A coalition of 12 states led by California is suing to block the $111 billion Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger, arguing it would reduce competition in theatrical distribution, blockbuster films, and basic cable licensing. The challenge (PDF) defies the DOJ's approval of the deal. Variety reports: The coalition, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alleges that the $111 billion transaction violates the Clayton Act by lessening competition in three distinct markets: wide-release theatrical distribution, "top-grossing" theatrical distribution, and basic cable licensing. "The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.," Bonta said in a statement on Monday. The suit argues that the combined company will control 27% of the wide-release theatrical distribution market, 30% of the submarket comprising "anticipated blockbuster films," and 27% of the basic cable bundle. The states argue that such consolidation will harm theaters and cable and satellite providers that rely on competition among distributors. Paramount and Warner Bros. are two of the five remaining legacy studios. Together, all five -- including Disney, Sony and Universal -- control 86% of theatrical distribution and 90% of blockbuster distribution, the states said. Warner Bros. and Paramount are also the second- and third-largest basic cable distributors, respectively. [...] The states are expected to seek an injunction to block the transaction, which Paramount expects to close sometime after July 22. The 12 states in the coalition are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. [...] All are represented by Democratic attorneys general. "Consolidation here not only leads to higher prices -- it also leads to fewer opportunities for important stories to come to life, and fewer ways for audiences to encounter stories, ideas, and perspectives beyond their own experiences," Bonta said. "In this country, no one is above the law. With this lawsuit, California and our sister states are fighting for free and fair markets, not rigged markets. America has no kings in government or our economy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Previously withheld material concerns fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti during immigration crackdown

Previously withheld evidence regarding the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti is now in the hands of Minnesota prosecutors, helping the state gain clarity on the deaths that occurred earlier this year during protests against a federal immigration crackdown.

“Through the cooperation of our federal partners, we have obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence in the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis,” the Hennepin county attorney, Mary Moriarty, said in a video statement posted on social media.

President Trump says the U.S. will "probably run" the Strait of Hormuz, as dueling attacks with Iran continue over control of the strategic waterway.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS had been filed for an "improper purpose."

Cyclosporiasis outbreak comes a year after Trump officials cut funding for state and local health departments

• What is cyclosporiasis, the parasitic illness causing ‘explosive’ diarrhea?

State health officials in Michigan and Ohio are reporting thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis, a – a parasitic infection that causes “watery diarrhea”, loss of appetite and weight loss.

The outbreak of more than 2,800 cases comes a year after the Trump administration cut funding to state and local health departments and reduced the remit of a program dedicated to coordinating information on foodborne illness, including of cyclospora.

US president says strait will remain open ‘with or without’ Iran and there will be a 20% rate charged on all cargo shipped; Iran’s Abbas Araghchi shot back that Iran would charge a lower rate

• Trump renews Iran blockade and again threatens to take control of strait of Hormuz

Bahrain’s military has accused Iran of targeting civilians with its latest attacks on the country, after Tehran said it had struck US military facilities and infrastructure there earlier.

“Iran continues its systematic hostile approach through its heinous attacks with missiles and drones that target civilians in the Kingdom of Bahrain,” the general command of Bahrain’s military said, adding that air defences “intercepted and destroyed a number of Iranian aerial attacks” this morning.

Carl McDaniel was ‘respectful distance’ from animal when it charged and has severe injuries, including broken bones

A tourist who was tossed 8ft in the air by a bison at Wyoming’s Yellowstone national park – an encounter viewed by more than a million social media users thanks to a viral video online – has been identified as a “community-minded” grandfather from Washington state.

Carl McDaniel had severe injuries including broken bones after Friday’s campsite encounter with the bison, which was posted to YouTube by the Wyoming news outlet Cowboy State Daily. A photographer named Mike MacLeod rushed to help the victim on the ground after making the recording.

Lawmakers face obstacles, including demands from Trump, Mitch McConnell’s absence and senator’s sudden death

Republican lawmakers return to the Capitol this week facing a lengthy to-do list and Donald Trump’s demands for new voting restrictions, as Democrats jockey for an advantage ahead of the November midterm elections.

Lawmakers from both parties are eager to highlight before voters legislative victories ahead of the midterms, when control of Congress is at stake. But for Senate Republicans, who are already navigating an array of demands from Trump, their agenda grew further complicated over the weekend with the death of Lindsey Graham, the budget committee chair who was a key player in negotiating a party-line bill to fund additional defense spending and other priorities outlined by the president.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is holding a press conference to announce his pick to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Lindsey Graham's death.

Senator Angus King raised concerns that ICE agents were not wearing body cameras; witnesses described the man as being shot in the head

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The Democrat’s outgoing senator for Michigan Gary Peters has endorsed member of Congress Haley Stevens to be his successor over Abdul El-Sayed in the state’s neck-and-neck primary race set for 4 August.

“She has demonstrated to me time and time again that she’s a fighter,” Peters told the Detroit News. “We need workhorses in the Senate, and we need someone who can do that job from day one. This is not a place for on-the-job training.”

French president Emmanuel Macron has been hosting leaders amid hopes that Ukraine’s recent advances could force Putin towards negotiations

in Kyiv

Meanwhile, Russia has been forced to suspend shipping in the Sea of Azov after 90 vessels were targeted by Ukrainian drones in less than a week.

Andy Burnham expected to vote in favour of home secretary’s changes to legal loophole and asylum system

• UK politics live – latest updates

The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will amend the immigration bill to allow the deportation of the Rochdale grooming gang, the first step in removing Shabir Ahmed from the UK.

At present, Ahmed cannot be deported because of a 1971 law applying to Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK more than 50 years ago.

Don’t float through the world in an AirPod bubble – enjoy music or podcasts and carry on using these tested favorites

• I tested 42 pairs of wireless earbuds to find the best in US

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

In a feat of engineering that borders on magic, the best wireless earbuds can silence the noisy world around you at the tap of a finger. So, why would you buy open earbuds, which are specifically designed to let in environmental sounds?

Frankly, I didn’t understand the appeal of them either until I started testing them, and now I use open earbuds even more than my noise-cancelling earbuds. For situations from hiking to running errands, these are the headphones you should be wearing. Here’s what you’re missing out on, and a few of the best pairs to try.

Best overall open-ear earbuds:
Soundcore Aeroclip Open-Ear Earbuds

Best premium open-ear earbuds:
Bose Ultra Open Earbuds

The last five days were very challenging for the 125 students participating in the ASC26 competition. It began with a long weekend of building their cluster and getting the environment settled in. When they began testing the applications, many teams found that the optimizations that worked on their university training systems didn’t work on their competition boxes. Ouch.

But they carried on. Now, finally, the competition is over – almost. It’s now time to discuss what they’ve done with the HPC expert judges panel. In years past, each of the 25 teams would make a 15-minute presentation to the judges. This was a long slog for both the students and those of us on the panel.

It’s different for 2026. Each team gets to produce a display showing off what they know and what they’ve learned over the past week. Judges will walk around the area, visiting with each team, and asking some sharp questions.

Some judges worked solo while others grouped up. HPC luminaries Jack Dongarra, Torsten Hoefler, and Ewa Deming moved as a group from team to team.

Dr. Jack has been attending ASC events and judging the competition almost from the beginning. Torsten and Ewa have done it multiple years as well.

Teams took vastly different approaches when designing their displays, ranging from the simple and direct whiteboard look to standard professional design to the outright ornate.

This wasn’t a trivial thing, the top team had the chance to add 10 points to their score, which could make all the difference in the world in their final score and standing.

So Who Won What?

I usually get the final scores on each component of the competition so I can show the horse race day-by-day. It also gives me a chance to shine a light on teams who did great on one application, for example, but didn’t win an overall award. I didn’t get the scores for ASC26, so I only have the official results to go on.

Group Competition Award – Qinghai University, Beihang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, EAFIT University and Beijing Normal University (representative from each of the winning teams in the picture…and nicely grouped)

Application Innovation Awards – Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications: These go to the teams that achieved the top score on AMSS-NCKU (Black Hole), QiboTN (quantum) or the Mystery Application (LeWorldModel.)

The e Prize – Peking University who achieved the highest team score on Embodied World Model Optimization task. This was the group task where university teams worked together on the application then ran the optimized solution on their own system. (My pictures of Team Peking on stage were blocked by other photographers! But I get a good one a little later, wait for it.)

Best Presentation Award – Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Highest LINPACK – Qilu University of Technology

This is the fourth ASC competition for Team Qilu and their first major award. Congratulations!

Silver Medal – Tsinghua University

This marks the 36^th competition for a team from Tsinghua. They’ve won an incredible 19 gold medals, seven silver (including this one), four bronze, and five LINPACK awards. I’d love to see their trophy case, it’s gotta be big, right?

Champion – Peking University

Peking University is the gold medal winner at ASC26, topping their cross-town rival Tsinghua for Beijing bragging rights.(They get a bigger picture in this article too.)

This is their 13^th cluster competition and certainly wasn’t unlucky.

They might need a trophy case now since they’ve won three gold, two silver, and a Highest LINPACK award. Great job Team Peking!

The awards ceremony concluded with short talks from Jack Dongarra and Qian Depei, who is Chair of the Sun-Yat Sen University AI Research Institute. They both discussed the value of these competitions for the students and the HPC/AI community as a whole. Perfect way to end the evening.

Yet another highly successful ASC cluster competition. Students learned a lot about advanced HPC, they had the chance to talk to employers at the job fair, and they were able to test themselves against the fiendish set of tasks laid out by the organizers. They also made friendships with students from other universities and countries. The ASC organizers did another outstanding job on this competition. So where’s the next one?

The post ASC26 Wuxi Wrap Up: Awards & Trophies appeared first on HPCwire.

The Penn State team behind these temporary tats hopes they can help spot heart attacks or power robotic prosthetics.

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Apple agreed to use Intel's U.S. chipmaking plants after White House officials pressured Tim Cook during tariff-relief talks last summer. MacRumors reports: In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports -- a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S., although many of those investments were already planned. During the meetings, president Trump and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are said to have urged Cook to use Intel's fabrication plants to make some of Apple's chips. The link between the tariff talks and the Apple-Intel deal had not been previously reported. Almost a year later, Trump announced via his Truth Social platform that Apple would begin using Intel-made chips in some products. "We need to design and build our Chips right here in America," the president posted. The news sent Intel shares to record highs. According to a person familiar with the negotiations cited by the WSJ, Apple plans to have Intel make chips for both Mac laptops and iPhones. The report doesn't say which chips or in what volume, and Apple is expected to remain reliant on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, for the majority of its custom silicon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maine Sen. Angus King said he told Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that he wanted a transparent investigation into the shooting.

After a wild attack on the media, Reform’s deputy leader joins other MPs in the Commons offering tributes rather than speculation

This is the third murder of either a sitting or former MP that I’ve covered in the last 10 years. It doesn’t get any easier or less shocking. Every death diminishes us all. The least you would hope is for politicians to behave with dignity. To set an example. For those who knew Ann Widdecombe to express their personal loss, for party leaders and ministers to convey the horror of her death and offer their condolences to her family and friends. Probably best for everyone else to say as little as possible for now.

The police have asked for everyone to refrain from speculating about the motives of the suspect, who, as of Monday lunchtime, was still being questioned by counter-terrorism officers, and not to politicise the murder if possible. A time for our political class to behave like grownups. And the overwhelming majority have done that. Just for now, even Nigel Farage has stopped acting as if he were the detective leading the investigation by offering his insights to every passing TV crew, and has fallen silent.

Ukraine and nine other countries including UK issue joint statement as leaders meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris

Ukraine and nine other countries including the UK, Germany and France are to build a shared protection programme for Europe against ballistic missiles, using Kyiv’s experience in fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion for more than four years.

“Our goal is to build a shared ballistic missile defence capability for Europe,” the 10 nations said in a statement on Monday as leaders met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for talks in Paris.

Bipartisan group argue in lawsuit that $110bn merger would hurt competition and lead to thousands of job losses

A dozen US state attorneys general are seeking to block the $110bn merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, arguing in a lawsuit filed on Monday that it would hurt competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

The coalition behind the lawsuit is led by the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, who has been a staunch critic of the merger since it was agreed to in February after a bidding war between David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and Netflix.

US president declares waterway open and demands tariff as both sides engage in heavy drone and missile exchanges

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Donald Trump has once again threatened to take control of the strait of Hormuz, as he announced the reimposition of a naval blockade on Iran and demanded a 20% tariff on all cargoes shipped through the key maritime passage.

Declaring the strait “open”, Trump suggested in a post on his Truth Social platform that the US should be known henceforth as the “Guardian of the Strait of Hormuz”, as Iran and the US engaged in some of the heaviest drone and missile exchanges since an interim deal was negotiated to bring an end to the conflict.

After Iran claimed to have killed three U.S. personnel in Kuwait over the weekend, the Pentagon’s official toll of injuries and deaths in the war quietly climbed on Monday.

The increase followed the collapse last week of the ceasefire with Iran amid tit-for-tat attacks between the countries.

As hostilities escalated, Iran called for revenge on the U.S. for killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the outset of the war in February.

The numbers for both wounded and dead U.S. service members in the war increased on Monday, according to the Defense Department.

Iran claimed Sunday that it “demolished the U.S. Army’s surface-to-surface missile base” in Kuwait, killing three American military personnel.

U.S. Central Command responded: “There are zero reports of U.S. service member deaths or injuries in the region.”

On Monday, however, the Pentagon’s Iran war death toll, which was last updated Friday, went up by one.

Pentagon statistics show a sailor died in what was provisionally deemed a “non-hostile” fatality with a “pending” caveat, meaning it could later be revised to a hostile death.

It marks the first U.S. fatality on the Pentagon rolls since March. It was not immediately clear whether the new death listed occurred in Kuwait.

The U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, CENTCOM, and the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ceasefire Collapse

Iran’s military said on Monday that it launched strikes aimed at American military targets in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman. Hours before, U.S. forces attacked Iran in response to strikes on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

President Donald Trump renewed his past protection-racket threats to seize the Strait and begin charging a 20 percent toll on all goods passing through it.

“We’re gonna keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” he said on Monday. “We’re gonna get paid for guarding it, a lot of money.”

Following a week of public funeral ceremonies for Khamenei, his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei called for retribution for the late supreme leader’s assassination.

“We pledge that we will avenge your pure blood and the blood of all those martyred in these two wars from the criminal and disgraced killers,” he said. “This revenge is the demand of our nation, and it must certainly be carried out.”

In addition to killing Khamenei, Trump’s war on Iran has killed thousands of Iranian civilians, including more than 150 — most of them children — in an attack on an elementary school.

U.S. Death Toll

The official number of dead and wounded U.S. personnel stands at 428, a more than 11 percent increase since the first ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was struck on April 8.

Reporting by The Intercept previously found that the Pentagon’s official count of dead and wounded personnel is a gross undercount, stemming from what one U.S. government official called a “casualty cover-up.” The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known casualties.

Related

Pentagon Erases Wounded U.S. Troops From Iran War Casualty List: “Definition of a Cover-up”

The number of casualties in the DCAS system fluctuates from time to time. On Monday, the number of U.S. deaths during Operation Epic Fury, the military’s name for the campaign in Iran, increased by one, to 14 total.

For a short time in May, however, the count was already at 14 before dropping back to 13, without explanation. Following the drop, DCAS listed 13 hostile and non-hostile U.S. deaths.

The Pentagon list of the dead is missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who reportedly died of a sudden illness in Kuwait on March 6.

Davius’s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the official count. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke about him during a memorial service and Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly recognized Davius as a fallen service member.

Wounded U.S. Personnel

On Monday, the number of U.S. wounded from the Iran war rose by one, to 414.

Like the official U.S. death toll, it has fluctuated, rising from 385 to 428 during a pause in hostilities in April. Later that month, the number suddenly declined by 15 without public comment from the Defense Department, leading to questions about manipulation of the figures or incompetence at the Pentagon.

While DCAS provides a running tally of “non-hostile” deaths — meaning those who died from accidents or by illness — it doesn’t include “non-hostile” injuries.

The DCAS figures show that 65 Navy personnel have been wounded in action. More than 200 sailors injured during a fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford in March are, however, missing from the tally.

The post Iran Claims to Kill 3 U.S. Service Members in Kuwait appeared first on The Intercept.

Kathleen Williams sanctions president’s lawyers and says $10bn suit against IRS was brought for ‘improper purpose’

A federal judge on Monday nullified an agreement the government reached with Donald Trump and his sons over the leak of his tax returns. The judge lambasted the government and president’s lawyers for using the judicial process to try to concoct a beneficial arrangement for the president.

The ruling from US district judge Kathleen Williams in the southern district of Florida blocks a widely criticized arrangement the government and the president’s attorneys reached earlier this year to resolve a $10bn lawsuit by Trump and his sons over the leak of the president’s tax returns. The government never responded to the lawsuit and then announced it was settling the suit by creating a $1.8bn slush fund to compensate victims of “government weaponization” and giving the president, his family, and related entities immunity from tax audits.

Home secretary insists all MPs treated equally but that security of former MPs and non-Westminster politicians is a concern

Shabana Mahmood has offered Nigel Farage a personal meeting with the Home Office unit that works on security for high-profile politicians, insisting all MPs are treated equally in how they are offered protection.

Addressing the Commons after the death of Ann Widdecombe, the Reform spokesperson whose body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Devon, the home secretary said the incident raised questions about the security of former MPs and politicians from smaller parties, including those not in parliament.

Vote will allow Israelis to pass judgment on Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of conflicts in Gaza and Iran

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel will hold national elections on 27 October, giving its citizens their first chance to pass judgment on the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his coalition since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023.

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, will be dissolved on Friday. With just a few days left in session, the most far-right government in Israel’s history is now rushing to pass several controversial laws in an attempt to bolster its position before polling day.

More than 90 residents have expressed interest in contamination claim against AGC Chemicals Europe

A Pfas factory in Lancashire has announced plans to close down, just days after the Guardian revealed that more than 90 residents had signed up to be involved in a potential legal claim over contamination of the local area.

AGC Chemicals Europe is consulting with employees and their union representatives about plans to cease operations at its manufacturing plant in Thornton-Cleveleys, Lancashire. The consultation is expected to last for at least 45 days.

The suit poses a new challenge to the $110 billion deal that would unite two of the nation's largest media companies.

Three of those arrested were detained on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, say counter-terrorism police

Twelve people have been arrested, including three on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, over a suspected far-right threat against an Islamic event held over the weekend, police have said.

Counter-terrorism police are leading the investigation, which they said was related to “extreme rightwing terrorism” targeting an event held at Shrubland Hall in Suffolk.

Using a VPN on your Android device can help you keep your online activity private, stream geo-restricted content and bypass throttling from anywhere.

BrianFagioli writes: Cloudflare has launched Precursor, a new behavioral bot detection system that monitors mouse movement, typing cadence, scrolling, clipboard activity, page visibility, and other signals across an entire browsing session. The system is designed to catch advanced bots that can run JavaScript, use real browsers, and pass traditional CAPTCHA challenges. Cloudflare says Precursor does not record actual keystrokes and instead studies timing and rhythm. The company also says the data is not tied to user identities or persistent profiles. Even so, software that watches how people move and type throughout a visit raises privacy concerns, especially as Cloudflare claims bots now generate roughly 57 percent of all Internet requests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Officials say blaze in Fontainebleau forest is of ‘exceptional scale’, with 900 homes evacuated and road and rail links hit

• Europe live – latest updates

French firefighters are tackling a blaze of unprecedented scale sweeping through Fontainebleau forest south-east of Paris, while in southern Spain the prime minister visited the scene of a deadly wildfire and warned: “The climate emergency kills.”

The fire in Fontainebleau, a one-time royal hunting preserve about 40 miles (60km) from the French capital that today is dotted with villages, began late on Sunday afternoon. The blaze, which is unusual in its proximity to Paris, raced across about 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of forest.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly wooed by Mossad agents after distancing himself from Khamenei

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Israel tried to recruit Iran’s intensely anti-Zionist former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lead a new post-Islamic regime in Tehran, and even sent its top spy to Budapest to meet him, according to media reports.

The remarkable quest to turn a leader who had denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s erasure began in 2022, according to reporting by the New York Times and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and continued even after Israel became engaged in a brutal campaign in Gaza against Hamas, a key Iranian ally.

US defense secretary says taskforce will ‘combat dangers’ of leaks in latest escalation of White House press crackdown

The US defense secretary, ⁠Pete Hegseth, ​announced on Monday that the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice have created a “joint taskforce ​to identify and ​prosecute” what he called the “unauthorized disclosure ​of sensitive” information to the press, marking the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s effort to crackdown on leaks.

In a ⁠video ​posted on X, Hegseth said that “to combat the dangers that leaks pose, effectively immediately, I have ​delegated tasking authority ​to the war department’s ‌office ⁠of general counsel, empowering OGC to request and receive ​all ​information, ⁠records and support across the ​department concerning ​media ⁠leak investigations”.

California, New York and 10 other states filed a lawsuit over the proposed merger.

Locking in the right CD rate now could earn your savings thousands of dollars in interest over the next year.

The two analysts expressed concerns that the 2020 election investigation in Fulton County, Georgia, was thin on evidence, sources said.

Shawn Fain calls allegations ‘bogus’ and says attorney holds a ‘grudge’ against him over union’s ‘anti-war stance’ on Gaza

The US Department of Justice is investigating allegations against the United Auto Workers (UAW) president, Shawn Fain, that he put pressure on another high-ranking union official to provide benefits to his fiancee and sister and then retaliated against the official who refused to approve it.

On Sunday, Fain, who is running for his second term as union president, said the accusations are false and a part of election interference against him.

