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Bell County sheriff’s deputies shoot man while responding to mental health crisis call

The Bell County Sheriff’s Office says deputies shot and injured a suspect Friday afternoon while responding to a reported violent domestic disturbance east of Holland.

Jun 19 • 4:50 PM EDT • Health • kwtx.com

Hugh Jackman almost 'pulled the plug' on ultra-violent 'Robin Hood'

Hugh Jackman has fought mutants, slayed vampires and gone toe-to-toe dancing with Zac Efron.

Jun 17 • 10:37 AM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Ozempic and Wegovy linked to surprising drop in violent behavior

A Rutgers study suggests GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy may weaken the link between impulsive tendencies and violent behavior. The surprising finding hints that these medications could affect how people act on impulses, though researchers stress that cause and effect have not been proven.

Jun 17 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Jimmy Kimmel breaks down Trump's 'big violent birthday party' UFC event

"It was so exciting he almost stayed awake for the whole thing."

Jun 16 • 7:09 AM EDT • Entertainment • mashable.com

Bronzeville Businesses Still Cleaning Up After Violent Storms, Water Main Break

BRONZEVILLE— Multiple Bronzeville businesses are still cleaning up from a series of severe storms last week, with fallout including a busted water main

Jun 15 • 4:47 PM EDT • Business • blockclubchicago.org

In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe

In April I spent a few days with Zryw, a Polish non-profit organization that recruits young people to enter politics and public life. Their aim is to build a new generation of civic leaders in Poland. I’ve followed their evolution from the beginning; my son is one of the founders. (“Zryw” means “impulse” or “burst of speed” in Polish). Julie Chmielewska, one of Zryw’s leaders, interviewed me at the event. Here is the conversation, lightly edited for grammar and context: Julia Chmielewska: Assuming that culture shapes institutions, could we conclude that some cultures are more prone to authoritarianism? Anne Applebaum: I don’t think so. Every culture, every nation, and every country has the potential for change. When we look at history, we can see that nations do change. Poland has changed, for example, from the 1980s to today. There’s a completely different mentality here than the one I encountered when I first visited, in 1988. The current generation sees the world through a different frame. So no, I don’t believe that certain nations are doomed to authoritarianism, or to anything. Of course, there are political and cultural traditions, but they can always be challenged. JC: So do you think there’s something intrinsic in human nature that pushes people to democracy, freedom? AA: I think there is something in human nature, a deep instinct, that pushes people towards freedom, yes. People who live in authoritarian countries – and I’ve heard this from them over and over again – sooner or later find themselves angered by a feeling of helplessness. They can see the unfairness of crooked courts, irrational political decisions. They naturally dislike the fact that somebody has all the power while they have none. In those circumstances, people who have no political background at all sometimes are politicized just by that frustration. I’m thinking of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, for example, who was a Belarusian housewife, until the circumstances of her husband’s arrest forced her to become a politician. I met a woman who is a Uyghur from China, and who had come to live in Turkey. After several of her family members were arrested, she too was propelled into a political role. These kinds of experiences make people interested in democracy or political reform, even if they thought they didn’t care. I also think that the opposite is true: some people instinctively prefer homogeneity, order, hierarchy. They don’t like the confrontation of opinions or the noise of debate, and they lean towards a single leader or a unified regime. I think that most of modern history is shaped by the clash between those two different sides of human nature. JC: Which force do you find more powerful today? AA: I think they both have a lot of power and there’s no way of predicting who wins. Even in countries that seem very shut off or stuck in an authoritarian system can change. We’ve seen that happen. And vice versa, I think democracies can also begin to fail and slide into authoritarianism. So it’s very important not to be complacent in either direction. JC: I want to go into your history and your experiences. You’ve lived in Russia during a time of incredible change in the late 80s, and then you came back to do research in post-Soviet Russia. AA: I was a student in Russia just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I then traveled and worked there extensively in the 1990s, and I met people who really were full of hope. They hoped that Russia could become a democracy, or at least a place that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press. These weren’t ideas that came from Washington. Although now the narrative in the Kremlin is different, I met many people who were working towards exactly that kind of transformation. A friend of mine ran a series of seminars – once a year, and then later several times a year, in cities all over Russia – designed to get people to discuss politics in new ways. She invited young politicians and journalists, as well as foreigners. I went to many of them, in Moscow as well as Volgograd and Novosibirsk. Over two decades, hundreds of people came to these seminars, and all of them wanted Russia to be different. I remain convinced that many Russians still want Russia to be different. It’s just that the old system, in the form of Putin, a representative of that system, returned. The KGB reimposed their power. And this wasn’t because of something to do with culture, this was to do with money and politics, and who was in charge. JC: You’ve partially answered my question... I wanted to ask whether that excitement of the 1990s was an exception from the Russian historical norm which has been rather authoritarian? AA: Of course, if you look at the history of Russia since the 18th century, there have always been liberal groups, reformers and revolutionaries. There were the Decembrists, in the early 19th century, and the rural populists later on, who tried to organize the peasantry. A significant group of liberal Russians appeared at the turn of the 20th century, people like the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was a Russian politician before the revolution. These groups were small in number, but sometimes had a broader significance. The Russian dissident movement in the 1950s and 1960s actually invented the modern human rights movement. It was their idea to hold the leaders of the Soviet Union accountable for the language they used, to remind them of the treaties they had signed and the promised they had made. They created the Helsinki group, for example, that held Soviet leadership to the language of the Helsinki Treaty, which formally ended the Second World War and which contained guarantees of human rights, at least on paper. That idea spread to Eastern Europe, and similar tactics were used here in Poland. (Benjamin Nathans recently wrote a great book about the Soviet dissidents, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause) JC: But seemingly, even if they do ever get power, they could never hold on to it. AA: We don’t know, because they have never really had power. But in any case, we also don’t know what will happen in the future. There is no reason to assume that Russia will forever be condemned to totalitarianism. Even during the first fifteen years of Putin’s regime there was some form of democratic politics. Only when the full-scale war began did he bring everything to an end: he shut down all remaining independent organizations and killed his most important opponent, Alexi Navalny. But does that mean he is popular, that he enjoys legitimacy? Even now, we don’t really know what Russians think about him, or about the war. There is no way of doing real polling in Russia because nobody will answer an independent pollster over the phone. JC: Do you think that the flock of young people, especially young men, who fled Russia