A Brain Implant Can Convert Thoughts to Speech

Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time.

Although it’s still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak.

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A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn’t speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial.

It “converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences,” said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said.

This is “a pretty big advance in our field,” said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study.

Read More: 9 Things You Should Do for Your Brain Health Every Day, According to Neurologists

A team in California recorded the woman’s brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound.

It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley.

The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that it’s listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. It’s a “streaming approach,” Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech—about half a syllable—sent into a recorder.

“It’s not waiting for a sentence to finish,” Anumanchipalli said. “It’s processing it on the fly.”

Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, “would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech.”

Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn’t affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with “sustained investments,” it could be available to patients within a decade, he said.

source https://time.com/7273155/brain-computer-implant-stroke-survivor/

We Must Stop Blaming Law Firms Attacked by President Donald Trump

This past month, President Donald Trump issued executive orders targeting the business of several big law firms and launched investigations into the human resource practices of many more. Some have rushed to condemn the law firms that were the victims of the President’s recent threats for giving in to his demands. However, not enough focus has been placed on the real actor behind this vindictive act: Trump.

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Three of the targeted firms—Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Perkins Coie—challenged the President in court and won, obtaining restraining orders against their respective executive orders. Another firm, Covington & Burling, took no action in response to a more limited executive order, while two others, Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps, reached cosmetic settlements with the President, allowing Trump to back down from his threats. As Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp outlined to his colleagues, the firm’s deal resolved an existential threat to the firm without compromising its policies or cultural principles. This letter also revealed that Paul Weiss became a target after Brad Karp had tried to rally the other major firms to support the early targeted peer firms. In fact, some rival firms responded just the opposite way trying to poach Paul Weiss attorneys and clients sensing vulnerability.

Paul Weiss’ and Skadden Arps’ agreements with the President have included offers of substantial pro bono legal work on causes such as veterans’ rights, anti-Semitism, and promoting fairness in the legal system. These are causes the firms have long supported and in dollar amounts that are a fraction of what the firms already dedicate to pro bono work. Plus, Karp maintains that Paul Weiss’ settlements did not include condemnation of previous firm engagements or HR practices, nor does it impose any formal limits on future representations, including representations against the Trump Administration. Such a deal seems like a great way to calm anxious major clients and potentially poached top attorneys.

In our legal system, conflict resolution balances protracted, expensive litigation against faster negotiated settlements. The choice depends on the strategic positions of each party. The President is unlikely to prevail in litigation challenging his executive orders. Thus, he is motivated to settle with face-saving ways of backing down, which Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps realized. Plus, as my Yale colleague John Morley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, the firms that quickly settled had much larger corporate transaction practices, with a higher propensity of flight risk, than those firms that have larger litigation practices. It is understandable that law firms with different business models would approach this same crisis differently. With the perishable quality of law-firm assets and firms’ fiduciary duties to their clients and employees, firms can make different business choices while still securing their futures with honor.

The continuing complex situation at Wilmer Hale shows further why the settlements of Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps are attractive. Wilmer Hale was granted partial relief, but the judge expressly denied relief on seeing security clearance block seeing that discretion of the purview of President Trump’s executive authority requiring ongoing litigation. Clients who require their lawyers to have security clearances may not be comfortable if there is some urgency in representation.

Attacks on the actions of Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps have missed the real story. The President’s motive was to attack virtually every leading law firm that has represented or hired those who challenged the President’s actions in court. It is noteworthy that not among the firms he attacked were such Trump-friendly firms as Jones Day, Quinn Emanuel, and Sullivan & Cromwell. In fact, one of the most disturbing aspects of this saga was that the President sought advice from the co-chairman of Paul Weiss rival, Sullivan & Cromwell, Trump’s personal attorney in his appeal of his conviction on 34 counts for falsifying business records, as he was negotiating with Karp, the Wall Street Journal and others reported. It is extraordinary that this involvement has not been the subject of greater scrutiny and criticism.

The leaders in the legal profession could take a page from their peers in other fields. After financial firms were devastated by the loss of their colleagues in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, their competitors rushed to offer assistance. Clients were not stolen and talent was not poached from the firms most affected by the attacks.

Similarly, during the 2008 financial collapse, leaders of top financial firms worked together to develop support for the TARP program, even though those firms were in competitively healthy positions to take advantage of their fallen rivals. Rivals such as UPS or FedEx routinely do not try to benefit from each other’s misfortunes but instead offer assistance to one another in the face of operational failures, labor strife, and other interruptions.

When in 2021, Delta Airlines expressed concern for the restrictive new voting laws, the President called for a boycott of Delta. I called the chief executives of American and United, who instantly expressed public support for Delta and joined a virtual forum of 100 CEOs hastily called for that purpose.

Collective action by chief executives in the business world has had a profound impact on blunting unchallenged authoritarian erosion of American democratic institutions. The legal industry stands apart—and the resulting spotlight is not flattering. The hypocritical chest pounding of attorneys condemning those law firms who settled is noteworthy, because many of those same attorneys previously failed to join the efforts to support those firms from the President’s attacks. Instead, they blame the victim here.

Hopefully, the leaders in the legal world can learn from bolder leaders in other fields. Already 80 deans of law schools have spoken out in unison in denouncing the President’s attack on law firms, while smaller firms such as Munger, Tolles & Olson and Keker, Van Nest & Peters have spoken out in defense of their larger rivals, suggesting “friend of the court” briefs.

Monday, the American College of Trial Lawyers joined the condemnation of President Trump’s coercive partisan executive orders attacking these law firms, while the American Bar Association has condemned this attack on the rule of law. Perhaps the big firms can join with the scrappy little firms out of enlightened self-interest. It wouldn’t hurt to hear from their clients now, either. It is not too late for the legal industry to redeem itself in this perilous moment.

source https://time.com/7273100/stop-blaming-law-firms-attacked-by-president-donald-trump/

An Alzheimer’s Blood Test Might Predict Advanced Disease

With two new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease approved in recent years, there’s growing hope for people at risk of the memory-robbing condition. But tests to detect the condition still lag behind. Earlier diagnosis would mean that people could take advantage of the drugs sooner, when the medicines are most effective.

Detection is currently tricky. Brain scans like PET can pick up amyloid plaques, the clumps of protein that are the hallmark of the disease, but by the time these form, people’s brain function is already declining. The scans are also expensive and not available at all hospitals. More sensitive ways to detect amyloid and tau, another protein related to the disease, are possible by analyzing spinal fluid, but that requires a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap. Blood tests for the two proteins have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—although they have received breakthrough designation from the agency, which means they are getting expedited review as studies of the tests are completed.

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In a new study published in Nature Medicine, researchers led by a group at Washington University in St. Louis report promising results of a blood test they developed to detect a different from of tau than the one that existing tests target. This form, they say, is a better indicator of how much of the damaging protein has built up in patients’ brains—and those levels correlate with the severity of a person’s disease. By comparing the results from the blood test to those from brain scans, the team determined that the blood test was 92% accurate in its readings of tau.

