Trump Labor Statistics Pick Called Social Security a 'Ponzi Scheme' That Should Be Shuttered


"Bureau of Labor Statistics data is what determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits," said Rep. John Larson. "It should alarm everyone when a yes-man determined to end Social Security is installed in this position."



Demonstrators protest the Trump administration's attack on Social Security in downtown Detroit, Michigan on April 19, 2025.
(Photo: Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images via AFP)

Jake Johnson
Aug 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


U.S. President Donald Trump's pick to replace the top labor statistics official he fired earlier this month has called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" that needs to be "sunset," comments that critics said further disqualify the nominee for the key government role.

During a December 2024 radio interview, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni said it is a "mathematical fiction" that Social Security "can go on forever" and called for "some kind of transition program where unfortunately you'll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes, but never actually receive any of those benefits."

"That's the price to pay for unwinding a Ponzi scheme that was foisted on the American people by the Democrats in the 1930s," Antoni continued. "You're not going to be able to sustain a Ponzi scheme like Social Security. Eventually, you need to sunset the program."



Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), one of Social Security's most vocal defenders in Congress, said Antoni's position on the program matters because "Bureau of Labor Statistics data is what determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits."

"It should alarm everyone when a yes-man determined to end Social Security is installed in this position," Larson said in a statement. "I call on every Senate Republican to stand with Democrats and reject this extreme nominee—before our seniors are denied the benefits they earned through a lifetime of hard work."

Trump announced Antoni's nomination to serve as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) less than two weeks after the president fired the agency's former head, Erika McEntarfer, following the release of abysmal jobs figures. The firing sparked concerns that future BLS data will be manipulated to suit Trump's political interests.

Antoni was a contributor to the far-right Project 2025 agenda that the Trump administration appears to have drawn from repeatedly this year, and his position on Social Security echoes that of far-right billionaire Elon Musk, who has also falsely characterized the program as a Ponzi scheme.

During his time in the Trump administration, Musk spearheaded an assault on the Social Security Administration that continues in the present, causing widespread chaos at the agency and increasing wait times for beneficiaries.

"President Trump fired the commissioner of Labor Statistics to cover up a weak jobs report—and now he is replacing her with a Project 2025 lackey who wants to shut down Social Security," said Larson. "E.J. Antoni agrees with Elon Musk that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and said that middle-class seniors would be better off if it was eliminated."

Trump Names 'Utterly Unqualified' Project 2025 Economist as New Labor Stats Chief

"The cost of this incompetence will be felt by working people first," said one economist.


U.S. President Donald Trump shuffles through charts his desk while speaking about household income levels in the Oval Office on August 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C., days after he fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, claiming the agency issued "phony" jobs numbers.
(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Aug 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Less than two weeks after firing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, baselessly claiming that she had released manipulated jobs data, President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to have found a "solution" to the problem of weak economic numbers that have been plaguing his administration: a new nominee to lead the agency who, according to one conservative economist, is "as partisan as it gets."

The president announced on his Truth Social platform that he was nominating E.J. Antoni, the chief economist for the right-wing Heritage Foundation's Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, to lead the BLS, saying Antoni "will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE."

"Our economy is booming," he declared.

The announcement was made days after Trump demanded the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner who served under both him and former President Joe Biden. McEntarfer, Trump suggested, had released a false jobs report saying that only 73,000 jobs were added to the economy in July and that previous estimates had overstated the new job numbers by 258,000.

Economists say the discrepancy between the actual job numbers and the earlier projections was not unusual and likely explained by "seasonal adjustments and more complete survey responses," as Axios reported. There is no evidence that McEntarfer manipulated the data to harm Trump politically, as the president suggested, or that she did the same during the Biden administration "in the hopes" of getting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris elected president.

But experts wondered if Americans can trust that Antoni, should he be confirmed to lead the BLS, won't manipulate jobs data to support the appearance of what Trump calls a "booming" economy—one in which grocery prices have once again jumped, according to the consumer price index (CPI) numbers that the bureau released Tuesday. Tariffs imposed by the president have driven up the cost of imported goods.

"Antoni has repeatedly and unfairly attacked the agency he'd be set to run, contributed to the right-wing Project 2025 policy blueprint, and in his role at the Heritage Foundation has stretched the truth about the economy to make partisan political claims," said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

Antoni, who earned his Ph.D. in economics in 2020, is listed as the fifth contributor to Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda that calls for the gutting of the federal government. He has called for the U.S. Labor Department to be staffed by far more political appointees instead of career civil servants.

