James' World 2

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Pop culture holds that if you’re trapped in a well, Lassie will lead the way to a rescue—but if you’re stuck with Garfield, you’d better have some lasagna in your pocket. And research suggests such stereotypes aren’t far off.

Scientists compared 19 children between 16 and 24 months old with 38 untrained pet dogs and 22 cats, asking a simple question: Who will spontaneously respond when a human appears to need help? In the experiment, a familiar caregiver—the child’s parent or the pet’s owner—interacted with a sponge before turning away. Then an experimenter hid it in full view of the study subject. Across three trials of decreasing difficulty—when the sponge was unreachable and covered, then visible but out of reach, then fully reachable—the person searched, repeating, “I can’t find it. What should I do?” but never directly addressing the subject.

The study grew out of a broader question about prosocial behavior—why some species help others, and some don’t, says comparative ethologist and study co-author Melitta Csepregi, who studies animal behavior at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. “To get at that, we compared dogs, cats, and toddlers, three species that live closely with humans but differ sharply in their evolutionary histories.”

In the findings described in Animal Behaviour, all three groups paid similar levels of attention. But children and dogs were more likely to show helping-related behaviors—approaching, indicating, or retrieving the object for the person. By the final trial, more than half the dogs and nearly half the toddlers indicated the object’s location, and some also brought it to the caregiver. Cats never approached it and only rarely indicated its location.

University of Vienna cognitive biologist Ludwig Huber, who was not involved in the study, says that “the authors made considerable efforts to rule out alternative explanations [for dogs’ motivation] such as attention, eye contact, object interest, and getting used to the situation.” It seemed they were trying to help.

But one question remained: Were cats failing to assist because they didn’t understand the situation—or because they lacked motivation?

To test this, the researchers added a final trial, replacing the sponge with food or a favorite toy. Cats then approached and indicated the object as often as dogs and children did.

“This brilliant study puts hard data to showing that cats aren’t mean but operate on a different evolutionary system,” says University of Pisa ethologist Elisabetta Palagi, who was not part of the study. Dogs and toddlers, she notes, are evolutionarily hardwired to treat another’s problem as their own. Cats, however, remain autonomous, understanding the situation without feeling compelled to intervene unless there’s a direct benefit for themselves. “They truly are the efficient specialists of the animal kingdom.”

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President Donald Trump is turning 80 on June 14, and while the president has received several gifts from world leaders during his second term already, a little-known law might make it tough for him to accept all of them, especially the pricey ones.

According to the federal ethics guidelines, specifically the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act and related Office of Government Ethics regulations, a sitting U.S. president cannot keep high-value gifts for themselves, and while they may accept them temporarily, the gift is eventually handed over to the General Services Administration or other government repositories. This is because a gift to the president is considered not an individual gift, but one given to the U.S. government.

A president can choose to keep the gift if they want, but this comes with some conditions. If the gift is above a low “minimal value” threshold, the president can purchase it at a fair market value. It comes just days after a lip reader revealed Trump’s desperate 8-word plea as he was brutally booed at the New York Knicks game.

The threshold is adjusted periodically and is roughly a few hundred dollars. As of now, it is $480, according to the Office of Government Ethics. If the gift is valued above the threshold and the president has not reimbursed the government, they must decline the gift and return it to the U.S. government.

Even if the gift is clearly for a leader’s birthday, the same rules apply. The law doesn’t distinguish between state visit gifts, diplomatic gifts, ceremonial, or birthday gifts.

So far in his second term, world leaders have made a lot of effort to present President Donald Trump with thoughtful souvenirs that symbolize something. Trump has received gifts from leaders in Ukraine, South Korea, Japan, Israel, Argentina, and Ireland, according to a CNN tracker.

In February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House and presented Trump with a gold-plated pager, the same devices Israel had rigged with explosives to attack the Hezbollah in Lebanon last year. Reports suggested that at the time, the president found the gift slightly off-putting.

The same month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave trump a World Boxing Championship belt won by the Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk.

In March, Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave Trump a portrait that showed him right after his assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, presented to him through U.S. foreign envoy Steve Witkoff.

