Russian ship that sank near Spain may have been carrying nuclear reactors to North Korea Sam Jones in Madrid

 North Korea

Western military may have targeted the Ursa Major, which went down after mysterious explosions, reports suggest

 

A Russian cargo ship that suffered a series of mysterious explosions before eventually sinking off the south-east coast of Spain 17 months ago may have been carrying nuclear submarine reactors destined for North Korea, according to reports.

The Ursa Major, a 142-metre-long, Russian-flagged ship owned by the state-linked Oboronlogistics company, was purportedly sailing from St Petersburg to Vladivostok in the far east of Russia when it sank 62 nautical miles off the coast of Murcia a little before midnight on 23 December 2024.

Eleven hours earlier, Spain’s maritime rescue and security service, Sasemar, had dispatched a helicopter, a fast rescue boat, and a tugboat to the Ursa Major, which put out a distress call at 12.53pm.

Other vessels in the area noted that the Russian vessel, which had slowed dramatically over the previous 24 hours, was listing badly and saw its crew abandoning ship. The crew members told rescuers that there had been three explosions in the ship’s engine room.

 

Spanish attempts to assist the Ursa Major were curtailed at 8.07pm that evening when a Russian warship arrived, took over operations and ordered the two Sasemar boats to withdraw to a distance of two nautical miles.

According to a Spanish government document that was released three months ago in response to parliamentary questions over the incident, the Russian warship then launched flares over the Ursa Major. A report in the Murcia newspaper La Verdad said the flares could have been deployed to blind the infrared channels of the intelligence satellites that were monitoring the incident.

A CNN investigation into the sinking of the vessel noted that “four similar seismic signatures … the pattern of which resembled underwater mines or overground quarry blasts” were heard just after the flares were fired. By 11.20pm, the Ursa Major had sunk and now lies at a depth of 2,500 metres. Two crew members are thought to have died in the initial explosions, while 14 were rescued.

Although the vessel was officially transporting “non-dangerous merchandise” – including 129 shipping containers, two cranes, and two large maintenance hole covers – its route and sinking raised the suspicions of the Spanish authorities.

Under questioning, the captain of the Ursa Major eventually told Spanish investigators that the “manhole covers” onboard his ship were “nuclear reactor components similar to those used by submarines”, but that no nuclear fuel was being transported.

 

Investigators had also noticed two huge blue containers – each estimated to weigh about 65 tonnes – on the stern of the ship in satellite photographs.

“These would therefore be two loads almost impossible to transport along the winding roads of Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan between the two cities served by the Ursa Major,” said the report in La Verdad.

“That mysterious undeclared cargo would certainly justify a voyage of more than 15,000km by sea between St Petersburg and Vladivostok.”

 

A source familiar with the investigation told CNN that the Russian captain believed he would be diverted to the North Korean port of Rason to deliver the two reactors.

While the incident remains a mystery, CNN suggested the sinking of the Ursa Major “may mark a rare and high-stakes intervention by a western military to prevent Russia from sending an upgrade in nuclear technology to a key ally, North Korea”. The network noted that the Russian ship set sail just two months after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had sent troops to assist with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

CNN and La Verdad reported that a 50cm by 50cm hole found in the vessel’s hull – with the damaged metal facing inwards – could have been made by a super-fast weapon known as a supercavitating torpedo.

“Only the United States, a few Nato allies, Russia and Iran are believed to have this kind of high-speed torpedo, which fires air ahead of the weapon to reduce the drag of the water,” said CNN.

“The source familiar with the [Spanish] investigation said it concluded the use of such a device would fit with the size of the hole in the Ursa Major’s hull, and that it could have made a noiseless impact resulting in the sudden slowing of the boat on 22 December.”

CNN said there had been a “flurry of recent military activity” around the ship’s remains, with US nuclear “sniffer” aircraft overflying the scene twice in the past year, and a Russian spy ship setting off four further explosions in the wreckage a week after it sank.

A report by Oboronlogistics claimed that the Ursa Major fell prey to what it termed “a targeted terrorist attack”.

Spain’s interior, foreign and defence ministries have been contacted for comment.

Do we absorb information better on paper, rather than screens? It depends on the screen by Lili Yu& Erik D Reichle

  

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The Swedish government recently announced it was moving from the classroom use of digital devices back to physical books. It cited concerns over declining test scores and increasing screen time.

Are these concerns well founded? And what does the science of reading say about the possible consequences of reading on digital devices versus books?

