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Yesterday I wrote about the segment of CBS’s “60 Minutes” show that was removed from the schedule by news editor-in-chief Bari Weiss shortly before it was to air. It was about American detainees, accused of immigration violations, who were sent to a notorious and horrible prison in El Salvador, CECOT.  Here’s an excerpt of the NYT story on the incident:

In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.

CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”

But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

It seems to me, and even more now that I’ve seen the show, that the reasons for taking it off there air were, as Alfonsi claims, not really editorial but political. Why would Weiss do that, though?  Perhaps because, she doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Trump, who doesn’t want the information in this show to be aired. There are several reasons why Weiss might have wanted administration pushback. First, the Trump administration approved the acquisition of Paramount (which owns CBS) to Skydance, and, after this, we can’t have CBS criticizing the administration.  Second, this year Trump sued CBS for airing an edited interview with Kamala Harris; Trump won and got $16 million. So there’s every reason to think that Trump would be really upset if CBS’s 60 Minutes criticized his administration, which is the show does implicitly. You can see that below.

Nevertheless, a fair number of readers here defended Weiss, arguing that Alfonsi did NOT ask enough U.S. administration officials to criticize the show. 60 Minutes did not, for instance, consult Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and “the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.” Weiss helpfully suggested that they ask Miller.  But, as you’ll see in the 14-minute segment, which was aired in Canada, the show did ask for comment from the White House. The response? Here’s what Alfonsi says in the piece:

“The Department of Homeland Sexurity declined our request for an interview, and referred all questions about CECOT to El Salvador.  The government there did not respond to our request.”

Now isn’t that enough asking? After all, the show asked the proper government agency to respond. That agency, DHS, referred CBS to the El Salvadorian government, which didn’t respond.  That is two asks, and to the right people. Isn’t that enough? How many bits of investigative journalism have you read that end with something like, “We asked X for a comment on this story, but we have gotten no response.”  Do you beef about them not having asked more people, up until they get a critical response?  No, I doubt it.  And the editors of this story were satisfied with that, as am I.  Weiss’s insistence that CBS keep asking people until someone in the Trump administration did respond critically constitutes micromanagement, and I fail to understand that this is justifiable grounds for pulling the story.

Before I make a few more comments, why don’t you watch the show? The links to the Canadian broadcast, apparently identical to the American one, are below, as “The Streisand Effect” has spread them all over the Inbternet.

First, from The Breakdown.  I’ve put the links to that site here, and you can watch the Canadian version by clicking on the headline below. The quality isn’t great, but you can certainly see the show.  It’s about the right length for a “60 Minutes” segment, being 14 minutes long (most are between 12 and 15 minutes). The site’s comment:

The segment apparently aired on Canada’s Global TV app and was shared by this Bluesky user @jasonparis.bsky.social. You can watch the entire segment below!

On The Reset, Yashar Ali also has a link to the full video; click below to access it (h/t reader Dave). THIS IS THE BEST AVAILABLE VERSION. That site says this:

The decision to pull the story was made by CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss, and it triggered a firestorm within the network and, subsequently, in the public. Here’s some info on the controversy and when I update this story shortly, I will link to additional reporting, but I wanted to publish this video immediately as a version of it was taken down on YouTube.

It turns out that the network delivered the segment to Canada’s Global TV app (it has since been pulled).

As I understand it, this is only part of the overall story, but this 13-minute-long video— sent to me by a source —is what exists. [JAC: I have no idea what they mean by “part of the overall story”. If something more was there, I’d like to know what it is.]

(An earlier version of this story had a video that was filmed with someone’s smart phone, this is a broadcast quality version),

Click the screenshot below to access the video, scrolling down a bit after you get to the site:

I also found a good version of the entire show, including the controversial segment, at an archived site.

There’s also a YouTube version embedded within a MayDay discussion.  The CBS segment goes from 4:49 to 15:20, so it’s shorter than other versions. I have not checked to see what, if anything, is missing from the video below compared to those above.