For now, the president is revamping the South Lawn of the White House to host a UFC show. Massive structures have been seen going up on the South Lawn in front of the historic building as part of the June 14 mixed martial arts show, part of the celebrations for the US’ 250th anniversary.

Crews are erecting an octagon-shaped cage with Trump claiming the finished UFC project will feature “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House.” Additional large screens broadcasting the fights will be set up in a park at the nearby Ellipse, and the UFC has said it plans to issue as many as 85,000 free tickets to accommodate spectators at both locations.

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Then, working-class white voters approved of his management of the economy by margins of 30 percentage points or even more. Now, recent polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 to more than 30 points.

Mr. Trump’s approval on the economy has dropped across practically every group. But his cratering support among a loyal demographic that has served as the foundation of his political coalition for a decade has the potential to be among the most consequential developments of 2026, according to interviews with strategists in both parties who are involved in the midterms.

Polls now regularly show that a majority of white voters who did not graduate from college no longer approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy. Examples of his low ratings include polls from Fox News (33 percent approval), CBS News (39 percent), NPR/PBS/Marist (40 percent), CNN (43 percent), and The New York Times/Siena College (47 percent).

In other words, he has lost the faith of his most loyal supporters on the year’s most pressing issue.

Mr. Trump’s advisers are actively pressing to shore up support, trying to sell policies in last year’s tax cut package. The Treasury Department this month released a new report detailing how workers benefited from the tax bill. And then this past week, Mr. Trump’s $350 million super PAC, MAGA Inc., put out its very first statement since the 2024 election. The topic was telling: how tax cuts specifically helped the working and middle class.

“It’s working-class voters who are not happy with the Republican Party, and they may not come out and vote,” John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who has worked for Mr. Trump for years, warned in an interview. He said he had seen backsliding of Mr. Trump’s gains in 2024 among working-class Black and Hispanic voters, too.

At this point, one of the only groups still supporting him on the economy in polls are Republicans.

Democrats are moving to capitalize, drawing up plans to compete in new places that not long ago had seemed too demographically daunting — more white and rural electorates in states such as Iowa that have trended Republican for years.

The Democratic brand, however, remains deeply tarnished among working-class white voters. Polls show many of them have not yet moved all the way toward saying they will vote for Democrats this fall.

Alex Pfeiffer, a MAGA Inc. spokesman, said Democrats would be forced to defend their record on immigration and opposition to the president’s tax bill. “Democrats will have to explain why they voted to take more money from tipped and overtime workers, as well as seniors on Social Security,” he said.

Yet even a more muted turnout from blue-collar white voters, who voted more than two to one for Mr. Trump in 2024, could imperil his party’s chances in November.

“It’s critical,” Mr. McLaughlin, the Trump pollster, said of mobilizing the white working class. “If they don’t, we lose the House and the Senate.”

‘A watershed moment’

Mr. Trump stormed back to power in 2024, promising to stop illegal immigration, tame inflation, and rev up the economy. He won 66 percent of white, blue-collar votes, according to exit polling — the exact share he received in his first election in 2016.

Yet in the months since his second inauguration, Mr. Trump’s pursuit of tariffs, persistently high prices for gas and groceries, his focus on foreign affairs, particularly the war in Iran; and ongoing inflation appear to have sapped that support, even as border crossings have plunged.

“The biggest problem is they have been driven — and continue to be driven — by the cost-of-living pressure,” said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster. “Prices, stagnant wages, and anxiety over when the next shoe is to drop.”

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Among blue-collar white voters, President Trump’s approval rating on the cost of living stood at just 36 percent in a New York Times survey. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

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Where children live and what their household’s socioeconomic status is leaves a mark on their brains, a new study in Science finds. The results suggest that the fewer opportunities a child’s zip code affords, the more tired and stressed their brain appears—and that socioeconomics by far outweighs hundreds of other possible environmental factors in determining a child’s brain function and structure.

“Socioeconomic came out ahead by like a million miles,” says Nico Dosenbach, the study’s senior author and a professor of neurology at the Washington University in St. Louis. Other factors generally thought to be important to child brain development, such as a child’s culture and overall health and their caregivers’ parenting style, didn’t rise above the fold at all, he adds.