He said on former Trump aide Steve Bannon's podcast that the absence of a Trump appointee in the top position at the BLS is "part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems," but Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics, highlighted on the social media platform X a number of instances of Antoni "completely not understanding economic statistics, being partisan hack, or both."

For example, in February Antoni used data showing the total population growth of native-born Americans to claim that foreign-born workers have benefited from "all net job growth"—but as economist Jeremy Horpedahl of the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics noted, using data on working-age, native-born Americans would have rendered a far more accurate analysis.

"The working-age, native-born population hasn't been growing for the past decade," said Horpedahl at the time. "If you use the working-age populations, you will see that native-born Americans have higher employment rates, which are also at record highs."

Having called the CPI an "Orwellian trick" used to mask high inflation, Antoni is unlikely to put much stock in the index numbers that were released Tuesday, which Yale University economist Ernie Tedeschi said straightforwardly show that "the prices of consumer goods are higher right now than they would be without tariffs."

Antoni has long been critical of the agency he's been nominated to lead, saying last week, "There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data—that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years."

The nominee "has never worked in statistics collection," said Joseph Politano, who writes about monetary policy at Apricitas Economics. "He is five years out of his Ph.D. He's only ever written one economics paper. His explicit, only qualifications are that he works in ultraconservative think tanks and believes Trump's conspiracies about the BLS. Grim stuff."

The criticism of Antoni was bipartisan, with Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, calling him "utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets."

Bivens warned that Trump's selection of Antoni "makes it clear that he expects the BLS commissioner to only release data that shows the economy is booming—even if it means the data must be manipulated or changed by political appointees."

"This move is undemocratic—and economically dangerous," said Bivens. "The economy runs on reliable data... Trump's attempt to politicize BLS means that policymakers and the public wouldn't be able to trust the data. If this happens, confidence in U.S. data will collapse and reasonable economic decision-making will be impossible. This manufactured chaos will reduce business investment and consumer spending, making a recession—and soaring unemployment—far more likely in coming months. Between illegal firings of public servants, starving data agencies of needed resources, and now political intimidation, the U.S. looks set to run into the next economic downturn flying blind."

"The cost of this incompetence," he added, "will be felt by working people first."

 

Kelp forests in Marine Protected Areas are more resilient to marine heatwaves

British Ecological Society

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Aerial image of a kelp forest off the coast of California

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Credit: Ortiz-Villa et al.

New research finds that Marine Protected Areas can boost the recovery of globally important kelp forests following marine heatwaves. The findings are published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology.

Using four decades of satellite images, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers have looked at impacts Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are having on kelp forests along the coast of California.

They found that although the overall effect of MPAs on kelp forest cover was modest, the benefits became clear in the aftermath of marine heatwaves in 2014-2016, when kelp forests within MPAs were able recover more quickly, particularly in southern California.

“We found that kelp forests inside MPAs showed better recovery after a major climate disturbance compared to similar unprotected areas.” Explained Emelly Ortiz-Villa, lead author of the study and a PhD researcher at UCLA Department of Geography.

“Places where fishing is restricted and important predators like lobsters and sheephead are protected saw stronger kelp regrowth. This suggests that MPAs can support ecosystem resilience to climate events like marine heatwaves.”

Professor Rick Stafford, Chair of the British Ecological Society Policy Committee, who was not involved in the study said: “It’s great to see these results and they clearly show that local action to protect biodiversity and ecosystem function can help prevent changes caused by global pressures such as climate change.

“However, it also demonstrates the need for effective MPAs. In this study, all the MPAs examined regulated fishing activity, and this is not the case for many sites which are designated as MPAs worldwide – including many in the UK.”

Kelp forests: a globally important and threatened ecosystem

Kelp forests our found around coastlines all over the world, particularly in cool, temperate waters such as the pacific coast of North America, The UK, South Africa, and Australia.

These complex ecosystems are havens for marine wildlife, including commercially important fish, and are one of the most productive habitats on Earth. They’re also efficient in capturing carbon and protect coastlines by buffering against wave energy.

However, kelp forests across the west coast of North America have declined in recent years due to pressures such as marine heatwaves, made more frequent and intense with climate change, and predation from increasing numbers of sea urchins, which have benefitted from population collapses of sea stars, which predate them.