after the start of the war represent a continuation of liberal movements that refuse to partake in the authoritarian state, or do you think they are moving for the sake of self-preservation – “I don’t want to go to the army, so I leave”? AA: I’m sure it’s both. I actually know many people who left Russia for political reasons either in the very last years before the war, or else just after the war began. JC: And do you see a change in the young generation versus the old one that have fled? AA: It’s hard for me to say because the people who I know were mostly already politicized. I do know some younger people who left, but most of them were already either active in the opposition, or working as journalists. Many of them very self-consciously think of themselves as maintaining Russian culture abroad, just as in the 20th century the Soviet dissidents or the anti-communist White Russians once thought of themselves as people who maintained the true Russian culture, outside of Bolshevik Russia. JC: Let’s move on to Poland. One of your first experiences with Poland was reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s first state visit, in the autumn of 1988. You followed her around the farmers’ market. AA: She was making a symbolic gesture. She wanted to welcome free markets, but the only one she could really visit was the farmers’ market at Hala Mirowska. JC: And I want to talk about this area because today you can look out of any window in that district, Mirów, and see rows and rows of skyscrapers. How does it feel to see a country built from the ground in such a short time, both politically and economically? AA: You know, when you’re living in a period of dramatic change, it’s always hard to know whether the change is positive or negative. The transformation in Poland created winners and losers, as well as new classes of people, new political movements of different kinds. At the time, it sometimes just felt like turbulence. Now, we can look back at the 1990s and early 2000s in Poland and see in retrospect that the country was headed in towards prosperity and European integration. In around 2009 or 2010, I remember speaking to a woman who worked cleaning government offices, and who asked me if her daughter should study in Amsterdam or in London. This seemed to me to be a real transformation, and it happened very fast: within a few years, Poles stopped feeling like second-class Europeans, and a generation of younger Poles appeared who had no qualms about crossing borders. JC: We again live in turbulent times. Do you think we’re heading towards positive outcomes? AA: I can’t make predictions, because everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today. Also, history doesn’t have a trajectory. It doesn’t move in a particular direction. You only think it does afterwards. As I said, you can look afterwards at Poland in the 1990s and you could say this was a period of great progress. But not everybody at the time saw that. Sometimes people are very wrong about a given country’s trajectory. I remember people writing about Ukraine in the 1990s, about how dangerous it was that Ukraine was independent, that this was going to be an anti-semitic state, that Ukrainian nationalism was going to come back... and although you can say many bad things about Ukraine, the country made many bad choices, actually it became a pretty tolerant state which now has a Jewish president and until recently a Muslim defense minister. JC: In the 1990s Poland’s and Ukraine’s GDP were roughly similar. Ukraine was even a bit richer. So the starting point was similar for both of these countries, but they’ve turned out very, very differently. Even if we stop in 2014. Why do you think Ukraine “chose East”? Was it external influence? AA: No, I think Ukraine was in a different position. First of all, central and eastern Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and had therefore experienced a longer period of occupation, repression, Sovietization and even Russification. Ukraine did not have, as Poland did, an alternative elite: a large cadre of economists and politicians, who already had some experience in opposition politics and in independent thinking. In Poland, the transformative finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, had already thought about how an economy might be decentralized before he took office. We can argue about how successful he was, but at least he was prepared to try something new. In Ukraine, people weren’t prepared. For one, there hadn’t been much space even for an illegal opposition in the previous couple of decades. Ukraine was also in many ways still emerging from colonial occupation. For the previous couple of centuries, many of the most capable Ukrainians had moved to Russia, and the first generation of leaders in independent Ukraine tended to be former Soviet apparatchiks. They didn’t immediately seek to become closer to western Europe. Instead, they looked for some kind of economic and political “third way” and an accomodation with Russia. Ukraine became stuck in this position, half-in, half-out and became pretty profoundly corrupt. JC: The Polish alternative elite had a vision of where they wanted the country to go. I think the general perception now is that this vision ends with the next election, right? Is this a natural process of gaining power? AA: Their vision, and it was shared by the time by politicians who now call themselves both left and right, was that Poland should join the EU and NATO, as fast as possible. My husband (Radek Sikorski) was in the very first government that said it wanted to join NATO. At the time this was taken very badly in Washington: the demand for NATO membership absolutely came from Poland, not from the US. But even then, in the early 1990s, many Poles already understood that the Russian sphere of influence would grow once again, that it was important to become part of the transatlantic alliance and an integrated Europe as fast as possible: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, all of the trading and security alliances. That consensus lasted through several different governments and over many years, even governments containing former communists. For twenty years, right, left and center disagreed about many things, but they all agreed on the direction that the country should go. In retrospect, that consensus created the basis for prosperity in Poland. JC: And regarding the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We know that antagonisms, e.g. the myth of Wołyń [a massacre of Poles that took place in what is now Western Ukraine, in 1943] are increasingly used in Polish political discourse today. In Ukraine, nationalist historians make heroes out of UPA, the Ukrainian revolutionary army, which is held responsible for this tragedy. Where do you see a start for burying the hatchet? Is the reconciliation of our nations possible? AA: So here’s a strange thing: For more than a decade after they both gained independence, Poland and Ukraine participated in a number of projects that were designed to solve exactly these kinds of Polish-Ukrainian differences. Books were published that were jointly written by Polish and Ukrainian historians, monuments were built. These projects were successful: If you’d asked me this question in 2010, I would have said that there are no real historical issues between Poland and Ukraine, that the two countries had mostly reconciled. For a number of reasons, this began to shift. In Poland, children and grandchildren of victims of the Wołyń massacre felt their tragedy hadn’t been fully recognized. In Ukraine, nationalist groups wanted the UPA partisans who had fought against the Soviet Union recognized for their heroism, despite the fact that some in this broad and not well-defined group were also linked to Wołyń. In both eastern Poland and western Ukraine, the memory of the ethnic cleansing that took place there in the late 1940s - Poles were moved West, Ukrainians East - to accomodate new borders has left feelings of displacement and bitterness. The wave of Ukrainian immigration, which started before the war, may have provoked some of this. But don’t underestimate the role played by Russia, which has always wanted to create discord between Poland and Ukraine, and pumps out propaganda to that effect in both countries. Vandalism on both sides of the border, damage done to cemeteries and monuments, is sometimes carried out by