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As far as organs go, the thymus is underrated. This little-known gland sits inside the chest next to the heart and the lungs. And while we typically retain it into adulthood, it is most active before and during puberty. At that time, the thymus is largely responsible for developing T cells, a critical type of white blood cell that help to fight infections. Its role in adults, however, has largely been overlooked for years, in part because it shrinks (and is replaced with fat tissue) as we age—a signal scientists had interpreted as meaning it was less relevant.

But now a pair of new studies suggest the organ may be far more important for our long-term well-being than we thought. The findings jibe with an emerging consensus that the immune system plays a major role in how well we age.

In one study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyze around 27,000 patient computed tomography (CT) scans and medical records to reveal that the health of the thymus may be linked to whether an individual develops cardiovascular disease or lung cancer, or dies from any cause.

The finding is in an important “puzzle piece” for understanding long-term health, says the study’s senior author, Hugo Aerts, a researcher at Mass General Brigham and a professor at Harvard Medical School and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

The AI analysis found “enormous variation” in the health of the thymus between individual people, Aerts says. “In some people, it stayed very active until a very old age. And [in] other people, it actually declined very rapidly at a younger age.”

Importantly, thymus health correlated with a person’s overall health. People who had a healthy thymus tended to live longer and were less likely to develop lung cancer or cardiovascular disease—even after accounting for factors such as what someone’s age or sex was and whether they smoked—than people with a less healthy thymus.

And in a related study also published in Nature on Wednesday, Aerts and his colleagues found that, among cancer patients receiving immunotherapy, those who had a healthier thymus tended to have better treatment outcomes.

“What these two studies show is that almost this forgotten organ, the thymus, may actually play a very central role in our health throughout life,” Aerts says.

“Increasingly, different lines of research are converging on the idea that immune competence—particularly T-cell-mediated immunity—is a central determinant of healthy aging,” says María Mittelbrunn, an immunologist at the Spanish Research Council and a visiting professor at Columbia University. Previous research has shown that patients who had their thymus removed experienced worse health outcomes years later, for example.

The research isn’t conclusive, however. The studies identify a correlation between the thymus and long-term health outcomes—but not a causal effect. It’s possible that the thymus could be “acting as a proxy for overall physiological health,” Mittelbrunn says, rather than determining it.

Patients included in the new research who had better thymus health also tended to have lower inflammation. “This could suggest that what is really being captured is a broader state of low inflammation and better global organ function rather than a thymus-specific effect,” Mittelbrunn says. It’s also possible other organs could show a similar trend, she adds.

What remains “compelling” is the message that “a well-functioning immune system is likely one of the most impactful factors in maintaining health,” Mittelbrunn says.

Aerts says more research is needed to fully understand how thymus health affects longevity. But the studies offer “new knowledge,” he says, and send a signal that the thymus deserves more attention and research.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, this organ—we should not forget about it,’” he says.

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I’ve always had a thing about fog. If the morning sky is cloaked in mist, I’m happy as a clam. It’s a condition I’ve been afflicted with my entire life (and one that’s procured quite a bit of teasing over the years), but there’s something about the mysterious nature of it all that improves my mood and boosts my creativity. As you might imagine, when murmurings of 2026’s “mystic outlands” trend began bubbling up, I felt as though I had met my people. If this is the first you’re hearing of it, allow me to show you the ropes: this trend was coined by Pinterest Predicts and centers on millennial and boomer travelers seeking out “distant ruins swallowed by mist, naturally-occurring spirals, and moody, enchanting forests.” More or less: Scottish Highlands vibes.

But digging a bit deeper into the psychology behind why travelers might be seeking out so-called mystical destinations, I’d argue it’s less about the aesthetic and more about the transformation. The metaphorical mist, if you will. “A few defining elements tend to surface,” says Scott Dunn’s Simon Hunt. “A palpable sense of energy tied to the land, ancient rituals and living traditions, otherworldly landscapes, and experiences that invite reflection.” Operating within those parameters, the mystic outlands trend extends to some of the world’s most mesmerizing corners.

“These journeys often take place in rare or remote environments where silence, scale, or isolation heighten awareness, and where…time-honored traditions invite reflection rather than spectacle,” explains Timbuktu’s founder and CEO Johnny Prince. This brings up a key point: while notions of moody forests and mysterious spirals might suggest a solo journey, a mystical travel experience is about connecting to the human experience. A “renewed perspective on how others live, believe, and find meaning in the world,” as Prince puts it.

Keeping this in mind, continue ahead for mind-bending travel destinations—some covered in mist, yes, others of the metaphorical variety. From the haunting coastline of Namibia to off-road adventures in Iceland, let the 13 trips ahead inform your next adventure.

The coastal deserts of Namibia are as perplexing to the eye as they are stirring to the soul. “The country offers landscapes like nowhere else on earth,” says Jennifer Morris of Abercrombie & Kent. The Skeleton Coast is a remote stretch in Northern Namibia named for its shipwrecks and whale skeletons, but it’s the intense fog and mesmerizing convergence of desert sand and Atlantic Ocean that truly renders it a mystical destination. Further inland and to the south, Wolwedans Boulders Camp sits atop an island of granite and sandy plains found within a private nature reserve deep in the desert. “[Come for] the dark sky reserve, incredible wilderness, and peace,” says Prince.

