In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture. “America,” Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” As tempers rose, one U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will. [UPDATE at 3:15 PM EDT: Letters from Leo can now independently confirm that the meeting took place — and that the Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that Pope Leo XIV shelved plans to visit the United States later this year. Some officials in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.]

NASA’s Artemis II mission sent four astronauts deeper into space than any human beings have gone before. It revealed what’s still possible, in every sense.

A key issue is protections against layoffs from AI

The proprietors of a now-shuttered Southwest Missouri boarding school are facing a new lawsuit by a former student alleging trafficking across several states, coerced labor, isolation and sexualized punishment while she was underage. The lawsuit was filed last week in the Western District of Missouri Southern Division court by Javairia Yankowy, who says she spent four years at Wings of Faith Academy after being placed in the custody of the school’s owners, Debbie and Percy “Bud” Martin. The lawsuit alleges the couple trafficked Yankowy while running Wings of Faith, which operated alongside Agape Boarding School, another Southwest Missouri Christian boarding school that has faced extensive abuse allegations.

President Trump's budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists. The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September. Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession. Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs: “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,” “extremism on migration,” extremism on “race,” extremism on “gender,” “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,” Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

Frantic diplomacy collides with 'genocidal' threats in lead-up to announcement of two-week ceasefire between US, Iran.

Sensitive LAPD records, including officer personnel files and documents from Internal Affairs investigations, are among the materials believed to have been seized in a breach last month involving the L.A. city attorney’s office.

We’ve learned that an armed man who authorities say created a tense situation for high school students protesting ICE in Chandler is a Phoenix police sergeant. The incident he’s involved in is now under review by the Professional Standards Bureau. These student walkouts happened a week after federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti on January 24. Pretti was armed with a handgun he legally owned. As for this protest against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Chandler, the armed counter-protester is Dusten Mullen, a Phoenix PD community action sergeant with the Sound Mountain Precinct who was off-duty. According to this Chandler report, his goal was to get juvenile protesters to assault him.

Tucker Collins, an 18-year-old freshman at USC, attended a 'No Kings' protest in Los Angeles on Mar. 28. He ended up getting shot in the eye with a less-lethal projectile by a Department of Homeland Security agent and is now blind.

The acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) identified a man shot by federal agents Tuesday morning in Stanislaus County.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had asked Trump for a two-week delay of his Iran deadline, and for the Strait of Hormuz to open for the same period.

The vice president is in Europe to show support for a far-right leader.

China and Russia on Tuesday vetoed a U.N. resolution encouraging states to coordinate efforts to protect commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, calling the measure biased against Iran, while Washington's ambassador to the world body called on "responsible nations" to join the U.S. in securing the waterway.

Australia's most decorated soldier was arrested on Tuesday and charged with five counts of war crimes relating to the killing of unarmed civilians while on deployment in Afghanistan.

India's most advanced reactor has set the country on a path towards potentially cutting its dependence on uranium.

The reason for the change? Fish are showing lower levels of toxic chemicals known as PCBs, which is shorthand for polychlorinated biphenyls.

Danhao Wang's March 20 death remains under investigation by the U-M Police.

Yoshihisa Kishimoto, the creator of the Double Dragon and River City (Kuno-kun) franchises, has died at the age of 64.

Cassowaries possess prominent keratinous and bony cranial ornaments, called casques, which have been suggested to function in visual signaling. Despite possessing vividly colored head and neck skin, casque keratin appears dull, which has abated the casque’s proposed role as a visual indicator. Given that cassowaries, like many other birds, can perceive color in the ultraviolet (UV) range, we exposed heads of living and museum-preserved cassowaries to UV wavelengths (365; 385–395 nm) and discovered that casque keratin possesses biofluorescent patterns that differ significantly between species (Casuarius bennetti, C. casuarius, C. unappendiculatus). To assess whether casque surfaces reflect these patterns, we tested for the presence of UV reflectivity using a UV-sensitive camera. We found that casque keratin reflects 365 nm UV light, a wavelength within the range of cassowary eye sensitivity. However, our observations cannot confirm whether species-specific patterns can be detected by cassowaries in natural light conditions.

An investigation is underway in Long Beach after a family discovered possible human remains during an Easter egg hunt in the area near DeForest Park and Wetlands on Sunday afternoon, according to police.