It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
At what point does smoking weed get dangerous? A British study measured cannabis consumption in THC units and determined which amounts increase health risks. The system comes with clear risk thresholds ― and weaknesses.
THC units can make the conversation around cannabis consumption more precise
Image: Henry Romero/REUTERS
Even just a few joints a week can make a difference ― measured in milligrams of THC. A new study by researcher Rachel L. Thorne and her team provides the first concrete thresholds for the weekly dose at which the risk of cannabis use disorder increases significantly. Thorne is a research associate in the psychology department at the University of Bath, UK, whose areas of expertise include cannabis use and its consequences for youth and adult health. The study was published on Monday in the journal Addiction. How much THC per week poses a health risk?
The researchers used data from the CannTeen study involving 85 adolescents (aged 16 to 17) and 65 adults (aged 26 to 29) who had used cannabis in the past year. One THC unit, defined as 5 milligrams, is analogous to the standard unit used to compare beer, wine and spirits in alcohol research.
Based on surveys of consumption patterns and a clinical diagnosis at the end of the study, the researchers derived thresholds that mark the difference between unremarkable consumption and cannabis use disorder.
A cannabis use disorder is present when someone can no longer control their cannabis consumption and continues to use despite clear problems in everyday life. Typical signs of the disorder are neglecting responsibilities at school, work or with family, and withdrawal symptoms such as restlessness or sleeping issues when trying to quit.
For adolescents, this threshold was around 6 THC units per week ― i.e., around 30 milligrams of THC ― and for adults, it was around 8 units, or around 40 milligrams per week. For moderate to severe disorders, the values were higher. The research team emphasized that only abstinence is completely risk-free.
THC units based on alcohol research
In alcohol research, consumption is also generally measured in standard drinks or units, and thresholds for "risky" behavior, like binge drinking, have been established.
"Threshold values are generally very useful for communicating health risks," says Jakob Manthey from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Addiction Research at the University of Hamburg.
But there is also a risk that such values can be misinterpreted.
"There is a danger that consumption below the threshold value will be interpreted as harmless or even beneficial to health," says Manthey, who was not involved in the study.
Unlike alcohol, however, cannabis contains many active ingredients whose interaction influences the drug's effects and risks. Although THC is indeed the most important risk factor, other cannabinoids produced by the plant, as well as the form of consumption ― whether via a joint, vaporizer or edible ― can significantly alter both dose and effect.
How reliable are the THC figures in the study?
One of the study’s strengths is that the researchers repeatedly asked the same individuals about their cannabis use over the course of an entire year. However, the sample size is small (150 individuals), and the actual THC content of the products consumed had to be estimated from external sources, as no lab analyses of individual samples was performed.
The figures the study quotes should therefore be understood as initial guidelines rather than hard limits. But they show, unsurprisingly, that the higher the weekly THC intake, the greater the risk of cannabis use disorder becomes.
Benefits for diagnosis, therapy and prevention in cannabis use
The new thresholds do not replace doctors or therapists for diagnosis and treatment, but they can help with preliminary screening. Specialists could, for instance, begin asking those affected how many THC units they consume per week in order to better assess risk and detect a potential disorder at an earlier stage.
In doing so, they would be following guidelines for the treatment of cannabis-related disorders, which state that frequency and quantity of consumption ― as well as the potency of cannabis consumed ― are important risk factors.
A standardized unit system could help make this information more comparable in the future. It will not, however, change consumption patterns all on its own, since availability, advertising and measures such as youth protection and advertising restrictions play a major role in that as well.
What THC units can do ― and what they can't
Practical applicability remains a key problem: Many consumers simply don’t know how much THC their products contain, especially if they are home-grown or sourced illegally. "Under the current regulations, there will be no widespread communication of THC units, so consumers often have no reliable way of knowing the THC content of the products available," says Jakob Manthey.
British neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt still views the new analysis as an important step.
"The data provide an estimate of a threshold of weekly consumption to eliminate dependence risk," Nutt said.
He is calling for "a regulated cannabis market with clear product quality and identification of unit amounts (as required for alcohol currently)."
The proposed THC units would clarify previously vague terms like "a lot" or "risky" when it comes to cannabis consumption. But those wanting to protect their health need more than just a weekly unit number. They also need honest information about potency, effective prevention and, when in doubt, the willingness to limit consumption or quit altogether. This article was translated from German
Alexander Freund Science editor with a focus on archaeology, history and health
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
This Tribal News Agency Shows How to Defend a Free Press at the Grassroots As Trump erodes press freedoms, the resurgence of Mvskoke Media offers lessons on how to protect independent media.
Angel Ellis speaking at the Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival in Poland, 2023, where the documentary Bad Press was screened. Millennium Docs Against Gravity
To say press freedoms in the U.S. have taken a knock during the first year of Donald Trump’s second term would be a gross understatement.
Perhaps the most glaring example is the Department of Defense’s new policy requiring journalists covering the Pentagon to sign a pledge promising not to use any information that hasn’t been explicitly authorized. But the Trump administration’s attacks on a free press have also included other tactics, like the effort to dismantle Freedom of Information Act processes across federal departments.
“To be clear, all presidents and all elected officials have always objected to their coverage,” David Loy, legal director with the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan nonprofit that seeks to promote and protect press freedoms, told Truthout. “But the Trump administration has mounted unprecedented attacks on freedom of the press.”
These attacks on press freedoms don’t stop at the federal level, however; they are also being inflicted by local governments seeking to undermine already-embattled local media. In Northern California’s Shasta County, for example, the region’s registrar of voters, Clint Curtis, singled out a local media outlet for exclusion on a press release distribution list after the publication had reported on serious questions about his proposed changes to the electoral process.
