Roblox is making changes in an attempt to keep younger players safe in the online platform. Beginning later this month, children under the age of 13 will no longer be able to search, discover or play unrated experiences within Roblox, and will be unable to access social hangout experiences.

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I first played Taiko no Tatsujin in an arcade (in Japan, because I am very cool), where it's controlled by hitting a recreation of an actual taiko drum. It was fun enough that I wish there was a taiko drum peripheral available for PC now the series is on our platform.

Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival is out now via Steam, where it offers over 70 songs to drum through, and a subscription service through which to unlock over 700 more. Maybe I should try to get my Donkey Konga drums working on PC, but I'll probably settle for playing it with a gamepad.

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Could tower defence be the ultimate "it's Friday and I am here in body only" genre? I haven't really thought about it before, but Rift Riff's effusively laidback crowd control has me pondering those optimal moments in any tower defender when the incoming horde hits the flamer-MG triangle just right, and you can settle back comfortably into the role of clockwatcher.

Rift Riff encourages this behaviour by being nice to look at. Created by a trio of developers including Hidden Folks designer Adriaan de Jongh, it's a world of spacey, sun-carved mountains, forests and monoliths. The towers resemble the sacred architecture of Monument Valley, and the colour scheme and general ambience remind me of Cocoon. There's a demo, if you fancy it.

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GeForce Now, Nvidia’s PC-focused game streaming service, will begin calling time on its most muscular of power users. A post on the GFN subreddit announced the introduction of a 100-hour monthly cap (or "allowance"), effective from January 1st 2025 for anyone who signs up after that date. Existing streamists, or anyone who signs up by the end of 2024, will get a year’s grace period before the limit kicks in from January 2026.

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Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with "Endless" in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and "other members of the team". The developers say everyone is parting "on good terms" and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been "amazing". But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.

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Palworld developers Pocketpair have finally revealed which patents Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing them about. It looks like they're focusing on the act of throwing capsular items to catch or release monsters, together with the usage of monsters as mounts.

If you've somehow yet to encounter Palworld, it's a bestselling survival game that takes hefty - some would say, scandalous - inspiration from Pokémon, with players poaching Pokésque critters using magic spheres, and deploying them as soldiers and minions.

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Let’s try and get you up to speed on the fascinating oddity that is simulation game Ecosystem, on the off chance that Nate's coverage of it hasn't stuck with you like an unwelcome brain parasite you’re nonetheless unwilling to get removed for fear of the lingering emptiness it might cause (he once described an eel as “a quaver with erectile dysfunction”). Broadly speaking, this game is Spore’s evolutionary-biology-degree-having cousin. It’s been in early access for about three years now, but with the latest "Crustacean" update, it’s just hit 1.0. Once again, carcinization has come for all things.

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Update:

The RPS 100 is our list of the best games to play on PC. It encompasses the full breadth and width of PC gaming stretching back to 1873, but focuses solely on those games that remain great to play today. It's updated yearly by our crack team of writers, and the first half of the 2024 edition is live now.

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"A lot of puzzle games can leave you staring at the same static screen for ages, but here, I’m always pushing you forward," says Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit. For a decade now, Brown has been releasing accessible deep dives on game design for his popular YouTube channel, like "How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves" and "The Two Types of Random in Game Design." This week, he’s releasing his own for the first time.

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The developers who remade Half-Life as Black Mesa are working on a new roguelite co-op shooter. It will feature no physicists celebrating Bring Your Shotgun To Work Day, but instead let up to four players tactically breach oil rigs and airports occupied by corporate-sponsored mercenaries. In Rogue Point the richest CEO on earth has croaked it, causing various megacorps to compete in a violent bum rush for control of that wealth. Which is where your team of renegade shooterists come in. They don't want to win this contest, they just want everyone else to lose.

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The developers of hero shooter Overwatch 2 must have dropped a box full of old photographs while clearing the attic, spilling old snapshots of Route 66 onto the floor and getting snared in a nostalgic daze. The game is launching a "Classic" mode today that will let you play the first-person payload pusher as it (mostly) was back in 2016 when the first Overwatch launched. That means 6v6 fights, the original abilities of its heroes, and no limits to stop the entire team picking the same character.

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After nearly a year of public beta honing, the Nvidia App – Team Green’s new one-stop shop for desktop GPU management – is out in full. Not alongside the upcoming RTX 50 series, as rumoured, but right-now-today-this-minute. I’ve been testing out the launch version and while it’s not without some dud features, it does agreeably achieve its stated goal of combining the functions within Nvidia Control Panel and GeForce Experience. And if installing it means never having to use the latter again, well, that’s 149MB well spent.

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"Where’s my Neo-Volkite pistol, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2?" was my perhaps slightly ungrateful reaction upon booting the action game up after the previous patch. "I didn’t even know what a Neo-Volkite pistol was until five minutes ago, but now this whole game is trash until I get one!." As promised in the roadmap, the last big update added a whole new Operations map, complete with a gargantuan new pseudo-boss in the form of a hierophant bio-titan. It did not, however, give me my beloved pistol. It’s fine. It’s in now, along with a few, less Neo-Volkite updates to other weapons.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Firefighters say they are making some progress battling the wildfires in Northern California. In all, the fires have consumed more than 220,000 acres, an area larger than New York City.

More than 5,700 structures have been destroyed. And at least 41 people have died, making it the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history.

The wine industry and the tourism business connected with it are trying to take stock. More than $50 billion in California’s economy comes from the wine business. And nearly 24 million people visit the region for that reason every year.

Special correspondent Joanne Jennings reports from Napa County.

JOANNE JENNINGS, Special Correspondent: The Mayacamas mountain range creates a natural barrier between Sonoma and Napa Counties. And it is here where the massive Nuns fire is posing a tough challenge for some 11,000 firefighters who are taming the blaze with aircraft and units on the ground.

CAPT. MARK BRENNERMAN, Viejas fire Department: We’re going around and making sure none of these fires that are still smoldering and smoking, we’re not going to get another big fire out of them.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Even as firefighters are battling shifting winds, owners and workers in Wine Country are trying to determine just how much damage has been done.

