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Today's top stories
Two ships came under fire in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday morning, hours after President Trump announced that he is extending the ceasefire with Iran. The attacks put the possibility of peace talks in jeopardy. Trump extended the ceasefire just hours before it was due to expire, but did not say how much longer it would continue. Instead of flying to Islamabad yesterday as planned, Vice President Vance, who leads the U.S. delegation, stayed in Washington.
- 🎧 The extension of the ceasefire is not surprising because, despite his significant threats, Trump's actions have made it clear that he is very interested in ending the war, NPR's Franco Ordoñez tells Up First. The president said the U.S. military will maintain its presence in the Middle East and that its naval blockade of Iranian ports would continue. Ordoñez says Tehran is staying on the offensive. One adviser posted on social media that the extension means nothing and that the losing side cannot dictate terms. The adviser also accused the U.S. of using the extension as a strategy to buy time for a potential surprise attack.
Virginia voters yesterday handed Democrats a victory by narrowly approving a ballot measure that allows lawmakers to draw a new congressional map. This change could allow Democrats to gain four additional seats in Congress, bringing their total to 10 out of 11 in the state.
- 🎧 NPR's Ashley Lopez says that even with this win in Virginia, the national redistricting battle ends in a wash — or with a slight edge for Democrats for now. Basically, California Democrats were able to offset potential Republican gains in Texas, while Virginia neutralized new GOP-favored seats in states like North Carolina and Missouri. Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling for a special session this month to try to carve out more seats for his party. Trump kick-started this battle last year by urging Texas to help Republicans gain more seats in Congress. Lopez says she believes the GOP underestimated the Democrats' response. The efforts have been massive, with Virginia's elections alone racking up millions of dollars in ad spending, plus expenses from special elections and sessions to redraw maps.
Public colleges, K-12 schools, local governments and other public institutions now have an extra year to ensure their digital materials are fully accessible for individuals with disabilities, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. For at least two years, many institutions had been racing toward a Friday deadline to comply with new federal accessibility guidelines updating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Four days before this deadline, the Justice Department overrode the original rule and said public entities serving 50,000 or more people now have until April 26, 2027, to comply. Smaller institutions have until that date in 2028. The Justice Department said it "overestimated the capabilities" the covered entities had to comply with the rule by the deadline. Several disability rights organizations have condemned the delay and pushed back on the last-minute change.
Living better
Living Better is a special series about what it takes to stay healthy in America.
In two landmark cases, courts found Meta and Google liable for endangering children with their products. The social media companies are appealing the verdicts, disputing the claim that they are addictive. During the California trial, an attorney accused Meta and Google of creating apps that function like "digital casinos." The comparison is supported by cultural anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll's research on what makes video slot machines so addictive. Through her research, she discovered four key features that, when combined, helped to hold people on the gambling devices. These features trigger a trancelike or dissociative state in which people lose track of time and place. On social media apps, these features can create a kind of superglue that keeps you scrolling:
- 📱 Solitude: Schüll says that when the relationship is just between the person and the machine, it eliminates the social cues needed for stopping. Studies have found that children who regularly use screens alone in their bedrooms have a higher risk of developing what psychologists call problematic usage.
- 📱 Bottomlessness: Apps provide endless content that plays automatically, leaving you wanting more.
- 📱 Speed: The faster people play slots, the longer they gamble. Speed has a similar effect on social media. The rapid scrolling and easy access to "new" content make it difficult for people to disengage. Technological advancements such as infinite scroll have accelerated the discovery of more content.
- 📱 Teasing: Apps typically select content for you by using artificial intelligence to decipher your interests. But they withhold that content and give you something close to what you want. This entices you with the promise that you will find what you are looking for soon.
Behind the story
by Nick Schönfeld, freelance journalist
Few people have ever heard of Tristan da Cunha. Even fewer have been there. But describe it to someone as the world's most remote inhabited island in the middle of the wild South Atlantic Ocean, and it tends to conjure a fantasy, a feeling, an idea of what a place like that must be. Julia Gunther, the photographer on this piece, and I were no exception.
We tend to project our fantasies onto extreme remoteness because it is so different from the lives most of us live. Remote islands have long served as canvases onto which we project our dissatisfactions and desires. Tristan is more remote than most, which makes the projection more powerful.
For many, the island promises freedom from the grind, commutes and social media algorithms. Others imagine it as a haven for nature, where food comes from the ground and sea, unsullied by hormones or pesticides. Still more are drawn to its windswept history of shipwrecked mariners and two centuries of isolation at the edge of the world.
All of those ideas contain an element of truth. None of them, however, capture what it is actually like to live there. None contain much substance about the islanders who do.
Tristan is a community in near-constant motion. Fishermen are out before dawn. Families cut up meat in a refrigerated locker. Road crews clear landslide debris. Pensioners clock into the lobster factory for the night shift. Across the sixteen months we spent on Tristan, none of this felt exceptional to anyone involved. It was just life.
Julia and I hope that this immersive multimedia feature will give readers a real sense of Tristan — its history, its isolation, the cooperative spirit it runs on — and an equally real sense of the people who reside there and what their lives actually demand. Tristan is not an isolated fantasia. It is a society where people work very hard to keep their way of life alive.
3 things to know before you go
- World Cup sticker shock extends beyond tickets. Getting to Northeast matches, especially in Boston and New York, can be pricey. Here's a breakdown of the costs, from parking to bus trips. (via WBUR)
- Fans from around the world gathered at Prince's Paisley Park Studios yesterday to remember the iconic pop singer on the 10th anniversary of his accidental death from a fentanyl overdose.
- The American Library Association has released its annual list of the books most challenged in U.S. libraries, noting 31% of challenges came from elected officials.
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
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