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NASA Unveils Plan for First Nuclear-Powered Interplanetary Spacecraft

The first-ever nuclear-powered spacecraft built for interplanetary travel will set off on a mission to Mars in 2028.

The Space Reactor‑1 Freedom (SR-1 Freedom) project was unveiled in Washington on March 24. NASA leadership said it’s the first step toward nuclear power on the moon and for exploratory missions farther out in space, where solar panels and traditional chemical propulsion would be less and less effective.

The ship was introduced by Steve Sinacore, NASA’s Fission Surface Power program executive, who said it comes from utilizing more than 60 years of NASA’s research into fission nuclear propulsion and repurposing a power and propulsion unit already nearing completion.

It will be fueled with low-enriched uranium, producing more than 20 kilowatts of advanced electric propulsion primarily through the transfer of heat from the uranium. It will also be equipped with radiation shielding and high-rate direct-to-Earth communications with images and data.

SR-1 Freedom’s first mission will be a year-long journey to Mars for a mission called “Skyfall.” Its job will be to deliver a payload of three helicopter drones modeled after “Ingenuity,” the first helicopter to fly on Mars, to the surface. The aircraft will then take readings of and below the planet’s surface in anticipation of a crewed mission, such as searching for water as ice trapped beneath the surface, and scouting out a landing site.

NASA leaders didn’t announce where the launch would take place or disclose what kind of rocket would be used.

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Biden officials pushed COVID booster harder after surveillance found stroke increase: Sen. Johnson

The Biden administration pushed COVID-19 boosters for elderly people even harder after its vaccine safety surveillance systems discovered, as early as November 2022, “statistically significant safety signals for ischemic stroke” in that age group following uptake of the Pfizer bivalent, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy in a letter Monday, disclosed Wednesday.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chair released nearly 2,000 pages of “relevant HHS records” in conjunction with the letter, in 10 batches, documenting the stroke signal and internal communications between officials “acknowledging significant statistical limitations in their ability to detect safety signals through their data analyses.”

The Biden White House next made edits to a draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration “communications plan” to increase booster uptake, in January 2023, that “downplayed the significance of the safety signal, changing a sentence that stated that the ‘signal is moderately elevated’ to the ‘signal is slightly elevated,'” Johnson told Kennedy.

“Biden health officials posted on FDA’s website that ‘no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice,'” the same month, even as they “initiated multiple studies and statistical analyses — including a so-called ‘Stroke Project” — to investigate the validity of their assertion” through at least September 2025, Johnson’s office said.

He asked Kennedy for more information about detection of ischemic stroke following the booster because “the full extent of HHS’s awareness of the ischemic stroke safety signal remains incomplete and key records are still missing.”

Biden officials downplayed the risk of ischemic stroke they found in coadministered COVID and flu vaccines in fall 2023.

Several months earlier they approved “additional investigation” of the booster stroke signal even while emphasizing they weren’t changing vaccine recommendations, but quickly dismissed the signal after using a “different methodology.“

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Shock New Evidence Showing No Link Between CO2 and Temperature Over Last Three Million Years Stumps Net Zero Activists

The climate science world (‘settled’ division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago. Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a 20 ppm movement recorded for the following near three million-year period. In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period. Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial rises appear to have occurred without troubling ‘greenhouse’ gas levels, and this revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.

The assumed level three million years ago of CO2 was around 400 ppm, a convenient mark that has been used to explain the subsequent ice age and a drop to 250 ppm. Due to the recently published paper, this explanation has become more problematic and natural climate variation is correctly noted to have occurred with the temperature changes. Alas, similar explanations are mostly ignored in discussing today’s climate changes in the interests of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. Some cling desperately to a dominant CO2 role, including one of the authors of the findings published in Nature. The co-author states that the results suggest even greater climate sensitivity to the warming effect of CO2. In short, there is a great deal of applying the laws of physics and chemistry to one era, but failing to extend the same courtesy to another.

The title of the paper, produced by 17 America-based scientists, was enough to set alarm bells ringing in the ‘settled’ science, Net Zero-obsessed community: ‘Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past three million years.’ A related paper examining ocean heat content derived from the ice core record was also published. Carrie Lear, Professor of Past Climates and Earth System Changes at Cardiff University, claimed that the papers “don’t rewrite the role of CO2, they underline how sensitive the climate system is… that is why today’s rapid  CO2 rise is so alarming”.

