Kelly Newman

Sperm donor with rare cancer mutation fathered nearly 200 children in Europe

health / Kelly Newman / December 10, 2025

A single sperm donor who carries a rare cancer-causing genetic mutation has fathered at least 197 children across 14 countries in Europe, according to a collaborative investigation by 14 European news groups.

According to their investigative report, some of the children have already died, and many others are expected to develop deadly cancers.

The man—Donor 7069, alias “Kjeld”—carries a rare mutation in the TP53 gene, which codes for a critical tumor suppressor called protein 53 or p53. This protein (which is a transcription factor) keeps cells from dividing uncontrollably, can activate DNA repair processes amid damage, and can trigger cell death when a cell is beyond repair. Many cancers are linked to mutations in p53.

When a p53 mutation is passed down in sperm (a germline mutation), it causes a rare autosomal dominant condition called Li Fraumeni syndrome, which greatly increases the risk of a variety of cancers in childhood and young adults. Those include cancers of the brain, blood, bone, soft tissue, adrenal glands, and breast, among others.

The estimated frequency of this type of mutation is between 1 in 5,000 and 1 in 20,000 .

According to the investigation, the man was unaffected by the condition, but the mutation was present in around 20 percent of his sperm.

Sperm donor with rare cancer mutation fathered nearly 200 children in Europe Read More »

Paramount tries to swipe Warner Bros. from Netflix with a hostile takeover

acquisition, HBO Max, paramount, streaming, Tech, warner bros. discovery / Kelly Newman / December 8, 2025

Although the US Department of Justice (DOJ) holds the power to block mergers that it deems to go against antitrust laws, Trump’s influence over the DOJ can’t be overlooked. While Paramount previously seemed to establish a good relationship with the president, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos may have done the same recently.

Sarandos “spoke with the president in the last couple of weeks in a confab that lasted about two hours,” The Hollywood Reporter reported on Sunday, citing “multiple” anonymous sources. A White House official told the publication that they can’t comment on “private meetings that may or may not have occurred,” and Netflix didn’t respond to the publication’s requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Trump’s relationship with the Ellisons and Paramount may have taken a turn recently. Today, the president lashed out at Paramount over an interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that aired on the news program 60 Minutes. As he said on Truth Social, per The Hollywood Reporter: “My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE.”

Appealing to the movie theater industry

The movie theater industry is one of the biggest critics of Netflix’s WB acquisition due to fear that the streaming leader won’t release as many movies to theaters for as long and may drive down licensing fees. Paramount is leaning into this trepidation.

As one of the oldest film studios (Paramount was founded as Famous Players Film Company in 1912), Paramount has much deeper ties to the theater business. Ellison claimed that if Paramount and WBD merge, there will be “a greater number of movies in theaters.”

Sarandos said last week that Netflix plans to maintain WBD’s current theater release schedule, which reportedly goes through 2029.

In terms of streaming, Paramount’s announcement pointed to a “combination of Paramount+ and HBO Max,” lending credence to a November report that Paramount would fold HBO Max into its own flagship streaming service if it buys WBD.

With numerous industries, big names, billions of dollars, and politics all at play, the saga of the WBD split and/or merger is only just beginning.

This article was updated on December 8 at 2: 31 p.m. ET with comment from Sarandos.

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The Boys gears up for a supe-ocalypse in S5 teaser

culture, Entertainment, prime video, The Boys, Trailers, TV trailers / Kelly Newman / December 8, 2025

Prime Video dropped an extended teaser for the fifth and final season of The Boys—based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson—during CCXP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And it looks like we’re getting nothing less than a full-on Supe-ocalypse as an all-powerful Homelander seeks revenge on The Boys.

(Spoilers for prior seasons of The Boys and S2 of Gen V below.)

Things were not looking good for our antiheroes after the S4 finale. They managed to thwart the assassination of newly elected US President Robert Singer, but new Vought CEO/evil supe Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) essentially overthrew the election and installed Senator Steve Calhoun (David Andrews) as president. Calhoun declared martial law, and naturally, Homelander (Antony “Give Him an Emmy Already” Starr) swore loyalty as his chief enforcer. Butcher (Karl Urban) and Annie (Erin Moriarty) escaped, but the rest of The Boys were rounded up and placed in re-education—er, “Freedom”—camps.

The second season of spinoff series Gen V was set after those events, and the finale concluded with Annie recruiting the main cast members to join the fight against Homelander and the Supes. Season 5 of The Boys picks up where the Gen V finale left off. Per the official premise:

In the fifth and final season, it’s Homelander’s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie, Mother’s Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a “Freedom Camp.” Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. It’s the climax, people. Big stuff’s gonna happen.

Most of the main cast is returning for the final season (although RIP Claudia Doumit’s Victoria Neuman), and we’ll also see the return of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), aka Homelander’s daddy, revealed in the S4 finale mid-credits scene to be alive and chilling out in cryostorage. Showrunner Eric Kripke has said that he wanted to delve a little deeper into that father/son relationship, particularly since Soldier Boy has switched sides and aligned with the supes after Butcher tried to kill him in S3.

The Boys gears up for a supe-ocalypse in S5 teaser Read More »

Please send help. I can’t stop playing these roguelikes.

ball x pit, Features, gaming, hades 2, roguelikes, roguelites / Kelly Newman / December 8, 2025

it’s “rogue,” not “rouge”

2025 was a very good year for my favorite genre.

Hades 2 has me in a chokehold. Credit: Supergiant Games

It’s time to admit, before God and the good readers of Ars Technica, that I have a problem. I love roguelikes. Reader, I can’t get enough of them. If there’s even a whisper of a hot new roguelike on Steam, I’m there. You may call them arcane, repetitive, or maddeningly difficult; I call them heaven.

The second best part of video games is taking a puny little character and, over 100 hours, transforming that adventurer into a god of destruction. The best thing about video games is doing the same thing in under an hour. Beat a combat encounter, get an upgrade. Enter a new area, choose a new item. Put together a build and watch it sing.

If you die—immediately ending your ascent and returning you to the beginning of the game—you’ll often make a pit stop at a home base to unlock new goodies to help you on your next run. (Some people distiguish between roguelikes and “roguelites,” with the latter including permanent, between-run upgrades. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use “roguelike” as an umbrella term).

