Pope Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence “threatens to normalize an anti-human vision” and said that the concentration of immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors must be countered.

The pontiff’s encyclical letter—a text that is poised to define Leo’s papacy—reads like a sharp warning to Silicon Valley executives and humanity more broadly about the future of civilization as new technologies rapidly advance.

The risk, he said, is that humans will be reduced “to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”

Leo used two biblical images to describe the choice humanity faces. 

“The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem,” he wrote.

Read it all.

ICYMI: Pope Leo Compares AI Threat to Biblical ‘Tower of Babel’: The head of the Catholic Church is adding his moral suasion to a growing backlash against the impact of artificial intelligence – WSJ https://t.co/7lfkPN4W0D

— Steve Williams (@HISteveWilliams) May 27, 2026

Many of the founders and important researchers at Anthropic and OpenAI joined the earliest gatherings at A.G.I. House. Mr. [Jeremy] Nixon is now founder and chief executive of a start-up called the Infinity Artificial Intelligence Institute, which is trying to automate the creation of A.I.

Mr. Nixon said he has met a generation of scientists who shunned traditional religion in favor of technology. After growing up with books like “The God Delusion” — in which the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins painted God as a false belief contradicted by empirical evidence — he and his peers saw A.I. as an alternative that was more real and far more powerful.

A.I. has started to crack math problems that humans struggled with for decades, he said, and it will soon cure diseases in the same way. “Practically speaking, it will achieve the outcomes that many religions claim their deities would be able to achieve,” he said.

This is an increasingly common belief among researchers in Silicon Valley. They insist they are on their way to building a more powerful species — or even a new God.

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At the Epicenter of A.I., Pope Leo’s Warnings Are Dismissed
Pope Leo XIV’s spiritual message on artificial intelligence arrived as Silicon Valley’s A.I. enthusiasts pursue their own spirituality through technology.https://t.co/FLBlOaknrL

— Emily Turrettini (@textually) May 27, 2026

1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” [1] In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.

2. Founded on Christ, the living stone, we experience the powerful and mysterious action of the Holy Spirit, and we believe that every authentic human effort to cooperate with him for the good will be blessed by our heavenly Father, in whom we place our hope. For this reason, we can diligently contribute to every initiative that builds a more just world, and we can call others to collaborate in promoting the integral development of every human being. We wish to engage in dialogue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, questions and aspirations of humanity. [2] Together with them, we seek to identify new paths for the common good and for promoting a dignified life for all. Indeed, openness to dialogue is an integral part of the Church’s vocation because, constituted in Christ as “a sacrament… of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race,” [3] she recognizes history as the place where the Gospel challenges and directs human experience.

3. In this spirit, Pope Leo XIII published his Encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the 135 ^th anniversary of which we celebrate with deep gratitude this year. With that document, my beloved predecessor gave impetus to the reflection on society, the economy and politics, which is now known as the “Social Doctrine of the Church.” When some objected that the Church should not waste energy on worldly matters, but instead focus on communicating the message of eternal life, Leo XIII responded with realism and wisdom, saying that the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people. [4] Many decades have passed since then, and the Magisterium, pastors, theologians and faithful have continued to reflect on social issues in the light of the Gospel. Today, the Social Doctrine of the Church is a legacy of wisdom, where we find principles for thought, criteria for discernment and judgment, and concrete guidelines for action. Founded on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and in engagement with the sciences, it helps us clearly interpret the challenges of the present and identify appropriate ways for living out a clear Christian witness, with joy and in service to the world. It is not an inert set of concepts, but a living corpus of truth that safeguards and interprets humanity’s vocation to a full and just life. I therefore wish to add my own voice to this living tradition, invoking the help of the Spirit of wisdom, who has dwelt in the world since its beginning (cf. Prov 8:22-31).

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"building for the common good means accepting the limits & weakness of humanity without considering them an error ..the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of technology that promises to free us from all weakness"

— Jennifer A. Frey (@jennfrey) May 25, 2026

As the heavens declare thy glory, O God, and the firmament showeth thy handiwork, we bless thy Name for the gifts of knowledge and insight thou didst bestow upon Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler; and we pray that thou wouldst continue to advance our understanding of thy cosmos, for our good and for thy glory; through Jesus Christ, the firstborn of all creation, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today is November 15. #OTD in 1630 astronomer Johannes Kepler passed away. He discovered three major laws of planetary motion. Kepler’s discoveries turned Nicolaus Copernicus’s Sun-centered system into a dynamic universe. pic.twitter.com/kwCCXSZjSj

— Mario Livio (@Mario_Livio) November 15, 2024

Elon Musk’s SpaceX pulled back the curtain on a business empire that has racked up ballooning losses and debt after acquiring a cash-hungry startup, and pumping billions of dollars into futuristic endeavors ranging from AI to a Mars rocket.

