Systemic warfare and surprise attacks will be key to winning future wars, according to a Study Times commentary published this week that appeared to be based on lessons drawn from the India-Pakistan conflict of early May.
“Recent real-world combat experience from regional conflicts has profoundly revealed the core logic of modern warfare: the contest of individual weapon performance has been replaced by systemic operations,” it said.
While Monday’s article in the newspaper affiliated to the Central Party School did not explicitly refer to the conflict, it contained descriptions that closely mirrored what is reported to have occurred on the battlefield.
According to the commentary, a seemingly weaker force leveraged an imported combat system – “combining data links, early warning aircraft, air defence systems, and coordinated fighter jets” – to overwhelm its opponent’s mishmash of weapons from different countries.
During the four-day skirmish, which began on May 7, Pakistan deployed a combination of Chinese-made weapons against Indian forces equipped with arms from Russia and several Western countries.
One of the conflict’s most notable developments was the combat debut of China’s 4.5-generation J-10C fighter jets, which Pakistan claimed were used to shoot down five Indian fighters, including three French-made Rafales.
As she canvassed for Zohran Mamdani in New York City on Tuesday last week, Batul Hassan should have been elated. The mayoral candidate – a 33-year-old state assemblymember – was surging in the polls and would within hours soundly defeat Andrew Cuomo on first preference votes in the Democratic primary election.
But Hassan’s spirits were hampered by record-breaking temperatures. In Crown Heights, where she was the Mamdani campaign’s field captain, the heat index soared into the triple digits.
“I couldn’t think about anything but the heat,” she said. “It was so dangerous.”
Early that Tuesday morning, Hassan visited a public school polling site, where elderly workers sweltered without air conditioning. The city board of elections sent over paper fans, but they were no match for the heat.
If Mamdani is elected, that school could be retrofitted with air conditioning and green space to bring down temperatures as part of his green schools plan, or could even be transformed into a resilience hub for communities shelter amid extreme weather events.
A fan under the US flag at a polling station during the New York City mayoral Democratic primary in the Brooklyn borough of New York on 24 June 2025. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
“Seeing total infrastructural failure on election day emphasized the stakes of what’s happening with the climate crisis and the importance of the election,” said Hassan, who took time off from her day job at the leftist thinktank Climate and Community Institute to canvass.
Mamdani’s green schools plan is just one of his schemes to slash carbon emissions and boost environmental justice. If elected mayor, his plans for New York City would make residents “dramatically more safe” from extreme weather, said Hassan.
But the democratic socialist, who was endorsed by the national youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement and student-led climate group TREEAge, did not place the climate crisis at the center of his campaign, instead choosing to focus relentlessly on cost-of-living issues. The model could help build popular support for climate policies, supporters say.
“Climate and quality of life are not two separate concerns,” Mamdani told the Nation in April. “They are, in fact, one and the same.”
Over the past two decades, Democrats increasingly focused on the climate. But often, their proposed schemes have been technocratic, Hassan said. Carbon taxes, for instance, can be impenetrably complex, making them difficult candidates for popular support. They can also be economically regressive, with “working class people experiencing them as an additional cost”, Hassan said.
More recently, Joe Biden coupled climate plans with green industrial policy and plans to boost employment. But even those projects can take years to affect tangible change, critics say. As president, for instance, Biden achieved historic climate investments in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). But its green incentives disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and its job creation remains invisible to most people around the country. One poll found only a quarter of Americans felt the IRA benefited them.
“Now with Trump, we see the pitfalls of the IRA, where there is real difficulty in consolidating enough political support to defend those climate policy achievements,” said Hassan.
Mamdani “learned from some of the mistakes” of the Biden administration, said Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which supported Mamdani’s campaign. His housing plan, for instance, aims to lower planet-heating pollution by boosting density, but his signature promise is a rent freeze.
That pledge could ensure residents are not priced out of New York City and forced to move to more carbon-intensive suburbs, and prevent landlords from passing the costs of energy efficiency upgrades or air conditioning installation to renters, preventing displacement, said Hassan.
Similarly, Mamdani’s headline transit goal was to make buses faster and free, which could boost ridership and discourage the use of carbon-intensive cars.
“Public transit is one of the greatest gifts we have to take on the climate crisis,” Mamdani said at a February mayoral forum.
Biden’s IRA placed little focus on boosting public transit, said Gordillo. This was a missed opportunity to cut emissions and also lower Americans’ fuel costs, he said.
“We need to expand mass transit to fight the climate crisis, which hasn’t been a priority for the Democratic establishment,” said Gordillo, who is an electrician by day. “But we also need to expand it because we want to improve people’s lives right now.”
As a New York assemblymember, Mamdani has backed explicitly green policies. He was a key advocate for a boosting publicly owned renewable energy production. The effort aimed to help New York “live up to the dream of our state as being a climate leader”, he said in 2022.
