Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we bring you one story that matters, and a few that don’t!
Your Brief for April 17, 2025: Eating planets, lab-grown meat, Jurassic prints, McIlroy's green jacket and more!
News
New OpenAI Models
OpenAI has unveiled two new AI models, trained via reinforcement learning, OpenAI o3 and o4-mini. Both can interpret sketches, diagrams, and low-quality visuals and have built-in web browsing and image generation tools. These models can use images to reason through problems in math, coding, science, and more. Users can upload photos, and the AI will implement the visual information into its workings. Though they take longer to deliberate before replying, OpenAI says this leads to more accurate and considered answers.
Image Credit: OpenAI
True Spies
I Was Never Here
Could you spy in suburbia?
Spies work in many far-flung locales, but some assignments are closer to home. For Andrew Kirsch, the suburbs of Toronto hold as much intrigue as Moscow or Baghdad. Kirsch served 10 years as an Intelligence Officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), where he rose to lead technical and physical covert teams in special operations.
As a team lead, Kirsch could invoke warrant powers to conduct surveillance of suspicious actors. About a year into his Special Operations career, he received the profile of one such person, a potential 'foreign fighter ' whose activity had been alarming enough to attract the watchful eye of CSIS. The man in question had made disturbing comments at community events and places of worship, and the threats were serious: He was outspoken about hating Canada and wanting to hurt its people. Kirsch's mission? To gather intel on the target before it was too late.
Join Andrew Kirsch in this week's podcast selection, 'I Was Never Here', on a nail-biting infiltration mission to unmask a home-grown terrorist, right in his backyard!
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Quirky
Lab-Grown Meat
How do you make a chicken nugget without chicken?
Scientists at the University of Tokyo, Japan, have grown a nugget—without the chicken! The researchers created the 10-gram nugget using animal cells to mimic the blood vessels found in natural meat. They built a bioreactor to feed the living cells via semi-permeable fibres, ensuring they had enough nutrients and oxygen to stay alive. The nugget was grown over about a week. Earlier versions of lab-grown chicken were reportedly soft or spongy, lacking the structure that gives meat its bite. By arranging muscle and fat cells more precisely, Professor Shoji Takeuchi and his team produced something thicker and chewier, and believe the approach could eventually grow full cuts of meat.
Science
Eating Planets
What happens when a star swallows a planet?
Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have analyzed what may be the remnants of a planet swallowed by its star over a million years ago!
The star in question is a white dwarf located about 1,300 light-years from Earth. Webb’s infrared instruments detected an unusual chemical signature in the debris disk swirling around it. Instead of the rocky materials typically found in destroyed planets, the spectrum revealed high levels of sulfur and low amounts of silicon and magnesium—an unexpected mix that suggests the planet had a strange, volatile composition.
Astronomers have long studied the aftermath of planetary engulfment, but have not observed these specific elements in such quantities. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal, could reshape theories about planetary systems and how stars digest their innermost worlds.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI)/Artists Concept
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Paleontologists have uncovered fossilized footprints in the Canadian Rockies belonging to a dinosaur never before tracked: an ankylosaurid, the heavily armored, club-tailed relative of the better-known nodosaur. Dating back about 100 million years, these are the first known tracks from the species, a subgroup of ankylosaurs known for wielding sledgehammer-like tails and walking on three toes. The dinosaur has been dubbed Ruopodosaurus clava.
These prints reveal that it roamed parts of North America during the middle of the Cretaceous period, though researchers have not discovered ankylosaurid fossils. Only the four-toed prints of nodosaurids were previously known, leaving a gap in the fossil record.
The discovery, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, also suggests the two subgroups may have lived side by side. Both were heavily armored herbivores, as long as 30 feet and weighing over 10,000 pounds, with bodies covered in thick plates.
Image Credit: Sydney Mohr/Artist's Impression
Sports
McIlroy's Green Jacket
How rare is a career Grand Slam in men’s golf?
Rory McIlroy won the 2025 Masters on Sunday, clinching his first green jacket after outlasting Justin Rose in a sudden-death playoff. The green jacket, awarded to the winner of the Masters, is one of golf’s most iconic symbols.
The 35-year-old Irishman finished the tournament 11 under par, finally adding the Masters to his collection of major titles: the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the Open Championship. He’d been chasing the Slam for over a decade, coming close in 2022 when he finished second. With the win, McIlroy becomes just the sixth male golfer in history to complete a career Grand Slam! Joining the ranks of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan, and Gene Sarazen.
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