Finally, this Bluesky post begins a series of five shorter posts that contain the segment. Again, I haven’t checked this one to see if it’s “complete,” at least compared to the first two above:

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog.xyz) 2025-12-23T01:28:12.219Z

So, what have we here? The piece is mostly about Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration from the U.S. to a horrible prison (CECOT) in El Salvador.  The purported reason was that they were terrorists or violent criminals. Most of the video is taken up with shots of the prison and interviews with Venezuelans who had been deported to CECOT and later sent on to Venezuela (and presumably freed there) in a prisoner swap.

CECOT is hell on earth, far worse than the Supermax prisons in the U.S.  The lights are on 24 hours per day, cells are overcrowded, there is no outside light or fresh water (prisoners say they drank water from toilets), the food is dire, and the El Salvadoran prisoners (presumably gang members) in CECOT will never get out again. They are treated like trash, and manhandled and beaten regularly. It is surely hell on earth.

Note that the people interviewed by 60 Minutes are not El Salvadoran gang members, but some of 252 Venezuelans who entered the U.S. illegally and were deemed suitable for sending to CECOT

CECOT, or Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, was constructed three years ago.  Wikipedia adds this:

With a capacity for 40,000 inmates, CECOT is the largest prison in Latin America and one of the largest in the world by prisoner capacity. In March 2025, the Salvadoran government accepted over 200 deportees that the second Donald Trump administration alleged were Venezuelan and Salvadoran gang members and incarcerated them in CECOT. Among them was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case received widespread media attention in the United States. The Venezuelans incarcerated in CECOT were repatriated to Venezuela in July 2025 following a prisoner swap involving El Salvador, the United States, and Venezuela.

According to the 60 Minutes report, the U.S. paid El Salvador $4.7 million to house Venezuelan deportees, characterizing them as “heninous monsters: rapists, kidnappers, sexual assaulter, and predators”, and “the worst of the worst.” Were they? Human Rights Watch, quoted in the show, concluded that nearly of the Venezuelans sent to CCECOT “had no criminal history” save illegal entry into the U.S. They add that only 8 prisoners, or 3.1%, “were convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.”

But surely none of these prisoners deserve this kind of punishment, even if they were murderers! Yet the vast majority were guilty of no crimes save illegal entry. ICE’s own records were consulted and reviewed by 60 Minutes. Even having a tattoo was apparently sufficient reason to warrant a Venezuelan’s deportation to CECOT, but tattooes aren’t reliable ways to identify Venezuelan gang members. And don’t even ask about “the island”: a punishment cell in which prisoners were beaten every half hour. You may have seen the “commercial” with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (the department asked for comments!), showing a group of heavily tattooes prisoners, actually shows El Salvadoran prisoners accused of being gang members, not Venezuelans deported by the U.S. Here’s an AP video of Noem’s visit. The prisoners shown are El Salvadoran, most with tattooes indicating gang membership. But remember, even these baddies to not deserve to be in such hell.

The show then interviews a group of students at U. C. Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. These students investigated the prison and verified that the deportees’ stories were true and that the conditions for all prisoners “violated UN minimum standards for prisoners,” constituting violations of human rights.

Yes, there are two sides for every story, but I can’t see another side of this one: a side that vindicates what the Trump Administration did.  But have a look for yourself (I recommend the second link, the one from Reset). What is the other side?

It seems to me that Weiss was micromanaging this video on ideological grounds, presumably to soften its implicit attack on the Trump administration.  Taking this segment off the air because they didn’t ask the Administration for enough comments appears to me as dissimulation.

Judge for yourself.

A new discovery shows that messy, stray light can be used to clean up quantum systems instead of disrupting them. University of Iowa researchers found that unwanted photons produced by lasers can be canceled out by carefully tuning the light itself. The result is a much purer stream of single photons, a key requirement for quantum computing and secure communication. The work could help push photonic quantum technology closer to real-world use.

A new discovery shows that messy, stray light can be used to clean up quantum systems instead of disrupting them. University of Iowa researchers found that unwanted photons produced by lasers can be canceled out by carefully tuning the light itself. The result is a much purer stream of single photons, a key requirement for quantum computing and secure communication. The work could help push photonic quantum technology closer to real-world use.