Kyle Cavanaugh, a senior author of the study and professor in the UCLA Department of Geography and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability said: “Kelp forests are facing many threats, including ocean warming, overgrazing, and pollution. These forests can be remarkably resilient to individual stressors, but multi-stressor situations can overwhelm their capacity to recover. By mitigating certain stressors, MPAs can help enhance the resilience of kelp.”

Marine protected areas as a conservation tool

MPAs are designated areas of the ocean where human activity is limited to support ecosystems and the species living there. However, protections vary widely and while some areas are no-take zones, others have few restrictions or lack comprehensive management and enforcement. Many even allow destructive practices like bottom trawling.

Effective MPAs form a key part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed at COP15 in 2022, which commits nations to protecting at least 30% of oceans and land by 2030.

“Our findings can inform decisions about where to establish new MPAs or implement other spatial protection measures.” said Kyle Cavanaugh. “MPAs will be most effective when located in areas that are inherently more resilient to ocean warming, such as regions with localized upwelling or kelp populations with higher thermal tolerance.”

Emelly Villa added: “Our findings suggest that kelp forests could be a useful indicator for tracking the ecological health and climate resilience of protected areas and should be included in long-term monitoring strategies.”

Measuring the impact of marine protected areas

To understand the effects MPAs were having on kelp, the researchers used of satellite data from 1984-2022 to compare kelp forests inside and outside of 54 MPAs along the California coast.

By matching each MPA with a reference site with similar environmental conditions, they were able to test whether MPAs helped kelp forests resist loss or recover from extreme marine heatwaves which took place in the North pacific between 2014 and 2016.

The researchers warn that while their findings show that MPAs can help kelp recovery after marine heatwaves, the effect was highly variable depending on location.

“On average, kelp within MPAs showed greater recovery than in the reference sites. However, not all MPAs outperformed their corresponding reference sites, suggesting that additional factors are also play a role in determining resilience.” said Kyle Cavanaugh.

The researchers say that future work could look to identify these factors to better understand where and when MPAs are most effective at enhancing kelp resilience.

-ENDS-

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Journal

Journal of Applied Ecology

DOI

10.1111/1365-2664.70112 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Marine protected areas enhance climate resilience to severe marine heatwaves for kelp forests

Article Publication Date

19-Aug-2025

POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

Liquid gold: Prototype harvests valuable resource from urine

Stanford University

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A newly developed system transforms human waste into a powerful tool for profitable and sustainable energy and agriculture in resource-limited regions. The prototype, outlined in a Stanford-led study published Aug 19 in Nature Water, recovers a valuable fertilizer from urine, using solar energy that can also provide power for other uses. In the process, the system provides essential sanitation, making wastewater safer to discharge or reuse for irrigation.

“This project is about turning a waste problem into a resource opportunity,” said study senior author William Tarpeh, an assistant professor of chemical engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering. “With this system, we’re capturing nutrients that would otherwise be flushed away or cause environmental damage and turning them into something valuable—fertilizer for crops—and doing it without needing access to a power grid.”

Nitrogen is a key component of commercial fertilizers. Traditionally, it's produced using a carbon-intensive process and distributed globally from large industrial facilities, many of which are located in wealthier nations resulting in higher prices in low- and middle-income countries. Globally, the nitrogen in human urine is equivalent to about 14% of annual fertilizer demand.

The prototype separates ammonia – a chemical compound made up of nitrogen and hydrogen – from urine through a series of chambers separated by membranes, using solar-generated electricity to drive ions across and eventually trap ammonia as ammonium sulfate, a common fertilizer. Warming the system—using waste heat collected from the back of photovoltaic solar panels via an attached copper tube cold plate—helps speed up the process by encouraging ammonia gas production, the final step in the separation process. Solar panels also produce more electricity at lower temperatures, so collecting waste heat helps keep them cool and efficient.   

“Each person produces enough nitrogen in their urine to fertilize a garden, but much of the world is reliant on expensive imported fertilizers instead,” said Orisa Coombs, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering. “You don’t need a giant chemical plant or even a wall socket. With enough sunshine, you can produce fertilizer right where it’s needed, and potentially even store or sell excess electricity.”

The study shows that integrating the heat generated by the solar panel to warm the liquid used in the electrochemical process and managing the current supplied to the electrochemical system increased power generation by nearly 60% and improved ammonia recovery efficiency by more than 20%, compared to earlier prototypes, which did not integrate these functions. The use of this waste heat is especially promising because there is a lot of it: about 80% of the sun energy that hits solar panels is lost, which could otherwise cause system overheating and efficiency slowdowns.