The tony Highlands gated community was among the first to be consumed by flames when the Atlas fire raced through this canyon, leaving several mansions in rubble. Down the hill, at the Silverado resort, charred remnants of the Safeway PGA Tour remain. The major golf event had just wrapped up last Sunday afternoon, a few hours before flames engulfed tents and grandstands, forcing spectators and athletes to evacuate.

MAN: Do you see how it burned right up to the retaining wall here?

JOANNE JENNINGS: Silverado resident Steve Messina stayed behind and shot video of fire crews containing the flames, which consumed some condos. Within minutes, flames raced three miles down Silverado Trail, home to several storied hillside vineyards.

Most wineries in the region have been spared the worst. But hundreds suffered some damage. And at least eight vineyards have been significantly damaged or destroyed.

Pierre Birebent, who has been making wines for the family-owned Signorello estate for 20 years, rushed to his winery as quickly as he could.

PIERRE BIREBENT, Signorello Estate Vineyards: I jumped right in my truck, came down, and then when I was riding down, I saw the hill all flaming.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Two vineyard workers joined him to help save the estate’s tasting room.

PIERRE BIREBENT: But the smoke was getting very thick, and the wind was very strong. And after an hour, we couldn’t breathe anymore. At the moment, I was so upset. It was rage to see that I couldn’t do anything. But it was like fighting a giant.

JOANNE JENNINGS: The tasting room, which also housed the winery’s office and a dining room, burned to the ground. But Birebent says he wants to focused on what survived.

Fortunately, he said, the fire stopped short of reaching the vineyard, the crush pad, or any of the barrels of wine stored on site; 95 percent of this year’s grapes were already picked.

But, to be on the safe side, Birebent is taking these samples to a lab to make sure the juice is not too acidic for winemaking. If the crops are OK, a staff of 25 employees will have jobs to return to.

As the fires begin to recede and the smoke clears, people here are beginning to wonder when the tourists, who fuel much of the economy, will return.

It’s a serious concern for Andrew and Jeni (ph) Schluter, who are self-employed and are raising a young family.

ANDREW SCHLUTER, Andrew’s Tours and Transportation: I do wine tours and transportation for people. And my business started to do really, really well. I was on track to have the best month ever.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Andrew just bought this new SUV, which has been idle in his driveway collecting ash. Jeni is a personal trainer and has family who lost their homes in the fires. She’s just not sure how they’re going to make ends meet.

WOMAN: I think we’re just overwhelmed, you know? And uncertainty is kind of scary.

ANDREW SCHLUTER: We will hopefully get by for awhile, but we might make — have to make some hard decisions shortly.

JOANNE JENNINGS: While fires burn nearby, some vineyards are already open to tourists. At the Raymond Vineyard, workers are crushing grapes at a feverish pitch. The tasting room is open for the first time since the fires started.

Jeremy and Erika Moore arrived from Tennessee yesterday. They considered canceling their trip, but decided the best way they could help people here is to give them their business.

JEREMY MOORE, Tourist: On the one hand, a few hundred yards from here, you can see them shuttling up with the helicopters fighting fires, but then here it’s beautiful. They are doing some great tastings, and they are working outside on the crops. So, it’s a weird combination of tragedy, but then at the same time business must go on, too.

JOANNE JENNINGS: Proprietor Jean-Charles Boisset owns several wineries in California, France and Canada, but like many other people here, he and his family had to evacuate their home when the flames came dangerously close.

Still, he is bullish about the future of the wine industry in this region.

JEAN-CHARLES BOISSET, Boisset Collection: Napa has been one of the most amazing agricultural places in California for a long time, so it will survive those fires. What I love, as a Frenchman here in California, is that amazing American positive attitude.

We will recover. We will walk again, run again, and we will welcome all our guests and give them the dreams of fine wine.

JOANNE JENNINGS: For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Joanne Jennings in Napa Valley, California.

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WASHINGTON — For U.S. presidents, meeting the families of military personnel killed in war is about as wrenching as the presidency gets. President Donald Trump’s suggestion Monday that his predecessors fell short in that duty brought a visceral reaction from those who witnessed those grieving encounters.

“He’s a deranged animal,” Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Trump. With an expletive, she called Trump’s statement in the Rose Garden a lie.

Trump said in a news conference he had written letters to the families of four soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, crediting himself with taking extra steps in honoring the dead properly. “Most of them didn’t make calls,” he said of his predecessors. He said it’s possible that Obama “did sometimes” but “other presidents did not call.”

The record is plain that presidents reached out to families of the dead and to the wounded, often with their presence as well as by letter and phone. The path to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as to the Dover, Delaware, Air Force Base where the remains of fallen soldiers are often brought, is a familiar one to Obama, George W. Bush and others.

Bush, even at the height of two wars, “wrote all the families of the fallen,” said Freddy Ford, spokesman for the ex-president. Ford said Bush also called or met “hundreds, if not thousands” of family members of the war dead.

READ MORE: What Trump said about his drug czar pick, health care fixes

Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza, tweeted that he photographed Obama “meeting with hundreds of wounded soldiers, and family members of those killed in action.” Others recalled his frequent visits with Gold Star families, and travels to Walter Reed, Dover and other venues with families of the dead and with the wounded.

Retired Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed these contacts, tweeting: “POTUS 43 & 44 and first ladies cared deeply, worked tirelessly for the serving, the fallen, and their families. Not politics. Sacred Trust.”

Trump addressed the matter when asked why he had not spoken about the four soldiers killed in Niger. They died when militants thought to be affiliated with the Islamic State group ambushed them while they were patrolling in unarmored trucks with Nigerien troops.

“I actually wrote letters individually to the soldiers we’re talking about, and they’re going to be going out either today or tomorrow,” he said, meaning he wrote to the families of the fallen soldiers. He did not explain why letters had not been sent yet, more than a week after the attack.

“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls,” Trump said.