provacateurs working for Russia, just to create bad feelings. The Polish-Ukrainian conflict also hides a different reality: although there are real grievances and bad memories, the truth is that the biggest tragedies both nations experienced in the twentieth century were inflicted by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That should unite these two countries, not divide them. JC: This week (19.04.2026 – Ed.) in Hungary we saw that using historical narratives to create grievance has no longer worked. Are you optimistic about the direction after Orban’s loss? AA: The Hungarian election was really important because it shows that people can actually resist powerful, dominant propaganda. The ruling party Fidesz controlled all of the TV, 90% of the newspapers, the constitutional court, the bureaucracy... and yet people had the nerve to vote against it and resist it. It’s also an important election because Hungary created a huge network of well-funded think tanks and foundations that were funding other far right groups and projects. So that loss is going to have a knock-on effect in other places too, maybe even in Poland. JC: What you’ve said about resisting propaganda reminds me of one of the interviews you did about talking to Russians in the post-Soviet era who claimed that people knew that the system was lying. Why do people choose to believe in these regimes anyway? AA: Because it’s useful. Stephen Kotkin, an American historian, once described how people would learn how to “speak Bolshevik”: It was just a language that you needed to use in order to get by in society. If you didn’t talk the way the regime wanted you to talk, then you might have problems, or lose your job, or your kids would not get into university. It was a way of getting along. Communist Poland was similar, at least in the early years. When I was writing a book about the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II, I met a lot of people who wanted to talk a lot about the war, when many of them had done really heroic things. But almost nobody wanted to talk about the decade afterwards, between 1945 and 1956. This was when you had the short period of terror, violence and Polish Stalinism. To stay safe, people felt the need to just go along with what others were saying, or stay out of politics, or use communist jargon without necessarily believing it. I don’t judge them for it, and I wouldn’t describe all of those people as collaborators. It’s easy to feel moral certainty in retrospect, because we know that communism ended. But if you were living in 1949, it might not have been clear to you that communism was going to end. In very repressive societies, maybe about 10% of people who are really evil – collaborators, torturers. Maybe 10% of people are really brave and who find ways to resist. And then around 80% of people have kids, they have parents, they have to have jobs and they’ve had to get through it somehow. Strange though it may sound, I’ve found that the work I did on that book is now very useful in explaining some of what’s going on in the United States today. There are plenty of members of the Republican Party in Congress who know perfectly well that Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true. But they avoid criticizing him because it’s inconvenient, because they would get in trouble, because someone would attack them on the internet. So actually you don’t even need mass terror to get people to conform. JC: Is Gen Z reinventing agency? AA: We’ll see. In any generation you can find groups of people who want agency. If you live in a society that’s unfair, for example where a tiny number of people have captured most of the wealth, then at a certain point people rebel. This is always easier for younger people, who have you have less to lose. The question now is how the internet will affect the relationships between citizens and the state, and how it will change organizations. The “Twitter revolutions” people spoke about as early as 2008-9, mass protests organized online, have often proved to be very superficial. Although you can easily join something just by clicking, the work of creating a real movement requires physical participation. Successful mass movements of the past, for example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, were built by people who had spent many years together. They had participated in non-violent workshops together. They practiced and prepared. Just using the you can get everybody to show up at a certain moment, but then when the protest is broken up, nothing happens. It’s also true that the repressive regimes have more recently learned how to use the internet to undermine leaders and movements. Most of all, they now understand how to make people cynical. The form of propaganda that most modern authoritarians use - and I think the Russians really pioneered this - deploys sneering cynicism. Instead of praising the rulers, the regime propagandists mock the opposition movement leadership for being supposedly corrupt or sexually degenerate, with the goal of undermining any kind of idealism. JC: MAGA grew on the internet? AA: MAGA is a real grassroots movement. They had symbols, red hats, they showed up at rallies. But you’re right that the cynicism, the sarcasm and the distrust that the movement embodies came originally from the internet, and this is different. Fifty years ago, most European political parties had a social base in real organizations, in trade unions for Social Democrats, in church groups for Christian Democrats. As people stopped going to church and as the trade unions became smaller, the social base of these parties disappeared. Now people who wouldn’t have known one another in the past meet on the internet and create new movements, many of which don’t last. JC: Is history ending? Going in stale circles? AA: History never ends. In truth, human beings want contradictory things at the same time: order and freedom, stability and change. These things are never resolved, and when a society swings too far in one direction, people always push it the other way. But each time that happens, the result is different. Certainly it is true that we are now in a period when old philosophers and ideas from the 1930s are undergoing a revival. Carl Schmitt, who was a philosopher who was very influential on the Nazis, is back as an influence on both the far left and the far right, once again inspiring people to think that all politics has to be existential, that all politics is about defining and defeating enemies. In the US, some are also bringing back dominionism, the idea that we need a Christian and not a secular state. It’s also true that we are living through a more fundamental shift. The old left-right divide, which was mostly about the size of the state, is much less important now. Instead, we are arguing about more fundamental things: what are our rights, what protects our freedom. Or how much power do we want to give small elites, versus how much power to give ordinary people. In America a small group of very wealthy people now control information, because they control the social media platforms and AI, which means they determine what people will read and learn. Finding a way to preserve preserve zones of autonomy and independent thinking, this is going to be the main task for the next generation. JC: What is the one book that a person interested in Central Europe should read? AA: You could read my book “Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe” which tells the story of how the Soviet Union imposed its culture on the region. Or read Tim Snyder’s history of the region, “The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999.” And everyone should read “The Captive Mind” by Czesław Miłosz, which describes exactly the phenomenon we were talking about: why do people collaborate? I joined Scott Galloway and the brilliant Fiona Hill in a discussion about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world. Scott told us that this was the 400th edition of his podcast, which is quite a number: My friend Francesco Chiamulera runs a brilliant series of literary events, Una Colline di Libri, A Hill of Books, in the Prosecco Hills, a region of vineyards and elegant hill towns in the Veneto, north of Venice. We did an event in Vittorio Veneto and also drove and biked around the countryside. Buy Autocracy Inc Buy Iron Curtain Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

