On Wednesday, the director of national intelligence and C.I.A. director contradicted one of the justifications the Trump administration had given for its attacks on Iran.

The Jones Act dictates that only U.S.-made ships can move cargo between U.S. ports. They charge customers more for shipping than foreign vessels.

They might be controversial.READ MORE...

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00790-8The cinchona alkaloids are a family of plant-derived compounds that include quinine, an antimalarial drug also used as the bittering ingredient in tonic water. The biosynthetic pathway in Cinchona plants that produces the scaffold for these important molecules has been mapped.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10282-4Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pairs alters red fluorescent protein emission in transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans, demonstrating in vivo magnetic field modulation of biomolecular processes.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10275-3A memristor integrated into perovskite photovoltaics aims to mitigate the issues seen with reverse-bias degradation under partial shading.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00891-4New evidence reveals biochemical pathway behind quinine production.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00837-wThe familiar phenomenon has puzzled researchers for centuries, but experiments are finally making sense of its unruly behaviours.

Top-five senior Christian Collins announced his commitment to USC on Wednesday, giving the Trojans their third McDonald's All American in the 2026 class.

The Panthers are trading veteran quarterback Andy Dalton to the Eagles in exchange for a 2027 seventh-round pick, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

The Bucks want to shut down Giannis Antetokounmpo for the remainder of the season after his latest injury and their postseason chances dwindled, but Antetokounmpo has refused the team's requests and wants to play again, sources told ESPN.

Bright Horizons, the child care giant, will also surrender permits for a Manhattan branch where workers were charged with abusing toddlers.

The outbreak has sickened people in California, Texas and Florida. The agency said Cheddar cheese products from Raw Farm are the likely source, but the company denies it and has not recalled them.

Irans military retaliation, along with the political defiance of its new leaders, evokes a decades-old pattern of unrealized goals for American interventions in the region.

It helps me say hello to spring and shed the old me every year.READ MORE...

Its a counterpart to Swedish Death Cleaning.READ MORE...

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10226-yThe excitatory neuron diversity and specialized connectivity of complex, multilayered mammalian neocortex are driven by mammalian-specific cis-regulatory elements bound by ZBTB18, deletion of which disrupts gene expression and results in projection patterns resembling those of non-mammalian brains.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-10032-yBlue ice records from Antarctica are used to determine methane and carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 3 million years.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10233-zIn the Uspallata Valley, agriculture was adopted by local populations, as evidenced by genetic continuity from earlier hunter-gatherers to farmers; maize-dependent groups from the same regional population later experienced stress and demographic decline and likely used social organization and migration as resilience strategies.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10309-wBistable superlattice switching between two lattice configurations with sharply contrasting periodicities has been observed in monolayer TaIrTe4, a dual quantum spin Hall insulator.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10245-9Self-bound droplets and droplet arrays are observed in an ultracold gas of strongly dipolar sodiumcaesium molecules, establishing ultracold molecules as a system for the exploration of strongly dipolar quantum matter.

Bara put seven past Newcastle on Wednesday, but their defense was alarming, and sterner Champions League opposition will better exploit that.

Former Bengals and Cowboys linebacker Logan Wilson announced his retirement from the NFL on Wednesday.

Kevin Mays, a former Cal State Bakersfield assistant basketball coach accused of pimping and other offenses, will face trial after a California judge ruled Wednesday that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

Declaring victory and ending the war might not be so easy.

Montserrat treats the holiday as both a national celebration and a more somber milestone: a commemoration of a failed slave rebellion.

A chance encounter in Brooklyn led to a decades-long project following the boys lives, from childhood to national prominence as critics of President Trump.

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Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10116-3Estimates of mean ocean temperature based on noble gas (Xe/Kr) measurements in shallow ice cores from the Allan Hills blue ice area, Antarctica, indicate enhanced cooling around the Plio-Pleistocene Transition and enhanced ice sheet growth around the time of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10243-xA deep-learning approach applied to routine CT scans is used to quantify the health of the thymus in a cohort of patients with cancer, and shows that thymic function is associated with immunotherapy outcomes.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09622-7Analyses of large-scale, multitaxa and long-term thermophilization patterns in forests, grasslands and alpine summits across Europe provide insight into shifts in community composition among different ecosystems in a warming world.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10250-yExhausted CD8+ T cells increase proteasome activity due to the accumulation of depolarized mitochondria, which drives the selective degradation of mitochondrial proteins and releases of regulatory haem through haemoprotein breakdown.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00632-7MicroRNAs control gene expression by modulating the output and stability of messenger RNAs. How are these crucial regulators kept in check?

