Although the Trump administration approved Nexstar Media Group’s $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, a US judge has ordered the two companies to stop integrating their assets and operations. US District Judge Troy Nunley, an Obama appointee, issued a temporary restraining order on Friday prohibiting integration of the companies until further rulings by the court.

"Defendants must immediately cease all ongoing actions relating to integration and consolidation of Nexstar and Tegna," wrote Nunley, the chief judge in US District Court for the Eastern District of California.

Nunley said he agrees with plaintiff DirecTV that immediate integration of the merging firms could eliminate competition, result in newsroom layoffs and shutdowns, and make it more difficult to divest Tegna stations if the court ends up requiring a divestiture after reviewing the merger. DirecTV has established that "the Nexstar-TEGNA merger will substantially lessen competition in markets in which it participates," and that there would be irreparable harm if a restraining order isn't issued, Nunley wrote.

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Looks like Meta is hoping the recent Supreme Court ruling that found Internet service providers aren't liable for piracy on their networks will help the social media giant dodge liability claims over its torrenting of AI training data .

Last week, Meta filed a statement in a lawsuit that alleged that Meta should be liable under copyright law for contributory infringement simply because the company knows how torrenting works. By seeding perhaps 80 terabytes of pirated works, the company allegedly knew it was inducing infringement by allowing uploads to help speed up its downloads, the plaintiffs, Entrepreneur Media, argued.

This contributory infringement claim is much easier to prove than a separate claim raised in a class action filed by book authors in Kadrey v. Meta , which alleged that Meta's torrenting meant it was liable for a "distribution" claim of direct copyright infringement. TorrentFreak noted that the authors' claim required evidence that Meta torrented an entire work, whereas the contributory infringement claim only depends on proving that Meta facilitated torrent transfers.

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Following this past weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, Formula 1 goes into a five-week hiatus now that war in the Gulf has made it impossible to hold races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The unplanned break is probably welcomed up and down the paddock as teams, drivers, and officials try to get their heads around this new generation of F1 car and the radical new demands it places on them all. Those new challenges were on full display at Suzuka.

On the plus side, the race itself was quite exciting. That's something you could not have said in 2025, a snoozefest with cars driving in procession and few opportunities to overtake. A hefty reduction in aerodynamic downforce for 2026 means that cars can follow each other more closely. But after this visit to one of motorsport's most-loved, most challenging circuits, it's very hard to avoid the conclusion that F1 has painted itself into a corner with its new hybrid systems. The sport itself recognizes this; on April 9, it will hold crisis talks to try to find a solution.

You don't have the energy

The problem, as we have been warned for some time, is the new hybrid power trains, which combine a 1.6 L V6 that generates 400 kW (536 hp) with a 350 kW (469 hp) electric motor. Getting to a near 50:50 split between internal combustion and electric power was key to attracting new auto manufacturers to the sport, and Audi, Ford, Cadillac, and Honda were all enticed by the 2026 rules. The electric motor is fed by a 1.1 kWh (4 MJ) battery pack, but depending on the track, cars are allowed to deploy 8–9 MJ from the electric side, which means recovering that energy while out on track.

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Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military's most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit.

The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed for command and control of the military's constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software to handle new signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018. The ground segment also includes two master control stations and upgrades to ground monitoring stations around the world, among other hardware elements.

RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, won a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and deliver the control system. The program was supposed to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Today, the official cost for the ground system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is developing an OCX augmentation projected to cost more than $400 million to support a new series of GPS IIIF satellites set to begin launching next year, bringing the total effort to $8 billion.

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The Trump administration is turning to the nuclear option on endangered-species protections in the name of national security.

A rarely tapped panel nicknamed the “God Squad” will meet Tuesday to discuss whether overriding Endangered Species Act regulations for all federally regulated fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico is more important than preventing the extinction of several imperiled species. That includes sea turtles and a whale species down to its last 51 individuals.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the upcoming Endangered Species Committee meeting last week, with no details on specific projects in the Gulf or the basis for what would constitute an extraordinary action. Only twice in the panel’s nearly half-century has it ever lifted restrictions.

