James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

Donald Trump on Sunday issued what he called his “last warning” to Hamas, urging the Palestinian militant group to accept a deal to release hostages from Gaza.

“The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”

Hamas said in a later statement that it received some ideas from the US side through mediators to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza.

The group said it was discussing with mediators ways to develop those ideas, without giving specifics.

Hamas also reiterated its readiness for negotiations to release all hostages in exchange for a “clear announcement of an end to the war” and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.

“I think we’re going to have a deal on Gaza very soon,” Trump told reporters as he traveled back to Washington from New York, without offering any details. He added that he thought all the hostages would be returned, dead or alive. “I think we’re going to get them all.”

On Saturday, Israel’s N12 News reported that Trump has put forth a new ceasefire proposal to Hamas.

Under the deal, Hamas would free all the remaining 48 hostages on the first day of the truce in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel and negotiate an end to the war during a ceasefire in the enclave, according to N12.

An Israeli official said Israel was “seriously considering” Trump’s proposal but did not elaborate on its details.

.

Trump speaks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A California serial murderer known as the “Alphabet killer”, convicted of slaying four women in 2013, actually had 26 victims, his death row confidant now claims.

Joseph Naso was convicted and sentenced to death 12 years ago for the murders of Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons, and Tracy Tafoya, which occurred in the 1970s and 1990s. The women’s first names and last names all began with the same letter, earning the former photographer the haunting moniker.

According to a new Oxygen documentary, “Death Row Confidential: Secrets of a Serial Killer,” his murder count is reportedly much higher. The revelation came from another death row inmate, William Noguera, who was locked up with Naso in San Quentin State Prison. Naso remains on death row to this day, and has not commented on the alleged killings.

“He’s guilty of more murders than anyone knows. He told me everything, and I wrote all of it down,” Noguera says in a preview of the series, which airs on September 13.

Noguera was part of a program to assist elderly prisoners and got to know Naso over a decade, when he made the bombshell confession, he claimed.

“When I told him, ‘Well, look, they got you because a list of 10,’ he started laughing,” Noguera told news outlet, KGO. “He said, ‘They got it all wrong. Yeah, I killed them women, yes. But those aren’t my top – those aren’t my list of 10. Those are my top 10.”

According to KGO, the killing 26 women may be supported by evidence found at Naso’s home. “They found a coin collection with 26 gold heads. Those represent his trophies; they represent the 26 women that he murdered,” Noguera added.

After his dealings with Naso, Noguera put together a 300-page document with clues and partial confessions, hoping to lead investigators to more victims. The case was taken up by retired FBI task force investigator Ken Mains, who also features in the Oxygen documentary.

Roggasch, 18, and 22-year-old Colon were killed by Naso in the 1970s, while 38-year-old Parsons and 31-year-old Tafoya were murdered in the 1990s. All four had been sex workers.

Naso, a father-of-two and a Little League coach, was arrested in 2009 when police officers found evidence linking him to the four crimes at his California home.

he stash included photographs of the women’s lifeless bodies, a detailed list of references to the murders, and a journal with featuring graphic descriptions of the rape and torture of other young women.

Despite this, Naso maintained his innocence, telling the jury that he was “not the monster that killed these women,” during his trial,l where he represented himself. Then-California Deputy District Attorney Dori Ahana argued in favour of the death penalty, which was ultimately handed down.

After his conviction, Naso had remained a suspect in the murders of at least two other California women.

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Hmmmm… Is the USA  falling behind China in research with the Trump Administration?

Click the link below the picture

.

Your peripheral nervous system (PNS) is crucial to navigating daily life. It lets you walk, controls your eye movements, and rings your brain’s alarms when you step on a Lego brick. Yet researchers have never built a complete map of this essential network in any mammalian body.

Now, a study published in Cell shows a complete, three-dimensional map of every single nerve fiber threading through a mouse. It completes the first-ever mammalian “connectome,” a flowchart of an entire nervous system, beyond just the well-researched brain and spinal cord.

“Mapping of the PNS has been a neglected component of mapping the connectome in animal and human brain studies,” says John Darrell Van Horn, a brain and data science researcher at the University of Virginia, who was not involved in the study.

The research team began by making the bodies of 16 mice as visually transparent as possible, removing fat, calcium, and other materials that block light. They then used a custom combined slicing tool and microscope to take images of each of the bodies 400 microns at a time, which took about 40 hours per mouse—providing data the researchers say would otherwise have taken months or years to collect.