It hasn’t been all bad news, with the courts remaining a vital bulwark against such attacks.
In November, Marion County in Kansas agreed to offer an apology and pay a $3 million settlement to end a lawsuit stemming from police raids on the small Marion County Record newsroom and two homes in August of 2023, including that of Record vice president and associate publisher, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, who died of a heart attack the following day. The raids were precipitated by a news tip the Record had received about the driving record of a local restaurant owner who was applying for a liquor license. The police chief alleged incorrectly that the paper had illegally accessed these records.
In October, a California district court judge sided with the Los Angeles Press Club in striking down an attempt by the Los Angeles Police Department to lessen use-of-force restrictions against journalists covering protests across the city.
Against this backdrop, the small and scrappy news outlet that serves the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma — the fourth-largest federally recognized tribal nation in the U.S. — offers a stark lesson of what happens when cherished press freedoms are lost altogether, as well as a blueprint for how to restore and protect these important civic checks and balances.
The Fight for a Free Press
Just over four years ago, Muscogee voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the nation’s free and independent press, along with a stable funding source for Mvskoke Media, a tribal news agency. It’s the first tribal nation to tweak their constitution to cement and secure an independent press in this manner.
The road to that moment was a long and rocky one, characterized by corruption in high office, a small newsroom hamstrung by government censorship, and a community forced to reckon with the potential loss of a key mechanism for holding their leaders accountable. The story is documented in the roller-coaster 2023 documentary Bad Press by filmmakers Joe Peeler and Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, the latter a member of the Muscogee Nation and a former editor of Mvskoke Media.
“Part of being a good journalism outlet is always advocating for press freedom and the First Amendment rights of our citizens,” said current Mvskoke Media Director Angel Ellis. “And now, we are in better shape to do that advocacy work and deliver the news as we should.”
The nation has been served by a monthly newspaper since 1970, The Mvskoke News, which is now housed at Mvskoke Media, an editorial and creative outlet. The nation’s journalists had already built a reputation for holding its leaders’ feet to the fire. But not everyone appreciated this public accounting, especially those in charge.
Ellis broke a major government corruption story in 2011 about the misuse of tribal gaming funds. It won her an award from the Native American Journalists Association, but Ellis’s department manager fired her for insubordination shortly after this coverage went to print.
A few years later, in 2015, the Muscogee Creek Nation passed a law codifying its free press, in the process protecting the work of the journalists Ellis had left behind. At the time, it was one of just a handful of tribal nations to have enacted such a law. Even today, only about 11 of the 574 federally recognized Native American tribes are protected by some sort of press freedom, either by a law written into their books or by a court ruling defending that nation’s independent news coverage, said Ellis.
As easily as a law can get passed, however, it can just as easily be rolled back.
In 2017, Mvskoke Media investigated the tribal council speaker, Lucian Tiger III, for sexual misconduct, in an explosive story that rattled the tribal nation. The newsroom received warnings from within the government that council members wanted to nuke the nation’s free press law to gag reporters. The following year, they did. The council voted 7-6 to repeal the law. Tiger was the decisive tie-breaker.
The vote dissolved the paper’s editorial board and gave council members the ability to edit and approve stories. Many of Mvskoke Media’s reporters — whose digital communications were suddenly open for scrutiny by government leadership — resigned, appalled at being professionally handcuffed. Ellis, who had been rehired in 2018, just before the repeal of the law, was one of the few who stayed on.
In 2019, the tribal council passed another bill somewhat restoring the Mvskoke Media’s press independence. But it was far from perfect. And the newsroom’s ability to check power remained limited under a law that could once again be revoked.
In a democracy where governmental authority isn’t properly held accountable, elections are among its most corruptible parts. After the tribal attorney general called the elections later that year “fatally flawed,” the Muscogee Creek Nation Supreme Court nullified the results and called for a redo, finding the election board’s handling of ballots opened the door to tampering.
If the wheels of democracy were to spin unimpeded, an independent free press was vital. A constitutional amendment would cement it in stone. Come the elections of 2021, Muscogee citizens got their chance to weigh in.
In the lead up to the vote, the Mvskoke Media championed the amendment, with Ellis, a heavy-smoking, straight-talking force of nature, its loudest bullhorn. Part of that role required convincing community members of its necessity, some of whom believed Mvskoke Media’s journalists were just scared of losing their livelihoods.
“I didn’t argue with them. I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re a news organization. And news organizations are run by people who do the job and people need to be paid,’” said Ellis, describing “hundreds and hundreds of hours of outreach speaking candidly one-on-one” with the community.
“We got really transparent with the public and showed them how we operated and what those funding revenue streams looked like and how they were being administered by our department. It felt risky to expose all of our funding streams and our financials,” said Ellis. “We did that so that they understood exactly how those public funds were being spent.”
Her work paid off in September 2021, when the Muscogee Creek Nation voted for the free press constitutional amendment by a whopping 76 percent. Its passage came with immediate tangible effects, for both Mvskoke Media and the Muscogee Creek Nation as a whole. Since then, “democracy has been carried out in a very cohesive and boring manner,” said Ellis. Since the Constitutional Amendment
The constitutional amendment built a firewall between Mvskoke Media and government officials. So far, it’s held firm. “There’s nothing threatening coming down the pipeline, but we don’t want to rest on our laurels,” said Ellis.
As part of that proactive approach, Ellis has found the publication independent legal counsel. They’ve also moved the newsroom’s headquarters from one owned by the Creek Nation to an independent location in Tulsa.
“If they ever wanted to come and shut our doors, they could have,” said Ellis, about the impetus behind the location change.
