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As BlueSky Surges, Could Trump Sell His Truth Social Shares Ahead of Inauguration?Israel, Lebanon agree to cease-firePolice became convinced they were investigating a crime in the disappearance of University of Mississippi student Jimmie “Jay” Lee when they interviewed the man now on trial in his death, a top officer testified Tuesday. Lee had been missing for two weeks when officers arrested Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. on July 22, 2022, said Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen. Authorities interviewed Herington twice that day, and he gave conflicting information about the hours before Lee vanished, the chief said. “From the moment that we gave Tim Herrington the opportunity to tell the truth and he couldn’t and he lied and we backed that up, we knew then,” McCutchen said. Herrington, 24, is being tried on a capital murder charge in the death of Lee, 20, a gay man who was well known in the LGBTQ+ community at Ole Miss and in Oxford. Lee disappeared in Oxford, where Herrington’s trial is in its second week. Prosecutors and the defense both called their final witnesses Tuesday, and Herrington did not testify. Closing arguments are set for Wednesday. Lee’s body has never been found, but a judge has declared him dead. Herrington maintains his innocence and his attorney, Kevin Horan, told jurors last week that prosecutors have “zero” proof Lee was killed. Lee has not contacted friends or family, and his financial transactions and once-prolific social media posts have stopped since the day he went missing, investigators testified. Before officers interviewed Herrington, they had already obtained sexually explicit text messages exchanged between social media accounts belonging to Herrington and Lee in the early hours of July 8, 2022, when Herrington disappeared in Oxford, McCutchen said. Lee communicated with his mother daily, and sent his last message to her hours before he vanished to wish her happy birthday, according to earlier testimony. Google records obtained through a warrant showed that Herrington searched “how long does it take to strangle someone” at 5:56 a.m., University Police Department Sgt. Benjamin Douglas testified last week. The final text message from Lee's phone was sent to a social media account belonging to Herrington at 6:03 a.m. from a spot near Herrington's apartment, and cellphone tower in another part of Oxford last located any signal from Lee's phone at 7:28 a.m., McCutchen said Tuesday. A security camera showed Herrington jogging at about 7:30 a.m. out of a parking lot where Lee's car was abandoned, investigators testified earlier. “We’ve been looking for Jay Lee’s body for two years, and we’re not going to stop 'til we find it," McCutchen said in court Tuesday. On the day Lee vanished, Herrington was also seen on security cameras buying duct tape in Oxford and driving to his own hometown of about an hour away, police have testified. Herrington is from an affluent family in Grenada, Mississippi, about 52 miles (83.7 kilometers) southwest of Oxford, testified Ryan Baker, an Oxford Police Department intelligence officer who was a detective when he helped investigated the case. Herrington’s grandfather is bishop of a church in Grenada, other family members work at the church and Herrington himself taught youth Sunday school classes there, Baker said. Herrington “was not portraying himself as gay” to family or friends, Baker said. During testimony Tuesday, Herrington's father and grandfather both said Herrington had never spoken about having boyfriends. Herrington operated a furniture moving business with another man while they were students at the University of Mississippi, and they had a white box truck that Herrington drove to Grenada, Baker said. Security cameras at several businesses and a neighbor’s house showed Herrington and the truck in Grenada hours after Lee disappeared, Baker said. During McCutchen's testimony Tuesday, Horan asked whether DNA tests on items taken from Herrington's apartment and the truck showed “any trace evidence at all implicating my client.” McCutchen said they did not, but police first searched Herrington's apartment two weeks after Lee vanished and they searched the box truck a few days after the apartment. Both Herrington and Lee had graduated from the University of Mississippi. Lee was pursuing a master’s degree. He was known for his creative expression through fashion and makeup and often performed in drag shows in Oxford, according to a support group called Justice for Jay Lee. Prosecutors have announced they do not intend to pursue the death penalty, meaning Herrington could get a life sentence if convicted. Mississippi law defines capital murder as a killing committed along with another felony — in this case, kidnapping.