To address these questions, it’s worth remembering that, although reading might appear to be an easy task, this impression is false. Reading is arguably the most difficult task one must learn – one that requires years of formal education and practice to master. In contrast to spoken language, it is a skill we are not biologically predisposed to learn. 

 

Why is reading so difficult?

To understand why reading is difficult, one must first understand the physiology of reading.

As you are reading this sentence, your eyes are making a series of rapid movements, called saccades, from one word to the next. During these saccades, the processing of visual information is suppressed and is only available during brief intervals, called fixations, when the eyes are stationary.

Experiments that measure readers’ eye movements have shown we fixate most words because our capacity to extract visual information during each fixation is extremely limited.

In languages like English that are read from left to right, our capacity to perceive the features that distinguish letters is limited to a small region of the visual field called the perceptual span. This span extends from 2-3 letter spaces to the left of fixation to 8-12 letter spaces to the right of fixation.

The span’s asymmetry reflects the movement of attention through the text. It extends to the left in languages like Arabic, which are read from right to left. The size of the span is smaller for dense writing systems, such as Chinese.

We also know from eye-tracking and brain-imaging experiments that words require time to identify. Our best estimates suggest visual information requires 60 milliseconds to propagate from the eyes to the brain and words then require an additional 100-300 milliseconds to identify. (A millsecond is one-thousandth of a second). 

These constraints limit the maximum rate of reading to 300-400 words per minute, depending on the difficulty of the text and one’s level of comprehension.

The physiology of reading is complicated, requiring a high level of mental coordination. Jess Morgan/unsplash, CC BY

Speed-reading advocates, who falsely promise faster reading speeds, teach you how to skim a text. Comprehension declines at a rate inversely proportional to the gain in speed.

Importantly, the upper limit for reading speed requires years of practice to attain, because it requires the brain systems that support vision, attention, word identification, language processing and eye movements to operate in a highly coordinated manner. Anything that prevents this coordination will therefore reduce comprehension.

Consequences of digital reading

So what are the likely consequences of digital reading?

With some devices, such as e-readers, there is little reason to suspect digital reading differs from the reading of books, because both formats support the mental processes required for skilled reading.

The more questionable devices are those introducing distractions (such as news websites interspersed with ads) or which have suboptimal formatting, such as centre-justified text with large or unequal-sized gaps between words. The latter is rarely a feature of paper-based texts.

Although the consequences of these two factors are under-researched, enough has been learned about human cognition to make informed predictions.

For example, images and audio unrelated to a text such as pop-up ads can capture attention. Although most adults have developed a level of executive control sufficient to ignore such distractions, young children have not.

The implications for a child who is struggling to understand the meaning of a text are obvious. Their comprehension will suffer to the extent that additional effort is required to ignore distractions, or if they do not yet have the mental coordination to understand the text has been disrupted.

Why Trump’s $2 billion buyoff to cancel offshore wind farms is a bad deal for American taxpayers and the US energy supply

 Published: May 8, 2026 8:47am EDT

The U.S. is in a bizarre situation in 2026: It’s facing a looming energy shortage, yet the Trump administration is making deals to pay offshore wind developers nearly US$2 billion in taxpayer money to walk away from energy projects.

These politically motivated moves are costing Americans far more than just the buyouts.

Communities have been laying the groundwork for offshore energy projects for years. Offshore wind development brings jobs and economic development that reshape regional economies, with the scale of public and private investment reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars over years. East Coast communities have built up ports to support the industry and launched job-training programs to prepare workers. Construction, maintenance and shipping businesses have sprung up, along with secondary businesses that support the industry.

 

Losing the projects, and the threat of losing other planned wind farms, will also likely mean higher energy prices. And while some offshore wind farms are moving ahead, developers must account for both lost momentum and increased uncertainty from the Trump administration.

As a result, Americans will bear the economic brunt of these decisions for decades ahead.

How America got to this point

To understand how the U.S. arrived in this predicament, let’s take a step back.

In March 2023, leaders from three U.S. federal agencies under the Biden administration met with the CEOs from American technology and manufacturing giants Microsoft, Amazon, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical and GE at the annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, under the banner of “Affordable, Reliable and Secure American-Made Energy”.

They agreed on a key point: The nation was staring down a severe shortage of electrons to drive American business forward.

Fortunately, solutions abounded. Enormous amounts of onshore wind and solar power had been deployed during the previous five years. More than 80% of all new power additions to the U.S. grid had come from these two sources.

