Wild Feed

The jewels nabbed in the Louvre heist may still be at large, but scientists have just closed the case on another gemstone mystery: what gives rare ammolite gems their rainbow shimmer.

Ammolite comes from the fossilized shells of extinct squidlike critters called ammonites. Scientists knew the secret to the fossils’ flamboyant appearance lay somewhere in their layers of nacre, or mother-of-pearl. But not all ammonite fossils boast brilliant colors — nor do pearly nautilus or pale abalone shells with similar nacre layers.

Gen Z reinvents meditation.

On Jan. 1, 2026, Zohran Mamdani will take his place as the first Muslim and first South Asian to serve as mayor of New York. A self-described democratic socialist, he campaigned for a tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for rent freezes, an end to bus fares, city-owned grocery stores, free child care and more.

People with higher levels of trust are more likely to report greater well-being than those who are less trusting, according to research in Psychological Bulletin.

What people share at work—and how it’s received—matters more than most people think, suggests research in Emotion. Across two studies, 358 participants in the United States reported on 26,324 workplace conversations, including what they shared, why they shared it, how others responded, and how they felt afterward.

As the federal government carries out aggressive immigration raids in major cities across the U.S., state officials are facing off with the federal government over a centuries-old question: When can states prosecute federal officials for violating state criminal law?

A statement from former speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Rep. Kevin Mullin on Oct. 23 asserted that “state and local authorities may arrest federal agents if they break California law—and if they are convicted, the President cannot pardon them.” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has formed a commission to address “unlawful attacks” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. New York’s attorney general recently set up a portal for the public to share footage of ICE interactions, stating that the office is “committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.” And local officials in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston have stated that they will pursue legal action if federal officers break the law.

China has disclosed critical specifications for a nuclear-powered ‘world’s largest’ cargo ship under development, revealing it will be driven by a groundbreaking thorium-based molten salt reactor (TMSR) with a thermal output of 200 megawatts. The vessel is designed to carry 14,000 standard shipping containers.

Law enforcement also became convinced that there was a link among the victims. Not just their wealth and the location of their homes—something more singular. Detectives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, cross-referenced their cases. Did the victims belong to any clubs? Only the most exclusive yacht and country clubs in the country, but there wasn’t one they all belonged to. What about academic affiliations? Collectively, they’d been to every elite boarding school and Ivy League university, but they weren’t all, say, graduates of Yale. Did they use the same arborist? Was the same individual collecting their trash? No and no. The police did notice one thing: Many of the victims’ phone numbers were not publicly listed, which made the fifty-ring calls odd—to say nothing of the hang-up calls some targets had received prior to being robbed.

People have been using flat, ribbonlike materials, such as reed strips, to make woven baskets for thousands of years. This weaving method has reemerged as a technique for engineers to create textile and fabric structures with complex geometry. While beautiful and intricate, these baskets can also be surprisingly strong.

We are a team of structures and materials scientists at the University of Michigan. We wanted to figure out how basketlike structures that use traditional weaving techniques can be so sturdy, load-bearing and resilient.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) has uncovered seven unregulated pregnancy centres (UPCs) across Canada that are offering recreational, non-diagnostic ultrasounds. This is a deeply concerning increase in the misuse of medical imaging equipment by organizations with no medical oversight or accountability.

ARCC’s position paper, Unregulated Pregnancy Centres and Sonography explains how the use of ultrasounds by UPCs may serve to mislead clients, spread misinformation, and interfere with informed reproductive decision-making.

The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to bar transgender people from changing the gender markers on their passports, it announced in an order Thursday. The order is the latest in a back-and-forth on the policy as the country debates the right for its transgender citizens to live openly.

LGBTQ+ advocates quickly called the order dangerous and discriminatory.

“This decision will cause immediate, widespread and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The Trump administration’s policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate and endanger transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”

Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with prominent white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying Hitler fan, has triggered a right-wing civil war over the last week, drawing in Republican politicians and reportedly triggering a meltdown at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative movement’s most prominent think tank.

On Wednesday, Carlson opened up a new front in that conflict that seems likely to put him in direct opposition to his former colleagues at Fox News.

A new image of comet 3I/ATLAS has revealed that the interstellar visitor is glowing green and hiding its tail, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

Qicheng Zhang, a researcher at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, used the observatory's powerful Discovery Telescope to make fresh observations of the comet as it zoomed away from the sun on Wednesday (Nov. 5). The comet recently became visible again after swinging around the far side of our star.

PlayStation players claim that Sony is engaging in a targeted pricing strategy on PS5. According to a viral post on Reddit, the Japanese publisher is now charging different game prices for different PlayStation 5 users.