Mongolia is the second most sparsely populated territory in the world, which makes a journey to its vast wilderness feel especially compelling. When contemplating why the country is imbued with mysticism, Abercrombie & Kent’s Paul Medley points to a few traits: wide-open spaces, nomadic culture, wind across the steppes, soaring mountains, fossils, and dunes. As one Vogue writer observes, Mongolia is “still relatively untouched by modern life,” and adventures are untamed—epic horse rides through the Gobi Desert, trekking to Buddhist temples in the mountains, and meditative hikes around the crystal blue Ugii Lake are all on the table.

Rising 348 meters above the Northern Australian desert plain, Uluru is a massive sandstone monolith—the largest in the world—formed around 550 million years old. The Uluru–Kata Tjuṯa National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site) includes the monolith itself and rock domes to the west, and is a sacred place to the Aṉangu people, who are among the world’s oldest living cultures. A visit to this mystical outback is, as Medley puts it, otherworldly. An Aṉangu-led tour of ancient caves reveals creation stories (or ‘Dreamtime’), and a moonlit supper in a safari-style camp offers the chance to soak in the learnings from the day.

You haven’t seen Iceland until you’ve experienced a Super Jeep adventure into the heart of its most mystical landscapes. With these heavily modified 4×4 vehicles, you can access the country’s most rugged and remote terrain, including glaciers and lava fields. Zip around hidden gems like Landmannalaugar’s steaming hot springs, brave river crossings to witness the towering Haifoss waterfall, and bask in the freedom to explore at your own pace. Or, if you prefer not to drive yourself, Black Tomato’s epic Iceland itinerary takes travelers into the Thórsmörk valley to traverse lush gorges and three glaciers (complete with a picnic in the wild), wrapping up the day at the turf-covered houses at Torfhús Retreat.

As one of the world’s earliest Christian nations, Ethiopia makes for quite the enigmatic travel destination. “The religion was established here as early as the 4th century,” Prince says, “and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church remains deeply woven into daily life.” The community is guided by a liturgical calendar, which Prince explains makes every day feel like a sacred moment. There are several festivals throughout the year, including Timket (Epiphany) in January (“the most vibrant and visually spectacular”), Meskel in September, and the spiritual observances of Fasika (Easter) and Genna, among others. “Adding to its distinct cultural rhythm, Ethiopia also follows its own calendar and marks the New Year on September 11th, underscoring the country’s unique spiritual and historical identity,” Prince adds.

The very mention of Japan tends to conjure images of misty forests and snow-capped mountains, usually with a remote Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple tucked into the landscape. Those mountains, in particular, offer travelers an ideal setting for a mystic-inflected journey. “Imagine spending the night in a traditional temple lodging alongside Buddhist monks, waking before dawn to witness their chanting and morning rituals, practicing calligraphy and hand-copying sacred sutras, and walking through a lantern-lit cemetery where great Buddhist spirits are still believed to reside,” Prince says of a visit to Mount Koya. “This is a transformative experience in Japan.” Then there’s Mount Fuji, the country’s most famous peak. “The view from the summit is among the most extraordinary in the world,” Prince says, “To stand atop an active volcano, above the clouds, as the sun rises, is a profoundly transformative experience.

”The Scottish Highlands are like a central hub for the mystic traveler: mysteriously deep lochs, rolling peaks cloaked in fog, and vast moors painted in heather’s signature mauve hue. Naturally, this is prime road trip country. A driving itinerary in this region of the country can include a bit of everything—castle ruins, local cuisine, and the famous Highland cows, of course. As for accommodations, only a stay at The Fife Arms will do. This art-filled hotel is, as Vogue’s senior lifestyle editor describes, “the full-blown, old-school Highlands fantasy.

”With its expansive jungles, ancient rituals, and extraordinary biodiversity, Hunt points to the Amazon rainforest in Peru and Ecuador as a quintessential mystical experience.“It’s guided by the ancestral wisdom of Indigenous communities whose spiritual practices are inseparable from the land,” he says. By learning how local communities live in harmony with the rainforest, travelers come away from the journey with a “profound sense of connection, healing, and transformation.” If you’re interested in a multi-day retreat, head for Korimana in Ecuador’s primary cloud forest of La Maná. “Korimana stands at the confluence of two extraordinary forces: the crystalline aquifers of Cotopaxi—Ecuador’s most revered snow-capped volcano—and the magnetic resonance of Quilotoa, a once-mighty volcano that collapsed into itself thousands of years ago,” explains Abercrombie & Kent’s Adam Fogg.

You shouldn’t travel somewhere just for the photo, but what a photo do the Uyuni salt flats make. This 10-billion-ton salt reserve—the world’s largest—spans over four thousand square miles and was formed by dried prehistoric lakes. During the rainy season of November to March, it transforms into a gargantuan reflective mirror. “Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni brings new meaning to the idea of mystical travel,” says Hunt, sharing that the destination offers some of the clearest skies on earth. “Visitors can get up close with the Milky Way, planets, moon craters, Saturn’s rings, and other celestial wonders, while ancient cosmologies that connect earth and sky add a layer of spiritual resonance,” he says.