Pressed on that statement later, he said of Obama: “I was told that he didn’t often, and a lot of presidents don’t. They write letters.” He went on: “President Obama, I think, probably did sometimes, and maybe sometimes he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s what I was told. … Some presidents didn’t do anything.”

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later that Trump “wasn’t criticizing predecessors, but stating a fact.” She argued that presidents didn’t always call families of those killed in battle: “Sometimes they call, sometimes they send a letter, other times they have the opportunity to meet family members in person.”

She said anyone claiming a former president had called every family was “mistaken.”

Bush’s commitment to writing to all military families of the dead and to reaching out by phone or meeting with many others came despite the enormity of the task. In the Iraq war alone, U.S. combat deaths were highest during his presidency, exceeding 800 each year from 2004 through 2007. The number fell to 313 in Bush’s last year in office as the insurgency faded. Bush once said he felt the appropriate way to show his respect was to meet family members in private.

READ MORE: What the Bannon vs. McConnell fight means for Trump and the GOP

Obama declared an end to combat operations in Iraq in August 2010 and the last U.S. troops were withdrawn in December 2011. As Obama wound down that war, he sent tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, and the death count mounted. From a total of 155 Americans killed in Afghanistan in 2008, which was Bush’s last full year in office, the number jumped to 311 in 2009 and peaked the next year at 498. In all, more than 1,700 died in Afghanistan on Obama’s watch.

Among other rituals honoring military families, the Obamas had a “Gold Star” Christmas tree in the White House decorated with hundreds of photos and notes from people who had lost loved ones in war. Gold Star families visited during the holidays, bringing ornaments.

Trump visited Dover early in his presidency, going in February with his daughter Ivanka for the return of the remains of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, William “Ryan” Owens.

Trump’s relations with Gold Star families have not always been smooth, dating from his belittlement of the parents of slain U.S. soldier Humayun Khan, who was Muslim. Trump was angered when the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, was given a platform to criticize him at the Democratic National Convention.

Owens’ grieving father said he didn’t want to talk with Trump at Dover. But the sailor’s widow, Carryn, attended Trump’s address to Congress and wept as he thanked her.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Jesse J. Holland contributed to this report.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: The hashtag #MeToo has millions of women sharing stories of abuse, shining a spotlight on a troubling reality in our society.

It was first used in 2007, but when actor Alyssa Milano tweeted it Sunday night to talk about sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein story, it went viral. The hashtag was tweeted nearly a million times in just 48 hours. Facebook reported 45 percent of its users have friends who posted #MeToo, as women wrote about their experiences about the workplace and culture, and what should change.

We explore some of those issues with Fatima Goss Graves. She’s president of the National Women’s Law Center. Lisa Senecal wrote about her own experience for the online news site Daily Beast. She’s with the Vermont Commission on Women. And Melissa Silverstein is the founder of the blog and Web site Women and Hollywood.

Thank you all for joining us.

Lisa Senecal, I’m going to start with you.

You have had a personal experience with sexual harassment. That’s in part what has drawn you to this #MeToo campaign movement.

Just tell us briefly about what happened.

LISA SENECAL, Member, Vermont Commission on Women: Sure.

Like most women, I have had a number of experiences with sexual harassment, beginning with my first job, when I was 15 years old. And it’s really been a threat off and on throughout my entire professional career.

The most egregious offense was an actual assault that occurred with a male executive. Unfortunately, because of an NDA — and we can go into the evils of nondisclosures another time — but because of that, there isn’t a lot that I’m able to say about the specific event.

But the issue of sexual harassment and finally having this come to the fore, so many women are already familiar with it from being on the receiving end. And I think, especially with the #MeToo campaign, it’s been really wonderful and an eye-opening experience for men to realize just how pervasive an issue this is.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, in your experience, it was a business setting.

Melissa Silverstein, you have been writing about women in Hollywood for 10 years. Of course, that’s where the Harvey Weinstein story came from.

If it’s been going on in Hollywood forever, why hasn’t it been talked about more before now?

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN, Founder, Women and Hollywood: Well, I think there was a culture of silence created around this man and also within this industry.

People were afraid. People are afraid for their jobs. It’s a very relational industry, where if someone is going to blacklist you, you are not going to get your next job.

So I think the way that a person was able to conduct himself for 30 years like this was to build a culture of fear, to make people sign nondisclosure agreements, and to get them to shut up.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fatima Goss Graves, here with me in Washington with the National Women’s Law Center, we have been talking about Hollywood.

We have talking about the business workplace. Is there any field of work where this isn’t going on?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES, President, National Women’s Law Center: Right.

The issue of harassment and assault, it’s a Hollywood problem, but really it’s an everywhere problem. It infects industries across the board, whether you’re high-wage jobs, low-wage jobs, male-dominated fields, but also female-dominated fields.

Restaurants are some of the areas where you have some of the highest rates of EEOC charges. And that’s not a male-dominated field.

JUDY WOODRUFF: EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Lisa Senecal, some people are saying that they’re uncomfortable with this #MeToo campaign movement because they’re saying, once again, women are being asked to go public with what happened to them, but there is no promise that there is going to be anything done about it. How do you see this?

LISA SENECAL: I don’t necessarily believe that women are being asked to come forward.

I think this is an opportunity to come forward, if that’s something that women want to do, but there’s no obligation to do it. And there’s been a lot of support for letting women know that if this isn’t something you’re comfortable with at this time, no one is obligated to tell their story, and no one is allowed to force you to tell your story before you’re ready.

But the stories are important. Without them, the degree to which this happens across all industries, across genders as well — we know that this happens to men. This happens to the transgender.

It’s not specific to women, although it affects us most frequently. Until we have a critical mass of women who are able to get the men in their lives, the men that they work with to understand how pervasive a problem it is, and then can get men to begin to act on this, because this isn’t a women’s issue.

This is a violence issue, and an issue of power and who has the power. So until the people who still primarily do hold the power, which is primarily men and primarily white men, until they’re going to begin to act, then the problems are going to persist.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Melissa Silverstein, how do you see that? What is it going to take for this to be a change?

