Report: UK’s ‘double lock’ on arms to Israel suspends nothing
The British government has not suspended or revoked a single additional arms export licence for Israel since announcing what Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described as a “double lock” on military sales, according to an investigation by Declassified UK.
Miliband announced a package of measures on 8 September targeting Israel’s illegal occupation and settlement activity. The measures included plans to prohibit trade with illegal settlements and refuse applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation of Palestinian territory.
However, responding to a parliamentary question from independent MP Iqbal Mohamed, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade confirmed that no further licences had been suspended or revoked since the announcement.
The department said this was largely because licences covering equipment that could contribute to the occupation had already been suspended over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. It added that existing licences remain under review and could be withdrawn if they are found to contribute materially to the occupation.
The disclosure has raised questions about the practical effect of Miliband’s restrictions. Ministers had claimed the measures went much further than the action taken by former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government in 2024, when it suspended 30 of the roughly 350 arms export licences for Israel that were active at the time.
Declassified UK said the latest measures had made no immediate material difference to the flow of military goods between Britain and Israel.
READ: UK sanctions on illegal settlements mark diplomatic setback, major failure for Netanyahu: Israeli report
British-made components for F-35 fighter aircraft continue to enter a global spare-parts pool accessible to Israel. The government has maintained an exemption for the multinational F-35 programme, despite the aircraft’s use in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Parts for Israel’s M-346 military training aircraft also remain eligible for export. The government says such components are not used in Gaza and do not materially support the illegal occupation. However, the Foreign Office has previously acknowledged that the aircraft train Israeli pilots and help develop the air force’s offensive capabilities.
Martin Butcher, Oxfam’s policy adviser on arms and conflict, said the government’s stated intention to end British military support for the occupation was being undermined by an excessively narrow interpretation of its international legal obligations. He called for all British exports of F-35 and military training aircraft components to Israel to end.
Dearbhla Minogue of the Global Legal Action Network, which challenged the government over arms exports to Israel, said the measures appeared to impose no concrete consequences despite Britain’s recognition of the likelihood of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
The mother of a British aid worker killed by Israel in Gaza has called on the government to halt all arms sales and sever military ties with Tel Aviv. Legal experts and campaigners have repeatedly warned that the F-35 exemption may conflict with Britain’s obligations under the Genocide Convention.
Emily Apple of Campaign Against Arms Trade described the “double lock” as a political soundbite that had failed to produce meaningful change. Campaigners are calling for a comprehensive two-way arms embargo covering direct exports, the F-35 supply chain, military imports and government contracts with Israeli weapons companies.
READ: British banks urged to avoid financing Israeli settlements ahead of UK trade ban
Rahman’s UN debut carries family weight, high national stakes
When Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time on Thursday (September 24), he became the third member of his immediate family to speak from the UN podium.
His father, President Ziaur Rahman, addressed the General Assembly in 1980, speaking on self-reliance and regional cooperation. His mother, Khaleda Zia, addressed it as prime minister in 1993, with democracy and development among her themes.
“Standing before the United Nations General Assembly, I feel somewhat nostalgic,” Tarique told delegates. After recalling both parents, he added: “In the same spirit, I stand here today to speak for the interests of my country and its people, and with the hope of a peaceful world community.”
Political families spanning generations at the UN are not unprecedented. George H. W. Bush addressed the General Assembly as US president and his son George W. Bush later did the same. Pakistan’s Bhutto family has also been represented across generations in UN diplomacy.
The Rahman [and Zia] case is more unusual because it involves a father, mother and son who each served as national leader and addressed the General Assembly. The three appearances also came at different points in Bangladesh’s political history.
Zia spoke less than a decade after independence. Khaleda addressed the UN following the restoration of parliamentary democracy. Tarique arrived after the 2024 uprising, the interim administration that followed Sheikh Hasina’s fall, and the February 2026 election that returned the BNP to government.
His first UNGA speech was therefore as much an account of Bangladesh’s latest political transition as it was a statement of foreign policy.
Democracy at home, firmer positions abroad
Tarique presented Bangladesh as a country returning to electoral democracy after a prolonged period of authoritarian rule.
He paid tribute to those killed and injured in the July-August 2024 uprising and described the previous period as more than “one and a half decades” of “fascist rule and exploitation.”
That description reflects Tarique and his government’s characterization of Hasina’s rule. His argument at the UN was that the February 12 election had restored political authority to voters. “We believe that the people are the source of all our political power,” he said.
Another line set out his broader argument on governance: “A state can never become strong by keeping its citizens powerless.”
Tarique linked political participation with what he called the “democratization of the economy” — distributing the gains of growth more widely, creating employment, expanding education, supporting women and young entrepreneurs and strengthening social protection.
He also acknowledged that the transition remains incomplete, citing democracy, human rights, good governance, accountability and political stability among the areas requiring further work.
His positions on several international issues were more explicit.
Tarique criticized the diversion of development resources into military spending, supported “complete and general disarmament” and nuclear non-proliferation, and reaffirmed Bangladesh’s support for Palestinian self-determination and an independent Palestinian state.
The Rohingya crisis received particular emphasis. Bangladesh is hosting more than 1.2 million forcibly displaced Rohingyas frm Myanmar, Tarique told the General Assembly.
“The only solution to this problem is the safe return of the displaced Rohingya population to their homeland, Myanmar,” he said.
At a separate high-level event co-convened by Bangladesh and The Gambia, Tarique proposed five measures: a credible roadmap for repatriation, an end to violence against civilians in Myanmar, predictable humanitarian financing, justice and accountability, and stronger cooperation against trafficking, narcotics and illegal arms.
“Humanitarian generosity cannot become an excuse for political inaction,” he said.
The formulation sharpened Bangladesh’s existing position. Dhaka’s argument is that financing refugee camps cannot substitute for addressing the conditions in Myanmar that prevent Rohingya repatriation.
Climate change was another major theme. At a separate high-level meeting, Tarique called for emissions reductions consistent with the 1.5C target, predictable climate financing, greater access to technology, faster deployment of renewable energy and implementation of the Loss and Damage Fund.
