Guardian investigation: Louisiana’s justice of the peace court system may violate tenants’ constitutional rights as eviction fees boost judges’ incomes
© Photograph: Annie Flanagan/The Guardian
© Photograph: Annie Flanagan/The Guardian
© Photograph: Annie Flanagan/The Guardian
Japan launched a $578 million mission Monday on a five-year expedition to land on the largest moon of Mars and retrieve samples for return to Earth, a daring international project that could yield new insights into the formation of the Solar System.
The robotic Martian Moons eXploration mission, known as MMX, lifted off at 3:41 pm EDT Monday (4:41 am Japan Standard Time Tuesday) from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.
The MMX spacecraft rode into orbit atop a 207-foot-tall (63-meter) H3 rocket, Japan's flagship launch vehicle. The rocket assigned to MMX debuted a new souped-up configuration with four strap-on solid rocket boosters, full-throttle main engines, and an extended payload shroud to accommodate the demands of Japan's heaviest and most ambitious interplanetary mission to date.
© ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/Andrea Luck
Nearly 100 years after the dirigible Graf Zeppelin made the first nonstop airship journey across the Pacific Ocean, another airship has successfully completed a round-trip flight from New Mexico to Japan and back. But the significance of this modern feat was less about the journey's length and more about its purpose: demonstrating how a lighter-than-air platform can act as a cell phone tower in the sky.
The trans-Pacific flight that took place over a month between August and September 2026 was the most notable milestone yet for Sceye, a US aerospace company based near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sceye has developed an uncrewed platform filled with helium for buoyancy and equipped with an electric-powered propeller for active propulsion, allowing it to resist most strong winds and keep hovering over the same location for long periods. The platform also uses top-mounted solar panels and onboard batteries to stay powered for stratospheric operations around the clock.
“We can stay over an area of operation, and we do that in the stratosphere right around 60,000 feet, so we're twice as high as air traffic and we're above the jet stream, and yet 30 times closer than low-Earth orbit satellites,” Mikkel Frandsen, founder and CEO of Sceye, told Ars. “We can fly through day and night until the sun comes up the next morning and recharges the batteries, at which point we're still at the same altitude and still over the same area of operation.”
© Sceye
Students say the school is more interested in scapegoating fraternities than in committing to institutional change
In the wake of a lawsuit over an alleged gang-rape that took place at Cornell University in 2024, the school announced this week that it would be suspending parties and social gatherings at fraternity houses for the remainder of the academic year.
Last month, a former student, referred to in court documents by the pseudonym “Jane Doe”, filed a civil lawsuit against multiple parties, including the university, accusing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of sexually assaulting her at a party at their fraternity house on campus in October 2024. All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied wrongdoing, and none have been criminally charged.
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© Photograph: Adrian Kraus/AP
© Photograph: Adrian Kraus/AP
© Photograph: Adrian Kraus/AP
Disgraced music mogul moved to Pennsylvania prison after reports of perks and fight injuries at New Jersey lockup
Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was convicted of prostitution-related crimes, has been moved to a federal prison in Pennsylvania after reports that the disgraced music producer was living the high life and was injured in a fight at his New Jersey lockup, according to reports.
The US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is transferring Combs, 56, from FCI Fort Dix to FCI Allenwood Low, a low-security facility south of Williamsport and about 155 miles (250km) west of New York City, a person familiar with the matter said to the Associated Press. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
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© Photograph: Jordan Strauss/AP
© Photograph: Jordan Strauss/AP
© Photograph: Jordan Strauss/AP
Soldier who killed 13 people in 2009 will still be executed, but president said ‘people would rather not watch him die’
Donald Trump has shelved a widely condemned plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009.
In a social media post on Thursday, Trump argued that broadcasting such an execution “might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan” but said that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device”.
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© Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
© Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
© Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
Most planetary scientists will tell you the heyday of Venus exploration was more than a generation ago. That is about to change.
Two NASA missions are on track to launch to Venus in the early 2030s. The first, known as the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI), is now scheduled for launch in December 2030, a year earlier than previously planned. DAVINCI will send a parachute-assisted descent probe through the atmosphere of Venus, returning the first direct images of the planet's surface since 1982. A second mission, Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy (VERITAS), will follow with a launch in November 2032 to map the Venusian surface by radar from orbit.
The European Space Agency is building another orbiter, Envision, for launch to Venus in 2032. The Venus armada might get started as soon as next year, when Rocket Lab aims to launch a privately funded probe to search for signs of organic material in the planet's clouds.
© NASA/Mike Guinto
Federal authorities issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas in inquiry into potential immigration fraud
Federal authorities investigating the Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar seized the Democratic lawmaker’s phone and have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, including to some of her relatives, according to a person briefed on the inquiry.