Jun 13 • 4:15 AM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com

Can we make the protesters look more violent?

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley blows the whistle on Bari Weiss' CBS News.

Jun 7 • 1:24 PM EDT • Politics • motherjones.com

Illinois 250: The political land of Lincoln, but also Addams, Daley, Washington, Jackson, Obama and more

Illinois’ political arena has always been the place for civil debate — and violent confrontation — for rights.

Jun 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • chicagotribune.com

Dodgers 3B Max Muncy and D-backs 1B Ildemaro Vargas both exit after violent collision at first base

Both men looked dazed after running into each other at full speed on a close play.

Jun 4 • 11:18 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

‘He hated women’: Explosive abuse, new Nazi tattoo allegations from exes rock Platner's campaign

Graham Platner's ex-girlfriends allege rape fantasies, violent episodes and heavy drinking in new report as Maine Democrat faces mounting scandals.

Jun 4 • 5:51 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Scientists reveal Ötzi the Iceman's dynamic microbial world

Ötzi the Iceman died violently roughly 5,300 years ago in the Alpine region of the modern border between Italy and Austria. An arrowhead was found lodged in his left shoulder, having caused fatal bleeding when ​he was attacked in mountainous terrain. But, in some sense, Ötzi still lives, as new research shows.

Jun 3 • 8:02 AM EDT • Science • reuters.com

Bolivia Unrest Threatens Return of Chaos, Sinks Sovereign Bonds

Bolivian sovereign bonds are in free-fall, dropping for a 10th day on Tuesday as protests and road blockades choke off essential supplies to La Paz and lead to violent clashes, threatening to push South America’s poorest country back into political and economic chaos.

May 26 • 10:23 AM EDT • Politics • bloomberg.com

Repeated violence puts spotlight on divisive political speech

Scholars who study rhetoric and extremism say the country’s political language has grown more aggressive and can trigger violent acts.

May 25 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Trump’s absurd choice for the ‘the most violent thing’ he’s ever seen in politics

When the president chooses to use the word “violence,” he often means it as a synonym for stuff he doesn’t like.

May 21 • 10:58 AM EDT • Politics • ms.now

The Subnautica 2 fish self-defence debate rages on, as the game’s non-violent themes clash with player desire to fend off underwater threats

Unknown Worlds has stayed true to its oceanic pacifism themes, while the realities of living with dangerous animals has some players frustrated.

May 18 • 7:17 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net

River Pig Saloon owner speaks out after violent crimes outside business: 'Frustrates me, my staff, the neighborhood, everyone'

May 18 • 12:04 AM EDT • Business • kgw.com

Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.

Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe

May 15 • 3:04 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com

As Jamaica loosened its politics-and-gangs ties, Haiti tightened them

COMMENTARY To observe Haitian Flag Day on May 18, the members of Haiti's political and business elite who've sponsored violent gangs could reflect on the possibly irreparable damage they've done.

May 14 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • wlrn.org

Californian criminal suspects can trade prison for psychiatric care. Is it working?

