The Los Angeles Left Is at War With Itself Over the Mayor’s Race

By

-

May 29, 2026

the-los-angeles-left-is-at-war-with-itself-over-the-mayor’s-race — The Los Angeles Left Is at War With Itself Over the Mayor’s Race

There are two democratic socialists running for mayor in Los Angeles, but many West Coast leftists are already feeling the crush of defeat.

Rae Huang and Nithya Raman have each, at varying times, been hailed as Southern California’s analogue to Zohran Mamdani. Yet when the rallies and canvassing sessions have wrapped up, leftists admit that neither has the coalition nor the talent that fueled the New York City mayor’s rise. Huang voices the platform they like; Raman has demonstrated some political chops. Mamdani won because he had both.

With less than a week to go before election day in a crowded nonpartisan primary, Huang, Raman, and 11 other candidates are all vying for second place to the presumed front-runner, incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. Unless someone gets over 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff in November.

There’s little chance either slot will go to Huang, a Presbyterian minister and activist who jumped into the race last November with plans to run from Bass’s left by campaigning on free buses, affordable housing, and police accountability. She has struggled to break 10 percent in the polls.

Raman, a city councilmember representing a sprawling district that spans the Los Feliz, Hollywood, and San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, surprised her allies and opponents alike when she joined the race just hours before the February filing deadline, but she has since amassed enough support that she could conceivably compete with Bass — or with Spencer Pratt, a right-wing reality TV star whose candidacy has fractured the city’s already divided left.

In the eyes of some leftists, a vote for Raman is the pragmatic choice to stop Pratt from making it to November, and a vote for Huang is a throwaway in the name of ideological purity.

Pratt has built a campaign attacking Bass’s handling of the Pacific Palisades fire, calling unhoused people drug-addicted “zombies,” and arguing that LA’s housing crisis should be solved with police force. In the eyes of some leftists, a vote for Raman is the pragmatic choice to stop Pratt from making it to November, and a vote for Huang is a throwaway in the name of ideological purity.

“While I understand the desire to vote for the most value-aligned candidate,” said Leslie Chang, a Raman supporter and co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America–Los Angeles, “if it comes at the cost of everyday people being able to live a better life, that’s not something I have sympathy for.”

Huang’s supporters, meanwhile, argue that Raman’s platform offers little daylight from Bass, whose status quo gave rise to Pratt in the first place.

“Those who consider themselves progressive, or even on the left, have kind of gone into retreat and not let themselves imagine a better political future,” said Michael Burns, a writer and performer who mailed in his vote for Huang. “And for me, supporting candidates with a bold vision, with a left vision, is part of contributing to that imaginary.”

Though both Huang and Raman are Democratic Socialists of America members, the local chapter has not endorsed either candidate, and Raman’s three DSA colleagues on the City Council have endorsed Bass. Huang and Raman’s campaigns did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Despite being a DSA member, Nithya Raman has at times aligned herself with more conservative forces and struggled to build coalitions on the left. After running in 2020 on calls to defund the police, she voted to expand the Los Angeles Police Department budget in 2021, 2022, and 2023. But she also voted against police raises in 2023, and this year, she opposed a plan by Bass to hire 170 more officers. In 2024, Raman accepted an endorsement from the Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles, a Zionist organization that opposed a ceasefire in Gaza, which earned her a censure from DSA–LA.

“I don’t know what version of Nithya I’m ever getting on anything,” said William Gude, a Hollywood resident. Known as @FilmthePoliceLA on social media, Gude is a fierce police accountability advocate who said he would have voted for Raman had she maintained her policy positions from her rise to City Council in 2020. Now, he says he finds it difficult to get responses from Raman’s office regarding police misconduct.

Raman’s supporters argue that at least their candidate has a political record to scrutinize. Huang has never held elected office, and her lack of campaign experience has shown itself on the trail. Earlier this week, the LA Reporter exposed that the Huang campaign had misrepresented its fundraising totals by claiming publicly that Huang had raised enough to qualify for public matching funds, when in reality she’d fallen far short. (The campaign has chalked the mistake up to clerical errors and lack of capacity.)

“The reason why I’m not voting for Rae Huang is kind of like a pragmatic approach and a belief that change comes incrementally,” said Sean Wakasa, who co-chairs DSA–LA along with Chang. “You have to make a power analysis about what’s achievable and what’s likely to happen, and that’s what keeps my vote for Nithya going strong.”

The most recent poll in the race, released from the Los Angeles Times and University of California, Berkeley on Thursday, has only increased the stakes. It shows Raman in striking distance of Bass, with 25 percent support to the incumbent’s 26, and ahead of Pratt, at 22.

In the eyes of the most ardent Raman backers, Huang’s voters, who made up 9 percent of respondents, are both delusional and important. Raman supporters call for Huang to drop out and for her voters who have yet to cast their ballots to jump ship. But not all leftist Raman skeptics favor Huang: Roughly 10 percent of voters remain undecided. Gude said he’s considering sitting this election out.

Raman also has a tendency to struggle during debates and public conversations; in an appearance on influential political commentator Hasan Piker’s stream earlier this month, she stumbled over questions about the sale of property in illegal West Bank settlements and the LAPD’s training collaboration with the Israeli military. Combined with the Huang campaign’s messy rollout, it’s possible neither candidate is quite spotlight-ready to command an audience the size of LA.

Leftist, liberal, and moderate Angelenos alike fear there’s someone else who is.

Los Angeles, CA - May 20: LA Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign "block party" event on 10th Ave. in Los Angeles, CA on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) — Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign event in Los Angeles on May 20, 2026. Photo: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

You might have seen Spencer Pratt on television 20 years ago, screaming “What are you crying about, Stephanie?” and calling his little sister, the target of his ire, a “crazy bitch.” He made millions on the reality TV show “The Hills” — then blew most of it on crystals, expensive wine, and other luxury habits. His campaign, too, is predicated on the idea of great personal loss: His platform centers the destruction of his home in the Palisades fire, for which he blames Bass (and not climate change, which, on one of many podcast appearances with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he implied was a hoax).

Pratt, who did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, has sought to paint himself as a regular guy fed up with the corruption of “elites” like Bass and Raman, and desperate to get the “bums” off the street. In one ad, he stands in front of an Airstream trailer, where he claimed to be living after his house burned down. (He was actually staying at the Hotel Bel-Air for over $1,000 a night.)

His situation has not translated into a drop of empathy for the people who actually cannot afford homes. “This idea that they’re forced on the street right now is a lie that our city is perpetuating,” said Pratt during a local ABC interview, referencing the city’s unhoused population. He has claimed they are on “super meth,” and argued that they don’t want to go into shelters, in part, because they want to continue to “abuse” animals on the street. Pratt has said that if elected, he plans to have police “arresting people and the people that aren’t getting arrested, we’re getting to mandatory medical treatment.” He argued that whoever was left would go to Seattle once his administration stopped providing resources and housing services — or, as he called it, “unplug them.”

Those “talking points” are “disconnected from the data and the reality of the situation,” said Benjamin Henwood, director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Homelessness has nearly doubled in Los Angeles over the last decade, though it’s dipped slightly in the last couple of years. “We know from research and data that [homelessness] really is driven by housing affordability.”

