By Richard Stone

Scientists have recovered DNA from a disputed Leonardo da Vinci drawing and 15th-century family letters that may contain genetic traces of the Renaissance master himself. The Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project, a decade-long collaboration of researchers, swabbed a red chalk sketch called Holy Child and letters written by Leonardo's cousin, extracting Y chromosome sequences that belong to a genetic grouping from Tuscany, where Leonardo was born. The team can't definitively prove the DNA is Leonardo's. His burial site was disturbed centuries ago and he had no direct descendants, but they're building circumstantial evidence by sequencing DNA from 14 living male descendants of his father and excavating family graves. The work pioneers "arteomics," using biological traces to authenticate artwork beyond traditional expert opinion. If successful, the approach could revolutionize attribution decisions and potentially uncover genetic variants explaining Leonardo's extraordinary visual acuity, which allowed him to sketch transient water patterns flickering at roughly 100 frames per second, far beyond normal human perception.

By Callie Holtermann, Photographs by Nina Riggio

Twenty students at St. John's College in Santa Fe voluntarily surrendered their smartphones for six days, storing them in a suitcase on a dorm closet shelf. Organizer Mary Claire Fagan recruited participants through typewritten fliers promising "a period of fasting" from devices that pulsed with constant distractions. The experiment revealed how thoroughly technology has woven itself into college infrastructure: laundry machines required smartphone apps, paychecks needed mobile banking, and emergency protocols relied on mass texting. Students woke each other with knock-knock alarms, scrawled messages on chalkboards to coordinate meetups, and borrowed physical metronomes for music practice. Most discovered they felt more present and invested in immediate surroundings when stripped of their digital escape hatches. By week's end, participants faced 307 unread texts and a stark choice about permanent changes. Some bought flip phones or pushed for dorm Wi-Fi shutdowns. Others acknowledged the sacrifices felt too steep. Two students left their devices unclaimed in the suitcase days after the fast officially concluded, apparently unbothered by their absence.

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Vietnamese philosopher Trần Đức Thảo arrived in 1930s Paris as a colonial scholarship student and became France's leading interpreter of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, only to abandon both the philosophy and the country that had trained him. His 1951 masterwork "Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism" argued that Husserl's focus on individual experience collapsed into solipsism, unable to account for how biology and history shape consciousness itself. Thảo concluded that only orthodox Marxist materialism could explain human nature without mystification. His political radicalization ran parallel to his philosophical journey. By 1945 he was imprisoned for advocating Vietnamese independence, and his landmark essay "On Indochina" dissected how colonizer and colonized could never debate on shared terms since words like "liberty" and "progress" meant opposite things to each side. He identified how Western universalism erased colonized peoples by design, anticipating Frantz Fanon's foundational work. After bitter disputes with Jean-Paul Sartre over whether existentialism and Marxism were compatible, Thảo departed for Vietnam in 1951. The communist regime later persecuted him, forcing self-criticism and farm labor. He returned to Paris in 1991, spectral and broken, dying two years later with thousands of unpublished pages behind him.

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President Donald Trump fired National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet via Truth Social in May 2025, calling her a "highly partisan person" for supporting diversity programs. Though the Smithsonian's board initially affirmed she kept her job, Sajet resigned three weeks later to avoid escalating attacks on the institution. The president subsequently issued executive orders claiming the Smithsonian operated under "divisive, race-centered ideology," assigning Lindsey Halligan, an insurance attorney with zero arts experience, to purge improper content. Museums responded with frantic self-censorship, scrubbing words like "diversity," "social justice," and even "unjust" from labels describing Japanese American incarceration during World War II. The administration demanded eight museums provide exhaustive documentation within 75 days and begin "content corrections" emphasizing American "strength" and "achievements" over reflection on slavery or historical failures. The Smithsonian faces particular vulnerability because 60% of its funding comes federally, and Trump explicitly threatened to withhold appropriations unless museums conveyed "a positive view of American history."

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Minneapolis, Minnesota and across the country, yesterday, after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.

According to reporting from the Associated Press, Good was shot in the head in front of a family member while attempting to drive from the scene of the altercation. DHS officials have described the shooting as self-defense, accusing Good of attempting to run over the agent. Videos taken from multiple angles at the scene contradict the federal government’s assertion, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey disputing the account and calling on ICE to leave the city. Images of the scene and protest here. (Warning: Graphic Images)

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, offering updated recommendations for a healthy diet.

The Trump administration flipped the food pyramid upside down. Proteins, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats now cluster together at the top of the inverted triangle, while whole grains got demoted to the bottom tier. The graphic replaces MyPlate, the 2011 standard that recommended roughly equal portions of grains and vegetables, smaller servings of protein and fruit, plus dairy on the side. The new guidelines abandon blanket warnings against all fats, distinguishing instead between different fat qualities. Daily alcohol limits disappeared in favor of vaguer guidance to drink less. The update also suggests Americans should roughly double their protein consumption.

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