Particularly exciting were plans to build large offshore wind farms up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Taken together, the wind farms would generate 30 gigawatts of new power by 2030, enough to power more than 10 million homes and reduce volatility in energy pricing thanks to long-term power purchase agreements.

The U.S. had one small wind farm at the time, off Rhode Island, and two wind turbines off Virginia, but Europe had been operating large offshore wind projects for over two decades and was building more.

In the months following the 2023 meeting, leasing and permitting for the U.S. mega projects continued, and in some areas construction got underway.

Then, the Trump administration arrived in 2025. As president, Donald Trump immediately issued an executive order to halt offshore wind lease sales and any approvals, permits or loans for wind farms. He had made his disdain for wind power clear ever since he lost a fight to stop construction of a small wind farm near his golf course in Scotland in the 2010s.

After a federal judge declared Trump’s executive order unconstitutional in December 2025, the administration shifted strategies.

In March 2026, news outlets began reporting on deals struck in which the federal government would pay three offshore wind project developers hundreds of millions of dollars to cease development of their permitted projects, agree not to build others and repurpose the funds toward fossil fuel projects.

According to reported discussions involving the French energy company TotalEnergies, the money would be paid out through the Department of Interior’s Judgment Fund, intended for payment of legal settlements, despite there not being any active litigation with TotalEnergies.

The other projects agreeing to Trump’s buyouts as of early May were Golden State Wind, in California, and Bluepoint Wind, off New Jersey and New York. Both are co-owned by Ocean Winds, a joint venture of the French energy company Engie and EDP Renewables, headquartered in Spain. The California Energy Commission and members of Congress are now investigating the moves.

Offshore wind means local investment

Regardless of whether these buyouts are even legal, the losing parties will be the American taxpayers and a U.S. economy that needs more electrons on the grid, not fewer.

One analysis projected that deploying 40 GW along the U.S. East Coast by 2035 would generate roughly $140 billion in investment, much of it concentrated in port infrastructure and supply chain development.

New York in early 2026 announced a $300 million state grant program to expand port infrastructure supporting offshore wind. And the New Jersey Wind Port represents an investment exceeding $600 million to enable manufacturing and assembly of turbines.

 

In 2025, California state lawmakers authorized $225.7 million in spending for offshore wind ports and related facilities.

For these projects to pay off for local communities, however, the regions will need to see the development of wind farms.

Killing jobs

The cancellations of the planned projects also take jobs away from hard-working, blue-collar Americans.

The construction and installation of offshore wind turbines requires the expertise of skilled electrical workers, pipe fitters, welders, pile drivers, iron workers, machinists and carpenters.

Future offshore wind costs depend on investments today. As infrastructure is established and expertise grows, each subsequent project becomes easier to build, less risky and less expensive.

This pattern is already evident globally: The levelized cost of electricity from offshore wind globally fell by 62% between 2010 and 2024.

Canceling projects or buying back leases eliminates the electricity those projects would have generated. It also slows the accumulation of experience, scale and supply chain maturity that drive costs down over time.

The result is higher costs for future projects and for electricity ratepayers.

An energy crisis

Developing a robust offshore wind industry provides resilience in the face of an unstable global energy market.

Future U.S. and global energy demand is projected to grow significantly, largely driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers and electrification of vehicles, homes and businesses.

The U.S. is in a bizarre situation in 2026: It’s facing a looming energy shortage, yet the Trump administration is making deals to pay offshore wind developers nearly US$2 billion in taxpayer money to walk away from energy projects.

These politically motivated moves are costing Americans far more than just the buyouts.

Communities have been laying the groundwork for offshore energy projects for years. Offshore wind development brings jobs and economic development that reshape regional economies, with the scale of public and private investment reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars over years. East Coast communities have built up ports to support the industry and launched job-training programs to prepare workers. Construction, maintenance and shipping businesses have sprung up, along with secondary businesses that support the industry.

Offshore wind farms bring jobs and economic development. State Pier in New London, Conn., serves as a staging site for wind farm construction and supplies. AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey

Losing the projects, and the threat of losing other planned wind farms, will also likely mean higher energy prices. And while some offshore wind farms are moving ahead, developers must account for both lost momentum and increased uncertainty from the Trump administration.

As a result, Americans will bear the economic brunt of these decisions for decades ahead.

How America got to this point

To understand how the U.S. arrived in this predicament, let’s take a step back.

In March 2023, leaders from three U.S. federal agencies under the Biden administration met with the CEOs from American technology and manufacturing giants Microsoft, Amazon, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical and GE at the annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, under the banner of “Affordable, Reliable and Secure American-Made Energy”.

