These Hungry Starfish Are Spiraling Out of Control in Australia

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These Hungry Starfish Are Spiraling Out of Control in Australia. Scientists Have a New Tactic to Fight Back (Maria) 

The author writes, “For decades, crown-of-thorns starfish have been rampaging out of control. These pizza-size sea stars — native to the Indo-Pacific, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — and their insatiable appetite for coral, few predators, and high reproductive rate mean that a small population can quickly multiply, devastating struggling reefs. … An international team of researchers recently developed a new way to control their numbers that co-opts their communication and lures them to their deaths.”

We Can Fight This: Minnesota’s General Strike Shows How (Laura)

From The Intercept: “There is a possible future in which the events that unfolded in Minnesota on January 23, 2026, are forgotten. The fact of the largest general strike in the state in nearly a century may be only remembered, if at all, as a big day of protests and walkouts, and no more than that. In that future, the possibility of mass, coordinated, and powerful action is wiped from the public imaginary — because, within 24 hours, federal agents had killed another civilian in cold blood. … The shooting — the third in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents since Trump’s deportation machine descended on Minnesota with extreme brutality in December — is an unbearable follow-up to the most extraordinary day of mass resistance to Trumpian fascism to date. It is also a searing reminder as to why Friday’s mass strike in Minneapolis must not be swept from our minds. Rather, it must be treated as a powerful new phase of resistance against Trump’s regime — a task that can only be achieved by building on and repeating it.”

Half of World’s CO2 Emissions Come From Just 32 Fossil Fuel Firms (Russ)

From The Guardian: “Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed. Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Critics accused the leading fossil fuel companies of ‘sabotaging climate action’ and ‘being on the wrong side of history’ but said the emissions data was increasingly being used to hold the companies accountable. State-owned fossil fuel producers made up 17 of the top 20 emitters in the Carbon Majors report, which the authors said underscored the political barriers to tackling global heating. All 17 are controlled by countries that opposed a proposed fossil fuel phaseout at the Cop30 UN climate summit in December, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and India. More than 80 other nations had backed the phaseout plan.”

ICE’s Secret Watchlists of Americans (Sean)

The author writes, “‘We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist,’ a masked federal agent taunted a protester filming him in Maine last week. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s response was firm: ‘There is NO database of “domestic terrorists” run by DHS.’ There’s just one problem: She’s lying. Two senior national security officials tell me that there are more than a dozen secret and obscure watchlists that homeland security and the FBI are using to track protesters (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian), ‘Antifa,’ and others who are promiscuously labeled ‘domestic terrorists.’”

Hospitals Cater to ‘Transplant Tourists’ as US Patients Wait for Organs (Bethany)

The authors write, “Heart transplant patients in the United States typically spend months waiting for a donated organ. But Kayoko Hira was not a typical patient. Mrs. Hira, the wife of a hotel magnate in Japan, flew to the United States in September 2021, went to the University of Chicago Medical Center and, within days, got a new heart from an American teenager who had died. Soon after, The New York Times found, a charity run by her husband made a donation to a nonprofit group led by the heart surgeon’s wife. It was the only time the charity has ever given money to an American institution, according to its website. More than 100,000 people in the United States are in need of a transplant, and each year thousands die waiting. But despite the shortage of organs, some American hospitals are aggressively courting international transplant patients, a New York Times investigation found.”

Welcome Back to the Office. You Won’t Get Anything Done (Dana)

From The Walrus: “During the pandemic, the glass high rises that struck terror into my young, impressionable heart stood empty, and for a while, people wondered whether offices were relics of the past. But over the past two years, companies have begun to call employees back into the office. … Unsurprisingly, employees are almost universally against RTO mandates. One 2024 study from the University of Pittsburgh found that 99 percent of companies that implemented them saw a drop in employee satisfaction. Part of the problem is that people are back to the commutes they avoided during the pandemic. In some cases, these commutes are longer than they used to be. As housing costs increased over the past few years, many people moved away from cities with the expectation that they could continue to work remotely.”

11,000-Year-Old Dog Skulls Reveal a Hidden Origin Story (Mili)

The author writes, “Dogs began diversifying thousands of years earlier than previously believed, with clear differences in size and shape appearing over 11,000 years ago. A massive global analysis of ancient skulls shows that early dogs were already adapting to different roles in human societies. This challenges the idea that dog diversity is mainly a product of recent breeding. Instead, it points to a long process of coevolution between humans and their earliest canine companions.”