The scientists genetically modified seven of the mice to have fluorescent neurons; as expected, this caused mostly the head to light up. In four of the mice, the team applied a technique called immunostaining, which uses antibodies to target and color specific proteins—in this case, those in the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which controls “fight or flight” responses. In the remaining five mice, the researchers tested a method using viruses to measure the full length of nerve projections known as axons. They specifically focused on tracing the vagus nerve, which contains projections threading in from thousands of individual neurons. The team found that each vagus nerve fiber connected to only one organ in the gut, rather than branching to many different organs as some had predicted. (Its path through the stomach and part of the small intestine is visualized in the topmost image.)

“By revealing the precise projection patterns and organ-specific targeting of different peripheral nerves, these maps will provide a structural framework for understanding how the PNS mediates body physiology,” says co-author Guo-Qiang Bi, a biophysicist at the University of Science and Technology of China.

The researchers hope to apply this method to human tissue next to help plan precision surgeries. Van Horn says the work could also inspire therapies for nerve-related disorders such as chronic pain. “It moves us closer to the precision mapping of the entire mammalian connectome and the diseases that affect it, not just the part between the ears.”

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article (for all images):

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Trump repeated booed

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-us-open-booed_n_68be01dfe4b00b82060b89d6?origin=home-latest-news-unit

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Russia must be pushed toward peace. The key to this, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, is unified action by Europe and the US, including sanctions and tariffs.

The Ukrainian president spoke about his recent meetings and visits, noting that 26 countries are now prepared to guarantee Ukraine’s security through concrete measures.

However, Zelenskyy emphasized that before peace can be secured, the Russian Federation must be compelled to move in that direction. He stressed the need to ensure Moscow stops rejecting all peace initiatives and fully understands the consequences of prolonging the war.

“Strong sanctions and tariffs — combined European and American efforts — are key to this. No opportunity to fund Russia’s war machine can remain. Next comes even more transatlantic work to ensure the pressure is truly tangible,” the president concluded.

Security guarantees for Ukraine and Putin’s withdrawal from talks

Since August 18, when US President Donald Trump hosted Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House, the parties have actively discussed security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine.

On September 4, the Coalition of the Willing met in Paris. Following the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron said the countries had completed preparations for Ukraine’s security guarantees. He later clarified that 26 states are ready to either send soldiers to Ukraine or support such a mission

Commenting on the potential deployment of foreign troops, Zelenskyy said the plan would involve thousands of soldiers.

Yesterday, the Ukrainian president stressed that security guarantees must take effect immediately, without waiting for the cessation of hostilities. He clarified that these measures include not only military support but also economic guarantees.

Zelenskyy added that the Ukrainian army is the strongest safeguard for the country and for all of Europe. He noted that it numbers 800,000 personnel, making it one of the largest and most capable forces on the continent.

US President Trump has also expressed readiness to provide Ukraine with security guarantees. However, he has repeatedly clarified that American troops will not be deployed in Ukraine. He emphasized that Europe should play the primary role in delivering security guarantees.

While security discussions continue, talks between Zelenskyy and Putin have stalled.

After the Washington meeting on August 18, Trump announced plans for a bilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia. However, Russia began denying that Putin had promised to meet Zelenskyy, and the situation has since remained stalled. The US president stated that the leaders are not yet ready to hold the meeting.

On September 3, Putin publicly said he does not rule out meeting with Zelenskyy. However, he added that Zelenskyy would need to travel to Moscow if he is ready for the talks.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Zelenskyy said Putin could come to Kyiv. He explained that he cannot travel to Moscow, the capital of this terrorist, while Ukraine faces daily attacks.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

University students might soon have something other than black-light posters to brighten their dorm rooms. Researchers have created glow-in-the-dark plants by injecting succulents with materials similar to those that make the posters light up. The fleshy plants shine as brightly as a night light, and can be made to do so in a wide variety of colours — a first for glowing houseplants, according to the team.

The researchers, led by Xuejie Zhang, a materials scientist at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, describe today how they produced the plants in the journal Matter. They have applied for a patent on the technology, which they hope will lead to decorative installations and living lighting.

The idea of making glowing plants has captivated scientists since the late 1980s, when researchers made the first bioluminescent plant by inserting a gene from a firefly (Photinus pyralis) into a type of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). This work laid the foundation for the first genetically engineered luminescent houseplant to come on the market in the United States, last year. The biotechnology firm Light Bio in Sun Valley, Idaho, sells the petunia (Petunia hybrida), which glows a very faint green thanks to genes from a light-emitting mushroom.