They agreed on a key point: The nation was staring down a severe shortage of electrons to drive American business forward.

Fortunately, solutions abounded. Enormous amounts of onshore wind and solar power had been deployed during the previous five years. More than 80% of all new power additions to the U.S. grid had come from these two sources.

Particularly exciting were plans to build large offshore wind farms up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Taken together, the wind farms would generate 30 gigawatts of new power by 2030, enough to power more than 10 million homes and reduce volatility in energy pricing thanks to long-term power purchase agreements.

The U.S. had one small wind farm at the time, off Rhode Island, and two wind turbines off Virginia, but Europe had been operating large offshore wind projects for over two decades and was building more.

In the months following the 2023 meeting, leasing and permitting for the U.S. mega projects continued, and in some areas construction got underway.

Do experts have something to add to public debate?

A map of offshore wind lease areas shows how many companies have paid the U.S. to lease areas of ocean for offshore wind farms. A few wind farms off New England are already operating. The lease areas where the Trump administration used taxpayer money to persuade companies to drop their wind farm plans include two TotalEnergies leases – Attentive Energy, off New Jersey, and a lease area off South Carolina – and Bluepoint Wind, also off New Jersey. U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Then, the Trump administration arrived in 2025. As president, Donald Trump immediately issued an executive order to halt offshore wind lease sales and any approvals, permits or loans for wind farms. He had made his disdain for wind power clear ever since he lost a fight to stop construction of a small wind farm near his golf course in Scotland in the 2010s.

After a federal judge declared Trump’s executive order unconstitutional in December 2025, the administration shifted strategies.

In March 2026, news outlets began reporting on deals struck in which the federal government would pay three offshore wind project developers hundreds of millions of dollars to cease development of their permitted projects, agree not to build others and repurpose the funds toward fossil fuel projects.

According to reported discussions involving the French energy company TotalEnergies, the money would be paid out through the Department of Interior’s Judgment Fund, intended for payment of legal settlements, despite there not being any active litigation with TotalEnergies.

The other projects agreeing to Trump’s buyouts as of early May were Golden State Wind, in California, and Bluepoint Wind, off New Jersey and New York. Both are co-owned by Ocean Winds, a joint venture of the French energy company Engie and EDP Renewables, headquartered in Spain. The California Energy Commission and members of Congress are now investigating the moves.

Offshore wind means local investment

Regardless of whether these buyouts are even legal, the losing parties will be the American taxpayers and a U.S. economy that needs more electrons on the grid, not fewer.

One analysis projected that deploying 40 GW along the U.S. East Coast by 2035 would generate roughly $140 billion in investment, much of it concentrated in port infrastructure and supply chain development.

New York in early 2026 announced a $300 million state grant program to expand port infrastructure supporting offshore wind. And the New Jersey Wind Port represents an investment exceeding $600 million to enable manufacturing and assembly of turbines.

Workers in New London, Conn., prepare a generator and its blades for transport to South Fork Wind’s offshore wind farm in 2023. To build an offshore wind farm requires manufacturing jobs, parts suppliers, dockworkers, crane operators, ship crews, as well as the wind farm construction crews and maintenance teams and many more businesses and their employees. AP Photo/Seth Wenig

In 2025, California state lawmakers authorized $225.7 million in spending for offshore wind ports and related facilities.

For these projects to pay off for local communities, however, the regions will need to see the development of wind farms.

Killing jobs

The cancellations of the planned projects also take jobs away from hard-working, blue-collar Americans.

The construction and installation of offshore wind turbines requires the expertise of skilled electrical workers, pipe fitters, welders, pile drivers, iron workers, machinists and carpenters.

Future offshore wind costs depend on investments today. As infrastructure is established and expertise grows, each subsequent project becomes easier to build, less risky and less expensive.

This pattern is already evident globally: The levelized cost of electricity from offshore wind globally fell by 62% between 2010 and 2024.

Canceling projects or buying back leases eliminates the electricity those projects would have generated. It also slows the accumulation of experience, scale and supply chain maturity that drive costs down over time.

The result is higher costs for future projects and for electricity ratepayers.

An energy crisis

Developing a robust offshore wind industry provides resilience in the face of an unstable global energy market.

Future U.S. and global energy demand is projected to grow significantly, largely driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers and electrification of vehicles, homes and businesses.