“India is always at the top of my list for travelers seeking depth and meaning,” explains Lili LeBaron of Scott Dunn. The massive country is an epicenter for spirituality, but Varanasi along the Ganges is perhaps the most frequently cited destination for a transformative experience. “Visitors can witness daily rituals that have been practiced for thousands of years, creating an incredibly powerful and emotional experience,” LeBaron says. One such ritual is the Aarti ceremony, which Abercrombie & Kent’s Jennifer Morris explains is a ceremonial expression of deep love. “India allows you to reflect on your own day-to-day and be more curious and mindful towards other people, cultures, and food,” Morris says.

Bali’s reputation as a spiritual epicenter is no secret, but beyond the well-known areas of Ubud and Uluwatu, there’s plenty of room to experience the island’s unique Balinese Hindu traditions in a remote setting. “In places like Munduk [to the north] and East Bali, temple ceremonies and water blessings are a natural part of daily life, offering travelers authentic experiences that connect them to the culture,” says LeBaron.

Sacred water springs, solstice ceremonies, and full-moon gatherings—that’s common fare for the vibrant Pagan community in Glastonbury. This small English town in Somerset is perhaps better known for its namesake music festival (which actually takes place on a dairy farm in the village over), but for the mystics among us, it’’s ground zero for practitioners like druids and Wiccans. Visitors to the region who are staying at The Newt in Somerset can sign up for a tour with a local mystic who leads the group in a circle casting ceremony before trekking up the Tor (a striking conical hill) to reach St. Michael’s Tower. For a ‘misty’ mix of Arthurian legends and Pagan mysticism, a visit to Glastonbury won’t disappoint.

You probably know it as Easter Island, but locally, this volcanic island goes by Rapa Nui. It’s famous, of course, for the majestic stone statues called moai, which represent ancestral figures from the region’s Polynesian culture and are best explored with a local guide who can share the legends behind them. Beyond archaeology, outdoor adventure is everywhere: hike one of the island’s three volcanoes, scuba dive off the coastline, or ride horseback along hidden trails. Remote and mysterious, Rapa Nui continues to awe visitors who wonder how its earliest navigators found this isolated corner of the Pacific.

More Great Living Stories From Vogue

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An Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field was coordinated with the Trump administration in advance, according to three Israeli officials, despite President Trump’s initial assertion in a social media post that the United States “knew nothing about” it.

“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack,” Mr. Trump wrote in the social media post late Wednesday, saying that Israel had “violently lashed out.”

A day later, Mr. Trump appeared to have changed course.

Speaking to reporters Thursday at the White House, Mr. Trump implied that he had spoken about the strike ahead of time with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“I told him, don’t do that,” Mr. Trump said. He went on to say, “we’re independent. We get along great. It’s coordinated.”

Israel has not commented publicly on the attack, carried out on Wednesday, or on Mr. Trump’s effort later Wednesday to distance the United States from it.

Three Israeli officials briefed on the South Pars strike said on Thursday that the United States was informed before the attack. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy.

Mr. Trump added in his social media post that Qatar, a U.S. ally, “was in no way, shape or form, involved with it,” nor “had any idea that it was going to happen.”

The South Pars gas field is shared between Qatar and Iran. Hours after Wednesday’s attack on South Pars, natural gas facilities in Qatar were hit by strikes. Qatar blamed Iran.

The attacks were the latest in a series of escalating strikes on energy infrastructure that have sent global oil and gas prices soaring. South Pars is part of the largest gas field in the world. Qatar is the world’s third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

The war began on Feb. 28 when Israel and the United States jointly attacked Iran.

Israeli analysts said the strike on South Pars may have been intended to warn Iran to stop effectively blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major transit route for global oil. Since Iran uses most of its natural gas domestically, the strike could have been meant to signal to the regime that Israel could do much more to disable Iran than it has so far.

“The strike attempted to send a broad signal to whoever is in charge in Iran — and that is very unclear — that Israel can paralyze the whole electricity network in the country,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“If you stop the electricity supply,” he said, “in many ways you stop the country.”

Mr. Yaari added that the coordination between the United States and Israel was so close and coordinated over the course of this war that it was implausible Israel would carry out such a strike without Washington being informed beforehand.

Mr. Trump said in his post a “relatively small section” of the facility had been hit. He said that “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL” on the South Pars field.

But, he added, if Iran was to “unwisely” attack Qatar’s natural gas facilities again, the United States would “massively blow up” the entire South Pars gas field “with or without the help or consent of Israel.” Iran vowed to retaliate for the Israeli strike on South Pars, saying it would attack oil and gas targets throughout the Gulf.

On Thursday, an Iranian military spokesman, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, said Iran had struck energy facilities “considered part of U.S. interests.”

In a statement published by state media, he warned that if Iran’s energy sites were targeted again, retaliatory strikes would continue until the “complete destruction” of the energy infrastructure of the United States and its allies in the region. He did not specifically refer to the South Pars strike.

Israel insists that it is aligned with Washington on all targets in the war that the two countries are jointly waging against Iran.

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

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• Attacks on Energy Fields: Iran and Qatar accused Israel of attacking the Iranian part of a giant offshore natural gas field that the two countries share, sending the prices of oil and natural gas soaring and worsening a dire energy crisis in Iran. President Trump said the United States was not involved, even as he threatened to destroy it.

• Iran’s Residents: Iran has imposed a near-total internet blockade for most Iranians, according to watchdog groups, as the regime tries to suppress communication. For many Iranians living under relentless airstrikes, each day has brought a new level of anger and fear.