Leafy greens … and blues and reds

Unlike the petunia, which emits light through chemical reactions in its cells, the succulent glows because of materials injected into its leaves. These materials — phosphor particles made of strontium and aluminium dosed with other metals — absorb energy from light at one wavelength, store some of that energy and then slowly re-emit it at a different wavelength for several hours. For instance, one material the scientists injected into their succulents absorbs ultraviolet and blue light, and re-emits it as green light.

This type of ‘afterglow’ phosphor is used in glow-in-the-dark toys and paints, and as an imaging tracer for laboratory animals. Whereas genetically engineered bioluminescent plants are, so far, limited in the range of colours they emit, afterglow phosphors span a wide variety of hues, including red and blue, and they can be combined to produce a white glow

The researchers purchased phosphors containing strontium aluminate and ground them down to particles of various sizes before injecting them into an assortment of plants. They found that particles around 7 micrometres in diameter glowed more brightly than did nanoparticles in plants, and were able to fill up the interior tissues of succulent leaves for a stronger, more uniform glow. By contrast, plants with simple leaf structures, such as tobacco plants and pak choi, emitted a more patchy glow.

The plant favoured by the team is the succulent Echevaria ‘Mebina’, a common houseplant that grows rosettes of dense, fleshy leaves. To make every leaf glow, the researchers had to inject each one with phoshor particles, a process that takes about ten minutes. The luminescence — which the team generated in hues of blue-green, blue-violet, green, red and white — lasted as long as 120 minutes after exposing the plant to tailored wavelengths of light or sunlight, and could be triggered again and again over the 10 days of the study.

The researchers estimate that the cost of materials to create one plant is about 10 yuan (US$1.40).

Co-author Shuting Liu, also at the South China Agricultural University, says that the team hopes to move away from injecting each leaf by using smaller particles, which can spread more readily throughout plants. But the team will need to overcome an obstacle: the smaller the particle, the dimmer the glow

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A sprawling Hyundai manufacturing plant in a quiet southeast Georgia community became ground zero on Thursday for one of the most extensive immigration raids in recent US history. The operation, months in the making, ended with 475 arrests, most of them Korean nationals.

As state troopers blocked roads leading to the plant and set up a security perimeter, nearly 500 federal, state, and local officers poured into the sprawling battery production facility, still under construction.

Agents moved swiftly, lining up workers along the walls. Word of the raid spread across the property, triggering a scramble among workers who attempted to flee, with some running to a sewage pond and others hiding in air ducts.

The officers spoke with each worker, one by one, working to determine which were in the US legally, allowing some to leave and taking the rest into custody, moving them off-site and transporting them to the Folkston ICE Processing Center, officials said.

By 8 p.m., their work was done.

The high-stakes raid in Ellabell, about 25 miles west of Savannah, Georgia, was the result of what authorities characterized as a meticulously coordinated investigation involving multiple federal and state agencies and weeks of intelligence gathering, all converging in a pivotal day, marking the largest sweep yet in the current Trump administration’s immigration crackdown at US worksites.

Workers describe tense, chaotic scene

Federal agents descended on the Hyundai site Thursday morning like it was a “war zone,” a construction worker at the electric car plant told CNN Friday.

The worker, who asked not to be named to protect his privacy, said he was part of the first group of people rounded up by federal agents.

“They just told everybody to get on the wall. We stood there for about an hour and were then taken to another section where we waited. Then we went in another building and got processed,” the employee said.

Masked and armed agents gave orders to construction workers wearing hard hats and safety vests as they lined up while officers raided the facility, video footage obtained by CNN showed.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Discovery of vast natural hydrogen reserves could fuel clean energy and reshape Earth’s future power supply.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article( Sound on for Slideshow):

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Like many other meteorologists around the U.S. Gulf Coast on the morning of August 26, 2005, Alan Gerard was monitoring the latest computer model forecasts for Hurricane Katrina, which had just emerged over the Gulf of Mexico after striking South Florida as a Category 1 storm. Gerard, then meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) office in Jackson, Miss., saw that the newest projections indicated that Katrina would track farther south than previous model runs had predicted. “It was a big change,” he says—and a concerning one because it meant that the storm would have more time over warm water to strengthen and that Katrina’s path had shifted westward, toward Mississippi.

With the weekend fast approaching and several hours before the official forecast would be updated, Gerard quickly e-mailed Mississippi’s emergency management agency to warn them that the state was facing a worse hit and that they needed to start preparing right away.

Just three days later, on August 29, Katrina rammed into the coast at the Louisiana-Mississippi border with a 20-mile-long wall of storm surge estimated at 24 to 28 feet high. (The exact heights that the surge reached aren’t known because most of the gauges, buildings, and other structures that would provide evidence of a high-water mark were obliterated.) In the subsequent hours, the levees around New Orleans failed, releasing torrents of water into the city and making Katrina the deadliest storm to hit the U.S. in nearly 80 years.