Another vulnerability came from the fact the newsroom’s IT services ran through the tribe. “Are they reading our emails? Were they able to shut us down in terms of our digital electronic functions?” said Ellis, replaying some of her fears. In response, the organization has adopted its own independent IT system.
All of this has cost money, which brings up another remarkable evolution of Mvskoke Media: funding.
Although the newsroom still receives statutory funding, about 60 percent of its money now comes from merchandizing: think sweatshirts, hoodies, and t-shirts. Mvskoke Media operates two brick-and-mortar gift shops, and while it doesn’t have a commercial printing press, it has printers perfectly suited for commercial business cards, flyers, and brochures.
“In the midst of all of the upheaval we were experiencing, a lot of the citizens were really behind us and we started selling t-shirts that were culturally branded,” said Ellis, explaining the genesis of the idea. “We started out with about $10,000 worth of just t-shirts. We sold them. And everything we sold, we put right back into it. And now, we’ve grown that into over half a million dollars of revenue.”
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Before the free press law was repealed in 2018, the Mvskoke Media newsroom employed 12 people. “As we sit today, I only have five,” said Ellis. “I’m desperately trying to rebuild capacity. When you lose 90 years-worth of experience in a newsroom, it’s damn near impossible to replace that.”
Ellis has taken her story to newsrooms large and small around the U.S. imparting words of hard-earned wisdom. One of her pieces of advice is to embrace public criticism. For the Mvskoke Media, a frequent critique, Ellis explained, surrounds the sort of coverage the community can feel paints the tribe in a negative light.
Another is to eschew the old profit-driven funding model built around advertising. “I’ve trained some very prestigious newsrooms and my message is always this: ‘Indigenize your process and get away from the capitalism,’” said Ellis, who explained that while the Mvskoke Media still accepts advertising dollars, it’s far from a central focus of their revenue-building efforts. “Your bottom line will improve if you live in service to your community.”
“It’s always in the nature of power to resist accountability,” said Loy, offering a reminder that press freedoms need eternal vigilance. “Free speech begins at home. It’s just as vitally important that free speech and a free press be defended at the grassroots.”
Ellis, meanwhile, can now start to look back on years of frustration, fear, and no small amount of hard work with the sense of a job well done. “To see progress and to be able to provide an example of a success story for our industry that doesn’t have a ton of reasons to celebrate right now, it feels very, very good,” she said. “It’s very gratifying work.”
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Dan Ross Dan Ross is a journalist whose work has appeared in Truthout, The Guardian, FairWarning, Newsweek, YES! Magazine, Salon, AlterNet, Vice and a number of other publications. He is based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @1danross.
Eric von Daeniken, Swiss author who popularised ancient alien theories, dies at 90
Legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films despite academics refuting his theories.
Best-selling Swiss author Erich von Daeniken, who built a lucrative career on his argument, rubbished by scientists and archaeologists, that humanity owes much of its development to the intervention of extraterrestrials, has died aged 90.
Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968, sold millions of copies with its thesis that advanced aliens had repeatedly visited Earth, leaving their mark in the form of Inca and Egyptian ruins, cave drawings and other physical monuments.
“It took courage to write this book, and it will take courage to read it,” the work begins. It acknowledged that scholars would dismiss it as nonsense, but insisted that “the past teemed with unknown gods who visited the primaeval earth in manned spaceships”.
‘Pseudoscience’ theories
Academics wrote books refuting his theories, criticising him as a purveyor of some of the more fantastical notions of pseudoscience. German news magazine Der Spiegel even had a 1973 cover story titled ‘The Daeniken Hoax’.
Nevertheless, legions of fans snapped up his more than 40 books and watched his television specials and documentary films. The over 70 million books that he sold were translated into more than 30 languages.
Von Daeniken spent the early part of his working life managing a hotel in eastern Switzerland, where a fraud conviction landed him in jail for 18 months. But as his book took off, he emerged from prison as a best-selling author.
Still, he never presented the smoking gun to fulfil astronomer Carl Sagan’s famous adage that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. “He … says that the astonishing astronomical information ancient civilisations, such as the Mayan, had is proof that there were some space travelers around to teach it to them. This fits in with his general questioning of the ability of the Egyptians to build the pyramids, or the Easter Islanders to erect those massive stone heads,” the New York Times wrote in 1974.
“His method is to use a negative — ancient peoples couldn’t have done or thought all the things they did — to prove a positive — that the ancient people were the beneficiaries of some kind of cosmological Point 4 (development assistance) programme.” Such criticism never knocked von Daeniken off his stride.
“We owe it to our self-respect to be rational and objective,” he wrote. “At some time or other, every daring theory seemed to be a Utopia. How many Utopias have long since become everyday realities!” Television specials about his books made him a well-known figure in Europe and the United States. In 2003, he opened a Mysteries of the World theme park in Interlaken — although it went bust after three years.
Return of the Aliens
In a treatise on his website, von Daeniken said he was not an esoteric, and that his work served to debunk “a world of religious and unfortunately often scientific humbugs”. “From countless old written records, I know that these ‘gods’ promised to return. Then we will experience the god shock, a total catastrophe in religion and science. And everything would have been so easy to understand — without this god shock. The evidence speaks a clear language. That is what drives me.” The release in July 2021 of a watershed US government UFO report that did not rule out extraterrestrial origins gave him hope.
“In future, anyone who talks about UFOs and extraterrestrials can no longer simply be ridiculed. People will slowly realise that many things are possible that they previously considered impossible,” he told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper.
“As soon as we are prepared and get used to the idea that we are not alone in the universe, the extraterrestrials will come to us. I expect that to be the case within the next 10 years.”
