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A dozen states have sued the Trump administration in the U.S. Court of International Trade to stop its tariff policy, challenging Trump's claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

(Image credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Topeka residents have plenty of internet options and these are the best ones, according to our CNET experts.

On March 23, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000 people killed by Israeli fire in the war with Hamas.

This is the story of 15 people who were killed the same day.

There were airstrikes across the territory, and in the south Israeli troops opened fire on a crew of emergency workers in ambulances and a firetruck.

At first, the Israeli military said the vehicles were "advancing suspiciously" toward troops, "without headlights or emergency signals." It said the soldiers had eliminated a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

A recording unearthed days later told a different story ultimately leading the Israel to conduct an investigation. The results blamed an "operational misunderstanding" and cite professional failures.

In more than 18 months of war – it's been rare for the Israeli Military to acknowledge failure.

Coming up the story of what happened.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

(Image credit: Eyad Baba)

Despite improvements in air quality in past decades, 156 million Americans still breathe in too much soot or ozone, says the annual State of the Air report from the American Lung Association.

(Image credit: ETIENNE LAURENT)

The drug company Eli Lilly is suing four telehealth companies for allegedly selling copies made by compounding pharmacies of its drug Zepbound.

(Image credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

When Disney Cruise Line opened its new island destination in the Bahamas – Disney Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point – it wasn’t just a vacation spot for island visitors. Instead, in coordination with its Animals, Science, and Environment (ASE) team, the brand launched a major conservation project that combined wildlife biology with modern technology, including radio telemetry and 3D printing.

While Disney Lookout Cay opened in June 2024, planning had been underway well before then, with the ASE Conservation team included from the start. A key decision was that Disney wouldn’t develop more than 16% of the land.

“We were going to leave a lot of the critical habitat, such as forest habitat, intact for the animals that were already living there,” Lauren Puishys, a Conservation & Science Tech with Disney’s ASE team, explained.

“We created an environmental impact analysis before any construction began,” Puishys said. That then turned into an Environmental Management plan, which was focused on learning about the bird population on the island and protecting them.

Sustainability Week 2025

This article is part of a series of sustainability-themed articles we're running to observe Earth Day 2025 and promote more sustainable practices. Check out all of our Sustainability Week 2025 content.

The team identified key zones on the island that would remain untouched based on where birds were nesting, migrating, or foraging – all gathered through on-the-ground fieldwork. “You're collecting every bird you see, every bird you hear, and you're just writing this down to make observations about how many of these birds are in this region,” Puishys said.

One species quickly emerged as important, though – the great lizard cuckoo. “They're noisy, they're really cool looking,” Puishys explained, calling them ‘incredibly smart.’ Now, to track a population, though, in terms of patterns when moving around the island and where they were choosing to nest, Puishys and team combined old with new.

In this case, the team turned to the art of 3D printing to get close to the bird species in question, and then, through radio telemetry, mapped them on the island.

“I need a very specific bird,” Puishys recalled telling her colleague, Jose Dominguez, a member of Disney’s ASE Behavioral Husbandry team. Though he’s 3D modeled a variety of enrichment items for Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park, he didn’t necessarily have experience modeling birds, so he called on other expert teams at Disney that did.

(Image credit: Disney Parks)

Disney has teams unsurprisingly well-versed in 3D modeling using CADs and tools like Blender. “They were like, ‘Oh, absolutely, I would love to work on this,’” explained Dominguez.

They collaborated for months, refining the model through regular Zoom calls. “Lauren provided her input on if it was too big or it needs an extra toe, things like that,” said Dominguez. “Eventually, we got to our desired model shape, the great lizard cuckoo.”

The model was printed in PLA, a plant-based plastic, which Dominguez said is what Disney routinely uses for deployments in “behavior-based enrichment.” The model was then coated with the same durable outdoor paint used across properties. More specifically, “an outdoors acrylic-based UV-resistant paint, and then with a protective clear coating on top.

The outcome? A decoy bird coupled with audio recordings of real bird calls. It worked and was deployed.

The Great Lizard Cuckoo model in nature at Disney's Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point. (Image credit: Disney Parks)

“We had it down there with the speaker underneath it, and we had two different types of calls on there,” Puishys said. “At one point, an actual great lizard cuckoo called back and forth to it… So it was actually trying to communicate with the model, which was incredible to see.”

