Offshore wind farms may do more than boost renewable energy: they might support marine ecosystems, too. That’s the takeaway of a new study conducted in China. The researchers found that wind turbines provided support for colonies of oysters and barnacles and that fish species and biomass were more abundant near the turbines than they were in an area without the machines.
The study counters a frequent criticism of offshore wind farms—that they are detrimental to marine life and may damage the seabed. China, while being the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is a global leader in renewable energy build-out, including offshore wind projects. It has the largest wind power capacity of any nation and plans to build the world’s largest wind turbine.
Located in China’s northern Yellow Sea, the wind farm evaluated in the study gave rise to a so-called benthic ecosystem—one dominated by seafloor organisms—that was nonexistent in a comparable area nearby that had no turbines. The researchers think the rough turbine surfaces provided an optimal habitat for such organisms.
Because these organisms were able to grow and thrive on and around the turbines, predatory fish followed the food, boosting the ecosystem’s diversity and stability overall, said James Tweedley, a senior lecturer at Murdoch University in Australia and a co-author of the study, in a recent statement.
Lawmakers are threatening to take action against the Trump Administration for only partially releasing government files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein despite a new law requiring it to make all such materials public by last Friday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Monday that he is introducing a resolution directing the Senate to initiate legal action against the Justice Department “for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files.”
“The law Congress passed is crystal clear: release the Epstein files in full so Americans can see the truth. Instead, the Trump Department of Justice dumped redactions and withheld the evidence—that breaks the law,” Schumer said in a press release. He called the move a “blatant cover-up,” accusing Justice Department officials of “shielding [President] Donald Trump from accountability.”
Schumer’s announcement comes after two other lawmakers—Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky—said over the weekend that they were discussing pursuing contempt findings against Attorney General Pam Bondi for the incomplete release. Khanna and Massie co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last month that gave the Justice Department 30 days to make public a wide collection of unclassified documents related to Epstein, his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and other people connected to their cases. The law allows the department to redact some information in certain situations, such as to protect victims’ identities and to adhere to the rules of grand jury secrecy.
“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” which aired on Sunday. “Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now.”
The resolution, Khanna told The Washington Post, would also include a provision that would permit a congressional committee to evaluate any redactions to the files to ensure that there is a valid reason for the redaction.
The Justice Department began releasing the files in the Epstein case on Friday, the deadline imposed by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Before the release, the Trump Administration warned earlier that day that it wouldn’t be releasing all the files—which is required by the law—because of the large scale of the redactions it said were needed to protect victims’ identities.
“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story to the extent it needs to be protected is completely protected,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News on Friday. He added that more documents are expected to be made public over the coming weeks.
Victims of Epstein and lawmakers quickly criticized the department for releasing incomplete and heavily redacted documents that included no significant new details about Epstein’s crimes or the attempts to investigate him.
“For survivors, this deadline was not symbolic for us but was a real opportunity to see whether transparency would finally outweigh the protection of powerful interests, after decades of reporting this abuse,” Liz Stein, an Epstein survivor and anti-trafficking advocate, said in a statement. “The DOJ’s partial, staggered release—largely repeating already public information, lacking context, and extending beyond the statutory deadline—violates federal law and risks shielding the individuals and institutions who perpetrated and enabled this abuse, falling far short of the transparency intended by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks at a press conference with other Senate Democrats on the upcoming deadline for the release of the Epstein files, in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 16, 2025.Nathan Posner—Anadolu/Getty Images
Hmmmm … Is War part of the current administration’s plan?
Click the link below the picture
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Where ICE makes arrests
The Trump administration has said it would prioritize deporting the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”
Historically, ICE detained immigrants who had committed crimes through “custodial” arrests — picking up people who had already been arrested by other law enforcement agencies from jails and prisons.
While custodial arrests still make up half of all immigration arrests, ICE has increasingly gone after anyone who may be in the country illegally, whether they have a criminal record or not.
Most ICE arrests at jails and prisons take place in Republican-led states like Florida, Georgia, and Texas.
The rest are “at-large” arrests in the community, which are more common in states led by Democrats, like California and New York, where many local agencies do not cooperate with ICE.
More people who have been in the country for years or decades are being swept up and removed. More than 3,000 adults who entered before the age of 16 — potential “Dreamers” — have been deported, as have more than 4,000 children.
Where they are held
In the past, most people who were arrested were released to await their day in immigration court. Illegal immigration is a civil — not a criminal — offense, and detention was designed to hold only those deemed a flight risk.
But the Trump administration told ICE to hold people indefinitely and told immigration judges that most people are no longer eligible for bail. The Laken Riley Act, passed in January, further narrowed who can be released.