Limiting the supply of homegrown energy will increase energy costs for Americans, especially in the regions where the wind farms were supposed to be located – New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and California.

With the federal buyouts, the U.S. is losing 8 GW of planned electricity generation, enough to power more than 3 million homes. That generation needs to be replaced by other energy sources and expanding power transmission lines that can take seven to 10 years to get permits for and build out. The leased projects were on their way to providing new clean power generation fairly quickly. Eliminating them restarts the project clock.

Reliance on dirtier, conventional forms of power generation will increase along with foreign energy imports, such as electricity delivered from Canada to New York, leading to higher and more volatile electricity prices.

Evidence from Europe shows that offshore wind can also reduce electricity costs for consumers by lowering wholesale prices and reducing dependence on fossil fuels and their volatile prices.

Vineyard Wind I, an offshore wind farm completed in 2026, with 806 MW of generation – enough to power about 400,000 homes – is projected to save Massachusetts customers about $1.4 billion on electricity bills over the next 20 years. With a fixed-price, 20-year contract, the project also lowered prices during cold snaps and peak demand for gas, reducing volatility and cost.

From jobs to local economic development to power costs, we believe canceling these offshore wind projects is a bad deal for American taxpayers.

 

 

 

Philadelphia’s founding years were rife with conspiracy fears about ‘godless’ Freemasons and the Illuminati by Derek Arnold

 

How conspiracies spread has changed immensely over the history of the United States, as technology and media have evolved. But the nature of conspiracies has not.

I teach communications courses at Villanova University, 12 miles from Philadelphia, on how conspiracy theories are created and disseminated.

As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, I have been thinking about the early history of Philadelphia and the controversial people, stories and ideas, including conspiracies, that permeated the city during the second half of the 1700s.

Conspiracy theories describe alternative versions of events – such as the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 – that contrast with the official, accepted versions of events. Conspiracies, however, involve small groups of people who act in secret for their own gain and against the common good. Examples of conspiracies include the Watergate scandal by President Richard Nixon and members of his administration, or the Tuskegee experiments in which U.S. public health professionals treated unsuspecting African Americans with syphilis with a placebo.

Colonial America was rife with perceived conspiratorial agendas. Many of these stemmed from the uneasy coexistence of political parties with religion – which was newly protected by the First Amendment – and with the Catholic Church in particular.

 Freemasons in the cradle of liberty

Philadelphia was the country’s political center during the American Revolution, which began in 1775.

 

After the war ended in American victory in 1781, Philadelphia served as the capital of the U.S. beginning in 1790, until Washington, D.C., was chosen as America’s permanent capital in 1800.

During this period, the U.S. depended on contributions from its political and civic figures to develop future leaders with skills and intelligence. Among this group and some of the country’s leaders were Freemasons, the independent “brethren” of skilled stonemasons.

In England, landowners or even royalty owned many masons, but some masons were self-sufficient and enjoyed their freedom to work as they wished. When they made their way to America by the 1720s, their high standards of workmanship, fair trade and reason as they taught their craft made them influential in society.

Being a Freemason was a mark of sophistication. Freemasons were high-status, wealthy men. The fraternity provided a forum for networking – not just for stone shapers but other men who were successful in business, trade or even Colonial administration.

By the late 1740s, almost all of Philadelphia’s Freemasons were also merchants, shipowners or successful artisans. They were considered political, intellectual and creative leaders in Colonial Philadelphia.

 

Freemasons built notable structures throughout the Philadelphia and southern New Jersey areas as well as in New York, Boston and other parts of New England.

But because the group’s rituals and oaths were shielded from public view and performed in clandestine sessions in Masonic temples, rumors spread about their activities. Some people believed Freemasons secretly conspired against American values – especially religion.

Freemasons believed in principles such as rationalism, which views science and logic – rather than sensory experiences – as the foundations of knowledge. Freemasons also held that everything in the universe is the result of natural causes rather than the supernatural or divine.

They treated all religions equally. They allowed participation in them but believed no faith was to be favored as possessing the one true God. This was in contrast with religions that argued their doctrine exclusively expressed the truth. In 1738, Pope Clement XII banned Freemasons from joining the Catholic Church, a prohibition that still exists today. 

 

The ‘godless’ Illuminati

“Another "secret society” also peaked at this time in various parts of Europe, and it drew suspicion among Americans that members exerted influence over the new nation.

Members of the Illuminati, a movement that started in Germany in 1776, promoted Enlightenment values and ideas, including logic, secularism and education. Like Freemasons, they rejected superstition. Unlike Freemasons, however, they also rejected religion and its influence on society.