CBS News reviewed police records, body camera footage, court documents and local news reports to find more than 50 cases of innocent bystanders shot by police.

Startups are using emails, photos and voice recordings to create AI simulations that family and friends can interact with after a loved one's death.

The European Union is considering major new restrictions on children's access to social media, including age limits, phased access, and an outright ban. "This is not about whether children can access social media," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. "It is about when social media can access our children." The Verge reports: Social media platforms could also be forced to prove their services are not harmful before young people are allowed to use them. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc's executive arm could propose new legislation within months, after reviewing recommendations from a panel of experts released today. The panel recommended using a phased approach, including "no screens at all" for children under 3, supervised internet use for those under 13, and some limits for older teens. It also said social media platforms should have to prove their services are safe to younger users, an approach von der Leyen said she supports. Von der Leyen said the Commission will consider the report and return with proposals "after the summer." Any legislation would still need approval from the European Parliament and the EU's 27 member countries before becoming law across the bloc.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Home Office announces move that officials say comes close to proscribing group as a terrorist organisation

The UK will ban support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Keir Starmer said on Monday, in a move that officials said came close to proscribing the military group as a terrorist organisation.

The prime minister announced his government would designate the branch of the Iranian military under a new National Security Act, enabling law enforcement to take action against anyone deemed to be providing it with support.

• Vick arrested in connection with Memphis shooting

• 29-year-old started on Jayhawks’ 2018 Final Four team

Lagerald Vick, a former University of Kansas basketball player and a starter on their 2018 Final Four team, has been charged with attempted first-degree murder in ⁠Tennessee.

Vick, 29, was a guard for the Jayhawks from 2015 to 2019.

Georgia Power says building a new transmission line will require acquiring more than 300 parcels of land, including residential properties.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's sudden death late Saturday has set off a scramble for who will succeed him in the Senate.

• Saturday’s bout in Las Vegas finished in first round

• Irishman says he will undergo surgery on leg

Conor McGregor says he plans to fight again in UFC despite the fact that his return to competition lasted just 69 seconds before he suffered a leg injury, which he says will require ⁠surgery.

“Surgery. Prehab. Return ⁠to ​martial arts practice. Go again,” McGregor wrote on Instagram on Monday. “Final fight of the contract. ⁠Praise God!”

President says appointing Darline Graham Nordone would be ‘fabulous tribute’ to Republican who died on Saturday

• Graham’s death triggers a scramble to replace him – what happens next?

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Donald Trump recommended that Lindsey Graham’s sister be named as the senator’s temporary replacement after his death on Saturday.

Trump posted on social media that the South Carolina governor, Henry McMaster, should appoint Darline Graham Nordone to fulfill the rest of Graham’s term, which expires in January.

Brent crude rises 5% after US president says 20% toll will be imposed on key trade route to cover ‘safety and security’

• Business live – latest updates

Oil prices rose 5% on Monday as Donald Trump reinstated the US blockade of Iranian shipping in the Gulf and will charge other countries to pass through the strait of Hormuz.

As the US and Iran exchanged strikes amid an escalating standoff over the vital trade route, the price of Brent crude climbed to $79.37 a barrel.

FactCheck.org has won the 2025 Sigma Delta Chi award for fact-checking from the Society of Professional Journalists. This is our fourth win in the fact-checking category and our fifth award from SPJ overall.

Our winning entry of three stories by Senior Writer D’Angelo Gore and Deputy Director Robert Farley provided fact-checks about several of President Donald Trump’s tariff claims.

Among the claims examined were the misleading calculations used for “reciprocal tariffs” the president sought to impose on nations around the world, the misleading justification for higher tariffs on imports of European goods, and the repeated, false insistence that the tariffs would be paid by other countries and not American consumers.

“Judges said calling out deliberate falsehoods and misstatements is increasingly important in journalism,” SPJ said during the virtual awards ceremony on July 9. “Here, [the president’s] tariff numbers and statements have been carefully analyzed with the facts clearly presented. Important work, well done.”

Previously, FactCheck.org won the 2019, 2020 and 2023 Sigma Delta Chi fact-checking awards. We also won a 2010 SDX non-deadline reporting award for independent news sites for our work on deceptive claims made about federal health care legislation.

The Society of Professional Journalists, originally founded as Sigma Delta Chi, has been honoring outstanding journalism since 1932.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The post FactCheck.org Wins Sigma Delta Chi Award for Fact-Checking appeared first on FactCheck.org.

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President Trump recommended that South Carolina's governor appoint the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's sister Darline to serve out the rest of his term in the Senate.

The move by the United States takes away the last major concession to Tehran that had helped foster a ceasefire.

A New Jersey man says his T-shirt nearly got him kicked off a United Airlines flight.

A new Incogni survey suggests Americans are pulling back from social media, with more than half saying "maintaining an online presence feels like work" and 55% reporting they post less than they did five years ago. "The full study concludes that there's been a significant shift in public attitudes toward social media," reports PCMag. "Where it was once fun and relaxing, it's now growing dark and angsty..." From the report: As the chart shows, there's also a clear correlation with age. A full 60% of Gen Z respondents feel the pain of maintaining a social presence. Perhaps they have a niggling hope that they might still be discovered as an influencer? Those of us in the Boomer category are clearly more relaxed about it, with just 38% saying that maintaining a social presence feels like work. The survey quizzed respondents about how they feel when they don't keep up with checking their socials and, by extension, how they'd feel if they just plain quit. They were given choices, both positive (peace, relaxation, and relief) and negative (anxiety, fear of missing out, and discomfort). Overall, positive reactions held slightly greater sway, with an average of about 21% compared with 19% for negative reactions. The Gen Y contingent accentuated that split, with 25% positive and 21% negative, while Gen X went even further, with 20% positive and just 13% negative. But the Gen Z group flipped the results, identifying 27% negative and 26% positive reactions to going without social media. There's another force pushing folks away from the socials: increasing politicization. Of the survey's respondents, 44% agreed that political content is driving people away from social media, and only 20% disagreed. Among Gen Z respondents, the impetus was stronger: 48% agreed, and just 13% disagreed. These negative feelings associated with politics only serve to highlight the positive reactions to deleting your social media. Are you posting less on social media than you did five years ago, and are you being more selective about who can see what you post? Then you're with the majority. More than half of the respondents answered yes to each of those questions. But would you ever parlay fewer posts into no posts (aka quit posting entirely)? When asked what it would take to finally get them to terminate a social media account, a die-hard group of one in six respondents said there's nothing that could make them quit. But more than half could picture quitting due to security concerns, and almost half accepted the possibility that harassment or hate speech could send them packing. Others cited the amount of time wasted on scrolling through social media and the mental health threats of doomscrolling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fridges are one of the most important home appliances to keep powered during an outage. Our lab testing revealed the power stations that can keep yours running the longest.

The sugar, called erythrulose, lurks in what's called the interstellar medium: thin clouds of gas and dust littered between stars.

Appeal for DNA to help identify bodies as local government leader says ‘we are in a state of climate chaos’

A British couple have been named as two victims of the wildfires in Spain that have killed 13 people, as authorities race to use DNA to identify those who did not manage to escape the blaze.

Pete and Fran Gillam, who lived in Bédar, the village that bore the brunt of the wildfires on Thursday, are believed not to have survived.

Debt relief can save you thousands if you approach it right, but a few common missteps could erase those savings.

Home secretary updates Parliament after counter-terrorism police take over investigation into her death

• Ann Widdecombe death: counter-terrorism police take over investigation

The government has announced that it is in effect proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It is doing so using new powers under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026.

Ministers have been under pressure for years to proscribe the IRGC, which backs terrorist activity outside Iran. But the last Conservative government, and Labour when it took power, argued that it would be difficult to use laws intended to target terrorist organisations against a state-run organisation.

Designation introduces new criminal offences relating to supporting, assisting, or obtaining material benefit from a designated body. Where an individual engages in espionage, sabotage or foreign interference for, on behalf of or with the intention to benefit the designated body, they may also be charged under the National Security Act 2023. The maximum penalty for these offences reaches life imprisonment.

For a body to be designated, the home secretary must reasonably believe that it is, or has been, involved in foreign power threat activity and must consider that designation is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom has identified activity linked to the IRGC involving threats to life and intimidation on UK soil. In January 2024, the UK announced sanctions targeting Iranian officials responsible for threats to kill on UK soil and criminal gangs who do the regime’s bidding overseas. The Iranian officials designated under these sanctions were members of IRGC Unit 840, which was exposed in relation to plots to assassinate two Iran International TV journalists in the UK.

In 2022, the National Cyber Security Centre issued an advisory alongside international partners exposing malicious activity. The advisory highlighted the threat from cyber proxy actors affiliated with the IRGC targeting a broad range of entities, including entities across multiple US critical infrastructure sectors as well as Australian, Canadian and UK organisations.

Between March and May 2026, there were a series of attacks and attempted attacks targeting Jewish communities, journalists and Israeli interests in the United Kingdom and across Europe. These incidents — including acts of arson and intimidation — have caused real fear and distress, and have had a profound impact on those communities affected.

The Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right (IMCR), otherwise known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiyah, have publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities, and Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.

It will be hard to wrestle a head-turning policy announcement from structural reforms to the state, though his allies are discussing a potential big bang early on.

One ally of Burnham recalled Gordon Brown’s announcement that the Bank of England would be made independent, four days after he became Labour’s finance minister in 1997. The person said: “He wants a Bank of England moment.”

It’s about “forcing the civil service to understand this is not just data on a graph,” said one Labour MP allied to Burnham. “Once you have a base where you can’t get free affordable integrated transport that gets you somewhere within 20 minutes easily, it changes perspectives pretty much overnight.”

Civil servants and Burnham’s allies are unanimous that No. 10 North will only be more than a gimmick if people with real power (including Burnham) spend serious time in Manchester — forcing Westminster’s lobbyist and journalist ecosystem to move with them. [Lucy] Powell predicted “big chunks” of Whitehall power will leave the capital. [Steve] Rotheram said: “You can’t have a No. 10 and then just have a load of junior officials there.”

The senior civil servant quoted above said a key test will be whether the No. 10 policy unit ends up based permanently in the northern version of Downing Street.

SHERBROOKE, Quebec, July 13, 2026 — Nord Quantique, a quantum computing company advancing efficient, scalable, and error corrected architectures, recently published a research paper demonstrating quantum error correction (QEC) of a single-mode grid state qubit with state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors below 0.1%; a roughly 100-fold improvement over prior results in comparable GKP-based systems, and now on par with error rates routinely seen in leading superconducting transmon qubit platforms.

SPAM errors represent a fundamental challenge in quantum computing: even the most sophisticated error-correction protocols can be undermined by poorly prepared input states or unreliable readout. Nord Quantique’s research directly addresses this bottleneck and is compatible with its existing high-performance autonomous error correction, achieving superior SPAM performance without any compromise in logical error rates.

This metric has long been the weak link in GKP-based systems, lagging behind other operational benchmarks and capping overall performance. Closing that gap removes a key obstacle and strengthens Nord Quantique’s path to scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing.

“This breakthrough advances our mission to realize fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2030,” said Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO and Co-founder of Nord Quantique. “By addressing the fundamental challenge of SPAM errors in our bosonic architecture, we’ve demonstrated that our 1:1 physical-to-logical qubit approach reduces performance limitations on the path to fault tolerance quantum computing.”

The gains stem from a repeat-until-success protocol based on post-selected stabilization, which uses quantum error correction itself to improve preparation fidelity. Rather than relying on real-time corrections and the complex classical control systems they require, the approach prepares a state, verifies whether the preparation succeeded, and either keeps the result or discards it and repeats. This simplification improves both implementation and reliability while drawing on the same error-correction capabilities that underpin Nord Quantique’s architecture.

This protocol is also adapted to prepare magic states, specialized quantum states required for the non-Clifford operations essential to universal quantum computation. High-fidelity magic state preparation is widely regarded as one of the most resource-intensive challenges across leading quantum architectures. Demonstrating it within Nord Quantique’s grid-state architecture highlights a further advantage of performing error correction without additional overhead.

As the field moves toward larger, more capable quantum processors, this kind of integration will be central to making fault tolerance practical rather than merely theoretical, bringing utility-scale quantum computing closer to reality.

Access the full paper and findings here.

About Nord Quantique

Founded with the vision of reinventing computing from the qubit up, Nord Quantique advances quantum error correction and scalable architectures toward commercially viable, fault-tolerant quantum computers. By embedding quantum error correction directly into each qubit using superconducting bosonic codes, the company enables a 1:1 logical-to-physical qubit ratio. This unique approach delivers scalable performance, fast clock rates, and an efficient energy and physical footprint—unlocking a clear path to useful, error-corrected quantum computers.

Source: Nord Quantique

The post Nord Quantique Achieves Sub-0.1% SPAM Errors in Bosonic Qubit Study appeared first on HPCwire.

You can now go "hooligan" in the McDonald's drive-through line.

Trump says the U.S. will be known as "THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT," and will charge 20% on all cargo shipped via the waterway to cover security costs.

The March 2025 marine disaster may be linked to a high number of dolphin deaths in the region, scientists say

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The number of dead dolphins washing up on South Australian beaches spiked in 2025, according to long-term data that reveals mortalities during the state’s devastating algal bloom were the highest in 12 years.

Last year, at least 70 carcasses of common and bottlenose dolphins were found across South Australia, with a further 20 reported in 2026, including the recent death of a popular Port River dolphin known as Zoom.

Higher temperatures can cause radio, TV and microwave signals to travel hundreds of miles farther, upsetting communications

It was 3am in north-east Indiana’s Huntington county when the outdoor emergency alarm went off on 1 July.

The only issue? There wasn’t a storm, tornado or any other emergency weather event forecast or present anywhere for hundreds of miles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Va., writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans' physical and financial well-being. A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet -- created with OpenAI's ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said -- circulated on X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash. A video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been a focus of Kremlin pressure. "The country's electrical grid instability may render it useless," the video's narrator says. All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence -- verging at times on hostility -- about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere. China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into "a domestic fracture point," according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year. These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year's midterm elections.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI tools can make Photoshop less overwhelming.

Shooting occurs days after man killed by immigration agent during traffic stop in Texas

• US politics live – latest updates

A person was ⁠killed on Monday in a shooting involving US immigration agents in Maine, according to a statement attributed to a prominent state lawmaker, days ⁠after a man ⁠was ​killed by an immigration agent during a traffic stop in Texas.

Word of the shooting ⁠in Biddeford, Maine, came in a post by the Maine state house’s speaker, Ryan Fecteau, on a personal Facebook ⁠page.

Knowing what debt collectors can and can't do after a borrower dies could protect your family from costly mistakes.

British counterterrorism police are now leading the investigation into the death of Ann Widdecombe after "new information and evidence" came to light.

Elizabeth Warren asks Jamie Dimon if he was advised to ‘mildly threaten’ UK chancellor over tax on bankers’ bonuses

A leading Democratic senator has written to the boss of JP Morgan to request clarification on the bank’s contact with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the senate banking committee, wrote to Jamie Dimon last week to ask if he took advice from Epstein while lobbying against a UK tax on banker bonuses, in a letter published by the committee on Monday.

Suspects, aged 15 and 16, taken into custody but not formally charged in ‘targeted mass shooting’ in East St Louis

Two teenagers were arrested on Sunday in connection with a “targeted mass shooting” that killed five members of the same family and wounded two others in East St Louis, Illinois, according to state police.

The 15- and 16-year-old suspects were taken into custody at Holten state park, a recreation area east of the city, the Illinois state police director, Brendan Kelly, said at a Sunday news conference – but they had not immediately been formally charged with a crime.

Brent crude remains below $80 a barrel; European shares push cautiously higher while Asian shares tumble with South Korea’s Kospi down nearly 10%

• People in the UK: have you used prediction markets to bet on the World Cup or other events?

Drinkers across the UK were shocked when a pint in some London bars hit £10, and now a cup of coffee is facing a similar inflationary rate. Some baristas are now charging £6.50 for a flat white.

Higher energy bills, inflated by the war in the Middle East, as well as government policies which have increased tax and wages, are filtering through into coffee prices, experts said.

Roaming charges also scrapped and trading terms continue for medicines, cars, art, jewellery and other goods

British nationals can expect shorter passport queues at Swiss airports and border crossings after a £5.2bn trade deal was sealed by Keir Starmer, likely his last big international agreement as prime minister.

As part of the deal they will be able to use e-gates from later this year, starting with exit checks at Zurich airport and with Basel and Geneva, a leading airport for business and winter sports travel, to follow next year.

• Matches will take place on 10 and 13 October

• Washington DC and Chester, Pennsylvania to host

The top two teams in women’s soccer will meet in a pair of friendlies this fall, with the United States hosting Spain in Washington DC on 10 October and Chester, Pennsylvania three days later.

The meeting pits the 2024 Olympic gold medalist United States against a Spain side who won the 2023 women’s World Cup. It will serve as a benchmark for both sides in the run-up to the 2027 World Cup in Brazil.

Body of pilot involved in tackling Gold Mountain fire recovered by divers from Silver Jack reservoir

A pilot who was helping to fight a wildfire in Colorado has died after the aviator’s aircraft crashed into a reservoir, local authorities said.

The Gunnison county sheriff’s office said in a statement that it was notified of the deadly crash at about 5.17pm local time on Sunday. Gunnison’s regional communications center received a call reporting that the aircraft involved in the crash went down in the Silver Jack reservoir located in the county’s south-western portion.

Shortages triggered by pipeline rupture drive up costs and deepen frustrations, as pressure grows on water utility

Jonathan Collazo owns two restaurants in a bustling section of San Juan, which has been plagued by water outages, severely disrupting the daily lives of residents and businesses alike.

The water scarcity is part of an escalating frustration felt by thousands of customers of Puerto Rico’s water utility over the past several months, prompting the governor to activate the national guard to distribute drinking water across the US territory. The shortages extend beyond San Juan, with sectors in municipalities including Loíza, Guaynabo, Bayamón and others experiencing interrupted service.

Exclusive: Three men killed in incidents over past year allegedly involving G4S guards, who replaced in-house team after previous deaths

Bereaved families and politicians have raised alarm about continued killings on Del Monte’s pineapple farm in Kenya despite the company hiring a British security firm to replace its in-house security team after previous deaths were exposed by the Guardian.

The multinational food company appointed G4S to guard the farm, which is estimated to cover at least 40 sq km, the area of a small city, after the Guardian detailed allegations of brutal assaults and killings of people suspected of trespassing on its land. Kenyan police have been working with G4S to guard the site.

"We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark," Meta wrote in a blog post.

Oliver Blume tells staff restructuring proposal includes ‘controversial decisions’ but he has broad support

• Business live – latest updates

The chief executive of Volkswagen has confirmed plans to cut 50,000 more jobs despite the carmaker’s supervisory board rejecting his plan to shut four factories in Germany.

Oliver Blume told staff on Monday that proposals for a sprawling restructuring was “the most comprehensive realignment in the company’s history” and revolved around “12 initiatives, approximately 150 pages and 45 individual resolutions” for change.

Congress is returning to Washington with limited time to address a number of priorities ahead of a lengthy August recess and the sprint to the midterm elections.

U.K. authorities have linked the IRGC and its proxies to a wave of violent plots on British soil.

As US water wars rage, a tributary of the Colorado River faces unprecedented pressure. Visitors worry how long this aquatic ‘relict’ will last

On an early morning in mid-May, a group of near strangers shoved camping gear and clothes into waterproof bags, slathered on sunscreen, and ambled into the bright-yellow rafts that would carry them down one of the last free-flowing rivers in the American west.

Unhindered by large dams or diversions, the Yampa curves across 250 miles (400km) of alpine tundras, cottonwood forests and ancient red-rock canyons, rising from Colorado’s Rocky mountains to where it joins with the Green River in Utah, much in the way it has for millions of years.

ULM, Germany, July 13, 2026 — QC Design has announced the publication of “Plaquette: A hardware-aware design platform for fault-tolerant quantum computers”, the paper presenting the theoretical framework and software suite behind its flagship product. The paper describes how Plaquette computes the logical performance of fault-tolerant architectures directly from the physics of a device’s actual imperfections, and is now available on arXiv.

Hardware teams designing fault-tolerant quantum computers lean on fast stabilizer simulators to decide which imperfections to fix first, and those simulators assume stochastic Pauli noise. Real devices do not behave that way: superconducting transmons leak out of the computational subspace, neutral-atom gates scatter through intermediate states, trapped ions heat as their motional modes absorb phonons, silicon spin qubits leak into valley states, and miscalibrated controls over-rotate coherently.

The standard workarounds, such as Pauli twirling, depolarizing stand-ins, and hand-built noise models, demand expert effort per device and per noise process, and certify the abstraction rather than the device. The paper shows what this can cost: Clifford-only simulation can be overly optimistic by more than an order of magnitude in logical error rate.

Plaquette follows a different approach. A team specifies its hardware error model once, e.g., as Kraus operators, Hamiltonian-Lindblad dynamics, or an experimentally reconstructed quantum channel, and Plaquette compiles it automatically into the exact or approximate representation required by each of four sampler classes: Pauli-twirled stabilizer simulation, the new XPauli sampler for leakage and environment sectors, near-Clifford samplers for coherent errors, and full-state simulation for exact reference calculations, at scales up to tens of thousands of qubits.

The paper validates the XPauli and near-Clifford samplers against full-state simulation, which they match within statistical uncertainty even where Pauli twirling falls short, and demonstrates the framework on three hardware error models: leakage in superconducting qubits, intermediate-state scattering in neutral atoms, and heating in trapped ions.