2025 has been a truly horrific year for most things. But for roguelikes? It’s been an embarrassment of riches. Because I’m an editor and there’s no one here to stop me, I’d like to tell you about them. To keep things manageable, I’ll stick to games that hit 1.0 in 2025.

Hades II

Screenshot of hades 2 — Credit: Supergiant Games

Where else could we start? In a year of wall-to-wall video game showstoppers, Hades II sticks out. The first Hades got our nod for best game of 2020, and Hades 2 certainly has my vote for 2025.

This time, you play as Melinoë, sister to Hades protagonist Zagreus and daughter of Hades himself, as she attempts to take back the house of Hades from Chronos, the titan of time. The cast of Olympian gods returns to bestow blessings (upgrades to your various attacks and defensive maneuvers) to help you on your way. If you played the first game, you’ll know what you’re getting into here; the sequel just vastly expands the content and mechanics.

As you fight through the game’s two different paths, you’ll slowly uncover the game’s story via little snippets of dialogue (there’s a truly mind-boggling amount of dialogue in this game), and oodles of unlockables and endgame challenge runs ensure you’ll be playing for a long time.

You won’t find many roguelikes with higher production values. The game is $30. Madness! If you like roguelikes, you’ve probably already picked this up. I’ll go further, though. If you enjoy video games at all, you should buy Hades II. It’s that good.

Ball x Pit

ball x pit screenshot

You ever boot up a new game and immediately think, “Well, this thing is going to be a problem for me”? Yeah.

We’ve been blessed with several pachinko-style roguelites over the past couple of years (Peglin, Ballionaire, and Nubby’s Number Factory are all worth your time); now comes a take on another ball-centric classic. I’m talking about last month’s Ball x Pit, a roguelite version of Breakout. Or at least that’s the simple way to describe it. In actuality, the game is that rarest of finds: something that feels unique.

Take one of your many and varied characters onto the battlefield, and you’ll lob a stream of balls toward the top of the screen, where slowly descending enemies periodically fire attacks back at you. When you level up, you’ll choose “special balls,” which have all manner of effects, like inflicting fire or poison on enemies or balls that explode into other balls. As the game progresses, you can “fuse” these balls together, combining the effects. Sometimes, you’ll be able to “evolve” two balls into an entirely new type of ball. Not enough for you? Slam two evolved balls together for even more wackiness.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is fantastic, with different characters and upgrades forcing you to play differently to succeed. The game doles out new mechanics and surprises along the way to keep things fresh, though this is a game you can “complete”; the between-run metaprogression eventually lets you become a bit of a god.

A base-building system—and a minigame in which you bounce your characters around the map to activate buildings—is a nice, thematic diversion between runs, but it’s mostly just a flashy upgrade screen. I usually just wanted to get back into the game as soon as possible.

Need more convincing? Check out the free demo.

Absolum

absolum screenshot

Absolum’s well-regarded demo was released in June, but this thing came out of nowhere for me. The elevator pitch: a beat ‘em up, but make it roguelite.

Not really a beat ‘em up fan? Me neither. Doesn’t matter. The last side-scrolling brawler I played for more than an hour was probably 1991’s The Simpsons arcade game or that same year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (though the original TMNT arcade game from 1989 was my first quarter-munching arcade love).

The game features gorgeous hand-drawn visuals and the year’s best soundtrack, including this absolute banger from Doom’s Mick Gordon (that’s from a particularly metal boss fight; most of the songs are more fantasy-forward).

Over your runs, you’ll traverse multiple paths, finding secrets and unlocking new features. The roguelike elements are a bit thin at first, but piecing together powerful builds becomes simple as you fill out your options. The combat is sublime—you can get away with button-mashing for a while, but you’ll want to learn at least some of its intricacies to make it to the end.

This thing’s the complete package, and it’s easily one of the best games of the year. Bring along a friend if you’re into co-op. The surprisingly beefy demo is still available—there’s really no excuse not to check it out.

Clover Pit

clover pit screenshot

I’ve never actually been to a casino, but judging by the electric dopamine surge I get when hitting a jackpot in the slot machine roguelike Clover Pit, I know I should maintain my chastity.

Clover Pit locks you in a disgusting, blood-soaked closet of a room, and the only way to earn your freedom is to deposit money into an ATM over a series of ever-increasing payments. In other words, it’s what’s come to be known in some circles as a Balatro-like, aka a numbers-go-up game (of course, Balatro was just the first such game to hit it big; the genre’s true progenitor came a year or so earlier in the form of another excellent slot machine roguelike, Luck be a Landlord).

Standing on a trap door that will drop you to your death if you fail to hit your deadlines, you’ll pull a lever on a slot machine over and over, hoping to hit it big. It’s not totally random, though, of course. Purchaseable trinkets allow you to manipulate your odds, trigger beneficial effects, and multiply your score. Getting a jackpot of all 7’s? It’s easier than you may think.

Don’t expect Balatro-like depth—most strategies here involve simply picking one symbol and buffing it to high heaven—but fun, game-breaking builds are easy to put together to make you feel like a winner. There’s something disconcertingly hypnotic and soothing about repeatedly pulling a slot machine lever—it’s best to do it here, where you won’t end up losing your home.

Shape of Dreams

shape of dreams screenshot

I’ve been playing the hell out of this game, but if you stopped me on the street, I could not tell you what it’s called. Forgettable name aside, I love it.

I’ve heard the game’s combat and controls described as MOBA-like. That seems reasonable, at least from what I remember from my ill-advised and short-lived attempt to get into Dota 2 a decade ago. Don’t let that scare you off, though; this is basically a top-down action RPG where you’ll be fighting through small rooms of enemies, Hades-style.

What makes it special is its skill system. You start each run with a couple of attacks and a passive ability, and you’ll pick up (and replace) skills as you go. Each skill—here called “memories” (don’t ask me; I skipped the lore)—can fit up to three “essences,” modifications that affect how the skill functions. You can rearrange these modifications at any time, enabling a “make your own skill” system that’s endlessly fascinating.

Unique unlockable characters and robust metaprogression skill trees will keep you busy for embarrassing amounts of time. You can even play with friends. Before long, you’ll be creating game-breaking, room-nuking builds, the hallmark of my favorite games of the genre.