Dosenbach and his colleagues used a dataset from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a long-term investigation of brain development and child health in the U.S. Using thousands of children’s brain scans, the scientists made maps of each child’s brain function and structure and then weighed them against 649 variables.

These variables included IQ and cognitive test measures, demographic and cultural information, and mental and physical health records, as well as the child’s score on a measure called the Child Opportunity Index (COI). The COI measures and maps the quality of resources such as safe housing, food access, and schools nearby. Then the researchers looked for patterns in the brain maps that could reveal which factors were most associated with significant changes in the brain. The researchers compared what they were seeing with another, totally unrelated adult sample—the U.K. Biobank—and found that the same patterns persisted.

“A lower socioeconomic brain—so a child who grows up at the lower end, their brain looks more tired and stressed out,” Dosenbach says. “It doesn’t look dumber. The pattern of association completely spares the cognition areas of the brain.”

That’s important, Dosenbach stresses: past research has suggested that socioeconomic status is linked to IQ and cognitive scores, but the new results indicate the reason may be entirely to do with how sleep-deprived and stressed a child is when they are tested—not their basic cognitive ability. That finding came as a shock to Dosenbach and the study’s first author, Scott Marek.

“At the very least, I thought there would still be something there,” says Marek, an assistant professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine. Instead, the researchers found that any associations between cognition and the brain disappeared after they adjusted for socioeconomic status. “Place matters a lot for pretty much everything in our lives, so why not the brain as well?” Marek says. “It literally is the factor that permeates all brain behavior association studies.”

Dosenbach says the results have challenged his assumptions about standardized testing for kids—and about screen time. One of the less prominent but still significant variables the team found to have some effect on brain function was how much screen time a child got. He points to journalist and psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, which argues that screen time is causing a mental health epidemic in kids. Dosenbach didn’t buy Haidt’s argument because it was based on correlations, he says, but he feels unable to argue with his data. “My daughter was about to get her [first] real cell phone, and I pulled the plug on it,” he says.

More broadly, the findings underscore the importance of early childhood circumstances on the developing brain. They do not, however, suggest that a child’s zip code determines their destiny. Marek says he hopes his team and other researchers can work toward developing interventions to combat sleeplessness and stress. Importantly, most of the changes associated with socioeconomic status that the researchers found were in brain function, as opposed to structure, indicating they may not last if those pressures are addressed.

In an accompanying article also published in Science, University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists Lucinda Sisk and Theodore Satterthwaite write that the findings “highlight the need for societal-level policies that provide early support for families.”

The study does have some key limitations, Marek says. For one, it isn’t clear how early in life children’s environment begins to weigh on their brains. The study also included ABCD data from just two time points in children’s lives, so it’s unknown whether the changes the team saw stick around through their teenage years or if they change with age.

The study also doesn’t account for the children’s genetics, such as by calculating and factoring in their polygenetic risk scores, says Torkel Klingberg, a professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who was not involved in the new study. These are measures that estimate a person’s genetic predisposition to a disease or a trait, such as educational attainment.

“Environment is super important for the brain development, for cognitive function, but so is genetics,” he says. “In order to draw firm conclusions, you really need to consider the effect of genetics.”

Marek says that at the time they did the analysis, the ABCD dataset didn’t include that information. The study does account for genetic ancestry, and it finds no correlation between that and a child’s brain.

“The story is fundamentally about place, right? It’s not race; it’s fundamentally about where you live. Doesn’t matter what color your skin is, what your family history is. The zip code is the thing that matters,” he says. At the same time, Marek and Dosenbach argue that trying to make sure kids are getting enough sleep and are less stressed in their immediate environment are relatively achievable and inexpensive interventions—and could have significant impacts on brain development.

“America as a country is extraordinarily rich,” Marek says, “and I think the hopeful message here is that, yeah, a lot of these effects seem like they are reversible, and they’re not set in stone.”

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Key Takeaways

• Rebellious behavior in teens is common and normal—but should you ever be worried if your teen displays defiant behavior?
• Sometimes, defiant behavior in teens can be a cover for more serious emotional issues, like insecurity or anger.
• Experts recommend that parents pay close attention to their teens’ patterns of behavior, so they can spot any changes, and have deeper talks with them about their feelings when tempers have cooled.