Immigrant detention centers are filling up, even as the Trump administration has opened dozens of new facilities to expand the capacity and reach of this network
The detained population has nearly doubled, to more than 68,000 people in December, an all-time high.
People detained by ICE have described unsanitary and unsafe conditions in some detention centers — including rotten food, a lack of access to showers and toilets, and the use of solitary confinement. At least 32 people have died in ICE custody since Mr. Trump took office, more than the number in Mr. Biden’s entire four years in office.
Officials have denied claims of poor conditions and mistreatment of detainees.
Because detention facilities are concentrated in the South, people arrested elsewhere are often quickly transferred long distances to places where there is space, often in Texas and Louisiana, far from family and lawyers.
Each line here represents the average monthly volume of transfers of immigrant detainees between detention facilities. Darker lines reflect higher numbers of detainee transfers.
People are moving around the system more than last year — passing through an average of three different facilities over seven weeks before they are deported. Immigration lawyers say the process has caused some people to give up their asylum cases and to agree to be deported.
Where deported people go
The Trump administration has deported people to almost every country in the world, including those that had resisted taking back their citizens. It has sent people to repressive regimes, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Russia, and it has pressed countries like South Sudan and Uganda to accept deportees from far-away places who have no ties to those countries.
Detailed data on ICE removals was available only through the end of July, but it showed that the monthly pace of deportations had more than doubled compared with last year for people from more than 100 places.
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How ICE has moved thousands of people through detention and out of the country.
Ancient Romans in Britain were riddled with intestinal parasites that spread through human feces.
A new analysis of the sewer system at Vindolanda, a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall, found that residents in ancient times were infected with at least three gut parasites—roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis.
Roundworms and whipworms both live in the intestine and cause various ailments, including abdominal pain, nausea, fever, and diarrhea. Roundworms can grow as long as 30 centimeters, while whipworms tend to be smaller. People can get infected by ingesting food or drink contaminated with human feces holding the eggs of these worms. Giardia duodenalis, meanwhile, is not a worm but a tiny organism that lives primarily inside the small intestine. It exists in two forms—cysts and trophozoites—and causes giardiasis, an illness that causes severe diarrhea and makes it harder for the body to absorb vital nutrients. It is also spread through human waste.
For the analysis, published in the journal Parasitology, researchers looked at 50 sediment samples taken from the drain of a third-century latrine at the fort. About 28 percent of the samples contained whipworm or roundworm eggs, whereas others had traces of Giardia duodenalis. A sample from an older structure dating to the first century also contained the worms.
What all this suggests is that ancient Romans were probably not as fastidious about washing their hands or their food as we are today. Fecal matter may also have contaminated the drinking water supply at Vindolanda fort, sickening the residents. And once the Romans were infected, there was little that could be done, said study co-author Marissa Ledger, a medical microbiology resident at McMaster University in Ontario, in a statement.
“While the Romans were aware of intestinal worms, there was little their doctors could do to clear infection by these parasites or help those experiencing diarrhoea, meaning symptoms could persist and worsen,” Ledger said.
The conditions almost certainly affected the Romans’ ability to protect Hadrian’s Wall, a vital defense structure built by the Romans in C.E. 122 to keep out the Picts and other tribes who lived to the north. Disease outbreaks would have been common, with dozens sickened at a time.
Ultimately, the findings suggest life for a Roman soldier at Hadrian’s Wall was pretty miserable, the researchers said. “Excavations at Vindolanda continue to find new evidence that helps us to understand the incredible hardships faced by those posted to this northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire nearly 2,000 years ago,” said Andrew Birley, a co-author of the study and CEO of the Vindolanda Charitable Trust.
A Wisconsin teacher pleaded guilty to one count of child enticement and two counts of sexual misconduct and was sentenced to six years in prison
Madison Bergmann broke down in tears at her sentencing hearing on Friday, Dec. 19
Bergmann exchanged thousands of texts with an 11-year-old student, including one that referenced “making out” with him
A Wisconsin elementary school teacher who engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a student broke down in tears after being sentenced to six years in prison on Friday, Dec. 19.
Madison Bergmann was sentenced to six years of confinement, to be followed by six years of supervision, after pleading guilty to one count of child enticement and two counts of sexual misconduct, according to KARE 11, WQOW, and WEAU.
Bergmann, 26, frequently texted an 11-year-old student, PEOPLE previously reported.
Authorities previously said in a criminal complaint that Bergmann sent texts saying how much she enjoyed “making out” with him and that she liked when he touched her, KARE 11 reported.
The outlet further reported that subsequent searches revealed 100 handwritten notes and artwork, in addition to thousands of texts.
“Dude, I love you so much more — like I didn’t think it was possible — but oh my god today during reading….” she wrote in one of the texts, according to WEAU.