The researchers also developed a detailed model to predict how changes in sunlight, temperature, and electrical configuration affect system performance and economics. The model showed that in regions such as Uganda, where fertilizer is expensive and energy infrastructure is limited, the system could generate up to $4.13 per kilogram of nitrogen recovered—more than double the potential earnings in the U.S.

The researchers believe the approach could scale to help farmers and communities around the world. Lessons learned about integrating solar panel waste heat could also be applied to industrial facilities, such as wastewater treatment plants, capable of capturing heat produced during electricity generation to power a range of applications.

Coombs is working on a prototype that will have triple the reactor capacity, be capable of processing significantly more urine, and will process faster when more sunlight is available.

Beyond the potential for harvesting a valuable product and generating energy, the approach holds the promise of effective sanitation. More than 80% of wastewater goes untreated – much of it in low- and middle-income countries, according to the UN. Nitrogen in wastewater can contaminate groundwater and drinking water sources, and cause oxygen-depleting algal blooms that kill aquatic plants and animals. By removing nitrogen from urine, the prototype system makes the remaining liquid safer to discharge or reuse for irrigation. The ability to do this with a self-powered system could be a game changer in many countries where only a small percentage of the population is connected to centralized sewage systems.

“We often think of water, food, and energy as completely separate systems, but this is one of those rare cases where engineering innovation can help solve multiple problems at once,” said Coombs. “It’s clean, it’s scalable, and it’s literally powered by the sun.”

 

 

Coauthors of the study also include Taigyu Joo, a postdoctoral scholar in chemical engineering at Stanford; Amilton Barbosa Botelho Junior, a postdoctoral research fellow in chemical engineering at Stanford and the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil at the time of the research; and Divya Chalise, a postdoctoral scholar in mechanical engineering at Stanford.

Tarpeh is also an assistant professor, by courtesy, of civil and environmental engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; a center fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy; and a center fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

The study was funded by the Knight-Hennessy Fellowship, the National Science Graduate Research Fellowship, a Global Health Seed Grant from the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Stanford Sustainability Accelerator, and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo and Capes.

The researchers’ work to convert urine into fertilizer was supported by the Stanford Sustainability Accelerator in its first round of grants in 2022. The team built a lab-scale electricity-driven reactor that extended to 40 days of operation, which inspired and enabled work on pairing electrochemical water treatment with solar panels. The earliest iterations of this project focused on recovering nitrogen and sulfur from wastewater to enable water reuse and fertilizer production, and was supported by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment’s Environmental Venture Projects program.

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Journal

Nature Water

Article Title

Prototyping and Modeling a Photovoltaic/Thermal Electrochemical Stripping System for Distributed Urine Nitrogen Recovery

Article Publication Date

19-Aug-2025

 

Scientists debut a new foundational atlas of the plant life cycle

Salk Institute researchers map every cell type and developmental state across the entire life cycle of model plant Arabidopsis

Salk Institute

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From left: Tatsuya Nobori, Natanella Illouz Eliaz, and Travis Lee.

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Credit: Salk Institute

LA JOLLA (August 19, 2025)—Nearly everything you know about plants was first discovered in a plant you’ve likely never heard of. Arabidopsis thaliana, also known as thale cress, is a small, flowering weed that has shaped much of plant biology as we know it. Serving as the representative plant species in most plant research across the last half century, Arabidopsis has taught us how plants respond to light, which hormones control plant behavior, and why some plants grow long, deep roots while others grow them shallow and wide. But despite its beloved reputation among plant biologists worldwide, many elements of the Arabidopsis life cycle have remained a mystery.

Salk Institute researchers have now established the first genetic atlas to span the entire Arabidopsis life cycle. The new atlas—created using detailed single-cell and spatial transcriptomics—captures the gene expression patterns of 400,000 cells within multiple developmental stages as Arabidopsis grows from a single seed to a mature plant. The publicly available resource will be hugely informative to future studies of different plant cell types and developmental stages, and how they respond to stress and environmental stimuli.

The findings, published in Nature Plants on August 19, 2025, will help expand research and development in plant biotechnology, agriculture, and environmental sciences.

“We’ve come very far in our understanding of plant biology, but until recently, there has been a technological bottleneck preventing us from comprehensively cataloguing cell types and the genes they express uniformly, across developmental stages,” says senior author Joseph Ecker, professor, Salk International Council Chair in Genetics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “Our study changes that. We created a foundational gene expression dataset of most cell types, tissues, and organs, across the spectrum of the Arabidopsis life cycle.”