Californians accused of crimes can receive mental health treatment rather than prison time. Lawmakers are revamping the rules following reports of violent offenses.

May 13 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • calmatters.org

Scientists Just Discovered How the Universe Builds Monster Black Holes

The biggest black holes in the Universe may be built through chains of violent mergers deep inside crowded star clusters.

May 11 • 6:39 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

“Somebody Should Do It” and the Politics of Violent Fantasy

A new social media trend has made political murder into a punchline. Across TikTok and Instagram, a genre of deliberately

May 9 • 9:11 PM EDT • Politics • lavocedinewyork.com

A deadly crisis of violent manhood spills into our politics, again

Two recent incidents of gender-based violence involving elected officials highlight the need for a shift in the way masculinity is defined, from one of control and domination to one of care and con…

May 8 • 1:30 PM EDT • Politics • thehill.com

Trump Has a Disturbing Ability to Make Violent Acts of War Sound Way Too Casual

Remember when presidents sounded, you know, presidential?

May 8 • 12:27 PM EDT • Politics • esquire.com

The Universe’s biggest black holes may be forged in violent mergers

The Universe’s biggest black holes may not be born giants after all. Scientists analyzing gravitational-wave signals from dozens of black hole collisions found evidence that the heaviest black holes are likely “cosmic recyclers” — formed through repeated smashups inside incredibly crowded star clusters. These violent chain reactions appear to create a distinct class of rapidly spinning black holes that stand apart from ordinary ones formed by dying stars.

May 7 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

2 dead, 3 injured after business dispute turns violent, police say

Police say a man shot five people, killing two, in back-to-back shootings because he was angry over business dealings with the victims.

May 6 • 1:39 AM EDT • Business • wsaw.com

America’s Politically Violent Have Their Own Ideology

Most Americans fully reject political violence. It’s time to differentiate between those who tolerate it and everyone else.

Apr 29 • 2:05 PM EDT • Politics • theatlantic.com

The Emergence of the High-IQ Political Attacker

In a shift from the past, more accused violent assailants have striking academic records. “We’re seeing a new breed of individual.”

Apr 29 • 12:00 PM EDT • Politics • wsj.com

An Age of Political Violence?

We look into whether the U.S. is in a new era of violent extremism.

Apr 29 • 7:09 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Social media's role in rising political violence in America in spotlight

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, discusses the explosion of violent political rhetoric on social media platforms.

Apr 28 • 6:16 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Convicted sex offender escapes mental health facility

“He has documented violent behavior and should be considered dangerous,” the Huntington Police Department said in a release.

Apr 27 • 10:05 PM EDT • Health • wsaz.com

'House of the Dragon' season 3 trailer goes all in on fire and blood

'House of the Dragon' season 3 trailer drops online after its CCXP Mexico debut. It's all-out fire and blood as the Targaryen civil war takes a violent turn.

Apr 27 • 10:32 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Treatment-first court model is redefining justice for people with serious mental illnesses

Kalamazoo County’s Mental Health Recovery court offers an alternative path for certain nonviolent offenders living with serious mental illness.

Apr 27 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • wwmt.com

Antarctica's sea ice suddenly started shrinking a decade ago — and deep-diving robots are revealing why

A decade ago, southern sea ice suddenly and dramatically declined. Scientists say the culprit was a "very violent release" of deep, pent-up heat.

Apr 26 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com

Trump calls for unity and bipartisan healing after another violent incident

President Donald Trump was somberly contemplative and unusually conciliatory after confronting what he saw as a third attempt on his life in less than two years.

Apr 26 • 11:40 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

WATCH: Woman alleges violent sexual assault by Rep. Eric Swalwell in news conference with lawyers

Apr 14 • 3:16 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Woman alleges violent sexual assault by Eric Swalwell: 'He raped me’

A day after Rep. Eric Swallwell said he would resign from Congress, a Beverly Hills woman detailed what she described as a violent sexual encounter with the Democratic lawmaker.

Apr 14 • 1:11 PM EDT • Politics • calmatters.org

Rare, violent rift discovered in Ngogo chimpanzee group from 'Chimp Empire'

The largest group of wild chimpanzees known to scientists has permanently split in two — something that is extremely rare.Scientists with Arizona State University and The University of Texas at Austin are the first to clearly document the permanent divide and the intergroup violence that followed. The study draws on three decades of field observations of the Ngogo chimpanzees of Kibale National Park, Uganda, a population featured in the Netflix documentary series "Chimp Empire."

Apr 9 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.asu.edu

Dennard Wilson shares his vision for the NY Giants’ defense

NY Giants defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson wants an unpredictable, aggressive, and violent defense

