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Archaeologists Are Mystified by These 2,000-Year-Old Bodies Found Seated Upright and Facing West in France

In 2024, archaeologists in France discovered an unusual grave site that contained 13 sets of human remains. All of the individuals appeared to have been buried sitting upright and facing west—a highly unusual and puzzling position.

Now, the researchers say they’ve identified at least five additional seated burials in a previously unexplored area of the same site. The latest discoveries raise more questions about the culture these individuals belonged to more than 2,000 years ago.

According to a March 18 statement from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), the team unearthed the skeletons while conducting excavations during ongoing renovations of the Josephine Baker primary school complex in Dijon, located in France’s east-central Burgundy region.

Just like the remains found in 2024, the newly discovered individuals were interred upright in a seated position, with their faces turned west and their hands resting in their laps. At least three appear to have been buried in a line parallel to the initially identified graves, about 66 feet away.

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Senior BBC Iran reporter exposed as opposition activist

After a top reporter at the BBC drew outrage for publishing a quote demanding Iran be nuked, she’s been revealed as a dedicated regime change activist whose career was launched by a CIA-founded propaganda network. Serious questions remain about the BBC’s editorial process. 

On April 6, 2026, horrified social media users began drawing attention to an extraordinary statement allegedly provided to the BBC by a twenty-something Iranian:

“About them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran – my honest reaction is that I’m okay with all of these.”

Three hours later, as the uproar grew, the quote suddenly vanished from the BBC’s article. It had been replaced by a far less controversial criticism of the Iranian government. The episode raises serious questions about the BBC’s editorial process, as well as the background and motivations of the author responsible for the article.

Who is Ghoncheh Habibiazad?

At the ripe old age of 27, Ghoncheh Habibiazad has already achieved more than most British journalists will in their lifetime. After just four years in the field, she has already risen to the position of ‘Senior Reporter’ at BBC Persian – a prestigious and influential role which requires a “minimum of 8 – 10 years of experience in journalism,” according to a BBC job listing.  

Following four years of higher education on the Iranian government’s dime, Habibiazad graduated from the University of Tehran in 2020, and immediately began aligning herself with her country’s enemies. In October 2021, she was brought on as an intern at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a CIA propaganda project founded by notorious spymaster Allen Dulles which nominally separated from the Agency in the 70s. During her time at the network’s studio in Prague, Habibiazad’s LinkedIn page notes that she conducted such groundbreaking investigations as “an article on “hidden disabilities”” while “working remotely for Radio Farda,” an RFE/RL subdivision that serves as Washington’s official Persian-language mouthpiece.

The same month she began interning for RFE/RL, Habibiazad joined forces with Marjan TV, another outlet founded by expat regime change activists. She would spend the next year and half developing social media content for the outlet and its subsidiary, Manoto TV. The broadcaster has been described by Iranian academic Shahab Esfandiary as “a pro-monarchy network with the mission of glorifying the Pahlavi dynasty, one of the worst dictatorships of the 20th century.”

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Missouri Governor Says Restricting Hemp THC Products Is ‘Something We Need To Get Done’ As Ban Bill Heads To His Desk

Missouri’s governor says the state needs to take steps to restrict the availability of intoxicating hemp-derived THC products in line with legislation that lawmakers recently sent to his desk.

“At a high level, I’m very much in favor of taking these illegal drugs in the form of the candies and stuff off of the shelves for kids to be able to buy,” Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) said in an episode of  This Week in Missouri Politics that aired on Sunday.

While the governor said his office will “do bill review” on the specific provisions of the legislation that lawmakers passed last week, he generally agrees with its aim.

“The way the legislation is drawn up is it helps us match the federal standard that’s coming down on these issues,” Kehoe said, referring to national restrictions that President Donald Trump signed into law late last year and that are set to take effect this November.

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“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

When it comes to large language model-powered tools, there are generally two broad categories of users. On one side are those who treat AI as a powerful but sometimes faulty service that needs careful human oversight and review to detect reasoning or factual flaws in responses. On the other side are those who routinely outsource their critical thinking to what they see as an all-knowing machine.

Recent research goes a long way to forming a new psychological framework for that second group, which regularly engages in “cognitive surrender” to AI’s seemingly authoritative answers. That research also provides some experimental examination of when and why people are willing to outsource their critical thinking to AI, and how factors like time pressure and external incentives can affect that decision.

Just ask the answer machine

In “Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender,” researchers from the University of Pennsylvania sought to build on existing scholarship that outlines two broad categories of decision-making: one shaped by “fast, intuitive, and affective processing” (System 1); and one shaped by “slow, deliberative, and analytical reasoning” (System 2). The onset of AI systems, the researchers argue, has created a new, third category of “artificial cognition” in which decisions are driven by “external, automated, data-driven reasoning originating from algorithmic systems rather than the human mind.”

In the past, people have often used tools from calculators to GPS systems for a kind of task-specific “cognitive offloading,” strategically delegating some jobs to reliable automated algorithms while using their own internal reasoning to oversee and evaluate the results. But the researchers argue that AI systems have given rise to a categorically different form of “cognitive surrender” in which users provide “minimal internal engagement” and accept an AI’s reasoning wholesale without oversight or verification. This “uncritical abdication of reasoning itself” is particularly common when an LLM’s output is “delivered fluently, confidently, or with minimal friction,” they point out.