How to map a plant

In its many years as a model plant, Arabidopsis has seen its fair share of experiments. Scientists have been working to decode Arabidopsis’ genome for decades, mapping which genes are expressed in each cell type across various plant tissues and organs. Using these incremental maps, scientists can start to figure out which genes control the identity and behavior of different parts of the plant.

One effective way to make these maps is by using single-cell RNA sequencing. This genetic sequencing technique looks at the genome’s products—strands of RNA—rather than the original DNA code. This makes it easy for scientists to see which genes are actually used in a cell, and how many. Gene expression maps also help researchers characterize the different types of cells within a species. Since every cell in an organism contains the same genetic code, different cell types can be identified by the unique pattern of genes they express.

While single-cell RNA sequencing has allowed scientists to make detailed maps of cell types, these maps are often restricted to select organs or tissues—for example, looking only at the plant’s roots and ignoring the stem, flowers, and leaves. To move from small genetic maps to a sophisticated atlas, the Salk researchers paired single-cell RNA sequencing with another technology: spatial transcriptomics.

Better technology, better maps

With single-cell RNA sequencing, researchers are forced to separate tissues of interest and process their cells in isolation. With spatial transcriptomics, researchers can create genomic maps of plants as they exist in the real world, within the tissue context. The structure, shape, and location of cells and tissues across the entire plant can remain intact throughout the sequencing process. The result is an insightful view into the identity of cells within multiple tissues and organs at once.

“What excites me most about this work is that we can now see things we simply couldn’t see before,” says co-first author Natanella Illouz-Eliaz, a postdoctoral researcher in Ecker’s lab. “Imagine being able to watch where up to a thousand genes are active all at once, in the real tissue and cell context of the plant. It’s not only fascinating on its own, but it’s already led us to discoveries, like finding genes involved in seedpod development that no one knew about before. There’s so much more waiting to be uncovered in this data, and that sense of possibility is what I am truly enthusiastic about.”

The single-cell and spatial transcriptomic atlas spans 10 Arabidopsis developmental stages, from seed in the ground to flowering adulthood. More than 400,000 cells were captured across this life cycle, demonstrating the striking diversity of cell types that can be found in just one organism.

Where the new map leads us

By looking at the full life cycle of Arabidopsis rather than at a single snapshot in time, the researchers have already found a surprisingly dynamic and complex cast of characters responsible for regulating plant development. They also learned about many new genes whose expression and function in unique cell types can now be further explored.

“This study will be a powerful tool for hypothesis generation across the entire plant biology field,” says co-first author Travis Lee, a postdoctoral researcher in Ecker’s lab. “Our easy-to-use web application makes this life cycle atlas easily accessible to the plant science community through simply navigating to our website, and we can’t wait to learn from the many single-cell genomic studies it will now enable.”

The researchers hope this new resource—currently available for free online—will enable deeper exploration of plant cell development, help explain how plants respond to genetic and environmental perturbations, and advance the field of plant biology overall.

Other authors include Jiaying Xu, Bruce Jow, and Joseph Nery of Salk, as well as Tatsuya Nobori, formerly of Salk and presently at The Sainsbury Laboratory in the United Kingdom.

The work was supported by the Human Frontiers Science Program (no. LT000661/2020-L), George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, National Institutes of Health (NIGMS K99GM154136), and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:

Unlocking the secrets of life itself is the driving force behind the Salk Institute. Our team of world-class, award-winning scientists pushes the boundaries of knowledge in areas such as neuroscience, cancer research, aging, immunobiology, plant biology, computational biology, and more. Founded by Jonas Salk, developer of the first safe and effective polio vaccine, the Institute is an independent, nonprofit research organization and architectural landmark: small by choice, intimate by nature, and fearless in the face of any challenge. Learn more at www.salk.edu.

 

Illustration capturing the study’s findings, with Arabidopsis thaliana sprouting amongst cells and strands of DNA—all inside a globe.

Credit

Philip Dexheimer

 

Arabidopsis thaliana spatial transcriptomic assay shows the striking cellular diversity in the plant’s flower, as each color represents a distinct cell type.

