Prime Minister Mark Carney says that U.S. demands to curtail his nation’s French-language identity were a nonstarter.

Pittsburgh had a hell of a winter storm in January, with more than a foot of snow, and freezing temperatures that created towering walls of ice and annoyed locals whose parking situations wouldn’t return to normal for a month. Some of the city's oldest buildings suffered the most damage, victims of a phenomenon known as ice damming. The warmth from a building rises to the snow banks on the roof, but it's only enough to defrost the bottommost layer, which then flows to the eaves and then re-freezes, creating a trapped reservoir of snowmelt that penetrates cracks and crevices, and flows into the walls to create conditions for mold. Ice damming alone caused millions of dollars' worth of damage in Pittsburgh, but perhaps nobody in the city felt as targeted by thermodynamics as Naomi Ruiz, a conservator currently working on some priceless and suddenly damp treasures at St. Nicholas Croatian Church. "I had, like, just gotten back home [to Europe] when they sent me a picture," Ruiz says, pointing up toward the corner of the Church's arched ceiling. Even from down here, I could see the intersection of the balcony and the wall was stripped of paint and had the unmistakable flaky look of water damage. She sighs as she remembers the sinking feeling. "That was the spot I'd spent a bunch of time fixing just before leaving." Naomi specializes in the painstaking process of preserving art in aging churches. It's much more complicated than simply putting a fresh layer of paint over the water damage or scrubbing candle soot from the walls. At St. Nicholas, Naomi is tasked with conserving internationally renowned—and uniquely provocative—murals painted by the Croatian artist Maxo Vanka. Upon entering the church, which is in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh but just across the Allegheny River in the borough of Millvale, new visitors can be overwhelmed by the images on display, with some breaking down into tears; I've seen it. These aren't traditional church images. In 25 murals completed just before and during World War II, Vanka applied the visual language of Catholicism to the horrors that fascism had inflicted on his homeland. On a ceiling panel at the back of the sanctuary is a painting of Christ on the Cross, His eyes bulging with pain as a soldier wearing a World War I–era helmet drives a bayonet into his side. Across from them is another soldier, with a subtle wound of his own appearing in the same place. The depiction of Jesus stands out by itself: His eyes are not complacent or knowing but panicked, and His skin has taken on the greenish hue of a person suffering from poison gas.

Wandering gliders are descended from some of the earliest known insects – and breed as one global population

The Supreme Court is siding with the Trump administration in a case over President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much can be implemented before the fast-approaching midterm elections.

A little while ago, I came up with the idea that that the difference between Italian Fascism and German Nazism was that Fascism essentially had “Jock-Douche” vibes while Nazism had “Creep-Loser” vibes. Now, I’m going to try to develop this fancy into a full-blown (or rather, half-baked) theory.

A new report from St. John's Community Health and other organizations says people who live and work near the site of a massive warehouse fire in Boyle Heights could face severe and worsening health risks.

I'm angry. I hate writing when I'm angry. I think it makes me too emotional, too attached to copy and most importantly makes my brain move too fast having ideas pop up and die before I can even get them down on the page... Olympic sport bodies have largely fallen in line with the new IOC party line that "sex assigned at birth" is how athletes should be categorized, and that "open" gender competition should be offered should transgender athletes not feel comfortable competing in events that don't match their current sex. Professional sports in the United States has largely stayed out of this eligibility mess because let's face it, trans people in the U.S. face too much systemic barriers to become professional athletes. There's only been a handful of transgender Olympic athletes, and all but one competed in events for their birth sex and have delayed hormone replacement therapy to continue their athletic careers. As someone who delayed HRT for over a year for personal medical reasons I can tell you that doing so is absolute hell. This matters because the WNBA continues to be in an endless news cycle about transfeminine athletes. I'm not going to recount all the details of how we got here, but in the last few days two sports opinion writers felt emboldened to talk about how they wished they could write columns about, and offer support for each other. Now two people do not make an industry, but the support that these men are receiving online is disheartening in the sense that it appears there are more people in the sportswriting industry that share the same views. I would not be surprised if we see similar columns come out in the next few days or weeks. There's never been a trans woman who played in the WNBA. There may never be one. But, there is an entire media ecosystem now devoted to the idea that the specter of trans women taking over women's sports is just one misguided policy away. And that the brave heroes pointing this out against the "outrage mob" are the ones saving women's sports.

The editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes says the Pentagon has fired him as well as its publisher and a reporter.

Image captured in early June shows animal foraging in the waterway in first since early 1900s, signaling its recovery

A report commissioned by L.A. County finds that the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger will cost 4,500 production jobs over three years.

Eight years of painstaking research on the virtually unknown Wolffsohn's viscacha have helped to shine the spotlight on this super-rare South American rodent and catalyze the conservation action it so urgently needs. BirdLife International and the Wildlife Conservation Society—a team of early-career conservationists from Argentina has transformed our understanding of a species that scientists knew almost nothing about. The detailed information that the team has compiled about Wolffsohn's viscacha and the threats it faces has led to a change in the species' official conservation status from Data Deficient to Endangered on Argentina's Red List. At the same time, the data is being used to help reassess its status on the global IUCN Red List.

Fire crews from several municipalities responded to a large structure fire at a cannabis facility in Aldersyde, Alta.

Herders and experts tell the BBC how Africa's camels are suffering because of extreme heat.

Rape. Domestic violence. Epstein friendship. It's all tolerated by our valiant homeland-security apparatus. PLUS: COINTELPRO 2026

"You may regret for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don't, you'll regret it for life," one popular social media post about the film said. Other social media users have hailed the movie as the antidote to the AI slop that is taking over social media algorithms.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said vandals are to blame for large swaths of dead grass on the National Mall near the World War II Memorial — in the same spot where Trump had a stage built and hosted crowds for his July 4 celebration. Trump made the accusation in a social media post without saying why he believes it’s the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. He posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf. “Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.

“If you don’t want to listen to your constituents, then we’re really just going to get another Republican,” she said as she walked away. “Yeah, I don’t think so. There’s a huge difference,” Vindman responded. “You’re walking away, but I am Jewish, and I’m an immigrant, ma’am.” The woman said she was walking away because of how he had responded to people raising concerns.

NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione is scheduled to be in federal court Friday for a hearing at which he’s expected to plead guilty in connection with the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mangione could still change his mind about the plea, said the person, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the case and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Previous plea talks in June broke down. Lawyers for Mangione and the Justice Department declined comment prior to the late-morning court hearing, which was hastily requested by prosecutors and defence lawyers earlier this week.

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the two women I overheard whispering about how they wanted to fuck Adam Bede, in one of my undergrad classes; the student of mine who disclosed that he loved The House of Mirth because “something similar happened to me recently” (????); or the guy who collects swords as a way into understanding the medieval period are examples of this type. You’ve certainly met these people or been taught by them; they are often motivated by personal attachments to specific works, and my hunch is that they represent the majority of those who care about art today. Secondary Source People are different; they become obsessed with the discourse about the objects being studied. Professional critics, “theory bros” (gender neutral), Letterboxd reviewers who primarily read other Letterboxd reviews, the weirdly combative people in your seminars who know all about the different scholarly camps on a topic—this group prioritizes the conversations, contexts, and conflicts surrounding the works above and beyond the works themselves. Secondary Source People are the main contingent both producing and consuming academic writing. For them, the question of a text’s beauty or capacity to immerse is less important than how its ideas expand or contract as we engage with them.

Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to observe a climate group and into churches, and obtained financial records for labor unions, as they sought to crack down on mass protests in Minneapolis following the Trump administration’s surge of federal officers into the city, attorneys alleged in a new filing. The effort began in earnest four days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti. On Jan. 28, Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, started what it called “Operation Puppet Master,” the filing says. That investigation was targeted at “an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators involved in impeding federal law enforcement, rioting, destruction of Federal property and assaults on Federal agents and Officers.”