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Famed aviator Amelia Earhart mysteriously disappeared in 1937 during an attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe. Speculative theories abound about what really happened to Earhart, but while tantalizing hints of her fate have popped up from time to time over the last 90 years, none have proved conclusive. The people behind those theories, and the extraordinary woman who still inspires them, are the focus of an eminently readable new book, Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life , by Rachel Hartigan.

A former editor of The Washington Post's Book World, Hartigan worked for National Geographic magazine for 12 years, covering such diverse topics as the genetics of persimmon trees and the history of women's suffrage. So why a book about Amelia Earhart? Hartigan acknowledged that she asked that question herself "in the darkest moments of writing."

After all, there are countless biographies for readers of all ages, as well as books touting various theories about Earhart's disappearance, not to mention occasional news coverage about the latest attempts to locate Earhart's plane or her remains. (Just last fall, we reported on Laurie Gwen Shapiro's The Aviator and the Showman , a biography exploring Earhart's unconventional marriage to George Putnam, a flamboyant publisher with a flair for marketing.) "I just didn't feel there was a book that tied everything together," Hartigan told Ars. "You get these news stories of people saying they know where Amelia Earhart is, but you don't have any context beyond the immediate story, all the things that make it a full picture."

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Polymarket’s temporary makeover of a K Street bar as “The Situation Room” yielded a few notable differences from other Washington watering holes: more laptops open, more overheard conversations about cryptocurrency, and more screens—most of which were not showing sports.

The New York-based prediction market announced in a March 18 thread on X that it was opening what it called “the world's first bar dedicated to monitoring the situation,” touting the availability of “live X feeds, flight radar, Bloomberg terminals, and Polymarket screens.” The bar would only be there for a three-day run.

The reality—as reported by journalists who showed up for a press-preview event Friday night—fell vastly short of that, with power and Wi-Fi problems that left all the displays dark . Polymarket fixed the screens the next day, however, and on my own visit on Sunday afternoon, dozens of displays offered a choice of CNN, CBS, the local Fox station, FS1, and various pages on Polymarket’s site. No normal bar would have CNBC or C-SPAN on, but those networks were a logical fit for this one.

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When George W. Maschke applied to work for the FBI in 1994, he had already held a security clearance for over 11 years. The government had deemed him trustworthy through his career in the Army. But soon, a machine and a man would not come to the same conclusion.

His application to be a special agent had passed initial muster. And so, in the spring of 1995, according to his account, he found himself sitting across from an FBI polygraph examiner, answering questions about his life and loyalties.

He told the truth, he said in an interview with Undark. But in a blog post on his website, he recalled the examiner told him that the polygraph machine—which measured some of Maschke’s physiological responses—indicated that he was being deceptive about keeping classified information secret, and about his contacts with foreign intelligence agencies.

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Three-hundred million years ago, the skies of the late Palaeozoic era were buzzing with giant insects. Meganeuropsis permiana , a predatory insect resembling a modern-day dragonfly, had a wingspan of over 70 centimeters and weighed 100 grams. Biologists looked at these ancient behemoths and asked why bugs aren’t this big anymore. Thirty years ago, they came up with an answer known as the "oxygen constrain hypothesis."

For decades, we thought that any dragonflies the size of hawks needed highly oxygenated air to survive because insect breathing systems are less efficient than those of mammals, birds, or reptiles. As atmospheric oxygen levels dropped, there wasn’t enough to support giant bugs anymore. “It’s a simple, elegant explanation,” said Edward Snelling, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Pretoria. “But it’s wrong.”

Insect breathing

Unlike mammals, insects don't have a centralized pair of lungs and a closed circulatory system that delivers oxygen-rich blood to their tissues. “They breathe through internalized tubing called the tracheal system,” Snelling explained.

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