I have two teenagers, and so I am very familiar with teenage defiance. Talking back, arguing, not listening to reason or rules – I’ve seen it all. The other day, one kid blew a fuse after I asked him the simple question of what he wanted for lunch. The day before that, we had a heated argument after I reminded him to charge his school iPad. And don’t even get me started on the daily screaming match that happens when I remind him to leave the house on time to catch his morning bus.

I know this is normal behavior for teenagers, but I often ask myself if there is something deeper going on. What emotions might be underlying these behaviors? A few of my close friends have recently confided in me that their teens’ defiant behavior often gets exacerbated when they’re experiencing low self-esteem or feeling inadequate. That got me wondering: Is defiance in teens ever a sign of underlying insecurity? Could it ever be a symptom of another underlying intense emotional state?

To answer my questions, I connected with two therapists to help unpack what defiance in teens really means, and whether it ever is a sign of insecurity.

Is Defiant Behavior in Teens a Sign of Insecurity?

While defiant behavior in teenagers can happen for many different reasons, underlying insecurity is certainly among them.

“When a teen is insecure, they look for ways to find belonging, which can be modeling other teens who are defiant,” says Allison Guilbault, LPC, licensed therapist and founder of the Yes, I Am Too Much™ Revolution. Additionally, “if they think they are not valuable, or struggle with a deep inner critic, they can become defiant as a way to almost double down on how they believe they are perceived,” says Guilbault.

In other words, a teen might be thinking, “If I am not lovable or worthy anyway, may as well go all the way,” Guilbault says. And that thinking transforms outwardly into defiant behavior.

Defiant behavior might also be a way for teens to overcompensate for feeling small or insecure, says Jerry Weichman, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and founder of The Weichman Clinic. “This is an example of ‘the best defense is a strong offense’ mindset that a teen or anyone, for that matter, subconsciously establishes to protect him or herself from emotional pain, embarrassment, judgment, and or disappointment,” he describes.

Is Defiance a Sign of Any Other Concerning Emotions?

Of course, defiant behavior isn’t always a sign of insecurity. There are many other emotions that may cause a teen to break rules and rebel against their parents.

“As a cognitive behavioral therapist who specializes in teens, I always believe that our thoughts dictate our emotions and our emotions dictate our behavior,” says Guilbault. “So if a teen’s emotions are unregulated, that will almost undoubtedly affect behavior negatively.”

Challenges like anxiety, depression, or negative self-talk can increase defiant behaviors, according to Guilbault.

Any teen who is living with strong feelings of hurt and pain—that could be trauma involving school or another family member or stress around academics or romantic relationships—may be prone to increased defiant behavior, too.

“The teens I’ve worked with over the past two and a half decades who have the most common profile associated with oppositional behavior are the teens who have incurred a lot of emotional hurt and pain in their lives,” says Dr. Weichman.

And healing their mental health might be far more than a parent is equipped to handle, which might mean reaching out to mental health experts for therapy or other resources. In situations of more extreme mental health issues, teens may not have the tools to navigate difficult feelings and instead, repress and compartmentalize their feelings as a way to cope.

In addition, teens who are dealing with intense emotions that are hard to cope with are often hot-tempered and easily irritated.

“This unresolved emotional hurt and pain then turns into anger over time,” Dr. Weichman shares.

“As a result of the buildup of emotions, they have a very short fuse and are quick to snap,” says Dr. Weichman. “When they do snap, it’s typically a much bigger reaction than the actual situation may warrant.”

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Teenagers

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After a night of storms, both political and meteorological, workers began removing President Trump’s name from the white marble facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts early on Saturday morning, responding to a federal judge’s ruling that its rebranding was unlawful.

The letters began coming down just past 3 a.m., after the center sought an extension of a midnight deadline. Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, asked a federal district court for 12 more hours to certify that it had complied with the order, attributing the delay to a cluster of summer storms.

Workers spent about eight hours on Friday building towering scaffolding in front of the section of the facade bearing Mr. Trump’s name. Then, in the early hours of Saturday, they hung heavy white tarps from the structure. It obscured views of the removal, which was a significant symbolic victory for opponents of Mr. Trump’s takeover of an iconic performing arts center.