Bangladesh contributes less than 0.5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions but is highly exposed to sea-level rise, cyclones, flooding and other climate impacts.
His argument was that countries with relatively small historical contributions to global warming should not bear a disproportionate share of adaptation costs.
Diplomacy beyond the UN hall
Tarique’s bilateral meetings also signaled his government’s foreign-policy priorities.
He met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The meeting with Sharif covered bilateral relations as well as regional and international issues. He also met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, an engagement that came amid heightened tensions in the Middle East.
For Bangladesh, the regional instability has direct economic consequences. The country depends heavily on imported energy, while shipping through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz affects supply and costs. Millions of Bangladeshis also work across the Middle East and constitute a major source of remittances.
Bangladeshi officials said Tarique discussed stranded ships, energy security, expatriate workers and remittance flows with Pezeshkian and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict.
The Iranian meeting also showed Dhaka’s attempt to maintain engagement across competing geopolitical relationships. Bangladesh has been strengthening economic ties with Washington while retaining interests that require engagement with Tehran and other regional capitals.
Tarique and his wife, Zubaida Rahman, attended a dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for visiting world leaders. Their attendance was confirmed, although details of any substantive exchanges with Trump have not been publicly released.
The visit also produced a significant commercial agreement.
On the UNGA sidelines, Biman Bangladesh Airlines signed a supplementary agreement to acquire 11 additional Boeing aircraft — five 787-10 Dreamliners and six 737-8s. The agreement takes Biman’s Boeing acquisition program announced this year to 25 aircraft.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau attended the signing, giving the commercial deal a clear diplomatic dimension as Dhaka seeks closer economic ties with Washington.
Tarique’s other engagements covered development financing, climate action, Rohingya repatriation, sea-level rise and maternal and newborn health.
Taken together, the speeches and meetings outlined the foreign-policy position his government wants to pursue: restoring democratic institutions at home while maintaining relations across competing geopolitical blocs, pushing harder for Rohingya repatriation, retaining Bangladesh’s established positions on Palestine and climate justice, and using trade and investment to deepen relationships with major powers.
The UNGA visit did not establish how successfully those objectives can be implemented. It did, however, provide Tarique with his first opportunity as prime minister to set them out before an international audience.
The family connection gave the appearance an additional historical dimension. Ziaur Rahman addressed the UN 46 years ago. Khaleda Zia followed 33 years ago. Tarique has now become the third member of the family to do so.
The significance of his debut will ultimately depend less on the family precedent than on whether the policies he outlined in New York are implemented after his return to Dhaka.
Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for seniors in disastrous experiment
In January, the Trump administration rolled out a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to authorize or deny certain types of care for patients with Medicare—a federal healthcare program for seniors that previously hasn’t required doctors to get any such pre-approval, called prior authorization.
Not long after, media outlets began relaying the disastrous outcomes: technical difficulties, long delays in decisions and care, puzzling denials, frustrated doctors, and patients suffering in pain. Those reports were largely confirmed earlier this month when the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a tranche of federal documents about the program, called WISeR, that the group obtained amid litigation. The documents included feedback from healthcare providers, including one who called the program “a disgrace to the human race” and reported seeing patients crying in pain as they waited for care.
Amid the worrying reports, lawmakers have been trying to get answers and shut the program down. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office determined in May that Trump officials did not follow proper procedure in setting up the program, calling its legality into question. Still, it appears to be moving ahead unabated, with plans to expand in the years to come.
Last week, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) called a committee vote to try to get the Trump administration to release more documents about WISeR, but Republicans voted the effort down.
“It’s clear why the administration is doing everything they can to conceal these documents,” DelBene said in a statement. “The more that Americans learn about WISeR, the more outraged they get at the Trump administration for jeopardizing their care and trying to privatize Medicare.”
Technical fumbles
WISeR, which stands for Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction, aims to use AI and machine learning to ensure “appropriate Medicare payment” for select services while benefiting taxpayers “by decreasing fraud, waste and abuse.” It was rolled out in January in six states—New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington—and intends to run until the end of 2031.
So far, the program requires prior authorization for around a dozen medical services, including nerve stimulation, epidural steroid injections for pain, cervical fusions (permanently connecting bones in the neck), skin substitutes for wounds, and treatments for incontinence and impotence.
According to the documents released by the EFF, the program’s implementation was rushed, and the technology wasn’t ready. One vendor, Innovaccer, was so unprepared that it asked the government to delay the rollout, and when it didn’t, the vendor set up its program to automatically approve all requests temporarily.
“[A]uto-affirming is the only path available that avoids creating a backlog of unprocessed prior authorizations and claims while we finalize, validate, and deploy the full rules-based solution,” Innovaccer wrote, according to a letter it sent to government officials.
But others carried on. One vendor, Zyter, had data discrepancies for months because it apparently didn’t understand the difference between Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient/hospital care, and Part B, which covers outpatient services. Zyter’s CEO, Sundar Subramanian, told Ars Technica in a written statement that the company is now “fully functional across Medicare Part A and Part B claims.” The company is working closely with federal partners and the healthcare providers to “enhance the experience,” Subramanian said.
More denials than approvals
Another vendor, Virtix, was found to be denying more prior authorization requests than it was approving. According to a weekly report on March 30, Virtix had reviewed 6,096 pre-authorization requests. It approved 2,863 of them, denying 3,233 (53 percent).
In addition to a questionable number of denials, decisions from the various contracted companies often took too long. WISeR is intended to provide authorization decisions within 72 hours, but many have taken weeks, some even months. The documents from EFF reveal at least one request was still pending after 83 days. In a survey, one healthcare provider said it “had a surgery pushed back almost two months due to zero communication.”
It was revealed in June that Virtix was put on a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for “noncompliance” with the 72-hour window. In a statement to Ars Technica, Virtix confirmed it was on a CAP but said it has since “reduced its average turnaround time for prior authorization to 1.18 days and prepayment review determinations to 1.17 days, well within the WISeR Model’s 3-day requirement.”
Virtix said the CAP ended on August 14.
It’s unclear if any other vendors have been put on a CAP. The CMS and the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment and a list of questions related to WISeR in time for publication.