Europe mostly outlawed the movement before 1790 due to the group’s attempts to greatly lessen religious influence. The Illuminati occupied key roles in the educational system and government of Bavaria, where they weakened clerical authority.

The normally secretive Illuminati attracted attention through their attempts to attend and participate within Masonic temples. They used Freemason ideas along with their own ideas to recruit followers through these networks, hoping to promote an even stronger “one-world” government led by reason instead of religion and spiritualism.

As a result, religious – and specifically Catholic – leaders suspected an association between the philosophically consistent Illuminati and Freemasons.

In a letter to George Washington in 1798, Rev. G. W. Snyder from Maryland attempted to awaken Washington to the danger of the Illuminati and their influence on Freemasons. He wrote about a recently published book by the Scottish physicist John Robison called “Proofs of a Conspiracy” that, according to Snyder, “gives a full Account of a Society of Freemasons, that distinguishes itself by the name ‘of Illuminati,’ whose Plan is to overturn all Government and all Religion, even natural; and who endeavour to eradicate every Idea of a Supreme Being.”

Even today, conspiracy theories still promote the Illuminati’s existence, even after they were formally outlawed in Europe. Such theories suggest the Illuminati still work to degrade religious influence through civil upheaval. A myth survives that the Illuminati still operate secretly, support a world government and guide various governments on how to economically control the world.

But the Illuminati in the late 1700s seemed to dovetail with what people assumed were the basic ideas and agenda of Freemasons in America. Some in America suspected without obvious evidence that Freemasons used their status to boost fellow Freemasons to various governmental positions. They worried this would drive America to become godless, or even Satanic.

Concerns about the influence of Freemasons persisted in part because American presidents Washington and James Monroe were Freemasons. The American public was suspicious that these members reached high levels of government due to the influence of Freemasons. In fact, as many as 25 of the 55 men who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were Freemasons. Founding father Benjamin Franklin was a devout Freemason for over 50 years. Thomas Jefferson was widely thought to be a Freemason, though there is little evidence to support this.

 Many of these American leaders, including Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson, had spent time in Europe, especially France, during the late 1700s. Americans feared that European Illuminati members could directly access these political leaders and gain power and influence over the U.S. None of the leaders admitted to having any connection with the Illuminati.

 

Conspiracy fears climax

Fears around the Freemasons and Illuminati came to a head in the dramatic and vitriolic U.S. presidential elections of 1796 and 1800.

In the 1796 election, Jefferson’s Republican Party accused Adams of wanting to be a king and also grooming his son, John Quincy Adams, to become president immediately after his father.

Adams’ Federalist Party and an anonymous writer in newspapers – suspected to be Alexander Hamilton writing under the pseudonym “Phocion” – spread rumors attacking Jefferson. Phocion suggested that while Jefferson was U.S. secretary of state in France during Washington’s presidency, the Illuminati influenced him in ways that would cause him to turn his back on religion.

Phocion also accused Jefferson of fathering children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, whom he “kept as a concubine” when he returned with her from France in 1789. Historians believe Jefferson did, in fact, have up to six children with Hemings. The accusations also said Jefferson would free all enslaved people in America if elected.

Adams won in 1796 by just three electoral votes, but Jefferson defeated him in 1800.

Freemasons today

Freemasons today have largely shrunk from their once quite prestigious influence in American society. Today they are a mostly philanthropic organization that supports many causes, such as children’s hospitals, homes for the aged and community services.

There are about 1 million members in America, according to an estimate from 2020. That’s down from a high of over 4 million in 1959. 

 

Visitors to Philadelphia might consider two stops where they can be reminded of the conspiracy theories that circulated 250 years ago.

A marker at 175 Front St. notes where Tun Tavern, one of America’s first brew houses, stood from 1691 until it burned down in 1781. It was a hangout for Freemasons, including Franklin and other famous patrons such as John Adams.

Most of the Masonic lodges the city constructed early in its history do not exist today. The first Masonic temple built in Philadelphia was erected in 1809 on Chestnut Street, between 7th and 8th streets, but burned down in 1819.

 

Trust in vaccines is cratering. I've seen it happen by Slater, Jonathan . The Washington Post

 

This November, the Pan American Health Organization will review whether the United States has lost its measles elimination status - a designation held since 2000. As of April 23, 1,792 confirmed cases have been reported across the U.S. Utah is the latest epicenter: more than 600 cases since last summer. At one to three deaths per thousand cases, the arithmetic is clear: Deaths are coming.