The idea that Los Angeles has enough beds, and people just don’t want to use them, is belied by the available data. As of 2023, an audit from the LA city controller’s office found that roughly 46,260 unhoused people live in Los Angeles, but there were only 16,000 interim shelter beds available. And while the city has added some new beds since then, Henwood said they’re not nearly enough for everyone.

“That’s one of the most expensive ways to try to address homelessness.”

Substance abuse and mental health problems are also not the main drivers, though they are often the most noticeable to the general public. And it’s not clear if Pratt’s arrest-first strategy would even be legal, Henwood said. But, “practically speaking, that’s one of the most expensive ways to try to address homelessness,” said Henwood. “It uses a huge amount of resources, and at the end of the day, people can only be incarcerated for short periods of time, and then they’ll have to be released. So I don’t actually know how that translates into any kind of longer term goal, but it does spend a lot of public tax dollars.”

Matthew Lewis, director of communications at California YIMBY, an organization that pushes for more development of high-density housing to solve the housing crisis, argues that Pratt, who he vehemently disagrees with, and the wave of anti-homeless legislation across the country is a reaction to policy failures in Democratic cities to adequately address the housing crisis. “You see the same thing play out all over the place,” he said, “and what that suggests is that this is not a Spencer Pratt phenomenon, this is an American city phenomenon. Spencer Pratt is a consequence of pretending we could brush it under the rug.”

“This is not a Spencer Pratt phenomenon, this is an American city phenomenon.”

But Bass has been the subject of LA-specific grievances. She faced intense scrutiny for her handling of the twin Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed dozens of people. Despite promising not to travel abroad during her tenure as mayor, Bass was in Ghana attending an embassy party when the fires broke out and returned the following day, leading to widespread condemnation and accusations of mismanagement and apathy. (Her defenders point out that strong Santa Ana winds whipped up last year’s fires, and a mayor cannot control the weather.)

Despite the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Pratt’s plan, Henwood said his message is landing with voters in LA for a reason. “People are frustrated,” said Henwood. In 2024, Angelenos voted to increase the sales tax rate to fund homelessness programs and, Henwood argued, Democrats set expectations too high on what the tax would really be able to achieve. “People in LA did that because they’re like, this is bad, we’ve got to do something about it, and they did that, and yet the problem still wasn’t fixed, and so they’re frustrated.”

Frustration with a Democratic establishment that has struggled to improve the city’s core issues has always been the key sell of Huang’s campaign.

She seizes on some of the same ire that motivates Pratt’s base but wields it to nearly opposite ends. Huang’s platform calls for public and social housing that would be owned by the city, immune from the whims of the profit-driven market. Raman calls for social housing too, but has also pushed for new exemptions to the city’s “Mansion Tax,” a progressive tax on the sale of certain high-value property. Huang and supporters have criticized the reforms as catering to corporate real estate lobby interests.

Wakasa, of DSA, said he remains excited about the fact that there are two democratic socialists in the race and the necessary debate it has sparked. As DSA grows as a political force, it’s received scrutiny for declining to endorse in the race, though it did ultimately “recommend” Raman in a voter guide.

In his rounds canvassing for DSA–LA City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, Wakasa said most of the voters he encounters aren’t caught up in leftist infighting. They’re more concerned about the lack of street lights amid a rash of copper wire theft or unfixed potholes and damaged sidewalks.

“Overall, there’s definitely a wider frustration with feeling like day-to-day activity in the city is not very smooth,” Wakasa said, “and just a kind of that burning question of, ‘How do we fix this and how do our electeds fix this?”

A second-place finish for Raman would be seen as a major victory for LA’s progressive left with the potential to reverberate for years in city hall politics. Failing to make the runoff could be an equally large disappointment: a flawed yet promising candidate whose abbreviated campaign squandered a viable path to the seat, leaving behind a fractured left that couldn’t coalesce around a candidate.

Burns, the Huang voter who lives in Los Feliz and has twice voted for Raman’s city council runs, said he understands the outcome will likely leave Huang out of the runoff, but he believes her candidacy can translate into energy for future leftist campaigns.

“I genuinely believe that Rae’s primary goal isn’t just winning this election,” Burns said. “It’s really trying to build momentum for a different political future in Los Angeles.”

“Rae Huang is a real one,” Pratt wrote on X on Thursday, “i respect that she actually walks the walk.” In the post, he lumped Raman in with “corrupt champagne socialists,” earning a short-lived share from Huang, who added, “It’s clear that LA is fed up with the status quo and is looking for new leadership.”

She quickly deleted her post and within a few hours had replaced it with a new statement. “Spencer is an opportunist dehumanizing the vulnerable to advance his media career,” Huang wrote, “he has no interest in meeting the needs of the majority of Angelenos.”

Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need.

By

Emily Schwing

-

May 29, 2026

0

alaska’s-deteriorating-schools-could-receive-more-than-$148-million-for-repairs-it’s-a-fraction-of-what-they-need. — Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need.

Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education.

The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking investment in Alaska’s public schools have resulted in leaking roofs, broken water pipes and failing foundations. If the governor signs off, it would be the largest allocation in more than a decade. The money could pay for more than 30 projects but would still cover only a fraction of the requested repairs.

Some of the worst conditions exist inside rural public schools that serve predominantly Indigenous student populations and are often used as emergency shelters. In December, former students and concerned parents told the State Board of Education about squalid conditions inside Alaska’s only state-owned boarding school. Their testimony further fueled efforts by lawmakers to help unburden cash-strapped rural school districts in communities where residents don’t pay taxes to help fund education.

As Alaska legislators wrestled with statewide budget shortfalls, money for education, including for school construction and maintenance, “bubbled to the top,” according to state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, an Alaska Native Democrat who represents the largest rural school district in the state. “Even though the whole state is having a problem balancing its checkbook, at the top of the list is education,” he said during an Alaska Senate Finance Committee meeting in March, at which legislators questioned state education department leadership.

Every year, districts follow an application process to submit their construction and maintenance funding requests to Alaska’s education department. Since 1998, the Legislature has funded only a fraction of those proposed projects. Last year, lawmakers were able to secure about 5% of the nearly $800 million that both rural and urban school districts said they needed to keep their buildings safe and operating. This year, school districts requested more than $1.12 billion for infrastructure — the second-highest total requested statewide since 1998. Despite the legislative infusion of cash, the 2027 budget for school infrastructure will cover only about 13% of what school districts asked for.

“I do appreciate it,” said Kuspuk School District Superintendent Madeline Aguillard, “but the hole that the state is in is so deep and so big. It’s going to take a long time to hit that word ‘enough.’”

Aguillard’s district includes schools in nine roadless communities along the middle stretch of the Kuskokwim River in the heart of Alaska’s interior. The district first requested funds from the state to repair a leaking roof at its school in Sleetmute in 2007. For nearly two decades, the leak persisted, resulting in other problems for the building. In 2021, an architect inspected the building and uncovered severe structural damage. Further reporting by ProPublica, KYUK and NPR revealed a bat infestation and other serious health and safety issues in Sleetmute’s school.