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Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future. White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could still grow. The U.S. believes that the hackers were able to gain access to communications of senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures through the hack, Neuberger said. “We don’t believe any classified communications has been compromised,” Neuberger added during a call with reporters. She noted that because the hack appeared to be targeting a relatively small group of individuals, only a small number of Americans' phone calls and texts have been compromised. Neuberger added that impacted companies are all responding, but none “have fully removed the Chinese actors from these networks.” “So there is a risk of ongoing compromises to communications until U.S. companies address the cybersecurity gaps the Chinese are likely to maintain their access,” Neuberger said. She said that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the findings and that the White House “has made it a priority for the federal government to do everything it can to get to the bottom this.” The Chinese embassy in Washington on Tuesday rejected the accusations that it was responsible for the hack after the U.S. federal authorities issued new guidance. “The U.S. needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cyber security to smear and slander China,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. The embassy did not immediately respond to messages on Wednesday. White House officials believe that the hacking was regionally targeted and the focus was on very senior government officials. Federal authorities confirmed in October that hackers linked to China targeted the phones of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, along with people associated with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. The number of countries impacted by the hack is currently believed to be in the “low, couple dozen,” according to a senior administration official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said they believed the hacks started at least a year or two ago. The suggestions for telecom companies released Tuesday are largely technical in nature, urging encryption, centralization and consistent monitoring to deter cyber intrusions. If implemented, the security precautions could help disrupt the operation, which has been dubbed Salt Typhoon, and make it harder for China or any other nation to mount a similar attack in the future, experts say. Neuberger pointed to efforts that have been made to beef up cybersecurity in the rail, aviation, energy and other sectors following the May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline . “So, to prevent ongoing Salt typhoon type intrusions by China, we believe we need to apply a similar minimum cybersecurity practice,” Neuberger said. The cyberattack by a gang of criminal hackers on the critical U.S. pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel used along the Eastern Seaboard, sent ripple effects across the economy, highlighting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the nation’s aging energy infrastructure. Colonial confirmed it paid $4.4 million to the gang of hackers who broke into its computer systems as it scrambled to get the nation's fuel pipeline back online.Gaetz withdraws as Trump's pick for attorney general, averting confirmation battle in the Senate
Integral Ad Science CFO sells $80,592 in company stockDid you buy raw milk from one of these LA County retailers? You may need to return itPresident Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil underwent an emergency craniotomy in the early morning hours of Tuesday to drain an intracranial hemorrhage resulting from an injury he suffered in a bathroom accident in October. According to statements from Lula’s medical team, the Brazilian president is stable and will remain under monitoring in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Sírio-Libanês Hospital in the city of São Paulo. Brazilian media reported that Lula, 79, experienced headaches in recent days and was admitted to the Sírio-Libanês Hospital in Brasilia on Monday evening, where imaging tests revealed “bleeding between the brain and the meningeal membrane.” Lula was then transferred to the Sírio-Libanês Hospital in São Paulo, where he underwent the emergency procedure. CNN Brasil reported on Tuesday morning that Lula had been unwell since the previous morning and “despite being lucid and oriented, he was feeling sleepy and unwell, but he continued to keep his appointments,” according to an unnamed source. The Brazilian government released a statement on Tuesday stating that the craniotomy Lula underwent was “uneventful” and that Lula remains well and under monitoring by his medical team. Lula’s medical team held a press conference on Tuesday morning in which Dr. Roberto Kalil, who tended to the Brazilian president, stated that Lula is “fine, talks and eats normally and will not suffer any after-effects,” and pointing out that “his neurological functions are preserved.” “The president is progressing well; he arrived from surgery practically awake, was extubated and is now stable, talking normally, eating and will remain under observation for the next few days,” Kalil said. According to the doctor, Lula is expected to return to Brasilia early next week and is prohibited from receiving work visitors at the hospital until he is fully recovered. The president’s medical team told CNN Brasil after the press conference that Lula is expected to remain in São Paulo, with no return date set at press time. Kalil further explained that the hematoma was approximately three centimeters in size and did not touch the brain. Kalil asserted that it is “very unlikely” that Lula will experience another bleeding episode of that nature, and claimed the president “is stable, talking normally and eating.” Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin reportedly cancelled his schedule in São Paulo and returned to Brasília to take over some of Lula’s workload, including an upcoming meeting with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who is presently conducting an official visit to Brazil. The emergency craniotomy took place almost two months after Lula suffered a head injury in a bathroom accident on Saturday, October 19, that required urgent medical attention at the Sírio-Libanês Hospital. Lula received five stitches at the time and was advised by Kalil and the other members of his medical team to avoid long-distance air travel. As a result, Lula cancelled his trip to Kazan, Russia, to participate in the annual meeting of the anti-U.S. BRICS bloc. The accident occurred hours before the scheduled trip. Lula participated in the event through a videoconference instead. Officials from Venezuela’s socialist regime claimed at the time that Lula’s bathroom accident was “ fake ” and an elaborate “alibi” to avoid attending the event, part of an alleged plot to snub Venezuela out of a long-coveted BRICS partnership spot. Brazilian government officials explained at the time that their decision to oppose longtime ally Venezuela’s entry into the group was due to a “breach of trust” following socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent July 28 sham presidential election. Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here .
