Officials who served under Republican president in 1980s say Trump is opposing friends and supporting enemies: ‘It makes me sick what’s going on’

The Observer has identified the operator of “GlomarResponder,” an overtly racist social media account, as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.

For much of terrestrial biodiversity, the evolutionary pathways of adaptation from marine ancestors are poorly understood and have usually been viewed as a binary trait. True crabs, the decapod crustacean infraorder Brachyura, comprise over 7600 species representing a striking diversity of morphology and ecology, including repeated adaptation to non-marine habitats. Here, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of Brachyura using new and published sequences of 10 genes for 344 tips spanning 88 of 109 brachyuran families. Using 36 newly vetted fossil calibrations, we infer that brachyurans most likely diverged in the Triassic, with family-level splits in the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene. By contrast, the root age is underestimated with automated sampling of 328 fossil occurrences explicitly incorporated into the tree prior, suggesting such models are a poor fit under heterogeneous fossil preservation. We apply recently defined trait-by-environment associations to classify a gradient of transitions from marine to terrestrial lifestyles. We estimate that crabs left the marine environment at least 7 and up to 17 times convergently, and returned to the sea from non-marine environments at least twice. Although the most highly terrestrial- and many freshwater-adapted crabs are concentrated in Thoracotremata, Bayesian threshold models of ancestral state reconstruction fail to identify shifts to higher terrestrial grades due to the degree of underlying change required. Lineages throughout our tree inhabit intertidal and marginal marine environments, corroborating the inference that the early stages of terrestrial adaptation have a lower threshold to evolve. Our framework and extensive new fossil and natural history datasets will enable future comparisons of non-marine adaptation at the morphological and molecular level. Crabs provide an important window into the early processes of adaptation to novel environments, and different degrees of evolutionary constraint that might help predict these pathways.

Major carriers are trying to overturn a Biden-era policy that ended decades of mistreatment.

President Trump, furious about delays in delivering two new Air Force One jets, has empowered Elon Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster, including relaxing security clearance standards for some who work on the presidential planes. His administration has even discussed whether a luxury jet could be acquired and refitted during the wait, according to five people with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe closely held deliberations. Mr. Musk, whom Mr. Trump has tapped to slash the federal government, has been central to the discussions — consulting with the military, the White House and Boeing, the people said.

Thousands of federal government employees have been shown the door in the first month of President Donald Trump’s administration as the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds. It is affecting more than just the national capital region, home to about 20% of the 2.4 million members of the civilian federal workforce, which does not include military personnel and postal employees workers. More than 80% of that workforce lives outside the Washington area.

DeJoy told the USPS Board of Governors to begin the process of searching for a new postmaster general. DeJoy took office in June 2020.

Are you scared to walk down the streets of NYC and also have too much money? There's an app for that.

Joe Biden granted clemency to the Native American rights activist literally minutes before his presidency ended.

U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services.

The leader of a cultlike group known as the Zizians that is linked to six killings has been ordered held without bail, as were two others.

Some bodegas in the Bronx are now selling eggs in threes as customers struggle with the soaring cost of an entire carton.

Rep. Hal Rogers has wanted another prison in eastern Kentucky for years. Local and national activists say the new land owners have better plans for Letcher County. A community building and land restoration group bought a plot of Letcher County land that’s been targeted for a new federal prison. The Appalachian Rekindling Project paid local property owners $160,000 in late December for 63 acres near the community of Roxana, according to a deed of sale obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The land makes up a portion of the 500-acre site where the Bureau of Prisons planned to build an estimated $500 million prison complex to incarcerate more than 1,300 people. The Appalachian Rekindling Project wants to instead reclaim the former strip mine by reintroducing native species like bison to the land, according to a press release from the group.

Tesla owner Elon Musk is a self-described ‘free speech absolutist’

The Democrats’ cowardly top-down messaging has never been good. But has it ever been worse?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has ordered the digital and physical destruction of 18 publications on workplace safety practices, according to an internal February 7 email obtained by Popular Information. Popular Information has obtained archived versions of most of the deleted publications. Almost all of them are not associated with DEIA topics but appear to have been targeted because they include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context. For example, one of the purged publications is "OSHA Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders During Treatment and Transport of Victims of Hazardous Substance Releases." Popular Information was able to obtain an archived version of the publication through the Internet Archive. The 104-page document — a collaboration between dozens of government agencies and NGOs — was published in 2009 to detail the steps "employers need to take to protect their EMS responders from becoming additional victims while on the front line of medical response." DEIA issues are not discussed.

India postponed its national winter games on Monday citing a lack of snow in the northern Kashmir territory's ski resort of Gulmarg, where the event was to be held this month.

A 17-shot fusillade from a shooter with a semiautomatic handgun sent two Israeli tourists to the hospital after an encounter Saturday night in Miami Beach, police said. As for what ignited such a random attack on Pine Tree Drive, the arrest form details Mordechai Brafman giving detectives his account in the police interview room, where he “spontaneously stated that while he was driving his truck, he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both.” Brafman didn’t kill anybody, according to police. One person was shot in the left shoulder; the other grazed in their forearm. Law enforcement sources didn’t say whether or not the people shot were Palestinians, only that they’re visiting from Israel.

It was Thursday, eight days after the Texas Department of State Health Services first reported a measles outbreak on the rural, western edge of the state. On Friday, the number of confirmed cases rose to 49, up from 24 earlier in the week, the state health department said. The majority of those cases are in Gaines County, which borders New Mexico. Most cases are in school-age kids, and 13 have been hospitalized. All are unvaccinated against measles, which is one of the most contagious viruses in the world.

A woman reportedly lost her hands to a shark attack while she was trying to take a selfie with the large creature.