To measure the prevalence and effect of this kind of cognitive surrender to AI, the researchers performed a number of studies based on Cognitive Reflection Tests. These tests are designed to elicit incorrect answers from participants that default to “intuitive” (System 1) thought processes, but to be relatively simple to answer for those who use more “deliberative” (System 2) thought processes.

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New NASA video spurs hoax that Artemis II mission is staged: ‘Pure green screen bulls–t’

Conspiracy theorists are going bonkers over a new NASA video that they claim “proves” the Artemis II mission to the moon is staged in front of a green screen.

The brave crew gave a live interview over the weekend to CNN, discussing their journey to the moon while a plush toy named Rise floated around the capsule as a sign of zero gravity.

But a clip of the interview filmed by a cellphone from the TV allegedly shows visual distortions and flickers of text, including the letters “TAN” and “OW” across the toy’s body and head.

Conspiracists quickly seized on the clip as supposed “proof” that the entire mission was staged.

“Pure green screen bulls–t. Same exact fabric they use on movie sets. Artemis? Fake as hell. They never went up there. Whole thing’s a staged circus and we’re the idiots paying for it. Truth’s buried under layers of CGI and lies. Wake up, man,” a second X user added.

“Over 50 million dollars a day to give us green screen BS,” wrote a third X user.

However, the more likely explanation appears to be that the clip was recorded from a TV display with chromakey overlay processing active.

Chromakey, also known as green-screen or blue-screen effect, is commonly used by broadcasters to insert captions, graphics and lower-third text into live footage.

Live interviews often include graphic overlays such as captions, logos, and name banners, which are digitally layered in real time over the video.

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THE OPERATOR: A Counterintelligence Officer Built the UFO Disclosure Movement. He Never Left the Payroll.

There is a version of this story that is comfortable to tell. A patriot inside the Pentagon discovers the government is hiding evidence of non-human intelligence. He resigns in protest. He goes public. He fights for the truth. Congress listens. The walls begin to crack.

It is a good story. It has a hero, a villain, and a ticking clock. It has been told on Joe Rogan, on 60 Minutes, on the History Channel, in the halls of Congress, and in a bestselling book cleared for publication by the same Department of Defense that supposedly tried to silence its author.

We are not going to tell that story.

We are going to tell you what happens when a career counterintelligence officer, confirmed as recently as 2022 to be on the government payroll, builds an information architecture designed to control what you believe about the most extraordinary claim in human history. And we are going to tell you what happens to the people who ask the wrong questions.

THE RÉSUMÉ THEY WANT YOU TO SEE

Luis “Lue” Daniel Elizondo enlisted in the United States Army in 1995. He spent two decades as a Counterintelligence Special Agent. The formal designations are MOS 35L and 35M. The informal job description is this: you learn how to identify threats, recruit assets, manage deception operations, run information campaigns, and neutralize anyone who disrupts your mission.

His deployments included Korea, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and South America. He managed classified intelligence operations at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Seven, the most restricted facility in the detention complex, running missions against al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hezbollah. His final DoD performance evaluation, dated 2016, praised his ability to manage highly classified programs on a global scale. According to Keith Kloor’s reporting in Issues in Science and Technology, the evaluator noted his office had “identified and neutralized 6 insider threats” and “co-authored 4 national-level policies involving covert action.”

Read that last line again. This is not an analyst. This is not a bureaucrat who stumbled onto UFO files. This is a professional whose government formally evaluated him on his ability to write and execute covert action policy. Covert action, by definition, involves narrative control, plausible deniability, and the manipulation of target populations.

His employer assessed him as excellent at all of these things.

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Ohio Judge Pauses Hemp Product Ban Enforcement, Saying It Favors Marijuana Industry

A Sandusky County court of common pleas judge has ruled that Ohio’s new law banning the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids except at licensed marijuana retailers is likely unconstitutional and has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Fremont Police Department from enforcing it.

The ruling impacts only the Fremont Police Department and “all who may act in concert with them” and remains in effect only until April 28. It comes in a case brought by Seattle-based Cycling Frog, a hemp cannabinoid beverage company that sells its products throughout Ohio, including Sandusky County.

Judge Jeremiah Ray held that the new law created by the passage of Senate Bill 56 appears to violate the Dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. That law effectively gives the state’s licensed marijuana dispensaries a monopoly over what are federally legal hemp-derived products, Ray held. (Congress voted to radically restrict hemp-derived cannabinoids last November, but that law does not go into effect until this coming November.)

“The practical effect is to immunize Ohio’s in-state marijuana industry, which Ohio law requires to have an in-state physical presence, from out-of-state competition with respect to federally legal hemp products otherwise sold in interstate commerce,” Ray said, noting the law also discriminates against in-state businesses.

