Facts Matter

Let’s delve into the history of the “prank video” format, and how it’s developed to where it is today, where TikTok stars are going into businesses pretending to work there in order to get access to unauthorized staff-only areas.

Humanoid robots from China—are they taking over, or just falling over? Are they our cute companions? Or, are they watching us in our homes through secret backdoors left open by the China-based manufacturers? Let’s look at these important questions together.

How badly do you want that perfect beach body? Some are willing to get liposuction and have someone shuffle their own fat around. But how about getting one’s body enhanced by injecting fat from dead people? Is that a bit much? Well, that’s what’s happening in the cosmetics industry. Now, you might ask: Why do they need to use fat from cadavers? Why not just liposuction one area, and move it to another? Here’s the twist: the rise of GLP-1 weight loss drugs are leaving people without enough fat to move around. Let’s go through it all together.

Scientists in the U.S. recently announced that for the very first time, they were able to use AI to create viruses never before seen in nature. Don’t worry, though: these new viruses were designed to target specific strains of E.coli bacteria that have become resistant to natural antibacterials. This development marks a major milestone in the field of synthetic biology, and it opens the door to potential rapid advancements in human healthcare. Maybe these AIs can develop never-before-seen cures to horrible diseases. However, on the flip side, I think after living through the early 2020s ... we can all imagine how this can go horribly wrong. So today, let’s go through the details of these newly created AI real-world viruses together.

Today, we do a round up of three stories. First, a former acting U.S. attorney was found dead in his office in a federal building in California. Second, the USPS just issued new rules regarding mail-in ballot envelopes. Last, the State Department has issued travel advisories regarding three countries. Let’s go through it all together.

In just 48 hours, a coordinated cyberattack disrupted the digital controls of water systems across more than 30 Minnesota communities, forcing operators to switch to manual backup to keep pumps, valves, and treatment systems running without any data theft, financial loss, or ransom demands. The incident, which remains—officially, at least—without a named suspect, highlights the longstanding vulnerabilities in local U.S. water infrastructure. Let's go through the details of the attack, as well as some of the possible culprits.

Leprosy appears to be not only spreading in central Florida, but according to the CDC, it might now be endemic to the region. Let’s explore why that is, as well as what it means for the safety of Americans.

A first-of-its-kind study reveals that one out of eight apps marketed to U.S. military service members (and their families) contain foreign code—some from China and Russia—that could be remotely updated to leak sensitive data to adversaries. This alarming finding arrives just as reports confirm foreign adversaries are already using cell phone location data to target American troops in the Middle East. Let’s go through it all together.

It turns out that Anthropic—the giant AI company behind the Claude chatbot—has been secretly destroying millions of books in the process of feeding them into the AI system. Slicing off the spines. Cutting the pages. Scanning them. And then discarding the remains. All to avoid paying copyright fees to the creators. The initiative was called Project Panama—and it was supposed to be a secret. We only learned about it through luck, basically—it was made public only because of the discovery process in an unrelated lawsuit. And the kicker is that it’s 100 percent legal. Furthermore, ironically, it’s only legal, because Anthropic destroys the books in the process of scanning them.

China launched the world’s first geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar satellite in 2023, giving it continuous all-weather surveillance over roughly one-third of the planet (including the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean), later pairing it with a high-resolution optical spy satellite. Let's discuss the critical mineral chokehold that allowed China to achieve this milestone, as well as the alternative supply chains that the United States is now building to counter the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

Havana Syndrome refers to a mysterious set of symptoms—headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, and cognitive issues—that has affected more than 1,500 U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel since 2016. The latest case, which was the most high-profile to date, is that of the former CIA Director James Woolsey, whose wife said that he was suffering from Havana Syndrome in the years leading up to his recent death. Let’s go through the details of what we know about this mysterious malady.

Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez has formally begun withdrawing the country from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States, which never ratified the Rome Statute and has long viewed the ICC as a threat to its own sovereignty, publicly praised the move and framed it as support for an American-led effort to dismantle what the Department of State calls a “corrupt and worthless” court. Let’s go through the details.

Let's go through the most recent spate of warnings, arising primarily from the Iran war, issued by the U.S. State Department and the embassies of several different countries.

A woman in Texas was shocked when she opened her front door and found the local police standing there, ready to arrest her over a Facebook post. And the reason she was shocked was because that post wasn’t threatening anyone, nor was it calling for violence. Instead, she was simply commenting on the horrible quality of the water in the town’s local water supply. One of our senior reporters here at The Epoch Times, Darlene McCormick Sanchez, went to where this all took place to get the full story. So today, let’s go through the details.

A federal judge on July 13 found that President Donald Trump improperly used a $10 billion lawsuit he ​filed against the IRS to extract personal benefits from the government he oversees, preventing the terms of a settlement agreement from taking legal effect. Miami-based ‌U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams excoriated Trump's personal lawyers and attorneys in his administration, concluding their interests were not opposed to each other as is legally required for civil lawsuits. Williams referred a Trump lawyer in the case and senior Justice Department officials who signed off on the settlement to state bar authorities to determine whether their actions violated legal ethics rules. Let’s go through the details of why she took these steps.

The story I’m bringing you today is one that you’ve probably never heard of before. Because, for one, it involves a continent that very few people have been on: Antarctica; and secondly, it involves a concept that very few people are familiar with: gravity holes. And right off the bat, I’ll mention that it’s not science fiction, nor is it a conspiracy theory. Gravity holes really do exist. The earth’s outer layers have different densities in different places (because the distribution of mass beneath the crust and the mantle isn’t consistent)—the effect of gravity is not perfectly uniform across the whole planet. It’s weaker in places that are less dense. In those places, you get what are known as gravity anomalies, where the gravitational pull is measurably weaker than the global average. Colloquially, these are known as gravity holes. These gravity holes can affect a person’s weight (you would weigh a little bit less if you were standing in one of these regions)—and also, they can affect sea levels (weaker gravity means that the ocean surface sits a little bit lower in those places). Interestingly, the largest gravity hole on the planet happens to be located beneath the most sparsely populated continent on the planet: Antarctica. Just earlier this year, a new study was published that worked to map out not only the mantle layer of the Earth beneath Antarctica, but also the 70-million-year-long process in which it was formed. Let’s go through it together.

In 2003, Florida harvested 242 million boxes of oranges. This season, they’re expecting 12 million. That’s a 95 percent drop in just over 20 years—in a single generation. Something’s very wrong with Florida’s orange industry, and that something came here from China. Citrus farmers all over the Sunshine State are seeing the destruction of their family farms and their livelihoods. Some are fighting back—but the challenges they face make the effort a true uphill battle. Let’s go through it all together.

Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention softened its longstanding position in November 2025, shifting from “vaccines do not cause autism” to stating the evidence isn’t strong enough to completely rule out a possible link, citing several older studies on aluminum adjuvants and vaccine timing. Months later, key studies used to justify that change were retracted by journals for methodological flaws, sparking backlash from Kennedy, who demanded greater transparency, while the CDC’s revised stance faced fresh scrutiny. Let's go through the details together.

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne say they have run Rosary Hill Home for 125 years, providing free palliative care to thousands of poor, terminally ill cancer patients without taking taxpayer money. New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Bill of Rights now threatens them with fines, license revocation, or prison for refusing to use preferred pronouns, allow opposite-sex bathroom use, or undergo gender ideology training, prompting a religious-freedom lawsuit in which the U.S. Department of Justice has joined them as a co-plaintiff.

Aside from the significant losses that were handed to him in a series of Supreme Court decisions, President Donald Trump did score one significant victory. The case in question was called Trump v. Slaughter, and the decision in that case bestowed significantly more power and authority not just to Trump, but to the office of the president itself—whoever that may be in the future. Let’s go through the details of that case together.