In its comment to Ars, Virtix said that it “understand[s] that any delay in care is difficult for patients, and we do not take lightly the impact that the prior authorization process can have on people who are in pain and seeking relief.”
That said,” the company continued, “the WISeR program uses long-established [National Coverage Determinations] and [Local Coverage Determinations] set by CMS, not by Virtix Health, to evaluate the medical appropriateness of each requested procedure.”
Virtix encouraged providers to consider resubmitting authorization requests and ask for peer-to-peer discussion about denials.
“A disgrace to the human race”
The suggestion to reach out for support is unlikely to assuage many providers who have experience with WISeR. From their perspective, technical snags, delays, and unexpected denials have led to real misery, and many providers have reported only radio silence from program vendors when they sought support.
The reality of WISeR’s implementation may best be captured by feedback from one healthcare provider in Ohio, which was working with Innovaccer, the vendor that initially auto-approved requests. In a survey response, the provider wrote (in all capital letters) about patients trying to get a minimally invasive surgery to treat compression fractures in their spines, saying:
I HAVE HAD TO WATCH 3 PATIENTS CRY AT BEDSIDE FOR NOT HEARING BACK ON THEIR PRIOR AUTH FOR KYPHOPLASTY/VERTABRAL AUGMENTIATION PROCEDURE. THESE PATIENTS ARE IN DEEP PAIN. SO MANY OFFICES OF MY PHYSICIANS ARE NOT HEARING BACK FROM INNOVACCER… THERE IS NO WAY TO GET A HOLD OF A HUMAN TO TALK TO… WHAT A DISGRACE TO THE HUMAN RACE IN AMERICA. THIS IS THIRD WORLD.
Another Ohio provider expressed similar frustration with Innovaccer about delayed care and lack of communication, writing in a survey response that the experience has been “extremely disappointing”:
A 3–4 day delay for necessary pain procedures is already difficult for vulnerable patients, but when providers cannot obtain answers for weeks, the situation becomes unacceptable… The lack of accessible support, accountability, and timely communication is deeply concerning. Programs affecting patient access to medically necessary procedures must have reliable provider support systems. Currently, that standard is not being met. Patients deserve better. Providers deserve answers. And systems designed to improve care should never result in preventable suffering.
Innovaccer did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica. In a statement to Stat News, Innovaccer said its technology is now “fully live” and that the company has “worked closely with all of our partners to refine and improve the program since its launch and we will continue to do so with the spirit of putting patients first.”
Financial incentive to deny care
In a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) raised questions about WISeR to Chris Klomp, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of HHS, a position that requires Senate confirmation. In her questioning, Murray wasn’t focused on WISeR’s calamitous rollout; she was instead interested in how the program was designed to work.
“Do the contractors in the model—who are the private companies conducting the prior authorization assessments—make more money if they deny care? Just ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” Murray asked in her opening question.
“My understanding is no,” Klomp replied.
Klomp’s understanding is inaccurate, which is notable given that he has been working as the deputy administrator of CMS and has been directing Medicare since last year. CMS documents, included in the packet obtained by the EFF, clearly explain that the companies implementing WISeR are financially rewarded for denying requests for care. CMS’s planning documents describes it as a “novel payment approach where the model participants are compensated based on a share of averted expenditures.”
CMS documents written as a guide for WISeR participants explain further that for every denied request, CMS will determine what the regional benchmark cost for that care would have been and then pay the company 25 percent.
Murray further quoted the CMS Office of the Actuary, which explained bluntly in a memo that “model participants will have an incentive to deny as many claims as possible.”
“And what do you know,” Murray said. “In the first three months of this year, the Washington state contractor denied more requests than they approved.”
Puny penalties
Klomp defended the program, saying, “My understanding is that when they deny care, if they do so inappropriately, there are significant financial penalties and that CMMI [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation] is carefully watching their performance and has the ability to terminate [contracts]. My understanding as well is that [CMMI] will be producing a report or a report card of something shortly that will show an accounting by vendor in the six trial markets… to drive an accountability.”
According to the CMS documents, Klomp was referring to the “Aggregate Quality Score,” a percentage-based score calculated for each company implementing the WISeR model. The score is partly based on whether companies appropriately deny or authorize care requests, and it’s then used as a “quality adjustment” to payments to disincentivize inappropriately denying care.
But the CMS documents reveal that this adjustment penalty for denying legitimate requests is small. A company that earns an AQS score of between 100 percent and 85 percent will be paid all 25 percent of the “averted” costs from denied claims. If a company’s score falls between 84 percent and 60 percent, it will be paid 95 percent of the 25 percent of averted costs—just a 5 percent drop in profits. If it scores below 60 percent—a failing grade by school standards—it will get 90 percent.
Companies won’t be paid if an authorization denial is appealed and overturned, but data suggests few people go through the appeal process. In Medicaid Advantage, for instance, only 11.5 percent of care denials are appealed—though 80 percent of appeals result in the denial being overturned.
While Klomp claimed that there would be accountability for companies wrongly denying care, Murray seemed to dismiss the assurance. She said she had already heard from seniors in her state—one of the six in which WISeR has debuted—who have suffered for weeks in pain as their doctors “battled with these contractors for approval.”
Hospitals in the state have said the situation has not gotten better since its rollout in January.
“I already know CMS is planning to expand this to oncology,” Murray said. “I am going to do everything I can to stop this. It is really hurting patients.”
According to the CMS documents, the Trump administration plans to expand WISeR’s prior authorization system from cancer treatments to air ambulance transport, advanced imaging (such as MRIs), cardiac catheterization, pacemakers, Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICDs), and genetic and molecular lab tests.
Pope makes first official visit to France in 18 years
Church bells will quite literally be ringing across France this Friday morning as Pope Leo XIV lands on the tarmac of Paris-Orly airport for the first official papal visit to the country in 18 years.
The Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF) described the decision to ring bells for seven minutes “as a simple and symbolic gesture” to mark the beginning of the Pope’s apostolic journey and allow people “to take part” from wherever they are.
From addressing EU leaders and meeting with victims of sexual violence within the Church to parading through Paris on his popemobile, the pontiff has a packed four days ahead of him.