“The parallel intrastate discrimination is no defense to the interstate discrimination. Indeed, the existence of parallel intrastate discrimination makes the protectionist effect of the ordinance more acute,” he wrote. “This is because the licensed dispensaries and their attendant supply chain benefit from a lack of competition from either inside or outside Ohio. This is, thus, inherently discriminatory on its face.”

The attorney representing Cycling Frog, Andy Mayle, said he asked Ray to make the temporary restraining order a class action that would block all law enforcement agencies in the state from enforcing the law.

“That’s the next step in the case,” Mayle said. “If he does, then basically the bill—with respect to the traditional hemp industry—will not be enforceable in Ohio.”

The regulation of interstate commerce is the province of Congress, not the state of Ohio, Mayle added.

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Trump’s Monstrous Threats Against the Iranian People

The president marked Easter with more deranged threats against the country and people of Iran:

The US president gave Iran until 8pm eastern time on Tuesday to reopen the crucial shipping lane after earlier threatening to unleash “hell” in an expletive-laden social media post.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

The president is making explicit threats to commit massive war crimes against the civilian population. He means to inflict collective punishment on tens of millions of people because their government will not yield to his unhinged demands. He is treating the Iranian people as hostages, and he is threatening to shoot the hostages if he doesn’t get what he wants. The message the president has sent amounts to telling the Iranian people, “Trump, or I burn the country.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that the president is threatening genocidal violence against the people of Iran. Trump has referred to Iranians as “animals” in a chilling echo of Israeli officials’ statements at the start of the genocidal war in Gaza. He said this morning that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back” if Iran does not capitulate. This is eliminationist language directed at a country of more than ninety million people. These are the words of a madman, and coming from the head of a nuclear weapons state they are terrifying.

It should be clear by now that this is a war on the Iranian people, and it was never going to be anything else. The aggressors want to wreck Iran and leave it in ruins. That should have been obvious from the start after what the Israeli government did to Gaza and is currently doing to Lebanon with Washington’s full support, but now it is undeniable.

Trump’s Iran policy has always been defined by collective punishment. His “maximum pressure” sanctions have impoverished the Iranian people and strangled their economy for the last eight years. Attacks on civilian infrastructure in his criminal war threaten the entire population with even greater deprivation and hardship. As ever, the destruction is the point. The president is not really trying to achieve anything. He simply wishes to punish and harm those that will not submit to him.

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These common drug tests lead to tens of thousands of wrongful arrests a year, experts say. One state is fighting back

Bird poop scraped off a man’s car appeared on a drug test as cocaine. A toddler’s ashes registered as methamphetamine or ecstasy.

And a great-grandmother’s medicine tested positive for cocaine – spawning a 15-month legal nightmare, forcing her to refinance her home, and spurring a new state law that could set a precedent across the country.

Colorado just enacted the nation’s first law banning arrests based solely on the results of colorimetric drug tests – a field test widely used by law enforcement across the country.

The tests are popular because they’re cheap, portable and can screen for drugs in mere minutes. It’s just not feasible to send all suspected drug samples to state laboratories, which would be far more expensive and could take days or weeks to return results.

But these inexpensive tests also lead to false positives at alarming rates, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found.

While the actual error rate nationwide is unknown, previous studies by manufacturers have put it around 4%. But the UPenn researchers believe the actual rate is much higher, from 15% to 38%. And a study by the New York City Department of Investigation showed test error rates from 79% to 91% in some correctional settings.

From lost jobs to months in jail, innocent people “are at risk of having their lives derailed by these inaccurate tests,” said Des Walsh, founder of the Roadside Drug Test Innocence Alliance.

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Billy Bush Tells Sean Hannity That After the 2016 Election, ABC News Had an Entire ‘Division’ of People Dedicated to Bringing Down Trump

Billy Bush recently appeared on the new Sean Hannity podcast and said that after the 2016 election, ABC News devoted an entire division of people to taking down Trump.

This is not exactly shocking news, but it is a third party confirmation of what Trump supporters have known for years – That the media has been out to ‘get’ Trump since the moment he won the presidency. Before that, even.

Of course, left wing networks like MSNOW are devoted to the same purpose, but at least they are up front about their biases. ABC News pretends to maintain some semblance of objectivity.

Townhall has details:

Not that you didn’t already know this, but the media hates Donald Trump. Still, the resources they dedicate to ending this man’s career in public life are staggering, yet they still fail to stop him. At every turn, Trump and his team outthink, outmaneuver, and even humiliate the liberal media…

During an episode of Sean Hannity’s podcast, Billy Bush revealed that ABC News has a 75-person team dedicated solely to finding ways to undermine Donald Trump. In 2016, Bush was criticized for joking with Trump.

He was caught on audio from an old segment where the soon-to-be-president discussed grabbing women; it was considered a non-issue. However, it cost Bush his job on the Today Show, where he was suspended and later fired. His wife eventually divorced him.

You know, other outlets have similar crews, and yet the man got his job back in 2024, even when everyone thought he was finished after the 2020 contest.

Never count out Trump. Also, it’s funny how the ’24 race was a cycle: the polls were wrong again, the pundits were wrong again, the night was short again, the Democrats got walloped again, and the liberal media thought the Democrat would cruise to another win.

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