Researchers from University of California San Diego report that an expanded, school-based tobacco prevention program in California was associated with significantly lower rates of smoking and vaping among middle and high school students. The study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health on Jan. 12, 2026, evaluated the impact of California’s Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) program following a major funding increase approved by voters in 2016.
Using data from more than 160,000 students statewide, the researchers found that students attending schools receiving TUPE funding were 20% less likely to use tobacco overall and 23% less likely to vape, compared with students in schools without TUPE funding.
“California has one of the most comprehensive tobacco control environments in the country, so demonstrating added impact from a single program is challenging,” said Shu-Hong Zhu, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. “But even in this active landscape, the TUPE program demonstrated a clear association with reduced youth tobacco use.”
The evaluation focused on the period after passage of Proposition 56, a ballot initiative approved by California voters in 2016 that increased taxes on cigarettes, vapes and other tobacco products. The measure generated new revenue for tobacco prevention efforts, including a substantial expansion of the TUPE program administered by the California Department of Education.
While statewide media campaigns funded through Proposition 56 reached nearly all adolescents in California, TUPE funding supported more intensive, school-based prevention efforts in selected districts. These included classroom education, youth engagement activities and access to tobacco cessation services.
To assess whether TUPE provided additional benefits beyond California’s broader tobacco control program, the research team analyzed data from the 2019–2020 California Student Tobacco Survey, a representative survey of students in grades 8, 10 and 12 conducted in 358 public schools across the state.
Students in TUPE-funded and non-TUPE-funded schools reported similar exposure to tobacco-related advertising, both for and against, and similar perceptions of how easy it was to obtain tobacco products, suggesting they shared a comparable external environment. The key differences emerged within schools.
Students in TUPE-funded schools were significantly more likely to receive tobacco prevention education and to take part in anti-tobacco activities, and these differences were associated with lower tobacco use rates.
Key findings include:
Students in TUPE-funded schools were more likely to receive school-based tobacco prevention education (71.0% vs. 63.8%).
They were more likely to participate in anti-tobacco activities such as tobacco-free events or creating tobacco prevention materials (15.2% vs. 10.6%).
Overall tobacco use was lower among students in TUPE-funded schools than among students in non-TUPE-funded schools (6.5% vs. 8.1%).
Vaping rates, the most common form of youth tobacco use, were also lower (5.4% vs. 7.0%).
“These differences may seem modest at first glance, but at the population level, they represent a substantial reduction in risk,” Zhu said. “Most long-term tobacco use begins in adolescence. Preventing even a small percentage of young people from starting can translate into major public health benefits over time.”
The study also found that TUPE-funded schools were more likely to provide students access to counselors or staff trained to address substance use concerns, reinforcing prevention messages beyond the classroom.
Importantly, the association between TUPE funding and lower youth tobacco use remained significant after researchers controlled for factors such as grade level, region, race and ethnicity, parental education, mental health status and whether students lived with someone who used tobacco.
Michael Ong, M.D., Ph.D., a health economist and professor from University of California Los Angeles who was not involved in the research, said: “Studies like this show how important it is to keep investing in strategies that work — and that protect young people from becoming addicted.” Ong chairs the Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which advises the state on tobacco prevention and control.
Ong added, “Proposition 56 allowed California to strengthen and modernize its tobacco prevention programs at a time when vaping products were rapidly changing the landscape. This study shows that when schools are given the resources to implement sustained, high-quality prevention education, students are more likely to reject these enticing new products.”
The consistency of the study’s findings across multiple measures strengthens the evidence that school-based prevention plays an important role in a comprehensive tobacco control program.
“School-based programs are not a replacement for strong policy and media, but they are a critical complement,” Zhu said. “This study suggests that sustained investment in prevention education at the school level can help protect young people from becoming addicted to tobacco.”
Additional co-authors on the study include: Katherine Braden, M.P.H., Yue-Lin Zhuang, Ph.D., Anthony C. Gamst, Ph.D., Joanna Sun, Jijiang Wang, Ph.D., Christopher Anderson, and Carey Blakely at UC San Diego; and Adam G. Cole, Ph.D., Ontario Tech University.
The study was funded by the California Department of Public Health (contract #CDPH-16-10109) and the California Department of Education, Tobacco-Use Prevention Education Office (contract #CN-230054).
Authors report no competing interests.
Journal
Journal of Adolescent Health
Sunday, January 11, 2026
Trump posts several images showing next military target — and it's not Greenland or Iran
Donald Trump early on Sunday morning shared numerous images indicating a new military target on his mind, other than Greenland and Iran
The president took to Truth Social first thing to share half a dozen posts from other people and graphics, but they all had a theme: Trump pondering taking Cuba.
The first post was a share from conservative Marc Thiessen, who wrote, "The Cuban regime has survived every president since Eisenhower. Wouldn’t it be something if that streak ended with Donald Trump?"
Trump also shared an AI photo of himself smoking a Cuban cigar, and he shared a post from someone encouraging Trump to make Marco Rubio the president of Cuba.
"Sounds good to me!" Trump wrote in response to the particular message.
Donald Trump looks on during the signing of executive orders in the Oval Office. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump issued an ominous threat Sunday to Cuba, warning that if they don’t “make a deal” favorable to the United States – and soon – it will be “too late” for the Caribbean nation.
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela. In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last weeks U.S.A. attack, and Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will. THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
Trump’s threat comes in the wake of the U.S. attack and takeover of Venezuela, and amid growing cheers from Republicans for the Cuban government to be toppled.
While increasing in intensity the past few weeks, calls from American lawmakers and leaders for the toppling of the Cuban government are not new, with the United States having sought to cripple the Caribbean nation since 1959 after Cuban revolutionaries ousted the Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, the U.S.-backed dictator who transformed the Caribbean nation into what experts have called a “virtual slave state at the behest of American companies.