He also fought fossil fuel buildout. He coupled that climate focus with efforts to keep energy bills low, consistently opposing local utilities’ attempts to impose rate hikes, said Kim Fraczek, director of the climate nonprofit Sane Energy Project.
“His growing political influence is a clear win for communities demanding a just transition: renewable power, democratic control and relief from crushing energy costs,” said Fraczek.
Progressive cities like New York are often climate leaders. But if they price out working people, only the wealthy get to see the benefits of their green policies, Mamdani’s backers say.
By crafting popular climate policies, the Democratic nominee is also building a base of New Yorkers who will work to defend those plans in the face of threats from the Trump administration, they say.
“New Yorkers want an affordable city, clean and green schools, fast and free buses, and a rent freeze,” said Daniel Goulden, a co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America ecosocialist working Group. “But most importantly, New Yorkers want a future – one where they can live and thrive in New York.”
In HBO’s signature drama “Six Feet Under,” Hall was consistently praised for his role as David Fisher, the closeted gay member of a dysfunctional family operating a funeral home.
His star status was secured with his portrayal of Dexter Morgan, a Miami-based blood spatter analyst who moonlighted as a serial killer in “Dexter.” The drama flavored with dark comedy was Showtime’s most popular series during its eight-season run, which ended in 2013. And a 2021 reboot, “Dexter: New Blood,” scored solid ratings.
That limited series was most notable for its finale, in which Dexter Morgan was shot and killed by his emotionally damaged son Harrison (Jack Alcott). Acknowledging that devoted fans would likely be upset by Morgan’s demise, Hall was still eager to end the “Dexter” saga.
“It feels justifiable,” said Hall of the conclusion in a 2022 Times interview. “As upsetting as it may be, I hope audiences will appreciate the resonance of Dexter dying this way at the hands of his son.”
He also signaled at that time that he was more than ready to shelve the character he had inhabited on and off since 2006: “Playing Dexter … was a kick. It was an experience I’ve never had before and can’t imagine ever having again. But the desire for closure had to do with wanting to move on.”
Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan in “Dexter: Resurrection,” which is set in New York City.
(Zach Dilgard / Paramount+ with Showtime)
But instead of winding up six feet under, Dexter now lives to kill another day. It turns out he miraculously survived that “fatal” gunshot, and is ready to resume his deadly vigilante campaign in “Dexter: Resurrection,” premiering July 11 with two episodes on Paramount+ with Showtime.
Leading the hurrahs for Dexter’s return is Hall: “I feel excited about his story continuing, and I think people will like it.”
During a video interview from New York before leaving for the last day of shooting, Hall’s upbeat demeanor was a clear indication that Dexter’s life after death agrees with him. He is already primed to keep playing Morgan for the foreseeable future.
“All I can say is I don’t think we embark on this season imagining it as a one-off,” Hall said. “Without giving away too much, I think the door will be open at the end of this.”
Sharing Hall’s enthusiasm is series creator Clyde Phillips, who is resuming his “Dexter” duties as showrunner and executive producer.
“When Michael called me, it was exhilaration,” Phillips said in a phone interview. “He said, ‘Dexter is in my blood, and he’s in your blood. Can you unkill me?’”
“All I can say is I don’t think we embark on this season imagining it as a one-off,” said Michael C. Hall of “Dexter: Resurrection.” “Without giving away too much, I think the door will be open at the end of this.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
The series kicks off with Morgan waking from a 10-day coma. After his recovery, he flees the fictional upstate New York hamlet of Iron Lake, where he had been living under an alias, and heads to New York City to track down — and hopefully reconnect — with Harrison, who is working at a hotel.
It’s not long before Morgan’s killer instincts resurface, eventually joining a group of fellow serial killers. The cast in the 10-episode series includes Uma Thurman, Peter Dinklage, Neil Patrick Harris and Eric Stonestreet.
Morgan’s resurrection had already been previewed in “Dexter: Original Sin,” which premiered last December and has been renewed for a second season. The prequel features Patrick Gibson as a younger Dexter Morgan who starts to indulge his sinister urges while working as a forensics intern at Miami Metro. As he did in “Dexter,” Hall provides the voice-over for his inner thoughts.
Returning from the original cast of “Dexter” for the new drama is James Remar as the ghost of Harry Morgan, Dexter’s adoptive father, and David Zayas as Det. Angel Batista. The series will have a different vibe than the first “Dexter.”
“New York is a completely new environment — different climate, different job,” said Hall, who is also an executive producer. Dexter’s “death” in “New Blood” actually gives the character a new lease on life, literally and figuratively, he added.
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1.David Zayas will reprise his role as Det. Angel Batista in “Dexter: Resurrection.”2.Joining the cast are Uma Thurman as Charley and Peter Dinklage as Leon Prater.(Zach Dilgard/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME)3.Also guest starring is Eric Stonestreet.