Megabonk

Megabonk screenshot

As its name might suggest, Megabonk is not a serious game. Unlike some other games on this list, there’s no chance of this one becoming an all-time great. But there’s a reason this buzzy little title has been on many gamers’ lips since its release in September. The concept is simple: it’s Vampire Survivors meets Risk of Rain 2.

If you’ve played both games, mash them up in your mind and you’ll know exactly how this thing plays. And not just in the way that most “Survivor-likes” tread extremely similar ground to the original. Megabonk‘s treasure-chest-opening animation is ripped straight from Vampire Survivors, and the game’s structure and items (down to the artwork style) are basically just Risk of Rain 2.

So no, it’s in no way original. And I was disappointed to learn that there are only two real “stages” to play; a Risk of Rain-style teleporter just takes you to a harder version of the stage you’ve picked. There are also balance issues; the damage scaling on anything but the first 10-minute stage is absurd. But there is some ridiculous fun to be had with it.

If you’re not into the whole auto-shooter/bullet heaven thing, there’s nothing here for you. But if you’re interested in seeing how chaotic a third-person Vampire Survivors can get, step right up.

It’s also the one 2025 game where you can play as a sunglasses-wearing, skateboarding skeleton who throws bouncing bones at enemies. In these tough times, that’s not nothing.

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor

deep rock galactic survivor screenshot

We’ve talked about this Survivors-like take on the beloved co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic a couple of times over its Early Access period, but we were remiss in not discussing it upon its 1.0 release last month. The game was already an Ars favorite, but its progression systems still needed a bit of work. It’s now ready for public consumption, and it’s one of the best auto-shooters on the market. It’s so good that you might want to take a look at it even if you want nothing to do with the oversaturated subgenre.

Its Vampire Survivor-like bones are obvious—you walk around a map while your weapons fire automatically at hordes of enemies closing in on you. Collect the XP gems defeated enemies drop to level up and choose an upgrade. The difference here is that you’re also able to mine through walls of rocks, letting you escape tricky situations and funnel bad guys to traps you’ve laid.

The progression system is heavy on the grind, but there’s plenty of fun to be had no matter how hardcore you want to be about it.

Rock and stone!

Monster Train 2

monster train 2 screenshot

Five years after the original, it’s time for the sequel to the second-best roguelike deckbuilder of all time (the sequel to the first-best roguelike deckbuilder has—thankfully, if I’m being honest—been delayed until the beginning of next year). As in the first game, and as the game’s title might suggest, you’ll be fighting monsters on a train, trying to stop them before they ascend three floors to reach your “pyre”—your health pool for the run.

In Monster Train 2, as in any deckbuilder, you start with a fairly crappy deck of cards and upgrade and expand it throughout your run to try to make it to the end. But in addition to the usual spells and attacks, Monster Train 2 gives you units to assign to the different levels of your battlefield, infusing an interesting spatial element to the cartoonishly violent proceedings.

The sequel is more of the first game, but with smart updates that make everything flow smoother. It’s one of my favorite games of the year, and I highly recommend it to any fan of tactical card games.

Deadzone Rogue

deadzone rogue screenshot

Deadzone Rogue instantly joins the pantheon of roguelite first-person looter shooters, which includes perennial favorites Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest (I haven’t played them yet, but the brand-new Abyssus and Void/Breaker are also generating a bunch of buzz).

Where Roboquest excels at fun, Doom-like movement and colorful environments, Deadzone Rogue is all about the shooting. The game has the best gunplay of any FPS roguelike I’ve played, and the random weapons, armor, and upgrades you get give each run a sense of personality.

The game’s music, voice acting, and lore are best ignored, but the sound design is nice and punchy. This won’t be a game you’ll play for 100 hours, but sometimes it’s just fun to shoot a gun in a video game, and Deadzone Rogue gets that simple formula right.

9 Kings

9 kings screenshot

Look, I’m going to cheat here, and I’m not ashamed of it. It’s true—9 Kings is not fully released. But I can’t not talk about. I initially wrote the game off when it was released into Early Access in July, thinking it looked too simple. It is simple, but that’s to its credit.

The premise is easy to explain: Build a little kingdom on a 3-by-3 grid of squares. Play a card to construct or upgrade a building or unit in your kingdom. Afterward, a neighboring kingdom will attack, and your units will automatically fight to defend your home. After the battle, you draft a card from the defeated kingdom to add to your hand.

As you can see from the above screenshot, you can expand your kingdom beyond the initial nine squares, and unlockable perks change up the way you play each king. A handful of enemies are randomly chosen from the pool of nine, meaning that the cards you can draft each run will be different.

Making busted builds and fighting your way up the difficulty levels is extremely compelling; there was a week where the “one more run” curse descended on me, and I did little else than play this game.

Aaron is Ars Technica’s Copy Chief. He has worked as an editor for over 17 years. In addition to editing features at Ars, he occasionally reviews board and video games. He lives in Chicago.

Please send help. I can’t stop playing these roguelikes. Read More »

Rare set of varied factors triggered Black Death

black death, epidemiology, medieval history, Science, volcanology / Kelly Newman / December 5, 2025

The culprit is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, and it’s well known that it spreads among mammalian hosts via fleas, although it only rarely spills over to domestic animals and humans. The Black Death can be traced to a genetically distinct strain of Y. pestis that originated in the Tien Shan mountains west of what is now Kyrgyzstan, spreading along trade routes to Europe in the 1340s. However, according to the authors of this latest paper, there has been little attention focused on several likely contributing factors: climate, ecology, socioeconomic pressures, and the like.

The testimony of the tree rings

Taking tree samples from the Pyrenees. Credit: Ulf Büntgen

“This is something I’ve wanted to understand for a long time,” said co-author Ulf Büntgen of the University of Cambridge. “What were the drivers of the onset and transmission of the Black Death, and how unusual were they? Why did it happen at this exact time and place in European history? It’s such an interesting question, but it’s one no one can answer alone.”

Büntgen et al. collected core and disc samples from both living and relict trees at eight European sites to reconstruct summer temperatures for that time period. They then compared that data with estimates of sulphur injections into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions, based on geochemical analyses of ice core samples collected from Antarctica and Greenland.