Read More: 5 Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp As You Age

Dr. Randall Bateman, professor of neurology at Washington University and senior author of the paper, says that the presence of both amyloid and tau proteins in patients’ brains is essential to diagnosing Alzheimer’s. Amyloid plaques take years to develop, and it’s not until sufficient clusters of the protein have formed that symptoms like memory loss, confusion, and disorientation occur. Once amyloid aggregates form, then tau starts to develop abnormally both inside and outside of brain neurons.

Outside of the cell, tau forms what scientists call phosphorylated tau—what current tests can detect. But inside of brain neurons, tau in Alzheimer’s patients breaks down further, and instead of adopting neat, linear forms as it does in people without Alzheimer’s, it becomes crystalized and forms a mess of protein resembling tangled yarn. “Tau tangles are most associated with a person’s dementia symptoms,” says Bateman. “Plaques are like the fuel driving a lot of changes that we observe [in patients] over time. But not until the fire ignites, with the spread of tau tangles, does the brain really fall apart.”

He says that the crystalized form of tau is more strongly linked to cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s, so detecting the first signs of this form of tau would help doctors to identify patients on the brink of developing more severe memory and cognitive problems. “This is the first report of a tau tangle marker in the blood,” he says.

Read More: Changing Your Diet and Lifestyle May Slow Down Alzheimer’s

In 2023, Bateman and his team developed the first test for this crystalized form of tau, but in the spinal fluid. Because of the inconvenience and risk of spinal taps, the team then focused on looking for the same telltale signs of crystalized tau in the blood. After tediously screening a variety of blood markers, they finally found it. “We went through molecule by molecule, atom by atom, looking for the exact structure of the forms of tau that [we knew] existed, and then discovered the form that was uniquely identified with the presence of tangles.”

Bateman founded a company, C2N Diagnostics, to manufacture and provide the test to researchers for use in clinical trials. The blood-based test could speed development of anti-tau treatments for Alzheimer’s, since drug developers can fairly quickly determine whether a compound they are testing is having any effect on the amount of tau building up in a patient’s brain from a vial of blood. “A lot of us think that if we can slow down or reverse the formation of tau tangles, then it’s a good strategy to slow down or reverse Alzheimer’s,” says Bateman. “[The test] can accelerate how quickly new treatments are developed.”

Having a relatively easy way to track tau levels in Alzheimer’s could also provide new clues about how the disease progresses, and potentially provide new targets for drugs.

It’s not clear yet how the phosphorylated forms of tau that exist outside of neurons are related to the crystalized forms that cells generally harbor inside, but it’s possible that at some point, the buildup of phosphorylated tau triggers the formation of destructive crystalized tau inside neurons. Another unanswered question is why some fragments of the crystalized tau make their way outside of the nerve cells. Understanding that process could lead to new strategies for controlling tau and perhaps slowing the progression of the disease. “If we want better treatments for patients,” says Bateman, “then we have to understand what causes the disease.”

source https://time.com/7273006/alzheimers-disease-blood-test-tau/

Chella Man: I Am Choosing Deaf Trans Joy Without Conditions

I wake up from the anesthesia and a black tide washes over me. The world seeps slowly back. A hospital room. The face of a doctor and two nurses mouthing something I can’t understand. 

This is not the first time I’ve woken up from surgery. The first ones I had gave me my cochlear implants. The last one I had gave me my chest scars. This time, seven new bolts of metal have been added to my left arm—I took a fall while bike training for an upcoming ride this summer with a deaf bike group from San Francisco to LA in support of the San Francisco AIDs Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.  

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My best friend pushes open the door and walks toward me, her eyes soft. Gazing at her with heavy lids, I allow myself to fall apart. Anesthesia, I later learned, has a way of bringing your subconscious, deepest thoughts to the surface. 

“I’m having such scary thoughts,” I keep saying, over and over, between sobs. “You know how I can’t ever seem to imagine my future…” I hesitated. Saying it out loud would make it real. “It’s clear now that I was never planning to kill myself,” I admitted. “I thought someone else was going to.”

We exhaled together. Her expression remained unchanged, like she already knew something I was only now beginning to realize myself.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I spent so many years being invalidated for being a deaf, trans person of color. I spent my last few years of high school listening to my peers chant “Electrocute the gays” and attach Trump stickers to every locker during Donald Trump’s first administration. I felt very stuck—I couldn’t vote because I was underage, and while I was out, I hadn’t yet realized that I was trans. I certainly didn’t feel safe enough to share that with my classmates, and I didn’t know how I could tangibly contribute to the fight against the hatred I was seeing around me. Every day, I was trying to do what I could to hold on to my soul—to survive.

Now, Trump is in office once again, but despite his full-scale assault on trans lives, something within me is different this time: I have a kind of joy I only felt as a young child—joy without conditions.

This concept is a bit new to me—it wasn’t always this way. For so long, I thought my joy had to be in resistance to those who want to erase me. Years ago, I had made a deal with myself: I made a choice to give my life to fighting for a just world. I wrote down, full of love for who I was and my communities: I am willing to fight until I die against the unfathomable injustices that pervade our society. I moved forward knowing I had set a timer for my own life,  anticipating that one day someone would be saying my name in memoriam.

That was the only ending I could see at the time. Not because of anything I did, but because of who I was: Deaf, trans, Asian, Jewish, and highly visible as these identities. Because people like me don’t survive the systems we live in. I never had a death wish. I just figured it was inevitable.

For years after that, I went to protests, sat on panels, and gave talks all across the country to universities and at brand headquarters. At various points, I imagined someone standing in the crowd and pulling a gun on me, making that day my last. But I showed up anyway because I had made my choice. 

In the end, I found myself in situations where my heart broke again and again. I fought so hard, thinking the world would change. I thought if I was a martyr—if I gave my life to the cause—it would catalyze the world I want to live in. 

That was the story I told myself. Until now. For the past few years, I’ve been making space to listen to my grief—letting it settle in my chest, listening to what it has to say. I’ve committed to meditation with relentless discipline. I’ve learned that stillness is a crucial part of our fight for liberation and is the balance that our movements need. I can’t offer authenticity to others if I’m not rooted in myself first. Showing up for myself isn’t a betrayal. It’s the only way I can truly show up at all.

Turning inward, I found myself sifting through thousands of diaries from the past two decades to jog my memory of who I was and who I’ve grown into. I see how much I endured for so many years, in part because I felt like I was in the dark for so long. No single person, place, or resource held the full truth of my lived experience. I found fragments of myself in different places. I had to be my own representation, my own role model, my own life-saving resource. I see why I had to fight so hard. I had to grieve that so many people did not know how to fight for my freedom, even if they tried. Unlearning martyrdom can be unsettling that way—but necessary.