The paternal grandmother of the Chicago-Born Pope Leo XIV — who is the first US pontiff — was born in France.
An operation heavy on logistics
Pope Benedict XVI’s September 2008 trip was the last papal trip to France classified as an official visit. While Pope Francis travelled to France on three occasions during his pontificate — Corsica, Marseille and Strasbourg — none of these trips constituted an official papal visit.
The cost of the Pope’s trip to France is set to cost an estimated €27 million, with the Catholic Church in France covering the bulk of the expenses through donations. Meanwhile, the total cost incurred by French security forces — who have had to lay out a vast security apparatus — remains unknown at present.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV on Wednesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said no “specific threat” had been detected at the time of the interview.
“The police are always on high alert, and intelligence agencies, in particular, are monitoring the situation in advance. We haven’t detected any specific threat, but there will be a major security operation in place,” he stated.
The Popemobile and Notre-Dame-de-Paris
After being received by the French President at the Elysée Palace, the Pope is set to deliver a speech at UNESCO’s headquarters, addressing a number of topics — including artificial intelligence and global peace.
AI has become a central theme over the course of the Pope’s pontificate, who published his first 42,300 word encyclical entitled “Magnifica humanitas**”** in May, focusing on the risks unchecked artificial intelligence pose for humans.
The pontiff will celebrate Vespers at the Notre-Dame-de-Paris Cathedral later on Friday before heading to the Stade de France in Saint-Denis for a major evening prayer vigil with young people.
The following day, crowds will gather for an open-air Mass at the Place de la Concorde and along the Champs-Élysées. French authorities have estimated that around 600,000 people are expected to attend the event and surrounding areas.
Over the course of the Pope’s two-day Paris trip, a million pilgrims and visitors are expected in the French capital.
Meeting with sexual abuse victims and addressing EU leaders
After Paris, the Pope will travel to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the world’s most renowned Catholic pilgrimage sites, located in southwestern France.
The popularity of Lourdes is intrinsically tied to the story of Bernadette Soubirous. Between February and July 1858, Soubirous — a young girl from a modest background, who suffered from asthma — reported 18 visions of a lady dressed in white in the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes.
The Catholic Church later recognised Bernadette’s visions as apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Her accounts, along with the discovery of spring water believed by some to have healing properties, led to the construction of a sanctuary at the site. Millions of pilgrims have since travelled there to pray.
In Lourdes, the Pope will also meet with seven survivors of sexual abuse who were assaulted as children or adults. A 2021 report estimated that 330,000 children had been sexually abused over 70 years by church personnel in France.
Although many have supported the Pope’s plan to meet with sexual violence victims, not all victims are convinced by the idea.
Among them is Arnaud Gallais, a child-protection activist and survivor of sexual abuse by a priest during his childhood, who has criticised aspects of the Pope’s visit while calling for the meeting with survivors to lead to concrete commitments from the Church.
He told Euronews that he was critical of the decision to give the Pope a ceremonial welcome, arguing that it is difficult to reconcile such displays with the scale of sexual abuse and the suffering experienced by victims within the Church.
“I can see that this meeting is important for the victims, but what I think should be really be a priority, is for the President of the French Republic to hold a diplomatic meeting with the Head of State of the Vatican to address the issue of sexual violence in the Church.”
Macron will not attend papal masses
On Monday, the Pope is set to address EU leaders in the northeastern French city of Metz with a speech entitled “To the Roots of Europe for Peace and Unity.”
He will deliver this address at the Robert Schuman Convention Center, named after one of the key figures behind the creation of the European Union. The Élysée Palace did not respond to a request regarding which leaders are set to attend.
The French president will not attend any of papal masses over the course of the trip.
In 2023, during Pope Francis’ visit to France, he attended the mass held at the Stade Vélodrome, but did not participate in the Eucharist or receive communion. His presence drew criticism from figures on the left at the time, who accused him of disrespecting France’s laïcité principle.
Green senator Mélanie Vogel took to X at the time to declare that “as the President of a secular country, you can go there as a Catholic, but not as President. That’s called secularism. You’re welcome.”
Meanwhile, Bastien Lachaud, an MP from the hard-left France Unbowed party back then also accused Macron of mocking “secularism” and of trampling “on its principles — the separation of church and state, and the state’s neutrality toward religions.”
Ahead of the Pope’s visit, the Elysée stressed that France could embrace religious enthusiasm while remaining committed to secularism.
Macron will be represented by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu as well as by his wife Brigitte Macron during the giant open air mass at the Place de la Concorde and adjoining Champs-Elysées on Saturday, according to the Elysée.
In Lourdes, the Pope is set to be greeted by a member of the government upon his arrival at Tarbes airport, but no officials will attend his Sunday mass at the Lourdes sanctuary.
Only ghosts and ruins remain in this dusty old town. Tucked under scenic hills of volcanic rock are the remnants of a bank, a railroad depot, and what looks to be a school, along with a handful of other deteriorating structures that are hard to make out. This is Rhyolite, Nevada, whose heyday was fierce but short-lived, something of a one-hit wonder. In 1904, after gold was discovered in the nearby Bullfrog Hills, prospectors descended upon this dry corner of the Mojave Desert with hopes of striking it rich.
Of the several mining camps that quickly sprang up in this part of the Great Basin, Rhyolite was one of the liveliest. By 1908, the town’s population had surpassed 5,000, and at its peak, there were 50 saloons, 35 gambling dens, brothels, a bathhouse, a newspaper, and over a dozen restaurants.
Rhyolite’s flame would burn out fast: The Wall Street panic of 1907 scared off would-be investors, and by 1910, just a few years after the mine opened, most of the gold had been extracted. With no mining jobs left, the town was soon abandoned. All three banks eventually shuttered, and by 1914, the last train departed the Rhyolite station, never to return. Entire buildings, including the old Union Hall, were relocated to a neighboring town, where they still reside. The leftover Rhyolite town site, now a tourist stop, is managed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and has been a not-so-popular location for a string of low-budget Hollywood films you’ve never heard of, like “Six-String Samurai” and “The Island.”
“Deserts, believe it or not, actually have a high level of carbon sequestration.”
The Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi) and the Western Shoshone (Newe) inhabited this arid region between the northern Great Basin and the southern Mojave. This ancient land holds many tales. In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered what appear to be aboriginal campsites dating back at least 10,000 years, to the end of the last ice age. West of Rhyolite is Beatty, a town with a certain rural desert charm. It could be the wild burros roaming the streets or the raggedy Sourdough Saloon with hundreds of dollar bills tagged to the walls. Whatever it is, I understand the appeal for those uninterested in city life. The residents I spoke with told me it was the quiet landscape that drew them there.
I find myself in Rhyolite — just seven miles east of the broiling Death Valley National Park — to meet up with two activists who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting the surrounding Mojave Desert. Kevin Emmerich and Laura Cunningham, founders of the Beatty-based Basin and Range Watch, are concerned that two major solar projects on nearby BLM-managed lands will destroy the desert ecology and provide little benefit to the local community.
“This type of desert out there actually sequesters carbon in the roots of the creosote,” explained Cunningham, a wildlife biologist and desert tortoise researcher who has lived in the area for over 20 years. “There’s biological soil crust [with a] deep network under the soil that sequesters carbon, literally sucks it out of the atmosphere and turns it into oxygen. And deserts, believe it or not, actually have a high level of carbon sequestration. But when you scrape it up and drive on it, you crush the lichens, shrubs, and flowers, and release carbon. Building on these habitats is actually [contributing to] climate change.”
Deserts like the Mojave, Cunningham said, play an outsized role in absorbing climate-warming carbon. Of the world’s carbon sinks — the places that soak up carbon from our fossil fuel emissions — deserts account for up to 28 percent of land-based uptake. It’s one reason why a patchwork of solar farms out here is a troubling prospect.
“If we do use renewable energy, we want to put it in the built environment where it doesn’t have much of an impact.”
Cunningham’s partner, Kevin Emmerich, is what you’d call a desert rat. He’s tall, grizzled, and soft-spoken. He strikes me as a man who has spent a lot of time in remote places, and I say that with admiration. A former park ranger in Death Valley, he nods in agreement with Cunningham while pointing to a valley across the highway where two solar projects, if completed, would blanket over 8,000 acres of open space. He’s frustrated that the people who usually oppose wrecking biodiversity aren’t warier of the large-scale energy projects proposed for public lands.
“Other environmental groups are really conflicted about ‘green’ energy,” Emmerich said. “We just had a little spat with one group. They want some of this public land development. … If we do use renewable energy, we want to put it in the built environment where it doesn’t have much of an impact.”
A Battle for What Remains
While some environmentalists may be on the fence, others, like the small outfit Basin and Range Watch, are working tirelessly to halt the development of these solar farms. In 2010, in coalition with community groups and the Quechan and Cocopah tribes, it blocked the Imperial Valley Solar Project in California, which would have destroyed nine square miles of habitat and decimated more than 400 Quechan cultural sites. Basin and Range also supported the “Save Our Mesa” campaign, which succeeded in stopping the controversial Battle Born solar project near Moapa Valley, Nevada. Battle Born was proposed as an installation of solar panels covering 14 square miles of public lands. The grassroots pressure was so strong that the developer, California-based Arevia Power, told BLM they wouldn’t move forward.
When it comes to impacts, at least on paper, solar energy may have the fewest downsides (although they certainly exist). The technology requires less mining and is inexpensive and easy to deploy. But as Basin and Range Watch argues, it’s not enough to simply let these vast, open spaces be blanketed with fields of solar panels. There are better locations for solar that will yield better results for people and the environment. Many of our popular ideas about places like the Mojave — such as the idea that they’re lonesome, empty wastelands, devoid of life — sustain the myth that desert solar farms have fewer drawbacks and are essential in the fight against climate change. Not many assumptions could be more untrue.
Many of our popular ideas about places like the Mojave — such as the idea that they’re lonesome, empty wastelands, devoid of life — sustain the myth that desert solar farms have fewer drawbacks and are essential in the fight against climate change.
BLM has considerable sway in the West and has, for decades, had the power to radically shape the region, from its fragile ecology to its resource-dependent economies. It manages 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights in the United States. In all, BLM oversees one-tenth of the country. It divvies up rights to mine, drill, and graze. What the bureau say goes, and even under the antagonistic Trump administration, which is no fan of renewables, it is still overseeing massive green energy developments.
While Trump and his allies in Congress have drastically reduced subsidies for renewable energy projects, those incentives aren’t set to expire until December 2027. As a result, companies are hurrying to build out solar farms, wind turbines, and commercial battery storage. While Trump’s actions have hampered long-term growth projections for the renewables industry, it’s booming, for now.
“The energy transition is still underway, but the whiplash has very serious implications for our economy and for the investment culture of America,” explains Sanya Carley, the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “Solar has still been on a phenomenal growth trajectory, especially across the entire world. … [It’s still] the leading source of growth in the energy industry in the United States.” Trump’s rancor has turned out to be more of a speed bump than a roadblock.
Whose Land Is It?
In Nevada, BLM has parceled around 12 million acres for large utility-scale solar project construction. In 2024, the agency announced its Western Solar Plan, which would reserve 22 million acres of public land for future solar development. As of early 2024, seven major projects were proposed or in the works, covering 140 square miles of land. The Western Solar Plan would locate high-solar-producing areas on public lands across the dry flatlands of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, and on millions of acres of federal land in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, believes this massive, swift expansion of industrial-scale solar could destroy many of the region’s “crown jewels.” He’s worried solar arrays could surround Nevada’s Great Basin National Park and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon — ditto for the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
“It’s insane,” Donnelly, who isn’t shy about his frustrations, said. “BLM is going to make lanes available for solar at the foot of the Sierra Nevada,” which he calls “possibly the most beautiful place in the country.”
It’s hard to argue with Donnelly about the stakes. I spend weeks each year wandering the Mojave, decompressing from urban life. The desert is a refuge. As a teenager growing up in Montana, I used to believe wilderness only included trout streams, mountains, grizzly bears, and wolves. I was youthfully naive, and I now realize that wilderness includes saguaro, rattlesnakes, desert tortoise, and bighorn sheep. We shouldn’t exploit these places for our energy needs, whether for fossil fuels or solar power. These desert lands are crucial not only for the animals that inhabit them but also for their roles they play, such as carbon sequestration, in helping mitigate the climate crisis.