Ah, yes. Even if CO2 movements are minimal, probably within a margin of potential error, they are still responsible for large variations in temperature. The laws of climate science are ‘settled’ – if the trace atmospheric gas CO2 is rising, falling or generally stable, it is almost wholly responsible for large movements in global temperature. Under this rather shaky assumption, humans must stop burning hydrocarbons and return to a neo-Malthusian pre-industrial age.

Study lead author Julia Marks-Peterson noted: “We definitely were a bit surprised. If correct, the findings may suggest that even small changes in greenhouse gas levels could trigger major shifts in climate.” That’s a little bit of a scary thought, she added, possibly with an eye on future grant funding. “May suggest” is doing a lot of the work here, and it may also be suggested that more plausible opinions are available.

Quoted in New Scientist magazine, Tim Naish, Professor of Earth Science at Victoria University in New Zealand, said it was “way too early to thrown the baby out with the bathwater”. Perish the thought that baby should be given its marching orders, ending a science-lite 40-year demonisation of CO2 and related promotion of a hard-Left Net Zero dream.

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School used AI to purge library of ‘inappropriate’ books including Orwell’s 1984 and Twilight, with librarian branded ‘safeguarding risk’

A school used artificial intelligence to censor books in its library including George Orwell’s 1984 and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, campaigners claim.

An investigation by Index on Censorship found a secondary school in Greater Manchester earmarked almost 200 books for removal from its library that were deemed ‘inappropriate’.

These also included Michelle Obama‘s autobiography, Becoming and The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks.

The charity, which campaigns for free expression, says the school got AI to generate summaries justifying why each book was not suitable for pupils.

Incredibly, the school librarian was also put under a ‘safeguarding’ investigation – leading to her resignation – for allowing the books in the library.

Index said it would not reveal the name of the librarian or the school, due to her being vulnerable.

Although many of the books were initially removed, it is not known if all of those on the list remain banned from the library.

The case was exposed this week by the school librarian, who spoke to the organisation on condition of her anonymity.

She said the purge began in November 2025, when the headteacher demanded the removal of Laura Bates’ nonfiction title Men Who Hate Women, which is an exposé of incel culture.

The head thought the book was inappropriate due to ‘exposure of misogynistic beliefs’, even though it was kept in a special section for older pupils.

Off the back of this incident, the school then launched an ‘investigation’ into the librarian, and closed the library as a ‘temporary safeguarding measure’.

She was then asked to remove any book that was ‘not written for children’, had ‘themes that could be upsetting to children’ and those that were ‘inappropriate or constitute a safeguarding risk’.

She told Index: ‘I was absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

The school also reported her to the council as a safeguarding risk due to introducing ‘inappropriate’ books – and there was also a threat of gross misconduct proceedings.

The school shared with her a list of 193 books which it deemed might be inappropriate, seen by Index.

Index said it had seen another document in which the school admitted the reasons given for the censorship had been written by AI.

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Trump’s FTC Wages a War on Media Criticism

NewsGuard, a company that rates news outlets’ accuracy using what it calls “apolitical journalistic criteria…to identify reliable sources of information,” has filed a lawsuit to block the Federal Trade Commission’s demand for a list of all its customers.

The FTC in May 2025 launched a wide-ranging probe into NewsGuard and 16 other groups—including left-leaning watch group Media Matters for America, and the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit media ratings service. The agency alleged the groups were part of “a conspiracy to boycott conservative and independent media.”

Deadline (2/6/26) reported that FTC chair Andrew “Ferguson has targeted NewsGuard, suggesting that it violated antitrust laws and that it was biased, as NewsGuard had given a low score to Newsmax, the conservative news site.”

NewsGuard’s lawsuit accuses the FTC of “brazenly using its power not for any issue concerning trade or commerce, but rather to censor speech simply because it disagreed with NewsGuard’s judgments about the reliability of news sources” (AP, 3/23/26).

NewsGuard also accused the FTC of holding up a $13 billion merger of advertising heavyweights Omnicom Group and IPG unless the merged company agreed not to use NewsGuard’s services.

Media Matters filed a similar lawsuit last summer to block sweeping FTC demands for documents; a federal judge ruled in the group’s favor, calling that FTC probe “a straightforward First Amendment violation” (Bloomberg, 1/22/26). The FTC has appealed the ruling against it.