The prospectus that SpaceX filed Wednesday for an IPO of unprecedented size boiled down to a well-worn strategy that entrepreneurs commonly hawk up and down Wall Street: in order to make money, we need to spend money. And nowhere are the outlays larger than in space and artificial intelligence.

“The big takeaway for me is that SpaceX is now an AI company,” said Chad Anderson, an early SpaceX investor and founder of Space Capital.

Musk is seeking to pull off the unprecedented feat of achieving a $2 trillion valuation from the outset, an audacious plan that’s set to transform both the public and private markets if it succeeds. At the same time, the prospectus lays bare concerns over whether private companies with limited financial disclosures and largely illiquid shares are reaching unjustified valuations in venture capital-led funding rounds.

Read it all.

Elon Musk is seeking to pull off the unprecedented feat of achieving a $2 trillion valuation from the outset, an audacious plan that’s set to transform markets if it succeeds. Read more: https://t.co/9IYTIOGzoh

📷: Brandon Bell/Getty Images pic.twitter.com/1EFis4o0TP

— Bloomberg (@business) May 21, 2026

Perhaps [Günther] Anders’s most important concept for our current moment, however, is that of the “Promethean gradient.” He uses this term to refer to the disproportionality between human faculties: we can achieve things in the sphere of technology that far outstrip the ability of our moral imagination to comprehend them.   

An example would be nuclear weapons: the level of destruction that a nuclear bomb can achieve is far beyond anything we can imagine. That possibly apocryphal saying ascribed to Josef Stalin, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,” captures this idea. I might be horrified at the face of a murder victim on the news; a picture of the mushroom cloud at Nagasaki does not have the same impact. Today, we can apply it to the tech bros: their technological innovation proceeds at a pace that outstrips any moral vision that might curb or direct it.

In light of this, the early departure of the tech bros from the summit I mentioned is understandable: there can be no moral accountability—indeed, they cannot even imagine what that would look like—because they are engaged in technological innovations beyond anything the current moral imagination can grasp. As Hans Jonas observed in the early 1970s, the advent of technology that was not simply external to human beings (steam, the internal combustion engine) but that touched on the nature of existence at both a profound and highly abstract level—for Jonas, chemistry; for us now, genetic engineering—grants the technological revolution theoretically limitless power to destabilize what it means to be human. And we cannot imagine what that might look like. Add to that the implications of social acceleration—that technology develops at a faster pace than can be assimilated into the moral imagination—and the problem Anders calls the Promethean gradient is set to become worse. Our technology liberates us from any sense of the authority of natural limits (let alone God-given ends), yet in itself it provides no new moral norms for how such liberation is to be exercised. 

But the Promethean gradient is not simply significant in the way it unshackles technological development from the moral imagination. It also has a paradoxical effect on human experience: our genius for technological development, that capacity that separates us from all other creatures and arguably forms part of our greatness, is precisely what renders us nothing in our eyes and therefore feeds despair. This Anders calls “Promethean shame,” which he sees as the result of the conflict between knowing ourselves as persons and yet finding ourselves reduced to mere “things” because of the technology we ourselves have developed. In Anders’s day, the primary culprits were nuclear weapons. Their development required the collaboration of free, intelligent, intentional human persons. But the result was that we human beings became the only creatures on earth who could, quite literally, annihilate ourselves. Man’s exceptional technological greatness had ironically given him the ability to make himself puny, contingent, and unnecessary in his own eyes.   

Today, this still applies, but it has expanded beyond narrow military technology to include such things as AI and transhumanism.

Read it all.

These hyper modernist dystopias that people want to create in Yemen and Gaza are so anti-human and unnatural as they completely deny the most important aspect of stability: socio-political and communal resilience https://t.co/G5XYfQ1fdJ

— Dr Andreas Krieg (@andreas_krieg) December 31, 2025

A sperm whale giving birth has been assisted by 10 other females in her social unit – the first time such an event has ever been observed in non-primates.

In July 2023, scientists who have been monitoring a group of sperm whales in the Caribbean since 2005 noticed that all 11 females in the group had gathered near the surface. By chance, the researchers had drones in the air and were able to observe and record the event.

