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Straits Times
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Judges keep blocking Trump's policies despite US Supreme Court injunction curbs
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox FILE PHOTO: A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., June 1, 2024. REUTERS/Will Dunham/File Photo President Donald Trump called the U.S. Supreme Court's June 27 decision limiting the ability of federal judges to use nationwide injunctions to block his policies "a monumental victory," but his legal win may be less definitive than it first appeared. The Supreme Court's decision curtailed the ability of judges to issue so-called universal injunctions that can stop the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, anywhere in the entire country. The Trump administration said it would move quickly to challenge such injunctions. However, the ruling by the court's 6-3 conservative majority contained exceptions, allowing federal judges to continue to issue sweeping rulings blocking key parts of the Republican president's agenda. In the short time since the ruling, lower-court judges have already blocked Trump's asylum ban at the U.S.-Mexico border, prevented his administration from ending temporary deportation protections for Haitian migrants and forced the government to restore health websites deemed to run afoul of Trump's efforts to squash "gender ideology." One of the biggest tests of the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. CASA will come on Thursday, when a federal judge in New Hampshire will consider whether to prevent Trump's executive order curtailing birthright citizenship from taking effect nationally on July 27. That executive order was at the heart of the Supreme Court's ruling, which did not address the legality of the policy, but held that judges likely lack authority to issue universal injunctions and ordered three judges to reconsider rulings blocking the policy nationwide. Issued on his first day back in office in January, the order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Singapore to hire more than 1,000 new educators annually in the next few years, up from 700 Singapore COE prices rise for all categories Business Temasek reports $45 billion rise in net portfolio value to $434 billion Singapore Man who killed cats by throwing them off HDB blocks has jail term doubled to 27 months Singapore $43k fine for undischarged bankrupt doctor who failed to disclose assets worth over $4m Singapore Female primary school teacher charged over alleged sex acts with underage male student Singapore Goodbye fraudsters? Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel rolls out identity verification Asia Amid handshakes and familiar friends, Asean navigates tariffs and tension in KL CLASS STATUS The plaintiffs in the New Hampshire birthright citizenship case are looking to seize upon one of the major exceptions to the Supreme Court's ruling. They argue it allows judges to continue to block Trump policies on a nationwide basis in class action lawsuits. The lawsuit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others hours after the Supreme Court ruled, seeks class action status on behalf of babies who would be subject to Trump's executive order and their parents. The plaintiffs are asking U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, who previously issued a more narrow injunction blocking Trump's order, to go further this time by allowing the plaintiffs to sue as a nationwide class and issuing an order blocking Trump's ban from being enforced against members of the class. At least one other judge has already followed this formula. On July 2, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington determined that Trump's denial of asylum to migrants on the southern border exceeded the president's authority. He then certified a class that covered all individuals subject to the presidential proclamation on asylum and issued an injunction to protect the class -- effectively a nationwide injunction. The administration appealed the ruling, which White House aide Stephen Miller called a judge's attempt to "circumvent" the Supreme Court's ruling by recognizing "a protected global 'class' entitled to admission into the United States." "I think there's going to be a lot more class actions," said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU, which brought the asylum case. Class actions must follow what is known as Rule 23, which requires the plaintiffs to meet several elements including proving that the proposed class members suffered the same injury. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned lower courts against certifying nationwide classes without "scrupulous adherence to the rigors of Rule 23.' The process to certify a class can often take months. A senior White House official told Reuters the administration will be watching class certification decisions closely and plans to aggressively challenge them to prevent abuse of the process. The government says the named class plaintiffs in the New Hampshire case are too different from one another to be able to proceed as a class action. They include an asylum seeker and someone on a student visa. Judges have used other legal tools to block Trump administration policies on a nationwide basis, including by finding the government failed to comply with administrative law, another exception in the Supreme Court's ban on injunctions. Judges did so in two separate rulings last week blocking the Trump administration from ending a program that allows a half million Haitians to stay and work temporarily in the United States, and requiring the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to restore government websites that had been scrubbed early in Trump's tenure following an executive order. Separately, on July 2, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy during a hearing in Boston raised the possibility that he could on the same basis continue to block the U.S. Department of Defense from sharply cutting federal research funding provided to universities throughout the country. "There's a strong argument that CASA doesn't apply at all," Murphy said. REUTERS
