Treehorn

Treehorn is an app with short audio shows, new every morning. News, science, history, books, and culture.

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NEW: Federal agents arrested an executive of CanaRx, a Canadian company that ships cheaper prescription drugs from abroad to Americans through their employers' health plans. The charge is smuggling. CNBC has found some employers require workers to use programs like it.

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NEW: Clay figurines up to 15,000 years old, found in Israel, still carry their makers' fingerprints. Most belonged to women and children, some younger than 10. One tiny human torso has both an adult's and a child's prints, as if they passed it back and forth.

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NEW: The U.S. asked Russia to draft a new security deal with Europe, including steps to show it's no threat, Axios reports. In talks this week, Russia's team blamed its invasion of Ukraine on demands the West ignored in 2021. Trump's envoys meet Putin tomorrow.

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JUST IN: The U.S. has pulled out of soccer's Under-17 World Cup, which starts in Qatar in eight days, the Guardian reports. U.S. Soccer cited safety and the State Department's warning of “risk of armed conflict” there. FIFA's fine for a late exit: about $24,000.

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NEW: A second Epstein files bill is headed for a House vote after a petition got the 218 signatures needed to bypass Republican leaders. Its sponsor says the Justice Department is still withholding over 3 million files. This bill would let victims and states sue to get them.

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NEW: Democrat Scott Colom's lead over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's uncalled Senate race grew past 4,400 votes this afternoon, with about 99% counted, AP figures show. Trump won the state by 20 points in 2024. Mississippi last elected a Democratic senator in 1982.

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NEW: United Airlines is blocking personal AI agents from booking its flights, saying they can cause “unintended purchases” or spend your miles. It also cites federal rules: travelers must personally confirm their bags hold nothing banned. A bot can't do that for you.

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NEW: Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Alexander Darchiev, has died “suddenly” at 66, Russia's foreign ministry says, giving no cause. Putin sent him to Washington last year to help rebuild ties with the Trump administration. It comes as peace talks over Ukraine stall.

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NEW: A proposed replacement for BMI adds waist size and organ health. Tested on 800,000 people's records, it found only a quarter to a third of obese people had disease caused by their fat, the group with much higher death risk. BMI alone missed obesity in 5% to 9% of adults.

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UPDATE: Treasury's Scott Bessent asked Commerce's Howard Lutnick last week why Megaspeed, accused of smuggling Nvidia chips to China, isn't blacklisted, Axios reports. The suspected spy Nvidia's CEO had an affair with worked there. Lutnick: “I don't know. I'll look into it.”

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NEW: A tiny mushroom from Florida's swamps is the first known to make both psilocybin, the psychedelic in magic mushrooms, and amatoxins, the liver poisons in the deadliest ones. Researchers call it the “dark magic mushroom.”

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NEW: Marco Rubio has flown government jets to Gainesville at least 23 times as secretary of state, mostly for Florida football games, the Washington Post finds. Cost: over $1.2 million. His son, a walk on running back, has played in four games in four years.

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NEW: Austria plans to outlaw spying on the U.N. agencies and other international bodies in Vienna. Right now, espionage there is only a crime if it targets Austria itself. Vienna has long been called a “capital of espionage.”

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NEW: A school's monitoring software took three months to flag a 13 year old who used her school laptop and Google's AI to research suicide and draft her own eulogy, a lawsuit says. The alert went to a counselor who had left nine months earlier, her family's lawyer tells WIRED.

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NEW: Lecturers told England's university regulator that AI may make assessing coursework “close to impossible.” Students said classmates finished assignments with AI “sometimes in just a few minutes,” then couldn't recall basic details. The regulator wants more AI free exams.

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JUST IN: The EU proposed banning “We're sad to see you go” guilt trips when you cancel a subscription, along with fake “Only 2 left!” warnings. Social media users would get an off switch for infinite scroll and autoplay. Canceling would have to be about as easy as signing up.

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NEW: An air ambulance company is suing hundreds of employers, from Walmart to a Virginia school district, over workers' emergency helicopter flights, STAT reports. Insurers haven't fully paid arbitration awards PHI Health won, so it's going after the bosses.

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NEW: Congo's Ebola outbreak has passed 11,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. Declared in May, it's already the second largest ever, with triple the cases West Africa's 2014 epidemic had at this stage. This strain has no approved vaccine.

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NEW: Kyle Busch, who died in May at 41, was voted NASCAR's most popular driver, ending Chase Elliott's eight year run. Elliott withdrew. “Whether you cheered him or booed him,” his widow said, “he gave you something to make noise about.”

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NEW: Stacy Keach, TV's hard boiled detective Mike Hammer, has died at 85. In 1984, while starring in the show, he was jailed in England for smuggling cocaine in a can of shaving cream. He later called the arrest “the best thing that ever happened to me.”