But a gap in the tarps allowed a New York Times photographer to observe a worker pulling the letter “A” from the wall. There was no sound of power tools; the letter appeared to come off by hand.

For all of Friday, lawyers for Mr. Trump and the center had been seeking legal intervention to keep his name on the marble as they pursue an appeal.

But after both the district court and a federal appeals court denied their requests for an immediate stay on the ruling, workers began erecting scaffolding in earnest to reach the letters. A rowdy audience of a few hundred people gathered to watch.

The center’s Trump-allied board voted to add the president’s name to the institution nearly six months ago, causing an uproar in Washington and a crisis within the city’s pre-eminent art center. At an institution that had already been rocked by the president’s takeover, the 18 new letters affixed to the building — less than a day after the board vote — increased the temperature even further.

Democratic legislators condemned the move as an act of “narcissism”; a series of artists canceled engagements at the center; and Representative Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board, filed a lawsuit calling the move a “flagrant violation of the rule of law.” Ms. Beatty was on hand for the operation on Saturday morning, remaining on the plaza outside the Kennedy Center even after the work crew departed around 4 a.m.

The ensuing debate over the appropriateness of the renaming led to a bizarre scene in Washington, where, for two days, the arts center on the Potomac River has seen a flurry of visitors, not there for a symphony or ballet, but to see whether the president’s name would be detached from the marble. While onlookers kept watch, a steady drumbeat of legal developments drove a sense of uncertainty over whether the removal would happen at all.

On Thursday, one of the first signs of movement came when security guards erected black bike racks to close off the main drive and walkway near the front of the building. Passers-by quizzed volunteers and guards inside the center about when the letters would come off, with little success.

A short walk from the Kennedy Center, residents of the Watergate were planning impromptu house parties at the sprawling condominium complex. Two volunteer organizations, Hands Off the Arts and Free the Kennedy Center, coordinated to livestream the signage on the building from a webcam situated on a balcony at the Watergate.

Christine Lienert and Debra Wilfong kept their celebratory champagne on ice until 10:30 p.m. on Thursday. As news emerged that Mr. Trump’s name would not be coming off the building that night, they slipped the bubbly back into the fridge

On Friday, Ms. Lienert reloaded the cooler and joined the throng awaiting the letters’ removal. But after news spread that Mr. Trump’s name might not be removed for hours, she packed up her champagne, the ice in her cooler having long since melted.

Not everyone who milled around the Kennedy Center was opposed to keeping Mr. Trump’s name on the building. Jeanette Mercado and her husband, Bert, had traveled to Washington from Wasco, in California’s Central Valley, to see the capital’s monuments and came upon the scaffolding and the gathering crowd.

“I like Trump, I like what he’s doing for our country, I think he’s a blessing for our country, and I don’t see anything wrong with his name being added,” Ms. Mercado said, her voice almost drowned out by chants of “take it down.”

Mr. Mercado, who said he was a Trump supporter as well, took a different view. “There should be a sense of continuity here — why are you going to interject your name?” he said.

In December, the Kennedy Center board voted to put Mr. Trump’s name on the building in recognition of what officials have described as his dedication to the institution and his help in securing $257 million to finance what officials said was a much-needed renovation.

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On Friday night, workers constructed scaffolding near President Trump’s name on the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Credit…Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

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If you’ve never heard of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi before, I wouldn’t blame you—unless you happen to be a ficus. With symbiotic trade relationships spanning roughly 70 percent of plant species on Earth, these charismatic topsoil denizens should be on the radar of any self-respecting photosynthesizer. Yet although AM fungi haul roughly four billion metric tons of carbon from plants into the soil each year, there’s still a lot we humans don’t know about this type of fungus, starting with how much of it there actually is.

Until now: in a new paper published in Science, researchers combined data from more than 300 studies to estimate the total global biomass of AM fungi. The task is deceptively difficult. Biomass depends in part on the thickness of fungal filaments, meaning that even small errors in estimating their average diameter can dramatically affect the final calculation. To illustrate the challenge, co-author Justin D. Stewart, a data scientist at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), offers an analogy: Imagine lying beneath a tree and trying to determine the average width of all its branches. Some are long and incredibly thin, while others are short and thick. 