Now, the moments that feel like the world is changing are unexpected: when I paint; when I scale a mountain on a bike; when I lose track of time in the woods; when I notice the leaves of the trees applauding me like they would in sign language, when I nuzzle into the people I love; Change is the peace I feel within, knowing what I want and where I need to be.

 The world is shaped, etched, and molded every day by people like me. People who are my neighbors, my peers, my elders. But true change starts with the world that exists inside of ourselves, first. On the surface, you may not notice the way things begin to shift. In the morning, for instance, when the light streams through my bedroom window, I used to slap on my cochlear implant immediately. Now, the silence allows me to tune into my inner voice. There is peace in welcoming transformation through stillness, knowing that change is inevitable–our lives are the proof.

In the reverberations of our chaotic political climate, it’s worth asking: What is your inner voice telling you? How are you thinking for yourself? What do you choose to believe? How can you show up for yourself and build toward a culture in which we all meet our needs and therefore our communities?

For me, it means recommitting to myself: My joy for being alive is not born out of resistance to any system, no matter who is in office. My joy does not need any reason to exist. It just is. And that has to be more than enough.

source https://time.com/7273059/chella-man-choosing-trans-joy-essay/

How to Prepare For the New Social Security ID Policy Ahead of Its Initiation in April

Since President Donald Trump has returned to the Oval Office, Social Security—a program which sends retirement and disability benefits to over 70 million people—has been the subject of many conversations. Although Trump initially assured voters that Social Security wouldn’t be touched, there have since been reports of potential staff and office cuts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

A new policy by the Social Security Administration (SSA) was announced on March 18, with a plan to enforce online and in-person identity proofing as opposed to that which can be done over the phone. This was an attempt to “implement stronger identity verification procedures,” the press release said. The changes were initially scheduled to go into effect on March 31.

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However, after much confusion and backlash, the SSA backtracked on some of the new measures and also extended the timeline, allowing more time for the system—and Social Security recipients—to prepare for the new identity proofing requirements.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the new Social Security identification policy.

What are the new Social Security ID policies? 

The new SSA ID policy includes a transition to requiring “stronger” identity proofing procedures for both benefit claims and direct deposit changes—identity proofing that can no longer happen over the phone for most beneficiaries of Social Security.

Recipients will instead have to verify their identity via an online account, but those who do not have an account will need to prove their identity “in-person” at an SSA field office. People can call 1-800-772-1213 to schedule an in-person appointment.

Per the SSA, “the updated measures will further safeguard Social Security records and benefits for millions of Americans against fraudulent activity.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is leading the charge with DOGE, previously characterized Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” claiming that the program is riddled with fraud and waste. Some experts have stated that the levels of fraud within the Social Security system are not as prominent as the Trump Administration says.

During a March 29 interview on MSNBC, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota who serves on the Senate Finance Committee, voiced concerns about the Trump Administration and DOGE’s intentions regarding Social Security. 

“They’re creating so much chaos and havoc in this system, it’s causing so much anxiety for my constituents and people all over the country,” she said. “I will tell you, I could see my Republican colleagues on the Finance Committee this week, as we were clearing the nominee [Frank Bisignano] for Social Security Administration, reflecting back the anxiety they’re getting from their constituents. But at the same time, are they willing to do anything to stop this? Apparently not.”

During Bisignano’s hearing on March 25, Smith declined to ask a question and instead made a statement. “This is a travesty. We can see what’s going on here… this is a wholesale effort to dismantle Social Security from the inside-out. This is not about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse,” she said. Speaking on MSNBC, Smith said Bisignano was “deflecting” during his hearing, and cast doubt on his assurances that he would protect Social Security.

Read More: What Is Happening to Social Security Under the Trump Administration and Should You Be Concerned About Yours?

Who will be affected by these new policies and who is exempt?

The new policy initially drew criticism from lawmakers and advocates who stated that it alienated those for whom it would be incredibly difficult to make in-person visits to SSA field offices—including those in rural communities far away from offices, those with disabilities, and seniors.

AARP, formerly the American Association for Retired Persons, posted a statement, requesting the SSA “rethink” these requirements, pointing out that “requiring rural Americans to go into an office can mean having to take a day off of work and drive for hours merely to fill out paperwork.”

During Bisignano’s hearing, he answered questions about these changes from lawmakers worried about the alienation of citizens. Sen. Elizabeth Warren posed a hypothetical scenario to Bisignano in which a senior with a disability has trouble with traveling to a field office and is eventually turned away. She asked him: “Is that a benefit cut?” To which he replied: “I have no intent to have anything like that happen under my watch.”

On March 26, the SSA posted an update to these new changes, stating that some people will be exempt from these new rules, allowing people applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to complete their claim by other means.

“We have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates, and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations,” Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, said in the update. “Medicare, Disability, and SSI applications will be exempt from in-person identity proofing because multiple opportunities exist during the decision process to verify a person’s identity.”

All other beneficiaries who are unable to use the online portal must still visit an in-person SSA office, that includes “people applying for Retirement, Survivors, or Auxiliary (Spouse or Child) benefits.” However, the agency states that this will not be enforced in “extreme dire-need situations.” These extreme scenarios include terminal cases or prisoner pre-release scenarios—though the agency says it is still working on a process that will allow for these cases to bypass the new policy.

When will the new Social Security ID policy go into effect?

With the new shift in policy, the update from the SSA announced a delay in the timeline of the new identity proofing requirements, stating the changes will apply to all beneficiaries beginning April 14. This was in part due to an attempt to have more time to train employees.

The changes come amid the SSA denying reports that they are closing multiple field offices.

“Since Jan. 1, 2025, the agency has not permanently closed or announced the permanent closure of any local field office,” the SSA statement read. “From time to time, SSA must temporarily close a local field office for reasons such as weather, damage, or facilities issues, and it reopens when the issues are resolved.”

Still, experts worry that with planned staff cuts, it may be harder for beneficiaries to receive benefits. Pamela Herd, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told TIME on March 26 that the effects are already being felt.

“People are waiting for hours to get through on the phone and then getting cut off before they can actually talk to a representative. The field offices, that honestly were already a bit overwhelmed [already], are now completely overwhelmed,” she said. “So there’s a real disconnect between the statement, ‘I’m not going to cut benefits,’ and in practice, what is going on in the agency.”

How to prepare for the new ID policy

Those who are not applying for Medicare, Disability and SSI should prepare for the new ID policy by creating a “my Social Security” account on the SSA website, if they do not already have one. That way, they will not have to provide identification in-person. This option is the “easiest and most secure” way to verify one’s identity, according to the SSA.

People can create their account through either one of two credential service providers: Login.gov or ID.me, and they must have a valid email address. For those who are unable to utilize the “my Social Security” account and therefore must go to a field office in-person, the SSA allows for several different kinds of primary and secondary proofs of identity, including a driver’s license, passport, alien or voter registration card, or union card to verify your identity.