The subpoenas were issued for a grand jury collecting evidence in Minnesota as federal authorities investigate potential fraud in Omar’s immigration paperwork, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The investigation led to federal agents searching Omar’s Washington DC home on Monday just weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is seeking re-election.
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© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
© Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Pike’s lawyers said she is back in same prison she’s lived in for last 30 years and will continue to receive medical care
Christa Pike has been discharged from the hospital after surviving Tennessee’s botched 30 September attempt to execute her by lethal injection and is back in prison, her lawyers said on Saturday.
Pike, 50, returned to the Deborah K Johnson rehabilitation center, where she has been imprisoned for the last three decades, her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, Luke Ihnen, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, said in a statement.
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© Photograph: WBIR-TV/AP
© Photograph: WBIR-TV/AP
© Photograph: WBIR-TV/AP
Leonard Peltier was imprisoned for 49 years before his sentence was commuted. A new Netflix documentary exposes the ‘corrupt’ system that allowed it to happen
On 20 January 2025, with 14 minutes remaining in his term as president, Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, after years of pressure to release a figure seen by many as the longest-serving political prisoner in the US. The Indigenous activist, a leader within the American Indian Movement (Aim) and an icon of Native American resistance, served nearly 50 years in prison for allegedly killing two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, in 1975 – killings he has always denied, prosecuted in a railroaded trial widely seen as corrupt.
Outside the Florida prison where Peltier was being held that morning were several of the many activists and lawyers who fought for his release, as well as film-makers David France and Jesse Short Bull. The two directors’ long-gestating documentary on Peltier’s fight for justice was set to premiere just a week later at the Sundance film festival with a very different ending, the octogenarian still awaiting a chance to return home to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. That morning, there was “a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to happen”, France said.
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© Photograph: Angel White Eyes/NDN COLLECTIVE/Reuters
© Photograph: Angel White Eyes/NDN COLLECTIVE/Reuters
© Photograph: Angel White Eyes/NDN COLLECTIVE/Reuters
Governor halts execution of William Lee Thompson, after Christa Pike survived failed lethal injections
Ron DeSantis cancelled a planned execution in the state on Friday, days before a 74-year-old man was due to be killed by lethal injection.
The move – the first time Florida’s governor has withdrawn a death warrant in his nearly eight years in office – comes just over a week after the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee.
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© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Pentagon said execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be broadcast live
The US is facing worldwide condemnation over a “barbaric” plan to execute a disabled man by firing squad and livestream it to the public, with critics comparing the Trump administration to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would be livestreamed on 3 December.
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© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
© Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Parviz Sabeti denies allegations he led Savak intelligence agency under shah and directed torture of thousands
The alleged “chief torturer” for the deposed Shah of Iran is a step closer to trial for human rights abuses after a Florida federal judge rejected his demand to halt a lawsuit brought by three former political prisoners.
Parviz Sabeti, who was reported last year to have lived in a quiet upscale central Florida community, is accused of being the former head of Savak, the shah’s secret police and intelligence agency. The plaintiffs say they discovered his whereabouts only after a photo of Sabeti at a 2023 protest against the Iranian government was posted on social media by his daughter.
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© Photograph: Alamy
© Photograph: Alamy
© Photograph: Alamy
Recovery marks a dramatic turnaround for Pike, who remains in hospital after a botched execution in Tennessee
Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital, her lawyer said, just more than a week after she survived two lethal injections during a botched execution in Tennessee.
The recovery marks a dramatic turnaround after Pike was declared brain dead on Monday, before waking up and beginning to speak on Tuesday. Her ordeal has shocked many in the US and overseas and galvanized critics of the death penalty.
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© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
Attorneys say Pike was set to be taken off life support before she woke up, as judge orders officials to preserve evidence
Christa Pike awoke “angry and confused” after surviving two lethal injections, her attorneys said on Wednesday, as a judge ordered Tennessee state officials to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution.
Pike, 50, was taken to hospital unconscious but alive from Tennessee’s execution chamber last Wednesday after two supposedly lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital.
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© Photograph: Dipti Vaidya/IMAGN IMAGES/Reuters Connect
© Photograph: Dipti Vaidya/IMAGN IMAGES/Reuters Connect
© Photograph: Dipti Vaidya/IMAGN IMAGES/Reuters Connect
Christa Pike, a death row inmate who survived the state of Tennessee’s attempt to execute her last week, is conscious and speaking. The 50-year-old is recovering in hospital after surviving two lethal injections in a case that has shocked many in the US and prompted a debate about the death penalty. She was due to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Michael Safi speaks to the chief reporter for Guardian US, Ed Pilkington – watch on YouTube
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© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
The prisoner received two doses of pentobarbital as authorities tried to put her to death on 30 September
Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived the state’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said on Tuesday.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital, a sedative, as Tennessee officials attempted to put her to death last Wednesday in a case that shocked many in America and created headlines around the world. She was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
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© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
© Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
© Mason Trinca for The New York Times
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