The United States has attempted to assassinate Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro countless times, and has maintained a decades-long embargo on the nation in the hopes of toppling its government. To date, however, all efforts to enact regime change in Cuba have failed.
Lindsey Graham issues most explicit threat yet: 'I'd be looking for a new place to live'
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham holds a press conference on the subject of the International Criminal Court's decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in Jerusalem, November 27, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among the most hawkish members of Congress, issued an ominous threat Sunday to Cuba in a manner strikingly similar to threats made to Venezuela just weeks before the U.S. attack and takeover of the South American nation.
President Donald Trumpissued his own ominous threat to Cuba Sunday morning in a social media post, demanding that the Caribbean nation “make a deal” favorable to the United States – and soon – before it’s “too late.” Graham excitedly shared Trump’s post just moments later, while also issuing his own warning to Cuba.
“My advice to the commies running Cuba and oppressing its people: Call [Venezuelan President Nicholas] Maduro and ask him what to do…If you can get through, that is,” Graham wrote Sunday in a social media post on X. “If I were you, I’d be looking for a new place to live.”
Graham’s warning is strikingly similar to the warning Trump issued Maduro before U.S. forces kidnapped and extradited him to New York to stand trial on drug-trafficking and weapons charges, where he urged Maduro to flee the country in late November, about one month before the U.S. attack.
In mid-December, Trump also declared Maduro’s “days are numbered,” a foreshadowing of the unprecedented attack that took place about two weeks later. Graham himself also issued similar threats to Venezuela's leadership in the weeks leading up to the attack. In late December, Graham openly called for regime change in Venezuela, professing his support of “standing up to Maduro” and saying he wanted “him to go.”
The U.S. government has sought to topple Cuba’s government since the 1959 overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, who opened the floodgates for American companies to exploit the nation’s labor and resources.
A number of Republicans have cheered at the prospect of finally toppling the Cuban government, including Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who shared an image on social media Thursday depicting Cuba plastered with the logos of American companies like McDonald’s, Exxon Mobil and Walmart.
Giménez was born in Cuba, and his parents, who were wealthy landowners, fled the nation after the 1959 Cuban revolution, which saw the systematic seizure of lands and properties held by the country’s elites, foreigners and Batista officials and supporters, though with compensation for seized property in the form of bonds.
Graham has been among the most hawkish lawmakers in Congress, having regularly advocated for U.S. military intervention abroad. Specifically, Graham has publicly voiced support for military action against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Mexico, and many on repeated occasions.
Trump ally openly threatens Cuban officials in online frenzy: 'Wipe you out in minutes'
U.S. Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) talks during a press conference on the U.S. strikes in Venezuela, in Doral, Miami-Dade County, Florida, U.S., January 5, 2026. REUTERS/Marco Bello
Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), a Cuban-born lawmaker and close ally of President Donald Trump, issued a barrage of open threats to Cuban government officials Sunday, warning them that the United States had the “capability to wipe [them] all out in a matter of minutes.”
Following the U.S. attack and takeover of Venezuela – which included the capture of President Nicolás Maduro – calls among Republicans for the Trump administration to target Cuba next have intensified, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Giménez leading the charge.
While Graham would issue just one explicit threat to Cuban leadership – that their opportunity to flee was quickly expiring – Giménez instead opted to directly reply to Cuban government officials on social media, writing several posts that included threats of kidnapping and military intervention.
For instance, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called for the international community to demand the release of Maduro and his wife from U.S. captivity on Sunday in a social media post. About 30 minutes later, Giménez responded with an ominous response.
“Don't worry so much about Maduro and drop the scandal,” Giménez wrote. “Your future will be much worse.”
In another social media post, Giménez shared an image of Maduro in U.S. custody, only doctored to swap Maduro for Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and writing that Díaz-Canel was “next” to be abducted by U.S. forces.
To Cuban diplomat Carlos F. de Cossio, Giménez issued a rare bit of praise, calling him potentially the “cleverest” Cuban official, albeit with an ominous warning.
“Seize the moment and negotiate while there's still time,” Giménez wrote in a social media post on X. “There's not much left.”
And again to Parrilla, Giménez issued another ominous threat.
“You all lie shamelessly,” Giménez wrote. “No one believes you anymore. You don't have much time left.”Giménez’s parents were wealthy landowners in Cuba under the rule of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, but fled following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which saw the systematic seizure of land and property held by foreigners, elites and Batista officials, albeit with compensation in the form of Cuban bonds.
Mars, often depicted as a barren red planet, is far from lifeless. With its thin atmosphere and dusty surface, it is an energetic and electrically charged environment where dust storms and dust devils continually reshape the landscape, creating dynamic processes that have intrigued scientists.
Planetary scientist Alian Wang has been shedding light on Mars' electrifying dust activities through a series of papers. Her latest research, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, explores the isotopic geochemical consequences of these activities.
Imagine powerful dust storms and swirling dust devils racing across the Martian surface. The frictional electrification of dust grains can build up electrical potentials strong enough to cause electrostatic discharges (ESDs) that break down the planet's thin atmosphere. These ESDs, which are more frequent on Mars due to the low atmospheric pressure, manifest as subtle, eerie glows, much like Earth's auroras, leading to various electrochemical processes.
Wang, a research professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a fellow of the university's McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, investigates the electrifying world of Martian dust activities, illuminating how these electrochemical reactions give birth to various oxidized chemicals. Supported by NASA’s Solar System Working Program, her team built two planetary simulation chambers, PEACh (Planetary Environment and Analysis Chamber) and SCHILGAR (Simulation Chamber with InLine Gas AnalyzeR), to uncover a fascinating array of reaction products, including volatile chlorine species, activated oxides, airborne carbonates, and (per)chlorates. These chemicals are transformative players in Mars’ geochemical dance.