Social security has their own priority list of identification documents on their website.

source https://time.com/7272921/social-security-new-identity-proofing-policy-how-to-prepare/

Iran Has Rejected Direct Negotiations With the U.S. in Response to Trump’s Letter

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s president said Sunday that the Islamic Republic rejected direct negotiations with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program, offering Tehran’s first response to a letter President Donald Trump sent to the country’s supreme leader.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran’s response, delivered via the sultanate of Oman, left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington. However, such talks have made no progress since Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

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In the years since, regional tensions have boiled over into attacks at sea and on land. Then came the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which saw Israel target militant group leaders across Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance.” Now, as the U.S. conducts intense airstrikes targeting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen, the risk of military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program remains on the table.

“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” Pezeshkian said in televised remarks during a Cabinet meeting. “They must prove that they can build trust.”

The White House offered no immediate reaction to the announcement.

Iran’s position hardens after Trump’s letter

Having Pezeshkian announced the decision shows just how much has changed in Iran since his election half a year ago after he campaigned on a promise to re-engage with the West.

Since Trump’s election and the resumption of his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, Iran’s rial currency has gone into a freefall. Pezeshkian had left open talks up until Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came down hard on Trump in February and warned talks “are not intelligent, wise or honorable” with his administration. The Iranian president then immediately toughened his own remarks on the U.S.

Meanwhile, there have been mixed messages coming from Iran for weeks. Videos from Quds, or Jerusalem, Day demonstrations on Friday had people in the crowds instructing participants to only shout: “Death to Israel!” Typically, “Death to America” was also heard.

A video of an underground missile base unveiled by Iran’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also showed its troops stepping on an Israeli flag painted on the ground — though there was no American flag as often seen in such propaganda videos.

But Press TV, the English-language arm of Iranian state television, published an article last week that included listing U.S. bases in the Middle East as possible targets of attack. The list included Camp Thunder Cove on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. is basing stealth B-2 bombers likely being used in Yemen.

“The Americans themselves know how vulnerable they are,” warned Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Friday. “If they violate Iran’s sovereignty, it will be like a spark in a gunpowder depot, setting the entire region ablaze. In such a scenario, their bases and their allies will not be safe.”

However, Tehran’s two recent direct attacks on Israel with ballistic missiles and drones caused negligible damage, while Israel responded by destroying Iranian air defense systems.

Iran’s rejection is the latest in tensions over nuclear program

Trump’s letter arrived in Tehran on March 12. Though announcing he wrote it in a television interview, Trump offered little detail on what he exactly told the supreme leader.

“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,’” Trump said in the interview.

The move recalled Trump’s letter-writing to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term, which led to face-to-face meetings but no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental U.S.

The last time Trump tried to send a letter to Khamenei, through the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2019, the supreme leader mocked the effort.

Trump’s letter came as both Israel and the United States have warned they will never let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, leading to fears of a military confrontation as Tehran enriches uranium at near weapons-grade levels of 60% purity — something only done by atomic-armed nations.

Iran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes, even as its officials increasingly threaten to pursue the bomb. A report in February, however, by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium.

Iran’s reluctance to deal with Trump likely also takes root in his ordering the attack that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a Baghdad drone strike in January 2020. The U.S. has said Iran plotted to assassinate Trump over that prior to his election this November, something Tehran denied though officials have threatened him.

—Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran.

source https://time.com/7272914/iran-rejects-direct-negotiations-with-us-trump-letter/

Trump Increasingly Asks Supreme Court to Overrule Judges Blocking Key Parts of His Agenda

WASHINGTON — As losses mount in lower federal courts, President Donald Trump has returned to a tactic that he employed at the Supreme Court with remarkable success in his first term.

Three times in the past week, and six since Trump took office a little more than two months ago, the Justice Department has asked the conservative-majority high court to step into cases much earlier than usual.

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The administration’s use of the emergency appeals, or shadow docket, comes as it faces more than 130 lawsuits over the Republican president’s flurry of executive orders. Many of the lawsuits have been filed in liberal-leaning parts of the country as the court system becomes ground zero for pushback to his policies.

Federal judges have ruled against the administration more than 40 times, issuing temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, the Justice Department said Friday in a Supreme Court filing. The issues include birthright citizenship changes, federal spending, transgender rights and deportations under a rarely used 18th-century law.

The administration is increasingly asking the Supreme Court, which Trump helped shape by nominating three justices, to step in, not only to rule in its favor but also to send a message to federal judges, who Trump and his allies claim are overstepping their authority.

“Only this Court can stop rule-by-TRO from further upending the separation of powers — the sooner, the better,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote Friday in the deportations case, referring to the temporary restraining orders.

Stephen Vladeck, the Georgetown University law professor who chronicled the rise of emergency appeals in his book, “The Shadow Docket,” wrote on the Substack platform that “these cases, especially together, reflect the inevitable reckoning — just how much is the Supreme Court going to stand up to Trump?”

In the first Trump administration, the Justice Department made emergency appeals to the Supreme Court 41 times and won all or part of what it wanted in 28 cases, Vladeck found.

Before that, the Obama and George W. Bush administrations asked the court for emergency relief in just eight cases over 16 years.

Supreme Court cases generally unfold over many months. Emergency action more often occurs over weeks, or even a few days, with truncated briefing and decisions that are usually issued without the elaborate legal reasoning that typically accompanies high court rulings.

So far this year, the justices have effectively sidestepped the administration’s requests. But that could get harder as the number of appeals increase, including in high-profile deportation cases where an extraordinary call from the president to impeach a judge prompted a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Here’s a look at the appeals on the court’s emergency docket:

Trump’s deportation order will be a critical test

Immigration and the promise of mass deportations were at the center of Trump’s winning presidential campaign, and earlier this month, he took the rare step of invoking an 18th-century wartime law to speed deportations of Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang.

Lawyers for the migrants, several of whom say they are not gang members, sued to block the deportations without due process.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge at the federal courthouse in Washington, agreed. He ordered deportation flights to be temporarily halted and planes already making their way to a prison in El Salvador be turned around.

Two planes still landed, and a court fight over whether the administration defied his order continued to play out even as the administration unsuccessfully asked the appeals court in the nation’s capital to lift his order.

In an appeal to the Supreme Court filed Friday, the Justice Department argued that the deportations should be allowed to resume and that the migrants should make their case in a federal court in Texas, where they are being detained.

Mass firings of federal workers have generated lawsuits

Thousands of federal workers have been let go as the Trump administration seeks to dramatically downsize the federal government.

The firings of probationary workers, who usually have less time on the job and fewer protections, have drawn multiple lawsuits.

Two judges have found the administration broke federal laws in its handling of the layoffs and ordered workers reinstated. The government went to the Supreme Court after a California-based judge said some 16,000 workers must be restored to their positions.

The judge said it appeared the administration had lied in its reasons for firing the workers. The administration said he overstepped his authority by trying to force hiring and firing decisions on the executive branch.