Apr 7 • 7:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes

Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins The image of Alfred Tennyson I’ve carried for decades goes back to the childhood card game of Authors that depicts him with a stately continence sharpened by a jutting black beard. He’s formidable, his aura superior. Holmes opens his biography of the youthful Tennyson by describing the similar formality of the imposing Tennyson statue at Trinty College Cambridge, sharing the honor with other Trinity greats, including Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Holmes doesn’t want to chip away at that statue but rather reveal its inner youthful core of the man—tall, handsome, and talented but unformed, emerging from a disturbed family of addicted or insane male siblings and four unusual sisters struggling under a violent alcoholic clergyman father. Alfred was certainly statuesque, but would he end up a block of unformed stone like his equally promising brothers? He was youngest of three equally regarded Tennyson brothers at Cambridge, all bright, handsome, and talented, in fact Alfred regarded by some as less promising than his elders who also wrote poetry. Yet Alfred wrote one of his major poems, “The Kraken,” at twenty, revealing both his talent, his interest in geological forces, and the haunting creature that embodied his anxieties. While Holmes focuses on Tennyson of the 1830s and 1840s, he can’t tell his story without exploring his involvement with the Victorian intellectual upheaval. Tennyson was fascinated by new scientific perspectives, following the latest findings as soon as books and articles were published. He was especially taken with Charles Lyell’s deep studies of geology and the discovery of fossils and a timeline of the planet’s development that did much to question fundamental religious assumptions. The impact of these discoveries is reflected in Tennyson’s poetry and led to the crisis in belief he shared with so many contemporaries. He was especially taken by the cycles of destruction and renewal that informed the struggles he confronted in In Memoriam, Maud, and Idylls of the King. Tennyson was only one of the eventual major figures at Cambridge at the same time, young men just beginning to realize their potential. Charles Darwin was at Christ College, although there is no evidence that he and Tennyson even met as students or later in life. Yet evolution became significant in Tennyson’s thinking and the issues of his poetry. One of Tennyson’s best and most important Cambridge friends was Edward FitzGerald, who became the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and in their on and off relationship served as Tennyson’s harshest critic. FitzGerald was also a friend of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the two of them partying in Paris as undergraduates. That connection led to a friendship between Thackeray and Tennyson. Others who came to play significant roles in Tennyson’s life were Thomas Carlyle, the Brownings, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Tennyson’s deepest friend at college was Arthur Hallam, who at twenty wrote a glowing review of Tennyson’s first poetry collection, travelled on European adventures with him, and fell in love with his sister Emily. Hallam was also regarded as one more very promising Cambridge student. His sudden death at twenty-two in Vienna from a stroke while travelling with his father devastated many friends, but perhaps Tennyson most of all. He did not write immediate poems of grief but took years to compile those collected in In Memoriam A.H.H., published in 1850, almost twenty years after Hallam’s death For all of Tennyson’s early poetic successes and successes, Holmes reveals him as an often troubled young man suffering periods of depression, fearing planetary upheaval, concerned about supporting himself, disappointed in romances, and worried that he would inherit the family’s mental illness tendencies. Yet despite his seeming withdrawals, he was always writing poetry that he kept private and would not let go, constantly revising. 1850 became a transformative year for Tennyson. He finally consented to publishing In Memoriam with a last-minute prologue that acknowledged God and perhaps convinced the religious Emily Sellwood to marry him after years of pursuit.. He opened up to Emily, revealing his struggles with fears of depression and “weird seizures.” The devastating event of that time was the stillborn death of his unnamed first son. It shook him, but Emily’s faith brought them closer and convinced him to believe in an afterlife. Two later sons survived. With the death of William Wordworth in April of 1950, Tennyson was named poet laureate at age forty-one, reluctantly accepting. It’s as if Tennyson’s life split in half in that year. He lived another forty years, now a recognized success, with the prestige of being an official poet writing patriotic verse, wealthy and revered, no longer the insecure young man seeking an outlet for his immense talent. He earned a place in the Authors deck, now dignified and in 1884 elevated to the peerage as Arthur, Lord Tennyson. Richard Holmes is the author of twenty previous books on the Romantics and Victorians, several of which received awards. The Boundless Deep was shortlisted for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He captures the complex vicissitudes of Tennyson’s youth, illustrated by frequent excerpts from the poetry, placing that life in the full context of the shattering discoveries that led to an upheaval of thought in the Victorian age.

Apr 7 • 12:35 PM EDT • Science • calirb.com

Queens slashing suspects wanted for attacking man near sports bar in bloody assault

Detectives in Queens are looking for two men behind a violent, bloody slashing near a sports bar last month that left a man seriously wounded.

Apr 4 • 11:37 AM EDT • Sports • amny.com

Scientists find evidence for theorized gargantuan star explosions

A supernova is always violent, but some supernovas may be so immensely powerful they leave absolutely nothing behind.

Apr 3 • 6:33 PM EDT • Science • ksl.com

Guardians share extreme, vulgar threats from bettors. 'It's a cesspool'

The legalization of sports betting has led to a flood of angry, sometimes threatening and violent messages from angry sports bettors to players.

Apr 2 • 6:01 AM EDT • Sports • beaconjournal.com

Are Humans Naturally Violent? Scientists Challenge Long-Held Assumptions

Mild aggression and lethal violence evolved separately, according to research across 100 primate species. The study challenges the idea that everyday conflict leads to deadly outcomes.

Mar 30 • 9:44 PM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com

LIVE! Watch UFC Seattle Post-Fight Presser Here

With UFC Seattle officially in the books after a night (Sat., Mar. 28, 2026) of violent action LIVE on Paramount+ from inside the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Washington, fight fans can check out the post-fight press conference video above for all the best reaction and official bonus winners. On an evening that featured a main event […]

Mar 28 • 9:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

How Dems are committing political suicide over anti-ICE obsessions

Democrats now risk a midterm-elections fiasco if they can’t let go of their anti-ICE obsession, and their related insistence on protecting even violent-criminal illegal immigrants from deportation.

Mar 28 • 11:08 AM EDT • Politics • nypost.com

This massive crater could expose the heart of a lost planet

A mysterious metal-rich asteroid called Psyche has been baffling scientists for over two centuries, and its true origin remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in planetary science. Is it the exposed core of a failed planet, or a chaotic mix of rock and metal forged through countless violent collisions? To find out, researchers simulated how a massive crater near Psyche’s north pole formed, revealing that the asteroid’s internal “porosity” — how much empty space it contains — may hold the key to its secrets.

