The cast of 'The Blair Witch Project' explain how they say they were screwed out of their share of the profits and why they're speaking out now.

The last known remaining survivors of the 1921 attack by a white mob were hoping for their day in court. A historic quest for justice by the last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre ended with a state court ruling on Wednesday. The Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of their lawsuit, the final legal stop for Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Ford Fletcher, 110. The women, who were small children at the time, argued that the destruction of what was then known as Black Wall Street and the massacre of up to 300 African Americans by a white mob amounted to an ongoing public nuisance, and they sought reparations. The ruling concludes the lawsuit that Ms. Randle and Ms. Fletcher filed in 2020. Last year, another survivor of the massacre, Hughes Van Ellis, the younger brother of Ms. Fletcher, died at 102. The justices ruled that the plaintiffs’ grievances, including any lingering economic and social impact of the massacre, “do not fall within the scope of our state’s public nuisance statute” and do not support a claim for reparations.

During the nineteen-seventies and eighties, a researcher at the University of Washington started noticing something strange in the college’s experimental forest. For years, a blight of caterpillars had been munching the trees to death. Then, suddenly, the caterpillars themselves started dying off. The forest was able to recover. But what had happened to the caterpillars? The researcher, David Rhoades, who had a background in chemistry and zoology, found that the trees in the forest had changed the chemistry of their leaves, to the detriment of the caterpillars. Even more surprising, trees that had been nibbled by caterpillars weren’t the only ones that had changed their chemistry. Some were changing their leaves before caterpillars reached them, as if they’d received a warning. A shocking possibility presented itself: the trees were signalling to one another. Zoë Schlanger recounts Rhoades’s story in her new book, “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth.” In a research paper that Rhoades published on his findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society’s series “Plant Resistance to Insects,” he pointed out that the trees were too far apart to be communicating through their roots. This suggested a possibility so novel that Rhoades couldn’t resist an exclamation point in his otherwise cautious positing—the trees seemed to be using “airborne pheromonal substances!” That paper, Schlanger writes, “would change everything, and in a cruel twist, it would end his career. Because back then, no one believed him.”

Denmark has banned several varieties of a popular South Korean instant noodle brand for being too spicy, advising consumers that the fiery food poses a poisoning risk. The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said on Tuesday that it had recalled the noodles produced by Samyang Foods because their capsicum levels are “so high that they pose a risk of the consumer developing acute poisoning”.

PleasrDAO, the digital art collective that owns the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, has sued the album’s previous owner, disgraced former pharmaceutical executive, Martin Shkreli, for copying the album and playing it for online audiences without permission. In its lawsuit—filed on June 10 in a Brooklyn federal court and viewed by Pitchfork—PleasrDAO outlines the largely public history of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Shkreli bought the album in 2015 for $2 million. That same year, he was arrested, and he was convicted, in 2017, of committing securities fraud. Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and ordered to forfeit nearly $7.4 million in assets, including the Wu-Tang Clan album. Shkreli was released from prison in 2022, but, while he was incarcerated, PleasrDAO bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $4 million. According to the lawsuit, Shkreli is still beholden to certain aspects of the forfeiture order, including the requirement that he “take[s] all reasonable steps, and bear all costs necessary, to ensure that all the Substitute Assets [i.e., Once Upon a Time in Shaolin] are preserved and maintained in good and marketable condition, and are not damaged, diluted or diminished in value as a result of any actions taken or not taken by the defendant and his representatives.” Shkreli, the lawsuit argues, has violated the forfeiture order by making copies of the album and playing it publicly—something he’s readily admitted to have done, including as recently as the day before the lawsuit was filed when he posted on X, “well @pleasrdao blocked me from their account so i think i will play the album on spaces now.” In the lawsuit, PleasrDAO states, “Any dissemination of the Album’s music to the general public greatly diminishes and/or destroys the Album’s value, and significantly damages PleasrDAO’s reputation and ability to commercially exploit the Album.” In addition, PleasrDAO argues that Shkreli has gained his own unjust enrichment through the promotion of his allegedly illicit Wu-Tang Clan music files. PleasrDAO and its lawyer are asking for an inventory of the files that Shkreli has, the seizure of his copies, damages, and more. In various posts on X, Shkreli has mocked PleasrDAO for suing him and defended his actions. Beginning on Saturday, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will be played publicly for an exhibition at Australia’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). A contract stipulates that the album cannot be commercially exploited until 2109, but it can be played at private listening events such as MONA’s.

Ren Faire director Lance Oppenheim and the HBO docuseries stars on George Coulam, the mercurial 86-year-old who created the Texas Renaissance Festival—and won’t let go.

Evan Goldstein has made a life — and a fancy lifestyle — off anal interventions, drawing ardent fans and curious skeptics.

Many of those sites are targeted to swing states — a clear sign that they're designed to influence politics.

Myka and James Stauffer adopted a toddler from China and shared every step of the process with their online audience. Except the last.

Young Thug's attorney Brian Steel has been ordered to spend 20 days in jail as the result of being held in contempt of court, according to Atlanta newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Judge Ural Glanville ordered Steel to spend the next 10 weekends in the Fulton County Jail in Georgia to fulfill his sentence. Steel requested he be allowed to do his time at the Cobb County Jail, where Young Thug is being held so they can work on the case. Glanville OK'd the request on his end and said he would speak with the sheriff.

With the guilty verdict in the federal gun trial, Hunter Biden became the first child of a president to be convicted.

The ostensibly Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has spent the last seven months cheering on the Israeli government's war crimes, mocking and attacking pro-Palestine activists, and generally being a massive, unrepentant asshole.

Last year the Legislature decriminalized drug paraphernalia, even if it contains drug residue. The change represented a step back from the drug war tactics of previous decades, with an eye toward treating substance abuse as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice concern. But one obscure relic of the war on drug paraphernalia […]

A.G. “Dash” Sulzberger’s Silicon Valley-inflected skepticism and open-debate pieties are a recipe for dangerously irresponsible journalism by omission.

As climate change makes summers hotter, restaurant employees are walking out and unionizing.

BOGOTA - Chiquita Brands International must pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight Colombian men killed by a paramilitary group in that country, a Florida jury said on Monday.

James Corden is back on British soil after almost a decade on his American talk show. Will a new play and a ‘Gavin & Stacey’ special be enough to change the tide of public opinion, asks Katie Rosseinsky

Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in a new recording bemoans having to “look across the lagoon at the Pride flag.”

Dr. Eithan Haim has portrayed himself as a victim of politically motivated prosecution after he leaked information about trans kids treated at Texas Children’s Hospital to a notorious culture war activist.

The president's son faces charges of unlawfully purchasing a firearm.