Mother shares story of daughter's murder to save others from traumaSenate Republicans on Tuesday blocked an effort by Democrats to pass a bipartisan bill that would give journalists greater protections under federal law – a move that comes in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump opposing the measure. Trump called on Republicans to “kill this bill” in a Truth Social post last month. Known as the PRESS Act, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act would prevent the government from forcing journalists to reveal their sources and limit the seizure of their data without their knowledge. The bill passed the GOP-controlled House earlier this year. After Trump’s reelection, press advocacy groups redoubled their efforts to get the legislation signed into law before the end of President Joe Biden’s term. But the bill’s failure to pass on Tuesday comes as time is fast-running out before the Democratic president leaves office. The bill is unlikely to win 60 votes, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has prioritized confirming judges during the lame-duck session. Government funding and a must-pass defense policy bill will also take up valuable floor time before lawmakers leave town for the winter holiday break. On Tuesday evening, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon went to the Senate floor and asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill. But GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas objected, blocking the attempt. Any single senator has the power to halt a bill put forward by a unanimous consent request. The Freedom of the Press Foundation said on X that Democrats knew the move would fail and called on the chamber to cut the holiday break short if necessary to try to pass the bill. “Speeches aren’t enough. The senate has had all year to pass this bipartisan bill,” the group said. Schumer spoke in support of the bill on the floor and urged passage, calling the provisions “common sense” and “more important now than ever before when we’ve heard so many in the incoming administration talk about going after the press one way or another.” Cotton argued in remarks on the floor that the bill is a threat to US national security and said its passage would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.” Earlier on Tuesday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press used the release of a Justice Department’s inspector general report into leak investigations during Trump’s first term to argue for passage of the act. “This investigation highlights the need for a reasonable, common-sense law to protect reporters and their sources,” the group’s executive director, Bruce D. Brown, said. “It’s time for Congress to pass the PRESS Act, which has overwhelming bipartisan support, to prevent government interference with the free flow of information to the public.”
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Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save WASHINGTON — A top White House official said Wednesday at least eight U.S. telecom firms and dozens of nations were impacted by a Chinese hacking campaign. Deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger offered new details about the breadth of the sprawling Chinese hacking campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. Neuberger divulged the scope of the hack a day after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued guidance intended to help root out the hackers and prevent similar cyberespionage in the future. White House officials cautioned that the number of telecommunication firms and countries impacted could grow. Hammonton police sergeant accused of failing drug test, stealing drugs from evidence room Mays Landing man charged in hit-and-run that injured man, killed dog in Absecon $680,000 Atlantic City charter bus purchase mostly covered by state, Small says Pleasantville man accused of murdering girlfriend Mainland Regional falls to Old Tappan in state final Atlantic County Sheriff's Office warns of new scam Everything you need to know about Mainland Regional's state title game 4 Bridgeton men indicted in alleged sex trafficking ring Wonderland developer to pitch vision again Wednesday at Ocean City Tabernacle Atlantic City mayor waives first appearance on witness tampering charge Holy Spirit overcomes rain, mud, Atlantic City to win Thanksgiving rivalry, clinch WJFL division Northfield Councilman Leeds resigns, citing concerns over Mayor Chau's criminal charges 19 arrested following street operations in Atlantic City Some Atlantic City casino workers call on union boss to resign for opposing a smoking ban Mays Landing man busted for meth The U.S. believes the hackers were able to gain access to communications of senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures through the hack, Neuberger said. “We don’t believe any classified communications has been compromised,” Neuberger added during a call with reporters. She added that Biden was briefed on the findings and the White House “made it a priority for the federal government to do everything it can to get to the bottom this.” US officials recommend encrypted messaging apps amid "Salt Typhoon" cyberattack, attributed to China, targeting AT&T, Verizon, and others. The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the accusations that it was responsible for the hack Tuesday after the U.S. federal authorities issued new guidance. “The U.S. needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cyber security to smear and slander China,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said. The embassy did not immediately respond to messages Wednesday. White House officials believe the hacking was regionally targeted and the focus was on very senior government officials. Federal authorities confirmed in October that hackers linked to China targeted the phones of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, along with people associated with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. By DAVID KLEPPER - Associated Press The number of countries impacted by the hack