“The fact that Dexter didn’t die liberated the character to a degree,” he said. “He can’t go back to who he was, but he can reclaim some of the essential magic of who he is. He is not blind to his past, but he’s not dragging it around in the same way. He’s able to let it be.”
Phillips said there’s a notable difference between the two series when it comes to Hall’s character: “We acknowledge that Dexter is in his 50s. In the pilot of ‘Dexter,’ he was a fit 33-year-old. Now he’s recovering from a gunshot wound. He’s slower and needs to be even smarter.”
Still central to Dexter’s mission is the code inherited from his father, which is to murder only criminals who have escaped punishment. “The code is vital to his integrity and the show,” Phillips said.
The violation of that code sealed Morgan’s fate in “New Blood.” After being arrested as a murder suspect in Iron Lake, Dexter, during a jail escape, killed a police sergeant who had formed a close bond with Harrison.
“He was backed into a corner,” said Hall of Dexter’s dilemma. “He found the consideration of the reality of the wreckage, having played fast and loose with his father’s code, excruciating. He encourages his son to do him in. There was something about what Dexter had come to be that demonstrated that he needed to be taken out.”
But the purpose of “New Blood” was also to correct the biggest stumble in the trajectory of “Dexter” — the series finale.
In that episode, Morgan took his foster sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) off life support after she suffered a stroke. After taking her body out to sea to dispose of it, a distraught Morgan steered his vessel into an approaching hurricane in an apparent suicide attempt. The closing moments revealed that he had survived, winding up in a remote community far from Miami and starting a new life as a lumberjack.
Legions of fans were furious, blasting the ending as perplexing and open-ended. Hall later echoed their unhappiness, stressing that the closure in “New Blood” was much more appropriate and definitive.
“Narratively, it made sense,” Hall said. “But emotionally, it seemed that it was difficult for people to see him go out like that.”
Michael C. Hall on choosing to step away from Dexter for a time: “It was about catching my breath, doing other things, having life go on as it does.”
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
The key to Hall’s interest in reviving the beloved character was getting distance from him.
“It was about catching my breath, doing other things, having life go on as it does,” he said. His post-”New Blood” projects included starring in Broadway’s revival of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and performing in his band, Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, now known as Princess Goes.
Despite those endeavors and others, the possibility of reviving Dexter never completely vanished for Hall, the show’s fan base, or executives at Paramount, which produces the franchise.
The first significant spark ignited a few years ago during a guerrilla-style video shoot in Times Square for Princess Goes that was directed by Marcos Siega, who had helmed several episodes of “Dexter.”
“Seeing Siega and remembering the amazing collaborators we had over the years got me thinking, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but what if Dexter didn’t die?’ ” Hall recalled. “I was compelled by the idea, and once I shared that with others, I realized there was an openness to that notion.”
The studio conducted its own research which revealed that fans found it more plausible that Morgan did not die in “New Blood,” Hall said.
“The fans went crazy after ‘New Blood’ because they love this character so much,” Phillips said. “I’m gratified that Michael wanted to come back.”
Asked about the durability of his character, Hall smiled: “Dexter is cherished or loved for different reasons, but he is nothing if not resilient. It’s undeniable that people relish spending time with someone who is taking responsibility for his darkness. We all have our share of darkness. It’s just not as formidable as Dexter’s.”
Phillips credited Hall’s artistry for the character’s popularity. “Whenever Michael is on screen, there is a power and connection with him,” he said. “As handsome and fit as he is, he’s also an everyman. That is appealing to an audience. This isn’t the Jeffery Dahmer or Ted Bundy story. Dexter has been referred to as America’s favorite serial killer.”
The least of Hall’s challenges was getting back into “Dexter” mode.
“My cycle of cellular regeneration has happened three times over since I started doing this,” he said. “So if Dexter is not in my bones, he’s somewhere in there.”
He smiled again: “The weirdest thing about returning to Dexter is how weird it doesn’t feel. That has to do with the scripts and the stories. I just surrender to it. Whether I return to Dexter or not, it is and will remain at the top of my resume … or obituary.”
In 2021, Google set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Yet in the years since then, the company has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence. In its latest sustainability report, Google said its carbon emissions had increased 51% between 2019 and 2024.
New research aims to debunk even that enormous figure and provide context to Google’s sustainability reports, painting a bleaker picture. A report authored by non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship found that, between 2019 and 2024, Google’s carbon emissions actually went up by 65%. What’s more, between 2010, the first year there is publicly available data on Google’s emissions, and 2024, Google’s total greenhouse gas emissions increased 1,515%, Kairos found. The largest year-over-year jump in that window was also the most recent, 2023 to 2024, when Google saw a 26% increase in emissions just between 2023 and 2024, according to the report.