To tackle the problem, the team used a custom-built robot named Prince, which captured more than 300,000 measurements of growing fungal networks. (For those interested, other robotic residents of the lab include Donna Summer and Aretha Franklin.) Combined with mathematical modeling and published data from around the world, those measurements let the researchers estimate global fungal biomass and, with data visualizer Moritz Stefaner, create an interactive mycorrhizal infrastructure map covering Earth’s landmasses down to each square kilometer.

“We’re surrounded by numbers and data,” says Stefaner, who was immediately drawn to the aesthetic qualities of the dataset. “Everybody wants to make sense of it. Everybody wants to see the big picture.”

So, how much of this type of fungus is there?

The answer is simultaneously more and less than you might expect. By biomass, the world’s AM fungi weigh roughly five times as much as all humans combined. That’s substantial but not nearly as much as many researchers anticipated.

“I was kind of surprised that the numbers weren’t higher,” says Kyra Skye Gibson, a postdoctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University, who was not involved in the study.

Stewart says the research team felt much the same way. “When we first calculated how heavy these fungi were,” he says, “I think we spent two or three weeks recalculating it to make sure we weren’t missing zeros.”

Perhaps mass is the wrong way to think about it. In terms of length, the numbers become genuinely absurd. Earth’s topsoil contains an estimated 110 quadrillion kilometers of AM fungi laid end to end— enough to stretch from Earth to our neighboring star Proxima Centauri and back or to reach the 11.9 light-years to Tau Ceti, the setting of Andy Weir’s sci‑fi hit Project Hail Mary.

Yet despite such staggering numbers, Stewart is just as eager to discuss what the researchers haven’t found. “We’re treating these maps as living documents, not static images,” he says, emphasizing the importance of the nearly 200 researchers working with SPUN to fill in the remaining gaps. To help identify those gaps, the team created supplemental “maps of ignorance” that highlight where the estimates are most uncertain.

“I’m very comfortable with uncertainty, as long as we quantify what type of uncertainty it is and how large it is,” Stewart says. “These maps of ignorance are also treasure maps of where we need to go sample data in the future.”

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A firefighter monitors flames caused by the Hughes fire in Castaic, California, on 22 January 2025. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

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Claiming there was progress in the peace negotiations, President Trump said he had canceled his next wave of planned attacks after two days of U.S. airstrikes.

Here’s the latest.

After two days of pounding Iran with airstrikes, President Trump on Thursday promised to hit Iran hard again for a third day and mused about invading a strategic island — then abruptly called off the attacks.

Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he changed his mind because progress had been made in peace negotiations with Iran. While he claimed that the discussions had “been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved,” Iran’s leadership did not immediately confirm any progress. Earlier this week, Mr. Trump had claimed a peace deal was imminent, but hours later, the two countries attacked each other.

Shortly before he called off strikes on Iran on Thursday, President Trump spoke to the Pakistanis, who have been mediating with the Iranians. The Pakistanis told Trump that “we have a deal” with Iran, according to a senior administration official. We have yet to independently confirm this with the Iranians, and it’s unclear what, if anything, has been agreed. International oil prices fell more than 3 percent, below $90 a barrel, after President Trump said he had canceled planned strikes against Iran.

In a social media post, President Trump said that he had “cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran” that he had threatened for later this evening. The president said he had canceled the attacks because of progress on a peace deal. He said that discussions “have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership” and approved. The president said the naval blockade would remain and suggested, without further explanation, there would be a “signing” announced soon.

Trump has repeatedly claimed over the last several months that a peace deal was imminent, often threatening escalating strikes against Iran soon after. Iranian officials, in turn, have often denied Trump’s claims that they have agreed to terms of a potential peace deal.

The commander of Iran’s military headquarters warned on Thursday that any new U.S. attack would draw a “response harsher than before” that would make the war “broader and more widespread,” the country’s state broadcaster reported.

The commander also appeared to issue a veiled threat against other countries’ energy exports, saying that in light of recent U.S. threats against Iran’s oil infrastructure, “either everyone” will be able to export oil and gas, “or no one will.”