In a previous study, Wang and her team discovered the crucial role of dust-induced electric discharges in Mars' chlorine cycle. The Martian surface is littered with chloride deposits, residues from ancient saline waters. Using a Martian simulation chamber with various traps to achieve mass balance, her team quantified the resulting reaction products. They concluded that Martian dust activities during the planet’s hot and dry Amazonian period could generate carbonates, (per)chlorates, and volatile chlorine matching observations by recent Mars orbiters, rovers, and lander missions.
Wang’s team, comprising members from six universities in the United States, China, and the United Kingdom, analyzed the isotopic compositions of chlorine, oxygen, and carbon in ESD products. They found substantial and coherent depletion of heavy isotopes.
"Because isotopes are minor constituents in materials, the isotopic ratios can only be affected by the MAJOR process in a system. Therefore, the substantial heavy isotope depletion of three mobile elements is a 'smoking-gun’ that nails down the importance of dust-induced electrochemistry in shaping the contemporary Mars surface-atmosphere system," says Wang.
Each isotopic measurement, along with the previous quantifications, acts as a piece of a larger puzzle. This comprehensive view suggests that electrochemistry induced by Martian dust activities has sculpted the planet’s chemical landscape. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that Martian dust activities have played a crucial role in shaping the contemporary geochemistry of both the surface and the atmosphere.
A conceptual model of Mars’ contemporary global chlorine cycle and airborne carbonate minerals emerges from this isotopic study. This model reveals a fascinating interplay between the electrochemical processes and secondary minerals on Mars’ surface and in its atmosphere. It demonstrates how the heavy isotope depletions in three mobile elements are transferred from the dust-driven ESD products to the atmosphere and then re-deposited onto the surface, even percolating into the subsurface to form the next generation of surface minerals. The on-going dust-driven electrochemistry throughout the Amazonian period has contributed to the progressive depletion of37Cl, leading toward the very negative δ37Cl value (-51‰) observed by NASA’s Curiosity rover.
"Alian’s work is very important. This is the first experimental study to look at how electrostatic discharges can affect isotopes in a Martian environment. Isotopic signatures are like fingerprints, and they can be used to trace the processes that have influenced the chlorine cycle on Mars, which makes this study especially valuable, " notes Kun Wang, an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University. " While the experiments did not produce the extremely light Cl isotopic signatures measured by Mars rovers, they clearly show that electrostatic discharges can drive Cl isotopic fractionation in the right direction. This work is therefore an important step toward understanding the origin of these unusually light Cl signatures and the formation of perchlorate minerals on the Martian surface. It also highlights just how different Mars is from Earth, with very different atmospheric and surface processes controlling chemical reactions."
Wang's latest study coincides with new findings from NASA’s Perseverance rover that recorded 55 electric discharges on Mars during two dust devils and the convective front of two dust storms, published in Nature, in which her previous studies were cited as the chemical consequences of electrical discharges, affirming her role as a leading expert in understanding Mars’ electrified environment. Her discoveries about the identification, quantification and isotopic signature of (per)chlorates, amorphous salts, airborne carbonates, and volatile chlorine species all align with observations made from Mars missions, providing compelling evidence of dust-induced electrochemistry on Amazonian Mars.
Wang's research opens doors to new possibilities beyond Mars. Similar electrochemical phenomena might exist on other planets and moons such as Venus, the Moon, and the outer planetary systems. This expands the significance of her work, suggesting that electrochemistry induced by Martian dust, Venusian lightning, and energetic electrons on the Moon and outer planets are essential factors in planetary processes throughout the solar system.
"This research sheds light on an important facet of modern Mars: the interaction of the atmosphere and the surface. But it also tells us about how the chemistry of the surface has, in part, come to be—with valuable lessons for other worlds where triboelectric charging may take place, including Venus and Titan," shares Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Washington University.
This innovative research direction electrifies our understanding of Mars, uncovering the potent role of dust activities in shaping its chemical landscape. Wang's contributions propel planetary science forward, offering deeper insights into the dynamic forces at play on Mars and beyond. As we continue to explore, her discoveries provide the foundation for a richer understanding of our celestial neighbors, sparking curiosity and inspiring future missions to uncover the secrets held by other worlds in our solar system.
As Mars continues to reveal its secrets, groundbreaking research brings us closer to understanding our planetary neighbor, its history, and its potential to support life. The mysteries of Mars remind us that the Red Planet still holds many wonders, waiting to be fully explored.
Journal
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Pitt student finds familiar structure just 2 billion years after the Big Bang
The barred spiral galaxy may be the earliest astronomers have seen yet
An unsharp mask overlaid onto the F200W, F277W, and F356W filter composition. The white lines are logarithmic spirals fitted to points along the arm structures and a line segmen fitted to the approximately North to South aligned bar structure.
Research led by Daniel Ivanov, a physics and astronomy graduate student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, uncovered a contender for one of the earliest observed spiral galaxies containing a stellar bar, a sometimes-striking visual feature that can play an important role in the evolution of a galaxy. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, also has a stellar bar.
This finding helps constrain the timeframe in which bars could have first emerged in the universe. Analysis of light from the galaxy, called COSMOS-74706, places it on the cosmic timeline at about 11.5 billion years ago.
“This galaxy was developing bars 2 billion years after the birth of the universe," Ivanov said. “Two billion years after the big bang.”
The findings are scheduled to be presented at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026.
The defining feature of these galaxies is right in the name: “A stellar bar is a linear feature at the center of the galaxy,” Ivanov said. The bar isn’t an object itself, but a dense collection of stars and gas that is aligned in such a way that in images taken perpendicular to a galactic plane, there appears to be a bright line bisecting the galaxy.