At least one lawmaker has publicly labeled that school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with Alaska’s public school infrastructure. Aguillard said news reporting in 2024 on serious structural deficiencies inside Sleetmute’s K-12 Jack Egnaty Sr. School “really lit a fire” in the state Legislature.

A room full of scraps of wood. The wall is partially destroyed, showing insulation and wooden studs. — Damage inside the woodshop of Sleetmute’s school in 2024. The school district first requested funds from the state to repair a leaking roof in 2007. Emily Schwing/KYUK

For years, lawmakers and state education department staff have blamed each other for the annual school infrastructure shortfall. Last year, education Commissioner Deena Bishop told Propublica, KYUK and NPR that she can do little more than advocate on behalf of districts. “The power of the purse is with the Legislature,” said Bishop, who has served as the state’s education commissioner for three years.

But this March, at the Senate Finance Committee meeting with education department leaders, co-chair Bert Stedman, a Republican, suggested the committee had not received sufficient information from school districts and Bishop. “She’s responsible. The buck stops with her,” Stedman, from the coastal hub community of Sitka in Southeast Alaska, told his colleagues. (In response, education department staff said they rely on information school districts provide about conditions inside buildings; those districts have an annual opportunity to make requests for money for maintenance and construction.) Stedman, Hoffman and one other ranking co-chair have been on the Finance Committee for more than 15 years. None of the co-chairs agreed to comment for this story.

Previous reporting by the news organizations has also brought to light several problems with the system school districts must use to request funds and the process the state education department relies on to rank those projects. “There is, I would personally say, a flaw in the system, in the ranking that we are trying to fix,” Bishop said during that March hearing.

When rights are sold back as concessions

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

when-rights-are-sold-back-as-concessions — When rights are sold back as concessions

Wars do not always continue through explosions. Sometimes the more dangerous phase begins when the noise falls, markets steady and governments hurry to turn a ceasefire into proof of victory. Iran is entering that phase. The danger is not only another round of fighting, but the quieter possibility that war is reorganised into a diplomatic architecture of pressure, in which the return to normal life is sold back to Iran as a concession.

The world wants the Strait of Hormuz reopened, oil risk reduced, shipping routes predictable and energy prices controlled. Iran’s question is different: will the world simply pass through Iran’s neighbourhood again, or will Iran itself be reconnected to finance, trade, insurance and credible security guarantees?

The concession that is not one

What is Washington actually offering?

When US officials speak of sanctions waivers, oil revenues, frozen funds or easier trade, much of this is presented as diplomacy. Yet a large part of it is the partial return of what the sanctions architecture has already obstructed: Iran’s access to its own money, its ability to sell oil and its right to conduct ordinary commerce without every bank and insurer fearing secondary penalties. The frozen funds at the centre of these talks have been reported at around $100 billion, much of it from Iranian oil sales. This is how a manufactured concession works: scarcity is created first, and relief from it is then presented as a prize.

The reported 60-day memorandum makes the imbalance visible. Iran would reopen Hormuz, clear mines and enter nuclear negotiations. Washington would ease port and shipping restrictions and issue sanctions waivers for oil sales. But the most valuable American steps — broader sanctions relief and the release of frozen funds — would be negotiated during the window and implemented only as part of a final, verifiable agreement. Iranian moves would be immediate and visible; the decisive American concessions would remain deferred, conditional and reversible. In post-war diplomacy, sequence is not a technical matter. It is power.

Hormuz, and the lever that bites back

Iran has also tried to turn normality into leverage. Hormuz is one of the nervous systems of the global economy, carrying roughly 20 million barrels of oil a day in 2024, about a fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption. Disruption there moves through energy markets, insurance desks, Asian supply chains and Western politics.

Still, Hormuz is not comparable to frozen Iranian revenues. Frozen funds belong to Iran; the strait is a shared international chokepoint. Washington can restrict Iran’s money and shift much of the burden onto Iran, but Tehran cannot disrupt Hormuz without sending some of the pain back to a country whose oil revenues, imports and maritime trade depend on the same waters. One lever mainly bleeds the other side; the other can also bleed the hand that holds it.

That makes Hormuz a self-costing lever, to be spent with precision rather than consumed as a slogan. If Iran reopens shipping lanes or accepts de-escalatory steps, each move should carry an immediate, measurable equivalent: oil sales that can actually be paid for, insurance relief that reaches vessels and security commitments that carry a cost if broken. Otherwise, Iran will have helped restore calm to the world economy while remaining sealed inside the same isolation.

When sanctions become the negotiating table

Washington’s sanctions campaign has not stopped while talks proceed; it has been folded into them.

The Treasury’s Economic Fury campaign has targeted Iran’s ability to generate, move and repatriate funds even as diplomacy continued. On 28 May, 2026, Washington issued fresh oil-trade sanctions on vessels and entities tied to Iranian crude, despite reports of a tentative ceasefire extension and plans to ease shipping restrictions through Hormuz.

The timing matters. Sanctions during negotiation are not an accidental contradiction; they help define it. Washington raises the cost of Iran’s oil, shipping, insurance and payments first, so that reducing a portion of that pressure later can be packaged as relief.

There is a sharper irony. At the height of the war, Washington briefly authorised the sale of Iranian oil already at sea to bring barrels to market and ease prices. Iranian oil was useful to the world when prices needed taming, even while Iran’s access to the value of that oil remained negotiable — the barrels serving the market before they served Iran.

The crack between Washington and Tel Aviv

The widest crack in this architecture runs between the US and Israel. They still share the aim of constraining Iran, but they do not bear the same costs or follow the same clock. Washington needs energy calm and a politically manageable exit from escalation. Israel is more concerned with preserving operational freedom, preventing Iranian recovery and keeping the Iranian file tied to Lebanon.

With the draft also touching on Lebanon and the Israel-Hezbollah front, one US official, quoted by Axios, drew the distinction bluntly: Netanyahu has domestic considerations, but the US president must weigh the interests of the global economy.

The divergence becomes useful only if turned into design: a Hormuz concession should be tied not merely to American assurances, but to the cost of renewed Israeli escalation. A formula that leaves Israel free to strike while requiring Iran alone to cool the crisis would not be a ceasefire, but a one-sided cooling mechanism for the world economy.

China is a corridor, not a saviour

China matters, but not in the sentimental form often imagined in Tehran. Beijing’s decision to invoke its anti-sanctions law against the blacklisting of refiners that buy Iranian crude was not charity. It was a defence of Chinese jurisdiction, energy security and resistance to American long-arm measures.

The new legal turn opens the possibility of something more durable. Tehran should convert that channel into stable contracts, protected payments and insured shipping, so that each new sanction against Iranian oil imposes a cost inside the US-China relationship itself. Otherwise, China remains a buyer with options.

The battlefield Tehran cannot ignore

The gravest vulnerability lies neither in Washington nor Tel Aviv nor Beijing. It lies in Tehran.