Dr. Ish Dhand, co-founder and CEO of QC Design, said: “Quantum computing makers are working on the same practical questions: Is my device below threshold, and by how much? Which imperfection is most important to suppress? What logical error rate will my FTQC deliver, and at what overhead? Answering these questions with Pauli approximations alone can be off by orders of magnitude. With Plaquette, teams describe the physics of their device once and get logical performance numbers they can trust, at the scale of full fault-tolerant architectures. This paper lays out the complete framework, and we are proud to share it with the community.”

The size of the discrepancy between Plaquette and Clifford-only simulations varies with platform and noise process, so reliable thresholds, error budgets, and overhead estimates require the most accurate simulation available. Plaquette provides a direct path from the open-system physics of a device to the logical performance of the fault-tolerant quantum computer built on it.

The paper is available on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08767.

About QC Design

QC Design builds software for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Its tools help quantum hardware teams design, simulate, and evaluate architectures under arbitrary hardware imperfections, understand how these imperfections affect logical-qubit performance, and establish rigorous benchmarks for error-correction performance. By combining detailed architecture-level simulation with theoretical threshold analysis, QC Design helps teams efficiently compare approaches, make better design decisions, and move faster toward scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Source: QC Design

The post QC Design Details Plaquette Platform for Simulating Fault-Tolerant Quantum Systems appeared first on HPCwire.

Ursula von der Leyen’s commitment comes after panel of experts calls for restriction for under-13s

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has pledged an EU-wide social media ban for children after an expert group called for restrictions for those under 13.

“It is clear we need age-appropriate restrictions to platforms,” von der Leyen told reporters after the publication of a report on child safety online.

A 65-year-old man was thrown 8 feet into the air by bison who charged at him in Yellowstone National Park, video shows.

President Donald Trump's ambassador had sought to portray the pontiff as the political leader of the Holy See. The Vatican swiftly said he is “proclaiming the Gospel.”

Proposed legal settlement over 2022 oil spill would resolve allegations that South Bow violated clean water laws

A proposed legal settlement with the US government would require the Keystone pipeline system’s operator to pay a $26.9m civil penalty over a large oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40m more to prevent future accidents.

The agreement would resolve allegations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Kansas that South Bow, based in Canada, violated US and state clean water laws. The rupture dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a creek running through a rural pasture in Washington county, Kansas, about 150 miles (241km) north-west of Kansas City.

The fire is one of the deadliest such incidents in the popular tourist destination in ⁠recent years

An explosive fire at a popular pub in Thailand’s ⁠capital, Bangkok, has killed 27 ⁠people and left another 22 ​in critical condition, in one of the deadliest such incidents in the tourism hub in recent years.

Officials said they were investigating whether emergency exits may have been obstructed, hindering people from escaping the burning Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao pub.

New Zealand actor Sam Neill, known for "Jurassic Park" and "The Piano," died Monday at 78, his family says.

Video shared by first responders​ shows a huge blaze, with flames coming out of the front door of the Na Ladprao bar in the northern part of the Thai capital.

Paris will summon Russia's ambassador and the EU and U.K. are announcing new sanctions over an alleged "vast cyber campaign" targeting European countries.

In six months last year, more than 2,000 such complaints were made to eSafety

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A new report by Australia’s online safety regulator has found “significant gaps” in how major tech platforms tackle online sexual extortion and child sexual exploitation, as “reports of this abuse continue to rise”.

The findings come from eSafety’s latest transparency report, examining how tech companies – including Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snap, Discord and WhatsApp – are addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse.

US political leaders must be more clear-eyed about our global alliances, without embracing his scorched-earth approach

Donald Trump memorably took out a full-page advertisement in multiple newspapers in 1987 charging that America was carrying too much weight for its allies. In his first term he repeated this charge, threatening to withdraw from Nato and berating US allies around the world in the process. Last week’s gathering of Nato’s heads of government in Turkey suggests his approach is running out of steam as the world adjusts and the president bumps up against the limits of American unilateral power in Iran.

Trump’s domestic political opponents should breathe a sigh of relief but not rush headlong into an uncritical embrace of US alliances. For all his counterproductive bluster, Trump recognized something real. If his opponents in the Democratic and Republican parties are not more clear-eyed about what alliances cost Americans – as Biden failed to be with Israel – they will fuel the fires that brought Trump to power in the first place.

Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Public health advocates warn of conflicts of interests and say panel likely to provide justification for key rollbacks

The Trump administration has stacked a top chemical safety board with industry-aligned scientists who have a range of financial conflicts of interest and stand to profit from deregulation, public health advocates say.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s science advisory committee on chemicals (SACC) is slated to review research for dozens of toxic chemicals during the new members’ terms. At least 13 proposed Trump appointees are probably conflicted on the chemicals that will be reviewed, comments filed with the EPA by a coalition of public health advocacy groups alleges.

Secondhand tech is an affordable alternative for must-have tech, but the RAM shortage is increasing the demand for it.

The union for 12 nurses laid off by Montefiore hospital say company broke contract they recently won through a strike

Marilyn Shuler has worked as a utilization review nurse for 39 years at Montefiore hospital in the Bronx in New York City, helping to read patient charts and communicate with insurance companies over coverage.

After nearly four decades in her job, Shuler is one of 12 nurses who were laid off Sunday after being replaced with AI-powered software, according to the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which represents nurses at the hospital.

July 13, 2026 — Have you ever taken a prescribed medicine to resolve a health issue, only for the treatment to fail? Perhaps you’re among the unlucky low percentage of people on weight loss drugs who can’t seem to lose a single pound. The lack of efficacy in your treatments may be due to your unique genetic profile. Our specific genes can have many subtle effects on our health that don’t necessarily fit the average.

The model overview of UKBioBERT and UKBioFormer as Foundation Models for genetically precise medicine.

Two researchers from Professor Hongyu Zhao’s lab at Yale University are working on AI tools to change that, and they’ve used their U.S. National Science Foundation ACCESS allocation on the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ (NCSA) Delta and DeltaAI supercomputers to support their projects.

Decoding Your Unique Blueprint

Tianyu Liu is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University working on a tool that can account for individual genetic variations when researching treatments and diseases. His work involves tackling how gene-expression-predictive models use genomic language models (gLMs). Liu’s work was recently published in npj Artificial Intelligence.

Most current gLMs rely on the “reference genome,” a standardized blueprint of human DNA assembled from multiple individuals. A different approach was needed to provide a better tool for individualized gene expression predictions.

“We pre-trained a powerful genomic language model (UKBioBERT) based on human variants from biobanks, and demonstrated that the embeddings from our model can enhance different expert models in performing gene expression prediction across individuals or genes,” said Liu. This language model was trained using real genetic variants from approximately 300,000 individuals in the UK Biobank, creating rich, function-aware representations of genomic sequences.

Building on this, the researchers created UKBioFormer and UKBioZoi by combining UKBioBERT with state-of-the-art architectures to improve the science of treatment and discovery. With these new tools, doctors would be better able to understand how your individual genes might affect things like disease risk or drug response. Conditions like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and autoimmune disorders are driven by subtle changes in gene expression rather than mutations in a single gene; these new tools help pinpoint those subtle regulatory effects. And, due to the broad dataset, results from these tools will be more applicable to a wider population with different ancestries than results based on a more limited reference genome, ensuring that treatments – from heart medication to weight-loss drugs – are tailored to the person, not the average.

Mapping the Biological Symphony

Xinyi Lisa Chen is a third-year Ph.D. student who also works in Professor Zhao’s lab. Chen is researching how genetic expression interacts with other parts of tissues. While Liu focuses on the unique ‘letters’ of an individual’s genetic code, Chen looks at how those instructions are carried out in physical space.

“Imagine watching the brain of a newborn mouse develop into adulthood,” said Chen, “cells gradually organizing into precise patterns, each performing distinct roles over time. To understand this biological symphony and discover how disruptions might lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, scientists must piece together a puzzle involving not just what genes are active, but also where in the tissue they’re active, when they’re switched on, and how they interact with other biological processes.”

Scientists have recently been able to get unprecedented amounts of detailed information about cells during scans – sometimes they’re even able to isolate tiny groups of cells no bigger than two to three together to study them. “Specifically, scientists can measure both gene activity (RNA, or transcriptomics) and gene regulation (chromatin accessibility, or epigenomics via ATAC-seq) within these spots, while also precisely pinpointing their locations in specific regions,” Chen explained.

However, these snapshots of gene activity within cells had limitations. “Until now, scientists lacked a method to combine all these layers – spatial location, timing and multiple types of genetic data – into a single clear picture,” said Chen. To solve this, she created a tool called STORM (Spatial Temporal multi-Omics Representation Model). STORM uses graph neural networks to integrate these complex layers of information into one cohesive, biologically interpretable view.

STORM’s integrated clustering result of postnatal mouse brain across 2 developmental timepoints, 21 days and 22 days after birth.

The hope is that this tool can be a valuable aid in personalized medicine.

ACCESS helped connect these researchers to the computing power needed to turn complex AI theories into real biological discoveries. “Leveraging NCSA’s powerful H100 GPU, we successfully processed extensive datasets encompassing five timepoints and two modalities within just over 24 hours – a task previously infeasible even with other advanced GPUs like the A100,” said Chen. “This tremendous computational acceleration has allowed us to conduct research at a pace previously unattainable, rapidly advancing our understanding of complex biological processes.”

If you’re a researcher who needs compute resources to power your project, you can get started with ACCESS here.

Resource Provider Institution(s): National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Resources Used: Delta, DeltaAI
Affiliations: Yale University
Funding Agency: NSF
Grant or Allocation Number(s): BIO250009

The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.

Source: Megan Johnson, NCSA; NSF ACCESS

The post NSF ACCESS: New Frontiers in Precision Medicine appeared first on HPCwire.

Officers say decision made after ‘new information and evidence has come to light’ over death of former British minister

Counter-terrorism police are now leading the investigation into the death of the former MP and Reform spokesperson Ann Widdecombe in light of “new information and evidence”.

Widdecombe’s body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Haytor, Devon, at 11.40am on Thursday, Devon and Cornwall police said.

Tehran says latest US attacks have ‘rendered futile’ diplomatic efforts of last few months. Plus, hit song in Australia prompts speculation about use of AI

Good morning.

The US military has launched a fresh wave of attacks against Iran amid the escalating standoff over the strait of Hormuz.

What has Iran said about the latest hostilities? Iran condemned the latest wave of attacks, its foreign ministry saying they had “rendered futile all efforts of the past few months to reduce tension and establish peace in the west Asian region”. The ministry added: “The US regime has also caused the return of insecurity in the strait of Hormuz and disruption of international commercial shipping.”

Is the strait open? Iran said on Sunday that passage through the waterway was not possible because of what it called recent illegal US military movements in the region. The US said its forces were positioned to safeguard freedom of navigation, and reiterated guidance that, despite a severe security threat, an “expanded” southern route near Oman coastline was available for two-way traffic.

How will Graham be replaced in the senate? South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, will appoint a new senator to serve out the remainder of Graham’s term, which ends on 3 January. Whoever is appointed will likely have a leg up in a special primary election on August 11 to get on the November ballot. The candidate would still run against the Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who gained significant support in the red state, but who still faces an uphill challenge.

"Git and email are the two really only tools I use," Linus Torvalds said at Open Source Summit India 2026. But ZDNet reports that he also shared his thoughts on Rust, C, and patch-checking tools: "I use Google as a way to look things up." He added, "I'm unusual; most of the other maintainers end up using many more tools, and I think a lot of them are starting to use AI tools for patch checking," while he "works at a higher level. I work with people, not tools." When asked about Rust both in Git and the kernel, he pushed back against hype: "I'm not sure Rust is going to take over the world. I still think Rust is very interesting, [but] I still find C to be a much simpler tool." Torvalds continued, "I'm much more excited about all the tools we have for verification of C," including "automated patch verification tools" and "automated email checking tools for patches like Sashiko." Summing up, Torvalds told the Mumbai audience: "I'm more of a hack-and-slash kind of person, and I still like the raw and simple power of C, and I don't think that's going to change." Torvalds also warned against overestimating Rust's benefits: "Rust fixes a few easy bugs that you can make in C, but it does not fix the logic errors, right? It does not think for you, and when you write incorrect code, the language does not matter. The end result will be incorrect." On mixed C/Rust code bases, he pointed out that guarantees are limited: "The guarantees that Rust give you only apply in the Rust-only parts of your code base, and wherever you interact with C code, all bets are off," with most Rust code in Linux talking to "core kernel C code" that is "much better quality... because that code has been tested in every single environment." At the same time, Torvalds pointed out, "some of our big and more high-profile bugs in the kernel lately have been logic errors" rather than the kind of memory errors Rust prevents. "It was just bad programming, which sadly happens even in carefully maintained subsystems and important kernels that are supposed to be very secure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President and allies have sued, cut access and issued subpoenas, but experts say media still producing strong work

Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on the media to a level without precedent in American history in the first 17 months of his second presidency.

But have Trump and his allies won their war against the media – or at least put the industry on a weaker footing than in the past? The answer isn’t so straightforward.

Heat alerts were issued for millions across parts of the western U.S. Sunday due to an unusually prolonged heat dome, which is starting to move east.

A body was recovered from a firefighting aircraft that went down in Silver Jack Reservoir in western Colorado.

Critics accuse ministers of failing to take control of nature crisis and leaving it to private landowners to act voluntarily

The government’s plan to protect and restore nature in England by 2030 has been condemned as “pathetic” and “completely insufficient” in the face of the spiralling environmental crisis.

The long-awaited plan published on Monday calls for landowners to voluntarily opt to protect and enhance nature, rather than creating legal protections for nature across more of the country’s land, critics say.

A pickup truck carrying wedding guests was crushed between two other trucks on a busy highway in Indonesia's, killing 13 people and injuring five others, police say.

This came after Xbox announced thousands of layoffs at the company.

Initiative with Derbyshire Libraries aims to boost access to cultural experiences and ‘champion reading for pleasure’

When Kate, a 47-year-old contract worker came face to face with Charlotte Brontë’s handwriting while visiting Chatsworth House, the avid reader, who counts Jane Eyre as her favourite book, struggled to contain her excitement.

“I had a little bit of a moment,” she said. “I just thought: ‘Wow, that was actually Charlotte Brontë’s writing there on that page.’ That was pretty special.”

As people yearn for connection, these events are popping up around the world - and spreading ‘collective effervescence’

We met in a former synagogue, a vast room with hardwood floors where the sound could echo freely. All were strangers, many former choir nerds, united by a love for group singing. Our goal was to learn and perform, in a single day, a classic of our time: a song from the Hannah Montana movie.

The event, near downtown Los Angeles, was a one-day choir hosted by the Gaia Music Collective – a three-hour gathering where more than 100 people rehearsed a choral arrangement of the song and sang it three times, with ourselves as the only audience.

High temperatures and below average rainfall put pressure on waterways used to cool reactors

Above average temperatures combined with below average rainfall across much of western and central Europe during June and the first half of July have placed increasing pressure on rivers, ecosystems and energy infrastructure. Persistent high pressure brought prolonged sunshine, suppressed rainfall and enhanced evaporation, causing river levels to fall and water temperatures to increase.

These unusually warm rivers are affecting electricity generation in France, as several nuclear power stations rely on river water for cooling. Under French environmental regulations, operators must limit the amount of heat discharged back into rivers, meaning electricity output may need to be reduced when water temperatures become too high.

The star of more than 100 films is remembered as a champion of New Zealand’s arts, culture and environment, and a generous collaborator and friend
• Sam Neill’s final interview
• His 20 best performances
• A life in pictures
• ‘A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Neill
• Neill interviewed in 2023, 2024 and 2026

Sam Neill’s friends, peers and admirers have rushed to pay tribute to the actor, after his sudden death on Monday at the age of 78.

Neill’s co-star in A Long Way Down and Aussie crime caper Dirty Deeds, Toni Collette, called him a “hero,” “legend” and a “sweetheart”. She wrote: “Our great friend. You are already missed so very much. Continue in peace wherever you are.”

"They were being submerged by the waves but still waving their hands for help," a witness said.

President Trump paid tribute to the late senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who had just returned from a trip to Ukraine.

Climate diplomacy has gone freelance. Multilateralism must adapt, not disappear Expert comment thilton.drupal 13 July 2026

The recent London Climate Action Week revealed that while formal climate multilateralism remains under strain, climate diplomacy is becoming more diffused, implementation oriented and focused on delivering security.

As much of Europe emerged from a record-breaking heatwave that closed schools, disrupted businesses and exposed the limits of adaptation even in some of the world’s wealthiest economies, London Climate Action Week (LCAW) took on particular salience. While the impacts of climate change were unfolding in real time, more than 75,000 participants from across the world attended over 1,300 events to debate the future of global climate action.

The central takeaway was not simply renewed urgency. It was that climate diplomacy is changing shape and that climate action is happening. 

In recent years, many have questioned the effectiveness of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The slow pace of consensus-based negotiations and the limited progress made at its annual COP summits have led some to argue that climate multilateralism is dead, or at least on life support. 

LCAW is not itself a formal multilateral forum, but it did offer an important window into how climate diplomacy more broadly is evolving. It highlighted that alongside multilateral negotiations, complementary forms of international climate cooperation that focus on implementation and coalition-building are growing in importance. 

Climate leadership is becoming less about grand declarations and more about sustained credibility and action. As geopolitical tensions reshape energy markets, trade, security priorities and development pathways, much of the practical work is increasingly taking place outside traditional multilateral channels. 

Governments remain essential actors, but they now operate within a much broader ecosystem of cities, businesses, financial institutions, philanthropists and civil society. LCAW pointed to how climate diplomacy is becoming more diffuse – and arguably more suited to the current fragmented geopolitical era. Three shifts stood out.

Climate security looms large

First, climate security has become an increasingly central part of the climate conversation. The recent Strait of Hormuz crisis is a stark reminder that today, geopolitical instability, energy security and the transition away from fossil fuels are increasingly intertwined, reinforcing the need to strengthen resilience while accelerating climate action. 

Increasingly, climate change and biodiversity loss are recognised as interconnected security challenges, as reflected for example in the UK government’s recent national security assessment on global ecosystems. As a result, climate is no longer being treated as a standalone environmental issue but as part of a broader nexus of environmental change driving risks across security, economic resilience and public health. 

The UK’s new Climate Security Taskforce, launched during LCAW, is a case in point. The taskforce brings together leading experts to advise the government on how to tackle growing climate threats.

Related work

It isn’t easy being green: The UK’s net zero trilemma

The taskforce helps cement the UK’s leading role in shaping climate security thinking. The UK first recognized climate change as a core national security challenge in its 2008 National Security Strategy. More recently, the National Security Strategy 2025, Strategic Defence Review 2025 and the launch of the taskforce demonstrate how this framing has become increasingly embedded in the UK’s national security planning.

Other governments are also increasingly explicitly treating climate change as a national security issue. Germany’s 2023 National Security Strategy recognizes that ‘our international and security environment … is increasingly defined by the existential threat posed by the climate crisis’. France’s 2022 National Strategic Review, Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy and Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy all integrate climate into assessments of national resilience, strategic risk and economic security. This trend is here to stay.

Shift towards practical delivery 

Second, the conversation is shifting from climate commitments to their implementation, with increasing emphasis on practical measures that deliver multiple benefits beyond emissions reductions.  

Climate action is becoming more explicitly linked to building resilience, strengthening energy security, enhancing industrial competitiveness and supporting economic growth. Discussions on the energy transition are increasingly centred on competitiveness, industrial strategy and electrification initiatives. This reflects a growing recognition that fossil fuel dependence is itself a strategic vulnerability and that resilient, diversified energy systems are central to long-term security. 

At LCAW, this shift was captured by the launch of the Electrify Now initiative – a coalition of governments and non-government organizations backed by the European Commission, the UK, Turkey, Australia, Ethiopia, and others. By promoting electrification across transport, buildings and industry, the initiative frames electrification not simply as a climate objective, but as a strategy for energy security, economic competitiveness and resilience. In doing so, it translates ambitious climate goals into concrete implementable actions with clear economic and strategic benefits. 

Preliminary investigations indicated that the fire may have been started by electrical short circuits, and that emergency exits may have been blocked.

Major incidents declared in north Wales and Derbyshire as Natural England warns of ‘exceptional fire risk’

Villagers were evacuated from their homes as a wildfire swept across a mountainside in north Wales, prompting firefighters to declare a major incident.

People described hearing the crackling fire advancing down Conwy Mountain towards homes as ash fell from a sky turned dark by thick smoke.

The twisting road to the candidate’s exit left a lot to be desired. But ultimately, reporters ferreted out the truth

After the New York Times published an article in early June about the Senate candidate Graham Platner’s treatment of the women he dated, the story’s main source reacted with disappointment and anger.

It was a “gift to the Platner campaign”, charged Lyndsey Fifield, who had dated the Democratic combat veteran years ago and who spoke candidly to the Times about that experience.

Senator played major role in critical negotiations with Democrats and members of his own party on key issues

When Democrats and Republicans were earlier this year locked in a standoff that had plunged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the longest partial government shutdown in US history, news of a path forward emerged in the form of a statement from Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

By announcing that the budget committee he chairs would set to work on a measure to fund the agencies leading Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign for the remainder of his presidency, Graham played a major role in rallying the GOP behind a plan that reopened DHS.

Indigenous and Hispanic students are suspended more often and for longer periods than their white classmates who commit similar infractions at Gallup-McKinley County Schools — a pattern of “substantial racial disparities,” an investigation by the New Mexico attorney general’s office found.

Indigenous students lose eight to 10 times more classroom days to suspensions than white students, while Hispanic students lose three to four times as many, according to the 47-page report released by the state’s Department of Justice last week.

