WASHINGTON—The Department of War will modernize Stars & Stripes, The Daily Wire has learned, refocusing the military news outlet so it better serves “a new generation of service members.” The independent news outlet authorized by the Department of War is meant to provide news for the military community. The publication has been in continuous circulation since World War II and covers the military, veterans affairs, and world events. Until now, it has republished content from the Associated Press and Reuters. This will no longer be the case, War Department officials explained to The Daily Wire. They plan to bring the publication “into the 21st century” and modernize its operations, refocusing content “away from woke distractions that siphon morale.” “The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told The Daily Wire. “We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century. We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) Parnell said the publication will be “custom-tailored” to the War Department’s soldiers, focused on “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.” “No more repurposed D.C. gossip columns,” he added, “no more Associated Press reprints.” “Stars & Stripes has a proud legacy of reporting news that’s important to our service members,” Parnell said. “The Department of War is committed to ensuring the outlet continues to reflect that proud legacy.” It is a move condoned by the White House, which applauded the move as an example of how President Donald Trump’s administration is modernizing institutions across the country. “The Department of War, under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, is continuing to revitalize, restore, and modernize,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told The Daily Wire. “Stars and Stripes is just the latest example of a broader effort to adapt long-standing institutions to how today’s service members live, work, and consume information.” Currently, Stars & Stripes has civilian staff who aggregate wire reports and write original stories. Going forward, the War Department officials shared, the publication’s content will be written by active-duty service members. Fifty percent of the website’s content will be composed of War Department-generated materials, including digital or print materials made by War Department writers and images captured by combat cameras.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he could invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota to stop “professional agitators and insurrectionists” from attacking federal immigration agents. Trump said the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military and federalize the National Guard, would quickly “put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.” The president has threatened to use the act in the past, but his comments on Thursday morning mark the first time he has said the move is a possibility following the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent, which sparked massive protests in Minneapolis. “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump’s threat comes just hours after the Department of Homeland Security said a federal agent shot an illegal immigrant on Wednesday night. According to DHS, a federal agent was ambushed and attacked by three people while attempting to detain a suspected Venezuelan illegal immigrant. The suspects attacked the federal agent with a snow shovel and a broomstick, according to Homeland Security. During the scuffle, the agent fired a defensive shot, which struck a subject’s leg, according to Homeland Security, which added that both the agent and the subject were transported to the hospital, and the two other alleged attackers were arrested. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara confirmed that a scuffle between a federal agent and another person took place. He did not confirm the federal government’s account that the officer was ambushed and attacked by multiple people. Protesters descended on the area near the shooting shortly after the incident and shouted at law enforcement. Some of the agitators threw fireworks at police officers, according to O’Hara. Following the second ICE shooting in Minneapolis in a week, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz said he was “angry,” adding, “What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets.” In a recorded address that was initially plagued by technical difficulties, Walz urged residents to “remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, and of peace” and told Minnesotans, “Don’t give [Trump] what he wants.” Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey also addressed the ICE shooting on Wednesday night and said that ICE and Border Patrol agents are “creating chaos” in the Twin Cities area, and said that residents are asking the Minneapolis Police Department “to fight ICE agents on the street.” “We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another,” he added. LIVE UPDATES: Minnesota Dems Angry After Second ICE Shooting, Protesters Throw Fireworks At Police Trump has suggested numerous times that the anti-ICE demonstrations in Minneapolis are organized and carried out by “professionals.” In at least one protest last week, organizers with the AFL-CIO told demonstrators that they were “moving out” after they hit their “goal time,” The Daily Wire reported. President George H.W. Bush was the last president to invoke the Insurrection Act during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers who were accused of beating Rodney King. The federal intervention helped restore order within days, but significant destruction had already occurred.

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Over the decades, a glacier in Central Asia appears to have been growing when almost every other glacier on Earth has been shrinking. Now, a scientific expedition has recovered ice cores containing 30,000 years of frozen water in the hopes that somewhere inside lies some indication of how we can help these rivers of ice […] The post One Glacier Is Actually Growing–and Perplexed Scientists Hope to Discover its Secrets appeared first on Good News Network.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Star Trek: Starfleet Academy: Holly Hunter Explains Why Nahla’s Barefoot, Among Other Things “You can lick those floors, but it feels really good to the feet.” By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on January 15, 2026 Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+ There hasn’t been a Starfleet captain quite like Chancellor Nahla, played to perfection by Holly Hunter in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The first two episodes of the show give us a glimpse into the personality of Nahla, a many-centuries-old half-Lanthanite who likes to lounge in the captain’s chair, drink other people’s old cups of coffee, and walk around many unexpected places barefoot. In my interview with Hunter and Paul Giamatti (who plays the villain this season), Hunter joked that those floors were “uber polished—you can lick those floors, but it feels really good to the feet.” It turns out that Nahla’s preference to walk around sans shoes came from co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the character with Hunter in mind. “Alex had written that my character was barefoot, and I loved that,” Hunter said during a press conference for members of the Television Critics Association (TCA). “That kind of opened up this whole idea of what she might be like, physically, for me.” Hunter expanded on her approach to Nahla in my interview with her: “It had to do with her being [part-Lanthanite], and it also had to do with my name, which is ‘water in the desert.’” In keeping with her name, she decided to give her performance “a liquidity” that informed every scene she was in. “Wherever I am, whatever environment that I’m in, I’m going to explore it with my body,” she said. “It gave every scene, many scenes, a whole different vibe, a different texture, and it put me in a different place.” Photo Credit: Miller Mobley/Paramount+ Hunter also shared at the TCA press conference that having Giamatti attached was a significant factor for her. “In my time of auditioning for stuff, I never auditioned for Star Trek,” she said. “And then Alex [Kurtzman] and [co-showrunner Noga Landau] just presented me with this script and asked me if I wanted to do it.” She continued jokingly, “One of the reasons why I immediately was on alert is because Paul [Giamatti] was attached. And I was like, ‘Wow… this is a red flag. I should avoid this thing at all costs.” Hunter then made clear that it was a “really easy yes.” And as for Giamatti? Kurtzman told me in my interview with him that he reached out only after hearing that the actor dreamt of playing a Klingon in the franchise. “We had the greatest conversation with him and assumed he would maybe do one episode,” Kurtzman said. “And he said, ‘No, I want to be the villain. I want to be Nus Braka.’” Braka, however, is only part-Klingon; the character is also part-Tellarite, a porcine species. Playing a Tellarite, however, was something Giamatti was more than happy to take on. “I was thrilled,” he told me. “As a kid, when I watched the show, there’s an episode in The Original Series that features a Tellarite. It might be the only time a Tellarite was featured until now [Editor’s note: Jason Mantzoukas’ Jankom Pog on Prodigy would like to have a word], and it always stuck with me… so I was very excited: [an] argumentative pig person seemed like a really fun thing to also do, and I get to do a Klingon.” New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere on Paramount+ on Thursdays.[end-mark] The post <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>: Holly Hunter Explains Why Nahla’s Barefoot, Among Other Things appeared first on Reactor.

Books Indie Press Spotlight Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2026 Stories of near-future societies, uncanny filmmakers, and virtual gaming gone wrong… By Tobias Carroll | Published on January 15, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share And here we are, in a new year like it’s going out of style. What we have here is a list of some notable books due out on independent presses in January and February. What you’ll find between their covers is everything from portraits of a near-future society to disquieting stories of ancient beings returning to Earth. Throw in uncanny filmmakers, virtual gaming gone wrong, and collections from longtime favorites and you have an wide-ranging selection of books to explore this winter. File Under: Frames and Mirrors Identity, doubles, and shared experiences can all make for compellingly uncanny fiction, and it’s into that strain of literature that Aoife Josie Clements taps for the novel Persona. It’s about a woman who discovers films of her online that she has no memory of making; things get stranger from there. Publishers Weekly’s review hailed it for its forays into “gut-churning corners of the human experience.” (Little Puss; Jan. 27, 2026) Publisher Feral Dove calls Alexandrine Ogundimu’s novel Temperance “[a] headfirst dive into physical and spiritual transformation.” In a fascinating interview published in January, Ogundimu touched on everything from transhumanism to the role of violence in her work: “I’m not really talking about the body transcending anything. I’m very much about we are flesh and that is it.” (Feral Dove; Jan. 23. 2026) “I define my writing and directing style as gothic whimsy,” Chelsea Sutton said in an interview with VoyageLA last year. That aesthetic seems to be very much on display in Sutton’s new book Krackle’s Last Movie, about a missing documentary filmmaker and the mummies, vampires, and mermaids who featured prominently in their final project.  (Split Lip Press; Feb. 10, 2026) File Under: Fantastical History Morris Collins is reckoning with a lot in his novel The Tavern at the End of History, including generational trauma and the legacy of genocide. That’s before getting into some of the more bizarre flourishes here, including unconventional angels and one character who may or may not be a ghost. Thus far, advance reviews have been promising. (Dzanc; Feb. 10, 2026) There are plenty of reasons why horror that takes cues from religion has been gaining ground lately. That’s included the series Midnight Mass, the horror film The Carpenter’s Son, and now David Scott Hay’s novel The Butcher of Nazareth. Here, Hay riffs on the untold history of the New Testament, and pushes the narrative into surreal and disquieting places. (Headless/Whiskey Tit; Feb. 26, 2026) In a 2023 interview with the Horror Writers Association, Rebecca Rowland explained her penchant for the genre. “I think that’s the attraction of horror for me. It’s darkly beautiful. Scary, sure, and that is part of the fun, but I like writing about the terrible beauty within the horror even more,” she said. Her novel Eminence Frost finds all of the above in this story of a snowstorm awakening an ancient presence. (CLASH; Jan. 20, 2026) File Under: Disquieting Futures Brooks Hansen’s literary work has covered a lot of ground, from historical works to philosophical investigations. His latest transports the reader into a future of haunted technology and ominous power struggles. The story Hansen tells in LucidDream covers everything from machine intelligences to an addictive online game. (Astrophil Press; Feb. 15. 2026) In the near-future Midwest of J. M. Holmes’s novel Me and Mine, the effects of climate change have reshaped the nation, with the Great Lakes becoming the site of both extreme development and political unrest. Holmes’s novel follows three brothers as they seek to make a life for themselves in this ever-changing new world. (Common Notions; February 2026) If you’re familiar with James Sallis’s name, it’s likely that it’s through his crime fiction, including Drive, adapted for the screen by Nicholas Winding Refn. (Sallis also wrote a tremendous work of literary criticism about the genre, Difficult Lives Hitching Rides.) Sallis has long had a foothold in science fiction as well—he was Nebula-nominated in 1970—and returns to the SF world with his latest book. That would be World’s End: A Mosaic Novel, telling the stories of several people living in a fragmented society in the near future. (Soho Press; Feb. 10, 2026) D. Harlan Wilson has also written extensively across genres; his book J.G. Ballard was a 2018 Locus Award finalist. Despite its title, Usurper: Essays on the Death of Reality is a novel—one that tells the story of an attempt to adapt James Joyce’s Ulysses for the screen in a dystopian society. Wilson has a penchant for heady ingredients, and this novel—the sequel to Wilson’s earlier Outré—rarely goes where you’d expect. (Raw Dog Screaming Press; Feb. 2, 2026) File Under: Telling Stories In an interview about her new collection Every Galaxy a Circle, Chloe N. Clark explained her approach to writing science fiction. “Good sci-fi, for me, is always based around the characters more than the plot,” Clark said. “Ideally, it should work even if that Sci-Fi concept is removed.” In this wide-ranging collection, Clark takes the reader through a series of ambitious, thought-provoking futures. (Jackleg Press; Jan. 15, 2026) Nicola Griffith’s writing has covered a lot of ground, both stylistically and thematically. Longtime readers of her work and newcomers to it should both find plenty to enjoy in the new collection She Is Here, which includes a winning survey of Griffith’s work—everything from a new novella to an essay on disability in literature. (PM Press; Feb. 10, 2026) Depending on your age and your inclinations as a young reader, it’s very possible that you were scarred for life by reading Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. (I’m pretty sure Stephen Gammell’s artwork has influenced decades’ worth of my nightmares.) As you might surmise, the new anthology Fucked Up Stories to Read in the Daytime Volume 2 takes its cues from that earlier series; this volume includes stories by Danger Slater, Xavier Garcia, and Charlene Elsby. (Filthy Loot; Jan. 1, 2026) Jeffrey Ford’s fiction spans multiple genres, moving from sinister nostalgia to speculative fiction and back again without missing a beat. (You can read some of his work right here.) His new collection Pandemonium Waltz is an excellent distillation of what makes Ford such a compelling writer—and one impossible to predict. (Lethe Press; February 2026) Bizarre transformations and uncanny doubles are just some of the mysteries readers can uncover within Dana Diehl’s collection The Earth Room. In a recent interview, Diehl mentioned that this book takes things further into the speculative and fantastical than her earlier writing: “I was watching a lot of David Lynch and horror movies while writing these stories, and I think that comes through.” (Black Lawrence Press; Jan. 20, 2026) File Under: Mysterious Destinations In 2023 in these very pages, Alex Brown praised a story by P.A. Cornel for the way it was “overflowing with emotions big and small.” Set in a retro-futuristic Toronto, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl tells the story of a love between two characters and the beguiling world that they inhabit. (Stars and Sabers, Feb. 3, 2026) Carly Racklin’s short fiction has been discussed in the column Reading the Weird; with Funeral Song, Racklin is making her debut at the novella length. It’s set in a town where the dead have the ability to return to life—and the complexities that that creates for its residents. Throw some murder into the mix and you have a very compelling yarn. (Dead Sky; Jan. 27, 2026) Lisa Slage Robinson nods in the direction of the Midwest’s history with the title of her new collection, Esquire Ball, Stories from the Great Black Swamp. These wide-ranging stories venture into the uncanny and the metaphysical. Kirkus’s review noted that these stories demonstrate how “murky mythologies mix with the letter of the law.”(Black Lawrence Press; Feb. 10, 2026) Kristal Stittle’s novel Kayak tells the story of a young man making his way across a landscape that’s turned treacherous with the addition of violent, powerful entities. The title gives you an idea of how the protagonist makes his way from place to place; the result is a dynamic and unsettling story of a world of constant unrest. (Tenebrous Press; Feb. 17, 2026)[end-mark] The post Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2026 appeared first on Reactor.

By Daniela Gonzalez Although the intention of this site is not to spread political information, there are lots of details involved that we Venezuelans need the world to know. This prologue was written so the reader can understand the magnitude of the forces that generated the whole Cuban operation that took over the country, brutally stomped on the civilian society, and managed (with the collaboration of uniforms) to even harm the US. With this, we mean they are NOT common criminals. I decided to let the dust settle until the first images of the intervention are published before trying to explain what seems to be happening. This is information I collected from trusted sources.  It is not wise for us to use social media at the present moment. The open wounds from a few days ago are still very recent, tempers are boiling! The humiliation is absolute. The ego clouds judgment about the shady, regrettable actions they committed, and this generates aggressive impulses to harm weaker, vulnerable people they label as “their enemies”.  Both sides (I will explain these sides in the short term) are now struggling, with a very clear loser. The woman who is now working as a de facto VP, Delcy Rodriguez (warlord of the civilian branch of the “Revolution”), was the one who assisted and supported the military extraction, in the hope she would be left “untouched”. However, she´s indeed one of the many heads of the Hydra. She also “extracted” a HUGE amount of stolen gold out of the Central Bank, fleeing to Spain, where she would be in collusion with Zapatero and Pedro Sanchez (Spanish politicians had a very important role in the laundering of the money stolen from Venezuela). The other branch of the gang is now aware they are sitting ducks, and the situation is more volatile than ever. Most of the information is already all over the internet, but mostly in Spanish. Obviously, they are making a huge effort to conceal the intervention of Cuba in this takeover.  The serious interest of the Russians in jumping into the equation to defend Cuba all these decades is because a good number of their high ranks are involved with the money laundering they need to keep the narcotics flow.  Happily, the (very necessary) military intervention exposed the truth. These are confirmed facts. Here is the summary of the very long text. The escort of 32 Cuban military personnel who formed the security ring of the former Venezuelan President—and who were killed in their entirety by Delta Force without causing a single scratch to the American soldiers—had not been sent to Venezuela to protect Maduro, but to prevent him from escaping and talking. They even had orders to kill him before he could attempt to flee or be captured. Maduro knew it. And that explains his relaxed countenance upon stepping onto American soil: his smile, his thumbs up, his cordial greetings, and his “Happy New Year” wishes to the DEA officials in New York. He looked relieved, almost grateful for having been rescued from a death foretold. The Cuban apparatus did not want Maduro to get out alive for fear that he would disclose a “secret”: the real drug kingpin is the Cuban self-called “Government”. Some history It has always been so since the 1980s, when Fidel Castro made a pact with Pablo Escobar and Carlos Lehder, heads of the Medellín Cartel, to exchange weapons for drugs. Soviet weapons were supplied to the M19 guerrilla group—to which the current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, belonged—and Castro collected payment in cocaine that arrived in small planes from Colombia to Varadero airport. This was then sold to traffickers in Florida who transported it in speedboats called “cigarette boats” from Cuba to the United States. Castro aimed to achieve three triumphs: to support armed insurgency in Hispanic America, to deposit tens of millions of dollars into his private bank account, and to undermine American society with the ghost of drug addiction. The DEA informed then-President Ronald Reagan about this. These were not conventional criminals, but an aggression by an enemy and hostile State like Cuba, committing a serious crime against the public health of the American population. Reagan limited himself to sending a warm, tasteless diplomatic note of protest. To justify himself, Castro blamed four subordinates who had only followed his orders and sent them to be shot by a firing squad in July 1989. That is how he saved his own backside. This traffic had interruptions for a time until Hugo Chávez came to power and started to receive the support and advice of the Cuban regime to establish a military dictatorship and resume the drug trafficking business. The rest is recent history already available. The Americans’ interest in Venezuela’s oil is not new. But what were the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians doing here? Were they the keepers of the secret recipe for Venezuelan arepas? There are many beneficiaries of the shady, opaque, and obscure deals with the Bolivarian regime, not only with oil, but also including gold, coltan, gas, and uranium. Uranium that could be used by enemies of America! Venezuela financed left-wing parties and leaders in Europe and Hispanic America, as well as the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah. Many are starting to get nervous about everything Maduro might testify to. Let no one have any doubt that he is going to “sing” (talk). That is already agreed upon. And his testimony could leave bare several leaders of the left and far-left who will be pointed out as accomplices of a narco-terrorist dictatorship. Now, the added value, from our prepper perspective. The good news There was no interruption of the internet service, power, water, etc., which was, frankly, remarkable.  Not in the other parts of the country. This was huge. People without information or energy would have hit the streets, only to be targeted by the assassins and gangs called colectivos (armed thugs, the equivalent of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard but worse), and blame it on the US Armed Forces. We were able to see the events as they unfolded, and that was PRICELESS! to keep the population calm. I am sure that this is impeding the collectivos from attacking the civilians, to later blame the US Army. They will be filmed, and any event will be instantly broadcast to the world. Very smart move. The economy is not so battered as it could be, although there are a LOT of people taking advantage of the uncertainty. Some merchants are working with USD only, and charging 3.5 X the equivalent in local currency. The only ones affected by the uncontrolled inflation are those with a salary in local currency. The independent ones charge in USD. Local production is not too cheap (I could add a list of basic staples in the next post), however, at least we have access as long as we have the $. The exchangers are the ones having a good one. They will exchange Bolivares for dollars in the “grey” market, and for today, the rate is 520 Bs per USD. With the official rate of Bs per USD at 325. This means we have some margin left, and can buy more products from the shops, which have access to get USDs at the official rate to buy products. The result of the armed actions is that the perpetrators of the abuse on unarmed civilians, disappearings, illegal kidnappings, 12-gauge shots to the face, and other barbarities…are now faced with a reality after decades of impunity: they will pay. This has resulted in a highly volatile situation these days. They will unlive anybody if someone tries to throw them under the bus. This is the next logical step, for sure.  We can confirm that the abuse of the roaming gangs on motorcycles is mostly in the major cities. In smaller towns, this is uncommon. The latest news is that in the barrios, they are surrendering the weapons that Hugo gave them to “defend the Revolution”. Meaning with this that the guns should be used to massacre unarmed civilians if they dared to lead an uprising.  It is a very interesting survival aspect: when faced with overwhelming (and lethal) violence, predators that are used to abusing their victims will run with their tails between their legs. People in Venezuela never felt the need to prepare. We suffered horrors. We were humiliated as citizens and subjugated beyond any belief. We struggled to feed our youngsters, provide healthcare to our elders, and meet our basic needs. We never had the intention to fight for gun rights, as they were sheepishly led to believe that the monopoly of guns (and violence) should be “The State”. That is what a short, chubby guy with a 15 million $ reward says… Thanks for your reading.  Dani. About Daniela Daniela Gonzalez is a student of history at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. The post An Eyewitness Look at Venezuela After the Capture of Maduro appeared first on The Organic Prepper.