A newly discovered raptor had a knobby bump on its head, suggesting that, like some larger dinosaurs, it engaged in competitive head bashing.

A flurry of posts from the White House, Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security have included images, slogans and even a song used by the white nationalist right.

A BAFTA mask after the nominations for the Orange British Academy Film Awards 2011 were announced, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011, in Piccadilly, London. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan, File)2026-01-27T12:16:42Z LONDON (AP) Paul Thomas Andersons politically charged action thriller One Battle After Another leads the race for the British Academy Film Awards, securing 14 nominations Tuesday including acting nods for five of its cast.Ryan Cooglers blues-steeped vampire epic Sinners is close behind with 13 nominations, while Chlo Zhaos Shakespearean family tragedy Hamnet and Josh Safdies ping-pong odyssey Marty Supreme have 11 apiece.The best film nominees are One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sinners and Norwegian family drama Sentimental Value.Best leading actor contenders are Robert Aramayo for playing a man with Tourettes syndrome in biographical drama I Swear, Timothe Chalamet for Marty Supreme, Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, Michael B. Jordan for Sinners and Jesse Plemons for Bugonia. The leading actress race pits favorite Jessie Buckley for Hamnet against Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs Id Kick You, Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, Chase Infiniti for One Battle After Another, Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value and Emma Stone for Bugonia. One Battle actors Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn are all nominated for supporting performances.The Associated Press was recognized in the best documentary category with a nomination for Mstyslav Chernovs harrowing Ukraine war portrait 2000 Meters to Andriivka, co-produced by the AP and PBS Frontline. The winners will be announced at a Feb. 22 ceremony in London hosted by actor Alan Cumming. The U.K. prizes officially called the EE BAFTA Film Awards often provide clues about who will triumph at Hollywoods Academy Awards, held this year on March 15.This year, unusually, Oscar nominations were announced first, with Sinners securing a record 16 nominations, followed by 13 for One Battle After Another. The British academy has recognized several performers overlooked by the Oscars, including supporting actor nominees Paul Mescal for Hamnet and Odessa Azion for Marty Supreme.The BAFTAs also have a distinctly British accent, with a separate category of best British film. Its 10 nominees include The Ballad of Wallis Island, Pillion, I Swear and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.Most BAFTA winners are chosen by 8,500 members of the U.K. academy of industry professionals, with one the Rising Star Award selected by public vote from a shortlist of nominees. This years rising star contenders are Infiniti, Aramayo, Sinners star Miles Caton and British actors Archie Madekwe and Posy Sterling.Like other major movie awards, Britains film academy has introduced changes in recent years to increase diversity. In 2020, no women were nominated as best director for the seventh year running, and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white. The voting process was changed to add a longlist round before the final nominees are selected.Zhao is the only female nominee in the best director category, alongside Anderson, Safdie, Cooger, Yorgos Lanthimos for Bugonia and Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value. Across all categories including documentaries and shorts, 25% of the directing nominees are women. JILL LAWLESS Lawless is an Associated Press reporter covering U.K. politics and more. She is based in London. twitter mailto

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00236-1Dietary change, supported by bold policies, is essential for a sustainable planet.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will have a security role during the Winter Games in Milan, according to multiple reports Tuesday.

In his first semifinal in Australia, Carlos Alcaraz will next take on Alexander Zverev after getting past Alex de Minaur on Tuesday.

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The Department of Homeland Security said body camera footage, taken from multiple angles, was being examined, as local officials sought to ensure evidence was preserved.

Hamnet, Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value are also in the running for best film at Britains equivalent of the Oscars.

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Executives who donated to the presidents super PAC met privately with him and urged a repeal of the rule, which was intended to prevent neglect of patients.

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Todd Lyons, acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs. Enforcement (ICE), is interviewed on TV on the White House grounds, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)2026-01-27T13:27:48Z MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP) The chief federal judge in Minnesota says the Trump administration has failed to comply with orders to hold hearings for detained immigrants and ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear before him Friday to explain why he shouldnt be held in contempt.In an order dated Monday, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, must appear personally in court. Schlitz took the administration to task over its handling of bond hearings for immigrants it has detained.This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result, the judge wrote. The order comes a day after President Donald Trump order border czar Tom Homan to take over his administrations immigration crackdown in Minnesota following the second death this month of person at the hands of an immigration law enforcement officer. Messages were sent Tuesday to ICE and a DHS spokesperson seeking a response. Respondents have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward, Schlitz continued in the order. Unfortunately, though, the violations continue. Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel. Follow on The judge said he recognizes that ordering the head of a federal agency to appear personally was extraordinary. But the extent of ICEs violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed, Schlitz wrote. Schlitzs order lists the petitioner by first name and last initials: Juan T.R. It says the court granted a petition on Jan. 14 from the person to provide him with a bond hearing within seven days. On Jan. 23, the persons lawyers told the court the petitioner remained detained.The order says Schlitz will cancel Lyons appearance if the petitioner is released from custody. ___Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. MIKE CATALINI Catalini covers government, elections and news primarily in New Jersey for The Associated Press. He focuses on accountability and how policy affects people. twitter STEVE KARNOWSKI Karnowski covers politics and government from Minnesota for The Associated Press. He also covers the ongoing fallout from the murder of George Floyd, courts and the environment, among other topics. twitter mailto