Today we have some lovely bird photos from Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia. Scott’s captions are indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Scott’s Facebook page, full of great photos, is here. (Photos used with permission.)

Social media, including Facebook, gets quite a bit of negative press these days. I get that. But one of the great values of social media is that it can put you in contact with people who can really help you out. In Sept. 2025, I started posting bird photos from my Western Australia trip. I was contacted by John Edmond, who lives in Perth. Last year, I met John in Cairns on our regular Tuesday AM bird walk, and then showed him some local birds along the Cairns Esplanade. John loves a twitch, and was especially happy to see Nordy, Nordmann’s Greenshank.

So John reached out on FB and offered to take me for a day’s birding in Perth. We had a great time and I particularly liked touring around Herdsman Lake. Here are some of my favourite images from that day’s birding.

The Pink-eared Duck [Malacorhynchus membranaceus] is one of my favourite birds. I was lucky to get nice close images of this bird. If you’re wondering about the name, look carefully at the head. You can just see a little bit of pink behind his eye. Personally, I’d name it the Zebra-breasted Duck.

And another. The flaps along the bill are used to help funnel microbe-rich water into their mouth.

The Great Crested Grebe [Podiceps cristatus] is another amazing bird. I just love the hairdo and the neck feathers during breeding season. Interestingly, this bird is found in wetlands from Asia Europe, Africa, and Australia. This is one of the grebes that does a upright mating dance that you may have seen on TV:

So am I gonna get lucky tonight? Let me think about it:

JAC: Here’s a YouTube video I found of the mating dance of this species. Don’t miss any of it!

I love the raking light on this stunning bird:

The Australian Shelduck [Tadorna tadornoides] during breeding season. The female is the one with the spectacles. It’s obvious she’s the only one with a good sense to wear glasses:

I like these this couple out for an evening promenade in the quiet water:

Herdman Lake like has more than water birds. This pair of Tawny Frogmouths [Podargus strigoides] are a bit of an institution there. People come around looking for these interesting, well camouflaged birds. See me if you can:

Australian Reed Warbler [Acrocephalus australis] was regularly heard singing in the rushes. Lovely calls—the sound of the Aussie wetlands:

At an earlier stop, I was happy to see the Western Spinebill [Acanthorhynchus superciliosus]. It’s not the world’s best shot, but it’s still beautiful bird and I hope to get better views of it in the future:

And finally, I’ll leave off this WA tour with a robin, a male Scarlet Robin [Petroica boodang]. Robins are so cute and they sit nicely for the camera, not jumping around like some crazy caffeinated gym rat like so many birds do. Speaking which I’m off for a coffee and a workout to work off some of the pounds I put on this trip:

The year’s most memorable moments from astronomy and space exploration include a double-detonating supernova, a private moon landing and a stunning lunar eclipse

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was involved in yet another first discovery recently available in pre-print form on arXiv from Cicero Lu at the Gemini Observatory and his co-authors. This time, humanity’s most advanced space telescope found UV-fluorescent carbon monoxide in a protoplanetary debris disc for the first time ever. It also discovered some features of that disc that have considerable implications for planetary formation theory.

Scientists cultivating partnerships of fungi and algae believe their invention has far-out implications for how we create the buildings of the future

An experimental gene therapy seems to slow the progression of Huntington’s disease by about 75 per cent, and researchers are working to make its complicated delivery much more practical

From fireplace to folklore, how the Yule log got its fake pagan backstory.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The real hazard is not the vaccines, but the warning itself

The post The FDA’s Proposed “Black Box” Warning for COVID-19 Vaccines first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The liquid ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa appears to be completely sealed off from the planet’s surface, which may reduce the chances of finding life there

Ejaculating within 48 hours of providing a sperm sample for IVF seems to lead to greater success rates than abstaining from ejaculation for longer

Using ultracold atoms and laser light, researchers recreated the behavior of a Josephson junction—an essential component of quantum computers and voltage standards. The appearance of Shapiro steps in this atomic system reveals a deep universality in quantum physics and makes elusive microscopic effects visible for the first time.