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: The fact that we’re having a global conversation about sexual harassment — I have been doing media for the last week all over the world.

People are really enthralled by this and want to see change. This is a global issue. And, also, Hollywood is a global industry. Seventy cents of every dollar of Hollywood studio movies are made outside the United States.

So what people are looking for is Hollywood to step up. And, today, we had a leader in Hollywood, Kathleen Kennedy, to say we need to have a commission, cross-industry commission, of people who are going to look into this and put a stop to it once and for all.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And pick up on that, Fatima Goss Graves. Just across the board, what is it going to take?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Right.

We know that there are things that would make a difference here. If employers had processes that their employees actually use, you wouldn’t have harassment in the shadows. Right now, most people don’t report harassment to anyone. And it’s because they think their employers won’t do anything, or, worse, that they would experience retaliation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that’s — because that’s been what happened.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: And that is. They’re right to believe that they will experience retaliation, because they do. They’re shamed. They’re blamed.

But employees could make a difference. Right? They can be — take it seriously and communicate that to their workplace. They can also have the right policies that are in place. And, finally, they could, when someone comes forward, be really clear that they take it seriously and that they will not tolerate retaliation.

Those are things that aren’t happening among employers frequently enough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lisa Senecal, as somebody who had it happen to you in a business environment, what changes need to be made in the workplace? What has to happen?

LISA SENECAL: Well, I agree completely with what was just said.

Too often, the workplace education that goes on is incredibly insufficient. It’s more of companies wanting to be able to check the box and say that they did their sexual harassment training. And it isn’t truly something within the culture of companies that they believe that this is a problem and that it is a right of all people working at that company not to be harassed.

So, until it starts to be taken more seriously, and when a woman or anyone comes forward with an accusation, it does have to be taken so much more seriously. And the knee-jerk response, as was in my case, cannot be to shame the woman, can’t be to blame her for somehow bringing this on herself, and putting women back in a position of being victimized a second time because they’re not taken seriously when they come forward.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Melissa Silverstein, yes, go ahead.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: I just wanted to add, one of the things that’s so fundamental about this is how this — how it’s so normalized for all of us to go through this kind of harassment, especially in Hollywood, and how people kind of laugh off, oh, you know, that’s locker room talk, or, you know, this is the movie business, get used to it.

And what we need to do is really pierce that veil of the normalization of this kind of conduct, because it starts with, you know, the comments, and then it can escalate very quickly.

So we really need to just change people’s attitudes and get rid of the toxic masculinity. Hollywood has no much institutionalized sexism that sometimes I feel like we need to just start over, if possible.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Joining us also is Leigh Gilmore, a professor at Wellesley College who’s written a book about why — titled “Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives.”

Leigh Gilmore, why don’t women — why haven’t women been believed and taken seriously on this, and could we now be at a moment when they are?

LEIGH GILMORE, Wellesley College: It’s good to be with you, Judy.

I think we have a persistent and a pervasive culture of doubting what women say, especially when they’re bringing forward accounts of harm into the public sphere. So we have these pre-made default cultural narratives of women’s unreliability. We have he said/she said, which is a false equivalence narrative.

We have that notion that nobody knows what really happened. We have that notion that you can’t really trust what women say. None of these are based in fact, but they are part of a kind of cloud that enables us to doubt any woman before she speaks up.

And it’s quite intimidating. And so, if we’re at a point of change, we really are at a moment where I think we have a new level of visibility, and we have the opportunity to amplify the voices of women who are speaking out.

So, insofar as we have that opportunity, there is a form of solidarity, and more women speaking can lead to change.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Fatima Goss Graves, as somebody who works on these issues from a legal standpoint, are we, could we be at a watershed point, or is it just a whole lot more complicated?

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Well, the culture change typically has to go together with both the enforcement of the laws and the policy change.

And so we’re at a tipping point, surely, on culture change. But I will tell you, you know, the National Women’s Law Center runs a hot line. And over the last two weeks, we have had double the intake on harassment.

And we have a new network called the Legal Network for Gender Equity, so we’re — attorneys are joining with us and will be ready to take these cases. But those people who are making these calls and contacting us, I think that that shows that you have people who are ready to come forward on social media, and there is power there, but it seems like there are people who are ready to come forward in other ways, too.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to quickly go around and ask each one of you about the role of men in all of this.

Lisa Senecal?

LISA SENECAL: Oh, I think it’s critical for men as allies to be coming forward and supporting women who do come forward.

Men also need to be willing to call out other men, whether that’s one-on-one, whether it’s in a group setting within a company, or socially. If a man hears, sees someone doing something inappropriate, they need to have the courage to stand up, even in front of other men, and say, it’s not OK, it’s inappropriate behavior, and it’s not going to be tolerated.

And until it’s also men joining in, women can’t do this by themselves. There is an organization, A Call to Men, that I’m a big fan of. And one of their mantras is, if women could have stopped abuse and assault, they would have done it already.

And that’s completely true. It’s not something that women are going to be able to do alone. It shouldn’t be looked at as only a women’s issue. And until people look at this on a larger scale and understand that this affects the bottom line of companies, it affects productivity, it affects, you know, absenteeism, just across the board, this is not a women’s issue.

It is a human issue.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

Melissa Silverstein, what about that?

And we should point out that men are themselves the victims of sexual harassment and abuse at times.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: I feel that this is on men.

The men are most of the perpetrators. They’re also the collaborators. And, at The Weinstein Company, their board was all men, and they were all complicit in creating an environment that allowed this to thrive.

In Hollywood, there’s not a single woman, even the people at the tippy-top of the industry, who don’t report to men. This is also about getting more women into leadership positions and getting the men — and holding the men accountable.

The men in this industry need to step up. They need to say, we want to be — we want to create this industry in a way that women can thrive and don’t have to experience this anymore.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Leigh Gilmore?

LEIGH GILMORE: We’re talking about awareness and accountability.

So, as wonderful as it is to have increased visibility, and it enables us to connect the dots and to see the long histories of sexual abuse, harassment and discrimination, we need new levels of accountability.