• U.S. Intelligence: Top U.S. intelligence officials directly contradicted one of the Trump administration’s justifications for going to war, repeating the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran was years away from developing missiles capable of hitting the United States.

• Palestinians Killed: At least three were killed in the West Bank during an Iranian missile attack, Palestinian officials said. Israel blamed an Iranian missile, while Palestinians said the deaths were caused by an errant Israeli aerial defense interceptor.

• A Familiar Pattern: Iran’s military retaliation, along with the political defiance of its new leaders, evokes a decades-old pattern of unrealized goals for American interventions in the region.

• In One Image: Near the center of Beirut, a photo of a Lebanese cafe captures the aftermath of an Israeli strike.

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Refineries at the South Pars gas field in 2019. Credit…Vahid Salemi/Associated Press

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The latest evidence that Mars was once a warmer, wetter world comes from a surprising place—the hidden subsurface depths of Jezero Crater—rather than its surface, which NASA’s Perseverance rover has explored for the past five years. The site of a vast, dried-up lake, Jezero also hosts ancient river deltas. Laid down by flowing water as early as 3.7 billion years ago, these deltas are so sprawling that they can be seen from orbit. Now, however, Perseverance’s ground-penetrating radar has found signs of an even older river-and-delta system at Jezero that is buried deep beneath the surface.

Published today in the journal Science Advances, the findings suggest the Red Planet’s window of habitability stretches even further back in time than many scientists had imagined.

“It extends the window of fluvial deposition on Mars,” says Emily Cardarelli, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the study’s lead author. “On Earth, those conditions produce minerals that can preserve fossils.

Jezero is the crash site of an asteroid that slammed into Mars’s surface almost four billion years ago. NASA chose it as Perseverance’s exploration zone because it has a wealth of fluvial features that hint that the crater was once ripe for life—and for preserving life’s telltale traces in stone. The new study relies on data from 78 traverses of the area from September 2023 to February 2024.

The rover used its radar capabilities to study layers of sediment buried more than 35 meters below ground—nearly twice as deep as it had previously probed—where it registered echoes of even older river-carved slopes and sinuous, meandering channels. These subsurface features, the researchers say, formed as early as 4.2 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years before the water-washed terrain that Perseverance has been studying on the surface. That means there were multiple sustained periods of water flow in the crater’s history—multiple opportunities scattered across Jezero’s deep past in which it might have harbored life.

The result also reinforces that Mars is now a planet that is almost frozen in time, with lands that are far more undisturbed than any on Earth. “The fact that we have this record of this age is remarkable,” Cardarelli says. On Earth, rocks of a similar age lost any clear signature of ancient rivers long ago. “They’ve been heated, they’ve been squished, and they’ve been altered by water,” she says. “They’ve had a rough time.

With this more intact geological record, astrobiologists hope Mars can yield not only the first-ever smoking-gun proof of extraterrestrial life but also clearer data on how that life emerged in the first place. This question, it turns out, could be of equal importance for understanding life’s origins on Earth as well: circumstantial evidence suggests that ancient asteroid impacts much like the one that carved out Jezero Crater could have also exported any early Martian life to our own world.

The newfound buried river delta “is very clear evidence for a long duration of activity,” says Jack Mustard, a planetary scientist at Brown University, who has extensively studied Jezero Crater. “And that’s very exciting to have,” Mustard says the distinct delta beneath the soil isn’t surprising because sporadic periods of flow are common in the formation of rivers and lakes. “If you were to ask someone how the Mississippi Delta formed,” he says, “you would see multiple episodes of overlapping deltas.”

Cardarelli says that we haven’t heard the last about Jezero from Perseverance. “There’s a lot more to say about this particular area—and other areas within the crater,” she says. “We’re still digesting all our data.”

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As the Iran war stretches into its third week, Democrats say they’re done with all of the classified briefings from top administration officials.

They now want public hearings into whether President Donald Trump plans to put U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, secure nuclear material there, and how he plans to end the deadly conflict in the Middle East.

Few Republicans agree such hearings are needed. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., went even further, suggesting that public hearings would compromise the operation in Iran.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. who has led unsuccessful efforts to pass war powers resolutions to rein in Trump’s military operations, said that Trump “hasn’t given a rationale that’s convincing for this. … We have now said we’re tired of the classified briefings. We’re tired of hiding this from the public.”

“When you keep something in secret, there’s a reason you keep it in secret because you don’t believe it will stand analysis in the light of day,” he said.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, agreed. “If this administration thinks it can defend this war — I don’t know how it can — then it should send Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio to the Senate next week for a hearing in front of the relevant committees,” Murphy said of Trump’s secretaries of Defense and State.

If Republicans ignore their demands, Murphy and Kaine said, Democrats will force more votes on Trump’s war powers, putting more political pressure on the GOP.

“I think they’ll lose votes in the Senate if they actually have to go in front of the American public and explain why gas prices are so high, explain whether we’re engaged in regime change or whether we’re not, explain how they’re going to get the nuclear weapons and the nuclear material without the ground invasion,” Murphy said. “I don’t think they have answers for any of that.”

There’s confusion on and off Capitol Hill about Trump’s strategy with Iran. Who exactly will seize Iran’s nuclear materials? Does the president want regime change? And how does he intend to end Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is causing oil prices to climb?