Shortly afterwards, the flukes of a calf started emerging from its mother. The delivery took place over the next half hour, during which the other females coordinated themselves into a highly synchronised formation to protect the mother and newborn.

As soon as the calf was born, the female whales gathered around and took turns making sure that it was kept lifted at the surface so it could breathe and had time for its flukes to fully unfurl. In the first few hours, newborn sperm whales aren’t buoyant and cannot stay at the surface on their own, so such assistance is thought to be critical to prevent calves from drowning.

“This is the first evidence of birth assistance in non-primates,” says team member Shane Gero at Project CETI in New York.

Read it all.

Teamwork helped make this sperm whale birth a success. And scientists caught it on camera.https://t.co/DiApcaLBAm

— Science News (@ScienceNews) March 26, 2026

Social media interactions are, by definition, public and social, and not private. Clergy are held to a
higher standard of responsibility in their use of these platforms. Being clergy is an honor, privilege,
and responsibility that comes with influence, but also requires discretion and often sacrifice of our
rights, obligating us to wise self-censorship and self-control. I expect all social media posts by our
clergy to adhere to the highest standard of Christian decorum. All that we do reflects on our Lord,
His Church, our Diocese, and our ministry.
To that end, I first offer five (edited) questions that Archbishop Emeritus Foley Beach requires his
diocese to ask before posting anything…

1. Is it the truth? Along with that, ask: Why is it my responsibility to speak this truth or address
   this situation?
2. Have I talked to the person before I post about the person?
3. Will it benefit all concerned?
4. Do my words reflect well on Jesus Christ and on His Church?
5. Will I someday need to apologize and confess what I have written as a sin?
   These helpful questions can serve as a beginning point and a filter for online interactions. From
   there, I offer a few wise policies, developed by my friend and fellow bishop, Alex Farmer, for the
   clergy of the Gulf Atlantic Diocese. (Again, I have edited these for our situation.)
6. Never post, repost, favorably comment on, or like content that reflects poorly on Christ
   Jesus and his Church, other clergy, or yourself.
7. Follow the same rules of courtesy and mature behavior you would observe in any face-toface interaction.
8. Think about consequences and how your message might be perceived before you post.

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I used to think the main damage from social media was to youth mental health. Now I believe that the global destruction of the human ability to pay attention may be even larger.

A meta-analysis shows the damage, to adults as well as teens, from TikTok+https://t.co/YS0dkQTdj0 https://t.co/a8bSMQyW60

— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) November 15, 2025

While headlines, industry hype and employers suggest a near-term revolution that will make workers more efficient and successful, [Daron] Acemoglu offers a more measured—and unsettling—view.

He agrees that recent advances, particularly in “agentic” AI, are moving faster than expected, but that today’s systems fall short when it comes to reliability, reasoning and real-world understanding. That means any sweeping, immediate transformation of jobs and productivity remains unlikely in the near-term. But the uncertainty about what comes next is higher than ever, and Acemoglu warns that tech giants are overwhelmingly focused on replacing workers rather than complementing them. This, Acemoglu says, risks both weaker productivity gains and serious social consequences.

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Nobel Prize–winning economist Daron Acemoglu warns that multiple factors are driving a labor-replacement model, with dire consequences for society https://t.co/XWEYwny4Fa

— Bloomberg (@business) March 18, 2026

A team at Eon Systems PBC, led by senior scientist Philip Shiu, has demonstrated the world’s first embodied whole-brain emulation. Not an AI trained to mimic biology. Not a reinforcement learning policy. A literal copy of a biological brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse, running inside a physics-simulated body.

In 2024, Shiu and collaborators published in Nature a computational model of the entire adult fruit fly brain—125,000 neurons and 50 million synaptic connections—built from the FlyWire connectome and machine learning predictions of neurotransmitter identity. That model predicted motor behavior with 95% accuracy. But it was disembodied: a brain without a body.

Now, the ghost has found its machine. Using the NeuroMechFly v2 framework and MuJoCo physics simulation, Eon integrated the connectome-based brain emulation with a digital fly body. Sensory input flows in, neural activity propagates through the complete connectome, motor commands flow out, and the simulated body moves.

And here’s the jaw-dropper:

Scientists just copied a fruit fly’s brain into a computer. Neuron by neuron. No training data. No machine learning.It woke up and started walking. No one taught it to walk. No gradient descent. It just… knew what to do.