I will echo the notion that Harvey Weinstein’s board certainly knew about these accusations. There’s a DA who failed to charge him. We have ample examples of failures.

And what we really need to do is to correct those. The role of men is certainly important here. Minimally, they can show up and be witnesses.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, Fatima Goss Graves, the role of men and how we prevent this.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: We have had a little bit of conversation about men as survivors, but the conversation we haven’t really had is about what happens when men are abusers or enablers or allow this to happen in the workplaces, in schools, or in women’s everyday lives?

And so now we have an opportunity culturally for that conversation. That culture is going to have to hit where policy-makers are. It’s going to have to hit where employers are in order to make a real difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it’s clear that everyone is hoping this is a watershed moment, that things will change as a result of what’s happened here. But we will see.

And we appreciate all of you joining us in this conversation, Fatima Goss Graves here with me in Washington, Lisa Senecal, Melissa Silverstein, and Leigh Gilmore.

We thank you all.

FATIMA GOSS GRAVES: Thank you.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: new questions surrounding the deaths of four Green Berets in the Western African nation of Niger and the role of the president as consoler in chief.

John Yang has the story.

JOHN YANG: Sending young Americans into harm’s way can be the most serious decision a president makes. Consoling the families of the fallen has become the latest controversy to engulf President Trump.

To bolster his claim that he does more than his predecessors, Mr. Trump today invoked the dead son of his chief of staff, retired Marine general John Kelly.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: To the best of my knowledge, I think I have called every family of somebody that’s died. Now, as far as other representatives, I don’t know. I mean, you could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?

JOHN YANG: Kelly’s 29-year-old son, Robert, a Marine lieutenant, was killed in 2010 when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan, an episode Kelly rarely talks about publicly. Kelly and his wife did attend a 2011 Memorial Day breakfast President Obama hosted for Gold Star families.

President Trump ignited the furor when he was asked about his public silence on four Green Berets killed two weeks ago in Niger.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls. A lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it.

JOHN YANG: Reporters pressed him to back up the claim.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know. That’s what I was told. All I can do — all I can do is ask my generals.

JOHN YANG: The response from former Obama officials was swift and forceful.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted this photo and insisted: “Stop the damn lying. I went to Dover Air Force base with 44 and saw him comfort families,” a reference to one of Mr. Obama’s late-night trips to pay his respects to troops killed in Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush often visited wounded warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals, a practice Mr. Trump has continued. In February, the president and his daughter Ivanka went to Dover for the return of the remains of a Navy SEAL killed in Yemen, the first casualty of his administration.

So far this year, the Pentagon says 16 Americans have been killed in action. Another 17 sailors died in accidents. In the first year of the Obama presidency, 344 were killed in action.

During last year’s campaign, Mr. Trump publicly feuded with the Khans, the parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, after they criticized him at the Democratic Convention.

Today, the Khans said: “President Trump’s selfish and divisive actions have undermined the dignity of the high office of the presidency.”

The current controversy comes as questions are being raised about how and why the four soldiers died in Niger.

Senator Jack Reed is the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

SEN. JACK REED, D-R.I.: I think the administration has to be much more clear about our role in Niger and our role in other areas in Africa and other parts of the globe.

JOHN YANG: The Pentagon is investigating the deaths. Reportedly among the questions, did commanders adequately assess the risk, and was there ready access to medical support?

Today, President Trump called the families of the four dead Green Berets.

For the PBS NewsHour, I’m John Yang.

The post Trump ignites furor with claim past presidents didn’t console military families by phone appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

WASHINGTON — When Karen Pence found out that an art therapist in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico couldn’t afford the clay her clients needed, she sprang into action.

A trained watercolor artist and advocate of the little-known mental health profession, Vice President Mike Pence’s wife went to the Virginia art supply store she frequented when they lived in the state during his tenure in Congress, bought 120 pounds of self-drying clay and packed it aboard Air Force Two for their flight down to survey the damage.

“She cleaned him out,” the vice president said of the store’s owner.

Mrs. Pence made art therapy her cause ever since she first learned about it more than a decade ago. She has visited numerous art therapy programs, both in the U.S. and abroad, and on Wednesday in Florida, nine months into the administration, she planned to formally announce the goals for her art therapy initiative.

She wants to help people understand the difference between art therapy and arts and crafts, and to grasp that art therapy is a viable option for treating trauma, injury and other life experiences. She also wants to encourage young people to choose art therapy as a career.

“I don’t think that a lot of people understand the difference between therapeutic art and art therapy,” Mrs. Pence, a trained watercolor artist, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The school has an art therapy program she described as “tremendous.”

Blabbing to a girlfriend can be therapeutic, she explained, but it is not the same as art therapy, which has three elements: a client, a trained therapist and art.

READ MORE: VP Pence’s wife aims to raise awareness about art therapy

As passionate as she is about raising art therapy’s profile, other issues help make Karen Pence tick, too.

One of them is helping military families, especially spouses. Her only son, Michael, is in the Marines.

There’s also her interest in honeybees. Mrs. Pence installed a beehive on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s official residence is located, to help call attention to a decline in managed bee colonies that officials say could negatively affect U.S. agricultural production. She had a beehive at the Indiana governor’s residence for the same reason.

Now 60 and married to the vice president since 1985, Mrs. Pence has long been viewed as one of her husband’s most trusted political advisers. They are often together on trips, at the White House, or at the observatory, almost always holding hands.

Since returning to Washington in January (the family lived in the area when her husband served in Congress), she has accompanied the vice president on goodwill tours of Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as trips to survey recent hurricane damage in Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She tries to visit art therapy programs wherever she goes. Journalists who travel with Pence often keep an eye out for his wife; she often brings them cookies when he ventures back to the press cabin for small talk.

READ MORE: Devastated Puerto Rico needs unprecedented aid, says governor

She’s even done a little campaigning, urging Virginians to vote next month for Ed Gillespie in what’s viewed as a tight gubernatorial race.

“It really makes a difference, I can tell you. Nobody thought that we were going to win,” she said, an apparent reference to the Trump-Pence ticket.