They studied a wide range of written sources across Eurasia—chronicles, treatises, historiography, and even a bit of poetry—looking for mention of atmospheric and optical phenomena linked to volcanic dust veils between 1345 and 1350 CE. They also looked for mentions of extreme weather events, economic conditions, and reports of dearth or famine across Eurasia during that time period. Information about the trans-Mediterranean grain trade was gleaned from administrative records and letters.

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Elon Musk’s X first to be fined under EU’s Digital Services Act

api access, blue checkmark, Digital Services Act, elon musk, online ads, Policy, Twitter, X / Kelly Newman / December 5, 2025

Elon Musk’s X became the first large online platform fined under the European Union’s Digital Services Act on Friday.

The European Commission announced that X would be fined nearly $140 million, with the potential to face “periodic penalty payments” if the platform fails to make corrections.

A third of the fine came from one of the first moves Musk made when taking over Twitter. In November 2022, he changed the platform’s historical use of a blue checkmark to verify the identities of notable users. Instead, Musk started selling blue checks for about $8 per month, immediately prompting a wave of imposter accounts pretending to be notable celebrities, officials, and brands.

Today, X still prominently advertises that paying for checks is the only way to “verify” an account on the platform. But the commission, which has been investigating X since 2023, concluded that “X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users.”

This violates the DSA as the “deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors,” the commission wrote.

Interestingly, the commission concluded that X made it harder to identify bots, despite Musk’s professed goal to eliminate bots being a primary reason he bought Twitter. Perhaps validating the EU’s concerns, X recently received backlash after changing a feature that accidentally exposed that some of the platform’s biggest MAGA influencers were based “in Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world, often linked to online scams and schemes,” Futurism reported.

Although the DSA does not mandate the verification of users, “it clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place,” the commission said. X now has 60 days to share information on the measures it will take to fix the compliance issue.

Elon Musk’s X first to be fined under EU’s Digital Services Act Read More »

New report warns of critical climate risks in Arab region

arabian peninsula, climate change, extreme heat, heat index, Science, syndication / Kelly Newman / December 5, 2025

The new WMO report shows that the foundations of daily life across the Arab region, including farms, reservoirs, and aquifers that feed and sustain millions, are being pushed to the brink by human-caused warming.

Across northwestern Africa’s sun-blasted rim, the Maghreb, six years of drought have slashed wheat yields, forcing countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to import more grain, even as global prices rise.

In parts of Morocco, reservoirs have fallen to record low levels. The government has enacted water restrictions in major cities, including limits on household use, and curtailed irrigation for farmers. Water systems in Lebanon have already crumbled under alternating floods and droughts, and in Iraq and Syria, small farmers are abandoning their land as rivers shrink and seasonal rains become unreliable.

The WMO report ranked 2024 as the hottest year ever measured in the Arab world. Summer heatwaves spread and persisted across Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. Parts of Iraq recorded six to 12 days with highs above 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit), conditions that are life-threatening even for healthy adults. Across the region, the report noted an increase in the number of heat-wave days in recent decades while humidity has declined. The dangerous combination speeds soil drying and crop damage.

By contrast, other parts of the region—the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and southern Saudi Arabia—were swamped by destructive record rains and flooding during 2024. The extremes will test the limits of adaptation, said Rola Dashti, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, who often works with the WMO to analyze climate impacts.

Climate extremes in 2024 killed at least 300 people in the region. The impacts are hitting countries already struggling with internal conflicts, and where the damage is under-insured and under-reported. In Sudan alone, flooding damaged more than 40 percent of the country’s farmland.

But with 15 of the world’s most arid countries in the region, water scarcity is the top issue. Governments are investing in desalination, wastewater recycling, and other measures to bolster water security, but the adaptation gap between risks and readiness is still widening.

The worst is ahead, Dashti said in a WMO statement, with climate models showing a “potential rise in average temperatures of up to 5° Celsius (9° Fahrenheit) by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios.” The new report is important, she said, because it “empowers the region to prepare for tomorrow’s climate realities.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Rocket Report: Blunder at Baikonur; do launchers really need rocket engines?

isar aerospace, launch, openai, rocket report, Science, South Korea, Space, spacex, starship, stoke space, vega c / Kelly Newman / December 5, 2025

The Department of the Air Force approves a new home in Florida for SpaceX’s Starship.

South Korea’s Nuri 1 rocket is lifted vertical on its launch pad in this multi-exposure photo. Credit: Korea Aerospace Research Institute

Welcome to Edition 8.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re back after the Thanksgiving holiday with more launch news. Most of the big stories over the last couple of weeks came from abroad. Russian rockets and launch pads didn’t fare so well. China’s launch industry celebrated several key missions. SpaceX was busy, too, with seven launches over the last two weeks, six of them carrying more Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. We expect between 15 and 20 more orbital launch attempts worldwide before the end of the year.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Another Sarmat failure. A Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired from an underground silo on the country’s southern steppe on November 28 on a scheduled test to deliver a dummy warhead to a remote impact zone nearly 4,000 miles away. The missile didn’t even make it 4,000 feet, Ars reports. Russia’s military has been silent on the accident, but the missile’s crash was seen and heard for miles around the Dombarovsky air base in Orenburg Oblast near the Russian-Kazakh border. A video posted by the Russian blog site MilitaryRussia.ru on Telegram and widely shared on other social media platforms showed the missile veering off course immediately after launch before cartwheeling upside down, losing power, and then crashing a short distance from the launch site.

An unenviable track record … Analysts say the circumstances of the launch suggest it was likely a test of Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat missile, a weapon designed to reach targets more than 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) away, making it the world’s longest-range missile. The Sarmat missile is Russia’s next-generation heavy-duty ICBM, capable of carrying a payload of up to 10 large nuclear warheads, a combination of warheads and countermeasures, or hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Simply put, the Sarmat is a doomsday weapon designed for use in an all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States. The missile’s first full-scale test flight in 2022 apparently went well, but the program has suffered a string of consecutive failures since then, most notably a catastrophic explosion last year that destroyed the Sarmat missile’s underground silo in northern Russia.