Gallup-McKinley, a sprawling district twice the size of Delaware, straddles part of the Navajo Nation and has the largest Native American student population of any public school district in the country.

The investigation was ordered by state Attorney General Raúl Torrez in 2023, after reporting by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica exposed the district’s high rates of harsh punishment for Native and Hispanic children. The news organizations found Native students in New Mexico are expelled far more often than any other group. The district has a quarter of New Mexico’s Native students, but it accounted for at least three-quarters of Native student expulsions during the four school years ending in 2020.

That disparity was evident even in kindergarten and elementary grades, often for ambiguous infractions such as “disorderly conduct.”

At the time, former district Superintendent Mike Hyatt called the news organizations’ reporting “completely false” and suggested the findings were a result of the district’s own data entry errors and its broad definition of expulsion.

But, state Department of Justice investigators said in last week’s report that neither explanation accounted for the racial disparities. Hyatt has retired and could not be reached for comment.

Their report calls on Gallup-McKinley officials to “acknowledge the facts” and work with the community “in remedying its excessive reliance on exclusionary and discriminatory discipline.”

Among the report’s recommendations: District officials should clearly define infractions and penalty ranges, make punishments proportional and limit suspensions. The report also called for Gallup-McKinley to adopt restorative justice alternatives such as talking circles, in which students discuss how their misbehavior impacted others, why they broke a school rule and other choices they could have made instead. The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission called for similar reforms in its own March 2026 report on discrimination at Gallup-McKinley schools. Wendy Greyeyes, the commission chair, noted that neighboring districts already use such alternatives, but she said in an interview that the district might have difficulty building trust with its students and their families.

Until the district fixes its discipline policies, investigators wrote, “children in and around Gallup, along with their families and communities, will remain negatively affected by educational, social, and emotional challenges that stem from the District’s current practices.”

That harm goes beyond the academic, investigators wrote, saying that out-of-school suspensions also deny students access to free meals and participation in extracurricular clubs and volunteer activities.

National research links suspension and expulsion to lower academic achievement, a higher risk of contact with the criminal justice system, isolation, poor health and lower wages, the report said.

Investigators also called on the district to create a clear and accessible complaint process for students and families, and to publish regular audits of discipline data.

In 2023, after New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica published their reporting, the district provided a contract auditor with discipline data that was “inexplicably different” from what it reported to state and U.S. departments of Education, with thousands of disciplinary records missing, the state Department of Justice investigators said. The news organizations’ own reporting on the audit could not verify the district’s assertions that it had dramatically reduced out-of-school suspensions.

“Instead of taking steps to rectify these problems, leadership denied that they exist and pushed a misleading and flawed counter-analysis,” the new AG report said.

In addition to district reforms, the new report also called on state lawmakers and the New Mexico Public Education Department to strengthen oversight of student discipline statewide. Audits at the state level should be conducted at least once a year and be made public, it said.

Such audits are needed to prevent disparities from becoming as “extreme and systemic as in Gallup-McKinley,” said Anjana Samant, one of the report’s authors and a deputy director in the state Department of Justice.

The state Department of Education should also require that students who are suspended or expelled receive instruction and other educational services while they are out of school. The department is reviewing the report, spokesperson Janelle Garcia said.

In addition to specific disciplinary policy changes, the new report urged state lawmakers to revisit legislation that would have given the AG’s office stronger investigative tools to “identify and root out” civil rights violations. That legislation passed in 2023, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, let the bill die without her signature in what’s called a pocket veto.

The governor, a spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday, stands by her decision, saying it’s unclear whether the new powers in the legislation “would have trumped federal student privacy protections and allowed the AG to access confidential student records.”

What matters now is ensuring the report’s findings are addressed quickly, wrote Michael Coleman, Lujan Grisham’s communications director.

The district is reviewing the report’s recommendations, Gallup-McKinley Superintendent Jvanna Hanks II told New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica.

“I am leading a period of transition that prioritizes community voices and renews our focus on every student,” Hanks wrote in an email provided by a public relations firm the district has hired. “The School District will be using this report and current student data as part of our review. Our focus is that students should be in school, supported in school, and treated fairly in school.”

The post New Mexico AG Calls for Reform After Report Finds “Substantial Racial Disparities” in One School District appeared first on ProPublica.

Eyebot wants to make getting a prescription for glasses as fast as ordering a coffee.

Superheroes, time travel and robots? Prime Video's got all the sci-fi goods.

Why Should Delaware Care?
With the closure of Wilmington’s sanctioned homeless encampment, city officials were considering sponsoring a tiny-home village initiative, in partnership with the nonprofit, Springboard Delaware. The plan relied on COVID-era dollars, but those funds have since been lost. 

Wilmington officials lost $1.6 million in federal COVID-era relief funding after failing to finalize plans for a tiny home village prior to a state deadline to spend the money.

The development comes after weeks of conversations among city officials and residents over whether the city should move forward with the project to provide the housing assistance to Wilmington’s growing homeless population.

In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Caroline Klinger, a spokeswoman for Mayor John Carney, expressed disappointment at the missed deadline. She also said the city would assess “options for supporting the unhoused and investing in affordable housing options while striking a balance that also respects the rights of surrounding residents.” 

Despite the missed funding deadline, Judson Malone — director of the city’s nonprofit partner, Springboard Delaware — said the proposal is not completely off the table. He said his organization will need more time to restructure itself financially before pursuing the Wilmington location. 

“One source of financing we lost for capital, but we are developing other sources for capital. It’ll take us some time to put that deal together, but we’re still coming,” Malone said.

Asked about Malone’s statement, Klinger said that while the city is open to working with the nonprofit, “major unanswered questions” remain, including where the tiny home village could be built and how it would be funded over the long term.

The collapse of the tiny-home village plans also came just weeks after city officials evicted residents living at a homeless encampment at Christina Park, which Carney created last fall. 

Most of the residents were provided housing for up to 90 days at various other facilities. But advocates have expressed concern about where the individuals will end up after that.

A dispute over the deadline

Last month, Carney’s administration placed the responsibility for selecting a site for the tiny home village with the City Council. 

According to the Delaware Department of Finance, the city had until June 19 to secure a location and the necessary approvals in order to use $1.6 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding. 

But city officials hoped for more time. Klinger said a state official had verbally told city officials that their deadline to identify a site could be July 1. Finance department officials say that is inaccurate. 

Nevertheless, the city then sent a request to formally extend the deadline to use the $1.6 million, stating the city needed additional time to secure land-use approvals and finalize a location.

Delaware Secretary of Finance Michael Smith denied the city’s request, citing the strict federal requirements to administer the funds. 

“Springboard Delaware could not obtain the required permits needed by the agreed-upon deadline of June 19, 2026, and therefore the project will be cancelled,” Smith said. 

State officials said the $1.6 million will now be redirected to another entity, but did not want to identify the recipient before the U.S. Treasury approves the reallocation. 

Asked why the city failed to meet the deadline, Klinger emphasized the lack of community support. She said the federal government’s schedule for spending the dollars “did not allow the time necessary to work with communities and get the proper support.”

“Our office identified potential locations for consideration by City Council and the Mayor always maintained that those sites would need to move forward with support from the surrounding community,” she said.  

City Councilman Coby Owens, who sat on Carney’s homelessness task force last year, said communication between the mayor’s office and council could have been better. He also noted that the full council was never able to have a conversation about selecting the location. 

“It just highlights again that when we’re not seeing eye-to-eye, the only people who are negatively impacted are some of our more vulnerable communities, and that’s not fair for any of us to play these games,” Owens said. 

What is Springboard Delaware?  

Springboard Delaware has spent at least three years looking for a location for their next tiny home village operation, with proposals also in Milford, Newark, and most recently, Dover. 

In Wilmington, officials had been in contact with the nonprofit for more than a year. Klinger said last month that talks with Springboard Delaware picked up after the group’s plans to build housing in Dover fell through.

Springboard Delaware currently operates one ‘navigation center’ in Georgetown, providing 40 tiny homes and services to those who are homeless. The site has been in operation for the last three and a half years. 

Each home has electricity, a microwave, and a minifridge. Those living in the village also have access to showers, restrooms, laundry, and meals. The case management services include counseling to help people find jobs, healthcare, and permanent housing. 

The average stay, according to Springboard Delaware’s website, is around four months. About 40% of the individuals living in the pallet village have transitioned to permanent housing, the website also states.

In June, Springboard Delaware began to attend community meetings in the city, pitching the idea to residents in the Eastside and Southbridge.

Malone noted that a property along Wilmington’s 7th Street Peninsula seemed most feasible, as it was owned by the city and likely would not generate overwhelming community resistance. 

But residents quickly rejected the all the proposed locations, arguing it made little sense to build such a project in communities that already lacked resources, Many also expressed fears that a tiny-home village could cause loitering, panhandling, and safety risks to spill into the neighborhood. 

“Put them in your neighborhood!” one resident shouted at presenters last month during a Eastside community meeting. 

Malone told Spotlight Delaware he believes the narrative around homelessness needs to change, arguing that communities mistakenly believe projects like this would worsen the problem. Instead of pushing unhoused residents elsewhere, he said communities need to accept that they are part of the community and deserve support.

“If every community wants every other community to be responsible for addressing homelessness, I don’t see a path forward to success,” Malone said.

The post Wilmington misses deadline to spend $1.6M on a tiny-home village appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Many imagined his buff, gruff and tattooed traits would help him connect with working-class men. But this logic was flawed

The left would do well to revisit New York’s Democratic primaries two weeks ago – it was a sunnier news cycle, yes, but those races were also an object lesson in progressive realpolitik.

Zohran Mamdani, busy as he already was, devoted a remarkable amount of time, resources and political capital to selecting and backing the eventual victors in three different races – in one case reversing a promise to support an incumbent, Adriano Espaillat, in favor of activist Darializa Avila Chevalier, and in another case supporting Claire Valdez, a relatively unknown assemblywoman, even as the Working Families party, major unions and other progressives backed the Brooklyn borough president, Antonio Reynoso.

The quantum computing market is entering a new phase as commercial deployments are beginning to complement cloud-based experimentation, according to Bob Sorensen, Hyperion Research‘s Senior Vice President of Research and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing. During a briefing at ISC 2026 last month in Hamburg, Germany, Sorensen said the industry is approaching an inflection point driven by growing enterprise readiness, expanding partnerships, and continued government investment.

Hyperion projects the quantum computing market will grow from approximately $1.4 billion in 2025 to roughly $3 billion by 2028, with hardware sales expected to become the largest market segment as organizations transition from cloud-based access to on-premises quantum systems.

(Hyperion Research)

“Now, the key here is we’re all waiting for the hockey stick. We’re all waiting for the killer application or the uptake, when organizations start to see demonstrated performance gains on real-world use cases,” Sorensen said. “And once that happens, the idea of systems moving from accessing quantum through a cloud access model … to an on-prem installation capability. And that’s where you’re going to see the hockey stick really happen.”

Sorensen said that shift would replace relatively inexpensive cloud access used for research, development and proof-of-concept efforts with multimillion-dollar purchases of on-premises quantum systems capable of running production workloads, creating the market inflection point Hyperion expects over the next several years.

Hyperion’s survey also suggests that partnerships are becoming a defining feature of the quantum ecosystem. Among the 99 quantum computing suppliers surveyed, 63% reported government-related partnerships over the past three years, while roughly two-thirds said they have established partnerships with end-user organizations.

(Hyperion Research)

Government support remains essential to the industry’s development, Sorensen said. “Governments have to stay involved, at least for the next few years, until the virtuous cycle of market provides money for research which provides new products which provides markets. They’re not at that stage yet.”

He added that vendors are also working more closely with customers to identify industry-specific applications rather than simply selling quantum hardware. “You just can’t drop a quantum system off on the loading dock and run like hell, and expect the end user to really understand what’s going on.”

Sorensen pointed to collaborations in sectors including oil and gas, aerospace, computational chemistry and advanced materials as examples of vendors tailoring quantum solutions to specific industries rather than pursuing one-size-fits-all deployments.

Hyperion’s survey found that respondents continue to see quantum computing’s strongest near-term opportunities in applications rooted in quantum physics itself. Computational chemistry topped the list of the most promising application areas at 26%, followed by materials science at 22%. Cryptography (16%), optimization and logistics (11%), and AI and machine learning (10%) rounded out the top five. Science and engineering applications accounted for just 5% of responses.

(Hyperion Research)

Sorensen said, “These are things that actually rely on simulating the quantum process at the quantum level. So in some sense, think of a quantum computer as a sandbox. It is a way to play with quantum interactions in a quantum system. And that’s why these are considered… the most promising applications going forward.”

By comparison, Sorensen said applications such as cryptography, optimization and machine learning rely less on quantum phenomena themselves and more on the computational capabilities of quantum algorithms.

It’s worth noting that AI and machine learning received just 10% of responses, trailing computational chemistry, materials science, cryptography and optimization. That’s down from 23% in Hyperion’s 2022 survey.

While Hyperion expects quantum computing revenues to continue growing over the next several years, Sorensen said the industry’s immediate priority is less about rapid commercialization than preparing organizations for broader adoption.

“Quantum curious or aspiring quantum end users understand that the time frame for true quantum utility is a few years away, but they need to get there first,” he said. “They need to build skills and they need to understand the computational workloads that quantum can bring.”

“They understand that this is a journey. This is not something where you just roll in the next generation processor … This is an entirely different paradigm shift.”

The post Hyperion Research Sees Quantum Market Nearing Commercial Inflection Point appeared first on HPCwire.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public.

Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.

• Georgetown to reconsider tiny homes
• Energy regulators finalize Delmarva rate increase
• Port of Wilmington leaders talk finances
• Colonial school officials to discuss feeder patterns

Georgetown to reconsider tiny home rules

Georgetown leaders on Monday will discuss changing, or even repealing, the town’s recently enacted tiny home ordinance.

The policy, and broader possibility of allowing tiny home developments in the Sussex County seat, became a flashpoint over the past year as residents and elected officials debated how best to address a growing homeless population.

Newly-elected Mayor Angie Townsend is proposing the discussion. Townsend was backed during her campaign by a citizens’ Facebook group known as “Make Georgetown Great Again,” which established a political foothold in response to growing resident frustrations about town leaders’ response to homelessness.

It is unclear what exactly Townsend hopes to change about Georgetown’s regulations, but current code allows for 12 tiny homes per acre, among other rules. 

After Townsend’s victory, an organizer of Make Georgetown Great Again told Spotlight Delaware he hopes town leaders will work with local nonprofits implement more homelessness programs that are faith-based and focused on accountability. 

📍 The Georgetown Town Council will meet at 7 p.m. Monday inside council chambers, located at 39 The Circle in Georgetown. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.

Regulators finalize Delmarva rate hike

Delaware energy regulators will finalize a $34.3 million Delmarva Power rate increase request on Wednesday, rebuffing the utility by approving only part of its already scaled-back request. 

By approving the rate increase request, the Public Service Commission will allow Delmarva Power to increase electricity bills for the average Delaware home by just less than a dollar. However, there could be additional increases in the coming months.

The diminished electricity rate increase comes as energy costs have been at the forefront of Delaware’s political conversation over the past year.

Gov. Matt Meyer has publicly pressured energy regulators to freeze electricity rates. Lawmakers also passed a bill last month limiting the amount of infrastructure spending that Delmarva Power — the state’s largest utility company — could pass on to customers.

The increase will be voted on as part of the Public Service Commission’s consent agenda, meaning there will not be debate about the specific Delmarva increase. Instead, it will be voted on along with a slew of other proposals in a single vote. 

📍 The Public Service Commission will meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday inside the Cannon Building, located at 861 Silver Lake Blvd in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.

Port leaders to talk finances

The Diamond State Port Corporation’s finance committee will meet Wednesday to discuss the Port of Wilmington’s financial position, including its budget for the 2027 fiscal year.

The discussion comes weeks after state lawmakers voted to use a controversial pot of money to fund the port’s Edgemoor expansion. For a decade, the port expansion has been a goal of state officials who said a new container facility could bring in thousands of new jobs to the Wilmington area. 

But plans for the development had been beset by obstacles and blunders committed by port officials in the past. They also faced opposition from regional ports in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and from Edgemoor residents concerned about environmental impacts.

Wednesday’s committee meeting is slated to include discussions about construction projects at the port, the allocation of federal funding and more. 

📍 The Diamond State Port Corporation’s Finance Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday inside the Carvel State Building, located at 820 N French St. in Wilmington. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.

Will Colonial send kids to new schools?

Colonial School District families may send their children to a different elementary school than expected for the 2027-28 school year.

On Tuesday, Colonial Board of Education members will discuss changes to their elementary schools’ feeder pattern, according to an action item on the board’s agenda. Details about which schools may be impacted are not readily available on the board’s agenda. If implemented, the district would likely use the coming school year as a planning year for future changes.

📍 The Colonial Board of Education will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at its district board room, located at 318 E. Basin Road in New Castle. For more information, including about virtual attendance, click here.

Karl Baker, Olivia Marble and Maggie Reynolds contributed to this report.

The post Get Involved: Georgetown tiny homes, electric rates, Colonial feeder patterns appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
Two Dover City Councilmen developed a plan to generate new revenue for Delaware’s capital city, but some leaders were left questioning its legality. The proposal — to charge certain tax-exempt properties an annual fee — has the potential to divide city leaders and state lawmakers, with residents’ tax bills caught in the crossfire.

Following a challenging budget year, two Dover leaders are offering up a revenue source proposal to resolve the city’s tight financial margins: new fees on certain tax-exempt properties. 

Dover City Councilmen Roy Sudler and Brian Lewis proposed at a committee meeting last week that the city levy an impact fee of $1 per square-foot of building space on tax-exempt properties larger than 50,000 square feet in the city. 

The proposal includes a list of 20 properties that would be subject to the yearly fee, including the Delaware State University (DSU) campus, Bayhealth Medical Center, the Delaware Technical Community College Terry Campus and Legislative Hall. 

If approved, the concept would require institutions like Bayhealth, DSU and the state government to each pay the city more than a million dollars annually. 

“Everyone should have to pay their fair price,” Sudler said at the meeting. “Job creation does not pave roads, institutional growth does not clear stormwater networks, and prestige does not fuel emergency rescue vehicles.” 

In a rare show of unity among city leaders, the eight members of the Legislative and Finance Committee present at the meeting voted affirmatively to move forward with the impact fee. The city’s finance department will now conduct a feasibility assessment by late August. 

Despite the enthusiasm about the proposal from city leaders, questions remain about the legality and logistics  of the concept, which would require the state government to pay the city of Dover for its properties within city limits. 

Dover City Attorney Dan Griffith told Spotlight Delaware he has not yet reviewed the proposal, and cannot comment on its constitutionality. Council members said a legal review will be a key part of the analysis of the proposal that city staff will undertake over the next month. 

Dover officials have long expressed concern that roughly 45% of property in the city has non-profit status – meaning it qualifies for property tax exemptions – and have made various attempts over the years to impose comparable fees on tax-exempt organizations. 

None of those past proposals have succeeded. 

In addition to passing an ordinance within the city government, the impact fee would necessitate a charter change to be implemented. Charter changes require an affirmative vote by two-thirds of each chamber in the General Assembly to be approved. 

While the proposal appears to have initial support within the city, it is not clear whether city leaders would be able to lobby their state counterparts to support the fee. 

State Sen. Trey Paradee (D-Dover), whose district includes the majority of the city of Dover, said he does not believe the impact fee is constitutional, nor would it be successful if put to a vote in the legislature. 

“It is politically impossible for them to do,” Paradee said. “It would just never happen.” 

Paradee said the Constitution’s supremacy clause – which states that state law takes precedence over local law – is evidence that the city does not have the authority to implement what he described as “essentially a tax on state property.”

Specifics about the fee proposal

A 50-page packet created by Lewis and Sudler lays out the impact fee proposal. They say it would force tax-exempt organizations to pay their fair share of infrastructure costs, because these entities consistently use city resources like roads and stormwater networks without having to pay into the system. 

Dover City Manager Sharon Duca and Finance Director Patricia Marney said they had not reviewed the plan, but that they believe it is an idea with some potential. At the same time, both said the concept would need a legal review.

Sudler said his goal is to incorporate the fee into the city’s next fiscal year budget, but Duca and Marney said it could take longer to iron out the logistics. 

The so-called Municipal Services Impact Fee would generate nearly $13 million in revenue annually for the city. It would allow the government not to have to pass rising costs on to residents in the form of property tax and utility rate increases, Sudler said. 

The city spent this spring debating its 2027 fiscal year budget, which initially included a $7 million shortfall. 

The city council ultimately balanced its budget by imposing a 3-cent increase per $100 of assessed value on residents’ property taxes, and a 1-cent increase to their per-killowatt-hour electric usage rate. 

The majority of council argued the tax increases were the only way to reconcile the budget shortfall, but Lewis and Sudler remained critical. They said the budget unduly placed the burden on residents instead of nonprofit organizations. 

The pair said this past year’s budget conversation led them to introduce the impact fee idea as a way of creating a more permanent solution to the city’s budget issues. 

But it’s not clear whether the nonprofits that own the 20 properties listed in Dover’s proposal would have the room in their budgets to pay the fees council members are suggesting.

A spokesperson for DSU wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware that the proposal would have a “significant impact” on the university’s operations, and is not something the university could support. 

Representatives from Bayhealth and Del Tech did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment on Friday about the fee. 

Lewis and Sudler also said Dover is one of the only state capitals without a program for collecting money from state owned real estate and higher education campuses within its city limits. They cited examples of capitals like Hartford, Connecticut, and Albany, New York, which they said receive funds from their respective state governments for maintaining state building infrastructure. 