Mar 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

This doctor treated migrants’ severe injuries at the US-Mexico wall: ‘Political decisions made it as violent as possible’

Dr Brian Elmore witnessed a public health crisis unfold at the border near El Paso. He reflects on why it was like a ‘perverse Groundhog Day’

Mar 14 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • theguardian.com

Scientists crack a 20-year nuclear mystery behind the creation of gold

Gold and other heavy elements are born in some of the universe’s most violent events—but scientists still struggle to understand the nuclear steps that create them. Now, nuclear physicists have uncovered three key discoveries about how unstable atomic nuclei decay during the rapid neutron-capture process, the chain reaction responsible for forging elements like gold and platinum.

Mar 12 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Sports bar along New Bern Avenue in Raleigh loses permits after multiple shootings

The North Carolina ABC Commission has officially suspended the operating permits for Touchdown Sports Bar in Raleigh following a series of violent incidents over the past year or so.

Mar 11 • 8:19 PM EDT • Sports • wral.com

Man charged with threatening Trump and Democratic representative Swalwell

Diego Villavicencio also made violent threats against an unnamed individual, who appears to be Jerome Powell

Mar 11 • 7:20 PM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com

Astronomers think they just witnessed two planets colliding

Astronomers have caught what may be a rare cosmic catastrophe unfolding 11,000 light-years away. A seemingly ordinary sun-like star suddenly began flickering wildly, puzzling scientists until they realized the strange dimming was caused by vast clouds of hot dust and debris drifting across the star. The most likely explanation is a violent planetary collision—two worlds smashing together and scattering glowing material throughout the system.

Mar 11 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com

Stop ignoring the mental health of trans violent offenders

Scott Newgent, a transgender man, argues media and institutions obscure transgender violent offenders, calls for honest reporting, questions rapid medical...

Mar 7 • 1:00 PM EST • Health • dallasnews.com

Rapper-politician Balendra Shah set to be Nepal's next prime minister

Thursday's general election was the first since violent youth-led protests toppled the government in September.

Mar 7 • 12:02 PM EST • Politics • bbc.com

In Senate hearing, Noem blames 'violent protesters' for Minneapolis chaos

It was her first congressional hearing since two protesters were killed in Minneapolis by Homeland Security officers in January

Mar 3 • 11:48 AM EST • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

James Webb spots a galaxy with tentacles in deep space

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have spotted the most distant “jellyfish galaxy” ever seen — a cosmic oddity streaming long, tentacle-like trails of gas and newborn stars as it speeds through a dense galaxy cluster. The galaxy appears as it was 8.5 billion years ago, revealing that the early universe may have been far more violent than scientists expected.

Mar 3 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

Local business owners say profits take a hard hit when crime happens nearby

A Durham restaurant is closed after a deadly shooting, and so are nearby businesses. Some owners and government officials say the violent crime not only impacts the people targeted, but also the local businesses' bottom line.

Feb 27 • 10:42 PM EST • Business • wral.com

'We can only hope': Local business owners say violent crime is hurting bottom lines

A Thursday night shooting, killing a pizza shop employee, shut down a shopping center for hours, forcing other businesses to close and miss out on profits. City leaders say violent crime not only impacts its target, but also the local economy.

Feb 27 • 9:37 PM EST • Business • wral.com

A lost moon may have created Titan and Saturn’s rings

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so violent it reshaped Saturn’s entire moon system and may have indirectly sparked the formation of its iconic rings. Clues come from Titan’s unusual orbit, its surprisingly smooth surface, and the strange behavior of the tumbling moon Hyperion.

Feb 27 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

🚨 Mexico’s starting XI for the friendly against Iceland

Everything is ready in Querétaro for the Tricolor to continue its preparation journey towards the 2026 World Cup. The Mexican territory has been in the eye of the storm due to the violent events that...

Feb 25 • 8:29 PM EST • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Business on Harry Hines shut down in multi-agency enforcement operation

This comes roughly 10 days after officials announced the expansion of Project Safe Neighborhoods to battle violent crime, drug trafficking and human...

Feb 13 • 9:06 PM EST • Business • dallasnews.com

Lindsey Vonn’s Olympic dream ends in violent downhill crash

Various broadcasts captured audio of Vonn crying, “Oh my God!” as a buoyant crowd grew essentially silent.

Feb 8 • 6:54 AM EST • Sports • washingtonpost.com

Killers without a cause: The rise in nihilistic violent extremism

Amid a burst of high-profile targeted violence, authorities have identified a new source of terror.

Feb 8 • 6:00 AM EST • Politics • washingtonpost.com

Ancient bones reveal chilling victory rituals after Europe’s earliest wars

New evidence from Neolithic mass graves in northeastern France suggests that some of Europe’s earliest violent encounters were not random acts of brutality, but carefully staged displays of power. By analyzing chemical clues locked in ancient bones and teeth, researchers found that many victims were outsiders who suffered extreme, ritualized violence after conflict. Severed arms appear to have been taken from local enemies killed in battle, while captives from farther away were executed in a grim form of public spectacle.

Feb 7 • 7:00 PM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

'System in flux': Scientists reveal what happened when wolves and cougars returned to Yellowstone

Large carnivores are both clashing and coexisting in the western United States. Although wolves dominate cougars and steal their prey, cougars' shift from elk- to deer-heavy diets, paired with a rugged landscape for escape, might help cougars avoid violent wolf encounters.