External pressure becomes most effective when it finds a domestic partner in failures of governance. The IMF’s current country data project Iran’s economy to contract by 6.1 per cent in 2026, with average consumer price inflation at 68.9 per cent. Iranian society is being asked to absorb war, sanctions, inflation and reconstruction while offered little transparency over costs, priorities or the distribution of sacrifice.

Sanctions matter, but they do not explain everything; domestic decisions will determine whether economic pain becomes political corrosion. If the state proclaims victory while people experience higher prices, tighter restrictions and no visible dividend from endurance, the ceasefire hollows out from within. An adversary need not invent new pressure when the distance between official narrative and lived experience does part of the work.

Public resilience is leverage only when it is renewed. Treated as an infinite reserve, it becomes the weakest point at the table. A purely external strategy therefore needs a domestic bargain: honest accounting of losses, a credible reconstruction map and visible relief where relief is claimed. Otherwise, the state may negotiate abroad while losing the social base that gives negotiation meaning.

The measure of victory

Iran has leverage, but leverage without design becomes a liability. Hormuz can be traded for immediate, verifiable financial and insurance relief. Nuclear capacity can secure properly sequenced sanctions relief and security guarantees. Frozen assets should be framed as a legal obligation on Washington, not a favour from it. Social endurance, the most fragile asset of all, must be protected by trust rather than spent as a silent reserve.

That posture is neither maximalism nor capitulation. It is sequenced reciprocity: no immediate Iranian move without a simultaneous American step, no self-costing lever surrendered before its replacement is secured, and no definition of “concession” that equates the return of what was taken with the surrender of what was built.

The coming months will be measured by whether two returns arrive together: the world’s return to normal passage through the region and Iran’s return to normal access to its own economic life. If the first happens without the second, the ceasefire will not have ended the war — only lowered its volume. And Iran will find itself bargaining not only with its adversaries, but with its own assets.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Startup offers free home cleaning—if it can record it all for robot training

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

startup-offers-free-home-cleaning—if-it-can-record-it-all-for-robot-training — Startup offers free home cleaning—if it can record it all for robot training

A tech startup is offering New York City residents free home cleaning with a twist—it will send “professional cleaners” wearing cameras to record everything they do. All that data will supposedly be used to train AI-driven robots.

The unusual pitch comes from the German startup MicroAGI, whose website describes the company as a “team of engineers, researchers, and operators on a mission to accelerate embodied AI.” It began publicizing the free home-cleaning service run through its newly launched Shift app on May 28, with posts on social media sites such as X and LinkedIn featuring a video set to the upbeat piano notes of the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys song “Empire State of Mind.”

The Shift app website claims it “connects New Yorkers with free, trusted professional house cleaners” in exchange for recording “first-person cleaning footage to help train the next generation of household robots.” The “book a free cleaning” link directs clients to enter information such as a phone number, email address, and home address, along with access instructions, before booking an appointment that lasts an estimated two hours.

From a privacy standpoint, the Shift app website’s FAQ states that “names, faces or other personal information is automatically anonymized, with any sensitive details blurred before it’s ever used…. We blur all personally identifiable information from screens and ID cards, to pieces of paper and cell phones to help protect both you and your home.”

The Shift app’s privacy policy says the company uses “advanced machine learning models” running directly on smart glasses or video capture devices to “perform irreversible transformations such as automated face blurring and identifier obfuscation” before any data is uploaded to the company’s cloud servers.

But there is no mention of whether people can ever request that their home cleaning videos be removed from the training datasets for robots. And it’s unclear whether the company’s anonymization techniques are enough to ensure that people’s homes can’t ever be identified when they appear in training datasets.

Although the Shift app website claims “there is no catch” for the free cleaning, the FAQ notes that booking an appointment requires payment information and warns that clients may be charged if they cancel appointments with less than 24 hours’ notice or are not available to let cleaners in at the appointment time. The Shift app terms of service document also seeks to absolve the platform of responsibility for any property damage, theft, or personal injury that may ensue from the cleaning appointments.

The reason behind the promotion

So why would a tech startup offer free cleaning? The first-person cleaning data is supposedly valuable enough for the company to “offer cleaning services free of charge for a limited time” by covering the cost of the professional cleaners, according to the Shift app website. The Shift app’s privacy policy describes the “core of microagi’s business” as “the collection of data for robotics training.”

The temporary free cleaning offer for New York City homes may also serve as a promotional hook for the Shift app’s main purpose—recruiting people to wear a “recording headstrap” to “capture short videos of everyday household or professional tasks” in exchange for supposedly getting paid $20 per hour plus bonuses.

That primary function for the Shift app is briefly highlighted in the promotional video about free home cleanings, which shows US general manager Harry Kilberg claiming the platform already pays “tens of thousands of people” across 15 countries to record daily work and chores.

The main Shift app website, designed to sign up contributors, suggests that more than 10,000 “operators” have already been collectively paid more than $5 million in the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year.

That makes MicroAGI one of the latest known startups to be recruiting and paying ordinary people to record their everyday tasks to provide robot training data. Other such companies include Encord and Micro1, with the latter having hired thousands of contract workers across 50 countries such as India, Nigeria, and Argentina, according to MIT Technology Review.

The Shift app’s website suggests MicroAGI is launching an aggressive recruiting campaign with dozens of blog posts tailored toward NYC university and college students, teachers, restaurant and delivery workers, and even residents of specific neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the company has spread Craigslist postings targeting residents of other US cities such as Boston—and MicroAGI founder and CEO Bercan Kilic teased the prospect of the Shift app soon launching in additional cities such as London, Munich, and Zurich.

Nine arrested as Spain targets Mediterranean migrant smuggling operation

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

nine-arrested-as-spain-targets-mediterranean-migrant-smuggling-operation — Nine arrested as Spain targets Mediterranean migrant smuggling operation

Spanish authorities arrested nine people and dismantled a migrant smuggling network that allegedly transported irregular migrants from Algeria to Spain and onward to other European countries, Europol said.

The operation was carried out jointly by Spain’s Guardia Civil and National Police, with support from Europol. Investigators said the network operated in the province of Almería and coordinated both Mediterranean crossings from Algeria and the movement of migrants toward France and other parts of Europe.

Authorities conducted coordinated raids in Almería, Roquetas de Mar, Vícar and Adra, arresting nine suspects and seizing cash, drugs, vehicles and equipment allegedly linked to the smuggling operation.

According to Europol, officers seized 43,000 euros ($49,000), 61 kilograms of hashish, three high-powered engines, 30 vehicles, two large boats, bladed weapons, an air pistol and false documents. Investigators said the network had invested more than 500,000 euros in movable and immovable assets used to support its activities.

Officials said the organisation was made up of Algerian, Moroccan and Spanish nationals and operated through a hierarchical structure with clearly assigned roles.

Leaders allegedly supervised the overall operation, while administrators coordinated members and managed logistics linked to the smuggling routes. Another group was tasked with providing operational support and security.

Investigators said the network was divided into branches handling different stages of the journey. One branch organised boat departures from Algeria and arrivals on the Spanish coast, while another facilitated onward travel from Spain to France and other European Union countries.

