Conservation in India successfully doubled the native population of tigers in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study reveals. In 2010, the nations that make up the remaining range countries of the tiger set a target to double the number of wild tigers worldwide—a goal called Tx2—10 at the St. Petersburg International summit […] The post The Tiger Population Doubled in India in Just Ten Years appeared first on Good News Network.

Featured Essays Heated Rivalry On Heated Rivalry and Queer Desire as an Unequivocal Good In a world where queer desire is nearly always framed as something that destabilizes, this series gives its audience an alternate narrative By Olivia Waite | Published on February 9, 2026 Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max Comment 0 Share New Share Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max Queer desire is too often played as an aberration, even in stories that center queer relationships. At best it’s a detour, at worst a catastrophe. Stede fleeing his marriage and family and finding Ed and a gaggle of queer/poly pirates, but having to stay constantly on the run in Our Flag Means Death. Louis in Interview with the Vampire, who follows Lestat into the underworld of New Orleans nightlife, flees Lestat to a sketchy postwar Paris theater—and then flees with Armand to a penthouse in Dubai. Carol, in Carol, whose road-trip love affair with shopgirl Therese complicates her divorce and ultimately costs her custody of her daughter. Their loves may be true, they may even be irresistible—but structurally, queer love in these stories is narratively an interruption. It flings you off-course. There is power in disruption, we know too well, and some laws deserve to be broken. But I think one reason why Heated Rivalry has hooked so many of us is that Shane and Ilya’s romance insists that queer desire and love belong at the heart of the world, not on the margins. It gets you where you live. Or, more succinctly: Coming to the cottage is the reverse of going over the rainbow. Rather than having Shane and Ilya escape to some gay paradise elsewhere, Heated Rivalry maps queer desire onto its characters’ actual lives. Not as interruption, but as improvement. You’re here, you’re queer—and it’s good for you, actually. Heated Rivalry is already notorious for the speed at which our leads bone down. Within minutes in the first episode they’re panting beside each other in a gym, then naked and aroused in the shower, then having some sex Shane acknowledges as “such a bad idea” even as he leans in for another kiss. Early responses when the first two episodes dropped were all a-flutter at the speed with which clothes came off. Sex scenes in most television shows are slowly built up to, edging the audience as though on-screen orgasms are only allowed when they sync up with the climax of the external plot.  Credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max But the idea that there is only one significant climax, and that every other sex act has to build up to that, you know what that is? That is straight nonsense. A lot of queer sex isn’t simultaneous; it’s reciprocal. Not a single all-important orgasm, but many—at least two, minimum, I would say. As Ilya says to Shane in their first encounter when Ilya’s been satisfied but Shane hasn’t yet: “I would not leave you like that.”  And Heated Rivalry is about what happens as a result of that kind of specific queer mutuality, the consequences of a series of orgasms. So we’ve gotta do that part first. You can’t tell a story about how a hookup becomes true love if you delay the hookup until the last minute. The upshot of doing so much queer sex early in the story is that the sexual/romantic relationship becomes the prism through which we view the rest of the world on screen. Queer love is built-in from the beginning: it’s where we as the audience live. Hockey becomes foreplay, whether it’s Russia versus Canada or Boston versus Montreal. Sex-inflected insults—Yuna’s “Fuck. Him. Right up the butt,” Shane’s teammate saying “If Rozanov fucks you tonight, I’m gonna fuck him back”—have a delicious, sparkly little gloss of entendre. Even when we focus on Scott and Kip’s story in episode three, where our main couple only briefly flicker into sight, we start with this pair of gay men meeting and how the weight of that connection bends time and space around it. We see how this new couple is also pressured to keep their relationship hidden. It’s an education in clocking: We’re learning to see through the façade the world puts up to tell us this kind of love either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter. How can it not matter when it affects everything else?  