Donald Trump Jr.’s other wedding secret: He got a facelift for oligarch-supported bash

Donald Trump Jr. apparently wanted to look his best for the glossy, heavily produced images that his new influencer wife shared of their lavish destination wedding to the Bahamas in May — which the couple recently admitted was partially funded by a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin.

To appear as strong and square-jawed as possible for the three-day wedding extravaganza, the 48-year-old Trump Jr. decided to address a defining feature of his physiognomy — his receding chin. Before exchanging vows with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson, the son of President Donald Trump underwent a custom, nonsurgical face-lifting procedure to “better define his jawline for the occasion.”

Trump Jr.’s cosmetic procedure was revealed in a blockbuster new report by Pro Publica. That report mainly focused on how the real estate executive, cryptocurrency entrepreneur and MAGA firebrand allowed Umar Kremlev, an oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance some of the wedding celebrations that he enjoyed with Bettina and his famous family members, including his brother, Eric, sisters Ivanka and Tiffany, and their spouses, including Lara Trump and Jared Kushner.

But the Pro Publica report also linked to a lengthy post by the Palm Beach medical spa that shared Trump Jr.’s adventure in cosmetic procedures. Pure Skin Palm Beach, which said it specializes in regenerative aesthetics, skin health and anti-aging treatments, explained that the medical spa hosted the couple for a range of treatments as part of their “wedding journey.”

—The Mercury News

NYC to install 17 new public bathrooms across the city, starting this week

NEW YORK — New Yorkers are finally going places. Seventeen state-of-the art new public bathrooms will be open for business soon in neighborhoods across the city under a pilot project designed to bring relief to people in their time of need.

“Too many New Yorkers know what it’s like to have nowhere to go while they’re on the go,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said while announcing the installation of the new facilities Wednesday.

“This pilot is about making sure New Yorkers can count on a clean, safe, accessible bathroom when they need one. We are going to learn from this pilot and build a public bathroom network that meets the needs of New Yorkers in every borough.”

Each bathroom will be free and open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Mamdani said. The fully touchless units will be compliant with the American Disabilities Act, and will include a comfortable interior, a running-water sink, a flushing toilet, climate control and a baby-changing station. The $4 million pilot program will run for one year, with installation scheduled to begin this week.

—New York Daily News

New evidence shows that you are only slightly hotter than a T. rex

LOS ANGELES — If you've been to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, you've probably been wowed by the fossilized remains of Thomas, the formidable 34-foot-long Tyrannosaurus rex dominating the Dinosaur Hall.

More than 66 million years after Thomas' death around the age of 17, the animal is continuing to contribute to science's understanding of his famous species.

Chemical analysis of one of Thomas' fossilized teeth has provided the most precise estimate yet of T. rex's body temperature. The predator was not a cold-blooded creature, but a warm-blooded one with a body temperature probably around 97.3 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 4.5 degrees. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

New analysis techniques developed in recent years have provided strong evidence that theropods like T. rex, velociraptors and other two-legged dinosaurs were endothermic animals like mammals and birds, rather than cold-blooded, or exothermic, like reptiles.

—Los Angeles Times

AI can supercharge Putin’s goals, not his great-power ambitions

When Russian leader Vladimir Putin imposed harsh censorship laws in the wake of his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a major Russian publishing house took drastic action.

Faced with trawling through the thousands of volumes it had published over the previous 20 years in light of the new restrictive criteria, the Eksmo-AST group trained an AI agent to highlight books and passages that risked falling foul of the law so they could be removed from bookshelves.

The publisher conducted some 20,000 checks, and 600 volumes were handed over to external experts for additional reviews, Oleg Novikov, the group’s president, told Russian state television. “We’re here on the frontier of technological progress,” he said. However overblown the claim, the use of artificial intelligence in Russia is widespread. It lags in the race to develop cutting edge models — a contest dominated by the U.S. and China — but Moscow has become adept at co-opting AI for real-life situations.

More often than not, Putin’s regime is the chief beneficiary. AI-powered drones are increasingly used to bomb Ukraine, bots create fake social-media profiles to disseminate the Kremlin narrative abroad, while at home facial-recognition surveillance networks keep track of citizens. It’s a source of pride for the president, who frequently mentions AI in his speeches and comments to officials.

—Bloomberg News