Oleg Orlov, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), announced that the Russian Orbital Station (ROS) will include the modules that make up the Russian Orbital Segment of ISS.

The attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach near Sydney (the capital of New South Wales), was horrific: fifteen people were killed (not including the perps) and 40 injured. It was clearly a terrorist attack designed to kill Jews, putting the lie that this kind of violence is “anti-Zionist” rather than antisemitic.

Australian Jews have been warning for a while that something like this could happen, as antisemitism is not rare in the country and there have been plenty of anti-Israel demonstrations.  Further, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been criticized for not doing enough to combat the growing antisemitism in his country.

Now the PM and the state of New South Wakes are trying to do something, by banning certain forms of “hate speech”. But it’s too little and too late, and banning “hate speech” that doesn’t threaten to create imminent and predictable violence won’t work. (This kind of “hate speech” is, in my view, properly permitted under the U.S.’s First Amendment.)

Click below to read the story from the Times of Israel:

 

Excerpts:

The Australian state of New South Wales is planning to ban “Globalize the intifada” chants, according to a Saturday BBC report, amid a crackdown on “hateful” rhetoric and slogans in the wake of Sunday’s devastating terror attack at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah event.

New South Wales is home to Sydney and its iconic Bondi Beach, where 15 people were killed and dozens wounded by two gunmen who opened fire on a crowd celebrating the Jewish holiday.

. . . .The mass shooting was Australia’s worst in nearly 30 years and is being investigated as an act of terrorism targeting Jews. Authorities have ramped up patrols and policing across the country to prevent further antisemitic violence.

Since the attack, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has said he plans to convene the state’s parliament and pass stricter hate speech and incitement laws.

According to the BBC, Minns is looking to classify the “Globalize the intifada” chant, popular among anti-Israel activists, as illegal hate speech, and aims to encourage a “summer of calm,” without mass anti-Israel demonstrations.

Critics point in particular to a now-infamous protest in Sydney held a few days after October 7, 2023, where video footage appeared to show demonstrators celebrating the attack and chanting “gas the Jews” and “f— the Jews,” rhetoric they say foreshadowed later acts of violence.

However, New South Wales police later claimed there was no evidence of the chant. The pro-Palestinian rally, which gathered over 1,000 people, also included the burning of an Israeli flag and the firing of several flares.

“Foreshadowing” apparently means that the chants occurred before the violence, and presumably quite a while before. Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, such chants would be legal. They’re prohibited only if they are likely to involve either “fighting words” or to create “imminent and predictable violence”. As Wikipedia says in its article on exceptions to the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech:

Hate speech is not a general exception to First Amendment protection. Per Wisconsin v. Mitchell, hate crime sentence enhancements do not violate First Amendment protections because they do not criminalize speech itself, but rather use speech as evidence of motivation, which is constitutionally permissible.

. . . The Supreme Court has held that “advocacy of the use of force” is unprotected when it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action”.

A bit more from the TOI:

Many in Australia’s Jewish community say the government, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in particular, “abandoned” them, arguing that clear warning signs were ignored in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre.

Under pressure from critics who say his center-left government has not done enough to curb a surge in antisemitism, the prime minister has vowed to strengthen hate laws in the wake of the massacre.

“We can’t be in a position where we see a repeat of Sunday. We need to do everything within our power to make that change,” Minns told reporters.

As I implied, banning “hate speech”, which is a slippery slope if ever there was one, is not the way to go in this case—not if Australia wants to have free speech like the U.S. does. Now you can argue that the U.S. is too permissive, or that Australia, with its particular situation, needs hate speech laws that America doesn’t have.

That said, I don’t think banning “globalize the intifada”—or perhaps “From the river to the sea. . .  “, which could be construed as hate speech, and certainly “Gas the Jews—will reduce the amount of antisemitism, or the frequency of antisemitic acts, in Australia. All that will do is drive the antisemitism underground, but also prevent us from knowing who holds those views since they can’t espouse them publicly.  And yes, I would even favor the already-conferred right of people to stand in the middle of a public park (or the quad at the University of Chicago as well as at public universities) and shout “Gas the Jews.”  That isn’t liable to lead to imminent lawless action on the part of the targets.