Authorities said the group had access to fast boats, fuel and experienced captains, allowing it to support both its own operations and other criminal groups. Some members allegedly reported boats used in smuggling activities as stolen in an effort to obstruct investigations.

Europol said migrant smuggling remains a major criminal threat to the European Union and requires coordinated action targeting recruitment, transport logistics and financial networks.

The agency said it supports national investigations through operational analysis, information-sharing and joint operations.

Europol also highlighted the creation of its European Centre Against Migrant Smuggling, established in March 2026 under new EU legislation adopted in December 2025. The centre is intended to strengthen information exchange, operational coordination and expertise in areas including open-source intelligence and financial investigations.

Shangri-La 2026: US heft, Chinese reluctance, Indian reckoning

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

shangri-la-2026:-us-heft,-chinese-reluctance,-indian-reckoning — Shangri-La 2026: US heft, Chinese reluctance, Indian reckoning

Every year, in a gleaming hotel ballroom in Singapore, the Indo-Pacific strategic order gets set for a public display. This happens not through signing of communiqués or conventions but through who shows up, at what level, and what they dare to say in front of an “unscripted” audience.

This is what makes Shangri-La Dialogue, now in its 23rd year, the most talked of barometer of Asia’s regional power equations. And the 2026 edition this weekend is unfolding this story of an unequal triangle – with radically different levels of confidence, comfort, and clarity guiding their engagement.

The United States sits at its apex – not because anyone voted for it, but because no one has successfully challenged it so far. China occupies the second vertex: militarily formidable, economically indispensable, and yet diplomatically uncomfortable in the very room where it should be most assertive. India holds the third point – ascending, consequential, and only now, after two decades of negligence, beginning to understand the strategic significance of this forum.

To collectively read these three trajectories reveals a lot about the Indo-Pacific security dynamics.

The American constant

Since 2002, most of the sitting US defense secretaries – Rumsfeld, Gates, Panetta, Hagel, Carter, Mattis, Shanahan, Austin – have delivered plenary speeches at this forum, and now Pete Hegseth isreturning for his second consecutive edition.

The forum is Washington’s annual pilgrimage to explain its strategic vision for the Indo-Pacific and to reassure US allies – before a rather influential audience of defence ministers, military chiefs, and strategic thinkers from over 40 nations that no other platform assembles in quite the same manner.

This is not routine multilateralism. It is an institutional expression of hegemonic commitment – the deliberate, annual signal that the United States regards the Indo-Pacific as its primary strategic theater and intends to remain its defining security provider.

Even as Washington’s domestic politics convulse and successive administrations disagree violently on trade and grand strategy, their Shangri-La addresses endure. Given their discursive nature these speeches are often more revealing than National Security Strategy documents: strategies can be rewritten, but showing up costs political capital that the US chooses to keep investing.

This sustained American presence creates the gravitational field in which others like China and India must choreograph their presence. The forum’s credibility test is implicitly set by Washington: show up with your defense minister, make your case and take those open house questions. Countries that meet that benchmark signal confidence. Countries that cannot reveal something about themselves stay at the sidelines.

The Chinese paradox

Nothing about China’s relationship with Shangri-La is simple. China’s military expenditure has risen every year for 31 consecutive years, reaching an $336 billion in 2025, second only to the United States. The People’s Liberation Army fields the world’s largest navy by hull count, has the most advanced ballistic missiles of any country in the region and a nuclear triad it has spent a decade modernizing.

By any material measure, China is the Indo-Pacific’s pre-eminent military power. And yet it cannot comfortably sit at Shangri La Dialogue. The most immediate reason is its institutional rot.

Dong Jun is the third consecutive serving defencs minister to face corruption investigation, following Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, both subsequently expelled from the Communist Party. In October 2025, Xi Jinping removed General He Weidong, the PLA’s second-highest-ranking officer, alongside the earlier suspension of Admiral Miao Hua – respectively Vice Chairman and senior members of China’s seven-person Central Military Commission (CMC). January this year saw Xi removing the second Vice Chairman of CMC Zhang Youxia.

Its not possible to send a defense minister who’s under investigation to face unscripted questions from forty nations’ military leaders.

The deeper problem is structural, not merely personal. There is a growing sense within Beijing’s political elites that Shangri La Dialogue has become nothing more than a forum to highlight and shame China’s perceived rule-breaking behavior. The South China Sea, Taiwan, the Quad, AUKUS – none of these are subjects Beijing can handle in an open Q&A format.

Unlike its own Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, where China controls the agenda and the guest list, Shangri-La Dialogue belongs to no one – which, in practice, makes it vulnerable to Washington’s agenda.

General Meng Xiangqing – a professor and strategist at China’s National Defense University – is leading the delegation for the 2026 Shangri La Dialogue.

This decision to downgrade attendance for the second straight year, after four consecutive years (except 2020 year of pandemic) of minister level engagement during 2019-2024, is not a weakness in the conventional sense. It is more like a calculated retreat from terrain that does not favor China’s ascendence. The world’s second-largest military power has decided that talking is riskier than silence.

India’s reckoning, long overdue

If China’s story at Shangri-La is a paradox – great power, thin presence – India’s is a prolonged missed opportunity now being corrected at accelerating pace. For most of the forum’s history, New Delhi’s engagement was, charitably speaking, desultory. It sent ministers of state. It sent military officials. In 2024, it sent effectively no one of consequence.

In the forum’s entire 23-year history, only Manohar Parrikar in 2016 appeared as a full defense minister. Modi’s celebrated 2018 Shangri-La keynote – still cited as India’s Indo-Pacific manifesto – was delivered as prime minister, not defense minister, representing a diplomatic one-off. This had coincided with his bilateral visit to Singapore.

What has shifted is compound and consequential. India’s 2026-27 defense budget rose by 15% to 7.85 trillion rupees (US$91 billion), making it world’s fourth-largest military spender. Defense exports have hit a historic high of 240 billion rupees (US$2.8 billion), with a 500 billion rupee (US$5.8billion) target set for 2029-30.

Operation Sindoor – India’s May 2025 precision strikes against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan – has altered something fundamental in India’s strategic self-confidence. The latest Nilgiri-class frigates now boast over 75 per cent local content, including BrahMos supersonic missiles, and India now operates three indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.

Nevertheless, India’s arrival in 2026 does not alter the fundamental asymmetry of the India-China military balance. China’s defense budget remains more than three times India’s. Rajnath Singh walking into the Shangri-La ballroom this weekend does not change that equation.

But what it certainly changes is something subtler and yet not trivial: the narrative contest over who speaks for a rules-based Indo-Pacific order. In that contest – fought in plenary halls and corridors rather than high Himalayas – India is present and China is absent.

The Triangle’s verdict

This unequal triangle at Shangri-La is not a simple story of American preponderance and India rising to challenge China. That framing underestimates China’s prowess. This instead is a story about an American-defined forum producing an uncomfortable truth; that multilateral security dialogue in the Indo-Pacific still flows most through the frameworks Washington anchors; that China is militarily supreme but diplomatically retreating; and that India – for all its newly earned confidence – is still finding its feet on a stage it should have claimed long ago.