Fauna Robotics' new robot, called Spout, is seen at their offices in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)2026-01-27T13:02:05Z NEW YORK (AP) As the new robot called Sprout walks around a Manhattan office, nodding its rectangular head, lifting its windshield wiper-like eyebrows and offering to shake your hand with its grippers, it looks nothing like the sleek and intimidating humanoids built by companies like Tesla.Sprouts charm is the point. A 5-year-old child could comfortably talk at eye level with this humanoid, which stands 3.5 feet (1 meter) tall and wears a soft, padded exterior of sage-green foam.Forged by stealth startup Fauna Robotics over two years of secret research and development, Sprouts public debut on Tuesday aims to jump-start a whole new industry of building approachable robots for homes, schools and social spaces. The robot is in many ways the first of its kind, at least in the United States, even as rapid advances in artificial intelligence and robot engineering have finally made it possible to start building such machines. If its emotive expressions and blinking lights seem vaguely familiar, it might be from generations of Star Wars droids and other endearingly clunky robotic sidekicks dreamed up in animation studios and childrens literature. Most people in this industry take inspiration from the science fiction that we grew up with, said Fauna Robotics co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran. I think some do so from Westworld and Terminator. We do from WALL-E and Baymax and Rosie Jetson. Making a business case for robots that wont work in car assembly linesThe usual hypothesis for the commercialization of humanoid robots is that they will get their first jobs in warehouses or factories long before they are ready for homes. Thats the path proposed for two of todays best-known prototypes: Teslas Optimus, which CEO Elon Musk sees as the carmakers future, and Boston Dynamics Atlas, which parent company Hyundai plans to deploy in car manufacturing by 2028.Fauna looks to skip that step for an entirely different clientele: other robot tinkerers. Much as early personal computers and, later, smartphones sparked a culture of developers designing new games and applications, Sprout is a software developer platform more than just a robot. Its also a mechanically complex one that will cost buyers $50,000. Thats a price some university research labs and technology entrepreneurs are already spending on Chinas Unitree, which sells a lightweight humanoid often seen at robotics conferences and competitions. Others have avoided Chinese hardware due to tariffs and broader security concerns.Cochran believes Fauna is the first American company to be actively shipping robots as a developer platform and has been hand-delivering the first models. Early customers include Disney and Boston Dynamics.You take it out of the box and you can start walking it around immediately, said Marc Theermann, chief strategy officer at Boston Dynamics, in a recent interview. Seeing their robot for the first time really lets you see the future a little bit. And if you squint, you can see how a robot like that would be welcomed into peoples homes. Inside the testing grounds for a friendly humanoid robot Sprout cant lift heavy objects, but it can dance the Twist or the Floss, grab a toy block or teddy bear, or hoist itself from a chair to take a long stroll along the wood floors of Faunas headquarters in New York Citys Flatiron District.Cochran and co-founder Josh Merel, the companys chief technology officer, demonstrated the robot to The Associated Press in mid-January ahead of its public launch. Fauna employees and an AP reporter piloted the robot, using a video game controller, a phone application and a virtual-reality headset. Sprout also knows the office layout enough to be sent on a planned mission, such as to check out the inventory of the break room refrigerator.It walks slowly but steadily on uneven ground. Only once it came close to tripping, taking a sharp turn to avoid a person and instead hitting its foot on a protruding table wheel too low to the ground to be seen by Sprouts camera eyes. But the robot, built to handle what engineers call perturbation, quickly recovered its balance and kept walking, much like a clumsy person might. If you step in front of it, it wont crash into you, itll plan a new path around you, said Ana Pervan, a Fauna research scientist who works on the robots mapping and navigation. Among the first batch of Faunas 50 employees, and a fan of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, she previously worked on self-driving cars but was excited about joining a startup building something that might one day serve as a robot butler.Its cute, and its not too humanoid, and I think that actually makes it a lot more fun, Pervan said. Its not verging on creepy or trying to be too human. Its like your buddy, your pal, thats a different thing than you. Why Faunas founders believe nows the time to bet on humanoidsStarting a robot company can be unforgiving, especially one designing personal robots. One of the few successes, Roomba vacuum maker iRobot, had a decades-long run before filing for bankruptcy protection last month.Most others didnt last that long, like Anki, maker of the playful toy robot Cozmo, or Jibo, which went out of business less than a year after its dynamic talking speaker made the cover of Time Magazines 2017 best inventions edition.There were a lot of really brilliant attempts. I think the technology wasnt quite there, Cochran said. I do think were right on the precipice now where you could build a companion that is present, engaging, delightful to be around, and can also move around a space in a way that nothing ever has before.Merel, an expert in robot locomotion, previously worked for Googles DeepMind, where he focused on teaching robots using AI learning techniques in simulated environments, a controversial approach but now increasingly how robots are built. The science journal Nature published his study on an AI-powered virtual rat, co-authored with another of Faunas research scientists, Diego Aldarondo.Cochran and Merel later worked together at CTRL-labs, a wearable neurotech company sold to Facebook in 2019. Cochran jokes that he then spent a misguided four years at Goldman Sachs before they decided to team up again.Improvements in AI, motors and batteries have accelerated humanoid development. But Faunas founders agreed that the dystopian aesthetic of many prototypes what Cochran calls industrial automotive machismo conveyed strength and confidence but wouldnt work for intimate human spaces. They were generally quite big and physically dangerous to be around, Cochran said. Strong, heavy. If they fell on you, itd be a real problem.The duo brought in Anthony Moschella, who helped design Pelotons exercise bikes, treadmills and rowers and is an admirer of the abstract designs of Star Wars robots like R2-D2 and BB-8. Lets build a system that human beings actually want to be around, said Moschella, now Faunas vice president of hardware. I think its incredible that so many robotics companies are not versed in the cultural context of what it means to be around a robot.Moschella said what happens next with Sprout will depend on how developers play around with it and what they learn. For Cochran, some of the most important judges have already approved. In a home video he keeps on his phone, his 2-year-old twins excitedly jump up and down as Sprout greets them. MATT OBRIEN OBrien covers the business of technology and artificial intelligence for The Associated Press. mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00055-4Some universities are implementing a mandatory retirement age for academics. Will it help young researchers to get permanent positions?