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ESA fills its coffers for launcher challenge. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) European Launcher Challenge received a significant financial commitment from its member states during the agency’s Ministerial Council meeting last week, European Spaceflight reports. The challenge is designed to support emerging European rocket companies while giving ESA and other European satellite operators more options to compete with the continent’s sole operational launch provider, Arianespace. Through the program, ESA will purchase launch services and co-fund capacity upgrades with the winners. ESA member states committed 902 million euros, or $1.05 billion, to the program at the recent Ministerial Council meeting.

Preselecting the competitors … In July, ESA selected two German companies—Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg—along with Spain’s PLD Space, France’s MaiaSpace, and the UK’s Orbex to proceed with the initiative’s next phase. ESA then negotiated with the governments of each company’s home country to raise money to support the effort. Germany, with two companies on the shortlist, is unsurprisingly a large contributor to the program, committing more than 40 percent of the total budget. France contributed nearly 20 percent, Spain funded nearly 19 percent, and the UK committed nearly 16 percent. Norway paid for 3 percent of the launcher challenge’s budget. Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic contributed smaller amounts.

Europe at the service of South Korea. South Korea’s latest Earth observation satellite was delivered into a Sun-synchronous orbit Monday afternoon following a launch onboard a Vega C rocket by Arianespace, Spaceflight Now reports. The Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-7 (Kompsat-7) mission launched from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. About 44 minutes after liftoff, the Kompsat-7 satellite was deployed into SSO at an altitude of 358 miles (576 kilometers). “By launching the Kompsat-7 satellite, set to significantly enhance South Korea’s Earth observation capabilities, Arianespace is proud to support an ambitious national space program,” said David Cavaillolès, CEO of Arianespace, in a statement.

Something of a rarity … The launch of Kompsat-7 is something of a rarity for Arianespace, which has dominated the international commercial launch market. It’s the first time in more than two years that a satellite for a customer outside Europe has been launched by Arianespace. The backlog for the light-class Vega C rocket is almost exclusively filled with payloads for the European Space Agency, the European Commission, or national governments in Europe. Arianespace’s larger Ariane 6 rocket has 18 launches reserved for the US-based Amazon Leo broadband network. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

South Korea’s homemade rocket flies again. South Korea’s homegrown space rocket Nuri took off from Naro Space Center on November 27 with the CAS500-3 technology demonstration and Earth observation satellite, along with 12 smaller CubeSat rideshare payloads, Yonhap News Agency reports. The 200-ton Nuri rocket debuted in 2021, when it failed to reach orbit on a test flight. Since then, the rocket has successfully reached orbit three times. This mission marked the first time for Hanwha Aerospace to oversee the entire assembly process as part of the government’s long-term plan to hand over space technologies to the private sector. The fifth and sixth launches of the Nuri rocket are planned in 2026 and 2027.

Powered by jet fuel … The Nuri rocket has three stages, each with engines burning Jet A-1 fuel and liquid oxygen. The fuel choice is unusual for rockets, with highly refined RP-1 kerosene or methane being more popular among hydrocarbon fuels. The engines are manufactured by Hanwha Aerospace. The fully assembled rocket stands about 155 feet (47.2 meters) tall and can deliver up to 3,300 pounds (1.5 metric tons) of payload into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.

Hyundai eyes rocket engine. Meanwhile, South Korea’s space sector is looking to the future. Another company best known for making cars has started a venture in the rocket business. Hyundai Rotem, a member of Hyundai Motor Group, announced a joint program with Korean Air’s Aerospace Division (KAL-ASD) to develop a 35-ton-class reusable methane rocket engine for future launch vehicles. The effort is funded with KRW49 billion ($33 million) from the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement (KRIT).

By the end of the decade … The government-backed program aims to develop the engine by the end of 2030. Hyundai Rotem will lead the engine’s planning and design, while Korean Air, the nation’s largest air carrier, will lead development of the engine’s turbopump. “Hyundai Rotem began developing methane engines in 1994 and has steadily advanced its methane engine technology, achieving Korea’s first successful combustion test in 2006,” Hyundai Rotem said in a statement. “Furthermore, this project is expected to secure the technological foundation for the commercialization of methane engines for reusable space launch vehicles and lay the groundwork for targeting the global space launch vehicle market.”

But who needs rocket engines? Moonshot Space, based in Israel, announced Monday that it has secured $12 million in funding to continue the development of a launch system—powered not by chemical propulsion, but electromagnetism, Payload reports. Moonshot plans to sell other aerospace and defense companies the tech as a hypersonic test platform, while at the same time building to eventually offer orbital launch services. Instead of conventional rocket engines, the system would use a series of electromagnetic coils to power a hardened capsule to hypersonic velocities. The architecture has a downside: extremely high accelerations that could damage or destroy normal satellites. Instead, Moonshot wants to use the technology to send raw materials to orbit, lowering the input costs of the budding in-space servicing, refueling, and manufacturing industries, according to Payload.

Out of the shadows … Moonshot Space emerged from stealth mode with this week’s fundraising announcement. The company’s near-term focus is on building a scaled-down electromagnetic accelerator capable of reaching Mach 6. A larger system would be required to reach orbital velocity. The company’s CEO is the former director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Science, while its chief engineer was the former chief systems engineer for David’s Sling, a critical part of Israel’s missile defense system. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A blunder at Baikonur. A Soyuz rocket launched on November 27 carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, for an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The trio of astronauts arrived at the orbiting laboratory without incident. However, on the ground, there was a serious problem during the launch with the ground systems that support processing of the vehicle before liftoff at Site 31, located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Ars reports. Roscosmos downplayed the incident, saying only, in passive voice, that “damage to several launch pad components was identified” following the launch.

Repairs needed … However, video imagery of the launch site after liftoff showed substantial damage, with a large service platform appearing to have fallen into the flame trench below the launch table. According to one source, this is a platform located beneath the rocket, where workers can access the vehicle before liftoff. It has a mass of about 20 metric tons and was apparently not secured prior to launch, and the thrust of the vehicle ejected it into the flame trench. “There is significant damage to the pad,” said this source. The damage could throw a wrench into Russia’s ability to launch crews and cargo to the International Space Station. This Soyuz launch pad at Baikonur is the only one outfitted to support such missions.