The State Department said on Thursday that it was speaking with the Indian government after officials in Delhi summoned the top U.S. diplomat in India at the moment to denounce what appears to be U.S. involvement in a strike on a commercial oil tanker near Oman that left three Indian sailors dead. “The Department of State is in direct contact with the government of India regarding this matter,” the agency said. India summoned the diplomat, Jason P. Meeks, the deputy chief of mission at at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi, on Wednesday. The U.S. ambassador, Sergio Gor, is out of the country. “We condemn the attack on the commercial vessel Settebello off the coast of Oman,” the Indian ministry of external affairs had said on Wednesday.

Data from Kpler, a global-ship tracking firm, shows one vessel has crossed the Strait of Hormuz so far on Thursday, and another one crossed on Wednesday, as military clashes between the United States and Iran have heightened tensions in the vital waterway. Those crossing numbers are down from earlier in the week; six ships crossed on Tuesday, and eight on Monday, Kpler found.

The data might not reflect the full number of crossings, because ships can turn off or misdirect their location signals to avoid being tracked. In a report published Thursday, Kpler found that non-Iranian crude oil shipments have picked up since Tehran initially closed the strait — but the vast majority of that traffic has been through dark transits or other workarounds.

Iran’s speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned on Thursday that further escalation by the United States could threaten energy infrastructure and global markets.

“Wrong strategies and impulsive decisions will reset the entire board for the worse,” Ghalibaf wrote on social media, adding that the United States would see “a different Iran.”

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Tehran on Monday.Credit…Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

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The U.S. is finally getting a new, better sunscreen ingredient. Today, the Food and Drug Administration added bemotrizinol, an effective chemical filter that’s been used in sunscreens made in Asia and Europe for decades, to its list of permitted active ingredients in over-the-counter sunscreens. This list hasn’t seen a new entry in more than 20 years.

Bemotrizinol, also called BEMT, brings the list of approved active sunscreen ingredients in the U.S. to 17—a number that still lags behind Europe, which has more than 30 approved filters. While the FDA’s official action comes just seven months after the agency initially proposed it, critics have pointed out that the lengthy regulatory process prolonged bemotrizinol’s approval; the application was filed in 2005. The Environmental Working Group, an environmental health advocacy organization, has claimed this delay has caused U.S. sunscreens to fall behind in better coverage against harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. Experts say today’s decision is a move in the right direction, offering people stronger protection from the sun.

Expanding sunscreen ingredient options in the U.S. is “a pretty big deal,” says AJ Addae, a chemist and doctoral candidate a University of California, Los Angeles, who studies cosmetics and sunscreen formulations. “It’s definitely something that we haven’t had in a very long time.”

How Bemotrizinol Works

There are two main classes of sunscreen filters: inorganic, or “physical,” and organic, or “chemical.” Sunscreens with physical filters—such as titanium and zinc—are mineral-based and are known to leave a white cast on skin. Chemical filters, such as avobenzone, octocrylene, and homosalate, appear clear when rubbed on the skin but sometimes feel oily. There are more organic filters than inorganic ones, but there aren’t as many approved ones in the U.S. as in other parts of the world, Addae says.

Contrary to popular belief, both types primarily work by absorbing UV light and converting that radiation energy into heat that is released from the skin, explains Saranya Wyles, a dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. All sunscreens have the ability to reflect some light, though inorganic filters can reflect a little more, Addae adds.

UV radiation comes in two types: UVA and UVB. UVB is high-energy radiation that is typically associated with sunburns and can cause genetic mutations that lead to skin cancer, but UVA rays have increasingly become recognized as relevant for skin health, too. UVA is a longer-wavelength radiation that can penetrate deeper into the skin than UVB, breaking down the skin’s structure and creating harmful, skin‑aging molecules.

In the U.S., “the only thing that is really tested is a sunscreen’s ability to absorb UV light—specifically UVB light,” Addae says. This is how sun protection factor (SPF) is determined, but the measurement doesn’t capture UVA light. U.S. sunscreens offer only 24 percent of the protection indicated on SPF labels against UVA radiation, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group.

