A lab at Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, Massachusetts, in September 2022. | Bloomberg via Getty Images New regulations are a win for safe synthetic DNA. In the past, if you were a researcher who wanted to study a specific strand of DNA or RNA, you’d have to go through the laborious process of coaxing some bacteria to produce it for you in the lab. Not anymore: These days, you can send your DNA or RNA order off to a synthetic biology lab that can print those genetic sequences for you. It’s an incredible technology that pairs well with other exciting new biological technologies. The just-released ne ..read more

Stormy Daniels leaves Manhattan Criminal Court on May 9, 2024, in New York City. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images What we learned from Daniels’s testimony. A New York case against former President Donald Trump, once considered the least important of the four criminal suits he faces, could now be the only one to have a direct impact ahead of the election. This case, which centers on whether Trump falsified business records in order to hide hush money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels, is currently on trial. (Two cases involving Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as ..read more

Refugees fleeing fighting in Darfur arrive at the border between Sudan and Chad on April 22, 2024, in Adre, Chad. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images International impunity helped allow a power struggle in Sudan to spiral into ethnic violence. Twenty years ago, American celebrities like George Clooney and Ryan Gosling urged us all to “Save Darfur” from the brutal conflict and ethnic cleansing campaign occurring under Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is now gone, but the militias he empowered have been carrying out brutal ethnic cleansings yet again in at least some parts of Darfur, according to a ..read more

Japan relies on coal power more than any other G7 country, but it’s aiming to make big cuts. | Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images If a wealthy, advanced economy is having a hard time getting off coal, what does it mean for the rest of the world? Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel by far, producing more particulate air pollution and global warming gasses than any other, per unit of energy. But for some countries — even ones with the money and the motivation to go green — coal can be hard to quit. Last month in Italy, members of the G7 — a consortium of industrialized democracies that includes ..read more

We set out to solve why a forest in the middle of Uruguay looked like that — and wound up discovering something much bigger. Deep in the geographic center of Uruguay, there’s a peculiar group of trees just a few kilometers down the road from the small town of San Gregorio de Polanco. From the ground, it looks like any other forest, with tall trees reaching deep as far as the eyes can see. But from above, the view is mind-boggling: Hundreds of trees are arranged in perfect concentric arcs, all spiraling toward the center. Together, they look remarkably like a human fingerprint. When we first s ..read more

Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Was this book the reason TikTok is getting banned in the US? No, but ads saying so sold a lot of copies. If you’ve spent enough time scrolling through TikTok, you might have seen a video from an account like @tybuggyreviews, a handle with half a million followers that exclusively posts videos selling products through the TikTok Shop. The creator, whose verified Instagram account identifies him as Tarik Garrett, used the @tybuggyreviews account to pitch viewers on supplements, water flossers, earbuds, workout machines ..read more

Franco Zacha for Vox Because of one law, the internet has no legal duty of care when it comes to hate speech. Just take a look at what happened in Myanmar. Just after the clock struck midnight, a man entered a nightclub in Istanbul, where hundreds of revelers welcomed the first day of 2017. He then swiftly shot and killed 39 people and injured 69 others — all on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Among those killed was Jordanian citizen Nawras Alassaf. In response, his family filed a civil suit later that year against Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube. They b ..read more

Mexico City is being threatened by a water crisis after the main reservoirs remain under 40 percent of their full capacity due to low rainfall, geography, and lack of infrastructure. | Hector Vivas/Getty Images Mexico City is staring down a water crisis. It won’t be the last city to do so. Mexico City is parched. After abysmally low amounts of rainfall over the last few years, the reservoirs of the Cutzamala water system that supplies over 20 percent of the Mexican capital’s 22 million residents’ usable water are running out. “If it doesn’t start raining soon, as it is supposed to, these [rese ..read more

Palestinians walk around the rubble of buildings destroyed after an Israeli attack on the As Salam neighborhood in Rafah, Gaza, on May 6, 2024. | Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images The US has offered unconditional military aid to Israel throughout the war in Gaza. Israel’s operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that houses more than a million displaced Palestinians, may have finally forced the Biden administration to do something it has been hesitant to do: pause a weapons shipment to Israel. The administration has been reluctant to restrict military aid to Israel in any way ..read more

Drake and Kendrick Lamar performing onstage. | Prince Williams/Wireimage, C Flanigan/Getty Images The rappers accused one another of abusing women, but weaponizing Me Too isn’t the same as standing up for women. The first weekend of May was the ultimate gift to rap fans. After more than a month of subliminal barbs and third-party interference, Drake and Kendrick Lamar went back-to-back with heavyweight diss tracks. Over the course of 72 hours, they created an amount of mayhem that hasn’t been seen in hip-hop since Drake was last accused of hiding a child. (There’s allegedly another one, per La ..read more