling, thanks to a combination of climate change, mismanagement, and infrastructure problems. But the war has also put desalination—something that most of Iran isn’t reliant on—in the spotlight.
In March, Iran accused the U.S. of an attack on an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. denied responsibility for the strike, and just a day later, officials in Bahrain, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, accused Iran of damaging one of Bahrain’s desalination plants. By April, at least two desalination plants in Kuwait, another U.S. ally, had also been attacked.
Desalination plants are a critical resource—they convert seawater to drinking water. Around 70 to 90 percent of the population in most countries in the Persian Gulf region relies on desalination for drinking water, says Chris Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah and author of the forthcoming book Saltwater Kingdoms. Targeting desalination plants is likely a war crime under international law because they are civilian infrastructure, he adds.
Direct attacks aren’t the only threat to the region’s drinking water, however. Hits to energy infrastructure by U.S.-Israeli and Iranian forces have sent untold amounts of oil into the Persian Gulf—enough for the spills to be visible from space—which risks clogging up desalination pipes and fouling filters, Low says. Radioactive waste from damaged nuclear facilities could further contaminate the water, too.
Smaller countries in the region, such as Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, are “exquisitely vulnerable,” Low says. “They only have a few days to a week, let’s say, of reserve capacity. There’s not much slack in the system.”
To understand how the war is affecting the region’s drinking water, Scientific American spoke with Low about how the conflict could spiral into a “long-term ecological disaster.”
How many people are dependent on desalination in the Persian Gulf region?
If we think about the Gulf as a relatively cohesive region, [there are] 60-million-plus people who are dependent in some way, shape or form on desalination.
If you break out desalination dependency for drinking water by country, you get Qatar somewhere around 99 percent—it’s completely dependent. Kuwait and Bahrain: 90-plus percent. Oman: 86 percent. Saudi Arabia: 70 percent. United Arab Emirates, the number comes in at 42 percent.
If we were to turn off the tap of the Jebel Ali plant in Dubai, [UAE], Dubai would not fare well. If we were to turn off access to the Al Taweelah plant in Abu Dhabi—it’s deeply dependent.
All of those major population centers—those skyscraper, glittering cities, they all are attached to very significant desalination facilities.
What about Iran? Is it reliant upon desalination?
No—that’s a key difference. Its desalination capacity only accounts for 3 percent of its water needs.
If you looked outside my window [in Salt Lake City] and see snowcapped mountains, that looks like Tehran. It’s a very similar kind of landscape. Snowmelt, rivers, dams, lakes—these are things that are not present in the Gulf. Iran has a much different ecological landscape as opposed to Gulf nations.
Now, Iran, of course, is acutely vulnerable to water risks. In 2025, President [Masoud] Pezeshkian announced that Iran was considering moving its administrative capital from Tehran to the southern coast, the Makran region, in part because the water is running out.
Have desalination plants come under attack in previous conflicts?
In the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq were at war, there emerged something called the tanker war. They basically started to fire on oil and commercial vessels with flags related to the other country.
The second, and I think most severe, issue related to desalination was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990–91. When Saddam Hussein and Iraq occupied Kuwait, and the U.S. and coalition forces came in, what Hussein did was basically unfurl a kind of program of ecological terror.
They sabotaged power plants, desalination plants. They set the oil wells—some 700-plus oil wells—on fire, and they intentionally spilled oil into the Gulf. They basically just wrecked Kuwait’s environment, not just in the short term but for many, many years into the future.
It took weeks, if not months, to get water supply back on. In the interim, you had water tankers and water trucks coming from Saudi Arabia, bottled water from as far away as Turkey, [and] U.S. and European support for mobile diesel units and generators.
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A satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway between Iran and Oman that links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025
Tim Andrews was so close to death, he was ready to risk what little life he might have left.
The retired grocery store manager was told he would have to wait five years before reaching the top of the transplant list and qualifying for a new, life-saving kidney. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. Already, he could no longer walk or hold down food.