Feb 3 • 8:47 AM EST • Science • livescience.com

Children at gymnastics meet witness double shooting during violent robbery at nearby business

A violent robbery witnessed by multiple children in Jacksonville’s Lakeshore neighborhood sent two men to the hospital and forced nearby businesses — including a kids’ gymnastics meet — to shut down in the middle of the day.

Feb 2 • 5:20 PM EST • Business • news4jax.com

Can Pakistan Contain the Violent Politics of Blasphemy?

The government’s ban on Tehreek-e-Labbaik reduced blasphemy violence but will take work to maintain.

Feb 1 • 4:00 AM EST • Politics • lawfaremedia.org

Activists call for a nationwide ‘blackout’ to protest against Trump’s violent immigration crackdown

Organizers say the demonstration is part of a growing non-violent movement

Jan 30 • 7:22 AM EST • Politics • theguardian.com

Ohio political blog 'The Rooster' banned from X after criticizing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem

The blog's author, D.J. Byrnes of Columbus, wrote that Noem "will have to die in prison. No other way around it." The social media platform banned Byrnes for violent speech and abuse.

Jan 29 • 3:10 PM EST • Politics • wosu.org

Radio waves revealed what happened before a star exploded

For the first time, astronomers have captured radio signals from a rare exploding star, exposing what happened in the years leading up to its death. The radio waves reveal that the star violently shed huge amounts of material shortly before it exploded, likely due to interaction with a nearby companion star. This discovery gives scientists a new tool to rewind the clock on stellar deaths. It also shows that some supernovae are far more dramatic in their final moments than previously thought.

Jan 27 • 7:00 PM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

Democrats Running for U.S. Senate in Texas Call for Overhaul of ICE

In a debate, Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico differed in their political styles but agreed that violent immigration agents needed to be held to account.

Jan 24 • 7:08 PM EST • Politics • nytimes.com

10 quintillion hydrogen bombs every second: Webb detects massive galactic eruption

Scientists have discovered an enormous stream of super-hot gas erupting from a nearby galaxy, driven by a powerful black hole at its center. The jets stretch farther than the galaxy itself and spiral outward in a rare, never-before-seen pattern. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope pierced through thick dust to reveal this violent outflow. The process is so intense it’s robbing the galaxy of star-forming gas at a staggering rate.

Jan 10 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

Political tribalism consumes debate over ICE shooting

Americans’ reactions to the videos of a violent act in Minneapolis have exposed the nation’s raw divisions.

Jan 9 • 7:00 AM EST • Politics • startribune.com

'It can be unnecessary - and even too much': Are violent video games like Grand Theft Auto 6 becoming too realistic?

The latest in the franchise is the most hyped release of 2026 and looks set to push the boundaries of gaming visuals – but it could prove more disturbing than entertaining.

Jan 8 • 5:54 AM EST • Technology • bbc.com

Analysis: Another violent death in Minneapolis lays bare the nation’s fractured politics

It took just a few seconds and a violent, unnecessary death to drag a snowy residential street in Minneapolis into America’s new age of political brutality.

Jan 8 • 12:00 AM EST • Politics • cnn.com

Behind the Lines: A Fine Line Between Sports, Entertainment and Reality

My studious, shy, parochial school-attending granddaughters, Jayne and Norah, have a not-so-secret appreciation of violent, combat sports, at least theatrical combat. For a Christmas present, Staci and Adam surprised the girls with tickets to the WWE Live Holiday Tour at Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena on December 27. Yes, the reflective eight-year-old Jayne, who competes in […]

Jan 7 • 1:12 PM EST • Entertainment • county10.com

See photos of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on its 5th anniversary

Five years ago, as lawmakers met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Americans violently stormed the Capitol.

Jan 6 • 3:02 AM EST • Politics • usatoday.com

Physicists found hidden order in violent proton collisions

Inside high-energy proton collisions, quarks and gluons briefly form a dense, boiling state before cooling into ordinary particles. Researchers expected this transition to change how disordered the system is, but LHC data tell a different story. A newly improved collision model matches experiments better than older ones and reveals that the “entropy” remains unchanged throughout the process. This unexpected result turns out to be a direct fingerprint of quantum mechanics at work.

Jan 4 • 7:00 PM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World Was Silent

When the country needed the sports world to speak out, most athletes kept mum—and a few openly embraced embraced Trumpism.

Dec 30, 2025 • 10:40 AM EST • Sports • thenation.com

New Hubble images may solve the case of a disappearing exoplanet

A massive collision between two asteroid-sized bodies around a nearby star offers a rare look at the violent process of planetary construction.

Dec 18, 2025 • 2:00 PM EST • Science • sciencenews.org

Astronomers just watched a black hole twist spacetime

Astronomers have detected spacetime itself being dragged and twisted by a spinning black hole for the first time. The discovery, seen during a star’s violent destruction, confirms a prediction made over 100 years ago and reveals new clues about how black holes spin and launch jets.

Dec 18, 2025 • 7:00 AM EST • Science • sciencedaily.com

15 must-watch British crime drama series

Whether with an old-fashioned one-case-per-episode or a more sprawling multistrand story, quaint or violent, historic or modern, the birthplace of Agatha Christie understands that we all need stories that make sense of seemingly senseless acts.

Dec 17, 2025 • 6:00 AM EST • Entertainment • latimes.com