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Arizona fossils reveal an ecosystem in flux early in the age of dinosaurs
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Scientists have unearthed in Arizona fossils from an assemblage of animals, including North America's oldest-known flying reptile, that reveal a time of transition when venerable lineages that were destined soon to vanish lived alongside newcomers early in the age of dinosaurs. The remains of the pterosaur, roughly the size of a small seagull, and the other creatures were discovered in Petrified Forest National Park, a place famous for producing fossils of plants and animals from the Triassic Period including huge tree trunks. The newly found fossils are 209 million years old and include at least 16 vertebrate species, seven of them previously unknown. The Triassic came on the heels of Earth's biggest mass extinction 252 million years ago, and then ended with another mass extinction 201 million years ago that wiped out many of the major competitors to the dinosaurs, which achieved unquestioned supremacy in the subsequent Jurassic period. Both calamities apparently were caused by extreme volcanism. The fossils, entombed in rock rich with volcanic ash, provide a snapshot of a thriving tropical ecosystem crisscrossed by rivers on the southern edge of a large desert. Along with the pterosaur were other new arrivals on the scene including primitive frogs, lizard-like reptiles and one of the earliest-known turtles - all of them resembling their relatives alive today. This ecosystem's largest meat-eaters and plant-eaters were part of reptile lineages that were flourishing at the time but died out relatively soon after. While the Triassic ushered in the age of dinosaurs, no dinosaurs were found in this ecosystem, illustrating how they had not yet become dominant. "Although dinosaurs are found in contemporaneous rocks from Arizona and New Mexico, they were not part of this ecosystem that we are studying," said paleontologist Ben Kligman of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, who led the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This is peculiar, and may have to do with dinosaurs preferring to live in other types of environments," Kligman added. This ecosystem was situated just above the equator in the middle of the bygone supercontinent called Pangaea, which later broke apart and gave rise to today's continents. Pterosaurs, cousins of the dinosaurs, were the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight, followed much later by birds and bats. Pterosaurs are thought to have appeared roughly 230 million years ago, around the same time as the earliest dinosaurs, though their oldest-known fossils date to around 215 million years ago in Europe. The newly identified pterosaur, named Eotephradactylus mcintireae, is thought to have hunted fish populating the local rivers. Its partial skeleton includes part of a tooth-studded lower jaw, some additional isolated teeth and the bones of its elongated fingers, which helped form its wing apparatus. Its wingspan was about three feet (one meter) and its skull was about four inches (10 cm) long. It had curved fangs at the front of its mouth for grabbing fish as it flew over rivers and blade-like teeth in the back of the jaw for slicing prey. The researchers said Eotephradactylus would have had a tail, as all the early pterosaurs did. Eotephradactylus means "ash-winged dawn goddess," recognizing the nature of the rock in which it was found and the position of the species near the beginning of the pterosaur lineage. Mcintireae recognizes Suzanne McIntire, the former Smithsonian fossil preparator who unearthed it. The turtle was a land-living species while the lizard-like reptile was related to New Zealand's modern-day Tuatara. Also found were fossils of some other reptiles including armored plant-eaters, a large fish-eating amphibian and various fish including freshwater sharks. The ecosystem's biggest predators were croc relatives perhaps 20 feet (six meters) long, bigger than the carnivorous dinosaurs inhabiting that part of the world at the time. On land was a four-legged meat-eating reptile from a group called rauisuchians. In the rivers dwelled a semi-aquatic carnivore from a group called phytosaurs, built much like a crocodile but with certain differences, such as nostrils at the top of the head rather than the end of the snout. Rauisuchians, phytosaurs and some other lineages represented in the fossils disappeared in the end-Triassic extinction event. Frogs and turtles are still around today, while pterosaurs dominated the skies until the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that ended the age of dinosaurs. "The site captures the transition to more modern terrestrial vertebrate communities," Kligman said.
The Star
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Star
Russia says it downs eight Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow
(Reuters) -Russian air defence units shot down eight Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow late on Sunday, from a total of 90 overnight over Russian territory, the Black Sea and the Crimean peninsula, the defence ministry said. Most came down over regions near Ukraine, but three were also destroyed over the Leningrad area, home to Russia's second-largest city of St Petersburg, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app on Monday. The ministry reports only the numbers of drones destroyed, not the numbers launched by Ukraine. Also, it does not report possible damage, but regional governors said the attacks caused no substantial damage. Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia reported temporary airport closures in the two cities and other regional centres, as well as delays to dozens of flights. (Reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Will Dunham and Clarence Fernandez)
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Ancient Egyptian man's genome reveals his society's cross-cultural ties
By Will Dunham (Reuters) -DNA obtained from the remains of a man who lived in ancient Egypt around the time the first pyramids were built is providing evidence of the ties between two great cultures of the period, with a fifth of his genetic ancestry traced to Mesopotamia. Although based on a single genome, the findings offer unique insight into the genetic history of ancient Egyptians - a difficult task considering that Egypt's hot climate is not conducive to DNA preservation. The researchers extracted DNA from the roots of two teeth, part of the man's skeletal remains that had been interred for millennia inside a large sealed ceramic vessel within a rock-cut tomb. They then managed to sequence his whole genome, a first for any person who lived in ancient Egypt. The man lived roughly 4,500-4,800 years ago, the researchers said, around the beginning of a period of prosperity and stability called the Old Kingdom, known for the construction of immense pyramids as monumental pharaonic tombs. The ceramic vessel was excavated in 1902 at a site called Nuwayrat near the village of Beni Hassan, approximately 170 miles (270 km) south of Cairo. The researchers said the man was about 60 years old when he died, and that aspects of his skeletal remains hinted at the possibility that he had worked as a potter. The DNA showed that the man descended mostly from local populations, with about 80% of his ancestry traced to Egypt or adjacent parts of North Africa. But about 20% of his ancestry was traced to a region of the ancient Near East called the Fertile Crescent that included Mesopotamia. "This suggests substantial genetic connections between ancient Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent," said population geneticist Adeline Morez Jacobs of Liverpool John Moores University in England and the Francis Crick Institute in London, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings build on the archaeological evidence of trade and cultural exchanges between ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, a region spanning modern-day Iraq and parts of Iran and Syria. During the third millennium BC, Egypt and Mesopotamia were at the vanguard of human civilization, with achievements in writing, architecture, art, religion and technology. Egypt showed cultural connections with Mesopotamia, based on some shared artistic motifs, architecture and imports like lapis lazuli, the blue semiprecious stone, the researchers said. The pottery wheel from Mesopotamia first appeared in Egypt at about the time the man lived, a period when the earliest pyramids began to spring up near modern-day Cairo, starting with the Step Pyramid of the pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara and later the Great Pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu at Giza. About 90% of the man's skeleton was preserved. He stood about 5-foot-3 (1.59 meters) tall, with a slender build. He also had conditions consistent with older age such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, as well as a large unhealed abscess from tooth infection. "Ancient DNA recovery from Egyptian remains has been exceptionally challenging due to Egypt's hot climate that accelerates DNA degradation, with high temperatures breaking down genetic material over time compared to cooler, more stable environments," Francis Crick Institute population geneticist and study co-author Pontus Skoglund said. "In this case, the individual's burial in a ceramic pot vessel within a rock-cut tomb likely contributed to the unusual DNA preservation for the region," Skoglund added. The fact that his burial occurred before mummification became standard practice in Egypt may have helped avoid DNA degradation because his remains were spared elaborate preservation techniques. Scientists have struggled to recover ancient Egyptian genomes, according to paleogeneticist and study co-author Linus Girdland Flink of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. One previous effort yielded partial genome sequencing of three individuals who lived some 1,500 years after the Nuwayrat man. Given the track record, the researchers were surprised with their success in sequencing the man's genome. "Yeah, it was a long shot," Skoglund said. The man may have worked as a potter or in a trade with similar movements because his bones had muscle markings from sitting for long periods with outstretched limbs. "All indicators are consistent with movements and positions of a potter, as indicated in ancient Egyptian imagery," said bioarcheologist and study co-author Joel Irish. "He would have been of high status to have been buried in a rock-cut tomb. This conflicts with his hard physical life and conjecture that he was a potter, which would ordinarily have been working class. Perhaps he was an excellent potter."