These lands are significant to Native Americans, who have inhabited this land long before Europeans showed up. For years, members of the Western Shoshone and Goshute tribes in Nevada have worked to designate a 25,000-acre monument called Bahsahwahbee near Great Basin National Park. The Western Solar Plan will carve out 7,000 of those pristine acres for development.
“Our ancestors were massacred at Bahsahwahbee. It is unconscionable that the site would be considered by the federal government as a development zone instead of a place to be preserved and commemorated,” Ely Shoshone Tribal Elders Delaine and Rick Spilsbury wrote for the Great Basin Water Network. “The federal government doesn’t propose developments in other cemeteries or seek to bulldoze other peoples’ churches. In fact, graves and churches are generally protected under federal and state laws. But for the resting place of our ancestors, we have to wonder why it’s OK?”
These large solar projects are sure to raze more Native lands to power hundreds of thousands of homes across the West, often in cities far from where the energy was first produced. Once the solar installations are built, few jobs are likely to remain in those regions, which contradicts the central arguments local governments make in support of the projects.
When it comes to the Western Solar Plan, most of the major environmental groups have either stayed silent or, like the Wilderness Society, uncritically supported it as a positive step to help California shift its grid to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.
“I feel like we are working out here on the marginalized fringe, and we’re sort of pushed more to work with grassroots groups, local communities, scientists, and people who aren’t beholden to their big climate donors [like other environmental groups],” Cunningham of Basin and Range Watch said. “[Energy developers] call this a wasteland, like there’s no biodiversity, and we push back against that. We support photovoltaic solar panels, first on rooftops, parking lot canopies, or on really disturbed ground. But this desert has life. The very, very bottom of the list [for solar development] should be public lands. Ecosystems built on utility-scale solar projects are the last thing we should support in the fight against climate change.”
Cunningham’s argument is convincing, and it’s hard not to think that much of this has to do with people’s perception of the desert as a wasteland, as she puts it. Even the late David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club who was forced out for his radicalism, once remarked that he’d be willing to sacrifice the Mojave under the guise of diplomacy and compromise if it meant protecting scenic wilderness elsewhere. He later retracted the sentiment, but this reasoning still permeates much of the mainstream environmental movement, which is focused on slowing climate change at almost all costs — even if it means harming wild places in the process.
“I feel like we are working out here on the marginalized fringe. … This desert has life.”
Perhaps it will take an expert like Laura Cunningham and a desert-lover like Kevin Emmerich, who have a deep admiration for and understanding of desert ecology, to alter people’s perceptions. At least I hope so. It’s easy to imagine the public outcry that would ensue, for instance, if giant redwoods were on the chopping block to make room for a gargantuan solar field in the Sierra Nevadas. But, strangely enough, Joshua trees and desert tortoises don’t seem to hold the same intrinsic value.
The onging summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping has been billed as a “high-stakes” meeting which the US president says will have a major focus on artificial intelligence (AI).
Trump told a gathering of world leaders at the US general assembly on Tuesday that, “whoever wins superintelligence wins … and we’re leading now over China by a lot”. Quite how this will help build rapport between the two leaders is anyone’s guess.
Leaving aside for now the US president’s decision to unilaterally rename (as is his wont) what everyone else calls artificial intelligence, there’s no doubt that what the world needs now is for Xi and Trump to do what they can to avoid an AI arms race.
Nicholas Wheeler and Marcus Holmes, whose research focus is on face-to-face diplomacy, believe the scale of this challenge recalls the summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. At that stage it was nuclear proliferation which was scaring people on both sides of the cold war. Fresh in Soviet minds were the Nato exercises which gamed out a scenario in which the Soviet Union invaded eastern Europe, to which the response was a nuclear retaliation.
Meeting in Geneva in November 1985, the two leaders – Reagan the dyed-in-the-wool anti-communist and Gorbachev, the passionate Marxist-Leninist – somehow developed a rapport which fostered an effective working relationship. As Wheeler and Holmes recount, the pair were able to appreciate that both of their countries shared a very real fear of nuclear proliferation.
This understanding enabled them to collaborate on a series of nuclear deals which pulled the world back from the precipice. The hope is that Trump and Xi, arguably the world’s two most powerful men, can reach the same sort of understanding.
The word “arguably” was used deliberately in the previous paragraph. As the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, noted in his final keynote address in the general assembly this week, the nature of power – and the way it is wielded – is becoming increasingly fluid in the 21st century.
Not only is it shifting in a geopolitical sense, but also from nation states to private corporations – and, worryingly, from humans to machines. And this shifting power will have an enormous influence on the key challenges facing the world, from war to inequality to the climate emergency and artificial intelligence.
Stefan Wolff and Martin Waelisch, experts in international security, caution that the US president’s speech suggested that an understanding of power that appears limited to achieving narrow victories is more likely to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, these problems.
To another international governance group – and in advance of the UK taking the chair of the G20 in December, we ask the question: is this another glorified talking shop which rarely achieves anything? Gordon Brown, who was prime minister when the UK last chaired the group would point to its response to the global financial crisis. But the question mark remains.
A lot of this is to do with the need for the group to reach consensus, meaning its decisions, communiqués and leaders’ declarations require agreement from all participating member states to be officially adopted.
This is entirely the wrong approach, writes Henrietta Moore, the founder and director of the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity. She and her colleagues have developed a new framework for global cooperation called The New Alignment. This calls for issues such as climate change, sovereign debt and technology to be tackled in a way that engages the key players that can make a difference.
G20: hard enough to achieve consensus, let alone action.Marco Longari/EPA
Or as she puts it here: “Begin with the problem, and ask what outcome is needed. Then consider which countries, institutions, businesses and communities have the capabilities to deliver that desired outcome”. That way, while consensus remains valuable, it’s no longer a precondition for progress.
Three election results to comment on, of which two could be accurately described as being shocks and one utterly predictable. Taking the latter first, it surprised nobody when in the elections for the Russian parliament, United Russia – the party of Vladimir Putin, won its usual landslide.