The forum that doesn’t lie is speaking again this weekend. With the renewed hostilities threatening a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran, China-hawk Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, has the microphone. China, for the second straight year, is only in the corridor whispers. And India, only for the second time in 23 years, is taking its seat at the table.

But that is not a story of India’s triumph, not yet. At best, its a beginning. But, in this unequal triangle, beginnings – rightly calibrated – can become game changing as well.

Israeli Chef Hails First-Ever Michelin Guide Listing for Kosher Restaurant

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

israeli-chef-hails-first-ever-michelin-guide-listing-for-kosher-restaurant — Israeli Chef Hails First-Ever Michelin Guide Listing for Kosher Restaurant

Israeli-owned Mutra in North Miami has become the first kosher restaurant to receive a Michelin star, earning one of the culinary industry’s highest honors less than two years after opening its doors.

The restaurant, led by Israeli-born chef Raz Shabtai, opened in February 2025. Shabtai, who is originally from Jerusalem, received the distinction as Michelin inspectors recognized the restaurant’s approach to kosher dining.

A dish served at Mutra, the first kosher restaurant to be listed in the Michelin Guide. (Social media)

According to the Michelin Guide, the selection came as a surprise because kosher cuisine by definition excludes some ingredients commonly found in fine dining. The guide nevertheless praised Mutra for its interpretation of kosher food, citing its ability to create a broad range of rich and distinctive flavors while adhering to a strict farm-to-table philosophy.

Inspectors also highlighted the restaurant’s dining experience, noting its communal atmosphere, where guests are seated around a bar and offered a variety of dishes.

“Growing up in Jerusalem, I was surrounded by incredible flavors, spices and food that told stories. I wanted to bring that same feeling here, not only for the local Jewish community, but for all of South Florida.”

Chef Raz Shabtai and his team celebrate as they learn that their… pic.twitter.com/Jdd1Bp6mIm

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) May 28, 2026

Shabtai marked the achievement in a post on Instagram, sharing a video from the announcement.

“First, thank you, God. For every blessing, every challenge, and for giving me the strength to keep going when the road seemed impossible.”

He also paid tribute to the restaurant staff.

“To my team – this honor belongs to you. Every long day, every late night, every sacrifice, every detail, every plate. Your passion and dedication turned a dream into reality. I am forever grateful to walk this journey beside you.”

Addressing customers and supporters, he added: “To our guests, friends, and supporters – thank you for believing in us and allowing us to share our story through food.”

Shabtai also reflected on the inspiration behind the restaurant’s name. In a separate post, he said Mutra was named after his grandmother.

“The woman who raised me. The woman whose love, strength, and values shaped the person I am today. I named this restaurant after you so that your spirit would live on through every guest we welcome and every dish we serve. This moment carries your name, your legacy, and your love.”

The award marks a milestone for kosher dining in the Michelin Guide.

Far removed from today’s global juggernaut, soccer was born in the well-heeled boarding schools of 19th-century England

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

far-removed-from-today’s-global-juggernaut,-soccer-was-born-in-the-well-heeled-boarding-schools-of-19th-century-england — Far removed from today’s global juggernaut, soccer was born in the well-heeled boarding schools of 19th-century England

Over the past two centuries, soccer – or football, as it is called in much of the English-speaking world – has become a truly global phenomenon that connects fans on all continents. It is also, come World Cup time, a deeply nationalist affair that pits teams and their fans from various countries against each other.

Yet today’s deeply competitive professional and spectator sport that spans the globe has far more local origins. As an expert on global history and author of a 2025 book on the subject, I know the game’s roots date back to early 19th-century England – and with a very specific social cause.

When English high school students and teachers created football as a sport in the first decades of the 19th century, it was to provide students at prestigious elite schools such as Eton with an opportunity to let off steam and excess energy. Students at such private boarding schools – they are called public schools in the United Kingdom – came mostly from wealthy families and were sent there not just for their education but also for socializing with their peers.

But boarding school students were often hard to control. Overprivileged students had a tendency to see teachers and headmasters not as authority figures but as people of lower social standing. Rebellions were common and pitted spoiled students against helpless teachers. Enter soccer: A strenuous physical activity such as kicking the ball across a field appeared to teachers as a means to regain control over their students and to redirect their energies.

The origins of soccer

Ballgames that pitted two groups of people against each other were nothing new in Britain.

“Folk football” existed long before it became a school sport. However, these early ballgames were unregulated, raucous and violent encounters of two parties formed by inhabitants of two villages or two neighborhoods. They did not need to involve an actual ball but something that could be kicked across a field or through the streets of a town.

Such events have little in common with modern-day soccer. They could involve hundreds of people. Playing fields were not marked. And the goal was to kick the ball once across a marker, such as a hedge or a field line. These ballgames were not about scoring but about taking on the opposing team by all means available. Such sporting affairs were known to anyone in England in the first half of the 19th century.

An old photo of a soccer match in progress. — A soccer match in progress in 1885. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The games migrated from there to school grounds.

At Rugby School, a public school in central England whose name was given to the modern game of rugby, students in the 1820s began playing a game that involved the kicking of a ball. Students engaged in these games because they gave them tremendous freedom.

The game was not yet codified, and teachers let students organize games without interfering in their play. Football offered both students and teachers what they craved most. Paradoxically, what for students was freedom was for teachers a useful means of control.

Teachers allowed the game to become a cherished activity of students because it took the students’ minds off other temptations. Tired and exhausted students, teachers reasoned, were good students who abstained from committing mischief and sexual behavior they deemed inappropriate.

The development of different games

Since the game lacked rules, and teachers kept a hands-off attitude toward the game, it gave students an opportunity to make their own rules. And these rules were the result of collective decisions of students.

From the 1840s to the 1860s, students produced rules that regulated how the ball could be handled, how many members a team should have and how scores were counted.

Students at Rugby School were the first to codify the game. These rules of 1844 allowed players to use their hands for controlling the ball. The rules produced by students at Eton in 1847, by contrast, outlawed the use of hands for propelling the ball.

But these were just a few of the many sets of football rules that students wrote in the three decades from the 1840s to the 1850s. And these codes did not yet clearly distinguish between a game that was focused on propelling the ball with hands – a key aspect of the modern game of rugby – versus a game that was focused on using only one’s feet, a key aspect of soccer.

The result was a great diversity of rules for a game that high school students played for fun. However, the game – mandatory for all high school students – was also used as an instrument of institutionalized bullying of younger students by older ones, with physical attacks on younger students built into the game. In effect, football of this time was a participation sport without any spectators.

Students played games on meadows and fields in the near surroundings of the public schools. These playing fields often did not have markings for borders or goals. Walls, trees and bushes marked the borders. Gates and doors were used as goals.

Soccer players pose for a photo. — The starting 11 players of the Cambridge soccer team in an undated photo. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The codification of what became soccer

Public school graduates took their versions of the game with them to the next level. At Cambridge, students began in 1837 to iron out some of the modern-day rules. There, three iterations of unified football rules were created over the course of the next 19 years. The third set in 1856 culminated in a game of kicking a ball with one’s foot.