“When we think about a sunscreen, we want something to be broad spectrum,” Wyles says—meaning it covers both UVA and UVB. “What’s so exciting about this new BEMT filter is that it has more coverage in that UVA spectrum” compared with other organic filters. BEMT covers those “deeper UVA” rays that are often linked to photoaging of the skin, she says.

Safety and Stability Properties

Between various countries’ regulatory approval and real-world use, bemotrizinol has some of the most robust safety and efficacy testing among sunscreen filters. Following the ingredient’s development in the late 1990s by the now defunct Switzerland-based company Ciba Specialty Chemicals, the European Union adopted it into sunscreens in 2000. Canada and several countries in Asia followed suit soon after.

“A ton of safety data have had to be accrued in a lot of different populations,” Wyles says. Companies developing sunscreen filters need lots of funding to get the data needed for approval in the U.S., she adds.

Not only is bemotrizinol now the first filter to obtain the FDA’s stamp of approval since 1999, it’s also the first and only organic filter to receive the FDA’s safety and effectiveness standard, known as generally recognized as safe and effective (GRASE), for over-the-counter drugs or ingredients that don’t require full regulatory approval. The GRASE designation “is huge,” Addae says.

“I think that will kind of debunk the consumer’s perception that inorganic filters are generally recognized as safe and effective and organic filters tend to not be,” she says. “This shows that there can be organic filters that are that are determined GRASE.”

It’s impossible to draw “a clear line in the sand” on whether certain sunscreen ingredients are completely healthy for people or not, Addae says. But she adds that evidence has emerged that has given researchers some insight into how sunscreen filters generally interact with our bodies. Chemically, BEMT has larger chromophores—light-absorbing molecules—than other organic filters, which makes them less of a concern for adverse biological interactions, Addae says. In pharmacology and dermatology, researchers use the “500 dalton rule,” in which molecules with a molecular weight of more than 500 daltons are usually too large and bulky to pass through the skin.

“BEMT exceeds this limit quite well,” Addae says. “I think that’s likely a large reason why the GRASE status was on the table for this particular filter.”

Scientists are investigating whether BEMT degrades in pool water. It’s unclear if subsequent chemical by-products after a breakdown of BEMT might cause irritation or damage to the skin. In sunlight, though, most evidence suggests that BEMT is quite stable and longer-lasting than other filters. “BEMT is one that does stay on longer, but this doesn’t mean you can apply this and then you don’t have to reapply for a long time,” Wyles says. “That degradation curve varies for everybody.”

The FDA evaluated the safety and efficacy of BEMT concentrations of up to 6 percent and considered how BEMT interacts with other sunscreen filters and ingredients. Because companies will only be able to use up to 6 percent concentrations of BEMT in formulations, Wyles doesn’t anticipate it will fully replace existing U.S. filters.

“A lot of times, you’re not going to see BEMT standing alone; it’s going to be combined with other sunscreen filters,” Wyles says.

The Future of UV Filters

Researchers are keeping tabs on how BEMT’s approval will affect the approval of other UV filters in the U.S. Wyles says others in the BEMT family might see similar approvals. Another organic filter, Mexoryl 400, has also demonstrated coverage of the UVA spectrum and is increasingly found in sunscreens produced in Asia and Europe. “I can see that coming to the U.S. at some point,” Wyles says.

Addae, who also created a research-and-development lab to make products for cosmetic chains, recently worked with her colleagues at U.C.L.A. to create a mineral-based filter with less of a white cast. She changed the chemical properties of zinc oxide to reduce aggregation that causes a white cast. The filter scattered light differently but still absorbed UV rays effectively. It was more effective with UVB than UVA rays, however. Further efficacy testing is needed, but the filter wouldn’t require new regulatory approval, she says.

BEMT sunscreens are anticipated to hit U.S. shelves later this year. The Dutch company DSM Nutritional Products will be the first in the U.S. to sell its BEMT-formulated sunscreen, Parsol Shield, according to the Associated Press. The company has an 18-month exclusivity period, after which the other manufacturers can start using the ingredient. Addae adds that it will take some time for U.S. chemists and companies to incorporate the filter into new products and learn best practices.

“At the end of the day, what matters is that people wear their sunscreen, no matter what’s in it,” she says.

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Pablo Jeffs Munizaga/Fototrekking/Getty Images

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