“Google’s own data makes it clear: the corporation is contributing to the acceleration of climate catastrophe, and the metrics that matter – how many emissions they emit, how much water they use, and how fast these trends are accelerating – are headed in the wrong direction for us and the planet,” said Nicole Sugerman, a campaign manager at Kairos Fellowship.
The authors say that they found the vast majority of the numbers they used to determine how much energy Google is using and how much its carbon emissions are increasing in the appendices of Google’s own sustainability reports. Many of those numbers were not highlighted in the main body of Google’s reports, they say.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the figures.
The authors behind the report, titled Google’s Eco-Failures, attribute the discrepancy between the numbers they calculated and the numbers Google highlights in its sustainability reports to various factors, including that the firm uses a different metric for calculating how much its emissions have increased. While Google uses market-based emissions, the researchers used location-based emissions. Location-based emissions is the average energy the company consumes from local power grids, while market-based emissions include energy the company has purchased to offset its total emissions.
“[Location-based emissions] represents a company’s ‘real’ grid emissions,” said Franz Ressel, the lead researcher and report co-author. “Market-based emissions are a corporate-friendly metric that obscures a polluters’ actual impact on the environment. It allows companies to pollute in one place, and try to ‘offset’ those emissions by purchasing energy contracts in another place.”
The energy the tech giant has needed to purchase to power its data centers alone increased 820% since 2010, according to Kairos’ research, a figure that is expected to expand in the future as Google rolls out more AI products. Between 2019 and 2024, emissions that came primarily from the purchase of electricity to power data centers jumped 121%, the report’s authors said.
“In absolute terms, the increase was 6.8 TWh, or the equivalent of Google adding the entire state of Alaska’s energy use in one year to their previous use,” said Sugerman.
Based on Google’s current trajectory, the Kairos report’s authors say the company is unlikely to meet its own 2030 deadline without a significant push from the public. There are three categories of greenhouse gas emissions – called Scopes 1, 2 and 3 – and Google has only meaningfully decreased its Scope 1 emissions since 2019, according to the Kairos report. Scope 1 emissions, which include emissions just from Google’s own facilities and vehicles, account for only 0.31% of the company’s total emissions, according to the report. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions that come primarily from the electricity Google purchases to power its facilities, and scope 3 accounts for indirect emissions from all other sources such as suppliers, use of Google’s consumer devices or employee business travel.
“It’s not sustainable to keep building at the rate [Google is] building because they need to scale their compute within planetary limits,” said Sugerman. “We do not have enough green energy to serve the needs of Google and certainly not the needs of Google and the rest of us.”
Thirsty, power-hungry data centers
As the company builds out resource-intensive data centers across the country, experts are also paying close attention to Google’s water usage. According to the company’s own sustainability report, Google’s water withdrawal – how much water is taken from various sources – increased 27% between 2023 and 2024 to 11bn gallons of water.
The amount is “enough to supply the potable water needs for the 2.5 million people and 5,500 industrial users in Boston and its suburbs for 55 days”, according to the Kairos report.
Tech companies have faced both internal and public pressure to power their growing number of data centers with clean energy. Amazon employees recently put forth a package of shareholder proposals that asked the company to disclose its overall carbon emissions and targeted the climate impact of its data centers. The proposals were ultimately voted down. On Sunday, several organizations including Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, League of Conservation Voters, Public Citizen, and the Sierra Club, published an open letter in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times calling on the CEOs of Google, Amazon and Microsoft to “commit to no new gas and zero delayed coal plant retirements to power your data centers”.
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“In just the last two years alone, your companies have built data centers throughout the United States capable of consuming more electricity than four million American homes,” the letter reads. “Within five years, your data centers alone will use more electricity than 22 million households, rivaling the consumption of multiple mid-size states.”
In its own sustainability report, Google warns that the firm’s “future trajectories” may be impacted by the “evolving landscape” of the tech industry.
“We’re at an extraordinary inflection point, not just for our company specifically, but for the technology industry as a whole – driven by the rapid growth of AI,” the report reads. “The combination of AI’s potential for non-linear growth driven by its unprecedented pace of development and the uncertain scale of clean energy and infrastructure needed to meet this growth makes it harder to predict our future emissions and could impact our ability to reduce them.”
The Kairos report accuses Google of relying “heavily on speculative technologies, particularly nuclear power”, to achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
“Google’s emphasis on nuclear energy as a clean energy ‘solution’ is particularly concerning, given the growing consensus among both scientists and business experts that their successful deployment on scale, if it is to ever occur, cannot be achieved in the near or mid-term future,” the report reads.
The Kairos report alleges the way that Google presents some of its data is misleading. In the case of data center emissions, for example, Google says it has improved the energy efficiency of its data centers by 50% over 13 years. Citing energy efficiency numbers rather than sharing absolute ones obscures Google’s total emissions, the authors argue.