We have infrastructure around property on the rooftops of buildings and cell towers that's actually created to pick up that signal

Lauren Puishys, a Conservation & Science Tech with Disney’s ASE team

Finally, a bird approached the decoy, and Puishys was ready for it. “I was in the woods, out of sight from the cuckoo but in sight of the model, so I could see it myself. And then all I had to do was step out of the woods, and the bird was in the net.”

From there, the team attached a solar-powered radio telemetry tag to track the bird. “So there's small solar panels on it with a little antenna, and that's giving off a radio frequency of 434 megahertz,” Puishys said. “We have infrastructure around property on the rooftops of buildings and cell towers that's actually created to pick up that signal, which has an associated identifying eight-digit number and letter code for that animal.”

The Western Spindalis Radiotelemetry Tag, attached by the wildlife conservation biologists team. (Image credit: Disney Parks)

Thanks to the tag and the infrastructure installed around the island in an unintrusive manner, Puishys can now track bird movements from her desk in Florida.

“We work pulling everything off of the cloud with an API key through the company, and we can just download it all to my desk using RStudio,” she said. “We’ve had it up now since pre-construction and now have over 35 million data points associated with this.”

We’ve had it up now since pre-construction and now have over 35 million data points associated with this

Lauren Puishys, a Conservation & Science Tech with Disney’s ASE team

That data is captured through a highly structured array of nodes across the island, with about 25 of them being spaced around 400 meters apart.

Further, the data is stored on those nodes, then sent to the sensor station, which processes it and is uploaded via a cellular network so that the team can access it from anywhere. That includes Puishys’s desk in Florida, and it’s the most data the ASE team has ever collected on a terrestrial species.

For Puishys, the most exciting part isn’t just the success of the project – it’s how early they were brought in. “I honestly think our involvement as a Conservation team in the development of Disney Lookout Cay was our biggest leap,” Puishys said. “It kind of blew me away… and it was a big part about why I was so happy to join the team and help out with the project.”

The hope is that this approach – one that blends science, tech, and collaboration – becomes a template for future projects. “We hope that it worked out well enough that we can kind of be an example or a good model for other construction projects moving forward,” Puishys said.

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A new pilot program from Microsoft and Western Digital has demonstrated a novel method of recycling rare earth elements (REEs) from decommissioned hard disk drives.

The initiative, developed in collaboration with Critical Materials Recycling (CMR) and PedalPoint Recycling, successfully recovered nearly 90% of rare earth oxides and around 80% of the total feedstock mass from end-of-life drives and related components.

Using materials sourced from Microsoft’s U.S.-based data centers, the project processed approximately 50,000 pounds of shredded HDDs and mountings, converting them into high-purity elemental materials. These can now be reused across key sectors such as electric vehicles, wind energy, and advanced computing.

Old HDDs now have more value

The project employs an acid-free, environmentally friendly recycling process that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 95% compared to conventional mining and refining.

This approach not only recovers rare earths like neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium, which are essential for HDD magnetic systems, but also extracts valuable metals including copper, aluminum, steel, and gold, feeding them back into the U.S. supply chain. It shows that even external hard drives can have an eco-friendly second life.

Despite the critical role of rare earths in cloud infrastructure, current domestic recycling efforts in the U.S. recover less than 10% of these materials.

Meanwhile, over 85% of global REE production remains concentrated overseas, but this pilot aims to change that, offering a scalable, domestic solution that reduces landfill waste, enhances supply chain resilience, and lowers dependence on foreign sources.

“This is a tremendous effort by all parties involved. This pilot program has shown that sustainable and economically viable end-of-life (EOL) management for HDDs is achievable,” said Chuck Graham, corporate VP of cloud sourcing, supply chain, sustainability, and security at Microsoft.

Acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR), a technology developed at the Critical Materials Innovation (CMI) Hub, was central to this achievement.

“This project is significant because HDD feedstock will continue to grow globally as AI continues to drive the demand for HDD data storage,” said Tom Lograsso, director of CMI.

Via StorageNewsletter

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America's neighbor to the north has seen wide ranging impacts from the tariffs on goods sent to the U.S.— from Canadian identity to the country's politics and of course the economy. Even small businesses are feeling the change. We go to the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia to see how tariffs are playing out.