Business as usual then. But there was some features of the election campaign, which Putin billed as a referendum on the war in Ukraine, that bear further investigation, as Jennifer Mathers reports.
Meanwhile two more German states held elections last weekend. In one, for the state of Berlin, the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) were beaten into second place by the party on the left, Die Linke. In the other, for the rural eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it failed to register sufficient support to merit winning a seat, attracting just 4.9% of the vote.
Here the big winner was the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), with 38.2% of the vote. This falls short of the outright majority it would need to form government writes Ed Turner of Aston University. But the results will pile yet more pressure on the already embattled German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, whose political survival now hangs in the balance.
The rise of the far-right has been a matter of some concern for anyone observing German politics in recent years. Since the end of the second world war, the fear of extremism in Germany has been such that the political system has operated a firewall, or Brandmauer, by which mainstream parties agree never to form a coalition which would help an extremist party – in recent years specifically the AfD – gain power.
Thor Steinar belt at a Neo-Nazi march.Kai Schwerdt via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Another attempted safety valve has been a ban on neo-Nazi symbols, violation of which carries stiff penalties of up to three years in prison.
But there’s no denying the rise in popularity of right-wing politics in recent years and supporters of various extremist movement have developed their own ways to self-identify which aim to circumvent this ban.
OpenAI agent “didn’t accept no for an answer” in Australian government breach
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government is investigating a June incident in which an OpenAI agent accessed “non-public files” from the country’s online Medicare statistics portal. OpenAI said in a statement that “our models took actions we did not intend” in causing the breach, which it only recently disclosed to the Australian government.
Speaking in New York on Wednesday, Albanese said three other public health statistics systems also “may have been impacted” across Australian federal and state governments. He added that these portals “contain non-sensitive Medicare information” such as aggregate statistics and that early indications suggest “no personal information is believed to have been accessed.”
That said, Albanese stressed that the “situation is obviously unacceptable” and that he has expressed his “extreme concern” over how the incident was handled to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Much like the now-infamous Hugging Face hacking incident, Albanese said this system breach stemmed from OpenAI’s own testing of an internal model, this time to conduct “Internet based research into public medicine spending.” When the company’s AI agent encountered “repeated blocks” in its search for specific information, Albanese said, it “attempted alternative ways to obtain the info” and “found a way around those blocks.”
“[It] didn’t accept no for an answer, if you like,” Albanese said. “There is no suggestion of foreign actors here. This is a research project that has got into areas that it shouldn’t have.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seen here addressing parliament this month.
Credit: Getty Images
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seen here addressing parliament this month. Credit: Getty Images
In a statement provided to multiple outlets, OpenAI said it had “identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation.”
Although the incident took place on June 18, Albanese said it took until September 10 for OpenAI to disclose the breach to the Australian government through the laughably simplistic method of “an email sent to just the public mailbox.” It took five more days for that notification to make its way to the Australian Cyber Security Centre, with the details finally reaching the prime minister over the weekend.
We didn’t ask you to do that!
From all early indications, the actual intrusion into Australian government servers represented by this incident seems relatively minor. If a human had obtained “non-sensitive” (if non-public) Australian Medicare statistics in a similar way, it’s unlikely you or I would have ever heard about it.
“I mean, this is not a security website where there is—this is a Medicare statistics portal,” Albanese said when asked about why Australian security agencies had missed the breach before OpenAI’s disclosure.
Altman himself addressed these concerns in a speech to the UN Security Council Wednesday, where he warned about the approaching specter of “systems that can improve themselves and future versions of themselves, often called recursive self-improvement.”
“We need to understand what these systems are doing and have strong evidence that they will do what people intend, even as they get very, very smart,” Altman said. “It doesn’t matter whether people put the risk of catastrophe at 10%, or 1%, or 12%, or 0.1%.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking in front of the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
Credit: Getty Images
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking in front of the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Credit: Getty Images
Of course, many observers think the risks of “recursive self-improvement” and species-ending AI misalignment are much smaller than AI researchers make them out to be. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said there is a “0%” chance of AI killing off humanity by 2030, a risk assessment that conveniently would alleviate some potential guilt among the AI companies continuing to buy Nvidia GPUs en masse.
Last week, OpenAI rolled out a new protocol for the public disclosure of misalignment incidents found in its model testing. The Australian hack does not yet appear on the company’s public misalignment notices page, though OpenAI did warn last week that some public reports might be put on a “slow track” due to “security, legal, and responsible disclosure obligations” when a third party is involved.
In disclosing six relatively minor misalignment discoveries last week, OpenAI said most stemmed from the model trying to “reward hack” an acceptable response to a difficult prompt through overzealous, unintended actions (i.e., breaches of private servers). The company said it had taken additional steps to “punish this kind of behavior” so its models no longer attempt this kind of reward hacking.
Albanese said that Altman “clearly accepted that the company had not done good enough” and “acknowledged their issues with protocols” when they talked Wednesday. But that kind of remorse doesn’t absolve the company of responsibility or liability here, and Albanese said the government will investigate whether the incident needs to be referred to the federal police.
“There will obviously be legal consequences on it,” Albanese said.
Si vis pactum, para bellum: Trump’s war-first path to a deal
US President Donald Trump addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 22, 2026. Photo: YouTube Screengrab
The Romans advised that to secure peace, you must prepare for war. The preparation was the point: weapons kept ready so they need not be used, readiness standing in for the fight. Their word for peace, pax, came from pacisci — to strike a bargain. Peace was a pactum, a deal, before it was anything else.
At the United Nations on September 22, President Trump rewrote the maxim. He framed the moment as a “big decision”: strike a deal with Iran or annihilate the Islamic Republic and drive it into hell. If you want a deal — a pactum — prepare for war. Better yet, wage one.
This is how Trump believes deals get made, and his UN address made it plain. The United States is nearly seven months into a war with Iran that he chose to start. He presented that war not as a diplomatic setback but as diplomacy by other means — the pressure that will force Tehran to sign.
Even as he threatened from the podium, his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Iranian officials on the sidelines, and he spent the day courting Gulf states and Jordan. Threat and negotiation run on parallel tracks in the Trump administration — threats in public, the bargain in private.