And, of course, “hate speech” is very often subjective. Criticism of the tenets of Islam, for example, can be deemed “Islamophobic hate speech.”  Calls for banning trans-identified males from competing in women’s sports can be deemed “transphobic”. But in both cases there can be no palpable hate, but simply the desire to discuss rights and harms.

How do you stop antisemitism in Australia without banning “hate speech,” then?  Counter speech is a good way, though it’s not guaranteed to work.  But for sure banning “hate speech” is not going to reduce antisemitism in Australia. What it will do is reduce the frequency of publicly expressed antisemitic sentiments. That is not the same thing.

h/t: Peggy

By requesting copies of the then-UK technology secretary's ChatGPT logs, New Scientist set a precedent for how freedom of information laws apply to chatbot interactions, helping to hold governments to account

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may not have a subsurface ocean after all. That’s according to a re-examination of data captured by NASA’s Cassini mission, which flew by Titan dozens of times starting in 2004. By 2008, all the evidence suggested a subsurface ocean of liquid water waited beneath Titan’s geologically complex crust. But the latest analysis says the interior is more likely to be made of ice and slush, albeit with pockets of warm water that cycle from core to surface.

From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we've found it, how will we know for sure?

As you know, when Paramount Skydance acquired the television station CBS, Bari Weiss, still editor of the Free Press, was also appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News. I worried about that, as CBS has a long reputation for quality news, and I couldn’t see Weiss—whose Free Press site seems both center-right and lacking gravitas as well as reportorial quality—actually improving CBS News. But we’ll give her a chance. So far, she’s blown it, but it’s early days.

Weiss is new on the job, but is already putting her fingerprints on the broadcast news, and not in a good way. First, she held a Town Hall in which Weiss (unusual for an editor) appeared as an interviewer questioning Erika Kirk, the widow of the assassinated Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk. It was a debacle, with Weiss not pressing Erika and letting her spew Christianity all over the show. (We’re promised more town halls with Weiss in the future.)

Now, according to several sources, including the NYT article below, Weiss has done something even more serious: she had a segment of the excellent news show “60 minutes” pulled—and apparently for ideological reasons, Click below to read, or find the article archived free here.

Here’s an excerpt:

In a move that drew harsh criticism from its own correspondent, CBS News abruptly removed a segment from Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes” that was to feature the stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador.

CBS announced the change three hours before the broadcast, a highly unusual last-minute switch. The decision was made after Bari Weiss, the new editor in chief of CBS News, requested numerous changes to the segment. CBS News said in a statement that the segment would air at a later date and “needed additional reporting.”

But Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, rejected that criticism in a private note to CBS colleagues on Sunday, in which she accused CBS News of pulling the segment for “political” reasons.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote in the note, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Ms. Weiss said in a statement late Sunday: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia about Alfonsi, who’s been with the show for a decade:

Sharyn Elizabeth Alfonsi (born June 3, 1972) is an American journalist and correspondent for 60 Minutes. She made her debut appearance on the show on March 1, 2015. In 2019, she received the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award journalism award and has reported from war zones in Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan.

More clues as to why the story was spiked:

The segment was focused on Venezuelan men who were sent by the Trump administration to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador. In a news release on Friday promoting the segment, CBS News said that Ms. Alfonsi had spoken with several men now released from the prison “who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured.”

Ms. Weiss first saw the segment on Thursday and raised numerous concerns to “60 Minutes” producers about Ms. Alfonsi’s segment on Friday and Saturday, and she asked for a significant amount of new material to be added, according to three people familiar with the internal discussions.

One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.

Ms. Weiss also questioned the use of the term “migrants” to describe the Venezuelan men who were deported, noting that they were in the United States illegally, two of the people said.

In her note, Ms. Alfonsi said that her team had requested comment from the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Ms. Alfonsi wrote.