In 1863, representatives of football clubs from the larger London area met to discuss the formation of a football association and a common set of rules. Ebenezer Cobb Morley, who served as captain of the London-based Barnes Football Club, convinced the other participants to accept unified rules that banned the use of hands for propelling the ball.

The 1863 rules of the Football Association stipulated that players were not permitted to “carry the ball,” to “throw the ball” nor “to take the ball from the ground with his hands while it is in play.” These rules provided the basis for modern-day soccer.

The game’s professionalization

The London rules of 1863 did not replace existing football rules, and these rules did not find acceptance everywhere. The 1863 London meeting did not include representatives of the public schools that were resolved to continue playing football according to their traditional rules. Rather than unifying football regulation, the London variant added just one more set of rules.

However, the London meeting showed a maturing game. The participants did not come from boarding schools but from football clubs that had formed independently of public schools. And these participants were not teenagers but adults.

Morley was 32 years old when he presided over the meeting that had become necessary because football was transforming into a competitive sport that pitted teams of different football clubs against each other. And for such competitive games, unified rules were needed.

In 1872, the honorary secretary of the Football Association, Charles W. Alcock, suggested the creation of the Football Association Challenge Cup Competition.

The introduction of this tournament helped transform football from a pure enjoyment into a competitive sport, first played by amateurs and later by professionals. With growing crowds of spectators came stadiums.

That’s the kind of highly professionalized and dynamic game that will feature in this year’s World Cup. And what a far cry it is from the chaotic boarding school pitches of 19th-century England.

Severed sea cucumber appendages don’t seem to die

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

severed-sea-cucumber-appendages-don’t-seem-to-die — Severed sea cucumber appendages don’t seem to die

Organs, arms, appendages, and other complex tissues usually decay rapidly when they’re separated from their host. Over the years, biologists have seen some success with keeping them alive outside of the body—organ transplants depend on it—but it has always required germ-free environments and nutrient-rich mediums filled with growth factors. Now, though, scientists have discovered bits of tissue removed from a species of sea cucumber called Psolus fabricii can keep on living indefinitely if they’re left in ordinary seawater.

“This is naturally occurring tissue immortality,” said Sara Jobson, a researcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland and lead author of the study. “Having tissues that survive that easily is unheard of. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

The beginning of LiPfe

Psolus fabricii is a species of sea cucumber that lives in the cold waters of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Its bottom side, known as a sole, is soft and ringed by a band of tube feet that it uses to grip rocks. Once on a rock, it extends soft, branching tentacles into the water to feed on suspended particles. Because these sea cucumbers inhabit harsh environments, their feet and tentacles experience high rates of injury and loss. Evolution has therefore endowed these sites with an incredibly high capacity for regeneration.

While sea cucumbers can easily regrow these parts, they don’t have whole-body regeneration like flatworms and some starfish do. Their severed bits don’t grow into new sea cucumbers. But it turns out they don’t die, either.

“We didn’t set out to find immortal tissues,” Jobson said. “Our lab focuses on sea cucumbers, and this sea cucumber has been used in other studies. One of my collaborators happened to notice that its amputated tissue just kept living, and it seemed to be healing and surviving and she didn’t do anything special to keep it. It was a fortuitous discovery.”

This fortuitous discovery quickly turned into an organized long-term experiment. The researchers took excised tube feet, groups of tube feet called ambulacra, and tentacles from P. fabricii and found all of them survived when placed in natural, non-sterile seawater.

“We examined all of them, but we primarily focused on tube feet,” Jobson said. When tube feet were severed, the wound margin was a mess of missing or fragmented epidermal and connective tissue. Within two days, the explants began shedding this damaged tissue. Internally, a large influx of coelomocytes, the sea cucumber’s immune cells, rushed from the inner connective tissues toward the damaged spot, apparently to facilitate organismal defense and regeneration.

By day six, the healthy tissue had curled inward, completely sealing the wound site; the severed organ was more or less restored to working order.

It turned out LiPfe explants weren’t just surviving; they were actively reorganizing their architecture to adapt to the new, severed state. First came the shrinking. During the first week, the tissue shrank by about 23 percent in diameter. Given more time, it stabilized and reversed this trend. Between 60 and 120 days post-excision, LiPfe grew back to their initial size, and after a year, they were 12 percent larger than when they were first cut from the host.

The researchers have introduced these tissues as a completely new class of living material they called LiPfe—living immortal P. fabricii explants. And as time went by, LiPfe put on quite a show.

The metamorphosis

The internals of a foot tube attached to a sea cucumber include a mix of epidermal tissue, connective tissue, a neural plexus, muscle tissue, and an inner lumen. The separated explants, though, got busy dismantling parts of themselves that were no longer useful. Muscle tissues, which initially made up 17 percent of the explant, were gradually invaded by coelomocytes that broke the muscle down into small pieces and destroyed its organization. After 180 days, the muscle tissue and the lumen had completely disappeared from the explant.

In their place, connective tissue expanded to become the dominant structure. The collagen fibrils within it began bundling together, creating strong bands or striations that looked similar to the vanished muscles. By the end of the first year, connective tissue accounted for 74 percent of the explant, while the epidermal tissue thinned out to occupy just 20 percent.

The outward appearance changed, too. The explants shifted in color from red or orange to a lighter white or pink. Red-pigmented cells clumped into small aggregates and migrated toward the center of the tissue, leaving the outer edges of the explants increasingly transparent.

In a year, LiPfe explants rebuilt themselves into alien-like translucent orbs with a large red cellular mass at their core.

They didn’t develop any orifices, though, or anything even remotely resembling a digestive system. “One of the first questions we had was how they were able to maintain cellular energy,” Jobson said.

Feeding the orbs

To test how LiPfe sustains itself, Jobson’s team exposed its explants to isotopically labeled amino acids and ammonium. By six days post-excision, the tissues saw a significant spike in the absorption of dissolved amino acids. LiPfe was directly sucking nutrients from the surrounding seawater to fuel its tissue repair and survival. And they could survive for a really long time.

The scientists noted that some of the tube foot explants survived for years just sitting free at the bottom of holding tanks, covered in a layer of particulate matter and surrounded by other living organisms. Some were completely buried under 10 millimeters of mud and still displayed the same morphology: round shape, transparent margin, and a red core. The only thing that could apparently harm them was proximity to decaying tissues of other species. “This made them struggle to survive,” Jobson said. “I think there were toxins or harmful materials their immune system could not cope with.”

The team also found that the immortality of severed tissues is, to the best of our knowledge, unique to P. fabricii. The researchers conducted comparative experiments on explanted tissues from related sea cucumber species, and none showed equivalent tissue survival.

Zombie cucumbers

Back in 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took a sample of a malignant cervical tumor from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old mother of five. When they cultured these cells later, they noticed that they doubled every 24 hours in a seemingly never-ending cycle. The HeLa cells, named after the patient, were the first instance of cell immortality ever discovered in humans. “This revolutionized cell biology and a lot of medical research,” Jobson says.