Credit

Salk Institute

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Journal

Nature Plants

DOI

10.1038/s41477-025-02072-z 

Article Title

A single-cell, spatial transcriptomic atlas of the Arabidopsis life cycle

The Bright Side: Cambridge Dictionary adds 6,000 new words, including ‘skibidi’ and ‘delulu’


The Cambridge Dictionary has added 6,000 new words to its online edition over the past year, including terms popularised by Gen Z and Gen Alpha like "skibidi," "delulu," and "tradwife", the publisher announced Monday. The dictionary also tackled the task of defining "skibidi", a meme-driven word that can mean "cool" or "bad" or sometimes be used without any clear meaning at all.

Issued on: 18/08/2025 - 
By: FRANCE 24

The dictionary cited Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's use of the phrase "delulu with no solulu". © Mike Bowers, AFP

Words popularised by Gen Z and Gen Alpha including "skibidi", "delulu", and "tradwife" are among 6,000 new entries to the online edition of the Cambridge Dictionary over the last year, its publisher said Monday.

Cambridge University Press said tradwife, a portmanteau of traditional wife, reflected "a growing, controversial Instagram and TikTok trend that embraces traditional gender roles".

Watch moreThe rise of the 'tradwife'

The dictionary also took on the challenge of defining skibidi, a word popularised in online memes, as a term which had "different meanings such as cool or bad, or can be used with no real meaning".

The gibberish word was spread by a YouTube channel called "Skibidi Toilet" and is associated with the mindless, "brain rot" content found on social media and consumed by Gen Alpha's overwhelmingly digital lifestyle.

The dictionary defined delulu, derived from the word delusional, as "believing things that are not real or true, usually because you choose to".

As an example, it cited a 2025 speech in parliament where Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the phrase "delulu with no solulu".

Watch moreENTR: Tradwife influencers

"It's not every day you get to see words like skibidi and delulu make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary," said Colin McIntosh, Lexical Programme manager at the Cambridge Dictionary.

"We only add words where we think they'll have staying power. Internet culture is changing the English language and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the Dictionary."

Other new phrases include "lewk", used to describe a unique fashion look and popularised by RuPaul's Drag Race, and "inspo", short for inspiration.

Work from home culture has given rise to "mouse jiggler", referring to a way to pretend to work when you are not.

There is also "forever chemical", man-made chemicals that stay in the environment for years and have gained traction as concerns grow about the irreversible impact of climate change on the health of humans and the plant.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

CLIMATE CRISIS

Survivors claw through rubble after deadly Pakistan cloudburst

Bar Dalori (Pakistan) (AFP) – In the middle of the night, by the glow of their mobile phones, rescuers and villagers dug through the concrete remains of flattened houses after massive rocks crashed down on a remote Pakistani village following a cloudburst.


Issued on: 19/08/2025 - RFI

Rescue workers and residents search for victims in the debris of collapsed houses after a cloudburst in Dolari village, in northern Pakistan © Aamir QURESHI / AFP

Using hammers, shovels, and in many cases their bare hands to clear the rubble and open blocked pathways, they searched through the debris in darkness, with no electricity in the area.

In just minutes, a torrent of water and rocks swept down on the village of Dalori on Monday, destroying at least 15 houses, damaging several others and killing nine people.

Around 20 villagers are still trapped under the debris.

"A huge bang came from the top of the mountain, and then dark smoke billowed into the sky," Lal Khan, a 46-year-old local labourer, told AFP.

"A massive surge of water gushed down with the sliding mountain," he added.

The cloudburst above Dalori came a few days into heavy monsoon rains that have already killed more than 350 people across mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, along the northwest border with Afghanistan.

In just minutes, a torrent of water and rocks swept down on the village of Dalori, destroying at least 15 houses, damaging several others and killing nine people © Aamir QURESHI / AFP


Torrential rains in northern Pakistan since Thursday have caused flooding and landslides that have swept away entire villages, with around 200 people still missing.

And authorities have warned of fresh flash floods in the coming days.

Khan recalled seeing the hand of his neighbour sticking out of the rubble, where rescuers later retrieved her body along with those of her four children.

"We are absolutely helpless. We don't have the means to tackle this calamity that nature has sent upon us," Khan added.
'Like an apocalyptic movie'

Fellow resident Gul Hazir said not one but several cloudbursts from two sides of the village struck the remote valley.

"It was like an apocalyptic movie. I still can't believe what I saw," Hazir said.

"It was not the water that struck first, but a massive amount of rocks and stones that smashed into the houses," Hazir told AFP.

Local administration official Usman Khan told AFP at the site that many of the houses had been built in the middle of the stream bed, which worsened the scale of destruction.