Read it all.

This breakthrough comes from Eon Systems, using the full connectome of the adult Drosophila melanogaster brain—over 125,000 neurons and 50 million synapses—to create the world's first embodied whole-brain emulation. https://t.co/Psimms60v2

— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) March 9, 2026

“Around the world, people are getting diminished,” Haidt said. “Less intelligent, less happy, less competent. And it’s happening very fast … My argument is that if we continue with current trends as AI is coming in, it’s going to accelerate. The decline of humanity is going to accelerate.”

Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the author of the recent bestseller “The Anxious Generation,” which suggests that the widespread adoption of social media in the 2010s has been especially damaging to young women, making them prone to anxiety and depression.

But as Haidt has continued to examine the effects of social media on society, he has started focusing on additional issues. Our inability to put our phones away, our compulsion to check social media, and the way we spend hours a day watching short-form videos, may be causing problems that go far beyond any rise in anxiety and depression.

“It turns out, it’s not the biggest thing,” Haidt said. “There’s something bigger. It is the destruction of the human capacity to pay attention. Because this is affecting most people, including most adults. And if you imagine humanity with 10 to 50 percent of its attentional ability sucked out of it, there’s not much left. We’re not very capable of doing things if we can’t focus or stay on a task for more than 30 seconds.”

Read it all.

More evidence that the global decline in test scores that began after 2012 is linked to the proliferation of smartphones and computers in class: The slide was bigger in countries where students began spending more time on devices (for leisure)https://t.co/HbzevWcG9e pic.twitter.com/7UipvTgZvS

— Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) February 28, 2026

Divine Physician, your Name is blessed for the work and witness of the Mayos and the Menningers, and the revolutionary developments that they brought to the practice of medicine. As Jesus went about healing the sick as a sign of the reign of God come near, bless and guide all those inspired to the work of healing by thy Holy Spirit, that they may follow his example for the sake of thy kingdom and the health of thy people; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever.

1952 Press Photo Dr. Charles Menninger And Sons Both Doctors William And Karl https://t.co/EzNYuHHkV3 pic.twitter.com/wOHD5qbBbB

— Collectible Photo (@CollectibleFREE) January 19, 2017

The novel centers on an institution called the N.I.C.E., which stands for the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments. It presents itself as scientific, humane and forward-looking. It promises efficiency. Improvement. A better future, scrubbed clean of superstition and sentiment.

Behind the glass walls and polite language, however, darker intentions take hold. The organization seeks to “recondition” humanity. To reshape desire. To erase conscience. To replace moral limits with technical control.

Lewis saw where this road leads. When science proceeds without reference to anything beyond itself, it doesn’t remain neutral. It fills with myth. Bad myth. Ancient forces wearing modern lab coats.

The leaders of N.I.C.E. don’t worship God. They worship power disguised as progress. In the end, they openly submit to demonic intelligences, though they dress this submission in the language of evolution and inevitability.

Lewis’s point was as unambiguous as it was unsettling: When people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing. Instead, they believe in anything.

Fast-forward to our own moment, and the novel no longer feels imaginative. It feels documentary. In Silicon Valley, some technology leaders speak openly about “awakening” artificial intelligence. About communion with non-human intelligences. About revelations delivered not through prayer, but through code.

Some have dedicated their creations to ancient gods. Others speak of consciousness emerging from machines as if it were a spiritual event. The vocabulary changes. The impulse does not.

Lewis, an Oxford University academic who converted from atheism to Christianity wouldn’t be surprised. He warned that superstition doesn’t vanish with faith. It mutates. When humility disappears, fascination rushes in. When reverence fades, obsession takes its place.

Read it all.

In 1945, C. S. Lewis published a strange, unsettling novel called “That Hideous Strength.” It was marketed as fiction, but it read like prophecy.

At the time, many critics dismissed it as eccentric. Too symbolic. Too mystical. Too suspicious of science. Lewis, they said, was…

— Religion Unplugged (@ReligionMag) February 25, 2026

Christopher Wild, a lay Anglican, is a former Professor of Molecular Epidemiology at Leeds, with a particular interest in the relationship between environmental and genetic factors in the development of cancer.

Appointed, leaving Leeds, director of the prestigious International Agency for Research on Cancer at Lyon, he is now excellently qualified to give an overview of ethical issues arising from recent developments in genetic science. He does so with commendable clarity: someone useful for the new Archbishop of Canterbury to consult.