The New York State code, for example, requires the state to pay aid to cities with a population greater than 75,000 where at least 25% of the city’s property is owned by the state. 

A similar ordinance discussed by the Dover City Council in 2018 drew pushback from smaller nonprofit organizations, like homeless shelters, who said they could not afford to pay such a fee. The updated fee proposal would not impact those organizations, however, because their properties are less than 50,000 square feet. 

When asked about the additional financial burden the fee would place on organizations like Bayhealth and DSU, which already pay water and sewer usage fees, Sudler said he would encourage the tax-exempt properties to apply for grants or use state bond appropriations to pay their potential fees. 

However, Sen. Paradee said the concept would quickly become an extremely costly situation for the state, because an impact fee in Dover would set the precedent for Wilmington, Georgetown and other jurisdictions to request state funds for the state-owned property within their municipal limits. 

“It’s clearly a tax,” he said. 

For the 2027 fiscal year, which began July 1, Dover was allocated $1.6 million from the state for fire and police services provided to DSU as a part of a higher education public safety grant program. The city also received $450,000 in payment in lieu of taxes – or PILOT money – for the large tax-exempt properties within its limits, like Bayhealth and DSU. 

The city would no longer be eligible to receive these state funding sources if it implemented the impact fee program. 

Residents back plan, officials question viability 

Sudler and Lewis presented their proposal to an agreeable audience during the June 9 meeting. In addition to unanimous committee approval, a few residents voiced enthusiastic support for the plan, while also sharing their battles living in Dover. 

Dover resident William Faust said he struggles to pay his increasing utility bills on a fixed income. 

“I’m living in the dark because I can’t afford to have my lights on,” Faust said. 

Another resident, Bonnie Pennington, said the plan is “the best thing that [city leaders] could ever come up with.”

Sudler said he and Lewis took a “biopsychosocial” approach to their proposal. He explained the economic predictability that would come from transferring the tax burden from residents to large entities.

“Traditional regressive tax hikes and utility spikes act as chronic financial stressors for working families,” Sudler explained. “By stabilizing local tax and utility rates, this model acts as a psychological buffer, lowering a systemic anxiety and protecting household wealth.” 

Sudler said there will be a well-being survey in resident’s utility bills that measures if emergency room visits for severe stress go down. He said the survey would ask about symptoms related to chronic stress and safety. 

While many voiced support for the plan, one council member raised questions about the plan’s economic viability. 

Councilwoman Julia Pillsbury questioned whether the fee would cause impacted organizations, like Bayhealth and DSU, to simply raise the cost of their services. 

“I’m not suggesting it’s a bad idea,” Pillsbury said. “I’m just saying, I think people need to think about the fact that it’s cost-shifting.”

Councilman David Anderson remained supportive of the bill. But he said the council will have to expect challenges from the state legislature and the nonprofit entities if they move forward. 

“If we do this,” Anderson said, “we need to be prepared to go all in.”

Following a unanimous approval by the committee, Sudler and Lewis are asking for city staff to complete an assessment of the plan by Aug. 24.

Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.

The post Dover leaders propose fee on tax-exempt properties; legality unclear appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware will spend $78 million in federal funds to open its first medical school in the coming years. The state fielded bids from multiple universities, before ultimately settling on Thomas Jefferson University earlier this summer. Now, the university must execute on its agreement with the state to stand up a medical school within the next five years. 

Contracts and internal reviews obtained by Spotlight Delaware reveal new details about how the state will stand up its first-ever medical school, as well how leaders decided to partner with Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University among a field of other contenders. 

When the state formally announced the endeavor last month, no documents about its agreement with Jefferson had been made publicly available.

But a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Spotlight Delaware has revealed supplemental salaries for executive leadership at Jefferson, renovation plans for the University of Delaware’s campus, as well as a commitment to expand medical residency opportunities in the state. 

The startup of Delaware’s first medical school will be funded with hundreds of millions of dollars awarded to all 50 states to bolster rural healthcare. Delaware intends to spend $78 million over the next five years to launch the school. After that point, though, it would be on Jefferson to keep it open. 

The grant, called the Rural Health Transformation Program, was created last summer to court Republican senators hesitant to support more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, which could disproportionately impact rural communities and their healthcare facilities.

In February, Meyer’s office released an initial batch of requests for potential vendors to carry out programs that will be funded by the federal grant.

It came weeks after the state received its first grant award from the federal government totaling more than $157 million. The full RHTP award amount for the state remains unclear, but Delaware will receive at least $500 million from the multi-year program.

What the contract says 

The contract contains a budget for the first year of the five-year program, spanning from July 1 to Oct. 30, 2026. 

In that first-year budget, $170,000 is set aside for “TJU Leadership,” which includes supporting the salaries for Jefferson’s president, general counsel, vice president of marketing, as well as the dean of its College of Health Professions.

Another $130,000 is set aside for “Other system leadership,” including some of the university’s executive officers.

Additionally, the budget sets aside $550,000 to support the salaries for 12 members of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College leadership team.

Asked if the budget lines for executive leadership within the university would continue in further years, a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) said “budget categories for future years will be finalized as annual work plans and budgets are developed.”

A spokesperson for Jefferson said in an email that the first two years of the program would be focused on securing accreditation for the medical branch campus, purchasing equipment, as well as hiring staff. 

Asked about the budget lines for executive leadership in future years, the spokesperson said “costs and budgets will vary by year.” They also said leaders would play a “central role” in launching the campus, and that the Delaware campus would be “continuously supported” by the college’s Philadelphia staff. 

The spokesperson also said launching a new medical school “typically takes eight years,” and that Jefferson is opening its branch campus in just two. 

As for selecting a dean for the Delaware medical school, the contract says Jefferson must consult Gov. Matt Meyer’s office before it makes a decision. 

The contract also names a building on the University of Delaware’s campus, Willard Hall, where students would do their preclinical training. According to the first year budget, the state will spend $12 million to renovate the building, located on Main Street in Newark across from the Trabant University Center.

When asked about the renovation’s impact on classroom space for non-medical school students, University President Laura Carlson said Willard Hall would serve as the primary location for the medical school.

“We will maintain needed instructional space for existing courses and students, while carefully sequencing any moves to ensure all program needs are met,” Carlson said in an emailed statement. 

It is unclear if the university will continue to use the space for non-medical school classes. 

The contract said Jefferson would be responsible for placing its students into hospitals for their clinical rotations, where students would do hands-on medical training, following their education at UD. That agreement also says the university and hospitals should work to expand medical residency opportunities in the state. 

Hospitals like Bayhealth in Dover, Beebe Healthcare in Lewes, and Nemours Children’s Hospital and Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington were included in the initial group of hospitals set to host students. 

Some questions still remain about whether Delaware’s largest hospital system, ChristianaCare, would host students for clinical training after its failed attempt to run the medical school with the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM).

A spokesperson for ChristianaCare said in a statement the hospital is “not currently involved” in discussions with the consortium of hospitals and higher education institutions running the medical school.

“We remain open to conversations about how we can continue to support the state’s vision for physician workforce development in Delaware,” the ChristianaCare spokesperson said. 

TidalHealth, which operates Seaford’s Nanticoke Hospital, was not initially announced in the lineup of hospitals participating in the medical school. 

And in a statement to Spotlight Delaware, the hospital said it too had not “been in contact with the project’s leaders,” but that it looks forward to learning more about its potential role. 

“TidalHealth is projected to become Delmarva’s largest trainer of physicians, and we remain committed to rural graduate medical education as a way to recruit and retain practitioners in the communities we serve,” a TidalHealth spokesperson said. 

The contract also carves out protections for an already existing partnership meant to place Delawareans into out-of-state medical school programs. 

The Delaware Institute of Medical Education and Research, better known as DIMER, places Delaware students into nearby medical schools like Jefferson and PCOM. Jefferson reserves 20 seats annually for Delawareans and PCOM reserves 10. 

But after PCOM lost its bid to run Delaware’s medical school, the future of DIMER came into question. The college, however, said it would continue to host Delaware students in the program. 

Grading the bids

Spotlight Delaware also obtained a copy of the state’s bid reviews for all the applicants to run the state’s first medical school. In that review, a panel of six judges scored the applications on financial sustainability, educational history and their commitment to the bid and its goals.

That panel included a mix of state officials in the governor’s office and at DHSS. The medical director of the Delaware Health Empowerment Coalition also sat on the scoring committee. 

Additionally, the panel included the leader of the state’s powerful hospital lobby, the Delaware Healthcare Association.

Delaware received four bids to run the medical school, although only three were thoroughly considered. One of the bidders, the global consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, was “unanimously” disqualified from the bid because it did not meet necessary requirements. 

Another bidder, Ponce Health Sciences University, is a private Puerto Rican medical school. The panel said Ponce had demonstrated success at its other branch campus in Missouri, but that it wasn’t sure that could be transferred to Delaware. 

The panel broadly agreed both PCOM and Jefferson, the two frontrunners to operate Delaware’s medical school, had strong proposals. But some of the judges wrote that PCOM fell short in demonstrating how its plan for operations would benefit rural Delaware. 

“Bidder is deeply entwined with [ChristianaCare]. While this partnership creates a strong connection to Delaware, it largely serves NCC not the rural two counties defined in this RFP,” Dava Newnam, a deputy director at DHSS, wrote of PCOM’s bid. 

The bid review also said PCOM considered hosting the medical school on Delaware State University’s campus in Dover. 

For Jefferson, the panel lauded the university’s proposal and its already longstanding presence in Delaware. Kevin Myers, a panelist from the governor’s office, requested “additional detail” about the university’s commitment to rural primary care, but he otherwise supported its proposal. 

Myers questioned the university’s proposed budget and its intended use of the funds, but he said Jefferson had given “solid evidence” of sustainability following the five-year federal award.

The bid review also said that among all of the bidders, Jefferson had the “strongest endorsement” from the state’s rural healthcare systems. 

“These partnerships will be absolutely essential in the success of the medical school,” Myers wrote.

The post Contracts, internal reviews detail early budget for Delaware medical school appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in prison with Sepideh Kashani, who worked with husband Houman Jokar to save Asiatic cheetah

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has described the rearrest of two Iranian environmentalists, one of whom she met at Evin prison, as “unimaginably cruel and alarming”.

Husband and wife Houman Jokar and Sepideh Kashani were arrested by the ministry of intelligence at their home on 1 July. No reason has been given and their whereabouts are unknown.

What the UK government should do on AI and tech policy Expert comment thilton.drupal 13 July 2026

Britain’s next prime minister faces major policy decisions on tech and AI. They should aim to strengthen the UK’s tech sovereignty by building the national strengths – and the alliances – that give a middle power leverage in a shifting order.

Keir Starmer’s resignation on 22 June leaves Andy Burnham likely on course to enter Downing Street within weeks. While Burnham may be less vocal on questions of tech than his predecessor, he takes office at a truly critical moment in shaping the UK’s economic resilience, its geopolitical independence, and its status as a defender of democratic values in the machine age. 

Sovereignty reigns

For two decades, the reflex of British tech policy has been to prioritize its special relationship with Washington. The UK’s dependencies on US technology run extremely deep. With them come expectations that this close relationship buys guarantees to market and frontier technology access, intelligence-sharing, investment and a seat at the top table for the UK’s outstanding AI governance and research institutions. 

US technology companies have invested heavily in the UK for decades; the Tech Prosperity Deal signed during President Trump’s state visit, which trumpeted £150 billion of future investment into the UK, looks now to be a high-water mark.

That deal is now, reportedly, on ice. Europeans have been further alarmed by the US imposing temporary limits on access to the latest AI models – notably Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 – apparently at the sole discretion of the Oval Office.

The UK-US relationship has always had its difficulties: the two countries are commercially entwined but normatively estranged. The UK public are sceptical of most US technology companies, particularly on questions of tax and safety. 

And despite US pressure, the UK has kept its digital services tax and hardened, not softened, online regulation – its June 2026 ban on under-16s using social media goes further than Australia’s. The ban drew a warning from the US Embassy that the rules would burden American firms, echoing the president’s own executive order targeting ‘overseas extortion’ of US tech companies. 

UK polling suggests tech sovereignty – as wonkish a subject as there is – is beginning to filter through to the public, with growing calls to curb foreign ownership of infrastructure and maintain the UK’s commitment to online safety. 

This friction has accelerated a broader trend across middle powers, who are now realizing that access to US technology – which they previously took for granted – may be less stable or come with more strings than they had hoped. The sovereignty question is hardly Britain’s alone; it animates Paris and Berlin too. Should the White House continue to entangle itself with its frontier technology companies, or should the AI boom undergo a painful course correction, these positions will continue to harden.

Reducing reliance on US technology is reportedly an emerging strand of Burnham’s thinking. So, what should the incoming government do? Three priorities stand out.

Build leverage

The first task is to make Britain AI ready, not just AI-adjacent: the best of the rest, behind the US and China. The returns from cheap intelligence (in the form of AI) won’t be limited by which models the UK can access, but rather by the physical and industrial capacity to turn this cheap intelligence into output: energy, grid connections, factory floors, lab capacity.  

Britain should audit its own economy for exactly these blockages and clear them, prioritizing the 2025 Industrial Strategy’s own growth sectors in life sciences, advanced manufacturing and clean energy.

It should also prioritize routes to safely using NHS and other sources of public data in AI development: they remain a potentially decisive asset that years of fragmented, siloed systems and public trust failures have kept locked up, and could be the keystone of a credible UK AI bio and medical research programme.  

On compute, the UK cannot, and should not, try to out-build the US or China: money is limited, energy is expensive and data centres are unpopular. The right target is enough sovereign onshore capacity for critical inference – the compute used to deploy and use an AI model – with any surplus committed to UK start-ups, universities and towards a shared middle power technology stack capable of picking some battles with the US and China. 

Lead at home

Second, the incoming government should do distinctive things well at home, including making good use of digital identities and AI in public services.

Digital identities have long been treated as a potential liability for civil liberties. Burnham seems to have embraced this position too following the government’s disastrous attempts to relaunch the idea last year. This is the wrong approach. Digital identity should be reframed for what it can and must be: a piece of digital public infrastructure that makes everyday life easier and lays a foundation for public services and new digital businesses. 

Related work

Can a Burnham government make Britain a global leader in science and technology?

The same logic applies to AI in public services, where the government should build on the work of Greater Manchester’s AI and Data Innovation Office and work on health data by Health Innovation Manchester. Both prove that modernising public services through the use of digital technology is achievable.

Lastly, the UK should also build on its leadership position in AI governance, where the UK’s AI Security Institute gives it international standing that capital cannot buy. 

Pool what you can

The final priority is maximising sovereignty by coalition with other countries rather than hopeless attempts at autarky. Dozens of countries share both the UK’s needs in public service technology and share the anxiety about entrenched dependencies on the current providers. To squander this opportunity by building rickety national silos of technology would be a disaster when the UK has historically shown its capacity to build technology that enables collaboration rather than shutting it off. The success of gov.uk – forked and used by many of Britain’s friends and allies – is just one example.

Donald Trump is cleaning up on crypto, recently disclosing a $1.4 billion windfall. Yet cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have, after a year of flying high in the wake of Trump’s election, plummeted.

The crypto industry is putting hopes for its revival in a long-awaited bill, under debate in the Senate, called the Clarity Act, which could open the doors to Wall Street investments.

But there is one thing ironically standing in its way: Trump’s giant crypto haul.

The naked self-enrichment has turned crypto into a prime example of presidential corruption.

The result is that even crypto’s most staunch Democratic allies will find it hard to back a crypto wishlist like the Clarity Act, which will need support from at least seven Senate Democrats to overcome a filibuster.

Take crypto stalwarts like centrist Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., the chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, who issued a statement demanding that any crypto bill include ethics provisions to stop Trump’s crypto profiteering.

With the industry poised to spend tens of millions more on the midterm elections, however, Gillibrand and other centrist Democrats may yet be tempted to sign off on window dressing instead of a crackdown, said crypto critics.

Related

This Commission That Regulates Crypto Could Be Just One Guy: An Industry Lawyer

“Sen. Gillibrand and too many of her colleagues prioritize and spend enormous time pushing crypto’s special interest agenda, which is to get legitimized by the weakest possible law and regulated by the smallest, most underfunded, least capable, and most capture-able financial regulator,” Dennis Kelleher, the CEO of the nonprofit Better Markets, said in a statement last Monday. “That is presumably because the crypto industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigns to buy friends and attempt to get crypto’s special interest agenda enacted.”

Gillibrand has dismissed those criticisms. In a statement of her own last week, she expressed her desire to both advance the bill and crack down on Trump.

“We cannot let self-dealing destroy an opportunity to strengthen consumer protections, crack down on illicit finance, and expand economic opportunity for the millions of Americans our financial system has left behind,” Gillibrand said. “The time to act is now — and that must include ethics reforms that prohibit members of Congress, the president, and their spouses from cashing in on their office.”

Declining Sector Hangs Hopes on Clarity Act

For crypto, the numbers are sobering. Bitcoin soared from roughly $60,000 just before Trump’s election to about twice that by October of last year. Since then, it and other digital assets have cratered. Bitcoin now trades back around $63,000 a token.

Related

Trump Is Rewriting History to Justify His Sketchy Pardon of a Crypto King

The market’s gyrations did not stop Trump and his family members from profiting handsomely off the $TRUMP meme coin and other ventures. His roughly $1.4 billion of crypto profits last year meant that he cleared more than the largest publicly traded company in the industry, Coinbase, according to crypto commentator Scott Melker. The White House has defended Trump’s crypto windfall as legal, a point even his critics concede is likely true.

Crypto’s fortunes now appear to hinge largely on whether Congress passes the Clarity Act, which is intended to create an overall regulatory framework for the industry.

“If the bill passed, you would probably see a bump for the industry,” said Mark Hays, the associate director for cryptocurrency and financial technology at Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress. “So much of crypto rides on sentiment, and if the bill were passed and signed into law, you would likely see an increase in prices just based on that sentiment alone.”

One sign of how much of the industry is placing its bets on Congress came in a recent quarterly earnings call held by Coinbase. Analysts asked the company’s executives several times how the Clarity Act would affect their bottom line. The company’s executives said that it could mean that Wall Street, which has been reluctant to dive headlong into the industry, will finally start to spend on crypto.

Passing the law, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, would “just unlock a lot of institutional capital that’ll flow into the space broadly.”

That is one of the outcomes that crypto skeptics fear most. If crypto becomes integrated with the economy rather than a speculative sideshow, they say, it risks taking down the entire system in a crash.

Democrats Holding the Keys

The only thing standing between crypto and its top priority are Senate Democrats. The House of Representatives, where crypto needs only a bare majority, already overwhelmingly passed last year a version of the Clarity Act with Democratic support. In the Senate, however, there are enough Democrats to block passage of the law with a filibuster. The question is whether they will.

Crypto needs to win over seven Democrats to beat a filibuster, or eight if Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remains absent due to illness.

Progressives such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have expressed broad concerns that the law could lead to the next financial crash. Centrists like Gillibrand, meanwhile, have voiced narrower concerns. One of their biggest hang-ups with the legislation, they say, is the question of whether it will rein in Trump’s crypto ventures.

Gillibrand occupies a powerful position in the party: She serves as the caucus’s top fundraiser as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And she has positioned herself as a leader in Clarity Act negotiations, despite not serving on the relevant committees.

Asked last month about the negotiations over the bill at the Aspen Ideas Festival — a cozy gathering of politicos and business executives in the Colorado mountain town — Gillibrand said she was working hard to overcome the ethics obstacle.

“We’re working hand in glove with Republicans,” Gillibrand said. “We’re negotiating with staff from the White House so that everyone is clear about what the bill is going to say, and we’re going to do our best to land that plane.”

Gillibrand’s public statements have repeatedly telegraphed her desire to see some version of the legislation passed. Gillibrand says it is urgent to get consumer protections on the books. Observers say the urgency may also be motivated by the industry’s massive campaign war chest.

Related

AIPAC, AI, Crypto, and Gambling Are Hiding Their Big Election Spends

Over one-third of the corporate money spent on this year’s elections so far has come from the crypto industry, according to a recent report from the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen. That amounts to $189 million, including $82 million routed through a single industry super PAC called Fairshake, which is backed by Coinbase.

Rick Claypool, the research director for Public Citizen’s president’s office, said that as chair of the DSCC, Gillibrand is keenly aware of crypto’s campaign spending potential.

“I’m sure it’s top of mind,” Claypool told The Intercept. “Part of the whole goal of the corporate crypto spending is to make sure that lawmakers in general, but also in particular those who are in fundraising, leadership positions, think of the industry before they think of voters.”

Other Democrats tipped as maybes on the bill include Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who last month nudged other Democrats on the banking committee to vote for a draft of the bill, along with a swath of the caucus’s more centrist members.

What Ethics?

It’s unclear what sort of ethics restrictions Republicans and Democrats have been working on behind closed doors.

The final text of the bill has yet to drop, despite a promise from Bitcoin evangelist Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., that it would be released over the July 4 weekend. The industry’s deadlines for passing the law keep slipping. Its best chance may be to secure passage before the Senate leaves August 10 for an extended period of work in their home states.

Hays said senators should ignore the industry’s artificial deadlines. His group recently released a poll suggesting that most voters are concerned about the crypto industry’s influence in Washington.

“Yes, Democrats are looking over their shoulder, but I think they should be reading the room and saying, ‘Wait a second, is this really a priority?’” Hays said. “Or, is this the kind of pay-to-play politics that have gotten so many voters frustrated in the first place?”

Correction: July 13, 2026, 8:59 a.m. ET
An earlier version of this article stated that Donald Trump disclosed his $1.4 billion in income from crypto last week; it was disclosed on June 30.