Anti-DEI teacher training cuts have been blocked, at least temporarily

Trump has moved quickly to try and root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the government and in education.

Eight Democratic-led states argued in a lawsuit that the push was at the root of a decision to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training.

A federal judge in Boston has temporarily blocked the cuts, finding they were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage. After an appeals court kept that order in place, the Justice Department went to the Supreme Court.

The administration argues that judges can’t force it to keep paying out money that it has decided to cancel.

Trump wanted to end birthright citizenship. So far, courts have disagreed

On Inauguration Day, Trump signed an executive order that, going forward, would deny citizenship to babies born to parents in the country illegally.

The order restricting the right enshrined in the Constitution was quickly blocked nationwide. Three appeals court also rejected pleas to let it go into effect while lawsuits play out.

The Justice Department didn’t appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn those rulings right away, but instead asked the justices to narrow the court orders to only the people who filed the lawsuits.

The government argued that individual judges lack the power to give nationwide effect to their rulings, touching on a legal issue that’s concerned some justices before.

source https://time.com/7272806/trump-increasingly-asks-supreme-court-to-overrule-judges/

Myanmar’s Earthquake Death Toll Jumps to More Than 1,600 as Rescue Efforts Continue

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s ruling military said Saturday on state television that the confirmed death toll from a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake rose to 1,644, as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the scores of buildings that collapsed when it struck near the country’s second-largest city.

The new total is a sharp rise compared to the 1,002 total announced just hours earlier, underlining the difficulty of confirming casualties over a widespread region and the likelihood that the numbers will continue to grow from Friday’s quake. The number of injured increased to 3,408, while the missing figure rose to 139.

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Rescue efforts are underway especially in the major stricken cities of Mandalay, the country’s No. 2 city, and Naypyitaw, the capital. But even though teams and equipment have been flown in from other nations, they are hindered by the airports in those cities being damaged and apparently unfit to land planes.

Read More: Photos Show Devastating Impact of Powerful Earthquake That Rocked Myanmar and Thailand

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in the throes of a prolonged civil war, which is already responsible for a humanitarian crisis. It makes movement around the country both difficult and dangerous, complicating relief efforts and raising fears that the death toll could still rise precipitously.

The earthquake struck midday Friday with an epicenter not far from Mandalay, followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 6.4. It sent buildings in many areas toppling to the ground, buckled roads, caused bridges to collapse and burst a dam.

In Naypyidaw, crews worked Saturday to repair damaged roads, while electricity, phone and internet services remained down for most of the city. The earthquake brought down many buildings, including multiple units that housed government civil servants, but that section of the city was blocked off by authorities on Saturday.

More damage in Thailand

In neighboring Thailand, the quake rocked the greater Bangkok area, home to around 17 million people, and other parts of the country.

Bangkok city authorities said the number of confirmed dead was now 10, nine at the site of the collapsed high-rise under construction near the capital’s popular Chatuchak market, while 78 people were still unaccounted for. Rescue efforrs were continuing in the hope of finding additional survivors.

On Saturday, more heavy equipment was brought in to move the tons of rubble, but hope was fading among friends and family members of the missing that they would be found alive.

“I was praying that that they had survived but when I got here and saw the ruin — where could they be? In which corner? Are they still alive? I am still praying that all six are alive,” said 45-year-old Naruemol Thonglek, sobbing as she awaited news about her partner, who is from Myanmar, and five friends who worked at the site.

Waenphet Panta said she hadn’t heard from her daughter Kanlayanee since a phone call about an hour before the quake. A friend told her Kanlayanee had been working high on the building on Friday.

“I am praying my daughter is safe, that she has survived and that she’s at the hospital,” she said, Kanlayanee’s father sitting beside her.

Thai authorities said that the quake and aftershocks were felt in most of the country’s provinces. Many places in the north reported damage to residential buildings, hospitals and temples, including in Chiang Mai, but the only casualties were reported in Bangkok

Myanmar sits on a major fault line

Earthquakes are rare in Bangkok, but relatively common in Myanmar. The country sits on the Sagaing Fault, a major north-south fault that separates the India plate and the Sunda plate.

Brian Baptie, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey, said that the quake caused intense ground shaking in an area where most of the population lives in buildings constructed of timber and unreinforced brick masonry.

“When you have a large earthquake in an area where there are over a million people, many of them living in vulnerable buildings, the consequences can often be disastrous,” he said in a statement.

A natural disaster on top of a civil war

Myanmar’s government said that blood was in high demand in the hardest-hit areas. In a country where prior governments sometimes have been slow to accept foreign aid, Min Aung Hlaing said that Myanmar was ready to accept outside assistance.

Myanmar’s military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, and is now involved in a civil war with long-established militias and newly formed pro-democracy ones.

Military forces continued their attacks even after the quake, with three airstrikes in northern Kayin state, also called Karenni state, and southern Shan — both of which border Mandalay state, said Dave Eubank, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who founded the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian aid organization that has provided assistance to both combatants and civilians in Myanmar since the 1990s.

Eubank told The Associated Press that in the area he was operating in, most villages have already been destroyed by the military so the earthquake had little impact.

“People are in the jungle and I was out in the jungle when the earthquake hit — it was powerful, but the trees just moved, that was it for us, so we haven’t had a direct impact other than that the Burma army keeps attacking, even after the quake,” he said.

In northern Shan, an airstrike on a rebel-controlled village just minutes after the earthquake killed seven militia members and damaged five buildings, including a school, Mai Rukow, editor of a Shan-based online media Shwe Phee Myay News Agency, told the AP.

Government forces have lost control of much of Myanmar, and many places are incredibly dangerous or simply impossible for aid groups to reach. More than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting and nearly 20 million are in need, according to the United Nations.

“Although a full picture of the damage is still emerging, most of us have never seen such destruction,” said Haider Yaqub, Myanmar country director for the NGO Plan International, from Yangon.

Control tower at Myanmar airport collapsed

Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show the earthquake toppled the air traffic control tower at Naypyitaw International Airport as if sheered from its base.

Debris lay scattered from the top of the tower, which controlled all air traffic in the capital of Myanmar, the photos showed on Saturday.

It wasn’t immediately clear if there had been any injuries in the collapse, though the tower would have had staff inside of it at the time of the earthquake Friday.

Rescue groups head to Myanmar

China and Russia are the largest suppliers of weapons to Myanmar’s military, and were among the first to step in with humanitarian aid.

China said it has sent more than 135 rescue personnel and experts along with supplies like medical kits and generators, and pledged around $13.8 million in emergency aid. Hong Kong sent a 51-member team to Myanmar.

Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said it had flown in 120 rescuers and supplies, and the country’s Health Ministry said Moscow had sent a medical team to Myanmar.

Other countries like India and South Korea are sending help, and the U.N. allocated $5 million to start relief efforts.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington was going to help with the response, but some experts were concerned about this effort given his administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance.