Stellar bars can play a role shaping their galaxy’s evolution by funneling gas inward from the outer reaches of a galaxy, feeding the supermassive black hole in the center and dampening star formation throughout the stellar disk.
Other researchers have reported earlier barred spiral galaxies, but the analyses of those are less conclusive because the methods used to analyze the lights’ redshifts are not as definitive as spectroscopy, which was used to validate COSMOS-74706. In other cases, the galaxy’s light was distorted as it passed by a massive object, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.
In essence, Ivanov said, “It's the highest redshift, spectroscopically confirmed, unlensed barred spiral galaxy.”
He wasn’t necessarily surprised to find a barred spiral galaxy so early in the universe’s evolution. In fact, some simulations suggest bars forming at redshift 5, or about 12.5 billion years ago. But, Ivanov said, “In principle, I think that this is not an epoch in which you expect to find many of these objects. It helps to constrain the timescales of bar formation. And it’s just really interesting.”
This work is based in part on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope with data from Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127, which is supported by NASA. Work was also supported by the Brinson Foundation.
Method of Research
Data/statistical analysis
Researchers observe gas outflow driven by a jet from an active galactic nucleus
Summary author: Becky Ham
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Morphological structure of the galactic outflow in VV 340a. This artistic rendering illustrates a multi-phase galactic outflow driven by a central active galactic nucleus. The white helix represents a precessing radio jet, a rotating beam of high energy plasma launched from the magnetosphere of the central supermassive black hole. The red filaments represent highly ionized coronal gas which results from the collision of the jet with the ambient gas of the host galaxy. The blue filaments represent ionized gas being ejected from the galaxy at high speeds and extending up to 15 kiloparsecs. As the jet propagates outward, it energizes and propels the galaxy’s gas into a high velocity outflow, altering the galaxy’s future evolution.
Active galactic nuclei, energetic and luminous regions powered by an accreting supermassive black hole at the center of some galaxies, can launch a jet that drives a gas outflow, shaping star formation in their host galaxy. Justin Kader and colleagues have observed this phenomenon in the nearby active galaxy VV 340a. Kader et al. observed the jet and galaxy across infrared, optical, radio, and sub-millimeter wavelengths, using the James Webb Space Telescope, Keck-II telescope, the Jansky Very Large Array and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The researchers combined these observations with modeling, to show that the low-power radio jet emitted by VV 340a undergoes a conical wobble, known as precession, as it moves outward. The jet ionizes and ejects gas as it propagates away from the supermassive black hole, driving a gas outflow at a rate of 19.4 ± 7.9 solar masses per year. This outflow rate is large enough to affect the star formation rate of the host galaxy, Kader et al. conclude.
UC Irvine astronomers found an unexpectedly large stream of super-heated gas at nearby galaxy.
The team used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.
Project funding was provided by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Irvine, Calif., Jan. 8, 2026 —University of California, Irvine astronomers have announced the discovery of the largest-known stream of super-heated gas in the universe ejecting from a nearby galaxy called VV 340a. They describe the discovery in Science.
The super-heated gas, detected by the researchers in data provided by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, is erupting from either side of the host galaxy in the form of two elongated nebulae as a result of an active supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Each nebula is at least three kiloparsecs long (one parsec equates to roughly 19 trillion miles).
By comparison, the entire disk of the VV 340a galaxy is about three kiloparsecs thick.
“In other galaxies, this type of highly energized gas is almost always confined to several tens of parsecs from a galaxy’s black hole, and our discovery exceeds what is typically seen by a factor of 30 or more,” said lead author Justin Kader, a UC Irvine postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy.
The team used radio wave images from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio astronomy observatory near San Agustin, New Mexico, to reveal a pair of large-scale plasma jets emerging from either side of the galaxy. Astronomers know that such jets, which energize super-heated gas and eject it from the galaxy, form as the extreme temperatures and magnetic fields produced in the gas fall into the active supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.
At larger scales, these ejecting jets form a helical pattern, indicating something called “jet precession” which describes the change in orientation of the jet over time, similar to the periodic wobble of a spinning top.
“This is the first observation of a precessing kiloparsec-scale radio jet in a disk galaxy,” said Kader. “To our knowledge, this is the first time we have seen a kiloparsec, or galactic-scale, precessing radio jet driving a massive coronal gas outflow.”
The team suggests that as the jets flow outward, they couple with material in the host galaxy, pushing it outward and exciting it to a highly energized state. This forms coronal line gas, a term borrowed from the sun’s outer atmosphere to describe the hot, highly ionized plasma. Crucially, this super-heated coronal gas is almost exclusively associated with the compact inner structure of the active supermassive black hole and rarely extends far into the host galaxy. It is usually not observed outside the galaxy, according to Kader.
The kinetic power of the outflowing coronal gas, Kader said, is equivalent to 10 quintillion hydrogen bombs going off every second.
“We found the most extended and coherent coronal gas structure to date,” said senior co-author Vivian U, a former UC Irvine research astronomer who is now an associate scientist at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. “We expected JWST to open up the wavelength window where these tools for probing active supermassive black holes would be available to us, but we had not expected to see such highly collimated and extended emission in the first object we looked at. It was a nice surprise.”
The picture of the jets and the coronal line emission they create became clear after Kader and his team combined observations of VV 340a obtained with several different telescopes.
Observations from the University of California-administered Keck II Telescope in Hawaii revealed more gas extending even farther from the galaxy, all the way out to 15 kiloparsecs from the active black hole. The authors believe this cooler gas is a “fossil record” of the jet’s interaction history with the galaxy, debris from previous episodes of the jet ejecting material from the heart of the galaxy.