China’s LandSpace almost landed a rocket. China’s first attempt to land an orbital-class rocket may have ended in a fiery crash, but the company responsible for the mission had a lot to celebrate with the first flight of its new methane-fueled launcher, Ars reports. LandSpace, a decade-old company based in Beijing, launched its new Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time Tuesday (US time) at the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China. The upper stage of the medium-lift rocket successfully reached orbit. This alone is a remarkable achievement for a new rocket. But LandSpace had other goals for this launch. The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, booster stage is architected for recovery and reuse, the first rocket in China with such a design. The booster survived reentry and was seconds away from a pinpoint landing when something went wrong during its landing burn, resulting in a high-speed crash at the landing zone in the Gobi Desert.

Let the games begin … LandSpace got closer to landing an orbital-class booster than any other company on their first try. While LandSpace prepares for a second launch, several more Chinese companies are close to debuting their own reusable rockets. The next of these new rockets, the Long March 12A, is awaiting its first liftoff later this month from another launch pad at the Jiuquan spaceport. The Long March 12A comes from one of China’s established rocket developers, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), part of the country’s state-owned aerospace enterprise.

China launches a lifeboat. An unpiloted Chinese spacecraft launched on November 24 (US time) and linked with the country’s Tiangong space station a few hours later, providing a lifeboat for three astronauts stuck in orbit without a safe ride home, Ars reports. A Long March 2F rocket lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew. The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later. Shenzhou 22 will provide a ride home next year for three Chinese astronauts. Engineers deemed their primary lifeboat unsafe after finding a cracked window, likely from an impact with a tiny piece of space junk.

In record time … Chinese engineers worked fast to move up the launch of the Shenzhou 22, originally set to fly next year. The launch occurred just 16 days after officials decided they needed to send another spacecraft to the Tiangong station. Shenzhou 22 and its rocket were already in standby at the launch site, but teams had to fuel the spacecraft and complete assembly of the rocket, then roll the vehicle to the launch pad for final countdown preps. The rapid turnaround offers a “successful example for efficient emergency response in the international space industry,” the China Manned Space Agency said. “It vividly embodies the spirit of manned spaceflight: exceptionally hardworking, exceptionally capable, exceptionally resilient, and exceptionally dedicated.”

Another big name flirts with the launch industry. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has explored putting together funds to either acquire or partner with a rocket company, a move that would position him to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the Wall Street Journal reports. Altman reached out to at least one rocket maker, Stoke Space, in the summer, and the discussions picked up in the fall, according to people familiar with the talks. Among the proposals was for OpenAI to make a multibillion-dollar series of equity investments in the company and end up with a controlling stake. The talks are no longer active, people close to OpenAI told the Journal.

Here’s the reason … Altman has been interested in building data centers in space for some time, the Journal reports, suggesting that the insatiable demand for computing resources to power artificial-intelligence systems eventually could require so much power that the environmental consequences would make space a better option. Orbital data centers would allow companies to harness the power of the Sun to operate them. Alphabet’s Google is pursuing a similar concept in partnership with satellite operator Planet Labs. Jeff Bezos and Musk himself have also expressed interest in the idea. Outside of SpaceX and Blue Origin, Stoke Space seems to be a natural partner for such a project because it is one of the few companies developing a fully reusable rocket.

SpaceX gets green light for new Florida launch pad. SpaceX has the OK to build out what will be the primary launch hub on the Space Coast for its Starship and Super Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle in history, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The Department of the Air Force announced Monday it had approved SpaceX to move forward with the construction of a pair of launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37). A “record of decision” on the Environmental Impact Statement required under the National Environmental Policy Act for the proposed Canaveral site was posted to the Air Force’s website, marking the conclusion of what has been a nearly two-year approval process.

Get those Starships ready … SpaceX plans to build two launch towers at SLC-37 to augment the single tower under construction at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles to the north. The three pads combined could support up to 120 launches per year. The Air Force’s final approval was expected after it released a draft Environmental Impact Statement earlier this year, suggesting the Starship pads at SLC-37 would have no significant negative impacts on local environmental, historical, social, and cultural interests. The Air Force also found SpaceX’s plans at SLC-37, formerly leased by United Launch Alliance, will have no significant impact on the company’s competitors in the launch industry. SpaceX also has two launch towers at its Starbase facility in South Texas.

Next three launches

Dec. 5: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 09: 00 UTC

Dec. 6: Hyperbola 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 00 UTC

Dec. 6: Long March 8A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 07: 50 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: Blunder at Baikonur; do launchers really need rocket engines? Read More »

Welcome to “necroprinting”—3D printer nozzle made from mosquito’s proboscis

3D printing, Biology, Biomechanics, materials science, mosquitos, printing, Science / Kelly Newman / December 4, 2025

“To integrate the proboscis, we first removed it from an already euthanized mosquito under a microscope,” Cao explains. Then the proboscis/nozzle was aligned with the outlet of the plastic tip. Finally, the proboscis and the tip were bonded with UV-curable resin.

The necroprinter achieved a resolution ranging from 18 to 22 microns, which was two times smaller than the printers using the smallest commercially available metal dispensing tips. The first print tests included honeycomb structures measuring 600 microns, a microscale maple leaf, and scaffolds for cells.

But there were still areas in which human-made technology managed to beat Mother Nature.

Glass and pressure

The first issue with mosquito nozzles was their relatively low resistance to internal pressure. “It was impressive but still too low to accommodate some high viscosity inks,” Cao said.

These inks, which look more like a paste than a typical fluid, hold shape better, which translates into more geometrically accurate models that do not slump or spread under their own weight. This was a problem that Cao’s test prints experienced to an extent.

But this wasn’t the only area where human-made technology managed to beat nature. While mosquito nozzles could outperform plastic or metal alternatives in precision, they could not outperform glass dispensing tips, which can print lines below one micron across and withstand significantly higher pressures.

The researchers already have some ideas about how to bridge at least a part of this gap, though. “One possible solution is to use mosquito proboscis as the core and coat it with ceramic layers to provide much higher strength,” Cao said. And if the pressure problem is solved, the 18–22 microns resolution should be good enough for plenty of things.

Cao thinks that in the future, printers like this could be used to print scaffolds for living cells or microscopic electronic components. The idea is to replace expensive, traditional 3D printing nozzles with more affordable organic counterparts. The key advantages of mosquito nozzles, he says, are low cost and ubiquity.