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Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canadas speech at Davos last week sent shock waves through the international community. The international-affairs scholar Henry Farrell explains why.

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Jennifer Mnookin forged compromises with protesters and politicians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now, she faces her biggest test.

Efforts to get the states Office of Cannabis Management on track have been slow to yield results.

The post JD Vance Places Candle Outside Hooters Where ICE Agents Were Heckled appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTONClaiming the nations beloved North Star State was in peril, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a ransom note Tuesday that told the United States to pay $65 billion if it ever wanted to see Minnesota again. The $65 billion should be placed in an unmarked federal appropriations billif it isnt, that will be the end of your precious Minnesota, read the note, a handmade letter assembled from magazine clippings and sent with what ICE claimed was the severed finger of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. One protester will be killed every hour on the hour until our funding demands are met. The clock is ticking for the nation to finance the construction of new detention centers and provide recruitment bonuses for agents. In the meantime, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The ransom note went on to state that explosives had already been placed in population centers across Minnesota and would be detonated if the country attempted to scale back funding for the Department of Homeland Security.The post ICE Issues Ransom Note Demanding $65 Billion If U.S. Wants To See Minnesota Again appeared first on The Onion.

Services for Peter Barnell, 72, will be held Friday. The family asks that each attendee take home a portion of the remains because they dont want any leftovers.The post Peter Barnell appeared first on The Onion.