This is ludicrous. The story was vetted five times and cleared by CBS sttorneys. The team working on the story asked for comment from the three most relevant agencies: the White House, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.  They refused to participate.  That would have been enough to add to the story: three “no comments”. But Weiss stuck her nose in and helpfully supplied Alfonsi with yet another administration official, a deputy chief of staff in the White House. (Did Weiss know what that person would say? If so, how?) It’s not the job of the reporter to keep asking administration officials until they find a cricial comment. Alfonsi is right: this appears to be Weiss’s attempt to get someone to badmouth or contradict the story. Alfonsi added this:

“We have been promoting this story on social media for days,” Ms. Alfonsi added. “Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of ‘gold standard’ reputation for a single week of political quiet.”

“I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight,” she wrote.

Reached on Sunday evening, Ms. Alfonsi said, “I refer all questions to Bari Weiss.”

Here, from “X”, is Alfonsi’s full email to the “news team,” presumably those people who worked on the story (click screenshot to go to site, Stelter is CNN’s chief media analys):

Alfonsi is clearly pissed off, and is going to fight (given Weiss’s position, Alfonsi will probably lose). But the whole thing smacks not only of censorship, but of Weiss’s attempt to micromanage “60 Minutes” stories, makng sure the Trump administration can weigh in publicly.  That’s not what reporting should do.,  Alfoni’s memo and stand is proper, and is that of a working reporter. Weiss has little experience with this end of reporting, and she screwed up by desperately trying to get someone from the Trump administration to criticize the story. Weiss’s overweening ambition to build news organizations is already starting to do her in. If she keeps acting this way towards CBS reporters, they will leave and the station will be left with a bunch of neophytes. (Some CBS employees are already threatening to quit.)

If you want other versions of this story, you can find them at CNN, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News, which adds a response from Weiss:

“My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” Weiss said in a statement.

Weiss should never have taken this job, for I foresee a lot of micromanagement that is not to the taste of the newspeople themselves. She is is clearly not ready to be CBS’s news editor-in-chief, and we may have to watch the news division go down the tubes before Weiss learns enough to manage the news section properly.

 

h/t: Douglas, David

Today we have more lovely butterfly photos sent in by Pratyaydipta Rudra, a statistician at Oklahoma State University, who notes that “the first twelve are photographed by me and the last two by my wife (Sreemala Das Majumder). She is a Ph.D. student in Environmental Sciences at Oklahoma State University.”  The pair has a bird-and-butterfly photo site called Wingmates. Pratyay’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. 

We have photographed many butterflies over the last couple of years, so I wanted to share on more batch of them – this time some larger ones from the family Papilionidae that are all commonly known as swallowtails.

Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes), our largest butterfly species. The flower is of Tall Thistle (Cirsium altissimum), which is native in our region:

Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) on wild coneflower (I believe Echinacea pallida) and looking like a fancy kite! These are probably the most common breeding Swallowtails in our area. We had many caterpillars on our fennel this year:

Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) – Gotta love these with all the beautiful iridescence. They are relatively easy to invite into your area if you have pipevine on your property. They avoid predators by being poisonous/distasteful:

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), a common migrant:

This one is also an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), but it is a dark morph female. While males are always yellow, females have two morphs – yellow and dark. It is thought that by being dark, they benefit from mimicking the distasteful Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor). This is true for some other species such as Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus), Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), Red-spotted Purple (Limenitis arthemis) etc.:

Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus), which looks quite similar to a Black Swallowtail:

Dorsal side of the Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes):

This one is not from Oklahoma. These two Palamedes Swallowtails (Papilio Palamedes) chasing each other in the swamps of North Carolina:

Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus), another Eastern species. Love their long tails!:

I think this image captures all the common Western swallowtail species. The one coming in and the one in front at the right are both Two-tailed Swallowtails (Papilio multicaudata). One on the left is definitely a Pale Swallowtail (Papilio eurymedon), and I think the one behind the right Two-tailed is a Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus), but please correct me if I am wrong. All of these congregated in this rocky area to get the necessary nutrients on a sunny day in the Rocky Mountains, of Colorado:

Another Two-tailed in flight and some others from the same area:

A black-on-black image of a Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) hovering over garden phlox:

These last two photos are by Sreemala:

Symmetry! Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) coming in:

Yet another photo of a Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) from our garden: