Dave Mustaine has long traced some of his earliest and most volatile songwriting to what he describes as “religious abuse” during his upbringing, shaped by his mother’s strict devotion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith until her death in 1990.

The Megadeth frontman has said the rules of that childhood — no birthday parties, no Christmas presents and not even participation in the Pledge of Allegiance — left him feeling isolated, robbing him of a normal youth and setting him apart from other children.

By his teenage years, Mustaine pushed back hard. He has spoken about turning toward black magic and the occult before eventually breaking into the music world as the lead guitarist for Metallica.

After being dismissed from the future Grammy-winning metal giants amid struggles with drugs and alcohol, Mustaine launched Megadeth, the band that would make him a thrash metal icon with tracks such as “Symphony of Destruction” and “Holy Wars.”

Now 64, the veteran rocker has suggested that the religion at the center of his childhood played a role in an even deeper family wound — a painful chapter he says has followed him for decades and, heartbreakingly, can never be fully repaired.

In his upcoming memoir, In My Darkest Hour, Mustaine, who also battled throat cancer in 2019, writes about growing up in a ‘weird and dysfunctional household (I wouldn’t even call it a home).’

He says he always suspected that the woman who raised him, Emily Marie Mustaine, was not his mother at all, but that one of his sisters had committed the cardinal sin of getting pregnant as an unwed teenager.

‘Maybe,’ he writes in the memoir, ‘out of embarrassment and religious and social pressure, they had “gone away” for a while (as people sometimes did in those days), and then turned the baby over to grandma to raise as her own. Grandma, in this case, being the woman I knew as my mother.’

He adds: ‘Maybe the tumult had contributed to my father disappearing.’

His mother and violent alcoholic father got divorced when Mustaine was just four. Mustaine has talked in the past about how he lived in fear of his father’s unpredictable and violent mood swings.

‘Maybe,’ he adds, ‘it had led my mother into the insane vortex of religious zealotry.

‘I can’t fully explain why I felt this way, but I did. Sometimes I’d even dream about it.’

In those dreams, his mother and father were both absent, and in their place was his oldest sister, Michelle.

‘She was always looking out for me, in a doting, caring kind of way, like she was worried something terrible would happen.

‘We looked alike, too, which I realize is not much of a shock, given that we were siblings, but I always wondered why I bore more of a resemblance to my sister – well, to all three of my sisters, actually – than to my own mother.’

Of course, he admits this could all have simply been a case of wishful thinking – a childish desire to make sense of his chaotic, traumatic childhood.

But just as he was finishing his memoir, he received a mysterious call from his middle sister, Suzanne, who is in hospice with Parkinson’s, ‘suffering from all the horrific stuff that comes with that disease, including dementia.’

He writes: ‘She drifts in and out of lucidity, telling stories that are dead accurate and others that make no sense whatsoever.’

Together with his sister’s assistant, he attempted to piece together coherent sentences from this ‘admittedly fuzzy conversation.’

They heard the name ‘David.’

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‘What did you say?’ the assistant asked.

Suzanne mumbled some more.

‘He’s your baby?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You mean David?’

After a long pause, Suzanne replied: ‘Yes.’

Mustaine admits his sister could have been using the word ‘baby’ in the colloquial sense – ‘as a big sister might do when referring to a little brother.

‘Or,’ he adds, ‘does one read something more gothic into it, something more sinister?’

What, he muses, if it wasn’t Michelle who was his mother at all. She’d been the eldest – 18 years older than Mustaine – so it made most sense. She was also very protective and loving around her baby brother.

Suzanne, on the other hand, had been just 15 when Mustaine was born.

‘Her giving birth to an illegitimate child would have been more scandalous. And maybe that would explain the bitterness and the resentment she so often exhibited toward me,’ he writes.

‘Maybe I had ruined her life. Maybe the mere fact of my existence provoked sadness and anger.

‘Or maybe my imagination was working overtime, as it sometimes does.’

Whatever the truth, he will likely never find the answer he seeks.

Both his mother and Michelle are now dead. His youngest sister, Debbie, meanwhile, is just three years older than he is, so has no memory of his birth.

‘And Suzanne is here, but not really here,’ he writes. ‘So it will remain an enigma for the rest of my life.