“In fact, since 2010, the company’s total energy consumption has increased 1,282%,” the report concluded.
BERLIN — In a country that saw its democracy die in 1933, the more than 170,000 people crowding into three of Germany’s biggest soccer stadiums for Bruce Springsteen’s rock concerts in recent weeks have been especially receptive to his message and dire warnings about a politically perilous moment in the United States, one that has reminded some of Adolf Hitler’s power grab in the ’30s.
At these gigantic open-air concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Gelsenkirchen, which have been among the largest concerts to date in Springsteen’s two-month-long, 16-show Land of Hope & Dreams tour across Europe, the 75-year-old rock star from New Jersey has interspersed short but poignant political speeches into his exhausting, sweat-drenched performances to describe the dangers he sees in the United States under the Trump administration.
“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert. “In my home — the America I love, the America I have written about — the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”
Springsteen’s words have had special resonance in Germany, where memories of the Nazi past are never far from the surface and the cataclysmic demise of the Weimar Republic, which led directly to Hitler’s takeover, is studied in great detail in schools and universities. With that Nazi past embedded in their DNA, German fears of President Trump’s tactics probably run higher than anywhere else.
“Germans tend to have angst about a lot of things and they are really afraid of Trump,” said Michael Pilz, a music critic for the Welt newspaper, who agrees that the death of German democracy in 1933 is a contributing factor to the popularity of Springsteen’s anti-Trump concerts this summer. “A lot of Germans think Trump is a fool. It’s not only his politics but the way he is, just so completely over the top. Germans love to see Trump getting hit. And they admire Springsteen for standing up and taking it to him.”
“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert.
(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)
The crowds in Germany have been as large as they are enthusiastic. More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11; 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18; and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27. All told, more than 700,000 tickets have been sold for the 16 shows in Springsteen’s tour (for concerts that last three or more hours), which concludes on July 3 in Milan, Italy.
“The German aversion to Trump has now become more extreme in his second term — Germans just don’t understand how the Americans could elect someone like Trump,” said Jochen Staadt, a political science professor at the Free University in Berlin who is also a drummer in an amateur Berlin rock band. Staadt believes Springsteen’s 1988 concert may well have helped pave the way for the Berlin Wall to fall a little over a year later in 1989. “Germans are drawn to Springsteen as someone who played an important role in our history when Germany was still divided and as someone who may have helped overcome that division with rock music.”
Springsteen has been filling stadiums across Europe in the warm summertime evenings with his high-energy shows that not only entertain the tremendous crowds but also take on Trump’s policies on civil liberties, free speech, immigrants and universities in thoughtfully constructed messages. To ensure nothing is lost in translation, Springsteen’s brief forays into politics of about two to three minutes each are translated for local audiences in German, French, Spanish, Basque and Italian subtitles on the giant video walls onstage.
To ram the message home to more people, Springsteen also released a 30-minute recording from the first stop of the tour in Manchester, England, that contains three songs and three of his speeches onstage.
“I’ve always tried to be a good ambassador for America,” said Springsteen while introducing “My City of Ruins,” a song he wrote after the 9/11 terror attacks that has taken on a new meaning this summer. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we’ve come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy and they’re simply too important to ignore.”
Springsteen’s first speech during the tour’s Manchester show on May 17 prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump on his Truth Social platform. “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock’… and this dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare’. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
Springsteen did not respond directly. Instead, he repeated his messages at every concert across Europe. He delivered more political commentary in introducing his song “House of a Thousand Guitars” by saying: “The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people. You and me. It’s the union of people around a common set of values. That’s all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve really got is each other.” In the song, Springsteen sings about “the criminal clown has stolen the throne / He steals what he can never own.”
His concerts also included the live debut of “Rainmaker,” about a con man, from his 2020 “Letter to You” album. At the concerts in Europe, Springsteen dedicates the song to “our dear leader,” with a line that goes: “Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white / Says night’s day and day’s night.”
More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11, 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18, and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27.
(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)
He also changed one line in the song from “they don’t care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land,” to “they don’t care or understand how easy it is to let freedom slip through your hands.”
Springsteen’s enormous popularity across Europe has long been on a different level than in the United States, and that gap could grow even wider in the future. Springsteen’s close friend and the band’s lead guitarist, Steve Van Zandt, recently observed in an interview with the German issue of Playboy magazine that the E Street Band may have lost half of its audience back home because of the group’s unabashed opposition to Trump. (The band’s concerts in the United States are often held in smaller indoor arenas.)