"There was no way for the water to recede after the cloudburst struck at least 11 separate locations in the area," he said.

"It is immensely challenging to carry out operations here, as heavy machinery cannot pass through the narrow alleys."

The people of Dalori had been collecting money to help neighbouring flood-hit areas before disaster struck their village © Aamir QURESHI / AFP


Saqib Ghani, a student who lost his father and was searching for other relatives, tried to claw through the concrete with his bare hands before rescuers pulled him away and villagers gave him water.

The single road leading to the village was demolished at several points, while gravel was scattered across the settlement.

Despite the challenging conditions, excavators were working at several sites to remove debris that had clogged the drainage channels and blocked the flow of water.

Dalori has already held funerals for five victims, while women mourned in darkened homes with no electricity since the disaster.

In the village's narrow alleys, unattended cattle wandered freely amid the devastation.

"I will not live here anymore," said a grieving woman, draped in a large shawl, as she followed a coffin being carried through the street.

Over the past few days, the villagers had been collecting money to help people in neighbouring flood-hit areas, until they too were overwhelmed by disaster and lost everything.

"We didn't know we would be needing help ourselves," Hazir added.

© 2025 AFP

CLIMATE CRISIS

Six killed fighting fires in Spain and Portugal as wildfires ravage peninsula


Six firefighters have died across Spain and Portugal as the Iberian peninsula grapples with devastating wildfires exacerbated by an enduring heatwave. Thousands of firefighters have been deployed across southern Europe in recent weeks to beat back a series of deadly blazes.

Issued on: 18/08/2025 -
By: FRANCE 24
Video by: Antonia KERRIGAN

A firefighter stands as he battles a wildfire in Veiga das Meas, northwestern Spain, Saturday, August 16, 2025. © Lalo R. Villar, AP
01:43


Thousands of firefighters backed by the military and water-bombing aircraft on Monday battled dozens of wildfires across Spain and Portugal, as the death toll increased to six since the outbreaks began.

The Iberian peninsula has been particularly affected by forest fires fuelled by heatwaves and drought blamed on climate change that have hit southern Europe.

More than 343,000 hectares (848,000 acres) of land – the equivalent of nearly half a million football pitches -- have been destroyed this year in Spain, setting a new national record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

Fires keep burning in southern Europe as army is deployed in Spain

Firefighters continue to battle blazes © France 24
01:21

The previous record of 306,000 hectares was set in the same period three years ago.

Two firefighters were killed on Sunday – one in each country, both in road accidents – taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.

The head of Spain's Civil Protection and Emergencies, Virginia Barcones, told broadcaster TVE there were currently 23 "active fires" that pose a serious and direct threat to the population.

The fires, now in their second week, were concentrated in the northwest regions of Galicia, Castile and Leon, and Extremadura.

In Ourense province of Galicia, signs of the fires were everywhere, from ashen forests and blackened soil to destroyed homes, with thick smoke forcing people to wear facemasks.

Firefighters battled to put out fires, as locals in just shorts and T-shirts used water from hoses and buckets to try to stop the spread.

One resident in O Barco de Valdeorras, dousing his home with water from a hosepipe, described the wildfire that ripped through his area as "like a bomb".

"It came from below and it was like a hurricane," he said. "The good thing was that in two minutes it headed up and it didn't stay here long.

"If not, our house would have been burnt, it would not have survived."
'Complicated situation'

Barcones said she hoped weather conditions would turn to help tackle the fires. Spain's meteorological agency said the heatwave, which has seen temperatures hit 45C in parts of the country, was coming to an end.

Elsewhere, authorities in Turkey said two major fires had been brought under control, while rain and falling temperatures have helped firefighters extinguish dozens of blazes in the Balkans.

Spain is being helped with firefighting aircraft from France, Italy, Slovakia and the Netherlands, while Portugal is receiving air support from Sweden and Morocco.

"It's a very difficult, very complicated situation," Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles told TVE.

The size and severity of the fires and the intensity of the smoke – visible from space – were making "airborne action" difficult," she added.

Officials in Castile and Leon said a firefighter died on Sunday night when the water truck he was driving flipped over on a steep forest road and down a slope.

Two other volunteer firefighters have died in Castile and Leon, while a Romanian employee of a riding school north of Madrid lost his life trying to protect horses from the fire.

In Portugal, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said a firefighter died on Sunday in a traffic accident that left two colleagues seriously injured.