Ilya’s story is much closer to the familiar narrative pattern of gay opression and escape—in no small part because it was then and is now illegal to be queer in Russia. The show frames Russian scenes as both geographically and emotionally distant: cold, dark, formal, paranoid, and claustrophobic. As if compulsory heterosexuality were a country. The only times the camera sees sunlight in Russia is during the Olympics, or brief moments when Ilya pauses in the middle of a run to text with Shane. Credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max Playing hockey in Boston offers Ilya a way out of this trap, so Boston is better—but with apologies to Sondheim, better is different than good. As a Boston player, Ilya is discouraged from even being friendly with a Montreal player, much less anything  more intimate. The realities of professional hockey keep both Ilya and Shane moving, from one airport and one city to another for years, while they steal a few hedonistic mutual hours in hotel rooms. And even in Boston, without a counterweight to his home country’s influence—the combined demands of legal status, family, culture, and lifelong habit—Ilya is unhappily drawn back to Russia time and again. It’s only when his father dies, when he confesses his love to Shane by telephone in a language Shane doesn’t speak, that Ilya is able to make a permanent break with family who have only ever offered him degradation.  This is realistic: Some laws deserve breaking. Some places are not safe. Shane, however, has a loving, involved Canadian family. He attempts to turn down the trip to Wimbledon and the chance to meet and presumably fall in stilted heterosexual love with a Swedish princess. He doesn’t want to escape anywhere; he wants to stay put. This is in the immediate aftermath of the scene where he visits Ilya’s house for the first time, where in addition to the usual orgasms—which Shane’s comfortable wanting by now—Ilya gave him a ginger ale and a tuna melt and the sound of Shane’s first name on Ilya’s lips. It’s suddenly more than a hookup: Shane realizes he has stepped into the sphere of Ilya’s actual life. And that he likes it! Shane promptly freaks out and leaves, like any self-respecting self-disciplined autistic closet case would. He gets heckled into attending a party—another false escape—and tries to bury his yearning for Ilya by dating super-hot, super-nice superstar Rose Landry. He’s learned he wants to build love into his life; he’s just hoping he can do it with someone who isn’t Ilya. Ilya catches the headlines, bristles with jealousy, tries to stomp away, and accidentally slams a foot into an excercise bike. Queer heartbreak is dangerous! And worse, he and Shane both play terribly when they’re not consistently fucking—the show expresses this as a kind of disappearing from the map: “But where on the ice was Shane Hollander? Where was Ilya Rozanov?” Vanishing is the danger, not the solution. Credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max At the end of episode four, we have that devastating club scene—the one where the bassline throbs like a pulse, and the slow-motion makes every gesture a heartbreak as Shane and Ilya realize the full depths they’ve sunk to. They’ve caught feelings and they’re miserable about it: jealousy and desperate longing overcome them as they glower down the barrel of the camera lens during orgasms where their images on screen flash back and forth so quickly that even though they’re having sex separately in different places, it feels like the two characters are merging into one. The club is classically a place of queer liberation and euphoria, from Stonewall to Fire Island to the Pink Pony Club. If any real place is over the rainbow, it’s there. (And if you liked Heated Rivalry but haven’t yet seen the delightful modern-set gay Asian Pride and Prejudice retelling Fire Island, what are you waiting for?) But the song playing in this club keeps telling us, over and over: “This is not enough.” Ilya and Shane stand frozen in place, staring, the only still points in a writhing crowd. You can’t escape feelings: you carry them with you wherever you go. Having a club to dance in for a night is not the same as having a whole life. Queer love can’t thrive if the club is its only space. Shane’s girlfriend gambit almost works. Rose is delightful! But Rose has gay ex-boyfriends and friends, she knows the patterns of queer camouflage. She softly, kindly talks Shane into revealing the truth, in a lovely scene parallel to the one in Our Flag Means Death where Stede tells his ex-wife Mary about his feelings for Ed. It’s healing in some fundamental way to see freshly self-aware gay men finding acceptance and support from former partners. The closet is a cruel reality, but Mary and Rose are not the ones most harmed by it. Credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max At this point in our hockey romance, the most obvious and boring move—the one all the basic bitch writing guides would steer you toward—would have been to put Shane and Ilya’s sexual relationship at odds with their hockey careers. Conflict is good storytelling, right? They might have faced off in a contest for the cup, where episode four’s neon-pink jealousy would translate into masculine competition, and romantic anguish would find expression in physical aggression on the ice. We’d be asked to root for one to triumph over the other. Neither the book nor the show make this mistake, thankfully. This is a romance novel. We’re not here for one man’s victory: we’re here for both. Rose’s acceptance—a uniquely queer moment of grace passed via a straight ally—changes nothing about where Shane lives, but it completely changes how he acts within the borders of his own life. Maybe it’s just that I realized I was bisexual long after I was happily married, but for me, accepting my queerness has been as much an internal journey as an external one. It’s about seeing my own life more clearly, how the ebb and flow of the current was there long before I had the words to measure the tides. I came out not by going out, but by coming into myself. This is precisely what Heated Rivalry asks Shane to do. When he sees Ilya next in Miami for the All-Star game, playing together rather than as opponents—Shane is, for the first time, the one moving the relationship forward. He tells Ilya that he’s not dating Rose—he initiates a conversation about their feelings when they’re alone that night—he straddles Ilya’s lap and wraps him in comfort when Ilya talks about his dad’s dementia—when Ilya tells him he asks too many questions, Shane says sorry, then deflects with a cocky line of dialogue taken right out of Ilya’s book: “I wasn’t clear. I’m sorry in advance for tonight’s game. We’re gonna destroy you guys.” He is able to offer support when Ilya’s father dies, via a cross-continental phone call where distance and language barriers turn out to mean nothing at all in the face of love and need. And then—Shane’s injury, and a too-familiar scene: a queer man slipping into the hospital room of the man he loves, uncertain if he’ll be allowed to stay. The realization of how much it hurts to be on the outside of Shane’s life, as far as the public and his parents are aware. Shane, doped to the gills, asking Ilya to come to the cottage; Ilya only feeling brave enough to accept after Scott and Kip kiss on center ice—the heart of the hockey world—a stunning moment of reunion and a reversal of the show’s whole polarity. Queer grace leads to queer grace, courage breeds more courage. The cottage is private and safe, Shane promises; it looks like the escape, an idyll, Sebastian and Charles sharing champagne and strawberries at Brideshead. Except: the cottage is the heart of Shane’s whole existence: “My favorite place in the world.” It’s Shane welcoming Ilya in, not running off somewhere new. They fuck, they swim, they cook, they say “I love you” for the first time. They talk, endlessly, luxuriating in hours and days they have no need to rush through. When Hayden calls, Ilya cheekily blows Shane while he’s mid-conversation—a mirror image of their former pattern, where Shane and Hayden shared a room and Ilya was only present on the phone. Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Crave Shane grew up on this lake, and his parents live so close they can stop by unannounced. Which, of course, by the laws of comedy, they do. It’s funny, but it’s also a blatant metaphor: you can’t maintain walls between the people you love the most. And then we see Shane and Yuna talking, in the house Shane grew up in, being fully honest and open with one another about something delicate and painful: forgiveness. Something broken in this family has been repaired on account of the queer romance. It’s still not easy: Shane has to melt down a little again as they sit around the table—the hearth, the heart of the house—to plan for the couple’s shared future. But Ilya returns grace for grace, as we’ve seen throughout this show: he’s seen that Shane’s parents aren’t going to react like Ilya’s father and brother. He gives them one questioning glance and then puts a hand on Shane’s back and says: “Your family is here, your boyfriend is here… You’re good here.” Those three words are just as necessary as the “I love you.” This is queer love and acceptance as strength, as union, as healing.  Credit: Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max And when we drive off into the sunset—toward that golden future—it’s not toward some faraway imaginary heaven. They’re going back to the cottage, Shane’s favorite place. They have dinner plans with the parents (“We’ll text,” David insists, while the audience snickers.) The message is not: “There’s something better for you somewhere else, if you leave your whole world behind.” It’s: “Your actual world could be better, and anyone who truly loves you will want this for you too.” This is a narrative of queer thriving that includes people like Ilya, who have somewhere to leave, and people like Shane, who need to find themselves where they are. Not an escape, but an expansion, stretching the boundaries of the safe places. The club spills into the street, and refugees deserve to be welcomed. It’s hard work, but it’s work the generations before us have always done.  There is no over the rainbow: there’s only us, here, together. Through acts of care and kindness, we make our own safe places.[end-mark] The post On <i>Heated Rivalry</i> and Queer Desire as an Unequivocal Good appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Discord is preparing to make age classification a constant background process across its platform. Beginning next month, every account will default to a teen-appropriate experience unless the user takes steps to prove adulthood. Age determination will sit underneath routine activity, shaping what people can see, say, and join. For accounts that are not verified as adult, access will narrow immediately. Age-restricted servers and channels will be blocked, voice participation in live “stage” channels will be disabled, and automated filters will apply to content Discord identifies as graphic or sensitive. Friend requests from unfamiliar users will trigger warning prompts, and direct messages from unknown accounts will be routed into a separate inbox. Core features such as direct messages with known contacts and servers without age restrictions will continue to function. Age-restricted servers will effectively disappear until verification is completed, including servers that a user joined years earlier. The global rollout reflects a broader regulatory environment that is pushing platforms toward more aggressive age controls. Discord has already tested similar systems. Last year, age checks were introduced in the UK and Australia. For many adult users, the concern is less about access to content and more about surveillance and the ability to communicate anonymously. Verification systems introduce new forms of monitoring, whether through documents, facial analysis, or ongoing behavioral assessment. That unease is reinforced by Discord’s own history. In October, a former third-party vendor working with Discord suffered a data breach that exposed age verification records, including images of government-issued IDs. Discord no longer works with this vendor for age verification. Despite that breach, submitting identity documents remains one option in the global launch. According to the press release, Discord says users who want to remove the teen-by-default limits “can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to [Discord’s] vendor partners, with more options coming in the future.” Facial age estimation relies on an AI system that analyzes a short video selfie. Discord says this analysis happens entirely on the user’s device. If the system assigns the wrong age group, users can appeal or switch to document-based verification. Identity documents are reviewed by a third-party provider, and Discord says the images “are deleted quickly — in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.” Beyond selfies and documents, Discord is also deploying an age inference system that relies on continuous profiling rather than explicit proof. The model evaluates metadata such as the types of games a user plays, activity patterns on the platform, apparent working hours, and overall time spent on Discord. This approach places algorithms in a permanent observational role, drawing conclusions about age from behavior rather than consent-driven disclosure. Even when framed as convenience, behavioral inference expands the scope of data analysis tied to everyday communication. Over time, this kind of architecture rewrites expectations around anonymity, pseudonymity, and the ability to exist online without being continuously assessed. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Discord to Demand Face Scan or ID to Access All Features appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

A Rising Sanae in Japan

How did a forest end up submerged under this huge mountain lake?

The new rule will apply to Artemis II astronauts as they head around the Moon.

Sometimes fashion = function.

On her eponymous Friday show, MSNOW host Chris Jansing had on liberal researcher Michael Mann to fret over predictions that few countries will have enough snow to host future Olympic games due to the use of fossil fuels. He also eventually blamed global warming for recent extremely cold temperatures. Introducing the segment, Jansing recalled: Well, today, Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, Chloe Kim are preparing to hit the slopes and the halfpipe for the Winter Olympics, but recent games have had to take increasingly elaborate measures to counter the warming effects of climate change. A recent study flagged by the Washington Post found that by the middle of this century, there could be fewer than 20 countries with the right conditions and infrastructure to host the games. She added: "One climate science researcher told the L.A. Times, 'We're going to see more warming around the world. We're actually seeing the Winter Olympic games literally melting before our very eyes.'" After bringing aboard Professor Mann, Jansing began by posing: "Are we looking at a future winter games that are that much of a challenge melting before our eyes?" He immediately went along with the doom-pushing premise: Yeah, I mean, this is an example of just the profound impact that we are having on the planet that we are having on, you know, everyday life. You know, it's not just some far off problem in the future that impacts polar bears -- it's influencing us and our way of life right now. And this is just another reminder of that. The MS NOW host followed up by fretting that there will be problems with the 2034 Olympics: One study estimates that by 2050, only four countries would be able to host the Olympics without machine-made snow. The IOC has said it is considering moving up future games from February to January when conditions might be better. The Salt Lake City mayor told the L.A. Times he bets that the 2034 games won't happen in his city as planned due to climate change. Quote, "If that's happening now, why do we think 2034 is going to be any better?" If there's the will, could change happen fast enough to change the equation for Utah eight years from now? Mann recalled that there had not been enough snow in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics, and soon tied in the burning of fossil fuels: We can't produce enough snow and enough cooling to allow for these events to proceed if we continue to warm the planet. That's a big if because let's keep in mind that this is under the assumption that we continue to warm the planet through carbon pollution -- through the burning of fossil fuels. And we do have a choice here. Jansing cued up her guest to take a shot at global warming skeptics: ...whether it's the Olympics or just winter sports destinations, the financial stakes are really high. Salt Lake alone is projecting $6.6 billion in economic activity from the Olympics over a decade. Have you been surprised that folks who argue climate change mitigation is too expensive don't see the long term expense? The liberal activist responded: Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, we hear from climate critics, from opponents of taking climate action that is too expensive to act when just the opposite is the case. It's far too expensive not to act. And here we're talking about the expense of relocating and building infrastructure in a changing climate for a winter, winter sports events, the Winter Olympics. But think about the extreme weather events, the floods, the heatwaves, the wildfires, the superstorms that we've contended with in recent years that cost billions of dollars in terms of insured damages. And in some places, you can't even get insurance anymore because of wildfire risk, because of flooding risk. And so the reality is that it's too expensive not to act. Jansing concluded the segment by reading a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump questioning the existence of global warming during the current cold weather, leading Mann to predictably blame the extremely low temperatures on "climate change." Transcript follows: MS NOW's Chris Jansing Reports February 6, 2026 12:42 p.m. Eastern CHRIS JANSING: Well, today, Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, Chloe Kim are preparing to hit the slopes and the halfpipe for the Winter Olympics, but recent games have had to take increasingly elaborate measures to counter the warming effects of climate change. A recent study flagged by the Washington Post found that by the middle of this century, there could be fewer than 20 countries with the right conditions and infrastructure to host the games. One climate science researcher told the L.A. Times, "We're going to see more warming around the world. We're actually seeing the Winter Olympic games literally melting before our very eyes." Let me bring in Michael Mann, author of Science Under Siege and UPenn presidential distinguished professor of Earth and environmental science. It's always good to see you, Michael. Are we looking at a future winter games that are that much of a challenge melting before our eyes? PROFESSOR MICHAEL MANN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Yeah. Hi, Chris. It's good to be with you. And, yeah, I mean, this is an example of just the profound impact that we are having on the planet that we are having on, you know, everyday life. You know, it's not just some far off problem in the future that impacts polar bears -- it's influencing us and our way of life right now. And this is just another reminder of that. JANSING: One study estimates that by 2050, only four countries would be able to host the Olympics without machine-made snow. The IOC has said it is considering moving up future games from February to January when conditions might be better. The Salt Lake City mayor told the L.A. Times he bets that the 2034 games won't happen in his city as planned due to climate change. Quote, "If that's happening now, why do we think 2034 is going to be any better?" If there's the will, could change happen fast enough to change the equation for Utah eight years from now? MANN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in 2010, in Vancouver, the Winter Olympics nearly had to be canceled because there was no snow in Vancouver, you know, in the middle of the winter. And they had to do everything they could to try to move in enough snow from other locations, manufacture snow. And so it's getting more and more difficult to actually hold this, you know, this event, this, this classic event, the Winter Olympics, in the traditional locations that we associate with them right now in Cortina -- Milan-Cortina, one of the classic ski resorts in the world. And they are going to have trouble in the future in being able to hold the Winter Olympics because there just isn't the infrastructure. We can't produce enough snow and enough cooling to allow for these events to proceed if we continue to warm the planet. That's a big if because let's keep in mind that this is under the assumption that we continue to warm the planet through carbon pollution -- through the burning of fossil fuels. And we do have a choice here. JANSING: Well, just to punctuate what you said, I've covered a lot of Olympics. The Vancouver games were many days warmer than the London summer games that I also covered. And in Sochi, there's a bunch of pictures of me sitting outside the venues in like a T shirt. So you're right, it was already leading up to this. And I think, you know, whether it's the Olympics or just winter sports destinations, the financial stakes are really high. Salt Lake alone is projecting $6.6 billion in economic activity from the Olympics over a decade. Have you been surprised that folks who argue climate change mitigation is too expensive don't see the long term expense? MANN: Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, we hear from climate critics, from opponents of taking climate action that is too expensive to act when just the opposite is the case. It's far too expensive not to act. And here we're talking about the expense of relocating and building infrastructure in a changing climate for a winter, winter sports events, the Winter Olympics. But think about the extreme weather events, the floods, the heatwaves, the wildfires, the superstorms that we've contended with in recent years that cost billions of dollars in terms of insured damages. And in some places, you can't even get insurance anymore because of wildfire risk, because of flooding risk. And so the reality is that it's too expensive not to act. JANSING: We've only got a minute left, but I want to ask you this because during last month's cold wave, this is what President Trump posted: "Could the environmental insurrectionists please explain whatever happened to global warming?" I mean, he's not alone. Plenty of folks look at the cold wave now. They say, "What climate change?" What don't they understand? MANN: Yeah. So there's so much in that short tweet that's -- or that short post that's wrong and misleading. You know, we actually have published some research recently, just this last summer that shows that these classic winter storms that we call nor'easters, that bring huge amounts of snowfall and often frigid temperatures along the U.S. East Coast -- climate change is intensifying those storms. So even though overall it's warming up and overall the snow cover season is shorter, individual storms can actually produce larger amounts of snow, and they can produce more extreme temperatures because they are becoming stronger and they're becoming stronger in this case because we're warming up the oceans. And those coastal winter storms actually feed off of the heat of the oceans. And so we actually expect more of these very intense winter storms, these nor'easters, in the future as we continue to warm the planet.

A male who last year ran over a Kansas City police officer with an ATV during a traffic stop, then sped away from the scene, has received his sentence.Kansas City police said they tried to stop a group of ATV riders and motorcyclists committing traffic violations on April 12, 2025, KCTV-TV reported.'The noise and the aggressiveness, they're not following any road rules, you know, they're blazing through intersections.'One officer tried to remove Kendall Coleman from his ATV and place him in custody, police told the station, adding that Coleman reversed, causing the officer to fall.Police said Coleman then lifted his ATV into a wheelie, hit the officer with its front two tires, and ran over the officer with all four tires before speeding away, KCTV reported.Court documents from last year indicate Coleman called his father — Marc Coleman — the night of the assault, telling him he was in trouble and needed to leave town, KMBC-TV reported.Investigators used license plate readers to track Marc Coleman’s vehicle traveling west on Interstate 70 into Colorado Springs, KMBC noted.Authorities told KMBC that prepaid phones were purchased after Kendall Coleman’s phone was disconnected, and surveillance video and other records helped link him to the ATV involved.An anonymous Crime Stoppers tip ultimately led investigators to Kendall Coleman on April 23, and he was arrested, KCTV reported.You can view video of the assault on the police officer in the below news video, which aired prior to Coleman's capture:RELATED: Blaze News original: A dozen times gangs on motorcycles, ATVs, and bikes harassed, attacked, and killed others The officer suffered head injuries but has since made a full recovery, KMBC reported.Kendall Coleman pleaded guilty Thursday, KMBC reported.Prosecutors dropped an armed criminal action charge against Coleman — who is 28 years old — as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and aggravated fleeing, KCTV said, citing Jackson County Circuit Court records.KMBC also said Coleman originally had been charged with first-degree assault.Jackson County Circuit Judge Adam Caine sentenced Coleman to 12 years in prison, KCTV said, citing court documents.Coleman remained in the Jackson County jail Thursday evening and was awaiting transfer to the Missouri Department of Corrections, KCTV added.A restaurant owner down the street from where the assault took place told KMBC that ATV riders have been a problem: "The noise and the aggressiveness, they're not following any road rules, you know, they're blazing through intersections."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

According to a February 6 CBS News article, “Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death observed an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39 p.m” — an observation, CBS says, that has gone “previously unreported by authorities.”In addition, the CBS reports that an “FBI memorandum” suggests that video footage reviews conducted by the FBI and other examiners “led to disparate conclusions” — the FBI logged the mysterious orange shape as “possibly an inmate,” while the inspector general’s report recorded it as “an unidentified [corrections officer]” carrying orange “linen or bedding.”Glenn Beck is sincerely puzzled by these FBI reports. “Inmates at 10:39 are not going around in that area, outside of their cell, so FBI, that doesn't make sense,” he says.Further, “we now know … [the FBI] knew that bedding is delivered the shift before this. … No one is allowed on that floor at 10:39,” he adds.Even more shocking to Glenn is that then-Attorney General Bill Barr publicly stated that "no one entered" Epstein's housing tier the night of his death, which was then reiterated by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino last summer during a “Fox & Friends” interview. These statements are seemingly called into question by the revelations made by CBS.However, the most jaw-dropping revelation in the article, says Glenn, centers on shocking new details from corrections officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas about the noose — or rather the lack of one — on the night Epstein reportedly took his own life. According to the article, records of Thomas’ interview, which were released in the latest Epstein document dump, indicate that he told investigators he discovered Epstein in his cell early on August 10 and that he “ripped” him down from the hanging position. However, when asked about the noose, Thomas could not recall taking off a noose. Noel, who was reportedly standing at the entrance of Epstein’s cell at the time, told investigators that she did not see a noose either.The noose, reported CBS, has “never been definitively identified,” and the one collected at the scene was later determined “not to be the ligature used in Epstein’s death.”“All right: First, you had us believe that it was a paper noose. Now you're saying the paper noose that was found was not the noose that killed him. In fact, you can't find the noose — the paper noose — and this one was later added to the scene. By whom?” asks Glenn.He is astounded that Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by the chief medical examiner just six days later despite failure to identify the actual instrument that caused his death.“You don't have the ... suicide weapon. The weapon that you do have, the noose, is not the noose that killed him. No explanation on how that arrived later at the scene. … You have a blurry figure going up in the middle of the night, and you can’t identify that individual … and yet you rule this a suicide?” he asks in disbelief. “That is fascinating to me.”“I mean, there's just no way to square this circle. There's no way to do it. You cannot, with any credibility, say, ‘Yeah, this guy committed suicide,”’ he scoffs.“There's a reason why we don't believe the government. There is a reason, and it's this kind of crap.”To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.