Tarot Card Reader Owes $10 Million for Defamatory Accusations. On February 27, a jury awarded $10 million in damages to Rebecca Scofield, who had sued Ashley Guillard for defamation. Guillard, who testified that she believes she has psychic powers, read tarot cards to help her investigate the stabbing deaths of four students in Idaho in 2022. She falsely claimed in TikTok videos that “Scofield had an affair with one of the female victims and tried to cover it up by ordering her death.” She’s appealing the verdict. In 2025, Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders and is now serving four life sentences. (For more, see “Tarot TikToker Must Pay $10M to Professor She Accused in Moscow Murders, Jury Says” at idahostatesman.com.)
Tinder Introduces Astrology Mode. On March 12, the dating app Tinder rolled out “astrology mode,” banking on a renewed interest in astrology from Gen Z. Tinder claims to use “a range of information, such as your star sign, to show you other users with compatible astrological signs.” In other words, potential matches whose star signs are deemed compatible in Western astrology are given priority. The company claims that in early testing of the feature, women in astrology mode sent 20 percent more likes. Astrology mode automatically engaged for users in select markets after the feature’s release. (For more, see “Tinder Drops a Slew of Updates, including an AI Way to ‘Cut through Dating Fatigue’” at mashable.com.)
iPhone Finds Bigfoot. The search is over! With Apple’s release of iOS 26.4 on March 24, the people of the world can rest assured that the location of the hairy gentle-giant cryptid has been pinpointed. He’s in every iPhone user’s back pocket. Bigfoot is one of the eight new emojis that came with the update. Although Apple coyly calls the new emoji a “hairy creature,” we all know the real identity of that hairy creature. The emoji depicts the cryptid standing in the iconic pose from the 1967 Patterson/Gimlin film, which, incidentally, was just conclusively revealed (yet again) to have been a hoax in the new documentary Capturing Bigfoot. (For more on the new documentary, see Benjamin Radford’s news piece in this issue, “Bigfoot Documentary’s Devastating Debunking.”)
JD Vance Says UFOs Are Demons, Not Space Aliens. On March 27, in a YouTube conversation, “Saving Western Civilization by Fighting Demons, Will We Survive?” with political commentator Benny Johnson, Vice President JD Vance made several interesting comments: “When I came in, I was obsessed with the UFO files” (at 19:39 in the video), “I will get to the bottom of the UFO files” (at 19:48), “I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion” (at 20:38), and “I think that one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed” (at 21:47). (For more, see “JD Vance Says He Was ‘Obsessed’ With UFOs, Believes Aliens Are Actually ‘Demons’” at foxnews.com.)
Ancient Aliens Alum Nick Pope Dies. Nick Pope, who parlayed his years spent as a civil servant in the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) into a successful career as a conspiracy-promoting TV personality, died April 6 of cancer. Though accused of exaggerating his security clearance access, he did investigate UFO sightings and photos for the MoD from 1991 to 1994 to determine if any posed a security threat. In a 2016 BBC News article, Pope wrote, “While the MoD certainly downplayed the true extent of its interest and involvement in the subject, I’m afraid we don’t have any crashed UFOs hidden away somewhere. That’s not to say that we didn’t have some fascinating cases in our files. Of around 12,000 sightings that the programme investigated, approximately 5% remained unexplained.” Pope spoke at conferences, wrote books, and appeared on many TV series, including Ancient Aliens, promoting claims about UFO coverups, extraterrestrial contact, and more. (For more on Pope, see Mick West’s column in this issue.)
Artemis II Took Humans Farther Than Ever Before. On April 1, NASA’s Artemis II mission launched toward the moon, ultimately taking humans farther into space than they’ve ever traveled before. Reaching a top speed of about 25,000 miles per hour, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman were joined by Jeremy Hansen (from the Canadian Space Agency) to reach a distance of 248,655 miles from Earth, surpassing the distance of the Moon and beating the previous record held by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970. On April 10, the team returned safely to Earth, where they likely continued to feel over the moon. (For more, read “Artemis II Fails to Find Moon Cities” by Benjamin Radford at skepticalinquirer.org.)