The vice president often refers to his wife as the family’s “prayer captain.” She has led congregations in prayer during their hurricane-damage trips.

“We’re people of faith so we just try and approach everything with prayer,” Mrs. Pence said from her sunny, second-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex, where she and her staff enjoy coveted views of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. Art therapy drawings given as gifts adorn the outer office.

She proudly displayed several of her paintings, including of the Capitol dome, the vice president’s residence, a Ball canning jar-turned-flower vase, a cardinal bird and a pink peony. She turns many of her watercolors into prints and boxed notecards that she gifts to art therapists she meets.

Except for myriad pets, including two cats, a dog and a rabbit named Marlon Bundo, the Pences are empty nesters. Their son and two adult daughters are off on their own.

“I think for us this is a good time in our life for this role because our kids are out of college. They’re living their own lives,” Mrs. Pence said.

She’s also launching a blog in conjunction with Wednesday’s announcement to chronicle her visits to art therapy programs.

The post Karen Pence to outline goals for art therapy initiative appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

WASHINGTON — After her Army son died in an armored vehicle rollover in Syria in May, Sheila Murphy says, she got no call or letter from President Donald Trump, even as she waited months for his condolences, wrote to him to say “some days I don’t want to live,” and still heard nothing.

In contrast, Trump called to comfort Eddie and Aldene Lee about 10 days after their Army son was killed in an explosion while on patrol in Iraq in April. “Lovely young man,” Trump said, according to Aldene. She thought that was a beautiful word to hear about her boy, “lovely.”

Like presidents before him, Trump has made personal contact with some families of the fallen, not all. What’s different is that Trump, alone among them, has picked a political fight over who’s done better to honor the war dead and their families.

He placed himself at the top of this pantheon, boasting Tuesday that “I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died” while past presidents didn’t place such calls.

But The Associated Press found relatives of two soldiers who died overseas during Trump’s presidency who said they never received a call or a letter from him, as well as relatives of a third who did not get a call. And proof is plentiful that Barack Obama and George W. Bush — saddled with far more combat casualties than the roughly two dozen so far under Trump, took painstaking steps to write, call or meet bereaved military families.

The subject arose because nearly two weeks passed before Trump called the families of four U.S. soldiers who were killed in Niger nearly two weeks ago. He made the calls Tuesday.

READ MORE: Trump ignites furor with claim past presidents didn’t console military families by phone

Meanwhile, Rep. Frederica Wilson said late Tuesday that Trump told the widow of a slain soldier that he “knew what he signed up for.” Early Wednesday, the president called Wilson’s version of the conversation a fabrication.

The Florida Democrat said she was in the car with Myeshia Johnson on the way to Miami International Airport to meet the body of Johnson’s husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called. Wilson says she heard part of the conversation on speakerphone.

When asked by Miami station WPLG if she indeed heard Trump say that she answered: “Yeah, he said that. To me, that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn’t say that to a grieving widow.” She added: “That’s so insensitive.”

Trump took strong issue with that recounting early Wednesday.

“Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!” he said on Twitter.

Sgt. Johnson was among four servicemen killed in the Niger ambush.

Wilson said that she didn’t hear the entire conversation and Myeshia Johnson told her she couldn’t remember everything that was said.

The White House didn’t immediately comment.

READ MORE: Trump’s claim about predecessors, fallen troops disputed

Trump’s delay in publicly discussing the men lost at Niger did not appear to be extraordinary, judging from past examples, but his politicization of the matter is. He went so far Tuesday as to cite the death of chief of staff John Kelly’s son in Afghanistan to question whether Obama had properly honored the war dead.

Kelly was a Marine general under Obama when his Marine son Robert died in 2010. “You could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?” Trump said on Fox News radio.

Democrats and some former government officials were livid, accusing Trump of “inane cruelty” and a “sick game.”

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq veteran who lost both legs when her helicopter was attacked, said: “I just wish that this commander in chief would stop using Gold Star families as pawns in whatever sick game he’s trying to play here.”

For their part, Gold Star families, which have lost members in wartime, told AP of acts of intimate kindness from Obama and Bush when those commanders in chief consoled them.

Trump initially claimed that only he among presidents made sure to call families. Obama may have done so on occasion, he said, but “other presidents did not call.”

He equivocated Tuesday as the record made plain that his characterization was false. “I don’t know,” he said of past calls. But he said his own practice was to call all families of the war dead.

But that hasn’t happened:

No White House protocol demands that presidents speak or meet with the families of Americans killed in action — an impossible task in a war’s bloodiest stages. But they often do.

Altogether some 6,900 Americans have been killed in overseas wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the overwhelming majority under Bush and Obama.

Despite the much heavier toll on his watch — more than 800 dead each year from 2004 through 2007 — Bush wrote to all bereaved military families and met or spoke with hundreds if not thousands, said his spokesman, Freddy Ford.

Veterans groups said they had no quarrel with how presidents have recognized the fallen or their families.

“I don’t think there is any president I know of who hasn’t called families,” said Rick Weidman, co-founder and executive director of Vietnam Veterans of America. “President Obama called often and President Bush called often. They also made regular visits to Walter Reed and Bethesda Medical Center, going in the evenings and on Saturdays.”

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kristen de Groot in Philadelphia, Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, and Hope Yen and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

The post Trump and the new politics of honoring war dead appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

What would it take to turn Texas, a Republican stronghold, into a blue state? According to data from SurveyMonkey, just remove all the gun owners from the Lone Star State and it would have gone to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You can do the same thing in liberal California. Remove all the non-gun owners and the state would have voted for Donald Trump.

That’s how divisive the issue of gun control is in American politics.

SurveyMonkey found that no other demographic — not race, religion or gender — so perfectly divided voters. In the 2016 election, 47 percent of Trump supporters said gun control was an issue important enough to influence their vote. That’s compared to just 27 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton.

But what does this divide mean? How is it impacting gun control policy, and how might this issue change in light of recent mass shootings like Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown? To discuss the data, join a PBS NewsHour-hosted Twitter chat at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday with data journalist Dante Chinni (@Dchinni), professor and chairman of political science at the University of Kansas Don Haider-Markel (@dhmarkel), and Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump (@pbump).