Last year's measles outbreak was the worst since 1992: 2,288 cases, three deaths. A 6-year-old unvaccinated girl died of measles pneumonia in Lubbock, Texas, in February 2025 - the first measles death in the U.S. in a decade. A second unvaccinated 8-year-old girl died in the same city weeks later.

A simulation model in JAMA projects an 83 percent probability that measles will become endemic again in the U.S. within 21 years at current vaccination rates. Under a 50 percent decline in childhood vaccination, the model projects up to 159,200 deaths over 25 years from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles alone would account for 51.2 million projected cases.

Among kindergartners in the 2023-2024 school year, coverage fell below 93 percent - compared with 95 percent in 2019-2020 - while nonmedical exemptions was roughly 3 percent. In total, approximately 280,000 kindergartners - 7.3 percent - lacked documentation of full MMR vaccination, leaving them potentially susceptible to measles. A 2026 county-level analysis found exemptions increased more than fivefold since 2010-2011, jumping sharply after the pandemic. A 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found 91 percent of measles patients were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

The pandemic cut off children from vaccination schedules at critical windows. But it also accelerated a more corrosive collapse of institutional trust. In my practice, I see parents who read the studies, identify methodological limitations and remain unconvinced. This is not ignorance. It is a trust failure so complete that no evidence can ever be sufficient.

That trust has continued to erode. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of an influential immunization advisory panel and replaced them with vaccine-skeptical appointees. The CDC reduced the childhood vaccine schedule from 17 diseases to 11. The American Academy of Pediatrics broke with the CDC's schedule for the first time, publishing its own guidance endorsed by 12 major medical organizations.

Against this backdrop, clinicians are doing the work anyway. Michael Rosenbaum, a pediatrician colleague, estimates an 80 to 90 percent success rate in persuading patients to get essential vaccines - often over multiple visits with hesitant families through motivational interviewing. The AAP recommends this practice, and a 2022 study found it cut vaccination refusals from 31.5 to 17.6 per 100 patients in the U.S.

Rosenbaum begins with an open question: "Tell me more about what concerns you." He affirms the family's values before pivoting to the reflection almost every parent accepts: The main focus of your decision is what is best for the baby after weighing the benefits and risks of vaccinating. Then there's the final summary: "How do you think we can do that?"

When they question pertussis vaccination, he describes the potential apnea of whooping cough in infancy. When they question vaccinations for Haemophilus influenzae type B, he tells them what meningitis wards looked like before 1985. "Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in children when I was a resident. It was horrible." He names his uncle who had polio and was debilitated for his entire life. He says: "The risks of this vaccine are minimal and the benefits potentially priceless." He refers back to a tragic case of measles encephalitis he saw as an intern when necessary.

Some children can't be vaccinated because they are immunocompromised and can't receive live vaccines or because they had a concerning but not debilitating reaction to a vaccine. Their safety depends upon their peers. Some parents remain resistant to some or all vaccines for religious reasons or because they attribute an illness they had (such as cancer) or their child had (such as encephalitis) to vaccines.

In Utah, state lawmakers introduced exemption-expansion legislation during the middle of the measles outbreak. A pediatric infectious-disease physician reached for the right analogy: "It's kind of like if you were a firefighter trying to put out a house fire," he said, "and somebody is standing on the hose."

Florida announced plans last year to end vaccine mandates for hepatitis B, chicken pox and bacterial meningitis, with seven additional diseases to follow.

There are positive signs. In congressional testimony last month, Kennedy repeatedly backed away from his criticism of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. He told the Senate Finance Committee: "We have advised every child to get the MMR. That's what we do." President Donald Trump has nominated Erica Schwartz, a physician who has supported childhood vaccination, to lead the CDC.

Routine immunization has averted 154 million deaths since 1974, nearly all among young children. Sustaining that requires trustworthy, consistent and transparent institutions. We know that eliminating nonmedical exemptions works. We know motivational interviewing works. We know the diseases vaccines prevent, because clinicians were trained in an era when those diseases still filled pediatric wards. The diseases eliminated by vaccination did not disappear because people stopped fearing them. They disappeared because institutions, clinicians and communities sustained the effort to keep them gone.

Jonathan Slater is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Pentagon official: Iran war has cost $25B by Connor O'Brien and Leo Shane III

 The figure is the most specific price tag the administration has provided on the U.S. military conflict. 