Just this week, NATO allies and other nations rejected Trump’s pleas to help pressure Iran to end its blockade of the key waterway. The president then wrote: “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

One key Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had been privately and publicly urging Trump to strike Iran this year, said he believes Republicans should hold public hearings at the “appropriate” time.

“I think we need to. I think we need to showcase what we did and why we did it, but we’re in the middle of doing it,” said Graham, who is running for re-election this year. “But it’s very important for me to tell people back home, Americans over there have to be over there to prevent the Ayatollah from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a member of Armed Services, said he has no objection to doing public hearings, “but I still want my classifieds.”

And retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., conceded that hearings will happen “at some point” because “we have to learn from our successes; we have to learn from any mistakes.”

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said public hearings “would adversely affect our mission.”Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

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President Trump and top federal health officials have repeatedly claimed that their new website, TrumpRx, offers Americans the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs.

“I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest,” Mr. Trump said during his State of the Union address last month.

That is not true, according to a review by The New York Times and the German news organizations Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR.

The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing. The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans.

The TrumpRx website shows the prices that the administration negotiated for a few dozen of the several thousand prescription medications in the United States. The list includes almost none of the most widely used drugs, like statins, or ultra-expensive drugs like cancer therapies.

Some well-known drugs on the list are Xeljanz, for autoimmune conditions, and Farxiga, for diabetes and heart and kidney problems. Both are cheaper in Germany, a rare example of a country that makes its negotiated drug prices public.

The biggest names on TrumpRx are two blockbuster weight-loss drugs — Wegovy and Zepbound. Both are available for lower out-of-pocket prices at pharmacies in wealthy countries around the world. In some cases, Americans pay about twice as much as patients overseas.

Higher price for Wegovy on TrumpRx

How much patients pay out of pocket at a pharmacy, without using insurance, for a four-week supply of a medium dose (one milligram) of Wegovy, Novo Nordisk’s injection for weight loss.

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President Trump unveiled the TrumpRx website last month. Visitors to the site are greeted by a promise: “Find the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs.” Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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For people with near-total paralysis, the ability to communicate easily in real time is a challenge. For years, scientists have been working to remedy that by developing devices that can decode brain signals and translate them into computer cursor movements or text.

These devices are a type of brain-computer interface, or BCI, and they consist of electrode chips that are implanted inside the brain to listen to and decode the electrical whispers of neurons. In the past, BCIs allowed people to type using a virtual keyboard, but the speed was frustratingly slow. Now, however, a team of scientists report that their BCI keyboard helped two people with paralysis type at speeds of up to 22 words per minute—nearly as fast as the average person can text using a smartphone. The findings were published today in Nature Neuroscience.

“This is an important technical advance that brings brain-computer typing much closer to practical communication speeds for people with paralysis,” says Edward Chang, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

“At about 22 words per minute, this is among the fastest motor-cortex typing BCIs yet and dramatically faster than most earlier neural spellers,” says Chang, who has worked on another speech-decoding BCI.

BCI technology has advanced significantly since its genesis in the 1960s, when researchers began using single electrodes implanted in the brains of monkeys to record their neural activity. In 2006, a consortium of researchers called BrainGate reported that a BCI allowed people with paralysis to control a computer cursor and operate a prosthetic hand. In recent years, the BrainGate BCI was used to control a virtual keyboard with a cursor and to decode letters from handwriting areas of the brain. Other groups’ BCIs have decoded words or short phrases directly from speech-related brain regions, too.

Previous versions of these brain-typing systems required participants to control a cursor on a screen and individually select letters, “which is far slower than being able to access any key at any time using your fingers,” says lead study author Justin Jude, a postdoctoral researcher at BrainGate, based at Brown University, and an appointed research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

In the new paper, Jude and his colleagues trained their BCI using artificial intelligence to recognize intended hand or finger movements from a part of the brain’s movement area, called the precentral gyrus, as participants tried to move their paralyzed hands or fingers. The AI model predicted the letters on a QWERTY keyboard that the movements most likely corresponded to. They tested their system in two participants: one person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurological disease that causes paralysis, and one with a spinal cord injury that left them paralyzed but still able to speak.

Using the device, the latter participant was able to type at 110 characters or 22 words per minute, with a word error rate of 1.6 percent. The other participant’s typing was slower but still impressive for someone who lacked the ability to speak. By comparison, several years ago, the BrainGate handwriting BCI achieved speeds of 90 characters per minute (about 18 words per minute). Another previous BCI that was implanted in a speech-related brain region by Chang and his colleagues was used to achieve a typing speed of 78 words per minute, but the median word error rate was far higher—25 percent.

“One of the things that we talk about a lot is the speed of communication. The reason we do that is not just to have a faster system than someone else,” says Daniel Rubin, a critical care neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was a co-author of the new study.

People who have lost the ability to speak and to use their hands might be able to employ an eye-tracking system to type, but this method is slow. “Communication speed matters, because being part of a conversation matters,” Rubin says.

The researchers say the QWERTY keyboard system is more successful than the version that decoded mental handwriting. It remains to be seen, however, whether decoding from brain regions that control finger movement or from speech-related regions is a better strategy overall, Chang says. Signals in the brain’s motor cortex are easier to decode, but those in speech-related areas might be faster and more direct.

