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PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.
US Marshals Service Suffers Security Breach (Maria)
The author writes, “The US Marshals Service (USMS) suffered a ransomware security breach this month that compromised sensitive law enforcement information, a spokesman said on Monday. The Marshals Service notified the US Department of Justice [about] the breach, and agents there began a forensic investigation, Drew Wade, chief of the Marshals Service public affairs office, told Reuters in an email. ‘The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees,’ Wade said. … The USMS is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Justice.”
How a Small-Town Train Derailment Erupted Into a Culture Battle (Russ)
From The Washington Post: “Two weeks after a train carrying toxic chemicals went off the tracks in northeastern Ohio, President Biden sat in the Oval Office listening intently as his national security team briefed him on a different train almost 5,000 miles away, ultimately agreeing to take a clandestine rail trip into war-besieged Kyiv. His decision to make the trip won praise globally, but it further inflamed already brewing domestic tensions over his handling of the train derailment in the small town of East Palestine.”
Death on a Dairy Farm: What Really Happened to 8-Year-Old Jefferson Rodríguez (Al)
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and ProPublica: “What happened to Jefferson and his father is a story of an accumulation of failures: a broken immigration system that makes it difficult for people to come here even as entire industries depend on their labor, small farms that largely go unexamined by safety inspectors, and a law enforcement system that’s ill equipped to serve people who don’t speak English.”
Drones, Stingrays, Hidden Microphones: Law Enforcement in Massachusetts Is Increasingly Using Surveillance Technology (Reader Steve)
From The Boston Globe: “Drones monitoring Black Lives Matter protests. License plate readers, hidden in plain sight, dumping the plate numbers of every passing car into an Internet database for anyone to see. A camera, tucked away high on a telephone pole, watching a home and its inhabitants for eight months without them ever knowing. A few steps removed from the all-seeing video networks featured in some British crime dramas, these are but a partial inventory of surveillance technology widely used by police across the state.”
Africa: New Ocean Forming, to Split Africa Into Two, Scientists Say (Sean)
From The New Times: “Geologists have confirmed that a new ocean is being created as the African continent is split in half. An international effort has revealed that a 35 miles long rift appeared in the Ethiopian deserts of the Far region in 2005 and is probably the start of a brand-new sea. The recent study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, combines seismic data from the rift formation to demonstrate that it is driven by processes similar to those at the ocean’s bottom. The tectonic plates of Africa and Arabia collide in the desert and have been gradually separating for about 30 million years. The same motion has also split the Red Sea, but this is only happening at a rate of a fraction of an inch per year.”
Traffic Pollution Impairs Brain Function (Mili)
The author writes, “A new study has shown that common levels of traffic pollution can impair human brain function in only a matter of hours. The study was the first to show in a controlled experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that exposure to diesel exhaust disrupts the ability of different areas of the human brain to interact and communicate with each other.”
Surprising ‘Forbidden Planet’ Discovered Outside Our Solar System (Dana)
The author writes, “Astronomers have found an unusually large planet orbiting a small star, located about 280 light-years from Earth. The unexpected size of the newly discovered world, called TOI 5205b, has led researchers to call it the ‘forbidden planet.’ About the size of Jupiter, it was spotted by researchers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system.”