—Jerry Harmer and Grant Peck in Bangkok, Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7272793/myanmar-earthquake-death-toll-thailand-missing-persons/

A Texas Bill Claims to Clarify Near-Total Abortion Bans. Advocates Say It Won’t

Texas has one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country, banning abortion in nearly all situations with very limited exceptions. Since the near-total ban went into effect, several women in the state have shared stories and filed lawsuits, saying that they were denied critical care while experiencing pregnancy complications. On March 14, one of the lawmakers behind the state’s restrictive abortion laws introduced a bill seeking to clarify medical exceptions. 

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But some abortion-rights advocates and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims to, and even worry that it could open the door to prosecuting pregnant people and people who help patients access abortions. 

Here’s what to know. 

What is current Texas law?

The only exception to Texas’ abortion ban is if a person is experiencing a “life-threatening” medical emergency “that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” But the current version of the law does not get more specific than that. Doctors have said that the near-total ban causes confusion over when they can provide treatment in urgent situations, leading to care delays or denials. 

However, there is specificity over the potential severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s ban: up to $100,000 in fines, 99 years in prison, and losing their medical license.

In the fall of 2024, ProPublica reported that three Texas women died after they didn’t receive appropriate care while experiencing miscarriages.

What is the new proposed bill, SB 31?

Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes—who has previously said that exceptions to the state’s near-total ban are “plenty clear”—said during a Senate committee hearing on March 27 that there have been “reports that some doctors and some hospitals are not following the law,” meaning that they have denied necessary medical care. He said he recently introduced a bill, SB 31, in order to “remove any excuse from a doctor or a hospital” from treating a patient experiencing medical emergencies. Republican Texas Rep. Charlie Geren has filed the same bill in the House. (Neither Hughes’s nor Geren’s office responded to a request for comment on this story.)

Read More: What Are Abortion Shield Laws?

The bill doesn’t expand abortion access in the state, but removes language from the state’s laws that requires a pregnant person to be experiencing a “life-threatening” condition for a doctor to provide care. The bill adds that it “does not require a physician to delay, alter or withhold medical treatment provided to a pregnant female if doing so would create a greater risk of the pregnant female’s death; or substantial impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant female.” It says that a patient’s emergency “need not be imminent or irreversible” for a doctor to provide care. It specifies that ectopic pregnancies are considered exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban, but doesn’t include exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape, or incest.

The bill also includes language that instructs the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Medical Board to hold education sessions for lawyers and doctors about the medical exceptions to the state’s ban.

Why is it controversial?

The bill has received some rare bipartisan support, as well as support from both anti-abortion groups and some medical organizations, including the Texas Medical Association. Dr. Julie Ayala, an ob-gyn who practices in Texas, testified during the Senate committee hearing on March 27 on behalf of the Texas Medical Association that she believes “this bill will clear up confusion” and “save women’s lives.” 

But other abortion rights advocates, doctors, and legal experts say the bill won’t do what it claims.

“It’s an attempt to add some clarity, but I think the underlying reasons that we’re seeing what we’re seeing with denials to care aren’t really changed in the bill,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law with expertise in abortion. While the bill specifies some situations in which abortion is permitted, “pregnancy is complicated, so there are a lot of other scenarios that aren’t going to be enumerated in the bill where physicians aren’t going to know what to do,” Ziegler says. 

The bill also doesn’t remove the severe penalties for doctors who are found to have violated the state’s near-total ban—one of the reasons “we’re seeing physicians refuse to provide care,” Ziegler says.

Read More: IVF Patients Say a Test Caused Them to Discard Embryos. Now They’re Suing

Samantha Casiano, an advocate for the reproductive rights advocacy nonprofit Free & Just, also criticized the bill. Casiano, who lives in Texas, was forced to carry her baby to term even after doctors told her at 20 weeks of pregnancy that her baby had anencephaly, a fatal birth defect, and wouldn’t survive. Her baby died four hours after being born. Casiano was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit Zurawski v. State of Texas that was brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights and made national headlines for challenging Texas’ abortion ban. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the women at the heart of the lawsuit in May 2024, refusing to clarify the exceptions to the state’s abortion ban.

“Nothing in [SB 31] would’ve helped my situation at all,” Casiano says. “I’m just so upset that I felt like from 20 weeks to 32 weeks, I was basically a walking coffin for my daughter until I had to give birth, and then she had to suffer and be in agony. So where in that [bill] does that help my situation, or families and mothers like me? It was really upsetting and disappointing to read it.”

Dr. Austin Dennard is an ob-gyn practicing in Texas who joined the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit after she was forced to travel out of state to receive care when she learned that her baby had anencephaly. Dennard says that while she believes some of the people behind the bill had good intentions, she doesn’t think the bill “is going to make a lick of difference in the real practicality of practicing medicine.” She says the bill’s language is still very confusing, even to reproductive rights lawyers she’s spoken with, adding that “exceptions don’t work” to ensure access to care.

As for the education sessions about the medical exceptions, Dennard questions who would be creating that guidance, and if it would be coming from anti-abortion sources.

“It’s extremely disappointing to me, and if anyone is celebrating, I think that they are extremely naive to think that these individuals actually really want to make a change,” says Dennard, who is an advocate for Free & Just. “It feels like a political publicity movement rather than [a] true desire to help people.”

A cracked-open “door” to further restrictions

Advocates and experts also point out that SB 31 amends a 1925 law predating Roe v. Wade. The 1925 law bans abortion and penalizes anyone who “furnishes the means for procuring an abortion,” with the possibility of up to five years in prison. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had previously tried to enforce the 1925 law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe, but a federal judge blocked the move in 2023. Now, advocates and experts worry that the bill could “open the door” to the 1925 law being used to prosecute abortion patients, as well as people and groups who help patients access care, such as through abortion funds.

“If there is even a sliver of [a] chance that that bill could open the door to that 1925 criminalization of women and people that help you get an abortion, we have to be concerned,” says Kaitlyn Kash, a Free & Just advocate. Kash was forced to travel out of Texas to receive an abortion after learning that her baby had severe skeletal dysplasia, which impacts bone and cartilage growth, and that her baby likely wouldn’t survive.

Texas is also considering a separate bill that would allow authorities to charge people who obtain abortions with homicide, making it one of at least 10 states that have introduced bills for the 2025 legislative session that open the door for penalizing patients—a growing trend since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Read More: Some States Consider Bills That Would Punish People Seeking Abortions

According to Ziegler, SB 31 carves out some situations that wouldn’t be considered “aiding and abetting” an abortion, but in doing so, leaves open the possibility that other situations would be. “It’s sort of a similar dynamic to what you see with the exceptions,” Ziegler says. “There’s some clarity in a few narrow situations, and then a lot of gray area and threat of prosecution in most others.” She adds that Hughes has also introduced another bill, SB 2880, which—among other attempts to crack down on abortion—would expand who could be penalized for “aiding and abetting” abortions, including people who pay for or reimburse the costs associated with obtaining an abortion.

Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the Zurawski v. State of Texas lawsuit, was denied an abortion after experiencing a complication called preterm pre-labor rupture of membranes (PPROM) because doctors said they detected fetal cardiac activity. A few days later, she developed sepsis, a life-threatening condition. Doctors performed an emergency induction abortion, and she had to spend several days in the ICU.

Zurawski, now a Free & Just advocate, criticized SB 31 for attempting to create “blanket rules over every single pregnancy in the state of Texas, because no two are the same.” 

“I like to believe—I think I have to believe—that the intent of this bill is not malicious,” she says, but she adds that Texas officials have attempted to penalize people providing access to abortion care. The Texas Attorney General’s office recently announced that it had filed criminal charges against a midwife and medical assistant, accusing them of illegally providing abortions in Texas.

Dennard says she has received pressure from some people behind the bill and other physicians who disagree with her to support it. While some doctors and legal experts have said that the clarity would make “modest but not meaningless” changes and could save some lives, advocates say they don’t believe it will work.

“We shouldn’t be begging for scraps,” Kash says.”You don’t legislate medicine.”

source https://time.com/7272512/texas-bill-abortion-ban/

Dying for Sex Is an Audaciously Raunchy Celebration of Life in the Face of Certain Death

The first thing Molly, the protagonist of the new FX dramedy Dying for Sex, does after learning she has incurable cancer is run to the bodega for a green plastic two-liter of generic diet soda. Then she lights up a menthol cigarette. Across the street, her husband Steve, who nursed Molly through her first fight with breast cancer a few years earlier, sits bewildered in the office of their couples therapist. When Molly’s oncologist called with the awful news, they had been arguing about her longing for sex and his refusal to touch her.

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Molly, played with impish vivacity and quiet resolve by Michelle Williams, bears little resemblance to the Hollywood archetype of the beautiful young woman dying of cancer. Neither a doomed dream girl like Ali MacGraw in Love Story nor a driven genius struck down in her prime like Florence Pugh in the latest Love Story riff, We Live in Time, she’s no vehicle for some devoted man’s epiphanies about what really matters. Despite her terminal diagnosis, Molly’s story rarely plays like a tragedy. It is, instead, a brutally frank, disarmingly raunchy, often uproariously funny rejoinder to the perfect-patient narrative—an affirmation of life through the insistence that there’s no wrong way to face the certain death that ultimately awaits us all.

Read more: The Best New TV Shows of February 2025

The title Dying for Sex evokes trashy reality series like Sex Sent Me to the ER, but the show takes its name from the acclaimed podcast that the real Molly Kochan recorded with her best friend, Nikki Boyer (an executive producer of the adaptation), about Kochan’s radical response to her Stage IV diagnosis. Rather than resign herself to a chaste marriage with a husband who treated her as a patient more than a lover, she left him and embarked upon a sexual odyssey. By the time she died, in 2019, she had explored her desires with more partners than most people would rack up in 10 lifetimes.

In the brilliantly cast show, Molly briefly tries to make it work with Steve (a concerned yet condescending Jay Duplass). But when he bursts into tears as she goes down on him, she realizes that living the rest of her life on her own terms will mean parting ways with him. So she moves out and recruits Nikki (a radiantly flustered Jenny Slate), a theater actress who’s finally settling down with a sweet single dad (Kelvin Yu), to be her caretaker. “I wanna die with you,” Molly tells Nikki. The request will upend Nikki’s life, and she knows it, but she loves Molly too much to consider saying no.

Convinced she’s squandered her 40ish years on earth, Molly must decide what to do with her newfound freedom. A breakthrough comes in an appointment with Sonya (Esco Jouléy), a cool, young palliative-care social worker. “Everybody has a bucket list,” Sonya insists. “I’ve never even had an orgasm with another person,” Molly blurts out. “And now I’m gonna die.” So begins said bucket list.

With Nikki and Sonya as her wingwomen and support system, Molly throws herself into hookups. She discovers an appetite for dominance, and her fumblings lead to a moving encounter with an experienced top. She isn’t looking for romantic love but accidentally finds it with the man in the apartment across the hall. A slovenly dreamboat known only as Neighbor Guy (a gloriously game Rob Delaney), he takes prurient pleasure when Molly scolds him for eating in the elevator.

Dying for Sex co-creators Kim Rosenstock (Only Murders in the Building, GLOW) and Elizabeth Meriwether (The Dropout), who worked together on New Girl, have a track record of blending tones and outsize characters in a way that reads as honest about life’s absurdities, rather than contrived. This series is their deftest tightrope walk yet. Scenes where Molly struggles to reconcile with a mom, Gail (Sissy Spacek), whose former boyfriend abused Molly when she was a child comfortably coexist with a raunchy scene where Molly’s—enthusiastically consensual—attempt to kick Neighbor Guy in the crotch lands her in the hospital. Viewers who never thought to wonder about the toxicity of post-chemo urine will be graphically enlightened.

It would probably be impossible to puncture pieties around cancer, sex, and death without a few missteps. In a concession to Hollywood norms, the show makes its dying woman unfeasibly gorgeous all the way to hospice. Molly’s relationship with the health care system is a bit fantastical. Money isn’t an issue. Sonya doesn’t hesitate to take her patient to a sex party. A doctor’s (David Rasche) brusqueness is a chance for Molly to flex her domme muscles more than a sign of overwork. 

But it would be misguided to begrudge the show its creative license, and specifically its refusal to fixate on the bureaucratic nightmare that is being gravely ill in America, when so many of its enormous swings connect. Mirroring Molly’s openness, Rosenstock, Meriwether, and Williams explode clichéd depictions of common human experiences that are perennially misrepresented in pop culture, from BDSM to the process of “active dying.” The dialogue is equally sharp in funny moments (Molly longs to be “one of those fully realized women who have sex while wearing jewelry”) and painful ones (Gail: “I’m the one who let him ruin you.” Molly: “I’m not ruined!”). Nikki’s perspective is a crucial foil to Molly’s; we sense the effort she has to put into being the kind of person a terminally ill friend can rely on. In giving the love between these two singular women the same emotional weight as any ill-fated romance, Dying for Sex becomes the rare cancer story that celebrates life in all its perverse idiosyncracies without shrinking from the specter of death.

source https://time.com/7271754/dying-for-sex-review/

Why Prince Harry Resigned From His African Charity

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Prince Harry’s surprising resignation from an African charity he co-founded in memory of his mother, Princess Diana, came this week amid allegations of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism made by the organization’s chairperson against unnamed board members.

Harry announced his resignation in a joint statement with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, who he co-founded the Sentebale youth-focused charity with in 2006. The princes were patrons of Sentebale and weren’t on the board of trustees.