HeLa, though, was just a single cell type. LiPfe offers a new experimental model that enables scientists to work with a structured piece of animal tissue that maintains its own immune activity, cell cycling, and nutrient intake, without ethical concerns that come with experimenting on live animals. “On the evolutionary tree, sea cucumbers are relatively close to mammals, and they have been previously noted as having potential for interdisciplinary research,” Jobson said.

The authors of the study also point out that finding naturally immortal complex tissues challenges our conventional perceptions of what being alive really means. “The question we get a lot is ‘are these tissues actually alive?’ and this is where it becomes kind of philosophical—we lovingly call them zombies,” Jobson said.

LiPfe explants are not dead because their tissue is not decaying or degrading, and it does absorb nutrients. On the other hand, LiPfe orbs don’t reproduce, and reproduction is one of the fundamental characteristics of life. “They’re not growing into a new sea cucumber but restructuring into a form that best suits them in their current state,” Jobson said. “So, they seem to be functioning as a whole new entity.”

Before resolving philosophical dilemmas about LiPfe, the team wants to understand the basics first. The first question is how tissue immortality in P. fabricii actually works. “Is there anything unique, rare, weird that we haven’t seen in other sea cucumbers that makes them able to do this?” Jobson wondered. The second question is why it’s there in the first place—whether there is an evolutionary role of this ability or if it’s just a byproduct of really high regenerative capacity.

Finally, we still don’t know how long P. fabricii with their immortal tissues actually live. “That’s a great question,” Jobson said. “Unfortunately, there are very few tools that work for aging sea cucumbers.”

Science Advances, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb1394

Not dying yet, the Quad even with Trump has a vital role to play

By

IwPost

-

May 29, 2026

0

not-dying-yet,-the-quad-even-with-trump-has-a-vital-role-to play — Not dying yet, the Quad even with Trump has a vital role to play

Analysts have tried to make sense of US President Donald Trump’s second term with countless, sometimes contradictory, labels. He’s isolationist and transactional. He’s a populist. Or, more recently, a neoconservative.

One way to make sense of both him and the broader state of geopolitics at the moment is to understand the difference between structure and agency.

Trump has undoubtedly exercised his agency in expansive ways since beginning his second term. Yet, at the same time, he has been constrained by structural limitations. The Supreme Court’s ruling against his Liberation Day tariffs is one example. Another is Congress’s release of the Epstein files.

Even Trump’s fiercest boosters will admit that he is, like his predecessors who also sought to expand executive powers, limited by the US constitution and its stipulation of three co-equal branches of government.

It’s similar with foreign policy. Trump can berate allies, implement tariffs and withdraw from international institutions, but he can’t fundamentally alter certain structural realities. This is helpful in making sense of the way Trump’s actions are impacting the United States’ alliances and partnerships.

A pivotal moment for the Quad

This week, the foreign ministers of the four nations in the so-called “Quad” – the United States, Australia, Japan and India – met in New Delhi.

The leaders of these nations, however, haven’t gathered for a summit since 2024, when Joe Biden was president. India was meant to host last year, but a summit never came together. It’s unclear if one will happen this year, either.

This has prompted much handwringing. Critics are saying the Quad is drifting “toward irrelevance” and is “on the brink of extinction”.

Yet, as much as the leaders of the four nations have exercised their agency in distinct ways – including, at times, changing the trajectory of the Quad to be less ambitious – the structural dynamics in the Indo-Pacific remain unchanged.

China’s rapid military buildup, extensive maritime aggression, economically destabilizing practices, wolf-warrior diplomacy and violent border clashes have altered the strategic calculations of the region for the foreseeable future.

This is why, before the Trump administration took office in January 2025, the four Quad nations dramatically expanded the group’s scope and ambitions. The members agreed to cooperate on everything from fighting cancer to developing vaccines to enhancing cyber security.

They declared at their last leaders’ summit that the “Quad countries have built a vital and enduring regional grouping that will buttress the Indo-Pacific for decades to come.”

US-India ties go downhill

This is not to say there haven’t been challenges.

No single issue has been more problematic for Quad ambitions in the second Trump administration than US-India ties.

For decades, US presidents have all touted the importance to American’s national interests of a powerful, independent and democratic India. In their view, India served as a helpful counterbalance to China in the Indo-Pacific. It was the first Trump administration, after all, that resuscitated the Quad in 2017. (The group was originally formed in 2007, but fell apart soon after that.)

Trump also befriended Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his first term, calling him “one of America’s greatest, most devoted and most loyal friends.”

Since 2025, however, India-US relations have soured due to the second Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown, his tariffs on India, tensions over India’s purchases of Russian oil and Trump’s growing closeness with Pakistan.

And, after a testy exchange between Trump and Modi over the phone last June, Trump reportedly canceled his plans to travel to India for the summit.

An effective counter-balance to China

Beijing has been opposed to the Quad since its inception, accusing the four democratic members of engaging in a Cold War mentality while encircling and antagonizing China. Beijing said it would accelerate its own military modernization in response.

After the Quad disbanded in 2008 – for reasons that remain debated – one US scholar argued: “The Quad came down and China did exactly what it said it was going to do if the Quad persisted.”

Unsurprisingly, China has continued to oppose the Quad since it regrouped. It still sees the Quad the same way the four members envisioned it – as an effective albeit still nascent counterbalance to China.

At this week’s foreign ministers’ meeting in India, the Quad members agreed to jointly build a port in Fiji, increase critical minerals cooperation and expand maritime cooperation in the region.

Beijing wasn’t impressed. Almost immediately after the meeting ended, Chinese state media ran a story with the headline, “Beijing blasts exclusive cliques after Quad meeting.”

Why the Quad still matters

Public opinion in the four Quad countries also shows firm backing for the alignment. Our polling at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney in 2025, for example, found respondents were far more supportive of the Quad becoming a formal military alliance than not.

Australians were the most supportive (49% agree), followed by Indians (44%), Americans (42%) and Japanese respondents (41%). Only a small number of respondents in the four nations opposed the Quad becoming a formal military alliance (from 7-15%). The rest either didn’t know or were unsure.

Cooperation among the Quad members is continuing to expand and deepen, as well. With every passing year, the Quad nations are engaging in an increasing number of military exercises, humanitarian and disaster assistance activities, and maritime cooperation efforts.

The individual leaders of the four nations will continue to change. And they will at times have significant reservations about each other. Yet China’s destabilising behaviour gives the Quad members few alternatives but to persist in using their agency to counterbalance Beijing’s revisionist agenda.

Jared Mondschein is director of research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

DowntownMagazine PRO

IwPostGlobal economy

Read More

The concession that is not one

Hormuz, and the lever that bites back

When sanctions become the negotiating table

The crack between Washington and Tel Aviv

China is a corridor, not a saviour

The battlefield Tehran cannot ignore

The measure of victory

The reason behind the promotion

The American constant

The Chinese paradox

India’s reckoning, long overdue

The Triangle’s verdict

The origins of soccer

The development of different games

The codification of what became soccer

The game’s professionalization

The beginning of LiPfe

The metamorphosis

Feeding the orbs

Zombie cucumbers

A pivotal moment for the Quad

US-India ties go downhill

An effective counter-balance to China

Why the Quad still matters

Recent Posts

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY