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WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday carried out an airstrike in eastern Syria against structures belonging to what the Pentagon said were Iran-backed militias responsible for recent attacks against American and allied personnel in Iraq. The strikes were authorized by President Biden in response to the recent attacks in Iraq and to continuing threats to American and coalition personnel, said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, who spoke with reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III in California. A rocket attack on the airport in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil this month killed a civilian contractor with the American-led military coalition and wounded six others, including a U.S. service member and four American contractors. American officials said the military response was essentially a tiny demonstration strike: one bomb dropped on a small cluster of buildings on the Syria-Iraq border used to transit militia fighters and weaponry in and out of...

For the first time, scientists have cloned an endangered U.S. species: a black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann, whose donor has been dead for more than 30 years. After the original ferret, Willa, died in 1988, scientists froze her body to preserve her genetic material, hoping to someday perform an experiment like this. While a domesticated ferret carried the cloned embryo, the new ferret, who is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, is still very wild, with all the instincts and aggression that suggests. This is a fresh success story for the black-footed ferret, which has become emblematic of how well conservation and repopulation efforts can work. First, scientists thought the ferret was extinct, after frustrated ranchers poisoned almost all of the animals in the wild. Then, the population grew from a group of just a few, so there are about 1,000 wild black ferrets today—plus populations in wildlife...

For an academic, Michael Caulfield has an odd request: Stop overthinking what you see online. Mr. Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at Washington State University Vancouver, knows all too well that at this very moment, more people are fighting for the opportunity to lie to you than at perhaps any other point in human history. Misinformation rides the greased algorithmic rails of powerful social media platforms and travels at velocities and in volumes that make it nearly impossible to stop. That alone makes information warfare an unfair fight for the average internet user. But Mr. Caulfield argues that the deck is stacked even further against us. That the way we’re taught from a young age to evaluate and think critically about information is fundamentally flawed and out of step with the chaos of the current internet. “We’re taught that, in order to protect ourselves from bad information, we need to deeply engage with the stuff that washes up in front of us,” Mr. Caulfield told me...

A 13 year-old girl stole her mother’s SUV, then smashed the huge vehicle into two homeless men at high speed and killed both, police say. Extremely disturbing doorbell camera footage showed the moment the unnamed teen lost control of the car in Escondido, California, on Friday night. Its tires could be heard screeching as it mounted a curb and crashed into a set of planters. Two homeless men were sleeping there at the time. One died instantly, with the other succumbing to his injuries after being rushed to a hospital. Another 13 year-old was in the car at the time of the collision, police said. Neighbor Ivan Calderon, who witnessed the death smash, told Fox5: ‘The car was just speeding off right here. I’m not sure if they were trying to make a turn and they didn’t handle it, and just went straight to the wall.’ ‘What are they thinking, you know? We read on the report that they were coming from Vista, and Vista is pretty far for you to be driving if you’re 13 years old, especially...

this is why we have warning labels; niggers...

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday. The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services. The measure to further economic development with the “alternative form of local government” has not yet been introduced in the Legislature. Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address delivered Jan. 19. The plan would bring in new businesses at the forefront of “groundbreaking technologies” without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that...