What happened
First lady Melania Trump yesterday denounced “unfounded and baseless lies” connecting her with “the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein,” calling unspecified reports and online images “mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation.” Addressing reporters at the White House, she also called on Congress to hold a “public hearing specifically centered around the survivors,” allowing those who wish to have their sworn testimony “permanently entered into the congressional record.”

Who said what
The first lady’s “seemingly out-of-the-blue” remarks caught “the White House — and indeed, all of Washington’s political world — by surprise,” The Associated Press said. It was “not clear why she chose to speak out now,” The New York Times said, but her comments are “sure to supercharge” a “scandal” her husband “has been struggling to make go away since last summer.”

The Epstein controversy had been “fading from public discourse amid the war with Iran,” CNN said, and some White House officials were “stunned by the timing of the remarks, which sparked rumors that the first lady was trying to get out ahead of something.” Sources close to Trump insisted she was just “increasingly frustrated by the online chatter.”

What next?
Congressional Democrats and some Republicans welcomed the call to let Epstein’s survivors speak. “We encourage” GOP leaders to “respond to the first lady’s request and schedule a public hearing immediately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).

What happened
Two once-harmonious groups of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park suddenly became estranged and have spent the past eight years engaged in bloody conflict, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science. This first-ever observation of animal “civil war” indicates that “group identities can shift and escalate into lethal hostility in one of our closest living relatives” without the “cultural markers often thought necessary for human warfare,” the researchers wrote.

Who said what
The researchers are “still trying to figure out what set off the conflict” in 2015, when the Central and Western clusters of the Ngogo chimpanzees stopped socializing or mating and starting fighting, The New York Times said. By 2018, “the hostilities began in earnest,” The Wall Street Journal said. The smaller Western cluster “launched coordinated lethal attacks,” targeting “rival adult males,” then young males, then infants. The researchers said they have observed 28 deaths, all among the Central cluster, exceeding “anything seen before among chimpanzees,” the Times said. Now, “it is conceivable that the Western cluster may ultimately eliminate the Central cluster.”

One theory is that the schism came after “several male chimps who had bridged cliques within the larger group died from disease,weakening social ties,” said the Journal. It’s also possible “the apes were victims of their own success,” seeing “increased competition for food and mates” even though “resources were abundant.”

What next?
Further study of the Ngogo chimpanzees “may shed light on the roots of warfare in our own species,” the Times said, though the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts have “cast doubt on whether the research will continue.”