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Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and many of the most popular adult sites in the world, announced today that starting February 2 it will restrict people visiting the site from the UK.In a call on Tuesday, leadership at Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which acquired Aylo in 2023, said that after six months of complying with the UKs Online Safety Act, its made the choice to restrict access in the country entirely. People who have already verified their ages with the current verification system will still be able to access those sites using login credentials, but anyone who hasnt already done so by February 2 will be blocked entirely.Anyone who has not gone through that process prior to February 2 will no longer be able to access [the sites] and they're going to be met with a wall, Alexzandra Kekesi, VP Brand and Community at Aylo, said. Basically, their journey on our platform will start and end there. Users on paid sites will be able to access those sites if theyre logged in; this restriction applies to Aylos free video sharing platforms.When ECP acquired Aylo in March of 2023, one of our most important commitments was to work with regulators and industry, adult and mainstream, in order to find a solution to keep minors from accessing explicit content online, Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, said in the call. That remains a key focus of our attention today. ECP does not wish for one single minor to be able to access adult content, not just on a levels platforms, but on any adult platforms. It unfortunately is disheartening that regulators have not been given the legislative tools that they need, and instead, have been provided with really flawed sets of laws that in some jurisdictions were never intended to succeed.Until now, UK-based visitors to Aylo sites have complied with the UKs Online Safety Act by verifying ages by entering a credit card, or uploading a government ID or other identification to an age estimation system called All Pass Trust. The Online Safety Act, which took effect in 2025, is similar to many laws in US states that keep users from accessing porn unless they upload an ID or pass biometric face scanning. In the UK, the law requires sites to implement age verification or face millions of dollars in fines and jailor up to 10 percent of global revenues, whichever is higher.Since going into effect, the Online Safety Act has fundamentally changed how people use the internet in the UK. Right after being implemented, platforms like Reddit, Bluesky, Spotify and others have been required to verify the ages of users to various degrees and to access various types of contentnot just porn sites.We have seen six months of failure out of the United Kingdom, once again, not because OFCOM is failing, but because the law is failing, Friedman said. And for that reason, from the ECP perspective, as the ownership group of Aylo, we want laws around the world that protect children.As part of the call, ECP and Aylo presented a demonstration of device-based age assurance, which Alyo, the adult industry, and anti-child exploitation organizations has said is a safer, more effective way to keep children from accessing adult material.

Police officers are being told to be as vague as permissible about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request. The warning originated from a Houston-area police intelligence center that includes members of the FBI and ICE and suggests without evidence that people are using a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com to potentially retaliate against law enforcement.The warnings were shared with 404 Media by researchers from Southerners Against Surveillance Systems and Infrastructure and Lucy Parsons Lab after our article about police unwittingly leaking the details of millions of surveillance targets nationwide due to public records redaction errors made by several Flock automated license plate reader system customers. This data was aggregated into a searchable tool called HaveIBeenFlocked.Rather than looking at this incident as a huge operational security failure associated with using a massive commercial surveillance system, police see this as something that puts their officers directly in harms way. The data released by police departments includes the agency doing a search, the officers name, time of search, the license plate searched, and a reason field, which is the justification for doing a specific search.In an Officer Safety Situational Awareness Bulletin, the Houston Investigative Support Center, an intelligence apparatus consisting of members of Houston-area police departments, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations told members that HaveIBeenFlocked poses a significant officer safety risk to law enforcement personnel because suspects can determine if they are the target of an investigation and potentially retaliate against law enforcement and/or those cooperating with law enforcement.It goes on to say in a recommendations for Flock Users/Agency Administrators section that Flock Administrators should ensure that the reason for the query be as vague as permissible, with a suggestion being that cops just write investigation as the reason for a search."A group of self-styled privacy advocates have filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to obtain agency Flock audit logs," the warning reads. "The Flock system itself has not been compromised. Currently, this information appears to be coming from Washington State, Colorado, California, Georgia, Illinois, and Virginia. Agencies in these states held data from other jurisdictions pertaining to inquiries that had been made against the national Flock platform. The data on the website is not 'real time' and, as of December 8, 2025, the most recently confirmed data appeared to be from late October 2025."A member of the FBI also sent the warning from the Houston Investigative Support Center to Atlanta-area police, according to an email obtained via public records request and shared with 404 Media. In another email, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation-GISAC, which is an Atlanta-area fusion center, issued a similar warning and said that a fusion center in Illinois had done the same. Fusion centers are intelligence sharing centers in which state and local police partner with federal agencies. "This website, and others like it, poses obvious risks to officer safety, operational security, and investigative integrity. Do not use your department systems to check these sites, as their ability to pull data and leave behind code is suspect." This email also warns agencies they "should consider reviewing their current license plate reader permissions and seek guidance from their respective customer service representative for any software they have."The Georgia fusion center warning was then further shared by a member of the United States Department of Justice, the emails show.The flurry of warnings highlight just how bad of an operational security screwup Flock's information sharing design was, leaving the investigations of thousands of police departments vulnerable to a redaction error by any single one of its customers. It further highlights how law enforcement see themselves as being consistently and universally under threat from the people it is supposed to protect. This is a narrative we have seen tragically play out in Minneapolis as legal observers shot dead in the streets by ICE have been branded "domestic terrorists" who were threatening ICE agents by the Trump administration despite video evidence showing this was not the case.ICE has also been obsessed with not revealing the identity of its officers, with its agents wearing masks during raids, refusing to give their names or ID numbers, and the agency refusing to reveal the names of agents during court proceedings. The warnings issued by fusion centers about Flock show that this obsession with secrecy and officer anonymity is filtering down to the state and local level, because Flock is most often used by local police.The suggestion that officers should be as vague as permissible about why they are using Flock is also a problem. Police currently do not get a warrant to use Flock, and have revealed that they use it for legitimate investigations, but also for all sorts of other purposes. Flock search audit logs have been used to reveal officers who have used the system to allegedly illegally stalk people and have been used to reveal informal cooperation between local police and ICE, as well as the search for a woman who had an abortion. We revealed last year that some of these searches were illegal in some states where they were conducted. An analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, meanwhile, showed that many police officers do not put any reason at all for their Flock search. Flock Officer Safety-Situational Awareness Bulletin - Houston HIDTA - December 2025 Redacted | DocumentCloudDocumentCloud

