Immigration officers will start this type of vetting.
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Good morning, happy Monday! Here are today’s top stories. |
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An idyllic Orange County community has seen an apparent explosion in cancer cases affecting both humans and dogs. Residents say it's caused by the spraying of toxic pesticides, Beige Luciano-Adams reports.
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A new deal with Venezuela that gives the United States majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves is expected to reshape global oil markets and give Washington significant control over oil prices. Here’s what to know.
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The breakdown of the U.S.-Canada trade talks owes to one factor that hasn’t been publicly named by both sides—China. That’s according to analysts who spoke to Terri Wu. They said that the United States is concerned that Canada could be used as a backdoor for Chinese overcapacity to flood the U.S. market, despite tariffs on Chinese imports. For Canada, China is also part of the calculus for offsetting U.S. pressure. But analysts say that could bring long-term damage to Canadians.
- Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. told The Epoch Times that a Chinese diplomat disrespected his country during a tense meeting over Taiwan’s participation in a regional summit hosted by the Pacific island nation.
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🍵 Health: Every night while you sleep, a microscopic cleaning crew moves through your eyes and flushes out the biochemical debris—a recovery process your retinas depend on.
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(John Moore/Getty Images) |
There used to be an extra hurdle to clear for people who wanted to become U.S. citizens: neighborhood investigations. Immigration officers would interview neighbors, landlords, employers, coworkers, and nearby business staff. Dropped some 35 years ago, the Trump administration is bringing it back.
Our reporter Jacki Thrapp takes us through what immigration officers will be looking for. |
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Limited-Time Offer: 7 days FREE, then $26 for one year. |
In times of crisis, it’s easy for your mind to feel bombarded—notifications, headlines, endless scrolling. It feels like information overload, but science shows it’s worse: shallow, fragmented content actually changes your brain, training it for distraction.
Stanford research proves the opposite is also true: deep, focused reading boosts blood flow in critical brain regions, providing a “truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.” And a study published in Neuroscience News shows that consistent cognitive engagement such as reading can even delay cognitive decline by years.
What you feed your brain defines how it performs. Shallow content trains distraction. Deep, quality reading trains focus and insight.
At The Epoch Times, we don’t serve you noise. We deliver intelligent, independent journalism—content that sharpens memory, enriches thought, and gives your mind the clarity it deserves.
If you’re ready for a real mental detox, stop scrolling and start reading news that strengthens your mind. |
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The green lawns and landscaping of Ladera Ranch, Calif., are toxic to pets and people, residents fear. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) |
LADERA RANCH, Calif.—In 2019, Kara Bell began firing off a series of emails to her homeowners association, hoping to find out what kind of herbicides gardeners were using on the many sports fields, pocket parks, and schools that pepper the hillside community of Ladera Ranch, a private enclave in the southeastern corner of unincorporated Orange County.
Like many residents, Bell was drawn to the safety and family amenities in this master-planned community, which sits just above an arroyo on historic ranchland in Southern California. “We loved it. Everything was great. It’s an amazing community,” she told The Epoch Times.
Walking her son to school one day, she saw a man fully covered in protective equipment, spraying the sidewalks. Bell said her inquiries indicated that the landscaping company contracted by the homeowners association was not warning residents before applying pesticides, including on school fields. She said that when she asked what, where, and how much they were spraying, she was stonewalled.
After much prodding, the state’s pesticide regulator eventually assured her the company would face consequences for future violations of a state law requiring it to report pesticide use at schools.
“It was constant violations,” she said. “And our HOA, anytime I would report, they would kind of push back and say, ‘Well, we have to do it because the community wants it to look like Disneyland,’ and ‘We can’t have any weeds,’ and ‘It’s too expensive to go non-toxic’—just giving us all the excuses.”
The allusion is material: Ladera Ranch’s primary landscape maintenance contractor was founded by a former landscape manager for Disneyland Resort in nearby Anaheim. Like the theme park, the suburb is arranged in interconnected “villages” whose vaguely anachronistic façades evoke a nebulous, cartoon mashup of small-town Americana. Its sports fields, strip malls, community centers, hillsides and parks, playgrounds and splash pads are all obsessively manicured, every bit of the plant life spaced, shaped, and tamed according to plan.
As she pushed to obtain pesticide records, Bell became alarmed at reports of neighbors losing their dogs prematurely to cancer. Then, there seemed to be an explosion of rare cancer cases in a human population of around 25,000. (More) |
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Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Aug. 10, 2026. (Ali Saeedi/Getty Images) |
- U.S. Forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers loaded with sea mines on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, marking the first military action against Tehran in a month.
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A federal judge has ruled that the government violated the First and Fifth amendments by using immigration laws to threaten noncitizens with visa revocation and deportation based on their protected speech. The plaintiffs alleged that the government targeted foreign students who expressed support for Palestinians or criticized Israel’s actions.
- President Donald Trump said that NBC News’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker will be reported to the Federal Communications Commission over her comments on the president’s endorsement record.
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- Google Maps has updated its site to include Lake America in place of Lake Ontario, following the direction of President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Great Lake.
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NASA launched its latest addition to its fleet of space telescopes, beginning a multi-year mission of cosmic discovery that is promising to dwarf that of its predecessors.
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X has said it uncovered a Chinese bot farm of approximately 200,000 inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations.
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Cybersecurity researchers have found surveillance backdoors in Chinese carrier routers made by Zbtlink and the same software in a different Zbtlink-made router sold through Amazon.
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A Chinese national studying at a Canadian university has been charged with lying to American officials to conceal that he took photographs at a Chicago airport cargo facility at the direction of a suspected Chinese official.
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Two days ahead of a national referendum on Iceland's European Union accession negotiations, supporters of the "no" campaign wave Icelandic flags during a rally in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Aug. 27, 2026. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images) |
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Icelanders voted against reopening negotiations to join the European Union, handing Social Democrat Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir’s government a defeat in a referendum it had brought forward by more than a year.
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The United States said that about 85 Americans remain missing following last week’s devastating flood, which engulfed villages along the border between China and Nepal and wrecked critical infrastructure in the region.
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The Chinese regime’s detention of U.S. citizen U Min Zin amounts to coercive “hostage diplomacy,” serving as a serious global warning that other authoritarian states could adopt similar tactics, experts warn.
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- Freedom Is on the Rise in Latin America—by Steven W. Mosher (Read)
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Homer’s Odyssey and the Future of Education—by Scott Masson (Read)
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(New Africa/Shutterstock) |
Christine Beal Dunst’s citrus cod en papillote is fresh, colorful, packed with nutrients, and ready in less than 30 minutes.
Layer wild-caught white fish with vibrant vegetables, fresh herbs, citrus, and seasonings inside parchment paper, then let the oven do the work. The best part? Almost no cleanup. |
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“Things which seemed reasonable were often found to be untrue, and things which seemed unreasonable were sometimes true.” |
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