Bruce Springsteen, left, performs with Steven Van Zandt: at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)
But in Europe, Springsteen and his band have been reliably filling cavernous stadiums during the long, daylight-filled summertime evenings for decades with improbably enthusiastic crowds that sing along to the lyrics of his songs and spent most of the concerts on their feet dancing and cheering. There are also large numbers of hearty Springsteen fans from scores of countries who use their entire yearly allotment of vacation to follow him from show to show across the continent. This summer, Springsteen’s message has been amplified even more, sending many in the boomer-dominated crowds into states of near-ecstasy and attracting considerable media attention in countries across Europe.
“The message of his music always touched a deep nerve in Europe and especially Germany, but ever since Trump was elected president, Springsteen’s voice has been incredibly important for us,” said Katrin Schlemmer, a 56-year-old IT analyst from Zwickau who saw five Springsteen concerts in June — from Berlin to Prague to Frankfurt and two in San Sebastián, Spain. All told, Schlemmer has seen 60 Springsteen concerts in 11 countries around the world since her first in East Berlin in 1988 — a record-breaking, history-changing concert with more than 300,000 spectators that some historians believe may have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall just 16 months later.
“A lot of Germans can’t fathom why the Americans elected someone like Trump,” said Schlemmer, who had the chance to thank Springsteen for the 1988 East Berlin concert at a chance meeting after a 2014 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. “We saw for ourselves how quickly a democracy was destroyed by an authoritarian. The alarm bells are ringing about what a danger Trump is. People love [Springsteen] here because he tells it like it is and because he is standing up to Trump.”
Stephan Cyrus, a 56-year-old manager from Hamburg, said Germans view Springsteen as a trustworthy American voice during a period of uncertainty.
“When Germans hear Springsteen speaking about his worries about the United States, they listen, because so many of us have so much admiration and longing for the United States and are worried about the country’s direction too,” said Cyrus, who saw the June 11 concert in Berlin. “He definitely touched us with his words.”
In one of his concert speeches, Springsteen goes after Trump without mentioning his name.
Spectators watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform at the Olympic Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)
“There is some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.”
Springsteen then adds: “In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they are inflicting on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t back down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”
He tells the audiences that those in the administration “have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”
But Springsteen ends on a hopeful note, promising his audiences: “We’ll survive this moment.”
The symptoms: Seven hours before being admitted to a hospital, the patient developed shortness of breath, abdominal pain and “obvious” abdominal distension, meaning his belly appeared very bloated and stretched out, doctors wrote in a report of the case. He’d had trouble urinating and defecating for about four days, and one week prior to admission, he’d been given antiviral and pain-relieving medicines for a case of shingles that was affecting his lower back, around the sacrum, or the base of the spine.
What happened next: At the emergency department, doctors found that the patient’s abdomen was “distended and painful,” especially beneath the stomach, and there were signs of “massive” fluid buildup. Around the base of the spine, there was visible skin damage from shingles, which causes painful rashes of fluid-filled blisters. The man’s heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate were high, but he had no fever. The amount of oxygen circulating in his blood was low, while markers of inflammation and acid levels in the blood were elevated.
A CT scan of the abdomen confirmed a large amount of fluid in the man’s pelvis and abdomen. After being transferred to the intensive care unit, the patient had a catheter placed, allowing bloody urine to pour out of his body for three hours straight. The doctors, who had already suspected that the man’s bladder may have ruptured, then introduced blue dye to the catheter to see if it ended up in the abdomen.
The diagnosis: This dye test also pointed to a bladder rupture, so the doctors performed surgery to both confirm the problem and repair it. During the operation, they found a nearly 0.8-inch (2 centimeters) tear in the bladder wall.
The treatment: The medical team repaired the tear in the man’s bladder during the surgery. They also placed a catheter and performed a cystostomy, which allows urine to exit the bladder through a temporary opening in the abdominal wall. While recovering from surgery, the patient also got antiviral medications for several weeks to treat his shingles.
“The patient regained complete bladder function after undergoing surgery to repair the bladder and treatment with antiviral drugs,” his doctors reported.
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What makes the case unique: “Spontaneous bladder rupture is an extremely rare urological emergency that can be life-threatening,” the patient’s doctors wrote in their report. Common causes include chronic bladder infections, bladder obstructions, cancerous tumors and cancer treatments designed to kill tumors in the pelvic area.
In this case, however, the rupture appeared to be triggered by shingles, which is caused by the varicella zoster virus. The same virus causes chickenpox, and after a chickenpox infection, it can go dormant, hide in the body’s nerves, and reactivate later to cause shingles. (The reactivated virus is known as herpes zoster.)
A rare complication of shingles is urinary retention, in which the bladder doesn’t empty enough or at all when someone urinates. But the man’s doctors believe this is the first known time that the infection has led to bladder rupture.
