📌 Preemptive Paardons, India’s Allegations, More

President Joe Biden is said to be considering preemptive pardons for possible targets of Donald Trump when he takes office.

Pardons are issued to those who have already been accused of specific crimes, such as in the case of Biden recently pardoning his son Hunter Biden. Preemptive pardons, though unusual, do have a historical precedent.

Pardons for crimes that people have not yet been accused of are being deliberated by White House lawyers, and Biden has discussed the issue with senior aides, ABC News reported.

There are fears that Trump may go after his enemies when he takes up the presidency. He has talked about "locking up" senior political figures, such as Liz Cheney (pictured right), while Kash Patel, Trump's pick for director of the FBI, also reportedly has a list of people he wants to “come after.”

If preemptive pardons are issued, it's likely they will be given to Anthony Fauci (pictured center), who led the Covid response and is unpopular with conservatives; Liz Cheney, who campaigned against Trump; and California Democratic Senator-elect Adam Schiff (pictured left), who led the first Trump impeachment trial.

Schiff voiced his resistance to Biden issuing such pardons. "I would urge the president not to do that. I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary."

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused the State Department and "deep state" elements of trying to destabilize India.

The BJP said the Department, investigative journalists, and Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Party used the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)'s articles that “singularly focused” on the Adani Group and its alleged closeness to the government to undermine Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Group chair Gautam Adani and seven others were indicted last month in the US for being part of a $265 billion scheme to bribe Indian officials — allegations the group has termed “baseless.”

OCCRP's articles have also accused state-sponsored hackers in India of using Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to target government critics. The government has previously denied both allegations.

The BJP has previously accused Gandhi, the OCCRP, and 92-year-old billionaire financier-philanthropist George Soros of attacking Modi. On Thursday, it cited a French media report that said that OCCRP was funded by the US Agency for International Development and "other deep state figures" like Soros.

“The Deep State had a clear objective to destabilize India by targeting Prime Minister Modi,” the BJP said in a series of messages on X. “It has always been the US State Department behind this agenda … OCCRP has served as a media tool for carrying out a deep state agenda,” it said.

A study suggests that the exceptional warmth the planet experienced in 2023 may be due to a reduction in its reflectivity.

A scientific paper suggests that one explanation could be Earth's albedo — the fraction of light that a surface reflects — is in decline. The darker a surface is, the more heat is absorbed. The lighter it is, the more it gets reflected into space.

Thomas Jung, professor of physics of the Climate System at the University of Bremen, Germany, and co-author of the paper, said low clouds, which are particularly good at reflecting the sun's radiation into space, seemed to have been reduced by roughly 4% and may have big implications.

Jung said the warming of the oceans — which hit a record high in 2023 — likely plays a role, as a warmer ocean can hold more moisture, affecting the clouds. Changes in the winds and large-scale circulation also have an effect, Jung said. A reduction of the trade winds in 2023 caused less mixing.

A research scientist at Berkeley Earth said the role of clouds is one of the biggest uncertainties of climate modeling. Fewer low clouds might be “a new phenomenon that's here to stay, which is worrying.”

University of Queensland student Lachlan Fitzgerald plans to control cockroaches with tiny circuit board backpacks.

The biorobotics lab where Fitzgerald works is putting control backpacks onto giant burrowing cockroaches that can grow up to three inches long. The backpacks send electrical pulses to the cockroaches' antennae to guide their movements.

A practical use for developing cyborg cockroaches is for inaccessible search and rescue operations in disaster zones where the cyborgs could deliver lifesaving drugs quickly and efficiently.

Similar research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has demonstrated the ability to command and direct cyborg cockroaches. Researchers tested their design by mounting tiny computers onto 20 cockroaches in Madagascar. They controlled the swarm simultaneously and made it move up a sandy slope.

But the cockroaches proved testy. At times, one cockroach would become the leader of the group. Apparently, they can overpower commands and choose their own way around an obstacle.

Ancient North Americans are looking more and more like experienced mammoth killers.

A chemical analysis suggests the Clovis people, who lived around 13,000 years ago, ate mainly mammoths, indicating they were experienced mammoth hunters. The study analyzed isotopes in the remains of Anzick-1, the only confirmed Clovis individual, to infer dietary habits.

Isotope values from Anzick-1's bones, reflecting his mother's diet, showed mammoths contributed 35-40% of her diet. Elk, bison, and camel contributed much less, with small mammals making up only 4% of intake.

The findings suggest a tradition of mammoth hunting among Clovis people in western North America. “It’s certainly a first to see evidence of mammoth in [Clovis] human remains,” which is a “big deal,” said anthropologist Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

But such sweeping assumptions can’t be made from a single skeleton, he said. “I don’t know how you could ever test them unless you found more human remains.”

Leads emerged of the masked killer of a US health insurer CEO, including a message scrawled on ammunition at the crime scene.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in a dawn ambush Wednesday as he walked from his midtown hotel to the company’s annual investor conference across the street, blocks from tourist draws such as Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center.

Investigators worked to piece together more of the timeline of the gunman’s whereabouts before the shooting, examine security camera footage, and even test a discarded water bottle and protein bar wrapper in a hunt for his DNA.

The words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” were found on the ammunition, a phrase used by insurance industry critics, two law enforcement officials said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation publicly.

The messages mimic the phrase “delay, deny, defend,” which is commonly used by lawyers and insurance industry critics to describe tactics used to avoid paying claims. It refers to insurers delaying payment, denying a claim, and then defending their actions. Investigators said the suspect may have traveled to New York last month on a bus that originated in Atlanta.

A 100-year-old man and a 102-year-old woman who met at their senior living home in Philadelphia fell in love and got married.

Bernie Littman and Marjorie Fiterman met at a costume party at the facility and later discovered they had both attended the University of Philadelphia at the same time but never crossed paths.

Sarah Sicherman, Littman's granddaughter, said the pair were "so lucky to have found each other and be a support to each other, especially during the pandemic. She wrote on social media that Littman and Fiterman “both had 60-plus years of marriage to their first spouses and found love again at 100 years old!”

Rabbi Adam Wohlberg, who officiated the ceremony, said the couple had "eventually reached the point where being not just close friends — but husband and wife — felt like the right step to take.”

Littman credited his long life to reading and staying up-to-date on world events, while Fiterman attributed her longevity to buttermilk. “They both love each other's humor and intellect," Sicherman said. "They keep each other young.”

Their marriage earned them a Guinness World Record as the “oldest couple to marry (aggregate age).”