He repeatedly emphasises — as others have done, following the late, great Ian Barbour — that (genetic) science can be used for good or ill: “As with so much of genetics, honourable and dishonourable aims run side by side, employing the same tools. This is ‘dual use’ at its most dangerous. While some seek to overcome disease by genetic engineering, others seek to weaponise biology.”

Read it all.

Robin Gill reviews Unravelling DNA: Applying Christian values to a genetic age by Christopher Paul Wild 🧬📚#Bookreview #DNA #churchnews #churchtimes 📖https://t.co/1nTZv19uVi

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 25, 2026

Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence tool Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, highlighting how AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The mission to capture Maduro and his wife included bombing several sites in Caracas last month. Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance. 

​​”We cannot comment on whether Claude, or any other AI model, was used for any specific operation, classified or otherwise,” said an Anthropic spokesman. “Any use of Claude—whether in the private sector or across government—is required to comply with our Usage Policies, which govern how Claude can be deployed. We work closely with our partners to ensure compliance.”  

The Defense Department declined to comment.

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BREAKING: The Pentagon used the Anthropic's Claude tool in its military operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, per WSJ pic.twitter.com/1u2r1TfK3E

— Exec Sum (@exec_sum) February 13, 2026

A first-of-its-kind inhalable gene therapy for lung cancer that genetically modifies people’s lung cells has been fast-tracked towards potential approval after promising clinical trial results.

“Very encouragingly, the hypothesis was proven – that there was actually shrinkage of the tumours in the lungs,” Wen Wee Ma at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio told a recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

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A gene therapy that patients breathe in has been found to shrink lung tumours by inserting immune-boosting genes into surrounding cells https://t.co/dFHJ8yFptQ

— New Scientist (@newscientist) February 11, 2026

Adults age 65 and older who completed five to six weeks of cognitive speed training — in this case, speed of processing training, which helps people quickly find visual information on a computer screen and handle increasingly complex tasks in a shorter time period — and who had follow-up sessions about one to three years later were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, up to two decades later, according to new findings published today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions.

This National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study is the first randomized clinical trial, and only study of its kind, to assess 20-year links with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, among adults who participated in the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study. Investigators enrolled 2,802 adults into this study in 1998–99 to assess long-term benefits of participants randomized to three different types of cognitive training — memory, reasoning and speed of processing — in comparison to a control group who received no training. In the three training groups, participants received up to 10 sessions of 60–75 minutes of cognitive training that took place over five to six weeks. Additionally, half of participants were randomized to receive up to four additional cognitive training sessions, or boosters, which took place 11 and 35 months after the initial training.

In this 20-year follow-up study, investigators found that 105 out of 264 (40%) participants in the speed-training group with boosters were diagnosed with dementia, which was a 25% reduced incidence compared to 239 out of 491 (49%) adults in the control arm. This was the only intervention with a statistically significant, or meaningful, difference compared to the control group.

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A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease https://t.co/1ntw4Q2cgE

— New Scientist (@newscientist) February 12, 2026

Romsey Abbey has been named a Demonstrator Church as part of the Church of England’s ambition to become net zero by 2030.

The abbey is currently working with two heritage consultancy firms to explore sustainable upgrades to its lighting and heating systems, with partial funding from the Church of England.

Jan Bartlett, lead churchwarden for the zero carbon initiative at Romsey Abbey, said: “The CofE’s Demonstrator Churches project aims to support high carbon emitting churches with zero carbon projects.

“Romsey Abbey is fortunate to have been selected for Demonstrator Church status and this year we will be receiving financial support towards the technical advice we need to take forward our heating and lighting projects.”

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Abbey working towards a greener future is recognised by Church of England https://t.co/TMdfMT3U0v

— Hampshire Chronicle (@hantschronicle) February 9, 2026

[Fox] Varian, who adopted the name Fox at 18 and is now 22, is one of thousands of minors who underwent gender-transition surgery over the past decade. And she is just one of the young people who have come to regret permanently addressing what was only a temporary identity shift.

Three years after her mastectomy, Varian stopped identifying as transgender and began a process known as detransitioning. In May 2023, she filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the two principal Westchester County, New York, care providers who oversaw her gender transition: her longtime psychologist, Kenneth Einhorn, and Dr. Simon Chin, who performed the mastectomy.