The technology is not ready for widespread use yet; the study was small, and the device requires brain surgery, which carries risks. “The biggest limitations are the small number of participants and the need for invasive intracortical implants,” Chang says.

Another limitation is the need to calibrate the BCI each time before it can used. “It’s almost like a musical instrument, and you have to tune it each day,” Rubin says. Having an instrument that can tune itself is a big goal for the field, he says.

Several companies are developing commercial BCIs, primarily for use in people who are paralyzed. Perhaps the most hyped has been Elon Musk’s Neuralink, but there are others, such as Paradromics and Synchron. (Some of the study authors consult for these companies and receive research funding from them.)

China recently approved the first invasive BCI for use in people with a form of partial paralysis. No such devices have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use by people with paralysis in the U.S.

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In a letter posted to X, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent said that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the US and claimed the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

The White House dismissed the letter, saying the president had “compelling evidence” that Iran was going to attack the US first. A US hate monitor accused Kent of “antisemitic tropes”.

With his departure, Kent is the most high-profile figure within the Trump administration to publicly criticise the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Kent was a “nice guy”, but “weak on security”.

He also said Kent’s resignation letter had made him realise “it was a good thing that he’s out”.

Latest updates: Trump lashes out at Nato allies

In the letter addressed to Trump, Kent alleged that “high-ranking Israeli officials” and influential US journalists had sowed “misinformation” that led the president to undermine his “America First” platform.

“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” the letter continued. “This was a lie.”

Kent, a long-time supporter of Trump who unsuccessfully ran for Congress twice, was nominated by the president early in his administration and narrowly confirmed to his post. Democrats had criticised Kent’s hiring of a member of the far-right Proud Boys as a consultant to his 2022 election bid.

In his confirmation hearings, Kent also refused to back away from claims that federal agents had fomented the January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, or that Trump had not been defeated in the 2020 election.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US antisemitism monitor, said in a statement that Kent’s accusations “traffic in old-age antisemitic tropes”.

“So it’s no surprise that he would blame Israel and the media for pushing the President into war against the Iranian regime,” the ADL said.

The pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), reposted the ADL statement on X. Aipac did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.

Ilan Goldenberg, a senior official at the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street, described Kent’s letter as “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes”.

Kent, 45, is a US special forces and CIA veteran whose wife, navy cryptologic technician Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019.

The father-of-two deployed 11 times overseas with the US military, including with the US Army’s special forces in Iraq.

He later became a paramilitary officer at the CIA, before leaving government service following his wife’s death.

Kent cited his military service and his wife’s death in his letter, saying that he “cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives”.

At the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and oversaw the analysis and detection of potential terrorist threats from around the globe.

Following Kent’s resignation on Tuesday, Gabbard backed Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran.

In a statement posted on X, she said that as commander-in-chief, the president was responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.

She noted that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was responsible for helping to provide the president “with the best information available to inform his decisions”.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” Gabbard wrote on X.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent’s suggestion that “Trump made the decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable”.

“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” she added.

In a brief interview with the New York Times, conservative media commentator Tucker Carlson praised Kent, with whom he has close personal ties.

“Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Carlson said. “He’s leaving a job that gave him access to the highest-level relevant intelligence. The neocons will try to destroy him for that.”

“He understands that and did it anyway,” he added.

There have been a number of resignations among senior officials in the Trump administration, including Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement director Margaret Ryan and Kennedy Center head Ric Grenell.

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Joe Kent is a long-time Trump supporter and decorated veteran of the US military.

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Hmmmm … an attempt to keep a highly questionable administration in office!

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What We’re Covering Today

• Voter ID Bill: Under pressure from President Trump, the House and the far right, Senate Republicans opened debate on Tuesday on legislation they call the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show approved photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. It is expected to be a prolonged and bitter election-year debate, with the potential to disenfranchise millions of voters.

• D.H.S. Funding: The White House indicated in a letter to two Senate Republicans that it was open to rolling back some of its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. Trump officials have been negotiating on the enforcement campaign with Democrats to end a partial government shutdown, which has disrupted most funding for the Department of Homeland Security and, according to a top T.S.A. official, could force smaller U.S. airports to close.

• Epstein Files: The House Oversight Committee sent a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi, requiring her to testify in a deposition about the Justice Department’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and its release of material connected to Epstein. The deposition has been scheduled for April 14. Five Republicans had joined Democrats in voting to approve the subpoena two weeks ago. Separately, Ms. Bondi and Todd Blanche, her deputy, will brief committee members on Wednesday.

The Senate voted 51-48 to open debate on its contentious voter ID bill, with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining Democrats in opposition. The debate is expected to last for days, and the close vote illustrates the tensions surrounding the legislation.

Senator Thom Tillis, another Republican opponent of the legislation, was absent.

The Senate is teeing up its first test vote on the Republican proposal to put tougher voter identification and registration rules in place for the November elections. At least one Republican, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has said he would join Democrats in opposing the effort to bring the bill to the floor, narrowing the Republican margin for error. If the first procedural hurdle is cleared, days of debate are expected.

What’s in the voter ID bill that Trump and Republicans are pushing?

The Senate has taken up a strict voter identification bill that President Trump has demanded Congress deliver him, and that he and his Republican allies groundlessly claim is needed to combat mass voter fraud by noncitizens.