KARE reported that Bergmann ultimately pleaded guilty in order to receive a reduced sentence. The outlet reported that she had asked the judge to only sentence her to a year behind bars, whereas prosecutors requested 12 years.
In a video of the proceedings aired by KARE, Bergmann apologized for her conduct.
“I want to make it absolutely clear that I take full accountability for every boundary that was crossed,” Bergmann said through tears.
The victim’s father also spoke at the sentencing hearing, calling the texts “disturbing stuff.”
Just a few weeks after a whirlwind rebel offensive seized control of his homeland last year, a Syrian expatriate in Moscow treated himself to a meal in the city’s tallest skyscraper.
With views from the 62nd floor, stylish hostesses and elaborate cocktails, the restaurant “Sixty” regularly welcomes members of Russia’s political elite and foreign celebrities.
So the Syrian diner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he had not been surprised when waiters asked him to refrain from taking photos.
But he was surprised to discover who one of the V.I.P.s dining in his midst was: his country’s ousted dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
For more than five decades, the Assad family name has been synonymous with brutal autocracy. Now, the Assads are fugitives living in Moscow.
Both the deposed president and his brother Maher, one of the regime’s most powerful military leaders, have betrayed little about how they spend their days in the country that propped them up when they were in power and took them in when they fell.
But from witnesses and family friends, and digital clues left on hard-to-track social media accounts, reporters for The New York Times have uncovered glimpses into a life of luxury and impunity.
Details of the Assad family’s lives emerged from a Times investigation into the whereabouts of 55 of the regime’s highest-ranking officials. The people who spoke to The Times — including family friends, relatives, and former officials — insisted on anonymity out of concern for their safety.
The Assads’ luxurious exile began from the first moments they fled to Moscow via private jets and car convoys, according to a relative, two family friends, and two ex-military officers from the Fourth Division, which Maher al-Assad led. All of them have spoken to, stayed with, or met members of the Assad family.
Under the close guard of Russian security services, they first stayed in opulent apartments run by the Four Seasons, which can cost up to $13,000 per week.
From there, the deposed president and his family moved to a two-story penthouse in Federation Tower, the same skyscraper where the restaurant Sixty is located. Later, Mr. al-Assad was moved to a villa in the secluded suburb of Rublyovka, west of Moscow, according to a former Syrian official in touch with the family, another acquaintance, and a regional diplomat told by Russian officials.
The enclave is popular with the Russian elite and boasts a “luxury village” shopping complex. The Russian security services continue to guard Mr. al-Assad and oversee his movements, the former officials and regional diplomat said, and have ordered the family not to make public statements.
In February, the Russian authorities moved quickly, three other former officials said, when Mr. al-Assad’s son Hafez, 24, wrote about the family’s escape on social media and shared a video of himself strolling through Moscow. He has not posted online since.
Two acquaintances said they had seen Maher al-Assad, a baseball cap low over his eyes, several times at a gleaming skyscraper in Moscow’s business district where they believed he was living. One family friend said he lived in the Capital Towers buildings in that district.
In June, he was seen in a video on social media at the trendy Myata Platinum hookah bar in Afimall, a nearby shopping and entertainment complex.
While in power, Maher and the forces he led were accused of shooting unarmed protesters, enforcing “surrender or starve” sieges and running a regional drug trafficking operation estimated to have made them billions of dollars.
Judging by the activities of the Assad daughters, the family has retained significant wealth.
In November, the ousted dictator invited friends and Russian officials to a villa in the suburbs for an opulent party celebrating his daughter Zein’s 22nd birthday, according to a relative, a former regime officer, and a family friend whose children or close friends attended the party.
Ms. al-Assad’s cousin and Maher’s daughter, Sham al-Assad, also appeared to celebrate her 22nd birthday with an extravaganza, held over two nights in mid-September at a gold-tiled French restaurant called Bagatelle in Dubai and then on a private yacht.
The social media accounts of both women are set to private, with user names that don’t obviously signal their identities. But The Times found and confirmed the authenticity of the accounts through tips from relatives and family friends, then examined images and videos from public-facing Instagram posts by their friends.
One post from Sham al-Assad’s birthday showed golden 22-shaped balloons surrounded by gifts in bags from luxury brands such as Hermès, Chanel, and Dior.
Another captured revelers at Bagatelle surrounded by champagne sparklers. There is a glimpse of Ms. al-Assad herself, shaking a bottle of Cristal in a cheering crowd. Another photo tags her cousin Zein’s Instagram, though she is not seen in the shot.
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.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks at a press conference with other Senate Democrats on the upcoming deadline for the release of the Epstein files, in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 16, 2025.Nathan Posner—Anadolu/Getty Images
How ICE has moved thousands of people through detention and out of the country.
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Aaron Byrd
James' World 2 