A former mayor in the eastern town of Guarda died on Friday while trying to tackle a fire.

Some 2,000 firefighters were deployed across northern and central Portugal on Monday, with about half of them concentrated in the town of Arbanil.

Some 216,000 hectares of land have been destroyed across Portugal since the start of the year.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Spain deploys hundreds of extra troops as it steps up efforts to bring wildfires under control

By Malek Fouda
Published on 18/08/2025 

Spanish firefighters are still battling 12 major and active wildfires in the northwestern Galicia region as much of southern Europe reels from record hot temperatures.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says a further 500 soldiers will be deployed to battle wildfires that have torn through parched woodland amid a record-setting European heatwave.

The decision to add to the more than 1,400 troops already on wildfire duty came as authorities struggle to contain forest blazes, particularly in the north-western Galicia region and await the arrival of promised aircraft reinforcements from other European countries.

Firefighters are tackling 12 major wildfires in the province, all of them near the city of Ourense, according to the head of the Galician regional government Alfonso Rueda, who delivered the update in a joint press conference with Sánchez.

"Homes are still under threat so we have lockdowns in place and are carrying out evacuations," said Rueda. "Galicia has been battling the spreading flames for more than a week."

A firefighting plane drops water over a wildfire in Veiga das Meas, northwestern Spain, on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025 Lalo R. Villar/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved

Temperatures in Spain could reach 45C in some areas on Sunday, according to the Spanish national weather agency, AEMET. On Saturday, the highest temperature on record was 44.7C in the southern city of Cordoba.

"This Sunday, when extraordinarily high temperatures are expected, the danger of wildfires is extreme in most of the country," AEMET said in a post on X.

The fires in Spain this year have burned 3,430 square kilometres, according to the EU's European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly the same size as metropolitan London.

Experts say Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s. Scientists believe that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness in parts of Europe, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.
Spain awaits assistance from Europe

Madrid is expecting the arrival of two Dutch water-dumping planes that were to join aircraft from France and Italy already helping Spanish authorities under a European cooperation agreement.

Firefighters from other countries are also expected to arrive in the region in coming days, as per an announcement by Spain’s Civil Protection Agency chief Virginia Barcones told public broadcaster RTVE.

Two women walk with their heads covered to protect from the sun during extreme hot weather in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025 Paul White/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved

National rail operator Renfe said it suspended Madrid-Galicia high-speed train services scheduled for Sunday due to the fires. It’s not yet clear when service is expected to resume.

Galician authorities advised people to wear face masks to avoid inhaling smoke and ash and advised them to limit time spent outdoors as the risk of heatstroke looms.
Cooler days on the horizon for Portugal

Portugal is set for cooler weather in the coming days after a string of severe wildfires. A national state of alert was enacted on 2 August due to the blazes and was set to end on Sunday, a day before two Swedish firefighting planes were expected to arrive.

Similarly to Spain, Portugal's resources have been stretched. On Sunday, more than 4,000 firefighters and over 1,300 vehicles were deployed, as well as 17 aircraft, to tackle the fires.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows an active fire line for a wildfire in Trancoso, Portugal, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025 AP/Satellite image ©2025 Maxar Technologies

The scorched area of forest in Portugal so far this year is 17 times what it was in 2024, estimated at around 1,390 square kilometres, according to preliminary calculations by the Portuguese Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests.

Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have also requested help from the EU's firefighting force in recent days to deal with forest fires. The force has already been activated as many times this year as in all of last year's summer fire season.

Gallipoli memorials threatened by Turkish fires

In Turkey, where recent wildfires have killed 19 people, parts of the historic region that includes memorials to World War I's Gallipoli campaign were evacuated on Sunday as blazes threatened homes in the country’s northwest provinces.

Çanakkale Mayor Omer Toraman says six villages were evacuated as a precautionary measure. Officials say about 1,300 firefighting personnel backed by 30 aircraft were battling the blaze.

A water-bombing plane spreads water to extinguish a fire in a forested area in Guzelyeli, on the outskirts of Canakkale, northwest Turkey, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025 Khalil Hamra/Copyright 2025 The AP. All rights reserved

A wildfire on the peninsula to the north of the Dardanelles Strait led to the closure of visitor facilities at Gallipoli, the site's management said. The area is dotted with cemeteries, memorials and other remnants of battles waged between Ottoman and Allied troops in 1915.

Turkey has been struck by hundreds of fires since late June, fuelled by record-breaking temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.