Mosquitoes live almost everywhere on Earth and are easy to rear. The team estimates that organic 3D printing nozzles made from mosquito proboscises should cost around 80 cents; the glass and metal alternatives, the researchers state in the paper, cost between 32 and 100 times more.

“We already started doing more research on mosquitoes themselves and hope to develop more engineering solutions, not only to leverage their deceased bodies but also to solve practical problems they cause,” Cao said.

Science Advances, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw9953

Welcome to “necroprinting”—3D printer nozzle made from mosquito’s proboscis Read More »

Testing shows why the Steam Machine’s 8GB of graphics RAM could be a problem

AMD, gaming, intel, NVIDIA, steam deck, steam machine, steamos, Tech / Kelly Newman / December 2, 2025

By Valve’s admission, its upcoming Steam Machine desktop isn’t swinging for the fences with its graphical performance. The specs promise decent 1080p-to-1440p performance in most games, with 4K occasionally reachable with assistance from FSR upscaling—about what you’d expect from a box with a modern midrange graphics card in it.

But there’s one spec that has caused some concern among Ars staffers and others with their eyes on the Steam Machine: The GPU comes with just 8GB of dedicated graphics RAM, an amount that is steadily becoming more of a bottleneck for midrange GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 7060 and 9060, or Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 or 5060.

In our reviews of these GPUs, we’ve already run into some games where the RAM ceiling limits performance in Windows, especially at 1440p. But we’ve been doing more extensive testing of various GPUs with SteamOS, and we can confirm that in current betas, 8GB GPUs struggle even more on SteamOS than they do running the same games at the same settings in Windows 11.

The good news is that Valve is working on solutions, and having a stable platform like the Steam Machine to aim for should help improve things for other hardware with similar configurations. The bad news is there’s plenty of work left to do.

The numbers

We’ve tested an array of dedicated and integrated Radeon GPUs under SteamOS and Windows, and we’ll share more extensive results in another article soon (along with broader SteamOS-vs-Windows observations). But for our purposes here, the two GPUs that highlight the issues most effectively are the 8GB Radeon RX 7600 and the 16GB Radeon RX 7600 XT.

These dedicated GPUs have the benefit of being nearly identical to what Valve plans to ship in the Steam Machine—32 compute units (CUs) instead of Valve’s 28, but the same RDNA3 architecture. They’re also, most importantly for our purposes, pretty similar to each other—the same physical GPU die, just with slightly higher clock speeds and more RAM for the 7600 XT than for the regular 7600.

Testing shows why the Steam Machine’s 8GB of graphics RAM could be a problem Read More »

Meet CDC’s new lead vaccine advisor who thinks shots cause heart disease

ACIP, anti-vaccine, CDC, fda, health, Kirk Milhoan, myocarditis, robert f kennedy jr, vinay prasad / Kelly Newman / December 2, 2025

Milhoan has a history of touting unproven COVID cures while disparaging vaccines.

Kirk Milhoan, James Pagano, and Robert Malone are seen during a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on September 18, 2025 in Chamblee, Georgia. Credit: Getty | Elijah Nouvelage

When the federal vaccine committee hand-picked by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets again this week, it will have yet another new chairperson to lead its ongoing work of dismantling the evidence-based vaccine recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the chairperson who has been in place since June—when Kennedy fired all 17 expert advisors on the committee and replaced them with questionably qualified allies—is moving to a senior role in the department. Biostatistician Martin Kulldorff will now be the chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), HHS said. As such, he’s stepping down from the vaccine committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Kulldorff gained prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing public health responses to the crisis, particularly lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines. He was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration that advocated for letting the deadly virus spread unchecked through the population, which was called unethical by health experts.

As ACIP chair, Kulldorff frequently made false and misleading statements about vaccine safety and efficacy that were in line with Kennedy’s views and statements. While Kulldorff presided over the committee, it made a series of decisions that were sharply denounced by scientific and medical groups as being based on ideology rather than evidence. Those include voting for the removal of the vaccine preservative thimerosal from some flu vaccines, despite well-established data indicating it is safe, with no evidence of harms. The committee also added restrictions to a combination measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox) MMRV vaccine and made an unprecedented effort to prevent Americans from getting COVID-19 vaccines, though the moves were largely ineffective.

In his new role, Kulldorff will be working with ASPE to provide analyses on health policy options, coordinate research efforts, and provide policy advice.

“It’s an honor to join the team of distinguished scientists that Secretary Kennedy has assembled,” Kulldorff said in a press release announcing his new role. “I look forward to contributing to the science-based public health policies that will Make America Healthy Again.”

The new chair, Kirk Milhoan

With Kulldorff moving on, ACIP will now be chaired by Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric oncologist with a track record for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and anti-vaccine views. In August 2021, the Hawaii Medical Board filed a complaint against Milhoan after he appeared on a panel promoting ineffective COVID-19 treatments, downplaying the severity of the disease, and spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, according to the Maui News. The complaint was dropped in April 2022 after state regulators said they had insufficient evidence to prove a violation of statutes regarding the practice of medicine.

While Milhoan claimed at the time that he is “pro-vaccine,” his statement, affiliations, and prescribing practices suggest otherwise. Milhoan is a member of the Independent Medical Alliance (formerly the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance), a group of dubious health care providers set up amid the pandemic to promote the use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and the de-worming drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Both drugs have shown to be ineffective and potentially harmful when used to treat or prevent COVID-19. The IMA also emphasizes vaccine injuries while pushing vitamins and other unproven treatments.

In 2024, Milhoan appeared on a panel set up by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to discuss alleged injuries from COVID-19 vaccines alongside other prominent anti-vaccine and COVID-19 misinformation voices. In his opening statement, Milhoan suggested that COVID-19 vaccines were causing severe cardiovascular disease and death in people aged 15 to 44—an unsubstantiated claim he frequently echoes. In his bio for the IMA, he touts that he offers treatment for “vaccine-related cardiovascular toxicity due to the spike protein.”