Hints and answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 213, for April 24.

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I review dozens of true-wireless earbuds each year. These are my current favorites among all the new earbuds released in 2025 so far.

A federal judge gave the Trump administration another week to answer detailed questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man whose illegal deportation has raised concerns about due process.

(Image credit: Adam Gray)

I remember life before YouTube and life after. In the 20 years since Jawid Karim posted that first zoo video, YouTube has become a dominant force in media creation and consumption.

It's built industries and stars and forever altered viewing habits. I'd argue that it's the reason we now get most of our information from social video. And while AI is fast becoming the source for every answer (and some videos), we still get things done with YouTube's voluminous guidance.

As a long-time technology journalist, I'm embarrassed to admit I was a little late to the YouTube revolution, waiting to post my first video until almost 18 months after the initial launch. Even so, that first video made me a convert. I was so excited, I detailed the entire process in a PCMag post.

The video is in some ways emblematic of 2006's state-of-the-art. It's a silent, grainy 800-x-600 pumpkin carving animation. In hindsight, "Ghost Carves Halloween Pumpkin" looks awful, and yet, it set the template for a long and fruitful relationship, which even then featured many of the elements YouTube Pros rely on today.

There's the pithy and key title, an accurate, if brief description, thumbs up marks (miraculously, no one gave me a thumbs down), and dozens of comments, including many that noticed my less-than-expert animation work.

In those early days, it wasn't entirely clear what YouTube was meant for. Even the crew that launched it, Chad Hurley, Karim, and Steven Chen, could not agree on where the idea came from. At the time, Karim told USA Today that they wanted to build a platform where people could quickly discover highly publicized (trending) stories online. Others recall that the desire was a place where people could share videos of important life events.

In a way, early YouTube is a reflection of all those intentions. Certainly, my own YouTube library, which is around 260 videos, is proof of that. It took me years to try my hand at becoming an official "YouTuber" but only after I learned the craft by watching thousands of other people's pro-level creations.

There were, however, some who quickly recognized YouTube's storytelling potential. The breakthrough hit "Lonelygirl15" used YouTube's early confessional style to tell a complex story that, for a time, many people believed was real.

The story ran on YouTube for a few years, but it was soon just one of many tales and, as I see it, lost among an explosion of YouTube talent that started using the platform as a way to convey lengthy monologues and details about their interests in science, technology, entertainment, DIY, and more.

We are all made of Stars

YouTube was the first media platform to lower the bar between filmed content and an audience. You no longer needed a TV network or film producer to greenlight your idea. If you could film and edit it, you could attract an audience.

When my 46-second Pumpkin animation was unexpectedly featured on YouTube's homepage, my views exploded. The short video soon boasted well over 200,000 plays. I spent years trying to recreate that success, but that was another early lesson of YouTube: virality is not promised.

It tickles me when TikTokkers moan about how the algorithm has abandoned them as if every video is supposed to hit 2 million views. YouTubers know all too well the vagaries of a platform and editors (then) and algorithms (now).

YouTube made stars of people like Justin Bieber and Shawn Mendes (don't let people tell you that it was all Vine). YouTubers like MKBHD and iJustine have built and held onto enviably devoted audiences that I think most network television shows would kill for. (If you want to have some fun, visit any of these YouTubers' pages, go to the video tab, and click on the "Oldest" link to see their first YouTube videos.)

In the meantime, YouTube altered our viewing habits and may have helped smooth the way for streaming platforms like Netflix, which launched its streaming platform two years after YouTube.

Watching high-quality videos online was quickly becoming an ingrained habit when Netflix first dumped Lilyhammer on us, but thankfully, it followed with House of Cards.

Over time, YouTube transformed from a place for sharing short, interesting videos to long-form, lean-back experiences. Today, it's stuffed with video podcasts, hour-long videos that couldn't survive on TikTok.

The transition from virality to information happened years ago, though. 2025's YouTube is as much about information as it is about entertainment. Parent company Google certainly assisted in this. How many times have you Googled how to do something and found a YouTube video that shows you exactly how it's done?

I'm not sure how I accomplish any unfamiliar tasks without YouTube's steady tutelage. With it, I've done everything from jump-starting my car to installing a bathroom fan, all under the confident guidance of a YouTube video.

