On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are "I Got Rhythm," "Georgia on My Mind," and "Dream a Little Dream of Me." We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain. After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. read more
WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump discussed a draft copy of a book by lawyer Alan Dershowitz that examines whether Trump could constitutionally serve a third term as president, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Trump's flirtation with the idea of a third term has alarmed opponents and constitutional experts, who say it would test the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which Congress approved after Franklin Roosevelt was elected four times. The 22nd Amendment states in part that "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." But Dershowitz said he told Trump on Tuesday that the Constitution was not clear on the issue. He said that during an Oval Office meeting, he handed Trump a draft of the book, titled "Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?"
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats released a selection of photos from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, including some of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and the former Prince Andrew. The 19 photos released by Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee were a small part of more than 95,000 they received from the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges. The photos released Friday were separate from the case files that the Department of Justice is now compelled to release. The photos were released without captions or context and included a black-and-white image of Trump alongside six women whose faces were blacked out. The committee did not say why their faces were blacked out.
The ranks of U.S. government statisticians have been gutted in the past year due to layoffs and buyouts. read more
From Yale Climate Connections: According to a new study, one of the first estimates of sea level rise made by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change closely matches what actually happened over the past 30 years. Torbjorn Tornqvist of Tulane University: "What we found was that they did remarkably well." In the 90s, the IPCC released a report with different scenarios for carbon emissions and what each would mean for global sea-level rise. Tornqvist's study found that real-world emissions have closely tracked one of the report's middle-of-the-road scenarios; global sea levels have risen about 9 cm " very close to the 8 cm the UN report predicted. Those early predictions were made without today's advanced computer models, and they over- or underestimated the impacts of some drivers of sea-level rise. read more
Gait recognition technology. Sorry.