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers get picture of aftermath of a star's double detonation
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The explosion of a star, called a supernova, is an immensely violent event. It usually involves a star more than eight times the mass of our sun that exhausts its nuclear fuel and undergoes a core collapse, triggering a single powerful explosion. But a rarer kind of supernova involves a different type of star - a stellar ember called a white dwarf - and a double detonation. Researchers have obtained photographic evidence of this type of supernova for the first time, using the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope. The back-to-back explosions obliterated a white dwarf that had a mass roughly equal to the sun and was located about 160,000 light‑years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Dorado in a galaxy near the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The image shows the scene of the explosion roughly 300 years after it occurred, with two concentric shells of the element calcium moving outward. This type of explosion, called a Type Ia supernova, would have involved the interaction between a white dwarf and a closely orbiting companion star - either another white dwarf or an unusual star rich in helium - in what is called a binary system. The primary white dwarf through its gravitational pull would begin to siphon helium from its companion. The helium on the white dwarf's surface at some point would become so hot and dense that it would detonate, producing a shockwave that would compress and ignite the star's underlying core and trigger a second detonation. "Nothing remains. The white dwarf is completely disrupted," said Priyam Das, a doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy. "The time delay between the two detonations is essentially set by the time it takes the helium detonation to travel from one pole of the star all the way around to the other. It's only about two seconds," said astrophysicist and study co-author Ivo Seitenzahl, a visiting scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. In the more common type of supernova, a remnant of the massive exploded star is left behind in the form of a dense neutron star or a black hole. The researchers used the Very Large Telescope's Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, or MUSE, instrument to map the distribution of different chemical elements in the supernova aftermath. Calcium is seen in blue in the image - an outer ring caused by the first detonation and an inner ring by the second. These two calcium shells represent "the perfect smoking-gun evidence of the double-detonation mechanism," Das said. "We can call this forensic astronomy - my made-up term - since we are studying the dead remains of stars to understand what caused the death," Das said. Stars with up to eight times the mass of our sun appear destined to become a white dwarf. They eventually burn up all the hydrogen they use as fuel. Gravity then causes them to collapse and blow off their outer layers in a "red giant" stage, eventually leaving behind a compact core - the white dwarf. The vast majority of these do not explode as supernovas. While scientists knew of the existence of Type Ia supernovas, there had been no clear visual evidence of such a double detonation until now. Type Ia supernovas are important in terms of celestial chemistry in that they forge heavier elements such as calcium, sulfur and iron. "This is essential for understanding galactic chemical evolution including the building blocks of planets and life," Das said. A shell of sulfur also was seen in the new observations of the supernova aftermath. Iron is a crucial part of Earth's planetary composition and, of course, a component of human red blood cells. In addition to its scientific importance, the image offers aesthetic value. "It's beautiful," Seitenzahl said. "We are seeing the birth process of elements in the death of a star. The Big Bang only made hydrogen and helium and lithium. Here we see how calcium, sulfur or iron are made and dispersed back into the host galaxy, a cosmic cycle of matter."