The post Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Wants to Save Crypto — But Trump Windfall Is a Political Obstacle appeared first on The Intercept.

Joan Rivet drank water she managed to splash up to her face by turning faucet on with her foot

An 82-year-old North Carolina woman says she survived falling in her bathtub and being trapped there for nine days by turning the faucet on with her foot and drinking water that she managed to splash up to her face – all while drifting in and out of consciousness.

Joan Rivet recently shared her remarkable survival story with North Carolina’s The Mountaineer newspaper, providing an extreme example of the kinds of emergencies that can face the millions of older Americans who fall by accident annually, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates.

After months of U.S.-Mexico tensions sparked by the Trump administration’s threats to strike unilaterally at Mexican drug traffickers, the two governments are heading for a potentially more serious confrontation over President Claudia Sheinbaum’s refusal to arrest Mexican officials charged in the United States with drug corruption.

U.S. Justice Department officials have yet to present a full picture of their evidence against 10 current and former Mexican officials, whose indictments were announced on April 29. They include the governor of Sinaloa state, Rubén Rocha Moya, an ally of the president and a prominent figure in her leftist political party.

But as the Trump administration steps up its efforts to target Mexican government figures who are accused of protecting the drug trade, Sheinbaum is taking a hard-line stand against extraditing Rocha and the others charged in a New York federal court, Mexican officials said.

“She is very clear about this,” a senior Mexican official said of the U.S. request for Rocha’s extradition. “She has decided no.”

The impasse presents the Trump administration with a potentially critical test of its aims in Mexico, raising questions about how far it will go to challenge the corruption that has long sustained Mexico’s trade in illegal drugs.

By elevating the importance of the drug issue and threatening harsh economic penalties if Sheinbaum did not join forces to combat it, the administration has pushed Mexico to dramatically escalate its fight against organized crime.

After years in which Sheinbaum’s political mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, withdrew from confrontation with the drug mafias, her security forces have worked with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to destroy clandestine drug labs, seize large caches of drugs, and kill or capture ranking crime bosses.

Sheinbaum also circumvented the two countries’ extradition treaty to hand over at least 92 accused traffickers sought by the United States — voicing none of the concerns about U.S. evidence that she has cited in refusing to arrest the Sinaloa officials.

Still, U.S. officials acknowledge privately, the two countries’ intensified counter-drug campaign has emphasized tactical strikes and short-term gains rather than a coherent, longer-term strategy to undermine organized crime groups, confront endemic corruption or strengthen Mexico’s criminal justice system.

To many senior Trump administration officials, particularly in the Justice Department and the White House, attacking the high-level corruption that sustains the drug trade represents a crucial next step. They have argued it is a step that U.S. prosecutors should take aggressively if Mexico will not do so, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Some diplomatic and intelligence officials, however, are wary of pushing Sheinbaum too hard, seeing her position as precarious. They fear that demanding she take on her own party’s old guard might prompt her to pull back on Mexico’s cooperation with U.S. drug enforcement and immigration policies, the officials said.

The U.S. policy debate also turns on a question that continues to obsess Mexico’s political class nearly two years into her presidency: How much independence does Sheinbaum really have from her political patron López Obrador, who remains a commanding figure within their National Regeneration Movement?

After keeping largely silent on Mexico’s changing relationship with Washington, López Obrador thrust himself back into the public debate on June 3 with a blistering attack on the New York indictments. U.S. officials were simply using drug corruption as a pretext, he claimed, to undermine Morena, as the leftist party he founded is known.

“To be clear,” the former president wrote, “some U.S. officials are plotting to weaken Morena and strengthen the rightist opposition in Mexico with the idea of once again having a submissive, corrupt, mafioso and cruel government.” Such a regime, he added, would be more amenable to Washington’s “interventionist designs.”

Sheinbaum did her best to respectfully downplay the significance of the former president’s screed. But current and former Mexican officials noted that López Obrador’s missive, while supportive of her, did nothing to dispel suspicions that he continues to pull strings in her administration.

To many analysts of Mexican politics, the source of Sheinbaum’s unyielding response to the Rocha indictment seems plain: her fear that if some accused officials cooperate with the U.S. authorities in the Sinaloa case and possibly other investigations, the Trump administration could target other Morena leaders, including key allies of López Obrador.

“I think the message from Andrés Manuel was, ‘Claudia, you have to stop this or they are going to destroy us,’” a Mexican security expert, Eduardo Guerrero, said in an interview. “But the longer she waits to turn Rocha over, the tougher the punishment from the United States is going to be.”

Trump administration officials have done little to assuage such concerns.

Asked two weeks after the Sinaloa indictment about the administration’s plans for dealing with Mexican corruption, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terrance C. Cole, told the Senate Appropriations Committee, “I can assure you this is just the start about what’s to come in Mexico.”

Turning Themselves In

When Rocha was elected in 2021 as governor of Sinaloa, a stronghold of Mexico’s drug trade for almost a century, the former teachers’ union organizer was known as a skilled political operator and a close friend of then-President López Obrador. But his campaign was assailed for what opposition parties and civic groups called the blatant role that criminal gangs played on Rocha’s behalf — intimidating voters, stuffing ballot boxes, and kidnapping and threatening numerous opposition candidates.

Despite detailed complaints to Mexico’s elections authorities, López Obrador and Sheinbaum strongly defended Rocha. Rocha insisted he had nothing to do with the mafias but suggested that it would be impossible to govern the state without somehow coordinating with them. “You have to find a way to do it,” he said in a television interview during the campaign.

Questions about Rocha’s links to the traffickers exploded again in July 2024, after a son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the imprisoned drug boss known as El Chapo, kidnapped his father’s longtime partner in the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael Zambada García. The son, Joaquín Guzmán López, then flew Zambada across the U.S. border, delivering him to U.S. agents on an airstrip in New Mexico and surrendering himself.

In a statement released by his lawyer, Zambada said he was kidnapped outside Culiacán, the state capital, when he went to meet Rocha and a Sinaloa congressman, Héctor Cuén, who supposedly wanted the drug boss to mediate a dispute between them. Instead, Zambada claimed, he was betrayed by Guzmán while Cuén, whom he described as “a longtime friend,” was murdered.

Rocha at the time denied any involvement in the episode, saying he was traveling in Los Angeles. A spokesperson for the state government, from which Rocha has taken a leave of absence, said it would not comment on the accusations against him. Rocha could not be reached for comment.

Both Guzmán and his brother Ovidio, who was extradited to the United States in 2023, have since provided federal prosecutors with extensive accounts of their relationships with Mexican government figures, as has at least one of their former lieutenants, law enforcement officials said. Investigators in New York also obtained detailed ledgers of the gang’s bribe payments, which were referenced extensively in the Rocha indictment.

After Zambada’s kidnapping, three U.S. officials said López Obrador’s government made repeated requests for information on what Zambada and the Chapitos, as Guzmán’s sons are known, might have been telling U.S. investigators. But the prosecutors answered those queries only when they finally laid out their case: “As he had promised, since he was elected governor, and in exchange for the Chapitos’ support in his election, Rocha Moya has allowed the Chapitos to operate with impunity in Sinaloa,” the indictment stated.

It also said Rocha had met personally with the Chapitos’ leaders and allowed them to name corrupt law enforcement officials to his government. Rocha’s aides took the traffickers’ bribes, allowed them to operate with impunity, arrested their rivals, freed them from jail when they were arrested themselves and warned them of law enforcement operations supported by the United States, the prosecutors said. Rocha has denied the allegations.

Barely a day after a federal court in New York unsealed the indictment of the 10 men, Sheinbaum dismissed that evidence as insufficient. She said the suspects could be investigated in Mexico but that she would not act without “overwhelming and irrefutable proof” of their guilt.

Such provisional arrest requests are often granted as a matter of course; by treaty, the country asking for extradition has 60 days to present more detailed evidence after the initial arrest is made. But Sheinbaum has argued that the indictment and various other Justice Department documents given to Mexico did not come close to justifying the U.S. request.

Some U.S. diplomats were initially skeptical of the New York prosecutors’ apparent reliance on imprisoned traffickers as primary witnesses in such a politically sensitive case, officials familiar with the matter said.

More recently, though, at least one of the accused Mexicans has changed that calculus. The former Sinaloa secretary of public safety, Gerardo Mérida, turned himself in to U.S. marshals at the Arizona border on May 11. Mérida — a retired army general accused of taking more than $100,000 a month from the cartel while in office — pleaded not guilty in New York. But he later indicated to the prosecutors that he might be willing to cooperate with their investigation in return for leniency, one official familiar with the matter said. Mérida’s court-appointed attorney, Sarah Krissoff, did not respond to calls and emails asking for comment on his status.

A second suspect in the case, former Sinaloa finance secretary Enrique Díaz Vega, is also believed to have turned himself in to the U.S. authorities, but the Justice Department has not confirmed that. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment on the status of either suspect, and Vega could not be reached for comment.

Months ago, current and former U.S. officials said, Sheinbaum’s powerful security chief, Omar García Harfuch, told American diplomats privately that the Mexican president was determined to take on the country’s corruption problem and would prove her bona fides by prosecuting officials of her own party. Since the Rocha indictment, however, she has taken a very different tone, accusing Washington of egregious meddling in Mexico’s affairs.

“An action of this magnitude has no precedent in the history of our bilateral relationship,” Sheinbaum said at a political rally in late May. “When they dictate from abroad who is guilty and who is not, that is no longer cooperation. We are talking about interference!”

Aides to Sheinbaum have begun to suggest that she could indeed scale back anti-narcotics cooperation if Washington pushes too hard on the Rocha case, two U.S. officials said.

Whether she has the wherewithal to follow through remains to be seen. But such threats have worked for Mexico in the past. When U.S. agents arrested Mexico’s former defense minister, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, in Los Angeles in late 2020, former Attorney General William Barr abruptly dropped the case after López Obrador threatened to limit Mexico’s counter-drug cooperation.

Despite the American concession, López Obrador still seized on the arrest to shut down several joint counter-drug programs and push through a new national security law curtailing the work of U.S. agents in Mexico. With the Biden administration focused on preserving Mexico’s cooperation on immigration, López Obrador later abandoned the so-called Mérida Plan, the two countries’ 14-year campaign to jointly fight drug trafficking and strengthen the Mexican criminal justice system.

“But these guys are not Biden,” a former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, said of the Trump administration in an interview. While Sheinbaum’s predecessors could almost always rely on U.S. leaders to prioritize Mexico’s stability above other interests, he added, “Trump just doesn’t care.”

The post A U.S.-Mexico Impasse Will Test How Far the Trump Administration Will Go to Fight Drug Trade appeared first on ProPublica.

A Finnish study followed patients for 10 years after they had a popular knee surgery. For many, the pain continued or even worsened.

A quarter of working-age adults use credit cards to purchase groceries but struggle to repay their debts, a new study finds.

Since Queen Victoria made it her official residence in 1837, every British sovereign has lived there. King Charles III, born at the palace, is the first to opt out.

"Japan's experimental reusable rocket took off and safely landed in a first test flight Saturday," reports the Associated Press, as Japan "seeks to achieve the technology key to cut launch costs and compete in the global space market dominated by SpaceX." The RV-X rocket lifted off, hovered and moved horizontally before landing [watch the video here] during its less than one-minute flight at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Noshiro Testing Center in northeastern Japan, which was livestreamed by the NVS, a group of space fans... Saturday's flight is a step forward for Japan in achieving the technology needed to develop a lower cost successor to the country's current mainstay, single-use H3 series. Japan's test comes the same week that China recovered an orbital booster rocket for the first time.

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New leaders in Peru and Colombia may find it hard to deliver on their promises  Expert comment jon.wallace 13 July 2026

The new presidents are part of a swing to the right in Latin American politics – but can they govern such divided societies?

In the space of two weeks in June, two Andean countries elected new right-wing governments. In Peru, Keiko Fujimori, leader of its largest congressional party, won the presidency on her fourth attempt. In Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defence lawyer running for office for the first time, defeated Iván Cepeda, a senator of the governing left. Fujimori will take office later this month, de la Espriella in August.

It is tempting to interpret these outcomes as part of a regional swing to the right, aligned with US President Donald Trump – and it is often reported as such. However, the deeper story is one of persistently divided societies: in Peru and Colombia electorates were split almost exactly in half. Fujimori’s margin of victory was so narrow that the count stretched on for days. De la Espriella won by 49.7 per cent to 48.7.

Indeed, the UNDP’s 2026 regional report finds that political polarization in Latin America has grown faster than in any other region and now exceeds the global average. This raises an important question. When mandates are this thin and political antagonism this deep, can election winners govern?

The paradox of prosperous fragility

Both Peru and Colombia enter this period with mixed economic realities. And in both countries, politics has come at the cost of better economic outcomes. Neither government will have a political honeymoon.

Peru retains credible macroeconomic anchors. It has an independent central bank, one of the region’s lowest public debt ratios, inflation converging to target, and a pipeline of new mining projects worth some $60 billion. The country grew 5.5 per cent a year during the commodity boom between 2004 and 2013. 

But politics has been highly unstable for a prolonged period and potential growth is now closer to 2.5 per cent, dragged down by a public administration weakened by constant turnover. Fujimori also inherits an insolvent state oil company, and multibillion-dollar arbitration claims against the state.

In addition, forecasters confirm an El Niño weather system is underway this year, with a 63 per cent probability of reaching ‘very strong’ magnitude. Past El Niño systems have cost between 0.7 and 5.3 per cent of Peru’s GDP.

Colombia, a larger and more diversified economy, has sluggish economic growth, fiscal deficits and public indebtedness near historical highs. Security is deteriorating: a leading presidential candidate was assassinated during the campaign, and the implementation of a decade-old peace agreement has stalled. Illegal armed groups have grown to around 27,000 members. Extortion and organized crime are expanding. Crime has displaced the economy as citizens’ first concern.

Meanwhile the IMF has advised Colombia to carry out a fiscal consolidation of roughly three points of GDP. But that task will require precisely the broad congressional coalitions that polarization makes hard to build.

Congress is the real second round

Both presidents will quickly discover that runoff elections are easier to win than decisive votes in their legislatures. Neither commands a majority and building coalitions will remain key to successful governance in both countries.

In Colombia, de la Espriella faces a Congress where traditional parties hold the balance, and a defeated left retains real capacity for mobilization, having drawn 12 million votes in the election. 

Peru’s new bicameral Congress seats six parties in the lower house. And it sets supermajority requirements in the Senate that act, for the first time in decades, as a brake on the impeachment habit that removed or forced out every president since 2016. 

Despite these reforms, Fujimori can expect difficulties. Her party bears much of the responsibility for the fiscal populism seen in Congress in recent years – and practiced zero-sum politics from the legislature. She can now expect her opponents to return the favour. 

Deadlock in these legislatures would inflict further damage on trust in institutions and faith in democracy. Latinobarómetro’s 2024 report found regional support for democracy growing to 52 per cent. But in Peru (and Bolivia) it fell, in Peru’s case to just 44 per cent. Just 10 per cent were satisfied with how their democracy works. In Colombia satisfaction with democracy barely reaches 20 per cent. 

Meanwhile what Latinobarómetro calls ‘expectations pressure’ – the gap between personal and national economic expectations – stands at 15 percentage points, the widest since 1995. That suggests electorates will not tolerate underperformance by the new governments.

Governing against polarization

Polarization is persistent in Peru and Colombia, but it is not an insurmountable challenge. Four courses of action could make a difference. 

The first would be to form governments that include talent beyond the winning coalitions, creating pluralistic, competent cabinets. In Peru’s case, Fujimori should draw on the economic technocracy that has served administrations of every stripe. In Colombia, de la Espriella could reach out to the political centre to negotiate a short legislative agenda during his first weeks in office. 

Related work

State capacity, mining and community relations in Peru

A second imperative is to leave independent institutional bodies alone. Central banks, electoral authorities and comptrollers held both countries together through the turmoil of the past decade. A public commitment to respect their autonomy, and to renounce prosecutions and impeachments as political weapons, is the best confidence-building measure available. 

Third, dialogue must be institutionalized where conflict is produced. Chatham House’s own research on Peru’s mining sector recommends standing, multi-sector dialogues between government, communities and companies. The same logic applies in Colombia’s post-conflict municipalities, where violence feeds on the state’s absence. 

Finally, the new governments must deliver in the areas that did not vote for them. Polarization in both countries is territorial – Peru’s southern highlands, and Colombia’s rural periphery, for instance, are strongholds of the left. Bringing roads, land titles, police and functioning courts to those jurisdictions will do more to close the divide than appeals to unity.

The ultimate question

Behind all this analysis lies the question polarized societies face: can populist, strong-hand rule deliver? The long-run evidence gives little hope. The most comprehensive study available – 120 years of populist governments worldwide – finds income per capita roughly ten per cent lower after fifteen years of populist rule, through eroded institutions and collapsed investment. 

Peru’s history proves this point clearly: Alberto Fujimori delivered stabilization and defeated terrorism. But the demolition of the party system that took place during his presidency fuelled institutional deterioration. 

In El Salvador homicides have collapsed, and its citizens report the region’s second-highest satisfaction with democracy. But that experience is hardly replicable in the Andes, where transnational criminal economies, built on illegal gold and cocaine, command export markets that would likely survive even mass arrests. 

Polarization manufactures the demand for strong hands while destroying the supply of what the evidence says works: broad coalitions, patient reform, credible institutions. These are the real challenges facing both incoming administrations. Whether their democracies can deliver fast enough to address voters’ dissatisfaction with their systems will be answered in Lima and Bogotá in the months ahead.

The wildfire is piling pressure on a region facing its third heat wave since May.

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The New Zealander drew international acclaim for roles as gruff loners and unhinged villains. He was best known for playing paleontologist Alan Grant.

America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post: Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do... Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows. From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce. Three interesting statistics from the article: U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department. America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041." South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post: Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do... Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows. From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce. Three interesting statistics from the article: U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department. America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041." South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This live blog has now closed – you can read our latest report from the Middle East here

Bahrain’s interior ministry instructed residents to take shelter after attacks on the island nation as Iran targets US interests in the Gulf.

The siren has been sounded... citizens and residents are urged to remain calm and head to the nearest safe place,” the ministry posted on X.

Abir Al-Sahlani targeted on social media after condemning anti-immigration chants in European parliament

A Swedish MEP has filed a police complaint accusing a fellow MEP of racist hate speech after she was targeted on social media over her condemnation of far-right, anti-immigration chants in the European parliament.

The complaint, which was filed last week with police in Sweden, relates to the aftermath last month of the decision by some rightwing MEPs to erupt in chants of “send them back” following a vote aimed at increasing deportations across the EU.

Alleged thieves in October 2025 robbery damaged a gem-encrusted crown worn in the 19th century by Empress Eugénie

Two men suspected of making off with €88m (£75m) worth of crown jewels from the Louvre museum in Paris last October have reportedly told investigators that the alleged mastermind behind the heist was disappointed by the haul and thought “they could have taken more”.

The French newspaper Le Monde cited transcripts of the alleged thieves’ questioning last month by two investigating judges in charge of the inquiry, offering detailed insights into the burglary that made global headlines and led the museum’s director to resign.

How a deadlocked conflict can pave the way for peace.

The IMF, the World Bank, and the debt crisis that imperils West Africa.

Senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins on China’s embrace of AI, from medical avatars to food delivery drones and state surveillance

While the spread of AI has been met perhaps with a lot of scepticism in the west, China has fully embraced the technology, explains Amy Hawkins, from millions of users talking to AI doctors, to the use of intelligent robots in factories, and drones delivering food on the Great Wall of China.

AI has also been eagerly taken up by the state, not least in the opportunities it provides for further surveillance, the Guardian’s senior China correspondent says.

Long-time Slashdot reader necro81 writes: There are several companies, such as Tesla, trying to make semi trucks fully electric. The capital cost for such a truck, and the MW-scale infrastructure to recharge it, may be a hard sell for some operators. [IEEE Spectrum notes that's a charging infrastructure "that most freight corridors do not yet reliably provide."] But some companies are instead adding batteries and an electric motor to the semi-trailers that trucks haul behind them. "The Nivalis Powered Trailer Kit centers on an electric axle [rated at 50 kilowatts-peak]... capable of both propulsion assistance and regenerative braking. It draws on a 60-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt lithium-ion battery pack charged from three sources: the axle itself during braking and deceleration, a full-rooftop array of photovoltaic panels generating up to 3.7 kilowatts-peak, and a 32-amp, three-phase AC grid connection available during parking stops." This approach is more akin to a plug-in hybrid: the truck may still be diesel-powered, but the electric assist from the trailer allows the truck to run more efficiently. Replacing diesel with kWh can save operators money while also reducing emissions. This incremental approach may be more accessible and less capital-intensive than replacing the truck itself. From the article: The driver's only window into the system is a small display readable from the cab's side mirror that shows the system status and battery charge level. Nothing about the trailer's handling or licensing requirements changes. The partners project savings of up to 7,000 liters of diesel per trailer per year, which is enough to keep about 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air... Trailer Dynamics, an Aachen-based company, has conducted field tests with BMW Logistics, DB Schenker, Duvenbeck, and Volkswagen Konzernlogistik, reporting average fuel savings of around 40% for diesel tractor combinations, substantially higher than the up to 18% reduction implied by the Nivalis projection... Trailer Dynamics prices its system between €145,000 and €195,000 and targets a payback period of no more than five years. Nivalis targets five to six years at current costs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Odyssey director addresses industry fears over artificial intelligence and says rightwing criticism of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is ‘irrelevant’

The Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan believes the kind of movies he makes – big-budget action films shot mostly on location – would survive the spread of artificial intelligence, a technology he says many people “disdain”.

The Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight director is promoting his latest blockbuster, an adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey, which will be released in cinemas this week.

Sen. Mitch McConnell released a statement on his health on Sunday along with a photo of himself and his wife, Elaine Chao, after questions swirled about his condition.

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Republican Sen. Tim Scott remembers Lindsey Graham, and Israeli Ambassador Michael Leiter and retired Gen. Frank McKenzie discuss the Iran war.

U.S. forces conducted more rounds of strikes on Iran this week, one of which was in retaliation for an attack on a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon said.

Lindsey Graham, the senior U.S. senator from South Carolina, died suddenly at age 71 on Saturday.

California drew more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, reports the Los Angeles Times, citing data released Thursday by PitchBook on private market funding: Its next biggest competitor, New York, raised less than a tenth of California's total. Texas raised 1/40th of the amount... Although a campaign for a new tax on billionaires has convinced some ultra-rich residents to shift to other states and businesses often complain that high property and energy costs and an anti-business regulatory regime make it too tough to make money in the state, the inability of the top talent, companies and investors in AI to set up elsewhere shows California's enduring attraction. The state's economy grew 5% last year to a record $4.25 trillion, making it larger than every country other than the U.S., China and Germany. It is home to nearly 400 billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights... Among metropolitan regions, Los Angeles ranked behind only Silicon Valley and New York, which attracted $98 billion and $11.5 billion in venture investment, respectively... Investors poured in nearly $8 billion across 207 deals in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana metro areas, up 28% from a year earlier, according to PitchBook... Nearly 90% of invested dollars [in California] went to AI firms, up from last year, when around 65% of new funds were allocated to AI. "If you're a tech company and you're not an AI company, you have a very, very difficult opportunity ahead of you to raise capital," Stanford said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Latest film in franchise takes just $43m in North America and $95m globally, against a $250m budget

The Walt Disney Company’s live-action remake of Moana may be the No 1 movie at the North American box office but it did not make a big splash in its first weekend in theaters.

The movie, which cost a reported $250m (£187m, A$360m) to produce, earned just $43m from ticket sales in the US and Canada, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

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For decades, unwed mothers in Italy were pressured to give up children born out of wedlock. Thousands were sent to America. Now some families are reuniting and looking for answers.

Sealand, a platform off England's coast, is the world's smallest state. It has just one permanent resident and its own royal family.

Christopher Nolan, director of "Oppenheimer," "Inception," "Interstellar," and "The Dark Knight," imagines every movie is the last he'll make, leading him toward an ambitious plan for "The Odyssey."

This week on 60 Minutes, Jon Wertheim reported on Sealand, the tiny principality fueled by humor and determination. But first he had to get there.

Correspondent Scott Pelley and director Christopher Nolan visited FotoKem, the last motion picture lab in the world that makes 70mm prints, to see finishing touches being made to "The Odyssey," the first feature shot entirely on IMAX film.

Republican senator, who died Saturday, had a global reach few could rival and was vital in shaping Trump’s worldview

It was revealing that one of the first tributes to Lindsey Graham, a US senator who died on Saturday aged 71, came from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, a far-right provocateur who recently caused widespread anger by sharing footage of himself taunting bound activists who had been trying to sail to Gaza with aid.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was not far behind, calling Graham a “great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine”, and he was quickly followed by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who described him as “a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer”.

Fire in Walthamstow affected one house and multiple gardens and sheds, according to London fire brigade

Residents have been evacuated from their homes after a fire at a railway embankment in east London.

Twenty fire engines and about 125 firefighters were called to the incident near Vallentin Road in Walthamstow.

Which jobs are most threatened by AI? "Programmers, software engineers and other tech industry employees," goes one common answer. "But many economists are more concerned about a different, larger group of white-collar workers," reports the New York Times: customer service reps, bookkeepers, payroll clerks and HR specialists, "who fly under the radar but collectively account for tens of millions of jobs..." They are spread across the country and throughout the economy, working in every industry, in big cities and small towns, at major corporations and mom-and-pop businesses... These jobs typically offer a middle-class salary or a pathway to achieving one — much as manufacturing jobs did for men before decades of globalisation and automation wiped many of them away... For now, such an outcome is a fear, not a forecast. Despite high-profile layoffs in tech and finance, there is little firm evidence that AI has hurt the labour market as a whole. Economists have become increasingly convinced that disruptions are likely, but they say it is too early to know where or how widespread they will be. They remain broadly sceptical of claims that the technology will lead to mass unemployment in the near future. Some AI industry leaders have walked back such predictions in recent weeks. But given the extraordinary pace at which companies are adopting AI — and at which the technology is improving — economists say policymakers need to consider the potential effects on the labour market. And they say they are concerned that the public debate has focused too much on software engineers and a relative handful of other high-status careers — lawyers, consultants, economists — rather than the workers who could be most vulnerable... Economists at Northwestern University recently recalculated measures of AI exposure based on the makeup of the total workforce, not just the people using the technology. Administrative and front-line roles, such as customer service representatives, rose to the top of the list. "The most affected jobs are secretaries, are routine clerks," said Michelle Yin, one of the working paper's authors. "They're not computer scientists or data scientists at all." The article also includes this counterpoint from an economist at the University of Illinois who has studied earlier waves of white-collar automation: that like other disruptive technologies, AI likely will also create new jobs. So the possibility exists AI will make workers more productive and allow them to earn more. "I would be cautious about just focusing on what are we losing as opposed to what are we going to gain on the other side."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senator says in statement he has undergone battery of tests after weeks of mounting speculation about his health

The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican’s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health.

McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he had undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what led to his fall. He explained the long silence about his condition by saying that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older”.

Republican served in Senate since 2003 and was sharp Trump critic before becoming one of his most loyal backers

• US politicians and foreign leaders pay tribute to Graham

Lindsey Graham, a longtime US senator and key ally of Donald Trump, has died from a sudden illness, his office said on Sunday. He had just turned 71.

Graham’s abrupt death will send shock waves through Washington and the Republican party. He had served in the Senate since 2003, representing South Carolina, and was running for re-election in November.

A survey found that parents are increasingly going online to find deals in a tough economy.

Fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Texas builder, renews outcry against Trump’s immigration crackdown

The builder got up every morning long before dawn, left home to pick up his construction crew and then headed out to work on yet another house somewhere across the sprawl of Houston.

Fourteen hours later, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo would return to the wife he’d met as a teenager in Mexico and the modest house he’d built for his family on the city’s east side.

Linus Torvalds once said LLMs might bring a 10X increase to programmer productivity. But speaking at Open Source Summit India 2026, he now says that number was "not scientific," reports ZDNet. "That was pulled out of my ass number, obviously." Today, he continued, "we're at the point where hopefully it creates more productivity than it takes away," but "we certainly saw more junk being generated by LLMs than we saw useful code up until the like early this year.... it can actually be a huge drain on resources when it takes humans a lot of effort to figure out that, hey, this machine-generated report was not true." Even now, he said, "most of the good ones require more than just the LLM," because "we've had to push back quite a bit... if you find a bug with an LLM, it's not enough to just ask the LLM to make a bug report and then throw it over the fence to us. We want to see a suggested patch; we want to see the human who ran the LLM act as a kind of back-and-forth." Torvalds described many AI-generated patches as "mindless band-aid kind of patches... they may fix the immediate problem, but the kind of bug remains, and it just is waiting in the hallway to hit you in another place." For his own toy projects, he uses LLMs as prototypers: "I use them as a way to prototype things... quite often the code is not usable in that form, but it's a great way to try something out," while insisting that for kernel-level fixes, "LLMs, in my experience, have not been at that level yet." Torvalds acknowledged that some AI-found issues have been "absolutely, stunningly, I mean, interesting in a painful kind of way," especially security problems that "show up in the technology press two days later." Despite the embarrassment, he said, "I'm very much not a shoot-the-messenger kind of person. I think we're much better off with LLMs finding bugs, even when they are embarrassing, and they are things that we should probably have found two decades ago." Torvalds also said he's using AI "for my own toy projects... Every time I travel to some new place, and this is the first time I've been to India, I send the kids pictures of where I am, and for some strange reason, Godzilla seems to follow me around and gets added to those pictures." ZDNet notes that Torvalds concluded, "There are many useful and less useful uses for AI," and "I think Godzilla is a great place to stop." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pair airlifted to hospital in two-hour rescue operation after Guardia Civil searched area for survivors

A British couple have been found badly burned and semi-conscious in a Spanish ravine amid deadly wildfires that have swept through the country’s Almería province, according to local media reports.

The couple were on holiday in the region and were thought to be out hiking when they were caught up in the wildfire, which has so far killed 13 people and burned more than 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres). At least 23 people are missing.

Israeli ambassador to US accuses Ro Khanna of political stunt to distract from support for Graham Platner

Ro Khanna accused the Israeli government and military of “lying” on Sunday about the US congressman’s detention by armed settlers and Israeli soldiers during a recent visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Khanna – a California Democrat – had posted video evidence on social media of Israeli settlers and soldiers blocking the path of his convoy on Wednesday in the South Hebron hills, near the village of Zanuta, where Israelis have driven Palestinians from their homes in what Amnesty International calls a government-backed “ethnic cleansing campaign”.

Politicians should not comment before facts established, says ex-chief constable, as Farage calls killing ‘premeditated murder’

Senior police figures and politicians have warned against speculation during the murder investigation into Ann Widdecombe’s death, after detectives said there was “nothing to suggest” political motivation following an intervention from Nigel Farage.

Devon and Cornwall police said on Sunday the killing was not being treated as terrorism nor as politically motivated. Officers said they remained open-minded about the motive and urged the public not to speculate, warning it was both unhelpful to the investigation and distressing for Widdecombe’s family.

Youngsters confirmed safe but men pronounced dead after being brought out of water at Seaton Carew, Hartlepool

Two men have died after going into the water at a beach in County Durham to try to help two children who had gotten into difficulty, police said.

Officers were called at about 3.45pm on Sunday after concerns were raised about two youngsters in the water at Seaton Carew beach in Hartlepool.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 13, No. 862.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 13, No. 1,850.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 13, No. 1,128.

South Carolina senator illustrated the changing face of the Republican party, from being an anti-Trump voice to a supporter of his war with Iran

• Lindsey Graham dies after sudden illness aged 71

• Lindsey Graham tributes from Israel and Ukraine point to complicated, often bloody legacy

Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who died on Saturday night, unexpectedly at the age of 71, was a politician who more than many illustrated the changing face of the Republican party in the age of Donald Trump.

A former House member, Graham sat in the Senate from 2003 as a foreign policy hawk and a close friend and ally of John McCain, the relatively socially liberal Arizona senator who became the party’s presidential nominee in 2008.

My Story, 17 June 2015

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CNN, 8 December 2015

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To CBS News, 2 March 2016

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To MSNBC, 2 June 2016

New York Times, 25 February 2019

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Congress, 6 January 2021

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• Graham’s death triggers a scramble to replace him – what happens next?

• US politicians and foreign leaders pay tribute to Graham

• Sign up for the Breaking News US email

Under South Carolina state law, governor Henry McMaster may appoint a temporary replacement to fill Graham’s now-vacant seat. As Graham was up for re-election this year and won the GOP primary last month, there is also now a vacancy in the Republican nomination for his seat.

After McMaster appoints a replacement, state law requires a special primary for voters to select a new nominee within weeks of a vacancy. The general election winner will take office in January, beginning a full six-year term.

Trump says US senator was ‘a true American patriot’ while Zelenskyy says he’s ‘deeply saddened’ by his death

• Graham’s death triggers a scramble to replace him – what happens next?

• Lindsey Graham dies after sudden illness aged 71

Washington woke up to the unexpected death of Republican senator Lindsey Graham, 71, who changed the course of modern history with his hawkish Iran platform and key role in establishing the stridently conservative US supreme court.

Donald Trump was one of the first to pay tribute to the controversial South Carolina lawmaker, a close ally despite past differences, in a social media post. “Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!”

Trump later told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that one of Graham’s legacies as a legislator was helping to confirm US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

A proposed settlement with the U.S. government would require the Keystone Pipeline system's operator to pay $26.9 million over a 2022 oil spill in Kansas.

Which couple will win?

Colorado officials expanded mandatory evacuation orders for residents near the Ferris Fire as conditions continued to change on Sunday.

"Elon Musk and Sam Altman criticized each other in new posts on X," reports CNBC, "highlighting the billionaires' long-standing tussle over OpenAI's evolution." This week, SpaceX released the Grok 4.5 generative AI model, while OpenAI debuted its own GPT-5.6 Sol. For days, Musk and Altman have hyped up their respective releases, but on Saturday the rivalry got personal. In response to a post about Apple filing suit against OpenAI on Friday over alleged theft of trade secrets, Musk wrote, "Scam Altman strikes again ...." Minutes after his post, Musk doubled down, writing, "He takes scamming to a whole new level." Next, Musk published a photo of Altman that included the words, "I'm doing this because I love it." "By 'this' he means scamming," Musk wrote, including two rolling-on-the-floor-laughing emojis. Musk then replied to that post, writing, "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!" The flurry of social activity got Altman's attention. "[H]omeboy you're the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters," Altman wrote in an X post of his own that garnered over 11 million views. "We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves," Musk fired back. Separately, Altman put Musk's fresh wave of attention in the context of OpenAI's fresh model release. "[T]here are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again," Altman wrote on X. Reacting to another post, Altman wrote that he was "not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company," CNBC reports — leading to a sarcastic response from X's head of product. "Incredible trade secrets as well, some of the best." And CNBC notes that Musk "replied with a face-with-tears-of-joy emoji."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ceasefire at the point of collapse after almost a week of tit-for-tat exchanges escalate tensions across Gulf region

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has rejected Iranian claims to have closed off the strait of Hormuz as both sides battled for control over the waterway, leaving a ceasefire agreed last month at the point of collapse.

US forces said they had attacked 140 targets in Iran on Saturday night and Sunday morning after Tehran struck and disabled a container ship in the strait, whose transit it said had not been approved. In a statement, US Central Command (Centcom) said its targets had included missile and drone sites, naval facilities, ammunition depots, communication networks and surveillance locations.

The burial site was identified as belonging to a man named Paser based on inscriptions.

Exclusive: Party would have raised £4.1m instead of £26.7m last year if £100k funding limit had been in place, Electoral Commission data suggests

Reform UK would have held just 15% of the donations it received last year if a proposed £100,000 cap on political donations had been in force, according to analysis shared with the Guardian.

The analysis by Friends of the Earth using Electoral Commission data highlights the party’s reliance on a handful of wealthy backers in advance of a showdown over political funding.

Lillard, of Oklahoma, contracted polio when she was five and slept inside cylindrical metal device to help her breathe

The last known US person living with polio and relying on an iron lung has died aged 78.

Martha Lillard, who contracted polio at age five and spent most of her life dependent on an iron lung machine that helped her breathe, died on 26 June in Oklahoma, according to an online obituary.

They also offer advice on how to correctly use a microcurrent device to achieve your desired results.

The following is the transcript of an interview with Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 12, 2026.

Liene's latest printer is tiny yet mighty and easy enough to use for everyone to enjoy.

The CEO of SK Hynix, one of the three largest DRAM producers, predicted to Reuters that the memory industry will see its "worst-ever" supply shortages in 2027, reports the hardware/gaming news site Wccftech: SK Hynix has also forecasted that, given the current market demand, they will fall way short of fulfilling the market demand, and that will continue beyond 2030. The comments from SK Hynix are in line with what Samsung and Micron executives have already said. Samsung has warned of 2027 being the worst year in terms of shortages and that things will continue this way till 2028 and beyond. Meanwhile, Micron has said that the current shortages are only the "first innings" and that both DRAM/NAND supply will be tight, as they are only able to meet 40-50% of the total market demand in the coming years. Heightened demand from AI customers and multi-year agreements further put pressure on the market. The big three DRAM makers have already prioritized premium DRAM segments such as HBM and LPDDR5X, while commodity memory such as DDR5, DDR4, and entry-level LPDDR RAM has taken a back seat. While these have boosted the profits of SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung, they have devastated the consumer segment, which is facing the worst kind of price hikes that are affecting all sorts of components and platforms, including PCs, Smartphones, Consoles, etc... SK Hynix, like Samsung and Micron, is also preparing to embark on a multi-year and multi-billion dollar expansion plan with new fabs and facilities being laid out across South Korea. SK Hynix is also considering the construction of Fabs in the US, Japan, and Southeast Asia, though the final plans are yet to be cemented. Micron recently started construction of its new facility that will be used for DRAM production. As SK Hynix proudly marks its Nasdaq debut, its CEO's sobering forecast serves as a clear reminder: the memory industry is entering its most challenging chapter yet. With 2027 poised to bring the worst supply shortages in history and tight conditions likely persisting beyond 2030, the AI boom is reshaping the entire semiconductor landscape.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has stepped down as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced fresh changes to Ukraine's government.

President Trump's demolition, construction and renovation efforts have triggered a firestorm of lawsuits, as critics seek to block his plans to remake our nation's capital.

Political leaders in both countries rebuke Mariano Rajoy after he writes team ‘does not have any French players’

The former Spanish conservative prime minister Mariano Rajoy is facing growing accusations of racism after writing in a World Cup newspaper column that the French national team “does not have any French players”.

Rajoy, who was in office from 2011 to 2018, pondered Spain’s looming semi-final showdown with France in an article for the online newspaper El Debate on Friday.

The following is the transcript of an interview with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Leiter that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 12, 2026.

Man reportedly seriously injured by the bison, described as ‘agitated’ and ‘charging anything’ by photographer

An enraged, 2,000lb (900kg) bull bison hooked a tourist and tossed him 8ft into the air at a campsite in Wyoming’s Yellowstone national park on Friday – an encounter captured by a professional photographer who said the animal was “agitated, pissed off and charging anything and everything”.

The tourist was reported to be seriously injured by the male bison while walking with his grandson through the Bridge Bay campground, south of Fishing Bridge.

The following is the transcript of an interview with former White House chief of staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 12, 2026.

South Carolina governor will pick successor to serve out Graham’s term as Trump says ‘I have somebody I think would be great’

• US politicians and foreign leaders pay tribute to Graham

South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, has the political decision of a lifetime with the unexpected death in office of Senator Lindsey Graham. The Republican governor and loyalist of Donald Trump will appoint a new senator to serve out the remainder of Graham’s term, which ends on 3 January.

Whoever McMaster appoints will likely have a leg up in a special primary election on 11 August to fill Graham’s place on the November ballot, which he won despite facing five challengers from his party in June. That election calendar favors candidates with wide name recognition and deep institutional support.

Owner Christina Bluhme feared the worst after Tokyo began to lose consciousness while climbing the UK’s tallest mountain

A dog has been rescued from Ben Nevis after falling ill from eating cannabis discarded on the mountain trail.

Christina Bluhme was halfway up the UK’s highest mountain last weekend when her black labrador, Tokyo, lost the use of her legs and began drifting in and out of consciousness.

Strikes and bluster on both sides, with Israel urging on Washington, are endangering the progress made

The cycle’s familiarity should not obscure the gravity of the consequences as the US and Iran return to threats, strikes and a futile search for an exit from war via escalation. On Sunday, Tehran said that it had closed the strait of Hormuz again. The World Food Programme is already feeding 1.5 million fewer people this year owing to the illegal war launched by the US and Israel. Vulnerable countries are suffering most as existing crises are compounded: an extra 2.5 million people in Somalia and 2.3 million in Afghanistan are struggling to meet basic food needs.

Even de-escalation would not fix this humanitarian crisis. The full impact on food production has yet to be felt. The strait was key to global fertiliser exports; as prices soared, many farmers cut back on use. The drying up of remittances from migrant workers in the Gulf hurts Asian as well as African nations.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Exclusive: Deputy PM says opponents have ‘no solutions’ to possible collapse of justice system in England and Wales

• Drugs, drones and heat: Amber Rudd and David Lammy begin search for answers to prisons crisis

Opponents of plans to release rapists and sex offenders early from prison have “no solutions” to halt the criminal justice system’s possible collapse, David Lammy has said.

Under pressure from Labour MPs – including the former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips – to curb the early release scheme, the deputy prime minister said failing to implement it could leave no capacity across jails in England and Wales in November.

The build-up to the semi-finals began earnest and Senegal sacked their head coach

Sidebar, Whatever bears such a striking resemblance to Neil Innes’ I’m Free to be an Idiot that the former Monty Python collaborator received a songwriting credit and a share of the royalties in an out of court settlement.

Wonderwall might be the England team’s Oasis song of choice, but surely they change it up to this more apposite (and far better imo) number.

GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said that he's hopeful the Senate will soon pass a Russia sanctions bill as "one of the legacies" of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly Saturday.

Colt Gray, now 16, expected to change plea after pleading not guilty to 55 criminal counts in Apalachee shooting

The teenager accused of killing two students and two teachers during a 2024 shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia has been scheduled to appear in court later in July for a “non-negotiated” plea hearing, according to records.

Documents filed on Friday in Barrow county superior court in Winder, Georgia, show that Colt Gray is expected to change his plea at a hearing on 24 July, with the court scheduled to hold proceedings for both the plea and sentencing, as the Associated Press reported.

The following is the transcript of an interview with retired Gen. Frank McKenzie that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 12, 2026.