Although urinary retention occurs in roughly 4% of shingles cases, it happens at a higher rate in patients whose shingles affects their lower spine and sacrum. It’s thought that the complication can arise from inflammation of the bladder, of the nerves that connect to the bladder, or of the nearby nerves of the spinal cord. This inflammation makes it harder for the bladder wall to contract and thus empty urine
In this patient’s case, a history of diabetes may have complicated the picture, as both diabetes and shingles may have contributed to nerve issues that decreased the man’s ability to sense that his bladder was full. This may have kept him from seeking treatment early on, raising the likelihood that his bladder would rupture when it got too full, the doctors wrote.
“The risk of herpes zoster-associated urinary system dysfunction cannot be ignored,” they concluded. “Urgent intervention is required.”
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari speaking at a seminar in Islamabad titled “Pakistan: A Bulwark Against Terrorism”, organised by Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI). — X/@IPRI_Pak
Bilawal calls for talks, peace, and Kashmir resolution.
Slams Indian leadership for zero-sum approach.
Urges end to weaponisation of Indus Waters Treaty.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has said Pakistan is ready to build a “historic and phenomenal partnership” with India to jointly combat terrorism, urging New Delhi to abandon its confrontational posture and engage in meaningful dialogue for peace.
Speaking at a seminar in Islamabad titled “Pakistan: A Bulwark Against Terrorism”, Bilawal called on Indian leadership to move past zero-sum thinking and cooperate on counter-extremism, not as rivals, but as neighbours with a shared duty to protect the lives of over a billion people in South Asia.
“All it requires is for India’s leadership to step down from the high horse that is galloping its republic towards the abyss,” Bilawal said. “Pursue peace with Pakistan. Sit with us. Talk to us. Let us resolve Kashmir [dispute] in accordance with the aspirations of its people.”
He further called for an end to the “weaponisation of water”, referencing India’s recent move to suspend participation in the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) — an accord brokered by the World Bank in 1960 which governs the use of shared rivers.
“Let us end the weaponisation of water and build instead a peace as mighty as the Himalayas,” Bilawal urged. “Let us return to our shared traditions grounded not in hatred but in the ancient soil of the Indus Valley Civilization.”
His comments came in the wake of renewed tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours after India accused Pakistan of involvement in the killing of 26 civilians in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) earlier this year — an allegation Islamabad has strongly denied. The spike in violence marked one of the worst escalations in decades before a ceasefire was reached.
India’s April decision to suspend the IWT prompted a strong response from Pakistan, which welcomed a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) reaffirming its stance. Pakistan maintains that the treaty does not allow for unilateral withdrawal or suspension.
Highlighting Pakistan’s extensive experience in combating extremism, Bilawal also invited the international community to engage with the country’s counterterrorism infrastructure.
“Come train with us. Come learn from Pakistan. Learn from our armed forces, our special forces, our police force,” he said. “We have waged the most extensive counterterrorism and counter-violent extremism battle from generation to generation.”
He described Pakistan’s counterterrorism data and experiences as invaluable to global partners. “Study our counterterrorism authority dataset. Few databases are richer. Come walk a rebuilt Pakistan in the aftermath of terror. Few places tell a more vivid before and after.”
Reiterating his offer of cooperation, Bilawal offered a vision of reconciliation: “Let’s let partnership replace perception. It is not weakness to extend a hand. It is wisdom.”
BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — India was 98-2 at lunch after being made to bat first by England to start the second test at Edgbaston on Wednesday.
Yashasvi Jaiswal was 62 not out, after Lokesh Rahul chopped on to his stumps on 2 early on, and Karun Nair was out minutes before lunch when he picked out second slip.
Rahul’s wicket was reward for England’s tight bowling on a dry, batter-friendly pitch under sunny skies.
Then Nair’s ambition sparked Jaiswal out of uncharacteristic caution and they accelerated to hit 16 boundaries in a stand of 80 runs off 90 balls.
But Nair’s wicket stopped the session from being dominated by India.
Captain Shubman Gill was with Jaiswal on 1.
The first hour was attritional for India, with England seamer Chris Woakes particularly effective.
He got Rahul out and had big lbw shouts against Jaiswal on 12 and Nair on 5. Both times the ball was tracking to clip the top of off stump but the batters survived on umpire calls.
Nair was promoted from No. 6 in the batting order to No. 3 for the first time in a test and quickly passed Jaiswal’s score by driving at Woakes and Josh Tongue.
Jaiswal was unusually strangled but didn’t give England the mistake it was waiting for. He opened up in the second hour by smashing fuller-length deliveries to the boundary by Tongue and Ben Stokes.
His rising confidence brought out his imagination, including an overhead volley smash of Stokes to the boundary. He brought up his 50 with his 10th boundary — an overhead cut, on his toes, off Tongue. His 16th 50-plus score in his 21st test came off 58 balls.
Nair fell softly after a bowling change and the return of Brydon Carse.
India revealed its lineup after England won the toss and surprised by resting its best bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, and not picking wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav, who was missed in the series-opening loss in Leeds last week.