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They said they were quitting in support of the trustees, who left after a dispute with chairperson Sophie Chandauka.

Read More: How Christian Groups Are Responding to Trump’s Foreign-Aid Freeze

Sentebale works in the southern African nations of Lesotho and Botswana and was started to help young people affected by AIDS after Harry spent part of a gap year in 2004 working at an orphanage in Lesotho for children whose parents died of the disease.

Sentebale means “don’t forget me” in the Sesotho language, and Harry and Seeiso set it up in memory of their mothers.

Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Seeiso’s mother, the former queen of Lesotho, died in 2003.

What Harry has said

In their statement, Harry and Seeiso said they were in shock at the developments at the charity, where the trustees had asked Chandauka to step down. She refused and filed papers at a British court to prevent her from being removed.

The princes said the trustees were acting in the best interests of Sentebale and had now resigned, and the breakdown in relationships was “devastating.”

“What’s transpired is unthinkable,” the princes said.

Allegations of sexism and racism

Chandauka, a Zimbabwean corporate lawyer, said in her own statement that she had “dared to blow the whistle” about poor governance, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, sexism and racism at the charity, and said there had been a cover-up. Her allegations appeared to be directed at the trustees, but she didn’t name anyone or give any details.

The trustees who resigned included Mark Dyer, a longtime mentor of Harry’s. One of the other trustees, Kelello Lerotholi, told British television channel Sky News that Chandauka’s allegations were surprising and “there was never even a hint” of misconduct by trustees.

Chandauka said that she had reported some of the board members to the U.K.’s Charity Commission, where Sentebale is registered. A spokesperson at Sentebale didn’t respond to a request for more information on who Chandauka’s allegations were specifically directed at or what they involved.

What does Sentebale do?

Sentebale has a special place for Harry and continued some of the work Princess Diana did by supporting AIDS charities and trying to remove stigmas around the disease. Diana visited South Africa to promote AIDS awareness in March 1997, five months before she died.

Sentebale was initially set up to help vulnerable children and young people affected by AIDS with health care services, education and vocational training. Lesotho, a poor mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, is one of the worst-affected countries in the world by HIV.

Harry’s charity had recently evolved to also address issues of youth health, wealth and climate resilience in southern Africa under Chandauka, and the future direction of the charity was a point of disagreement among its leadership, according to British media reports.

Harry visited Sentebale in Lesotho as recently as October, when he spent an evening around a campfire speaking with young people and said the charity was building a force of young advocates. On the same trip, Lesotho Prime Minister Sam Matekane said the country would always be Harry’s “second home.”

source https://time.com/7272165/what-to-know-after-prince-harry-resigned-from-his-african-charity/

Why Climate Change is a National Security Threat

The U.S. intelligence community published its 2025 annual threat assessment on March 25. Missing from the document was any mention of climate change—marking the first time in over a decade that the topic has not appeared on the list.

“What I focused this annual threat assessment on, and the [Intelligence Committee] focused this threat assessment on, are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in response to questioning on the removal during a Senate Intelligence Committee. 

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Gabbard said she “didn’t recall” instructing the intelligence community to avoid mentioning climate change in the report. But the change comes amid the Trump Administration’s continued push for a deprioritization of climate change in the federal agenda. 

Read more: Here Are All of Trump’s Major Moves to Dismantle Climate Action

The U.S. government has considered climate change a global security threat for at least three decades. Academic reports at the Naval War College included environmental stressors and climate change in the 1980s, says Mark Nevitt, associate professor of law at Emory University. On the federal level, climate change was first acknowledged as a national security threat by President George W. Bush in August 1991, and the U.S. national security community first listed the issue as a threat in 2008. 

The issue has typically been included on the annual threat assessment list because of its destabilizing impact—both domestically and abroad. “The annual threat assessment is projecting forward about where the areas of concern and the areas of competition [are], and where the U.S. national security sector should be focusing its attention,” says Nevitt. “Because climate change is just destabilizing different parts of the world, through extreme weather, through droughts, through sea level rise…the intelligence community wants to be ready for future conflicts and future areas of competition.”

Climate change is often referred to as a “threat multiplier” by the intelligence community, because it aggravates already existing problems, while also creating new ones. 

“It takes things that we were already worried about, like extremism or terrorism, and exacerbates the scale or nature of those threats,” says Scott Moore, practice professor of political science, with a focus on climate and security, at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you have these intensified climate change impacts, they place stress on things like food systems, and worsen already existing tensions within countries.”

Climate migration, for example, is on the rise around the world—more than half of new internal displacements within countries registered in 2023 were caused by weather related disasters, according to the Migration Data Portal. 

“Mass migration leads to a lot of political and social tensions as well as border issues,” says Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of the Environment. “That … could affect national security, because it could destabilize an entire region.” One study from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that extreme weather is contributing to migration into the United States through the southern border—with more migrants from agricultural regions in Mexico settling in the United States following extreme drought. 

Such displacement can have major impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, experts say—especially in already fragile regions. “If you have, for example, a really extreme and intensified drought in a country in which extremist ideologies are percolating, these climate change impacts may make it more likely that people are going to stop farming, or might migrate to cities where they may face difficult employment prospects, be socially dislocated and may be more vulnerable to extremism or engaging in some type of violence,” says Moore.   

On a domestic level, considering climate change helps the U.S. military ensure that infrastructure is built to withstand extreme weather events—and respond to national disasters both domestically and abroad. “You need the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the U.S. military, to basically help out their community when there’s an extreme weather event,” says Nevitt. As extreme weather events intensify with climate change this could strain military resources and put more lives at risk if the military does not prepare to address the threat.

Infrastructure within the U.S., like energy and internet grids, also need to be fortified. If regions were to lose power in the case of an extreme weather event, the networks could be vulnerable to attack. 

“Our energy grid is highly at risk, and we’ve seen wildfires happening across the country, and so these could again be threat multipliers,” says Seto. “I think the national security risk is that we are not ready to respond to any threats from foreign agents that may take advantage of the weaknesses that we might have.”

Showing that the climate crisis is a priority is also necessary to maintain the United States’s diplomatic strength—especially in regions that see climate change as a top concern. “Other countries, in particular countries that are very significant for the U.S. defense posture, like the Pacific Island countries, really care about climate change a lot. They want to hear what the United States is willing to do to help them deal with climate change,” says Moore. “And so when you have the instructions to essentially ignore climate change, or in an extreme version almost censor mention of climate change, that’s going to have a harmful effect on diplomatic engagement with some pretty important countries.”

And experts say that removing climate change from the list—and deprioritizing the issue writ large—is only going to leave the U.S. more vulnerable. “This is going to make the administration and national security sector less nimble, because they might not have the people, the plans, the policy, [and] capacity in place when disaster inevitably strikes,” warns Nevitt. “You can’t just wish climate change away.” 

source https://time.com/7272152/climate-change-national-security-threat/