is currently believed to be in the “low, couple dozen,” according to a senior administration official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said they believed the hacks started at least a year or two ago. The suggestions for telecom companies released Tuesday are largely technical in nature, urging encryption, centralization and consistent monitoring to deter cyber intrusions. If implemented, the security precautions could help disrupt the operation, dubbed Salt Typhoon, and make it harder for China or any other nation to mount a similar attack in the future, experts say. Trump's pick to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation Kash Patel was allegedly the target of cyberattack attempt by Iranian-backed hackers. Neuberger pointed to efforts made to beef up cybersecurity in the rail, aviation, energy and other sectors following the May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline . “So, to prevent ongoing Salt Typhoon type intrusions by China, we believe we need to apply a similar minimum cybersecurity practice,” Neuberger said. The cyberattack by a gang of criminal hackers on the critical U.S. pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the fuel used along the Eastern Seaboard, sent ripple effects across the economy, highlighting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the nation’s aging energy infrastructure. Colonial confirmed it paid $4.4 million to the gang of hackers who broke into its computer systems as it scrambled to get the nation's fuel pipeline back online. Picture this: You're on vacation in a city abroad, exploring museums, tasting the local cuisine, and people-watching at cafés. Everything is going perfectly until you get a series of alerts on your phone. Someone is making fraudulent charges using your credit card, sending you into a panic. How could this have happened? Cyberattacks targeting travelers are nothing new. But as travel has increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, so has the volume of hackers and cybercriminals preying upon tourists. Financial fraud is the most common form of cybercrime experienced by travelers, but surveillance via public Wi-Fi networks, social media hacking, and phishing scams are also common, according to a survey by ExpressVPN . Spokeo consulted cybersecurity sources and travel guides to determine some of the best ways to protect your phone while traveling, from using a VPN to managing secure passwords. Online attacks are not the only type of crime impacting travelers—physical theft of phones is also a threat. Phones have become such invaluable travel aids, housing our navigation tools, digital wallets, itineraries, and contacts, that having your phone stolen, lost, or compromised while abroad can be devastating. Meanwhile, traveling can make people uniquely vulnerable to both cyber and physical attacks due to common pitfalls like oversharing on social media and letting your guard down when it comes to taking risks online. Luckily, there are numerous precautions travelers can take to safeguard against cyberattacks and phone theft. Hackers can—and do—target public Wi-Fi networks at cafés and hotels to gain access to your personal information or install malware onto your device, particularly on unsecured networks. Travelers are especially vulnerable to these types of cybersecurity breaches because they are often more reliant on public Wi-Fi than they would be in their home countries where they have more robust phone plans. This reliance on public, unsecured networks means travelers are more likely to use those networks to perform sensitive tasks like financial transfers, meaning hackers can easily gain access to banking information or other passwords. One easy way to safeguard yourself against these breaches is to use a virtual private network, or VPN, while traveling. VPNs are apps that encrypt your data and hide your location, preventing hackers from accessing personal information. An added bonus is that VPNs allow you to access websites that may be blocked or unavailable in the country you are visiting. To use a VPN, simply download a VPN app on your phone or computer, create an account, choose a server, and connect. If your phone falls into the wrong hands, there's a good chance you won't be getting it back. Out of those 91,000 phones stolen in London in 2022, only 1,915 (or about 2%) were recovered. The good news is that you can take precautions to make the loss of your phone less devastating by backing up your data before you travel. With backed-up data, you can acquire a new device and still access your photos, contacts, messages, and passwords. Moreover, if you have "Find My Device" or "Find My Phone" enabled, you can remotely wipe your stolen phone's data so the thief cannot access it. It's safest to back up your data to a hard drive and not just the cloud. That way, if you have to wipe your device, you don't accidentally erase the backup, too. Strong passwords for important accounts help protect your information while you travel, but it's just a first step. The National Cybersecurity Alliance recommends creating long, unique, and complex passwords for every account and combining them with multifactor authentication to create maximum barriers to entry. If you're worried about remembering these passwords, password managers can be a vital tool for both creating and storing strong passwords. Password managers are apps that act as secure vaults for all your passwords. Some even come with a feature that allows you to temporarily delete sensitive passwords before you travel and then easily restore them once you return. Story editing by Mia Nakaji Monnier. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Tim Bruns. Photo selection by Lacy Kerrick. This story originally appeared on Spokeo and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio. The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.TerrAscend Appoints Lynn Gefen to Expanded Role of Chief People Officer
The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to reaffirm Boston’s status as a sanctuary city “to protect” immigrants amid President Donald Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations when he takes office for the second time next month. The 13-0 vote was to reaffirm the Boston Trust Act, which, per the Council’s approved resolution, was first enacted in 2014, later amended in 2019, and “delineates the distinct roles and responsibilities of the Boston Police Department from those of the U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE), thereby promoting trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities.’ The law prohibits Boston Police and other city departments from cooperating with ICE when it comes to detaining immigrants on civil warrants, while still allowing for cooperation in criminal matters like human trafficking, child exploitation, drug and weapons trafficking, and cybercrimes, according to the resolution. “It’s not just a policy, but it is a promise to our immigrant neighbors that they are welcome here, and this is a safe haven, and they don’t have to live in fear of being unjustly scrutinized or even ripped away from their families,” Councilor Gabriela Coletta said at the Wednesday City Council meeting. “As we brace for impact, we’ve got to make sure that we all work together.” City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, who introduced the resolution and is the first Haitian-American elected to city government in Boston, made similar remarks. “As the national climate grows increasingly hostile towards immigrant populations, we must reaffirm who we are as a city, our leadership role in maintaining a positive and welcoming environment here with our immigrant communities,” Louijeune said. “This resolution is just enforcing what is already on the books and what is already enforced, but I think our immigrant communities need to hear that we, as a Boston City Council, unanimously support them via the Trust Act.” The resolution, co-sponsored by Councilors Julia Mejia and Benjamin Weber, touches more specifically on the changing federal administration sparking the all-Democrat City Council’s decision to reaffirm Boston’s sanctuary status. “In the face of changing federal leadership, the City of Boston must reaffirm our support for the Boston Trust Act to protect our immigrant residents by creating a safe environment where all residents, regardless of immigration status, can report crimes, seek assistance, and live without fear of discrimination or undue scrutiny.” It goes on to state that, “The City of Boston shall continue to monitor and respond to federal immigration policies that may impact its residents, reaffirming its commitment to protect immigrant communities from unjust enforcement actions.” The Council action follows progressive Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu’s declaration last month that the city would look to continue to protect immigrants in “every possible way” under the threat of mass deportations from Republican President-elect Donald Trump, and would not cooperate with efforts that threaten residents’ safety. Wu’s comments caught the attention of Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan, who bashed the mayor for what he saw as her vow to fight federal efforts to eradicate public safety threats, leading to a public squabble between the two.
Particle that only has mass when moving in one direction observed for first time December 10, 2024 Penn State For the first time, scientists have observed a collection of particles, also known as a quasiparticle, that's massless when moving one direction but has mass in the other direction. The quasiparticle, called a semi-Dirac fermion, was first theorized 16 years ago, but was only recently spotted inside a crystal of semi-metal material called ZrSiS. The observation of the quasiparticle opens the door to future advances in a range of emerging technologies from batteries to sensors, according to the researchers. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIN Email For the first time, scientists have observed a collection of particles, also known as a quasiparticle, that's massless when moving one direction but has mass in the other direction. The quasiparticle, called a semi-Dirac fermion, was first theorized 16 years ago, but was only recently spotted inside a crystal of semi-metal material called ZrSiS. The observation of the quasiparticle opens the door to future advances in a range of emerging technologies from batteries to sensors, according to the researchers. The team, led by scientists at Penn State and Columbia University, recently published their discovery in the journal Physical Review X. "This was totally unexpected," said Yinming Shao, assistant professor of physics at Penn State and lead author on the paper. "We weren't even looking for a semi-Dirac fermion when we started working with this material, but we were seeing signatures we didn't understand -- and it turns out we had made the first observation of these wild quasiparticles that sometimes move like they have mass and sometimes move like they have none." A particle can have no mass when its energy is entirely derived from its motion, meaning it is essentially pure energy traveling at the speed of light. For example, a photon or particle of light is considered massless because it moves at light speed. According to Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, anything traveling at the speed of light cannot have mass. In solid materials, the collective behavior of many particles, also known as quasiparticles, can have different behavior than the individual particles, which in this case gave rise to particles having mass in only one direction, Shao explained. Semi-Dirac fermions were first theorized in 2008 and 2009 by several teams of researchers, including scientists from the Université Paris Sud in France and the University of California, Davis. The theorists predicted there could be quasiparticles with mass-shifting properties depending on their direction of movement -- that they would appear massless in one direction but have mass when moving in another direction. Sixteen years later, Shao and his collaborators accidentally observed the hypothetical quasiparticles through a method called magneto-optical spectroscopy. The technique involves shining infrared light on a material while it's subjected to a strong magnetic field and analyzing the light reflected from the material. Shao and his colleagues wanted to observe the properties of quasiparticles inside silver-colored crystals of ZrSiS. The team conducted their experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida. The lab's hybrid magnet creates the most powerful sustained magnetic field in the world, roughly 900,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. The field is so strong it can levitate small objects such as water droplets. The researchers cooled down a piece of ZrSiS to -452 degrees Fahrenheit -- only a few degrees above absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature -- and then exposed it to the lab's powerful magnetic field while hitting it with infrared light to see what it revealed about the quantum interactions inside the material. "We were studying optical response, how electrons inside this material respond to light, and then we studied the signals from the light to see if there is anything interesting about the material itself, about its underlying physics," Shao said. "In this case, we saw many features we'd expect in a semi-metal crystal and then all of these other things happening that were absolutely puzzling." When a magnetic field is applied to any material, the energy levels of electrons inside that material become quantized into discrete levels called Landau levels, Shao explained. The levels can only have fixed values, like climbing a set of stairs with no little steps in between. The spacing between these levels depends on the mass of the electrons and the strength of the magnetic field, so as the magnetic field increases, the energy levels of the electrons should increase by set amounts based entirely on their mass -- but in this case, they didn't. Using the high-powered magnet in Florida, the researchers observed that the energy of the Landau level transitions in the ZrSiS crystal followed a completely different pattern of dependence on the magnetic field strength. Years ago, theorists had labeled this pattern the "B^(2/3) power law," the key signature of semi-Dirac fermions. To understand the bizarre behavior they observed, the experimental physicists partnered with theoretical physicists to develop a model that described the electronic structure of ZrSiS. They specifically focused on the pathways on which electrons might move and intersect to investigate how the electrons inside the material were losing their mass when moving in one direction but not another. "Imagine the particle is a tiny train confined to a network of tracks, which are the material's underlying electronic structure," Shao said. "Now, at certain points the tracks intersect, so our particle train is moving along its fast track, at light speed, but then it hits an intersection and needs to switch to a perpendicular track. Suddenly, it experiences resistance, it has mass. The particles are either all energy or have mass depending on the direction of their movement along the material's 'tracks.'" The team's analysis showed the presence of semi-Dirac fermions at the crossing points. Specifically, they appeared massless when moving in a linear path but switched to having mass when moving in a perpendicular direction. Shao explained that ZrSiS is a layered material, much like graphite that is made up of layers of carbon atoms that can be exfoliated down into sheets of graphene that are one atom thick. Graphene is a critical component in emerging technologies, including batteries, supercapacitors, solar cells, sensors and biomedical devices. "It is a layered material, which means once we can figure out how to have a single layer cut of this compound, we can harness the power of semi-Dirac fermions, control its properties with the same precision as graphene," Shao said. "But the most thrilling part of this experiment is that the data cannot be fully explained yet. There are many unsolved mysteries in what we observed, so that is what we are working to understand." Other Penn State researchers on the paper are Seng Huat Lee, assistant research professor of bulk crystal growth; Yanglin Zhu, postdoctoral researcher; and Zhiqiang Mao, professor of physics, of material science and engineering, and of chemistry. Dmitri Basov, Higgins Professor of Physics at Columbia University, was co-lead author on the paper. The other co-authors are Jie Wang of Temple University; Seongphill Moon of Florida State University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory; Mykhaylo Ozerov, David Graf and Dmitry Smirnov of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory; A. N. Rudenko and M. I. Katsnelson of Radboud University in the Netherlands; Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman and B. Andrei Bernevig of Princeton University; Zhiyuan Sun of Harvard University; and Raquel Queiroz and Andrew J. Millis of Columbia University. The U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Simons Foundation funded Penn State aspects of this research. Story Source: Materials provided by Penn State . Original written by Adrienne Berard. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference : Cite This Page :South Africa, assuming the G20 Presidency this month, seeks to advance shared global goals, according to Ronald Lamola, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation. During the inaugural G20 Sherpas meeting, Lamola outlined the presidency's theme, Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability, aimed at addressing global challenges. Key actions include bolstering disaster resilience, ensuring debt sustainability, and fostering a just energy transition. South Africa plans to establish temporary task forces focusing on inclusive economic growth, food security, and technology for sustainable development. Lamola emphasized the need for strong multilateral institutions to uphold international law and promote global consensus. (With inputs from agencies.)None