CDC data has found that boys and young men, aged 12 to 24, have a heightened risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) after COVID-19 vaccination. However, the cases are rare, relatively mild, and almost always resolve, according to CDC data. In a COVID-19 safety data presentation in June, CDC staff scientists reported that its vast vaccine safety monitoring systems indicated that in males 12–24, there are 27 myocarditis cases per million doses of COVID-19 vaccine administered (roughly one case in 37,000 doses). In cases identified during 2021, 83 percent recovered within three months, with more than 90 percent recovering within the year. The monitoring data found no instances of cardiac transplant or death from COVID-19 vaccination.

While anti-vaccine activists have seized on this minor risk from vaccination, health experts note that the risk of myocarditis and other inflammatory conditions from a COVID-19 infection is significantly greater than the risk from vaccination. Exact estimates vary, but one CDC study in 2021 found that people with COVID-19 infections had a 16-fold higher risk of myocarditis than people without the infection. Specifically, the study estimated that there were 150 myocarditis cases among 100,000 COVID-19-infected patients versus just nine myocarditis cases among 100,000 people without COVID-19 infections and who were also unvaccinated. Similar to what’s seen with vaccination, the study found that young males were most at risk of myocarditis.

Kennedy’s allies attack on COVID-19 shots

Kennedy and his allies, like Milhoan, have consistently inflated the risk of myocarditis from COVID-19 vaccination, with some claiming without evidence that they have caused sudden cardiac arrest and deaths in young males, though studies have found no such link. In 2022, Milhoan and fellow ACIP member and conspiracy theorist Robert Malone were featured in a viral social media post suggesting that 50 percent of college athletes in the Big Ten athletic conference had myocarditis linked to COVID-19 vaccines, which could lead to deaths if they played. But the two were referencing a JAMA Cardiology study that examined subclinical myocarditis in Big Ten athletes after COVID-19 infection—not vaccination. In fact, researchers confirmed for an AFP fact check that none of the athletes in the study were vaccinated. And the rate of subclinical myocarditis in the group was 2.3 percent, not 50 percent.

Milhoan’s misinformation about the cardiovascular harms from COVID-19 vaccines seems particularly pertinent to the direction of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine allies. On Friday, Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine regulator, sent a memo to staff claiming without evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have killed 10 children. The memo provides little information about the extraordinary claim, but it hints that the deaths were linked to myocarditis and found among reports submitted between 2021 and 2024 to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

VAERS is a system by which anyone, including members of the public, can report anything they think could be linked to vaccines. The reports are considered a type of early warning system, but the vast majority of the reports submitted are not actually related to vaccines. Further, CDC scientists have thoroughly evaluated VAERS reports and ruled out deaths attributed to COVID-19 vaccines. Prasad’s memo—which experts have speculated was designed to be leaked to produce alarming headlines about child deaths—claimed that before Trump administration officials with anti-vaccine views began sifting through the data, these deaths were “ignored” by FDA and CDC scientists. Prasad also claimed that there could be many more deaths that have gone unreported, despite the fact that healthcare providers have been legally required to report any deaths that occurred after COVID-19 vaccination, regardless of cause.

This week’s ACIP meeting

In this week’s scheduled ACIP meeting on Thursday and Friday, COVID-19 vaccines don’t appear on the draft agenda. Instead, ACIP is expected to vote to remove a recommendation for a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. That dose protects newborns from contracting the highly infectious virus from their mothers during birth or from other family or acquaintances shortly after birth. About half of the people infected with hepatitis B are not aware of their infections, and testing of mothers before birth is imperfect. That can leave newborns particularly vulnerable, as infections that start at or shortly after birth almost always develop into chronic infections that can lead to liver disease, liver transplant, and cancer. In a previous ACIP meeting, CDC staff scientists presented data showing that there are no significant harms of birth doses and there is no evidence that delaying the immunization offers any benefit.

The committee is also taking on the childhood vaccine schedule as a whole, though the agenda on this topic is not yet clear. In his memo, Prasad attacked the common practice of providing multiple vaccinations at once, hinting that it could be a way in which the committee will try to dismantle current childhood vaccination recommendations. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that the committee will examine whether the childhood vaccine schedule as a whole is causing allergies and autoimmune diseases, something Kennedy and his anti-vaccine organization have long floated despite evidence refuting a link.

Under clear attack are aluminum salt adjuvants, which are used in many vaccines to help spur protective immune responses. Aluminum salts have been used safely in vaccines for more than 70 years. The FDA notes that the most common source of aluminum exposure is from food and water, not vaccines.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

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Samsung reveals Galaxy Z TriFold with 10-inch foldable screen, astronomical price

Foldables, samsung, smartphones, Tech / Kelly Newman / December 2, 2025

Samsung has a new foldable smartphone, and it’s not just another Z Flip or Z Fold. The Galaxy Z TriFold has three articulating sections that house a massive 10-inch tablet-style screen, along with a traditional smartphone screen on the outside. The lavish new smartphone is launching this month in South Korea with a hefty price tag, and it will eventually make its way to the US in early 2026.

Samsung says it refined its Armor FlexHinge design for the TriFold. The device’s two hinges are slightly different sizes because the phone’s three panels have distinct shapes. The center panel is the thickest at 4.2 mm, and the other two are fractions of a millimeter thinner. The phone has apparently been designed to account for the varying sizes and weights, allowing the frame to fold up tight in a pocketable form factor.

Huawei’s impressive Mate XT tri-fold phones have been making the rounds online, but they’re not available in Western markets. Samsung’s new foldable looks similar at a glance, but the way the three panels fit together is different. The Mate XT folds in a Z-shaped configuration, using part of the main screen as the cover display. On Samsung’s phone, the left and right segments fold inward behind the separate cover screen. Samsung claims it has tested the design extensively to verify that the hinges will hold up to daily use for years.

Precision Engineering in Every Fold | Galaxy Z TriFold

While this does push the definition of “pocketable” for some people, the Galaxy Z TriFold is a tablet that technically fits in your pocket. When folded, it measures 12.9 mm thick, which is much more unwieldy than the Galaxy Z Fold 7‘s 8.9 mm profile. However, the TriFold is only a little thicker than Samsung’s older tablet-style foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold 6. The 1080p cover screen measures 6.5 inches, which is also quite similar to the Z Fold 7. It is very, very heavy for a phone, though, tipping the scales at 309 g.

Samsung reveals Galaxy Z TriFold with 10-inch foldable screen, astronomical price Read More »

Author name: Kelly Newman