YouTube's knowledge base across a wide range of topics is truly encyclopedic. I challenge you to find a topic that doesn't have a dozen or more video tutorials.

In truth, the world learns differently because of YouTube.

Generation YouTube

A 2022 Pew Research study found that 95% of teens use YouTube. TikTok was close behind, and by now, it may be neck and neck. Still, learning from video and using it as your foundational source for news and forming opinions is all YouTube's doing. I understand that people still watch cable news and form opinions based on specific information bubbles, but online video wasn't a primary news source until YouTube came along.

And it's not just young people. Statista found that people across all age ranges are watching videos, and the next generation will too, as 80% of parents said their under-11-year-olds are also watching YouTube.

I've seen these kids in their strollers, iPad in hand, staring intently at the latest Ms. Rachel video. And with YouTube entering its third decade, we are now living among adults who literally grew up with the platform. They've never known a world without YouTube, and their expectations for content are largely shaped by what they found there.

My point is, we made YouTube, and then YouTube made us. Happy 20th Birthday, YouTube.

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Rumors also suggest that the iPhone 17 Pro could come in a sky blue color.

Updates to the Meta glasses bring a "live AI" button and real-time translation services, among other new features.

The Women's Health Initiative, begun in the 1990s, has made many important discoveries. Now funding to collect more research data will end in September.

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• ChatGPT will now use The Washington Post to provide answers using the newspaper's reporting
• ChatGPT answers will now include summaries, quotes, and article links
• The move builds on OpenAI’s growing roster of news partners and The Post’s own AI initiatives

The Washington Post has inked a deal with OpenAI to make its journalism available directly inside ChatGPT. That means, the next time you ask ChatGPT something like “What’s going on with the Supreme Court this week?” or “How is the housing market today?” you might get an answer including a Post article summary, a relevant quote, and a clickable link to the full article.

For the companies, the pairing makes plenty of sense. Award-winning journalism, plus an AI tool used by more than 500 million people a week, has obvious appeal. An information pipeline that lives somewhere between a search engine, a news app, and a research assistant entices fans of either or both products. And the two companies insist their goal is to make factual, high-quality reporting more accessible in the age of conversational AI.

This partnership will shift ChatGPT’s answers to news-related queries so that relevant coverage from The Post will be a likely addition, complete with attribution and context. So when something major happens in Congress, or a new international conflict breaks out, users will be routed to The Post’s trusted reporting. In an ideal world, that would cut down on the speculation, paraphrased half-truths, and straight-up misinformation that sneaks into AI-generated responses.

This isn’t OpenAI’s first media rodeo. The company has already partnered with over 20 news publishers, including The Associated Press, Le Monde, The Guardian, and Axel Springer. These partnerships all have a similar shape: OpenAI licenses content so its models can generate responses that include accurate summaries and link back to source journalism, while also sharing some revenue with publishers.

For OpenAI, partnering with news organizations is more than just PR polish. It’s a practical step toward ensuring that the future of AI doesn’t just echo back what Reddit and Wikipedia had to say in 2021. Instead, it actively integrates ongoing, up-to-date journalism into how it responds to real-world questions.

WaPo AI

The Washington Post has its own ambitions around AI. The company has already tested ideas like its "Ask The Post AI" chatbot for answering questions using the newspaper's content. There's also the Climate Answers chatbot, which the publication released specifically to answer questions and share information based on the newspaper's climate journalism. Internally, the newsroom has been building tools like Haystacker, which helps journalists sift through massive datasets and find story leads buried in the numbers.

Starry-eyed idealism is nice, but there are some open questions. For instance, will the journalists who worked hard to report and write these stories be compensated for having their work embedded in ChatGPT? Sure, there's a link to their story, but that doesn't count as a view or help lead a reader to other pieces by the author or their colleagues.

From a broader perspective, won't making ChatGPT a layer between the reader and the newspaper simply continue the undermining of subscription and revenue necessary to keep a media company afloat? Whether this is a mutually supportive arrangement or just AI absorbing the best of a lot of people's hard work while discarding the actual people remains to be seen. Making ChatGPT more reliable with The Washington Post is a good idea, but we'll have to check future headlines to see if the AI benefits the newspaper.

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