But a deal forever imminent and never signed is not a path to peace; it is a pretext for the war that precedes it. Trump has pulled back from major strikes again and again — by the count of those tracking the war, he has backed off significant action on at least eight occasions — while keeping a deal just out of reach.
The asymmetry is the point: the war is certain, the deal is not. Pressure is easy to apply and hard to convert. An adversary given nothing but capitulation or destruction, with no off-ramp, does not sign — they escalate, or they wait.
Trump admitted as much when he noted that Tehran is watching to see how he fares in November at America’s midterm elections, where his Republican party is lagging in various polls.
Iran was the sharpest expression of Trump’s wider posture, but not the only one. He also defended aggressive US force against Venezuela on the grounds that the world cannot handle such threats itself.
The Greenland and Denmark deal he signed hands Washington greater control of the Arctic – strength turned into acquisition. And when he called the International Court of Justice “evil”, Emmanuel Macron answered him, pledging that France would keep backing the court.
The through-line is plain: American power, in this view, should be unbound, and the institutions built to constrain it are to be brushed aside, not negotiated with.
The old formula prepared for war in order to avoid it; the line between coercion and conquest was the whole point. Trump’s version erases that line. When war becomes the instrument that produces a deal, every deal is a truce until the next threat.
A rival may conclude that this president is moved by force, not diplomacy – the very reasoning that drove Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb. An agreement signed under the threat of destruction is a hostage’s promise, kept only as long as the gun stays raised.
If every deal must be preceded by war and every war folded into an eventual deal, the result is not peace punctuated by conflict but permanent conflict punctuated by pauses.
The Romans knew that pax and pactum were kin: peace was a bargain kept. Trump has divorced them. He offers the pactum, wages the bellum and calls the space between them strategy. If you want a deal, prepare for war — and prepare, too, for the deal never to come.
Eric Alter is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and a former UN civil servant.
A former Colorado DNA analyst whose misconduct shook confidence in hundreds of criminal investigations has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. But claims tying her crimes to the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey leave out a crucial finding from authorities.
Yvonne “Missy” Woods, 66, received the sentence September 8 after pleading guilty to cybercrime, first-degree perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery, according to the Colorado First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Her punishment follows a scandal involving altered and deleted laboratory data, false reports and renewed questions about cases that depended on her work.
For those following JonBenét’s murder, however, there is an important distinction. Boulder police and prosecutors told Fox News Digital that a CBI review found Woods’ misconduct had not affected the Ramsey evidence.
That finding undercuts suggestions that Woods’ prison sentence represents a breakthrough in the little girl’s case.
Woods worked for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation from January 1994 until November 2023, meaning she was employed there when JonBenét was killed. But employment at the agency does not establish that she mishandled evidence in that investigation.
The criminal conduct covered by her guilty plea occurred between 2008 and 2023, according to prosecutors. She entered the plea June 23 under an agreement requiring between eight and 16 years behind bars.
The investigation began after a CBI intern discovered missing data in a sample Woods had processed years earlier. Prosecutors ultimately identified 53 cases involving false or misleading reports, while alterations to laboratory notes affected hundreds more.
In many of the charged incidents, Woods reported that DNA was absent when testing had detected it. Prosecutors said that stopped some investigations before scientists could proceed to identifying or comparing the DNA.
The criminal investigation did not establish that she created false DNA identifications or false positive results—a distinction that does not erase the damage caused by concealing evidence.
“I failed that responsibility,” Woods said at sentencing, acknowledging the consequences for defendants, victims and families. A restitution hearing is scheduled for November 12.
One case drawn into the fallout involved Michael Clark, who was convicted in 2012 of killing Marty Grisham in Boulder in 1994.
According to Denver7 reporting published by KOAA, Clark’s conviction was overturned and he was released in April 2025. As of the September sentencing coverage, he was awaiting a retrial, with proceedings paused over evidence-disclosure issues. CBI has said Woods’ misconduct did not affect the DNA testing in his case.
Clark’s attorney, Adam Frank, separately sought early investigative records from the Ramsey case, arguing they could support claims about mistakes in Boulder police investigations. That request was denied. It did not establish that Woods tampered with JonBenét evidence.
Meanwhile, John Ramsey continues to press for additional testing in his daughter’s case.
“I believe getting the crime scene evidence into the hand of an outside DNA lab is step one,” he told RadarOnline.
His frustration is longstanding, but police dispute suggestions that they are ignoring forensic opportunities. On their official case page, investigators describe working with the FBI, CBI and outside forensic laboratories.
In the department’s December 2025 video update, Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said detectives had conducted new interviews, collected additional evidence and tested or retested other items to pursue fresh leads. Authorities have not publicly detailed all ongoing testing.
JonBenét was 6 when she was reported missing from her family’s Boulder home on December 26, 1996. She was found dead inside the house later that day.
Nearly 30 years later, the investigation remains open. Woods’ conviction establishes serious wrongdoing in Colorado’s forensic system, but it does not identify JonBenét’s killer or establish that her evidence was compromised.
2 IDF Reservists Killed After Drone Crashes, Explodes in Northern Gaza
Two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists were killed Thursday in the northern Gaza Strip when a drone they were operating crashed inside a military post and later exploded for reasons that remain under investigation, the IDF reported.
The IDF Spokesperson on Friday morning cleared for publication the deaths of Sgt. Maj. (res.) Nadav Kali, 24, from Har Halutz, and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Ofek Moalem, 23, from Jerusalem. Both were evacuated to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where they were pronounced dead.
Kali and Moalem served in Battalion 7007 of the 16th Brigade and were operating the drone in northern Gaza as part of an IDF operation.
Their first flight with the drone was completed successfully. During a second flight, however, the aircraft crashed inside an IDF post for reasons that have not yet been determined.
After the crash, the two reservists approached the drone to examine it at close range. The drone then exploded, killing the two soldiers.
IDF officials are investigating what caused the drone to crash and subsequently explode. The circumstances surrounding the incident have not yet been established.
Pending the findings of the initial investigation, the IDF has suspended drone operations.