Sai Sudharsan, who made his test debut in Leeds, and Shardul Thakur were dropped and Nitish Kumar Reddy and Washington Sundar picked in an attempt by India to try and balance batting depth with a side that can take 20 wickets. India became the first side to lose a test after hitting five centuries.
The new spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral.
Credit: SpaceX
Europe has added to its weather monitoring and Earth-observation capacity with the launch of the MTG-S1 satellite and the Sentinel-4 instrument. The launch took place late July 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, with satellite signal acquisition 35 min. later, followed by solar array…
Robert Wall
Robert Wall is Executive Editor for Defense and Space. Based in London, he directs a team of military and space journalists across the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific.
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Traditional medical tests often require clinical samples to be sent off-site for analysis in a time-intensive and expensive process. Point-of-care diagnostics are instead low cost, easy-to-use, and rapid tests performed at the site of patient care. Recently, researchers at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology reported new and optimized techniques to develop better biosensors for the early detection of disease biomarkers.
People have long been fascinated with iridescence of peacock feathers, appearing to change color as light hits them from different angles. With no pigments present in the feathers, these colors are a result of light interactions with nanoscopic structures, called photonic crystals, patterned across the surface of the feathers.
Inspired by biology, scientists have harnessed the power of these photonic crystals for biosensing technologies due to their ability to manipulate how light is absorbed and reflected. Because their properties are a result of their nanostructure, photonic crystals can be precisely engineered for different purposes.
The Nanosensors Group at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, led by Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Brian Cunningham (CGD leader), previously developed photonic crystal-based biosensors that amplify the fluorescence using gold nanoparticles, which act as tags for sensing various molecular biomarkers. But while this innovative technology enables low-level detection of biomarker molecules, it still has room for further improvement.
“Traditionally, metal nanoparticles, especially gold, offer the potential for fluorescence enhancement, but suffer from a fundamental flaw at close range,” said Seemesh Bhaskar, an IGB fellow in the CGD research theme and lead author of the study. “These nanoparticles can quench— or decrease—the very fluorescence signals they aim to amplify. This creates a dead zone of detection, limiting the sensitivity of biosensors.”
In a paper published in MRS Bulletin, the research team aimed to overcome this limitation by introducing a new class of cryosoret nanoassemblies; these organized structures comprised of gold nanoparticle subunits are formed via rapid cryogenic freezing.
“Self-assembly is a fundamental principle of nature, whether it’s the formation of planetary systems in cosmology or the precise organization of nucleotides in DNA,” Bhaskar said. “What individual nanoparticles cannot accomplish alone becomes possible through their collective organization. At its core, it’s about engineering optical behavior—both structurally and functionally—through deliberate design.”
By integrating these cryosoret nanoassemblies with specially designed photonic crystals, the fluorescence demonstrated a 200-fold signal enhancement compared to the photonic crystal alone. This showed that fluorescence quenching was effectively minimized, making this technology a promising avenue for detecting low concentrations of biomarkers.
Building upon this work, the team next sought to introduce magnetic tunability into the nanoassemblies, with the long-term goal of developing intelligent, responsive biosensors.
Light is a specific frequency range of electromagnetic radiation; other examples include radio waves, microwaves, and X-rays. Electromagnetic radiation travels through space in the form of waves, and as its name suggests, consists of both electrical and magnetic components. While many biosensing systems take advantage of the electrical component of light, the magnetic component is largely overlooked.
In a study reported in the journal APL Materials, Bhaskar and his colleagues designed magneto-plasmonic cryosoret nanoassemblies. They integrated these nanoassemblies onto a photonic crystal interface and found that it successfully harnessed both the electric and magnetic components of light. They tested their platform using a common fluorophore, which resulted in ultra-sensitive detection in the attomolar range, while still minimizing fluorescence quenching.
Overall, this dual-mode interaction allows for enhanced control over light-matter interactions at the nanoscale, offering a new method to design highly sensitive and tunable biosensing platforms.
“This work represents a hybrid optical platform where photons are not merely emitted—they are orchestrated,” Cunningham said. “This convergence of photonic-plasmonic simulations, advanced nanofabrication, and chemical engineering principles has far-reaching implications, particularly in the realm of medical diagnostics.”
Moving forward, the researchers plan to continue optimizing the cryosoret nanoassemblies to target specific biomarkers, like microRNAs, circulating tumor DNA, and viral particles, for early detection of cancer and infectious disease. They hope that with further improvement, point-of-care technologies can meet the pressing need for sensitive, accessible, and deployable biosensing systems.
Reference: Bhaskar S, Liu L, Liu W, et al. Photonic crystal band edge coupled enhanced fluorescence from magneto-plasmonic cryosoret nano-assemblies for ultra-sensitive detection. APL Materials. 2025;13(4):041103. doi: 10.1063/5.0251312
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