CORCAN, an agency within the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), employs federal inmates across the country in agriculture, manufacturing and services. Inmates produce office furniture, textiles, food and other goods for government departments and in some cases for public consumption.

“Very few actually gain skills that are transferable,” said Ivan Zinger, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, the federal government’s prison watchdog. “In my view, it even amounts to a human rights violation.”

London’s prized Royal Albert Hall has seen symphonies, rock concerts and ballets. But today it smells like wet dirt, as 11 tonnes of specially selected soil is shovelled from the marshes of Kettering (the only place with the perfect ratio of clay and sand) into its central stage. Without speaking, a team of Japanese builders churn into action – first compressing the soil with wooden mallets, then old Asahi beer bottles, before shaping the mound into a perfect 4.55 metre circle. Finally, the edges are sliced off the now-hardened clay to reveal a smooth, flat ring. This is the dohyō — the sacred stage of sumo. It’s an hours-long process, performed with laser-focused familiarity.

A new prototype of a knitting machine creates solid, knitted shapes, adding stitches in any direction – forward, backward and diagonal – so users can construct a wide variety of shapes and add stiffness to different parts of the object.

Unlike traditional knitting, which yields a 2D sheet of stitches, this proof-of-concept machine – developed by researchers at Cornell and Carnegie Mellon University – functions more like a 3D printer, building up solid shapes with horizontal layers of stitches.

As the sun sets, the surface of the Earth cools. This makes the air denser and increases relative humidity, condensing more water vapor, and resulting in a phenomenon known as radiation fog. This type of thick, low-lying cloud typically appears late at night or just before dawn—exactly the moment our tired minds are likely to start seeing shapes in the dark. It’s small wonder fiction’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, faced the savage Hound of the Baskervilles amid the nocturnal mists of a mire.

The sun is governed by a strict rhythm. The magnetic activity of the sun displays a cyclic variation, reaching a maximum approximately every eleven years. Two enormous plasma circulations, each in one solar hemisphere, set the pace for this rhythm, thus defining the sun's eleven-year cycle. Near the surface, the plasma flows carry the magnetic field lines from the equator to the poles; in the solar interior, the plasma flows back to the equator in a huge cycle spanning the entire hemisphere.

The term sustainability usually elicits ideas of a green planet, solar panels, electric vehicles, and plastic-free oceans.

However, this outlook—sustainability primarily focused on the environment—lacks a critical component that University of Georgia researchers are elevating in the realm of food systems and agriculture.

“All pillars of sustainability matter, but social sustainability can get left out of the conversation,” said Jennifer Jo Thompson, senior research scientist in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.

Three decades after a landmark summit in Copenhagen, leaders in the Qatari capital warned that inequality remains high, climate shocks are intensifying, and nearly two billion people still lack social protection, pushing the world off course for the 2030 deadline.

"German-born political cartoonist Thomas Nast gave America some of its most enduring symbols: the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and Uncle Sam. Publishing regularly in Harper's Weekly, the celebrated Nast drew thousands of cartoons during the second half of the nineteenth century."

William Shakespeare was wildly prolific. According to one estimate, his complete works add up to 884,647 words. And all these hundreds of years after his death, people still reference him and his works constantly. No one did it like The Bard, so it’s no surprise that some myths about him and his writing have seeped into our culture over time. Let’s debunk some of the biggest ones.

• Misconception: Historians debate whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare.

• Misconception: Shakespeare invented 1700 words.

• Misconception: Saying Macbeth in a theater is dangerous.

• Misconception: Shakespeare’s plays all contained original storylines.

• Misconception: Shakespeare worked alone.

• Misconception: Wherefore means “where.”

• Misconception: As Hamlet says, “to be or not to be,” he’s holding a skull.

• Misconception: Shakespeare was a playwright during Elizabethan times.

• Misconception: The Globe Theatre was round.

"Today is a significant event for us – the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Khabarovsk is being launched from the renowned Sevmash shipyard," Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said after Navy Commander Admiral Aleksandr Moiseev smashed the traditional bottle of champagne into the hull of submarine.

The Defence Ministry confirms on Telegram that the new submarine will carry robotic weapons systems "for various purposes."

The Poseidon is a post-doomsday weapon unlike any ever seen in any previous arms race. Formed like a giant torpedo, the weapon is nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed, and can allegedly travel down deep with intercontinental range.

Alberta’s leading labour organization is asserting that it intends to forcefully respond to the government’s back-to-work order for Alberta teachers, but has stopped short of directly calling for an imminent general strike.

This week, Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, signalled his intent to topple the United Conservatives in response to Bill 2, through an organized campaign involving 24 of the province’s unions under a coalition called the Common Front.

“We will begin the process of organizing towards a potential general strike,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.