Despite the disaster that unfolded because of human mistakes, Katrina had been a well-predicted hurricane; the forecast errors involved were lower than the average at the time. But Katrina, along with the rest of the blockbuster 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, helped spark a dedicated, government-funded effort to make hurricane forecasts even better. Over the past 20 years, that project has nearly halved the error in predictions of where a storm will go and has given communities an extra 12 hours of warning time. By one estimate, these and other improvements have saved the nation up to $5 billion for each hurricane that hit the U.S. since 2007—3.5 times as much as the NWS’s budget for 2024. The resounding success is an example of “how this can all work when it’s done right,” Gerard says.

But that success, he and other hurricane experts warn, is under threat as the Trump administration is chopping away parts of the research staff and infrastructure that made such remarkable, lifesaving progress possible.

How Hurricane Forecasts Have Improved

When Frank Marks began forecasting hurricanes in the 1980s, it was only really possible to try to roughly predict the track that a storm would take. “Intensity was a wing and a prayer,” he says. Back then, a storm similar to Hurricane Erin, which parallelled the East Coast in mid-August 2025, would have likely prompted meteorologists to warn the entire coast of a possible hurricane hit because of the inherent uncertainty in forecasts. But this year, forecasters were able to tell that Erin would stay well out to sea; they only issued warnings for rip currents, heavy surf, and some storm surge in coastal areas. “To me, that is astounding, to see that evolution,” says Marks, who became director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division in 2002 and is now retired.

By the time Katrina formed near the Bahamas on Aug. 23, 2005, increased computing power, a better understanding of the physics of hurricanes, and more detailed observations of storms had substantially improved forecasts. But after the Gulf was battered by storms throughout 2004 and 2005, Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, then administrator of NOAA, thought there was still plenty of room for improvement, Marks says.“If you eliminate all of that research, you’re basically creating a stagnant weather service and a stagnant weather community in general.” —Alan Gerard, former National Weather Service meteorologistWhat grew out of that initial request was a fairly revolutionary effort that was eventually dubbed the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP). (The full name was subsequently changed to the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program.) Its first step was to ask forecasters what problems they faced—and to bring together NOAA’s hurricane researchers and modelers, as well as academic scientists, to solve those issues.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A new international study that included a large-scale analysis of U.S. workers has highlighted an interesting aspect of the ways women relate to other colleagues. It could partially explain their underrepresentation in senior, influential business roles.

The international team of researchers, including a professor of sociology from the University of South Carolina, examined the way women think about social networks in professional settings. In this context, this means, essentially, how people create a mental map of how colleagues are connected to each other, through particular projects, through various managerial chains, and other, more subtle links.

The team’s research found that women have a much, much better ability than men when it comes to spotting who is connected to who else in a professional way — and they’re better at remembering these networks, research news site Phys.org notes. That may not surprise you, at least if you’ve ever been impressed by the way a female colleague can remember details like, “Oh yes, that’s colleague X who worked for boss Y on that big project Z last year…you know, the one where person A did that amazing work with person B?”

But the researchers found that women are able to carry out this sort of impressive mental feat by relying on a “triadic” trick, which means they assume some form of professional relationship exists between two people who are both connected to a third person. In complex, dense team situations in the workplace, this is a superpower. Researchers found this approach boosts the accuracy with which women understand professional social networks.

The thing is, when you get to more open, informal, and less densely interlinked social networks, the report says it could lead to women making more incorrect assumptions about how people are connected, potentially leading to confusion and less team cohesion.

Think of a situation where your company has asked people to work on a new project that crosses existing teams, where many workers may not have had too many opportunities to work together before. In these situations, information, instruction, and expertise tends to flow through one or two highly knowledgeable people, or informal leadership networks, rather than passing along the usual direct reporting chains. For example, Steve from Accounts may know exactly who to speak to on the new project to solve a particular issue, but you may not, even though you may be senior to Steve.

The researchers found that thess situations tend to disadvantage women. Men can then find themselves in a position of being able to wield more power and advantage.

Why should you care about this? It may sound like a bit of scientific psychobabble to you, but it touches on something important.

You should care because having a deep understanding of relational patterns in a workplace is vital for a good leader. Remembering who reports to which manager for which project, and how the projects are allocated across teams, is more than a memory trick: if problems occur, knowing which person can fix them can be critical. Essentially, knowing which personnel lever to pull to get your company to achieve its goals makes you a more effective leader.

.

Photo: Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________