On Friday, a jury in White Plains, New York, awarded Varian $2 million in damages. Varian’s case is the first malpractice suit from a detransitioner to go before a jury, and I was the only reporter to attend the entire three-week trial. Represented by personal-injury attorney Adam Deutsch, Varian said she had been injured by the defendants due to their deviation from standard practices and a lack of informed consent. While there are no guarantees in medical malpractice lawsuits, legal experts believe Varian’s victory could inspire a wave of similar cases that would significantly disrupt pediatric gender medicine.

The trial was anchored by emotional testimony from Varian and her mother, Claire Deacon. Varian testified that Einhorn served as an enabler, repeatedly assuring her that the mastectomy she desired would greatly improve her well-being. Deacon testified that Einhorn browbeat her into consenting to her daughter’s surgery, threatening that she would otherwise commit suicide. 

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A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine by @benryanwriter https://t.co/yAv9DOK6c9

— The Free Press (@TheFP) February 5, 2026

Those who believe in Elon Musk are convinced both by his vision to go where no one has ventured before and his ability to pay for it—what some call the “Elon backstop”. Mr Musk’s announcement on February 2nd that he will merge SpaceX, which builds rockets and sells satellite broadband, with xAI, his artificial-intelligence lab, was not short of ambition. The world’s richest man declared that the new company would “extend the light of consciousness to the stars”. Back on Earth, however, it is getting harder to see how Mr Musk’s numbers add up.

The transaction values the new entity at $1.25trn; investors in SpaceX will be entitled to 80%, with the remainder going to xAI’s owners (Mr Musk holds a controlling stake in both). The stated rationale behind the tie-up is that the companies will work together to launch a fleet of data centres into space, giving xAI a big advantage in the race to develop cutting-edge models while furnishing SpaceX with a new line of business. More immediately, combining the two could further boost interest in a public listing expected this summer.

By bringing SpaceX and xAI together, however, Mr Musk is saddling a money-spinning space champion with a loss-making AI laggard. At the same time, he is reshaping Tesla, the carmaker he runs, into a “physical-AI company” focused on self-driving taxis and humanoid robots. If the latest wave of AI proves as transformative as some expect, these bold gambles might just pay off. If not, Mr Musk’s business empire could well be in jeopardy.

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The fates of xAI, SpaceX and Tesla are increasingly intertwined https://t.co/UlUWKowPVk

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) February 4, 2026

European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent.

Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.

Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the west following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the west have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 — two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious manoeuvres in orbit.

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European security officials expressed concern that the likely interceptions risk compromising sensitive information and could allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them. https://t.co/LLZBrsTe5V pic.twitter.com/YOVTYH7ezK

— Financial Times (@FT) February 4, 2026

Sports events have always attracted betting. The more prestigious the level of play and the event involved (say, the Super Bowl and World Series) the greater the wagering.  

But the Supreme Court disastrously crossed a red line in the 2018 case Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. In it, the Court ruled that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, which prohibited states from sponsoring, advertising, or “authoriz[ing]” sports gambling, was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the “anticommandeering” doctrine that the Court had previously read into the Tenth Amendment. That is, since the Tenth Amendment states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the 1992 Act unconstitutionally dictated to state governments the limits of their powers. (Coincidentally, the Court first enunciated its anticommandeering rule in an unrelated case during the same year that the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was enacted.) 

On purely textual grounds, there is reason to doubt the correctness of the anticommandeering doctrine, since as the great constitutional scholar Walter Berns pointed out in a 1962 essay titled “The Meaning of the Tenth Amendment,” the Tenth Amendment, read literally, is  just a tautology: it says that the powers that the Constitution doesn’t delegate to the federal government are thereby reserved to the states and/or the people, without specifying just what those powers are.  

In fact, as is well known, since at least the late 1930s, federal courts have consistently adopted an extremely broad view of Congress’s powers under the Constitution, especially when it comes to domestic spending and regulation: consider the extensive volume of New Deal legislation that the Supreme Court upheld starting in 1936, along with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” which authorized the establishment of entire cabinet departments that are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; Obamacare; and Joe Biden’s egregiously mislabeled “Inflation Reduction Act.” But while the Murphy decision hinged on a somewhat arcane distinction between the federal government’s authorizing or prohibiting a particular mode of conduct and its imposing the burden of such a prohibition on the state governments, subsequent events have demonstrated the imprudence of that decision. Among those harms are an explosion of publicly advertised sports betting: many of the ads during televised sports events are sponsored by gambling companies like Draft Kings and FanDuel, duping people who can ill afford to lose substantial amounts to do just that. Each ad is accompanied by a 1-800 number that problem (that is, addicted) bettors can call for “free help.” (What if cigarette ads were once again posted on television, accompanied by the counsel, “Got lung cancer? Call for free help!”)  