The NFL is laying groundwork for hiring replacement officials this season if the league is unable to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Referees Association.

Jerome H. Powell, who leads the central bank, also said he would not leave the Fed until a criminal investigation into his handling of renovations was over.

A man is accused of handing tellers notes, demanding money at six Chase branches in five days. In three of the attempts, he left empty-handed.

U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, the oldest active federal judge at 98 years old, asked the Supreme Court to step in after being suspended by colleagues over concerns about her mental acuity. What do you think?As long as she can swing a gavel, shes fit for the job in my book.Lois Hackett, Windshield InstallerBelieving SCOTUS will help you is all the proof of cognitive decline that I need.Warren Lawton, Dog ScolderMy grandma got the Supreme Court involved when we tried to get her to install a shower seat.Tiago Hernandez, Dietary HistorianThe post 98-Year-Old Federal Judge Appeals Suspension For Mental Fitness appeared first on The Onion.

I tried it, and here are my honest thoughts.READ MORE...

Attorney General Pam Bondi arrives before President Donald Trump attends a women's history month event in the East Room at the White House, Thursday, March 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)2026-03-18T22:16:47Z WASHINGTON (AP) Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the Justice Departments handling of millions of files related to Jeffrey Epsteins sex trafficking investigation.The countrys top federal law enforcement officials were providing a closed-door briefing to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the tranche of documents that have become a political headache that the Trump administration has struggled to shake for more than a year. Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents tied to the disgraced financier would put an end to a political saga that has dogged the presidents second term, but the agency remains consumed by questions and criticism over Epsteins case and its management of the files. The Republican-led committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14 to answer questions under oath about Epsteins case and the investigative files. Lawmakers have accused the Justice Department of withholding too many files and criticized the agency for haphazard redactions that exposed intimate details about victims. The Justice Department has called the subpoena completely unnecessary, noting that members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the Justice Department and that department leaders have made themselves available to answer questions from lawmakers. The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public that there has been no effort to shield President Donald Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, or any other high-profile figures close to Epstein from potential embarrassment. Justice Department leaders have also rejected suggestions that they have ignored victims and insist that while there is no evidence in the files to prosecute anyone else, they remain committed to investigating should new information come forward. Im not trying to defend Epstein Im not, Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump adviser Stephen Miller. I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anyway, and if there is a narrative that exists that we are ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting.After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. The Justice Department in January said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Richer covers the Justice Department and federal courts. She joined The AP in 2013 and is based in Washington. twitter RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10227-xA combination of isotopic labelling, gene silencing, single-nucleus RNA sequencing and comparative transcriptomics reveal the genes that mediate the biosynthesis of cinchona alkaloids in plants.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10262-8An integrated photonic deep neural network was trained end-to-end with on-chip gradient-descent backpropagation, and all linear and nonlinear computations were performed on a single photonic chip, resulting in a reliable performance despite on-chip errors and variations.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10232-0Target-directed microRNA degradation is driven by the atypical ZSWIM8CUL3 E3 ubiquitin ligase that uses a two-RNA-factor authentication mechanism to specifically recognize AGOmiRNAtrigger RNA complexes and polyubiquitylate AGO.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00718-2Genomic analysis has unexpectedly revealed that microorganisms called Asgard archaea, the closest relative of our cellular ancestors, can respire using oxygen. This suggests that the common ancestor of these modern archaea and nucleus-containing eukaryotic cells could have been oxygen-tolerant, contrary to previous models of the origins of complex life.

Nature, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00732-4When a virus infects a bacterial cell, the viral genome is the first component to be fully injected into the cell, making it an ideal immune target. A bacterial enzyme anchored to the membrane intercepts and cleaves viral DNA during injection, providing a powerful form of antiviral defence.

Bucs GM Jason Licht said Wednesday that he does not feel "betrayed" by Mike Evans' departure to the Niners, saying that Evans "earned the right to make this decision."

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was left to square the presidents comments about an imminent nuclear threat from Iran with a letter from one of her trusted aides.

The man said his attackers stripped him naked, beat him and zip-tied his genitalia, an account corroborated by family members and a rights activist who were also beaten.

A restrictive voter I.D. bill under consideration in the Senate could severely limit mail-in voting. Conservatives are pressing to end the practice outright, taking aim at an option that is widely used by voters.

Also, oil prices jump after airstrikes hit a crucial energy site. Heres the latest at the end of Wednesday.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is creating a Mayors Office of Community Safety, a pared-down version of a major campaign pledge with a smaller budget than promised.