Passed narrowly by the House last month, the legislation, which Republicans call the SAVE America Act, would normally seem to have little chance of enactment given near-solid Democratic opposition. That means it lacks the 60 votes required to move to a final vote.

President Trump threatened on Tuesday to campaign against any lawmaker who votes against the voter ID bill, escalating what had been a steady barrage of warnings against any effort to stymie the politically divisive legislation. “Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote in a social media post, in which he pledged he would never endorse anyone who voted against it.

The Senate’s debate over the bill is expected to be long and bitter.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday narrowly agreed to open what is expected to be a prolonged and bitter election-year debate on a bill to stiffen voter identification and registration rules, defying Democratic vows to block the measure even though they lack the votes in their own ranks to push it through.

Under pressure from President Trump, the House and the far right, Senate Republicans voted to move ahead with the legislation they call the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show approved photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. It would also require states to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security to remove those flagged as noncitizens. 

David Steiner, the postmaster general, said at a congressional oversight hearing that at the current rate, “we’ll be out of cash in less than 12 months, so in about a year from now the postal service will be unable to deliver the mail if we continue the status quo.”

“The postal service is at a critical juncture,” he said.

Trump administration offers narrow immigration changes to end D.H.S. shutdown.

White House officials on Tuesday outlined narrow adjustments the administration would make to federal immigration enforcement operations to answer Democratic demands for major changes in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security.

In a letter to Senate Republicans, the administration ignored several of Democrats’ top priorities, including blocking immigration officers from wearing masks to shield their identities and requiring them to obtain warrants from judges to enter private homes or businesses. And the proposal did not address Democrats’ call for a use-of-force policy, a central demand they made after federal immigration officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis.

A T.S.A. official warns that small U.S. airports could close if the partial government shutdown continues.

With more than 30 percent of Transportation Security Administration officers absent from work at several airports across the United States this week, a senior T.S.A. official warned on Tuesday that the ongoing partial government shutdown may force the closure of small U.S. airports.

The latest court ruling voiding the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America dealt another blow to Kari Lake, a Trump ally and the de-facto head of V.O.A.’s oversight agency, and President Trump, who has called the news group the “voice of radical America.” It was not immediately clear whether the administration will appeal.

This ruling comes more than a week after Judge Lamberth ruled Lake’s appointment illegal, effectively voiding all layoffs. But that ruling fell short of ordering the administration to bring back journalists and resume all news programming. Nearly all V.O.A. journalists had been on paid leave since March, 2025.

A federal judge has voided nearly all actions that the Trump administration took to shutter Voice of America, a federally funded news group that broadcast to countries with limited press freedoms, such as Iran, China and Russia.

In a victory for V.O.A. reporters and staff who sued the administration, Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered more than 1,000 full-time journalists and support staff at the news group to return to work by March 23 and to resume broadcasting operations.

Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington, who is presiding over the lawsuit challenging President Trump’s White House ballroom project, said he would rule on a motion to halt construction by the end of March.

A bipartisan bill would waive Trump’s $100,000 visa fees for medical professionals.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the House on Tuesday would waive the $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas for foreign health care professionals seeking to work in the United States, among them doctors and nurses.

The fee, imposed by the Trump administration last September, threatened to drive up costs for hospitals that rely on foreign health providers for staffing, and typically bring on a new class of medical residents, among them many foreign medical school graduates, on July 1.

As Congress remains locked in a standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said that progress had not yet been made around some of Democrats’ major demands. Those demands include requiring officers to not use masks, to display visible identification, and to require warrants when entering private homes. “They haven’t budged on those,” Schumer said of the White House. “They’ve got to get serious.” The department’s funding lapsed on Feb. 14, but negotiations have remained stalled.

Chief Justice John Roberts says personal attacks on judges are ‘dangerous’ and must stop.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Tuesday denounced personal attacks aimed at judges and justices, calling them “dangerous.”

“It’s got to stop,” he said.

Democrats hammer Trump on ‘energy affordability.’

Democrats are dialing up their rhetorical attacks against President Trump over energy affordability as the war against Iran drags into its third week, and oil prices remain elevated.

In a new report on Tuesday, top Senate Democrats accused the Trump administration of waging a “war on energy affordability” by canceling hundreds of clean energy projects even before the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran — strikes which have sent energy costs higher. The report is a precursor to a series of live-streamed round-table discussions that party leaders hope will keep a spotlight on their campaign mantra for the fall’s midterm elections, focusing on lowering the cost of living.

The House Oversight Committee sent a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, requiring her to testify in a deposition about the Justice Department’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and its release of material connected to Epstein. Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, was forced to issue the subpoena after a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted to do so in a hearing.

In the subpoena, Comer scheduled Bondi’s deposition for April 14. Separately, Bondi and Todd Blanche, her deputy, will brief committee members on Wednesday.

Speaking in the Oval Office, President Trump said Cuba’s government was in “very bad shape” and that “they are talking to Marco,’’ referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio stepped in to say that “their economy does not work, it is a non-functioning economy” and that the country’s subsidies from Venezuela had halted. The Trump administration is seeking to push the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, from power, according to four people familiar with talks between U.S. and Cuban officials.

President Trump just addressed his trip to China, which he delayed over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. “We are resetting the meeting, and it looks like it will happen in five or six weeks,’’ Trump said, speaking in the Oval Office.