So last year, he volunteered for an experimental surgery at the leading edge of scientific research: He agreed to get a pig kidney to replace his own failing organ.
Tim Andrews, a 66-year-old resident of Concord, New Hampshire, is now the fourth person to ever have a genetically modified pig kidney transplant. Andrews previously underwent more than two years of dialysis due to advanced kidney disease, and getting a human kidney transplant would take considerably longer due to his O-group blood type. The pig kidney bought him the time he needed to wait for a human kidney to replace it.
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“I’m gonna die anyways, why wouldn’t I do something for all these [other people with kidney disease] that are suffering?” said Andrews, of Concord, New Hampshire.
“I don’t care if I die the next day as long as you learn something,” he told his doctor.
One pig- and one human-kidney transplant later, Andrews, 68, says he is now thinking of his future in terms of decades instead of days.
“I’m laughing again,” Andrews chuckled, remembering his time as a self-proclaimed “pig man.”
In the process, Andrews has become an example of how far transplantation has come and what it could look like in the future when there are enough organs for everyone in need and when the medication that enables a transplant’s success doesn’t threaten a recipient’s long-term survival. Andrews’ success as a transplant patient represents a decades-long American journey, one of many USA TODAY is profiling as part of its coverage of the United States’ 250th anniversary year.
The first-ever successful organ transplant took place in 1954, just a few miles from where Andrews received his own. The distance the field has traveled since −and has yet to go − represents a remarkable and very American medical journey, characterized by big ideas, big risks, perseverance, and issues of fairness and eye-popping prices.
The result: Andrews is alive and much healthier than he was two years ago.
“Oh my God, I’m in a science-fiction movie!” said Andrews, chuckling again, and adding that he’s always been a sci-fi buff. “How did I end up here?”
The wait for an organ
More than 100,000 Americans now sit on an organ transplant list, and most of them are waiting for a kidney. Like Andrews, they worry they won’t last long enough to get the ultimate gift.
For kidneys and some liver transplants, live donation is possible ‒ that is, someone can donate one of their two kidneys or a part of their liver and live out the rest of their lives normally. But not everyone can find a living match among friends, relatives or total strangers.
Andrews, like many, eventually benefited from a deceased organ donor. Only about three in 1,000 people die in a way that allows them to donate an organ like a kidney, lungs, or heart.
The science is getting better, enabling more organs to be used from patients who die older, sicker, or further from a hospital.
“We’re expanding the pool by using what we used to call ‘marginal’ organs,” said Dr. Nahel Elias, surgical director for kidney transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Andrews had his surgeries. “But at the end of the day, dead people are dead for a reason. Young, healthy people don’t just drop dead.”
And there simply aren’t enough organs for the people who need them, Elias and other experts said.
That’s where the idea of using pig organs comes in. For decades, researchers have been working toward the goal of using animal organs to save people. Some view the trade as unethical, but Americans already eat more than 130 million pigs every year, and pig, cow, and even shark tissue have long been used in medical settings.
Pig organs are similar enough in size and function to humans’, but transplanting entire organs was completely out of reach until about a decade ago, when scientists began mastering gene editing well enough to breed pigs whose organs are less likely to be rejected by the human immune system.
Tim Andrews undergoes a xenotransplant procedure on Jan. 25, 2025, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Andrews received a genetically-edited pig kidney. A closeup shows the kidney in its jar before surgery. Andrews lived 271 days with the pig organ before receiving a human kidney transplant.
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But xenotransplantation, as it is known, is still very much a work in progress, with just 10 Americans, including Andrews, having undergone a transplant. Only six are still alive. Andrews holds the record as of this writing. He lived 271 days with a pig organ.
Clinical trials started in 2026 to test pig organs in more people. The goal, doctors say, is to count their survival in years, not days.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Crowds inside the sprawling Grand Bazaar in Tehran on Saturday. Imports of goods have been affected by the war. 
Deagreez/Getty Images
James' World 2 