 The Iran war has already cost the Pentagon $25 billion, a top Defense Department official said Wednesday, providing the first official price tag for a U.S. military campaign with little public support that has stretched two months.

Acting Pentagon comptroller Jules Hurst gave the figure during a House Armed Services Committee hearing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Dan Caine on the department’s budget. It’s the most specific number the Trump administration has attached to an effort that, despite a recent ceasefire, has no clear end. 

 

“Approximately [to] this day, we’re spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury, most of that in munitions,” Hurst said. “There is part of that, it’s obviously [operations and maintenance] and equipment replacement.”

But that figure falls far behind many outside estimates, given the torrid pace of air and sea operations and the costs to restock expensive air defenses. It is also dwarfed by reports that the administration could seek hundreds of billions of dollars to cover the Middle East campaign.

Hurst told attendees at a March defense summit in Washington that the first week of the Iran war cost roughly $11 billion. The $25 billion price tag comes as administration officials discuss a supplemental request of up to $200 billion to pay for the conflict and weapons replenishment. Officials, though, have stressed publicly that they haven’t yet settled on a price tag for a supplemental request.

 

The Pentagon is expected to submit a supplemental funding request soon. Hurst told lawmakers the administration will make it “once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict.”

Ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who asked about the war’s cost, appeared surprised by the Pentagon budget chief’s specificity.

“I’m glad you answered that question, because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time, and no one’s given us the number,” Smith told Hurst. “So if you could get those details over to us, that would be great.”

 

The hearing, ostensibly about the administration’s 2027 budget request, quickly turned to Iran and whether the military conflict has produced any real strategic wins for America.

“As we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started,” Smith said. “They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.”

But Hegseth preemptively hit skeptics of the war.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats,” he said, “and some Republicans.” 

 

Teslas are aging like old smartphones you can't upgrade by Joann Muller

 

Tesla's admission that millions of its older cars can't support full self-driving underscores a new reality: software-driven vehicles are starting to age like smartphones — but without an easy upgrade path.

Why it matters: Cars last far longer than phones — about 13 years on average — setting up costly headaches as their hardware struggles to keep up with rapidly evolving features.

The big picture: AI software is improving much faster than the chips and sensors behind it — an expensive hardware ceiling for automobiles that could soon hit millions of non-Teslas, too.

• The risk is that your car's capabilities might expire before the car itself is ready for the junkyard.

Between the lines: The hardware gap isn't exclusive to Tesla.

• "This is just an early sign of a bigger, forever problem that will affect any privately owned autonomous vehicle technology," autonomy expert Phil Koopman, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, told Axios.
• "Cell phones and laptops get tossed when the technology ages out in perhaps five years," he said. "Cars still have a dozen or two years left on the road with obsolete computers. What's the plan for that?"

Driving the news: For this week, it is a Tesla problem. CEO Elon Musk has long envisioned a world in which cars get better with age through regular software updates.

• He's assured Tesla owners that cars produced since 2019 have all the hardware they need to eventually drive themselves.
• Last week during the company's quarterly earnings, he reversed course, telling investors the computers in Teslas built before 2024 lack sufficient memory to achieve fully autonomous driving.

The broken promise has already triggered an avalanche of lawsuits from Tesla owners, many of whom paid thousands of dollars upfront for a feature they'll never get to use.

Tesla is offering two solutions, and both will be expensive, considering an estimated 3.5 million vehicles — 40% of all Teslas on the road worldwide — are affected.

• Customers can get a discount to trade in their car for a new one equipped with the latest hardware.

 

• Or they can upgrade their car by having the computer, cameras and wiring replaced, requiring a quasi-rebuild of the vehicle.

Reality check: Upgrading the hardware is the equivalent of major brain surgery, a process that Musk previously acknowledged would be painful and difficult.

• Tesla hasn't said how much the hardware upgrades will cost, or when retrofits will be available.
• As a stopgap, it's planning an "FSD v14 Lite" software update for older cars to provide improved assisted-driving capability that's still short of full autonomy.

What they're saying: Not every Tesla owner will take action, but even if only 1 million vehicles are retrofitted at $3,000 to $5,000 per vehicle, the liability would be $3 billion to $5 billion, figures Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research, per the Wall Street Journal.

What we're watching: For a while, expect manufacturers to offer a "mid-life upgrade strategy" for cars, similar to Tesla's current plan, Koopman said.

• Eventually, though, carmakers have an incentive to stop providing software updates in older — but perfectly operable vehicles.

The bottom line: After all, manufacturers would probably rather sell a new car than upgrade an old one.