Have questions? Tweet them using #NewsHourChats.

The post Twitter chat: How the gun control debate mirrors larger issues of partisanship in America appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

In America, there’s a significant kind of public insistence that one’s “freedom” is fundamentally tied to one’s wealth.

Much of the country views America through an aspirational and transformative lens, a colorblind and bias-free utopia, wherein wealth conveys equality and acts as a panacea for social and racial ills. Once an individual achieves massive financial success, or so the message goes, he or she will “transcend” the scourge of economic and racial inequality, truly becoming “free.”

Working in parallel with this reverence for this colorblind version of the “American Dream” is the belief that economic privilege mandates patriotic gratitude. Across industries and disciplines, Americans are told to love their nation uncritically, be thankful that they are exceptional enough to live in a country that allows citizens the opportunity to reach astronomical heights of economic prosperity.

For the nation’s black citizens, there’s often an additional racialized presumption lurking under the surface of these concepts: the notion that black success and wealth demands public silence on systemic issues of inequality and oppression.

These are durable and fragile ideologies that prop up the concept of the American Dream – durable because they are encoded in the very fabric of American culture (most Americans, including African Americans, have readily embraced these ideologies as assumed facts); yet fragile because it’s all too easy to see that one’s economic privilege is a lousy barrier against both individual and systemic discrimination and oppression.

Consequently, black people have also been among the most vocal challengers of these ideologies, as we’ve seen most recently with the Colin Kaepernick and the NFL #TakeAKnee demonstrations. In a show of solidary with the free agent quarterback, professional football players – the vast majority of whom are black – have been kneeling during the National Anthem as a means of protesting racial injustice and police brutality.

WATCH: NFL players team up in defiance and solidarity

Over the past few weeks, the president of the United States has brought renewed attention to the inherent tensions that define the ideologies of the “American Dream” through his repeated public criticisms of these kneeling NFL players.

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues,” Trump recently tweeted, he or she should not be allowed to kneel. Labeling the protestors actions “disrespectful” to the country, flag and anthem, President Donald Trump has called for players to be fired, encouraged a boycott of the NFL, insisted that the league pass a rule mandating that players stand for the anthem and derided the protestors as “sons of bitches.”

In a dramatic ploy more befitting of a scripted reality television show, the president gloated that he had instructed Vice President Mike Pence to walk out of an Indianapolis Colts game the moment any player kneeled. This was an orchestrated show of power and outrage, designed to send a flamboyant political message given that Trump and Pence knew in advance that on that particular day, the Colts were playing the San Francisco 49ers – the team that currently has the most protestors. The NFL’s announcement this week that the league has no plans to penalize protesting players is the most recent event to provoke the president’s fury; taking to social media during the early morning, he once again equated kneeling with “total disrespect” for our country.

As many have pointed out, the president’s moralizing outrage toward the NFL players is selective and deeply flawed – his apparent patriotic loyalty hasn’t stopped the billionaire politician from criticizing the removal of Confederate statues, or attacking a Gold Star family, or mocking Sen. John McCain’s military service.

The NFL players and their defenders have repeatedly stated that the protests are intended to highlight racial inequality and oppression. They’ve also explained that their decision to kneel emerged from a desire to protest peacefully and respectfully after a sustained conversation with military veterans.

Trump has chosen to ignore these rationales and the structural issues of inequality that motivate the protests and instead, advance a narrative exclusively concerned with overt displays of American patriotism and the “privilege” of the NFL players. As one of president’s advisors explained, by aggressively targeting the NFL players, Trump believes that he is “winning the cultural war,” having made black “millionaire sport athletes his new [Hillary Clinton].”

READ MORE: As ‘America’s sport,’ the NFL cannot escape politics

It’s a cynical statement, revealing the president’s perception of the jingoism of his base of supporters who envision him as a crusader for American values and symbols.

In casting the black protestors as the antithesis of all of this, Trump has marked the players as unpatriotic elites and enemies of the nation. For a president who has consistently fumbled his way through domestic and foreign policy since he was elected, a culture war between “hard-working” and “virtuous” working-class and middle-class white Americans and rich, ungrateful black football players is a welcome public distraction.

Trump’s attacks on the NFL protestors are rooted in those competing tensions inherent to the American Dream: that wealth equals freedom; that economic privilege demands patriotic gratitude; and most importantly, that black people’s individual economic prosperity invalidates their concerns about systemic injustice and requires their silence on racial oppression.

Among the protestors’ detractors, this has become a common line of attack, a means of disparaging the black NFL players’ activism by pointing to their apparent wealth. The fact that systemic racism is demonstrably real and that individual prosperity does not make one immune to racial discrimination appears to be lost on the protestors’ critics.

Theirs is a grievance that suggests that black athletes should be grateful to live in this country; that racism can’t exist in America since black professional athletes are allowed to play and sign contracts for considerable sums of money; that black players owe the nation their silence since America “gave” them opportunity and access; that black athletes have no moral authority on issues of race and inequality because of their individual success; and that black athletes’ success was never theirs to earn, but instead, was given to them and can just as easily be taken away.

This culture war being waged over black athletes is not new. Black athletes – and entertainers – have long been hyper-aware of their peculiar place in American society as individuals beloved for their athletic and artistic talents, yet reviled the moment they use their public platform to protest systemic racial inequality. The parallels between the #TakeAKnee protests and the protests of Muhammad Ali or John Carlos and Tommie Smith are readily apparent; so too are there important similarities to the case of Paul Robeson.

An outspoken civil rights activist, collegiate and professional football player, lawyer, opera singer and actor, Robeson had his passport revoked in 1950 because of his political activism and speech – actions that all but destroyed his career. The star athlete and entertainer, “who had exemplified American upward mobility” quickly “became public enemy number one” as institutions cancelled his concerts, the public called for his death and anti-Robeson mobs burned effigies of him.

During a 1956 congressional hearing, the chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities beat a familiar refrain with Robeson, challenging the entertainer’s accusations of American racism and racial oppression. He saw no sign of prejudice, he argued, since Robeson was privileged, having gone to elite universities and playing collegiate and professional football.

READ MORE: Poll: Americans divided on NFL protests

Black athletes, even the silent ones, largely understand that their economic privilege doesn’t insulate them from the realities of racial discrimination. They also understand that their wealth and success is precarious and is often dependent not only upon their athletic performance, but also upon them remaining silent on issues of racial injustice, especially those that appear to question the “American Dream” or implicate the American public by association.

It should come as no surprise then that Colin Kaepernick, whose protests turned him into a national pariah despite his on-the-field talents, has filed a grievance against the NFL, accusing the league and its teams of blackballing him because of his political beliefs. “Principled and peaceful political protest,” Kaepernick’s lawyers argued in a statement, “should not be punished and athletes should not be denied employment based on partisan political provocation by the Executive Branch of our government.” Whether the ostracized Kaepernick will win his grievance is unknown, but it is certainly telling that he and his lawyers have rooted their claims in contested definitions of freedom and the precarious economic privilege of outspoken NFL players.

For the loudest and most vocal critics of black protestors, in particular, outspokenness is tantamount to treason, grounds for the harshest of punishments. Perhaps they would benefit from a close reading of James Baldwin, who once argued: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

The post Column: For black athletes, wealth doesn’t equal freedom appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell held a news conference today after the second day of the annual owners meeting. Watch his remarks in the player above.

NFL players will be encouraged to stand for the national anthem at the start of the football games, the league’s chief told reporters today.

After two days of meeting with owners of each NFL team, representatives for the players’ union and players themselves, the NFL has reiterated its decision to keep its existing policy of not requiring players to stand during the anthem. Goodell said yesterday that the league wouldnot instate a rule that would penalize players who refuse to stand for the anthem.

“We believe everyone should stand for the national anthem,” he told reporters at a news conference today. “That’s an important part of our policy. It’s also an important part of our game that we all take great pride in. And it’s also important for us to honor our flag and our country and I think our fans expect us to do that.”

Goodell’s remarks came after President Donald Trump continued his criticism of the NFL this morning. On Twitter, Trump said: “The NFL has decided that it will not force players to stand for the playing of our National Anthem. Total disrespect for our great country!”

After former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the anthem last year to protest police killings of unarmed black men, dozens of other players joined him to draw greater attention to social and racial injustice. Last month, Trump said the NFL ought to fire players who didn’t stand for the anthem.

The players “are not doing this in any way to be disrespectful to the flag,” Goodell said today. “But they also understand how it’s being interpreted.”

Goodell also said the league wanted to stay out of the political arena over the issue.

“We’re not looking to get into politics,” he told reporters. “What we’re looking to do is to continue to get people focused on football.”

The post WATCH: NFL commissioner says players ‘should stand for the national anthem’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A DWP employee who has been working in the welfare system for 42 years has shared some key advice for new claims for the likes of PIP and Attendance Allowance

Finance guru Laura Pomfret explained how changes to inheritance tax in the budget may hit people in a way they hadn't realised

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has torpedoed the UK's economic recovery with her tax-and-spend Budget but Ed Miliband is the one who worries me.

Benefit increases, new investment opportunities, and several tax changes are due to come into effect in April.

It is nearly time for one of astronomy's top annual sights – the Perseid meteor shower. This year is a bit special, says Abigail Beall

A planet orbiting extremely close to a white dwarf may have formed inside its star – this could be the origin of some of the most promising worlds beyond our solar system to search for life

From artificial retinas to ageing mice, here are five of the most promising results from research performed on the ISS – and what they might mean for humans on Earth and in space

Space exploration has long been a staple of sci-fi films and TV, yet most play fast and loose with the laws of physics, and scientific fact often couldn't be further from the truth

Mars rocks that were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet millions of years ago have been traced back to craters where they originated, which could transform our understanding of Mars’s volcanism and evolution

A radio signal detected in 1977, sometimes claimed as evidence for aliens, may have been caused by a laser-like beam of microwave radiation

Sam Howell tells New Scientist why NASA is so keen to visit Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, Europa, and how the mission could help us figure out the likelihood of life elsewhere in the cosmos

The Milky Way may be home to strange black holes from the first moments of the universe, and the best candidates are the three closest black holes to Earth

Past observations have indicated that the icy moon of Jupiter has a vast subsurface ocean. Launching in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper will go there in search of evidence that it could support life

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted six strange worlds the size of planets that formed like stars – and the smallest may be building its own miniature solar system

News of the asteroid 2024 RW1 impacting near the Philippines may have come as a shock this week, but space agencies and astronomers around the world are keeping an eye out to protect us

Greg Eghigian's After the Flying Saucers Came and Luis Elizondo's Imminent both show how our fascination with UFOs goes beyond simple curiosity

Four private astronauts are riding a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule further from Earth than any human since 1972, where they will attempt the first ever civilian spacewalk

Five satellites due to launch this week could be brighter than most stars, and astronomers fear the growth of such constellations could have a catastrophic impact

If you were standing on Mars as it was hit by charged particles from the sun, you might be able to see an aurora just like on Earth

The Cassini mission’s samples from Saturn’s moon Enceladus have signs of various organic molecules that could be among the ingredients needed for life to get started

The success of the all-civilian spacewalk on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission shows that private space flight is starting to catch up with government space agencies

The long-standing mystery of how supermassive black holes grew so huge so quickly could be solved by decaying dark matter

See the world's best space images from the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024 award

Genetic analysis shows that microbes growing inside the International Space Station have adaptations for radiation and low gravity, and may pose a threat to astronauts

A distant planet should have been consumed when its star expanded to become a red giant, perhaps offering insights into planetary migration

Astronomers listened for radio signals emanating from planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, but found no evidence of any interplanetary communications

Astronomers have detected an exoplanet around Barnard’s star, one of the sun’s closest neighbours, but it is too hot for liquid water or life

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week