Observations of the coronal gas came from the Webb telescope, which, as the largest space telescope ever built, orbits the sun one million miles away from the Earth. Its instruments see the universe in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which means the telescope can detect things that would otherwise be invisible to visible light telescopes.
The Webb telescope’s infrared capabilities were key in helping Kader and his team spot the coronal line emission, he said. VV 340a has a lot of dust, which prevents a visible light telescope like Keck from seeing much of what’s happening in the galaxy’s interior.
However, the dust doesn’t block infrared light, so when the Webb telescope retrieved images of VV 340a, the existence of the coronal line gas erupting out of it became clear. The effects of such a gas jet on a galaxy can be massive. According to the study, the jet is stripping VV 340a of enough gas every year to make 19 of our own suns.
“What it really is doing is significantly limiting the process of star formation in the galaxy by heating and removing star-forming gas,” said Kader.
A jet like this doesn’t seem to exist in our own Milky Way galaxy. Kader explained that there appears to be evidence that suggests the Milky Way’s own supermassive black hole had an active feeding event two million years ago – something Kader said our Homo erectus ancestors may have been able to see in the night sky here on Earth.
Now that the team has found the precessing jet and the associated outflowing gas, Kader and U agree that the next thing to do is to investigate other galaxies to see if they can spot the same phenomenon in order to understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way may turn out in the future.
“We are excited to continue exploring such never-before-seen phenomena at different physical scales of galaxies using observations from these state-of-the-art tools, and we can’t wait to see what else we will find,” U said.
Funding for this project was provided by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.
Journal
Science
Article Title
UC Irvine astronomers spot largest known stream of super-heated gas in the universe
They’re called ghost particles for a reason. They’re everywhere – trillions of them constantly stream through everything: our bodies, our planet, even the entire cosmos – without us noticing. These so-called neutrinos are elementary particles that are invisible, incredibly light, and interact only rarely with other matter. The weakness of their interactions makes neutrinos extremely difficult to detect. But when scientists do manage to capture them, they can offer extraordinary insights into the universe.
Neutrinos are born in violent cosmic events – including nuclear reactions inside stars. Now, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have produced the most comprehensive model to date, mapping how many neutrinos all the stars in our own Milky Way generate and how many reach Earth – a complete picture that until now existed only in rough outline. The study has just been published in the scientific journal Physical Review D.
“For the first time, we have a concrete estimate of how many of these particles reach Earth, where in the galaxy they come from, and how their energy is distributed. Because ghost particles come straight from the core of stars, they can tell us things that light and other radiation cannot,” says lead author of the new study, postdoc Pablo Martínez-Miravé from the Niels Bohr Institute.
A ‘Roadmap’ for Observatories
The researchers combined advanced stellar models with data from ESA’s Gaia telescope to map where in the Milky Way neutrinos mainly originate.
The study shows that the vast majority come from the region around the galactic centre, where most stars are concentrated – particularly in areas a few thousand light-years from Earth.
This knowledge is a practical tool for scientists attempting to capture neutrinos with enormous detectors, often located deep underground. With this new map, they can increase their chances of “hitting the target.”
“Now we know more precisely where to look for Galactic neutrinos. Our results show that most neutrinos are produced in stars that are as massive or more massive than the Sun. This means that the best chance of detecting neutrino signals is when looking towards the galactic centre, where the signal is the strongest,” explains Pablo Martínez-Miravé.
A Window into Stellar Interiors – and Possibly New Physics
While traditional astronomy relies on light, X-rays, and gamma rays, neutrinos offer an entirely different way to explore the Universe. Their special advantage is that they can travel enormous distances without being affected, so when we measure them here on Earth, we get a very direct insight into what is happening out there.
Just as neutrinos have told us for decades what goes on inside the Sun’s core, researchers hope the same will become possible for all the other stars much farther away.
“Neutrinos carry information straight from the interior of stars. If we learn to harness them, they can give us new insights into stellar life cycles and the structure of our galaxy in a way no other source can,” says senior author of the study, Professor Irene Tamborra from the Niels Bohr Institute.
Beyond expanding our understanding of stars and our own Galaxy, this knowledge could eventually touch on fundamental questions in physics. Neutrinos interact so weakly with their surroundings that they might reveal new physical laws that traditional experimental techniques could never be sensitive to.
“Because neutrinos are barely affected, we have clear expectations of how they should behave on their long journey to Earth. So even tiny deviations in their behaviour would be a strong clue to new, unknown physics,” says Irene Tamborra, concluding:
“With neutrinos, it’s like dimming the lights in a room and suddenly seeing what was hidden in the dark – and with this new model, we now have both a map and a compass to start navigating it.”
[FACT BOX] WHAT DOES THE MAPPING SHOW
The model is the first complete map of neutrinos from all the stars in the Milky Way.
The new mapping reveals that the neutrino flux spans a wide energy spectrum and includes contributions from light, intermediate and very massive stars.
Stars closer to the galactic center contribute most to the overall neutrino flow towards Earth.
Neutrino production varies with stellar age and mass: younger stars, heavier than the Sun, produce the most neutrinos.
Most neutrinos originate in nuclear reactions, while some are created in thermal processes inside stars.
[FACT BOX] WHAT IS A NEUTRINO
A neutrino is an elementary particle – one of the smallest building blocks of matter.
Neutrinos are invisible, extremely light, electrically neutral and rarely interact with matter.
They are formed in nuclear reactions in stars, in supernova explosions and other high-energy cosmic events.
Billions of neutrinos pass through your body every second without you noticing.
Because they are almost unaffected by other forces, neutrinos can provide direct information about processes deep inside stars and about the origin of the universe.
