US Secretary of State Rubio Risks to fail on Somaliland Opportunity, President Trump needs to intervene by Michael Rubin

Very recommendable! Like Israel just did, the US should recognize the state of Somaliland!

"... Somaliland did everything right. It oriented itself toward the West, was the only democracy in a sea of dictatorships, shut down terrorist cells, and denied its territory to the weapons smuggling that sustained both Yemen’s Houthis and Somalia’s al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab.

The State Department never got the memo. At the time, Donald Yamamoto, a career diplomat and one of the Foreign Service’s top Africa hands, was U.S. ambassador to Somalia. He sought to ingratiate himself with Mogadishu, encouraging a de facto embargo of Somaliland while channeling billions of dollars of aid and debt relief to Somalia’s pro-China government. His theory was simple: Mogadishu’s happiness would reflect his success. Keep the money flowing, and Mogadishu would be happy.

His successor, Larry André, Jr., stood firm in the idea before retiring early and going to work for Somalia’s largest telecom provider, lobbying to allow it access to U.S. banks after previous terrorist finance allegations.

Bullies prey on weakness and vulnerability. As secretary of state under former [46th President], Antony Blinken [a total fool] signaled ambivalence.

China launched a proxy war, supporting Somali militias against Somaliland to punish the country for siding with Taiwan and to seize its rare earths by force. 

Somalilanders hoped that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would end the State Department’s self-defeating, pro-Beijing policy toward the Horn of Africa and perhaps even recognize Somaliland’s independence as Israel just did. Many in Congress, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the intelligence community favor independence. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act called for the State Department to conduct a policy review. ...

On Dec. 21, 2025, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance, told Chinese television that he endorsed China seizing Taiwan by force. And yet, Rubio’s State Department continues to embrace the Somali president first promoted by former Secretary Hillary Clinton. ...

Just as then-President Harry S. Truman defied the State Department when he recognized Israel in 1948, Trump should defy the State Department to embrace Somaliland, the most pro-American, anti-Chinese country in Africa."

Rubio and Landau Risk Oversleeping on Somaliland Opportunity | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

Resurrected tissue: Mechanism that enables regeneration after extensive damage solves a 50-year-old mystery

Amazing stuff!

"... A new study from the Weizmann Institute of Science, ... reveals that the very enzymes responsible for cellular destruction—caspases—may also render certain cells resistant to death, enabling damaged tissue not only to regenerate but even to become more resilient. ..."

"... A delicate balance between tissue repair and excess growth is essential to any regenerative process. In the final part of their study, the researchers revealed how uncontrolled growth is prevented during tissue repair after injury. “DARE cells promote the growth of nearby NARE cells, apparently by secreting growth signals,” ... “In turn, NARE cells secrete signals that inhibit the growth of DARE cells. In fact, we’ve discovered a negative-feedback loop between the two cell populations that prevents overgrowth.” ...

“Many cancers originate in epithelial cells that have lost normal growth control, and many traditional cancer treatments aim to cause them to self-destruct through apoptosis. Our findings pave the way for understanding why such treatments sometimes fail and how they could be improved. The results also point toward new ways in which we might be able to accelerate beneficial regeneration of healthy tissue after injury.” ..."

From the abstract:

"Caspases are best known for promoting apoptosis, yet their role in tissue regeneration by compensatory proliferation remains unclear.
Using Drosophila wing discs and a delayed reporter for the initiator caspase-9 ortholog Dronc activity, we identify two apoptosis-resistant epithelial cell populations that mediate regeneration after ionizing radiation:
Dronc-activating (DARE) and
non-activating (NARE) cells.

Dronc activity in DARE cells, independent of Dark and effector caspases, drives regeneration both cell-autonomously and non-cell-autonomously.
The TNFR in DARE cells, Wengen, likely activated by ROS, strongly promotes DARE proliferation, while TNF/Eiger and TNFR Grindelwald moderately suppress it. Downstream, p38 MAPK is the main signaling essential for DARE and NARE cell proliferation.
Myo1D ensures DARE survival by preventing lethal effector caspase activation, whereas Myo7A/Crinkled supports moderate caspase activity.
Dying cells trigger DARE induction, and both DARE and NARE transmit apoptosis resistance to progeny, with DARE progeny showing enhanced resistance. Maintaining balanced DARE-NARE proliferation is crucial for proper regeneration, growth, and differentiation, insights that may be relevant to radiation-resistant cells in cancer therapy."