‘What is the importance of any of this?’ he asks. ‘Why not leave it all behind, with the other detritus of my Dickensian childhood? Why burrow into rabbit holes best left unexplored?

‘I guess the answer to that would be: I don’t want to leave it behind. I don’t want to forget. The memories drive me. The hunger, physical and metaphorical, motivates me to live a better life, to make the most of my time on the planet. I’ve always felt that way, but cancer has a way of turning up the volume on the ticking clock.’

The guitarist, who converted to Christianity around 2002 and, for years, refused to play some of the band’s most controversial hits, admits that he’d spent a lot of time praying during cancer treatment.

Those prayers, he says, were largely focused on keeping his family, wife of 35 years Pam and their children Electra, 28, and Justis, 34, together.

Now seven years cancer free, he writes: ‘Here we are, the same tight family we’ve always been. I can’t help but feel blessed, and it isn’t so much cancer that drives that point home, but the persistent, ceaseless memory of where I came from and the fractured family from which I escaped.’

In My Darkest Hour by David Mustaine is published September 8 by Da Capo, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

Rapid progress in artificial intelligence could bring humans closer than ever to understanding—and potentially communicating with—animals. But as the technology advances, some researchers and advocacy groups are raising a new concern: whether decoding animal behavior may intrude on animals’ right to privacy.

Using machine learning, scientists are increasingly able to sort, analyze and even reproduce the calls, songs and signals animals use with one another. Supporters say these AI tools could transform the study of animal communication, offering deeper insight into how other species navigate their social worlds.

Yet the ethical implications are still catching up with the science. “One risk that is currently not taken into account in research ethics is the concern that we might be violating the privacy of animals by collecting data on their vocalizations and movements,” researchers wrote in an article published by Springer Nature.

The authors argue that privacy is not only a human concern. “An interest in privacy is an interest in controlling how you appear to others, and the complex social lives of many nonhuman animals offer strong support for thinking animals have this interest.”

Beyond privacy, experts warn that the ability to “speak” with animals could create broader risks for ecosystems if the technology is misused or disrupts natural behavior in the wild.

The controversy involves a technique known as “playback,” which is the practice of broadcasting recorded animal calls in the wild.

Biologist Vittorio Baglione, who has spent his career cataloging the calls of carrion crows, was blown away by how AI models could help sort his recordings and point out commonalities in specific cries.

Among the calls was one that Baglione described as essentially, “Hey! Come help!” as the crows would use it to summon others to help defend the nest, he told Bloomberg.

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But Baglione said his research and the breakthroughs in communication could be co-opted by hunters or anyone with ill-intent to lure in the crows.

“You can stress the animals. You can disrupt their social environment. You can pose conflicts between them, especially if you don’t really understand the meaning of the call,” the scientist said of such playback.

This is why playback remains controversial, as it takes advantage of an animal’s trust in a specific sound to make it act in whatever way the user wants, explained César Rodríguez-Garavito, director of the More-Than-Human Life, or MOTH, Program at New York University.

In his 2025 report on the development of AI models striving for animal communication, Rodríguez-Garavito said the technology has the capacity to expose animals to mobs of people wanting to chat or to even weaponize them.

Researchers and animal-rights groups have pointed to previous playback experiments to show the distress an animal can suffer when confronted with an imitation call from a machine.

In 2007, zoologist Katy Payne admitted she caused an elephant great distress when playing a recording of her dead grandfather’s voice.

Despite the concerns, there remains a $10 million reward for a project that can establish communication with an animal without that animal recognizing that it is communicating with humans.

Private equity billionaire Jeremy Coller, who funds the Coller Doolittle Challenge, said during the challenge’s latest prize event in June that humans will likely reach this goal within the decade.

“Because AI is so fast, I have absolute conviction we will crack the code by 2030,” he said.

The Trump administration’s effort to press Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, to break up pro-Iran militant networks is still advancing, despite signs of friction and delays along the way.

Regional analysts are watching the situation cautiously, with some expressing guarded optimism. But in late August, a senior Iraqi official signaled that Baghdad does not view Sept. 30 as a firm deadline for disarming the Iran-backed groups known as the Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU, also referred to as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Iraq’s government is attempting to bring these powerful, state-linked but often independently operating militias under tighter official control by folding them into the country’s formal institutions. Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric who commands the Saraya al-Salam armed group, said in May that he supported such integration. However, more hardline factions aligned with Tehran, including Kataeb Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, have insisted they will neither surrender their weapons nor merge into the Iraqi state structure.