Trump says Newsom shouldn’t be president because he is dyslexic.

President Trump said on Monday that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat widely seen as a likely presidential contender, should not be president because he has dyslexia. A leading advocacy group for people with learning disabilities criticized the comments.

In an appearance at the White House, Mr. Trump said that he was “all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president — a president should not have learning disabilities.” He added, referring to Mr. Newsom, “Everything about him is dumb.”

Judge ejects federal prosecutor from court and orders bosses to testify.

A federal judge threw a top prosecutor from the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office out of his courtroom during a sentencing hearing this week and demanded that the office’s leadership testify about who had authority over their actions, according to court documents.

The rapid sequence of events on Monday in the courtroom of Judge Zahid N. Quraishi was the latest indication of growing tensions between the Justice Department and the federal judiciary in New Jersey. It came during the scheduled sentencing of a man who last year agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography.

Trump officials weigh a new $1 billion deal to block offshore wind farms off New York and North Carolina.

The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.

Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.

The Supreme Court has deferred a decision on Trump’s bid to end protections for migrants.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to immediately allow the Trump administration to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants living in the United States, and instead agreed to hear oral arguments in the matter in late April.

As part of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, the administration has moved to terminate a program, known as Temporary Protected Status, that has allowed migrants from certain troubled nations to live and work legally in the United States. At issue in the cases before the Supreme Court are protections for some 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians.

The Latest on the Trump Administration

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• Legal Retribution Campaign: In the wake of a lacerating ruling by a federal judge derailing an inquiry into the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, prosecutors are floundering in the most basic steps of criminal investigations into those President Trump wants scrutinized.

• Susie Wiles Diagnosed With Breast Cancer: Trump’s White House chief of staff, the first woman to ever hold that position, said that the disease was caught in its early stages, and she is not planning to take a leave.

• War in the Middle East: The president is no stranger to staking out contradictory stands, part of what his aides say is his negotiating style. But on Iran, Trump’s shifting positions are colliding with the consequences of war. And a surge in oil price is threatening to raise costs across the economy and cut into the already modest stimulus the tax cuts passed by Republicans last year were poised to deliver.

• Kennedy Center: The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has voted to shutter the institution for a two-year renovation project after Trump warned them that the building was in “very bad shape” and had been on “the verge of collapse” before he took over.

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The Senate majority leader, John Thune, and his Republican colleagues plan to move ahead on Tuesday with the legislation they call the SAVE America Act. Credit…Nathan Howard for The New York Times

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Torrential rains have brought flash floods to Hawaii. Parts of the upper Midwest are blanketed in more than two feet of snow, with flakes still falling. Hail, strong winds, and tornadoes threaten the eastern U.S., and the West is in for record-shattering heat. Why is all the weather seemingly happening right now?

The short answer: it’s March. Early spring is a transitional time of year, weather-wise. Cold air from the north lingers even as warm, moist air pushes up from the south, leading to collisions over the contiguous U.S. that set up prime conditions for unsettled weather and blockbuster snowstorms. “March and April are the time of year we get these clashes in air masses,” says Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) Weather Prediction Center.

Let’s dig into the details a little more, starting with the snow in the Midwest. A storm, or low-pressure system, developed over the area, with cold air coming down from Canada meeting moist air streaming up from the Gulf of Mexico. That means the storm “has a lot of moisture to work with,” Hurley says, so snowfall totals are high. The snow is also very wet compared with what typically falls in the region in January or February. This is fairly normal for March and April snows there, Hurley says. But because this storm is fairly strong, it is bringing blizzard conditions and snowfall rates of up to three to four inches per hour in some places. Certain spots could see record-setting snowfalls for this time of year.

Next up, the low-pressure system has a feature associated with it that, in meteorology speak, is called a QLCS, or quasi-linear convective system. Basically, this means a long, wavy line of thunderstorms, which can be seen trailing down from the low-pressure area in a classic comma shape on weather maps. The waves happen when “winds are gusting out faster” ahead of the main line, Hurley says, an arrangement that looks like a bow pulled taut. The wind happens because of large pressure differences, and in this case, it could gust up to 60 to 70 miles per hour in parts of the mid-Atlantic on Monday. Abundant moisture makes for an unstable atmosphere that will cause thunderstorms to develop, and that, along with the strong winds, could create tornadoes.

Now let’s move westward. Upstream of a low-pressure area, you’ll find a high-pressure one, which is exactly what is set to settle and strengthen over the Southwest this week. That will usher in a major heat wave that is expected to send temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in some places. This also happens in the summer and is often called a heat dome—temperatures won’t get as high as they would if this was, say, July, but are very warm compared to what [they] should be,” Hurley says. The heat wave could set all-time March records unusually early in the month.

Moving westward and further upstream again, on the other side of the high-pressure system is another low-pressure area. This one, called a “Kona low,” brings southerly winds “that draw a lot of deep moisture up over the islands,” says Thomas Vaughan, a meteorologist at the NWS’s office in Honolulu. The Hawaiian Islands typically see a few of these systems a year, he says, but this one was intense. Several places saw rainfall totals of 15 or more inches over five days, which led to flash flooding and mudslides. Those rains “far surpassed normal rainfall values for the entire month of March,” Vaughan says. Further rain is expected this week, although not on the same scale, he adds.

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