Ferguson is yet another representative of the Trump regime trying to silence any criticism of the government or its right-wing support network. For regime apologists, of course, the FTC chief is a sacred warrior against liberals, protecting conservatives from insults and disagreement.

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Mystery of five missing scientists sends chill across America. Three are dead. And one troubling link is now under scrutiny in DC

A chilling pattern has emerged after a string of US scientists died or went missing in recent months. 

Retired General William Neil McCasland, 68, and NASA aerospace engineer Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, were both major figures in the Air Force Research Laboratory. The general oversaw Reza’s work on creating a futuristic metal for rocket engines.

Within the span of eight months, both have mysteriously vanished without a trace while allegedly hiking in the Southwest United States.

McCasland’s reported ties to secret UFO programs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and Reza’s work with space-age technology used for advanced propulsion, have led many to claim without evidence that the pair are fleeing from parties that wish to silence them because of what they know.

Independent researchers and even a member of Congress fear the pattern has grown even darker after three scientists in the fields of chemical biology, nuclear fusion and astrophysics were murdered or found dead in just the last three months.

One of those renowned scientists was working on a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize science, creating an unlimited energy source that may end fossil fuel use as we know it.

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett told the Daily Mail he saw a clear pattern in these seemingly unrelated deaths and disappearances, noting that the work several of them were doing has been linked to theories about extraterrestrial spacecraft. 

‘There have been several others throughout the country that have disappeared under suspicious circumstances,’ Burchett said. ‘I think we ought to be paying attention to it.’

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Politicians Want To Ban Gambling Ads To Stop Youth Addiction. What Do the Data Say About Teens and Betting?

Are young boys everywhere on the verge of being pulled down into the abyss of online gambling? 

If you’ve been reading the news lately, you might be tempted to think so. Young men are all addicted to sports betting, and now the industry’s incessant advertising is luring in kids, so say some media outlets. If something isn’t done to limit ads for gambling apps, some argue, kids will continue to be taken advantage of. 

These dire predictions have reached Colorado lawmakers, who are now considering Senate Bill 26-131, which would place major restrictions on sports betting in the state. In addition to barring adults from making more than five separate deposits with an individual betting operator within a 24-hour period, the bill would also make it illegal to broadcast an ad “for a sports betting operation from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. or during a live broadcast of an athletic competition.” . 

The bill’s supporters defend this prohibition by saying it’s necessary to protect kids. In reality, gambling ads pose very little threat to children. Even for those who find ways around age restrictions, the data show that they make bets only occasionally (similar to most adults). While gambling can and does ruin lives for the small fraction of adults who become addicted to it, it’s a relatively harmless form of entertainment for the vast majority of users. And for those who do have a genuine gambling problem, advertisements for legitimate betting apps can help direct them toward well-regulated companies and steer them away from dangerous, illegal gambling operations. 

The moral panic over online sports betting has made some people wildly overestimate the power of TV commercials. State Sen. Matt Ball (D–Denver), one of the bill’s sponsors, compared sports betting ads to those for cigarettes. “The whole point is we try to restrict that advertising from getting to kids,” he told Denver 7, a local ABC News affiliate. “At the end of the day, gambling is an addiction. It’s like alcoholism. It’s like substance abuse.” The theory seems to be that, if kids see ads for gambling apps, they’ll start gambling themselves and immediately develop an addiction that will destroy their lives. 

A recent survey by Common Sense Media on gambling amongst minors is helping to fuel those concerns. The survey found that 36 percent of boys aged 11 to 17 said they gambled online within the past year.    

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Jury in Los Angeles finds Meta, YouTube negligent in social media addiction trial

A jury in Los Angeles determined on Wednesday that Meta and Google’s YouTube were negligent and failed to warn users of the dangers associated with using their platforms, in a case that could have repercussions across the social media and the broader technology market.

The personal injury trial commenced in late January in Los Angeles Superior Court. A young woman identified as K.G.M., or Kaley, alleged that she became addicted to apps like Instagram and YouTube as a child. Deliberations began Friday, March 13.

Jurors ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, who claimed that Meta and YouTube’s negligence played a “substantial factor” in causing mental health-related harms. Compensatory damages were assessed at $3 million, with Meta on the hook for 70% and YouTube the remaining 30%. The next phase of the trial will determine punitive damages.

“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

It’s one of several trials taking place this year that experts have characterized as the social media industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment, comparing it the 1990s, when tobacco companies were forced to pay billions of dollars for lying to the public about the safety and potential harms of their products.

On Tuesday, jurors in Santa Fe, New Mexico found that Meta willfully violated the state’s unfair practices after Attorney General Raúl Torrez alleged that the company failed to properly safeguard its apps from online predators targeting children. Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in damages based on the number of violations. The company said that it would appeal the case.

The New Mexico case is separate from other social media lawsuits that state attorneys general have brought against companies including Meta and TikTok.

During the six-week trial in L.A., jury members were tasked with determining whether Meta and YouTube implemented certain design features in their apps like recommendation algorithms and auto-play that contributed to K.G.M.’s crippling, mental distress. The 20-year-old woman alleged that she suffered from severe body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts due to her near-constant use of the apps and the constant notifications that made it difficult for her to stop.

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Portugal Bans Irreversible Sex Change Treatments for Minors and Restores Clinical Criteria in Gender Identity

The Portuguese Parliament has approved in first reading several bills introduced by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the CDS-PP, and the sovereigntist CHEGA party that substantially modify the gender identity regulations in force since 2018.

The central measure establishes a strict prohibition on puberty blockers and hormonal treatments for any minor under 18 years of age, while requiring the reinstatement of mandatory clinical reports—prepared by psychologists and physicians—for any change in registered name and sex, thereby eliminating the pure self-determination allowed by the previous law.

This reform, driven by the center-right coalition and strongly supported by CHEGA, returns the legal framework to scientific and medical criteria similar to those of the 2011 legislation, prioritizing the protection of childhood against irreversible decisions.

According to the promoters, including CHEGA’s parliamentary leader Pedro Pinto, “changing sex before the age of 18 is inconceivable,” and the measure responds to consultations with parents’ associations and medical professionals, reinforcing the role of families in decisions of this magnitude.

The defenders of the law consider it a measure for the protection of childhood and the reinforcement of the role of families in this type of decisions.The 2018 law, which made Portugal one of Europe’s pioneering countries in allowing gender change by mere personal will without medical requirements, is partially repealed in its most controversial aspects.

Now, legal identity is once again based on clinical evidence and not solely on subjective self-determination. For minors, any hormonal intervention or puberty suppression is prohibited, thus avoiding treatments that, according to accumulated scientific evidence in several European countries, can cause permanent consequences in bone, cardiovascular, and psychological development.

This decision is set within a European context of growing prudence. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland have already restricted or suspended these protocols for minors following independent reviews that questioned their long-term safety and efficacy.

In Portugal, the parliamentary right—including the governing formation—has acted responsibly in the face of the gender ideology that for years imposed changes without deep debate or safeguards.

The approval, with 151 votes in favor and 79 against, marks a clear turning point in Portuguese politics and demonstrates that, when the best interests of the child are prioritized, reason and science prevail over ideological dogmas.

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Liberal Supreme Court Justice Got Smacked Down During Arguments Over Mail-in Ballots

The Supreme Court heard arguments about laws that allow mail-in ballots to be counted five days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Fourteen states permit these ballots to be counted within that period, but a legal challenge in Watson v. RNC, which had its oral argument on Monday, could shorten this window. The court appeared ready to restrict it, potentially undermining a favored Democratic election strategy for certain elections.

The case, Watson v. RNC, challenges a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day, as long as the ballot is postmarked by Election Day. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia also allow mail-in ballots to be received after Election Day. 

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, said the case would give an opportunity for mail-in ballot laws to be uniform across the country. 

“Federal law clearly states that ballots must be received by Election Day,” Snead told The Center Square. “Despite this, states continue to allow absentee ballots to pour in days or even weeks late.” 

In Illinois, mail-in ballots can be received up to 14 days after Election Day. Lawyers for the RNC argued that the federal government sets a date for federal elections and that all ballots need to be available for counting by that date. 

Lisa Dixon, executive director at the Center for Election Confidence, said delayed mail-in ballot receipt deadlines became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said a ruling in favor of the RNC would still allow states to accept late mail-in ballots for nonfederal elections. 

Lawyers for Mississippi have argued that upholding a strict receipt deadline would jeopardize ballots for military and overseas voters. However, Congress’ passage of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Voting Act established requirements for states to send absentee ballots 45 days before a federal election. 

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