Qasim al-Araji, the prime minister’s security adviser, clarified the government’s position in an Aug. 23 interview with Al Iraqiya, saying, “Sept. 30 is the date for the international coalition to depart, not the deadline to hand over weapons.” The coalition he referenced is the U.S.-led force that helped defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during Trump’s first term. Baghdad has not clearly explained why it appears to be stepping back from a fixed timetable for PMU disarmament.

A spokesman for the Iraqi embassy declined to comment on the mixed messaging from Iraq’s government and on the timetable for dissolving or integrating the PMU.

Just days before al-Araji’s announcement, a representative of the Iraqi government sent News Media a statement: “Prime Minister Ali Faleh Al-Zaidi: All political forces fully agree on moving forward with restricting weapons to state control, and work is underway on mechanisms for surrendering weapons and bringing this issue to a complete end.”

Al-Zaidi told the Baghdad Dialogue Conference at the same time that “all political forces agree on moving forward to ensure that all arms remain under state authority and on developing mechanisms for the handover of weapons. There are no intentions or prospects of any military confrontation, and we will not allow Iraq’s enemies to exploit any opportunity. The presence of weapons outside state authority creates an environment that discourages investment, which is unacceptable because it does not serve the interests of Iraqis.”

In May, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Ali Maarij Al-Bahadly, Iraq’s deputy minister of oil, because he, according to the designation, “abuses his position to facilitate the diversion of oil to be sold for the benefit of the Iranian regime and its proxy militias in Iraq.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the time, “Like a rogue gang, the Iranian regime is pillaging resources that rightfully belong to the Iraqi people,” adding “Treasury will not stand idly by as Iran’s military exploits Iraqi oil to fund terrorism against the United States and our partners.”

In late August, the UAE’s The National paper reported that “Iraq’s anti-corruption body announced that deputy oil minister, Al-Bahadly, was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined millions of dollars for corruption.

Reacting to reports that Iran approved passage of Iraqi oil tankers via the Strait of Hormuz, Alberto Fernandez, former U.S. ambassador and Mideast analyst, claimed that “the profit from that Iraqi oil goes, in part, to pay for Iran’s own Iraqi militias/death squads on the Iraqi government’s payroll.” 

An Iraqi government spokesman dismissed Fernandez’s comments, telling News Media, “That is not accurate.”

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A State Department spokesperson told News Media, “Iraq has embarked on a new direction under the leadership of Prime Minister Al-Zaidi in full partnership with the United States. As President Trump made clear when he hosted Prime Minister Al-Zaidi’s historic July 14 visit, the United States strongly supports his vision to ensure a brighter future for all Iraqis free from terrorism, to prevent attacks in and from Iraqi territory, and to deliver a strong and mutually beneficial U.S.-Iraq partnership.”

Entifadh Qanbar, a former spokesman for the deputy prime minister of Iraq during the George W. Bush administration, told News Media: “We were all hoping that Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi would take decisive action against the militias, especially after his visit to the White House and the widespread praise he received from President Trump. I was always skeptical, very skeptical, but I believed he deserved a chance.”

Qanbar added, “Initially, some militias such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Imam Ali (sanctioned by the U.S.) merely issued statements claiming they would hand over their weapons. There has been no credible evidence that they have actually disarmed.”

Qanbar claimed that “any remaining hope was further diminished after IRGC [Islamic Republic Guard Corps] Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani visited Baghdad. According to multiple reports, he instructed militia leaders to slow down any discussion of disarmament, reject the September 30 deadline, and maintain their weapons as part of Iran’s broader regional deterrence strategy.”

When asked about Iraqi state efforts to dismantle the PMU, Elizabeth Tsurkov, a senior non-resident fellow at the New Lines Institute in Washington, D.C., told News Media, “The Iraqi government is trying. It genuinely carried out some moves. Unfortunately, because the militias are extremely willing to use force against their own people, including against security forces, the government finds itself in a position of backing down in the face of these militias.”

She noted, “The militias have penetrated most state institutions… and you see repeated situations of the state backing down.” Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, kidnapped Tsurkov in 2023 and held her hostage for nearly two years. The Trump administration secured her release in 2025.

The power of the PMU was demonstrated in a recent setback for the Iraqi government.

Both Qanbar and Tsurkov cited the case of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), which arrested Abbas al-Yaqubi, the head of intelligence for the Popular Mobilization Forces’ Baghdad Belt Operations Command.

A few days after al-Yaqubi’s arrest, he was transferred to the PMU intelligence branch. Qanbar said: “Al-Yaqubi has long been involved in violence against Iraqi activists, and many viewed his arrest as an important signal that the government was finally willing to confront powerful militia figures. What seemed like a significant step forward turned into a major setback.”

Tiger Woods returned to the public eye with a smile Friday night, appearing on the Stanford Stadium sidelines just days after receiving a five-year driving ban.

The 15-time major winner was back at his alma mater as Stanford hosted the Miami Hurricanes in a college football showdown, marking his first public outing since his recent court appearance.

Woods, dressed in a white Stanford cap and a wool quarter-zip from his Sun Day Red apparel line, looked at ease as he laughed and spoke with staff members along the sideline.

The golf icon appeared relaxed throughout the pregame scene, taking in the atmosphere and sharing a conversation with West Coast rap legend E-40 before kickoff.

Still, the night carried a slightly uncomfortable wrinkle for Woods, with the matchup creating a tricky split in allegiances.

While Woods remains one of Stanford’s most celebrated alumni – having won 11 collegiate tournaments before turning pro – his personal ties now run deep in Miami, given his relationship with Vanessa Trump.

Vanessa’s 19-year-old daughter, Kai Trump, recently moved to South Florida to begin her freshman year as a collegiate golfer for the University of Miami.

The granddaughter of Donald Trump has regularly documented her move on social media, sharing snaps in Hurricanes gear as she begins her collegiate golf career.

On Friday night, it was Kai’s new school that walked away with all the bragging rights, as Miami blew out Woods’ beloved Stanford Cardinal in a 45-6 rout. 

The outing marked a stark change of scenery from Wednesday morning, when Woods appeared alongside Vanessa to resolve his criminal case stemming from a March 27 crash near his Jupiter Island estate.

Woods’ girlfriend held hands with him at the Martin County Courthouse in a show of public solidarity as he finalized his plea deal over a March rollover crash. 

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Woods pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of reckless driving and refusal to submit to testing, avoiding jail time after entering a plea agreement.

As part of the deal, Woods will have his license suspended for five years. 

President Trump declared Woods’s plea deal ‘very fair’ as he weighed in on the matter, just one day after the golf legend discovered his fate from the ordeal.

He added: ‘But I think he’s going to have somebody drive him. I told him that a long time ago: ‘Why don’t you get somebody to drive you’

‘So he’s going to have somebody drive him from now on. He’s just a very special guy and I’m glad that was resolved.’

Trump added: ‘It’s a very tough situation because they didn’t find alcohol on him. You know, he didn’t test positive at all for alcohol. It’s a tough deal when you’re taking a painkiller because you’re under pain… and you have a problem and you test positive.’

The 15-time major champion was found at the scene of the crash in Jupiter, Florida, with two opioid tablets in his pocket, on March 27. 

He has since spent time in rehab in Switzerland but had not been seen publicly since arriving back in America until last month. 

According to police, Woods was driving at a high speed along a beachside road when his Land Rover clipped a tractor-trailer truck and rolled onto its side, causing about $5,000 worth of damage to the other vehicle. 

Call it a rough late-summer stretch for Republicans.

The GOP’s Senate map is showing new signs of strain heading into the post-Labor Day sprint toward the midterm elections, with a leading political handicapper now rating six Republican-held seats as either toss-ups or tilting toward Democrats — double the number from May.

Earlier in the year, the only Republican seats in that danger zone were North Carolina, Maine and Ohio. But the latest Cook Political Report ratings have added Texas, Iowa and Alaska to the toss-up column, widening the list of competitive Senate races Democrats are eyeing.

That shift is notable because President Trump carried every one of those states except Maine in 2024, and he won four of them by double-digit margins.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) acknowledged the concern last week when Keloland News asked about the possibility that Republicans could lose control of the chamber. “I worry about that, for sure,” he said.

“I’m a realist, and … I don’t ever try and sugarcoat things. I think it’s a competitive environment right now.”

As The Post previously reported, Republicans are behind in eight of the nine competitive Senate races this cycle, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate. Iowa is the only one where the Republican candidate is up in the polls.

Notably, almost all of those races, except Georgia and North Carolina, are within the typical margin of error. Data guru Nate Silver has aggregated similar results from the polls based on his methodology of weighing more credible polls more heavily.

“National Republicans have been sounding the alarm that midterms are hard since last year, and we’ve been firm that not a single race should be taken for granted,” a GOP operative involved in Senate races previously told The Post.

“Republicans continue to believe we’ll hold the Senate.”

Despite the bleak polling, some Republicans have taken solace in the fact that many polls have undercounted their voters in recent cycles.

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An analysis by Echelon pollster Patrick Ruffini assessed that 3,312 polls had underestimated Republicans by 3.7 points on average over the past four election cycles. The error rate jumped to 5.9 percentage points.

A famous example of this was Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) 2020 bid when the RCP had her down by roughly 5 percentage points, and she won by 8.6. More recently, polling aggregates overestimated Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s support in Michigan by about 9 points in his primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)

CNN data guru Harry Enten recently noted that if polls have a similar error rate to past election cycles, Republicans could conceivably hold onto the House, despite widely being viewed as the underdogs there.

Additionally, President Trump is armed with a huge cash cannon in his MAGA Inc super PAC, and the official GOP campaign arms are flush with more cash than their Democratic counterparts. Trump’s political team has only really just begun tapping into that firepower, and it is just starting to get splurged now.

During some of those past elections where Republicans were underestimated, Trump was on the ballot. There are questions about whether the GOP’s low-propensity voters will turn out enough for them to win.

Democrats are working to seize on Trump’s approval rating being significantly underwater, gas prices remaining high, affordability being the runaway top issue for most voters, and divisions within the GOP over the war in Iran as well as the Epstein files.

A recent Gallup poll found that Democrats have their biggest party identification advantage over Republicans since about 2008, with a roughly 10-point edge.

There are also historical headwinds that typically go against the party in control of the White House during midterm elections; however, that trend has been true for the House, but not necessarily the Senate.

Both Trump and former President Joe Biden gained Senate seats during the midterms of their first terms, despite taking a beating in the House.

Three inexperienced hikers who used artificial intelligence to map out a Mount Shasta climb in California found themselves trapped overnight in a steep canyon after their route veered into dangerous terrain, officials said.

After they were rescued, the three young men from Roseville told a Siskiyou County sheriff’s deputy they had leaned heavily on Google Gemini for guidance on both the hiking route and the gear they should bring.

That decision became a “critical misstep,” according to the sheriff’s office, because the AI tool allegedly recommended far less food and water than the group would need once their expected eight-hour climb turned into a multi-day survival situation.

The group first set up camp at roughly 8,400 feet on Saturday, Aug. 29, before leaving with daypacks at 3 a.m. Sunday in an attempt to reach the summit.

They did not reach the top until 7 p.m. — seven hours after the recommended noon turnaround time — leaving them to descend in the dark.

About an hour later, the hikers called the sheriff’s office for directions but eventually wandered off the Clear Creek Route and into Mud Creek Canyon.

One of the men later fell and injured his knee, stranding the group in the steep canyon overnight.

U.S. Forest Service climbing rangers reached the hikers the next morning and treated the injured man. Siskiyou County Search and Rescue volunteers also were sent to help, and everyone made it back to the trailhead safely.

“It is always advisable to call the local USFS Mount Shasta Ranger Station ahead of your trip to ensure you have the most accurate information, and to never rely solely on AI for your trip planning,” the sheriff’s office said.

Climbers who have not reached the summit by noon should turn back, the sheriff’s office said, giving themselves — and rescuers, if needed — enough daylight to get off the mountain.

Hikers should also carry more than one way to navigate and regularly check that they are still on the correct route rather than depending on a cellphone or GPS device.

The Clear Creek Route does not require technical mountaineering, but hikers still need to be fit and prepared for injuries, bad weather or an unexpected night on the mountain, the sheriff’s office said.

Serious accidents and deaths have occurred when people became lost and wandered into more dangerous areas such as the Mud Creek drainage.