Babe, wake up … a new fear just dropped. In case you didn’t hear, the expiration of the last remaining nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia has sparked renewed fears about a nuclear arms race, since the two biggest nuclear superpowers without limits on their arsenals for the first time in decades.

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump indicated the United States would not continue to adhere to the limits of the New START Treaty. “Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

In the days since, statements by administration officials have made two things clear: Washington is actively weighing the deployment of more nuclear weapons, and it is also likely to conduct a nuclear test of some kind. Both steps would reverse nearly 40 years of stricter nuclear control by the United States, which has reduced or kept steady the number of weapons it has loaded into silos, bombers and submarines.

Some experts are worried and confused, of course. Others are hoping that Trump is merely trying to spur negotiations for a new deal. “It’s all a bit mysterious,’’ said Jill Hruby, a longtime nuclear expert who, until last year, ran the National Nuclear Security Agency, a part of the Energy Department that designs, tests and manufactures American nuclear weapons. “It is very confusing what they are doing.”

Then again, critics of the now-expired treaty, including Trump, pointed out it did not cover China, which is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and could have some 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 if they continue to expand their stockpile at the current pace, according to a Pentagon report from 2022. But Beijing has consistently rebuffed the idea of trilateral negotiations both privately and publicly. Which is not great.

Austin Long, scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former deputy director for strategic stability at the Pentagon, says today’s security environment is “night and day” compared to the one when the old treaty was negotiated. And not just because of Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy since 2010. China’s nuclear arsenal is expanding rapidly, and North Korea now has a viable, if small, force to deter its adversaries.

Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell declined to answer lawmakers’ questions and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a deposition before the House Oversight Committee on Monday. However, her lawyer said she was “prepared to speak fully and honestly” if she was first granted clemency by President Donald Trump.

According to NBC News, he told committee members his client “would very much like to answer your questions,” but she “must remain silent because Maxwell has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial.” You might recall that she was sentenced to prison in 2022 after a federal jury found her guilty of helping Epstein traffic teenage girls.

Amid a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse that has spilled into the highest levels of businesses and governments around the globe, lawmakers are searching for anyone who was connected to Epstein and may have facilitated his abuse. So far, the revelations have shown how both Trump and Clinton spent time with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but they have not been credibly accused of wrongdoing.

Well this is great news for those of us who sometimes worry we drink too much coffee. Because those cups of caffeine could lower your dementia risk, new research suggests.

In a long-term, observational study of nearly 132,000 healthy adults, daily consumption of two to three cups of caffeinated coffee or one to two cups of tea was associated with lowering dementia risk, slowing cognitive decline and preserving cognitive function. The findings were published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Yu Zhang, lead study author, said he wasn’t recommending that people who don’t drink coffee start chugging cold brews. “We are just seeing that for people who already drink coffee, the results are really reassuring.”

Other research has supported the idea that caffeinated coffee can be linked to healthier aging and that caffeinated coffee and tea can lower risk for conditions like heart disease. What’s more, caffeine might not be the only benefit in drinking coffee and teas. Coffee, for example, “contains caffeine along with hundreds of bioactive compounds that influence inflammation, glucose metabolism, vascular function, and oxidative stress,” one doc recently told CNN.