Resurrected tissue: Mechanism that enables regeneration after extensive damage solves a 50-year-old mystery

Resurrected Tissue (original news release) "Weizmann Institute researchers have solved a 50-year-old mystery, uncovering the molecular mechanism that enables tissue regeneration after extensive damage. The findings may pave the way for treatments that help prevent cancer from returning"

Apoptosis-resistant cells drive compensatory proliferation via cell-autonomous and non-autonomous functions of the initiator caspase Dronc (open access)

DARE cells (their bodies marked in green) and NARE cells (their bodies are unmarked) in the epithelial tissue from which the fly’s wing develops. In red are the nuclei of cells as they divide. The researchers discovered that NARE cells receive signals from neighboring DARE cells instructing them to proliferate

Early neanderthals made fire 400,000 years ago in the UK pushing back the origin of human fire making by over 350,000 years

Amazing stuff! Another surprising discovery about the Neanderthals!

I had previously blogged here already about this discovery, but it was only about a video!

I bet this is not the earliest ever, but other places somewhere around the world will be discovered in the future.

"... Pinpointing exactly when this kind of fire use evolved is tricky, since the traces of natural burns and human-made ones look alike. Now, a new study reports on a concentrated patch of heated sediment and burned stone tools from the East Farm Barnham archeological site.

The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago. ..."

"A stunning discovery at an archaeological dig in the UK is rewriting the timeline of when humans first made fire.

Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.

The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought. ..."

"The discovery shows humans were making fire around 350,000 years earlier than previously known.

Research ... provides evidence of the earliest known instance of fire-making by humans – around 400,000 years ago. Previous recorded instances of fire-making date to only 50,000 years ago. ..."

From the abstract:

"Fire-making is a uniquely human innovation that stands apart from other complex behaviours such as tool production, symbolic culture and social communication.
Controlled fire use provided adaptive opportunities that had profound effects on human evolution. Benefits included warmth, protection from predators, cooking and creation of illuminated spaces that became focal points for social interaction. Fire use developed over a million years, progressing from harvesting natural fire to maintaining and ultimately making fire.

However, determining when and how fire use evolved is challenging because natural and anthropogenic burning are hard to distinguish. Although geochemical methods have improved interpretations of heated deposits, unequivocal evidence of deliberate fire-making has remained elusive.

Here we present evidence of fire-making on a 400,000-year-old buried land surface at Barnham (UK), where heated sediments and fire-cracked flint handaxes were found alongside two fragments of iron pyrite—a mineral used in later periods to strike sparks with flint.

Geological studies show that pyrite is locally rare, suggesting it was brought deliberately to the site for fire-making.

The emergence of this technological capability provided important social and adaptive benefits, including the ability to cook food on demand—particularly meat—thereby enhancing digestibility and energy availability, which may have been crucial for hominin brain evolution."

"... Sites in Africa suggest humans used natural fire over a million years ago, but the discovery at the Palaeolithic site in Barnham evidences the creation and control of fire, which carries huge implications for human development and evolution. Until now, the oldest known evidence of fire-making was from 50,000 years ago, found in northern France. ..."

Early neanderthals made fire 400,000 years ago

The moment the earliest known human-made fire was uncovered "BBC News visits the prehistoric site in Suffolk"

Groundbreaking discovery shows earliest evidence of fire-making (official news release) "Researchers led by the British Museum have unearthed the earliest known evidence of fire-making, dating back over 400,000 years, in a field in Suffolk."

Earliest evidence of making fire (no public access)

The site at Barnham, where the discoveries were made

Ancient Greece to Turner v Constable: Five of the greatest rivalries in art history

Recommendable!

Ancient Greece to Turner v Constable: Seven of the greatest rivalries in art history

The record Year 2025 of the $100 Million sales per luxury residences in the US housing market

Wow!

"The U.S. housing market in 2025 was tepid at best. Ultra luxury real estate, on the other hand, was white-hot.

The top 10 residential deals were all above $100 million—up from seven in 2024 and five in 2023 ..."

The Year of the $100 Million House - WSJ (behind paywall) "For the first time ever, every luxury property on the list of 2025’s 10 biggest sales traded at nine figures or more"

Boosting the Coherence of X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers

Amazing stuff!

"X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have transformed the study of matter by delivering femtosecond and attosecond pulses at angstrom wavelengths, enabling direct observation of ultrafast structural and electronic dynamics. Despite these successes, XFELs have long lacked a capability central to precision optical science: stable temporal phase coherence.

Most XFEL facilities operate in the self-amplified spontaneous-emission (SASE) regime, in which radiation originates from microscopic shot noise in an electron beam. This mechanism produces extremely bright pulses, but shot-to-shot fluctuations in their temporal structure limit their use in phase-sensitive experiments useful for metrology, interferometry, and ultrafast spectroscopy. ...

In conventional lasers, mode locking enforces a fixed phase relationship among an optical cavity’s longitudinal modes—discrete, equally spaced frequencies that resonate with the cavity. Without mode locking, these modes would oscillate independently, and their random phases would lead to noisy emission in time. When mode locking synchronizes their phases, the modes interfere constructively at regular intervals, producing a periodic train of ultrashort pulses. ...

XFELs, however, lack a physical resonator and therefore do not possess longitudinal modes in the usual sense of a cavity-based laser. They operate in a single pass, as electron bunches propagating through a sequence of undulators emit x-ray radiation. Nevertheless, theory has shown that an effective set of longitudinal modes can be synthesized by inserting, between undulator modules, magnetic chicanes that introduce a fixed delay between successive amplification stages. These delays define a comb of allowed frequencies—sometimes described as “synthetic” longitudinal modes—whose spacing is determined by the relative temporal slippage between the emitted x rays and the electrons. Recent experiments have demonstrated that such multichicane schemes enhance temporal coherence in SASE operation ..."

From the abstract:

"X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are powerful photon sources offering a wide wavelength range, subfemtosecond pulse duration, and high brightness. Most x-ray FELs are based on self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE). SASE-FEL radiation has excellent transverse but only limited longitudinal coherence, with power and spectral profiles consisting of multiple randomly distributed spikes.

In this Letter, we present the first experimental demonstration of mode-locked SASE, which generates periodic trains of phase-locked sub femtosecond pulses, thus providing an x-ray analog of the optical frequency comb.

Our approach combines the mode-coupled SASE scheme, where magnetic chicanes between the undulator modules of the FEL increase the coherence of the output radiation, and an external optical laser that restricts the FEL amplification to periodic and short regions of the electron bunch.
The work relies on evidence in the frequency and time domains for photons and electrons, respectively, and will benefit investigations of ultrafast dynamics as well as coherent spectroscopy, and enable new types of experiments requiring phase-correlated x-ray pulses."

Physics - Boosting the Coherence of X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers "Mode locking—a laser technique that revolutionized optical physics—has been extended to x rays, producing stable trains of attosecond pulses with unprecedented phase coherence."

Demonstration of Mode-Locked Frequency Comb for an X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (open access)

Fig. 1 (a) Schematic layout of the experiment. (b) and (c) Longitudinal phase space measurements of the electron beam without and with the 790-nm seed laser, respectively.

English for trippers: Panic on the Titanic

No manic!

When the "unsinkable" ship hit an iceberg!

China's latest large-scale military exercises simulated a blockade, quarantine and isolate Taiwan

Perhaps, the aging Xi Jinping (age 72, dictator for life) prefers a full blockade over an invasion of Taiwan to gain fame and glory!

Maybe Taiwan will get the Berlin Blockade (1948-49) treatment?

When China becomes more like Taiwan and the Communist Party of China has to compete in fair and square democratic elections with other political parties then the Taiwanese people might very well decide in a referendum to be reunified with mainland China.

"The People’s Republic of China (PRC) conducted large-scale military exercises that simulated a blockade around Taiwan from December 29–30. The exercise, named Justice Mission 2025, was the second exercise of its kind in 2025. Justice Mission 2025 rehearsed operational elements of a campaign to isolate Taiwan while using the rehearsal to enhance PRC political and psychological pressure on Taiwan and its allies. PRC propaganda emphasized the blockade aspects of the exercise, but it may also have been intended to practice combining blockade/interdiction missions with operations that would support a decapitation strike or invasion of Taiwan.

Key Takeaways

• Justice Mission 2025 simulated a blockade of Taiwan’s major port cities and the interdiction of Taiwanese energy imports.
• The PRC deployed 14 China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels during the exercises, indicating that the CCG will play an important role in a blockade or quarantine of Taiwan. The CCG would likely interdict non-military vessels during a blockade to create a veneer of legitimacy under the pretext of “law enforcement” operations.  
• The exercise was likely rehearsing cooperation between the CCG and the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in such activities since PLAN vessels operated together with CCG ships.

..."

China & Taiwan Update, Special Edition, December 31, 2025 | AEI