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00191-xRemembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this weeks pick from the Nature archive.

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Nekima Levy Armstrong holds up her fist after speaking at an anti-ICE rally for Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)2026-01-27T15:07:25Z LOS ANGELES (AP) The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.But an edited and realistic image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noems account posted the original image from Levy Armstrongs arrest before the official White House account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in MinneapolisHowever, the White Houses use of artificial intelligence has troubled misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or edited images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust. In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White House officials doubled down on the post, with deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the memes will continue. White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking the criticism. David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University, says calling the altered image a meme certainly seems like an attempt to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated media. He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems much more ambiguous than the cartoonish images the administration has shared in the past. Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders. AI-enhanced or edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House uses to engage the segment of Trumps base that spends a lot of time online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm. People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it as a meme, he said. Your grandparents may see it and not understand the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or grandkids about it.All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral, said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White Houses social media team.The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they are shared by credible sources, crystallizes an idea of whats happening, instead of showing what is actually happening, said Michael A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media literacy researcher. The government should be a place where you can trust the information, where you can say its accurate, because they have a responsibility to do so, he said. By sharing this kind of content, and creating this kind of content it is eroding the trust even though Im always kind of skeptical of the term trust but the trust we should have in our federal government to give us accurate, verified information. Its a real loss, and it really worries me a lot. Spikes said he already sees the institutional crises around distrust in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from official channels inflames those issues. Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the Utopias podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for trustable information. AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence, he said. Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, like policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to algorithmically privilege extreme and conspiratorial content which AI generation tools can create with ease weve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands. An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, protests and interactions with citizens has already been proliferating on social media. After Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces. Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are likely coming from accounts that are engagement farming, or looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular keywords and search terms like ICE. But he also said the videos are getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be watching them as fan fiction, or engaging in wishful thinking, hoping that theyre seeing real pushback against the organizations and their officers. Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers cant tell if what theyre watching is fake, and questions whether they would know whats real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes are a lot higher.Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the best-case scenario would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying enough attention to register the use of AI. This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicols Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will only become more commonplace.Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a solution. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has developed such a system, but Carrasco doesnt think that will become extensively adopted for at least another year.Its going to be an issue forever now, he said. I dont think people understand how bad this is. __Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report. KAITLYN HUAMANI Huamani covers social media and internet culture for The Associated Press. mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

A man takes an image with his phone next to where the border wall separating Mexico and the United States reaches the Pacific Ocean Jan. 28, 2025, in Tijuana, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)2026-01-27T15:12:21Z ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) President Donald Trumps crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nations growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu. Tuesdays data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administrations immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign. The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Bidens Democratic administration and the first half of Trumps first year back in office. The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administrations crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nations 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons. They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up, Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency. Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureaus staffers appear to have been doing this work as usual without interference. So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out, Frey said.___Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.___Follow the APs coverage of the U.S. Census Bureau at https://apnews.com/hub/us-census-bureau. MIKE SCHNEIDER Schneider covers census, demographics and Florida for The Associated Press. Author of 2023 book, Mickey and the Teamsters. twitter mailto

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00234-3To get the most out of the sensing revolution, different disciplines need to be on the same wavelength. This is a priority for the Nature Portfolios newest journal, Nature Sensors.