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Online Gambling Corrupts Sports—And Americans, Too https://t.co/bHmZmgqXgU

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) January 29, 2026

When Elon Musk was at Davos last week, an interviewer asked him if he thought aging could be reversed. Musk said he hasn’t put much time into the problem but suspects it is “very solvable” and that when scientists discover why we age, it’s going to be something “obvious.”

Not long after, the Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair jumped into the conversation on X to strongly agree with the world’s richest man. “Aging has a relatively simple explanation and is apparently reversible,” wrote Sinclair. “Clinical Trials begin shortly.”

“ER-100?” Musk asked.

“Yes” replied Sinclair.

ER-100 turns out to be the code name of a treatment created by Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup that Sinclair cofounded and which he confirmed today has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers. 

The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called “reprogramming” that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech. 

The technique attempts to restore cells to a healthier state by broadly resetting their epigenetic controls—switches on our genes that determine which are turned on and off.  

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The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin “shortly” https://t.co/oHGyByBoyM

— MIT Technology Review (@techreview) January 27, 2026

Drones are responsible for between 70 and 80 percent of those injured or killed on both sides of the war in Ukraine, according to a new report by a key Latvian intelligence service.

“This makes the war more dynamic at the tactical level, but reduces the chance of either side making a strategic breakthrough,” reads the report by Latvia’s Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), published Monday.

As a result, the decisive factors in determining the outcome of the war are Western military and political support, the authors concluded.

Drone warfare played a major role in helping Ukrainian forces repel Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Since late 2024, however, the drone war has shifted in Russia’s favor, as Moscow adapted to the new technology, according to the Atlantic Council. 

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Drones are responsible for between 70 and 80 percent of those injured or killed on both sides of the war in Ukraine, according to a new report by a key Latvian intelligence service.https://t.co/d9BvLABQXg

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) January 26, 2026

More than 9 out of 10 Alzheimer’s cases could be driven by specific variations in a single gene and the protein it produces, a new study reveals, suggesting that treatments targeting this well-known gene could prevent the disease from developing in the majority of instances.

The gene in question, APOE, has long been associated with Alzheimer’s risk. What’s new here is the way the different variations of the gene have been analysed and mapped against the chances of developing Alzheimer’s. It turns out that the APOE combination we’re born with could be even more important than previously realized.

Researchers led by a team from University College London (UCL) took a fresh look at the three main variations of the APOE gene: ε2 (linked to a protective effect against cognitive decline), ε3 (historically considered the normal or neutral version), and ε4 (already known to significantly increase Alzheimer’s risk).

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Nearly all Alzheimer’s, and half of dementia, is driven by APOE.

A new, large-scale analysis reports that up to 93% of Alzheimer’s cases and 85% of brain amyloid burden are attributable to having an APOE ε3/ε4 genotype, and the combined contribution of ε3 and ε4 to all-cause… pic.twitter.com/lbP5NZJ4q7

— Dr. Rhonda Patrick (@foundmyfitness) January 9, 2026

On Newsnight in 1999, David Bowie called the internet “an alien life form” with the power to revolutionize society: “We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying”. He rightly discerned that the internet was a wild technological shift, extraordinary and volatile. Since then, we have witnessed the shattering of old monopolies and hierarchies, political and creative revolutions, seismic changes to everyday life, an eruption of open-source information and neologisms, the advent of data mining and surveillance capitalism, and the emergence of new monopolies and hierarchies, including a weird kind of technofeudalism. The AI revolution has emerged from this eruption, with the AI trained on vast “datasets” – our thoughts, our creative work, our lives.

In the books under review, three authors from different disciplines and backgrounds seek to fathom this revolution. They are: Tim Berners-Lee, who has written a memoir with a focus on his status as the inventor of the World Wide Web, though he also examines surveillance capitalism, tech monopolies and polarization. His title derives from a phrase he typed at the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in London in 2012: it was “my statement about what I wanted the web to be”. Then there is Cory Doctorow, an author, blogger and journalist who presents a “natural history” of…the process by which internet platforms are “getting worse” – along with his views on how this decline might be arrested. Finally, there is Nick Clegg, former British deputy prime minister and Facebook/Meta employee. His book is also concerned with the future of the internet, and is described by Tony Blair as “a wake-up call we cannot afford to ignore”. All three authors agree that the internet is suffering from at least one, and perhaps several, pathologies. But they disagree about the most effective remedies.

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Chinese researchers have developed a form of hybrid rice that can replicate itself through seeds that are clones, preserving high-yield traits generation after generation, according to the development team. The scientists say their breakthrough could transform global agriculture by dismantling the biggest barrier to hybrid rice production: the need for farmers to buy expensive new hybrid seeds every season.

As hundreds of millions of people around the world face acute food insecurity, hybrid rice has promised dramatically higher yields: nearly four times more in parts of Africa compared to traditional varieties. If all rice farmers could plant the new hybrid variant, the world’s rice production could double, according to some industry estimates.

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China creates world’s first clone-hybrid rice that could double global output

Team developed 6 apomictic rice varieties tested over multiple generations in Hainan and Zhejiang provinceshttps://t.co/pPPqMIDlYQ

— Shehzad Younis شہزاد یونس (@shehzadyounis) January 7, 2026

An online Christmas service designed for people working shifts will be released on the Church of England website at 6 a.m. on Christmas Day.

Lasting 15 minutes, so that it can be watched in the course of a break from work, the service was created in response to a request by hospital chaplains, and includes a Gospel reading, sermon, prayers, and music.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, features in the service. A former nurse, and Chief Nursing Officer for the NHS, she says that she has “fond memories” of working on Christmas Day.

“Although not always easy, it is a privilege to be with people who need us most at this time. And of course, we receive so much from them too.”

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An online Christmas service designed for people working shifts will be released on the Church of England website at 6 a.m. on Christmas Day.https://t.co/dVHP8yQ3VK

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 24, 2025

Concerned that artificial intelligence could threaten Communist Party rule, Beijing is taking extraordinary steps to keep it under control.

Although China’s government sees AI as crucial to the country’s economic and military future, regulations and recent purges of online content show it also fears AI could destabilize society. Chatbots pose a particular problem: Their ability to think for themselves could generate responses that spur people to question party rule.

In November, Beijing formalized rules it has been working on with AI companies to ensure their chatbots are trained on data filtered for politically sensitive content, and that they can pass an ideological test before going public. All AI-generated texts, videos and images must be explicitly labeled and traceable, making it easier to track and punish anyone spreading undesirable content.

Authorities recently said they removed 960,000 pieces of what they regarded as illegal or harmful AI-generated content during three months of an enforcement campaign. Authorities have officially classified AI as a major potential threat, adding it alongside earthquakes and epidemics to its National Emergency Response Plan.

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China Is Worried AI Threatens Party Rule—and Is Trying to Tame It: Beijing is enforcing tough rules to ensure chatbots don’t misbehave, while hoping its models stay competitive with the U.S.@stuwoo https://t.co/wOtnfHJGQchttps://t.co/wOtnfHJGQc

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) December 24, 2025

The standard sperm-meets-egg story posits that sperm cells are hardly more than bundles of shrink-wrapped DNA with tails. Their mission is simple: Deliver a father’s genes into a mother’s egg for sexual reproduction. Just about all other aspects of a developing embryo, including its cellular and environmental components, have nothing to do with dad. Those all come from mom.

But nearly two decades of studies from multiple independent labs threaten to rewrite that story. They suggest that dad’s gametes shuttle more than DNA: Within a sperm’s minuscule head are stowaway molecules, which enter the egg and convey information about the father’s fitness, such as diet, exercise habits and stress levels, to his offspring. These non-DNA transfers may influence genomic activity that boots up during and after fertilization, exerting some control over the embryo’s development and influencing the adult they will become.

The findings, so far largely described in mouse models, could end up changing the way we think about heredity. They suggest “that what we do in this life affects the next generation,” said Qi Chen(opens a new tab), a reproductive and developmental biologist at the University of Utah Medical School who is among the pioneers of this research. In other words: What a father eats, drinks, inhales, is stressed by or otherwise experiences in the weeks and months before he conceives a child might be encoded in molecules, packaged into his sperm cells and transmitted to his future kid. The researchers have largely zeroed in on RNA molecules, those short-lived copies of DNA that reflect genetic activity at a given time.

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Growing evidence in mouse models suggests that non-DNA sperm molecules can pass along a dad’s condition at the time of conception. Researchers are working to understand how this occurs, and if it occurs in humans.@ivan_amato reports: https://t.co/6fc0bgO0M5

— Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) December 22, 2025