The Wall Street Journal says "an intense 27-year-old activist who had been leading sit-ins at OpenAI to protest the dangers of AI" was just part of a larger movement. "The Bay Area's AI boom is drawing young disillusioned men and women to join the fight against it. They are upending their lives and leaving behind careers for think tanks, nonprofits and street protest groups." Their cause is now riding a surge of anti-AI backlash. Many Americans are souring on the technology amid mass layoffs, data center sprawl, reports of chatbot-fueled attacks by unstable users and hacking tools that have panicked cybersecurity professionals. Seventy percent of U.S. adults believe AI will cost jobs, and 55% believe it will do more harm than good in their daily lives, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll. But for activists on the front lines, the driving fear is often more dramatic: human extinction. They cling to dire predictions, like Geoffrey Hinton's. The Nobel laureate, dubbed the "godfather of AI" for his work on artificial neural networks, warns of a 10% to 20% chance AI will wipe out humans. At its most extreme and troubling end, some believe they must stop an AI apocalypse by any means necessary. In April, an unknown assailant fired 13 shots at the home of an Indianapolis councilman, leaving a note: "no data centers." That same month, authorities arrested a 20-year-old Texas college student for an attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home in San Francisco, and charged him with attempted murder and arson. The student was carrying an anti-AI document with a section on "our impending extinction," according to a federal criminal complaint. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have said his actions appear to have been driven by an "acute mental-health crisis, not a desire to harm."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Heat alerts were issued for millions across parts of the western U.S. Sunday as an unusually prolonged heat dome reached its peak.

Fierce Ukraine supporter Lindsey Graham passed away Saturday on the heels of his tenth trip to the warzone, and at a key moment for one of the Republican senator's proudest accomplishments.

Stalled legislation aims to prevent cover-ups and help families seek justice after major disasters

Keir Starmer is expected to use his final week in office to push the Hillsborough law through its remaining stages in the Commons after months of delays.

This bill aims to strengthen support for families seeking justice after major disasters and create new offences for officials who deliberately mislead the public or seek to block accountability.

Sen. Lindsey Graham was running for reelection in November when he died suddenly on Saturday.

Long-serving South Carolina Republican senator who was an ally of Donald Trump and an ardent supporter of Ukraine

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, who has died suddenly aged 71, had just returned from Kyiv after a meeting with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It was Graham’s 10th visit since the 2022 Russian invasion; Zelenskyy, who came away with promises of the aid that had been on and off with the Trump administration, called him a “true defender of freedom”.

It was a good demonstration of both Graham’s firm stance on US power overseas, and his opposition to Russia. “Putin will not stop in Ukraine,” he said. “To be weak in Ukraine means you lose in Taiwan.”

@abignoli I just realized you reported it ll working. Would love to do this. Does it charge and discharge as factory?

The following is the transcript of an interview with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 12, 2026.

Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina remembered Sen. Lindsey Graham as a "powerful leader" following his sudden death​, while emphasizing Graham's role in "building bridges."

For many watching their team beat Norway at a south London nightclub the look was as important as the game

The Carpet Shop nightclub in Peckham, south London, is ordinarily packed with rowdy crowds at the weekend. But Saturday night’s liveliness was not congregated around the DJ on the dancefloor, the crowd was at the sold-out venue for England’s victorious quarter-final game at the 2026 World Cup, and the young spectators were there for the fashion as much as they were for the football.

Luke Grandon and Mattia Guarnera, both 27, are “massive” football fans, and their love for the game is expressed in their outfits. “I have a massive collection of vintage football shirts,” said Guarnera, wearing a white polo shirt with “LOVE” printed on the back from a limited-edition World Cup-themed collaboration between Lyle & Scott and the British artist Reuben Dangoor.

"While KDE and GNOME dominate the landscape, a relative newcomer is starting to make waves with features other desktops still don't fully support," argues XDA Developers: Linux 7.0 was the first release of the kernel to officially support Rust, but COSMIC has been all-in on Rust since the very beginning, and COSMIC 1.1 finally stripped all the leftovers of C language from the desktop. It no longer has any traces of Nautilus (the GNOME file manager), and then there's now a COSMIC-native system monitor to replace the GNOME System Monitor, so you have even fewer chances of being afflicted by C-related problems. [The article calls COSMIC's system monitor "much better at showing detailed information about everything from processes to network and disk usage compared to the GNOME and KDE alternatives."] Stacking Windows As someone who used to love following Windows news, one of the most disheartening announcements was when Microsoft gave up on Sets, a feature that essentially turned every app window into a tab you could combine with other apps in the same window. I never thought I'd see that feature again, until COSMIC came along. Simply called "stacking", COSMIC has a feature that is exactly what Sets was supposed to be, though this time, you have more control. By default, apps still open in their proper, typical windows, with a title bar as you'd expect. But if you do want to combine multiple apps into one, you can right-click the title bar (or press Super + S) to enable stacking for that window. Then, simply drag another window over that one to start stacking them as tabs. This essentially gives you a whole new way to create "workspaces", as you can have a single window with all the tools you need, so you don't need to jump between different windows all the time, and you can keep a given window focused on a specific workload, but have multiple apps within it. It's a great reminder of what Microsoft took from us, too. Tiling, But On Demand Tiling windows is one of those features some power users simply love, and yes, there are ways to make it happen on KDE and GNOME with third-party apps or extensions, but those aren't ideal. It's an extra step to set them up, and very often they don't play nice with all the features those desktops offer, especially as new updates come out and those tools may have a hard time keeping up with the development of the desktops themselves. COSMIC is fantastic because not only does it have built-in window tiling, it's entirely controllable by the user. You can set any workspace to use tiling or floating windows depending on your preference, all completely independent of each other, and you can also choose the new default behavior for new workspaces so things are always tuned to your preferences. You can turn tiling on or off for a given workspace easily, and of course, even while tiling is on, you can allow certain apps to ignore it and still float above others. Not all these capabilities are exclusive to COSMIC, but to have this kind of feature built in with this level of control is still leagues better than anything KDE or GNOME offer in this regard. The article argues COSMIC also makes customization extremely simple without stifling your options (like tweaking color options for your desktop). "This desktop environment just keeps getting better, and it's quickly establishing itself as a major competitor to long-standing alternatives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Authorities confirm worst toll in more than 20 years, as extreme temperatures in Europe force early closure of Eiffel Tower

Nearly 100 people, the largest proportion of whom were young men, died by drowning in Germany last month, authorities have said, as extreme temperatures in western Europe that have been blamed for hundreds of excess deaths geared up again.

In Germany’s worst death toll from drowning for more than two decades, 99 people died in June, according to official figures, after temperatures rose as high as 41.7C (107.1F) in some areas.

Data shows the rightwing party faces an obstacle in the form of urban seats – and the effect of preference flows is harder to predict

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One Nation’s spectacular rise from a distant 6% of the vote in the last election to first or second in some recent polls has upended Australian politics. It has also made it a lot harder to predict what exactly will happen at the next election.

Traditionally, pollsters and election experts would look at how preferences flowed in previous elections when estimating two-party preferred numbers, or translating polling into seat projections. This was fairly predictable when almost every seat would come down to a contest between Labor and the Coalition.

Tehran reportedly attacks Gulf countries following fresh US strikes

There has been almost no visible traffic in the strait of Hormuz so far today, with only two oil products tankers seen approaching the narrow waterway, according to a Bloomberg report.

As a reminder, the US president, Donald Trump, has declared the ceasefire over while leaving the door open for talks, and mediators have been trying to salvage a diplomatic solution despite the attacks intensifying.

Microsoft released its 2026 Environmental Sustainability Report showing that last year it matched its entire electricity consumption with renewable energy, reports The Register. "The bad news is it also increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25%" — mostly due to datacenter construction and a decision to stop purchasing some renewable energy certificates: In 2020, Microsoft set itself the goal of becoming "carbon-negative" by 2030. Its own figures show emissions heading only upwards, from 13 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2020, to 20 million tons in 2025. However, Microsoft estimates that without the carbon reduction initiatives it has already put in place, emissions would now stand at 34 million tons... For the first time, Microsoft claims to have replenished more [water] than it withdrew during 2025, returning 14,278 million liters (3,771 million gallons). Elsewhere, the corporation says its Circular Centers program reused 92% of decommissioned servers and their components.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vital maritime corridor closes after 90 vessels – including shadow fleet oil tankers – are attacked in under a week

Russia has been forced to suspend shipping in the Sea of Azov after 90 vessels were targeted by Ukrainian drones in less than a week.

Ukraine’s drone forces chief, Robert Brovdi, said on Sunday that his units had hit 10 tankers and four ferries overnight, as well as a major oil refinery in the city of Syzran. There had been several strikes on electricity substations in occupied Crimea, he added.

Man in 20s also found with stab injuries after incident over which 44-year-old is being held on suspicion of murder

A man has been arrested after a 24-year-old woman was killed and a man in his 20s was injured in a stabbing in west London, police have said.

Officers found the woman with stab injuries after being called to a property on Uxbridge Road in Hayes on Sunday morning. The man in his 20s was found outside the property with stab injuries. Police are awaiting an update on his condition.

Woman dies after her home is swept away as heavy rainfall batters parts of state, forcing rescues and evacuations

A woman was found dead in Missouri on Saturday after heavy rainfall battered parts of the state the previous day, forcing numerous emergency rescues and evacuations, including at a summer camp with more than 200 children.

The body of Faith Gregory, who went missing in Missouri’s Crawford county after her home was swept away from its foundation, was found by volunteers late Saturday morning. Her body was discovered about 1.8 miles (3km) downstream from her residence in Huzzah creek, according to the county sheriff’s office.

Guardian staff contributed

Timing of Devon switchoff ‘could not be worse’, says board, as members face an estimated £2m in lost revenue

Britain’s biggest community solar project has been forced to shut for the duration of its first summer by the government’s energy system operator to avoid overloading the local grid with renewable energy.

The north Devon solar farm was ordered to shut weeks before record high temperatures across Europe led to power supply warnings, due to concerns that the large amount of rooftop solar in the area could destabilise the power grid by triggering a “thermal overload”.

The Guardian’s global tech reporting team are investigating the impact of the vast datacentres being built to power the AI revolution. We spoke to them about how their beat has become increasingly offline

Journalists often use the term “shoe-leather reporting” to refer to the on-the-ground legwork that goes into covering certain stories. As the tech industry’s focus has shifted from screen-based realities to the physical world of colossal AI datacentres and social media harms, comfortable footwear has become more essential to a tech reporter’s job.

Earlier this week, we published the Guardian’s latest investigation into the datacentres and energy infrastructures that underpin AI – revealing that an £8.2bn AI complex in rural Scotland has misrepresented its plans to be powered entirely by on-site renewables. “Our reporting is showing that you can’t simply wave a magic wand and have a datacentre appear,” says Aisha Down, who covers AI for the Guardian and went to Scotland to investigate the story. “There are a lot of huge physical constraints and reality checks. These physical, tangible things are what makes or sinks the AI boom.”

Getting rid of old computers and printers responsibly is free, accessible and considerably simpler than most people assume.

Byelection winner says heatwaves are causing ‘absolute chaos’ and workers need protection from unsafe conditions

The Green MP Hannah Spencer is to introduce a bill in parliament that would pave the way for a maximum workplace temperature in the UK, as the country grapples with increasingly frequent heatwaves.

If passed, the legislation will create an independent body to recommend maximum safe workplace temperatures and set out how those recommendations should be implemented.

Typhoon Bavi weakened Sunday to a tropical storm but was still bringing strong winds and heavy rain to parts of China.

At 26, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams has won praise from critics and fans for her intimate songs – whispered words that become anthems. She talks about her latest album, "Daughter From Hell."

Disruption at Channel crossings expected to rise amid new fingerprint and facial recognition checks

France and the UK have agreed to increase staffing at border controls in response to warnings of travel chaos caused by new fingerprinting and facial recognition checks.

Disruption at Channel crossings is expected to rise sharply next weekend at the start of the summer holiday season, with MPs saying there would be “utter chaos and miles of tailbacks” unless the EU’s entry-exit system (EES) is fixed or checks are suspended.

In 1898, Wilmington, N.C., was prosperous and integrated. But white supremacists took back control of the city's multi-racial government at gunpoint, and killed scores of Black residents - a little-known story retold in Lauren Collins' "They Stole a City."

Apple must pay iPhone owners to settle a lawsuit over delayed and missing AI features.

We don’t need fewer amateurs running for office. We need far more of them, recruited seriously

Graham Platner is out of the Maine Senate race, burdened by controversies that include a troubling rape accusation, which he denies. His departure is no doubt a good thing that will make it easier for Democrats to win back the Senate.

But progressives should pay attention to the discussion around Platner. His collapse is being turned into something larger, supposed proof that people from outside politics have no business being in it.

The media-savvy mayor’s popularity has only grown as the Murdoch-owned tabloid has thrown everything at him

The rightwing New York Post has attacked Zohran Mamdani as a communist, a hater of the police, an antisemite, a driver-away-of-billionaires, and as someone who isn’t very good at bench press.

But six months into his mayoralty, Mamdani has so far succeeded where most of his predecessors have failed: he has bested the city’s most powerful tabloid.

Commentary: As generative AI continues making inroads into the world of creatives, what are we to make of the increasingly bonkers On This Day...1776?

Robotics researchers are trying to prove that lighter-than-air robots could excel at emotional connection.

With five light modes targeting everything from fine lines to blemishes and pigmentation, CurrentBody’s latest mask promises a lot – and so does its price tag

• The best LED face masks

I’ve been testing LED masks for a couple of years now, and the CurrentBody Series 2 red-light face mask has long been my favourite option for anti-ageing. It’s comfortable, offers excellent coverage and powerful deep near-infrared treatments. Sadly, it doesn’t work for other skin concerns. It’s a one-trick pony.

So, when I heard that CurrentBody had launched its Multi Light Therapy mask with five different modes, I was interested to see how it would stand up to the stellar performance of its predecessor. As someone with hormonal acne, I was especially keen to try the mask’s “clearing” mode, but it also offers a calming “restoring” mode, a pigmentation-reducing “brightening” mode, and a distinctive “complete” mode, as well as the “anti-ageing” mode.

City official says staffers were performing ‘routine park maintenance’ where 15 people have gathered for months

City employees in Atlanta, Georgia, recently threw away tents, medication, identification and other belongings of unhoused people at a public park without warning. This led activists and a local official to point to an apparent violation of procedures created after a city employee ran over a tent with a front loader last year, killing a man.

The sweep through the park occurred less than a mile from a popular spot for World Cup watch parties, drawing into focus ongoing tension over the issue of what happens to the city’s several thousand unhoused people during the month-long event.

Dozens of projects are in development across US despite concerns over environmental and health risks

The plan to bury carbon under remote Indiana farmland is supposed to be a slam dunk for the climate, according to its supporters – all generously funded by US tax dollars.

But as far as Melissa Harrison and some other residents of Clymers, Indiana, are concerned, it just might be the end of their town. “This is our place,” she says. Generations of her family are buried in the cemetery, and she is raising her five grandchildren in one of several dozen white-clapboard homes among corn fields and industrial plants serving the farming industry.

I doused my Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro in these household chemicals, and the effect was dramatic. Don't try this at home.

Officers say they are not looking for anyone else after arrest of man, 28, on suspicion of murdering ex-Tory politician

Police have said there is nothing to suggest the death of Ann Widdecombe was politically motivated.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday morning, the assistant chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police, Matt Longman, said detectives were open-minded about the motive for the killing, but stressed there was no evidence to suggest it had been politically motivated. He also said it was not being treated as terrorism.

"I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs," John Carmack posted Thursday to his 2.8 million followers on X.com: My "Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand" statement isn't aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month. I'm saddened, but I can't muster anger or outrage over it. I don't have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft's perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved. Games are competing with every other option for spending your leisure time and money, and the competition is brutal. You can't rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn't be your default belief. I don't think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from Id games. Could they have gotten more with a different pricing strategy? Could they have created more things for fans to buy? Could they have cost effectively marketed in a way that reached more players that would have loved and bought the games? Could they have changed the game designs and broadened the appeal to more players without alienating existing ones? Could they have produced the games at a lower cost, faster or cheaper? I really don't know. The game isn't over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through. Id Software co-founder John Romero also shared his thoughts on X.com: I'm so sorry for everyone at id Software affected by these layoffs. I know what it feels like to leave id while id goes on. It's a strange and painful thing to step away from a place that holds so much of your work, friendships and history. The people at id have done a great job moving that legacy forward. DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today's industry. The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people. Romero also expressed his hope for "digital preservation" of Id's ongoing history (including code and assets). "I'm thinking of everyone at id today, and everyone else affected by yesterday's layoffs. Romero Games was there a year ago. I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you. "Four Xbox studios are already out the door," noted IGN, but shared some thoughts about the future: Some have expressed concern that id Software would be unable to lead development on any new games in its current state, and that it might be relegated to support studio status. But in a new statement [posted to id Software's page on X.com] id Software said it was now at the staffing level it was back when it made the much-loved 2016 Doom reboot — and insisted it was still capable of making "great games." "While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for... We're going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years, and we're looking forward to seeing you at QuakeCon this August."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commentary: The Apple Watch is the most accurate wearable I've tested, but its battery life is holding it back.

When Mark Lanier and his young client Kaley faced the tech giants in an LA courtroom earlier this year, it seemed a bigger battle than David v Goliath. But they scored a landmark victory, proving that the social media giants had created ‘addiction machines’ that harmed mental health. How did they pull it off?

When Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom on 18 February flanked by an entourage bedecked in Meta Ray-Bans, some people laughed. If this was an attempt at product placement for the company’s newest range of smart glasses, it was jarringly ill-judged: Zuckerberg was about to testify before a jury in a landmark lawsuit that sought to prove that Instagram and YouTube are addictive by design, and he had passed a throng of bereaved parents on his way into the courthouse. But the prosecution team, led by Mark Lanier, were not laughing.

This was a serious trial. For the first time, the most powerful names in social media were being held to account for the inherent design of their platforms, rather than the content hosted on them. They were accused of deliberately and maliciously building products that keep children hooked, with disastrous consequences for the mental wellbeing of young people. It was a landmark case – a big tobacco moment for big tech.

The White House is working to change electoral rules in its favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counterplan

The second Trump administration is systematically eroding the institutional foundations of competitive elections without formally abolishing them. They have a plan to achieve what scholars of democratic backsliding call “electoral subversion”: changing electoral rules in their favor. Protectors of democracy must have a counter-plan of their own.

The White House’s approach to electoral subversion has multiple fronts. The administration has rewarded those who used violence to disrupt the last transfer of power, disabled the federal agencies charged with protecting election integrity, moved to extend executive control over voter registration, and threatened to withhold terrorism prevention funding from states who do not change their voting rules.

Scientists worry that current eradication efforts won’t be able to contain parasitic infestation pushing into US

When conservationists set up cameras in remote regions of Central American forests, they wanted to monitor illegal cattle movement, which can lead to deforestation. But in recent months, they discovered another alarming development: wildlife rapidly infected with the new world screwworm.

It’s a warning sign of how the fly could spread in the US – and it signals new difficulties in pushing it back south, a process that will probably take years, experts say.

Gallery director says collection of 140 paintings will offer a more balanced view of Manchester painter’s work

A new exhibition of work by LS Lowry will “bust a few myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the show’s co-curator says is still wrongly derided for being “naive and uncultured”.

LS Lowry: the Theatre of Life features 140 paintings by the artist, who captured working-class life in the industrial north-west of England during the early and mid 20th century.

Software engineering was one of the best-paying professions in the US in 2022, but the advent of AI has disrupted it, leading to several layoffs and underemployment

Every weekday, Matt, a software engineer, looks forward to his four-hour train commute to Pawling, New York. It’s time he uses to work on his own project: a browser-based video game for which he writes every line of code himself.

“I am actively trying to keep my axe sharp,” said Matt, who did not want to use his actual name, to protect his employment. In the last six months, Matt’s job has increasingly shifted away from coding, problem solving and software architecture towards reviewing code generated by artificial intelligence. Convinced that the shift will weaken his skills, he’s doing what he can to keep them intact. “I am trying not to leverage AI where I can.”

Miller takes indefinite leave after arm amputation and questions of possible financial improprieties

An on-air analyst for a top US sports broadcaster says he is pulling back from his role indefinitely as he heals from a car crash in Missouri that forced him to undergo a life-saving amputation – and while he reportedly faces a law enforcement investigation into possible financial improprieties connected to what he billed as side charity work.

Matt Miller’s announcement on Friday that he was taking indefinite leave from ESPN provided only the latest twist in an unusual case that has drawn significant attention from both media as well as the substantial number of American football fanatics who follow his area of expertise: the process by which NFL teams select, or draft, collegiate prospects.

Eighteen months after the Eaton Fire, Pasadena schools are trying to clear toxic soil. Students and activists are fighting to save nearly 200 trees.

Tensions between progressive and moderate camps of Democratic party on display in key Senate race in Michigan

The Israel-Gaza war created gaping divisions in the Democratic party and contributed to a resounding loss in a critical presidential election year in 2024. Two years later, the issue continues to dominate races across the country, as progressives try to seize on Israel’s falling popularity and a broad anti-war sentiment ahead of November’s midterms.

A recent debate among two Democrats vying for one of the most competitive US Senate seats in the country openly displayed the tension between progressive and moderate camps of the party.

Trump’s immigration architect calls the supreme court’s decision ‘outrageous’ as he pushes for policy rooted in genetics, not law

Neither of the supreme court majority opinions in Trump v Barbara, the 5-4 decision upholding the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, mentions the true architect of the case. Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which would deny citizenship to children born on American soil if their parents are undocumented immigrants or on temporary visas, is extensively noted, but not the man responsible for it. The omission of Stephen Miller is like Dracula without Dracula.

The vampire identified is Chief Justice Roger B Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, though his notorious statement at the heart of his ruling went uncited: that the framers believed that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”, that they were excluded from the Declaration of Independence’s principle that “all men are created equal” because of racial inferiority “too clear for dispute” and that rendered them no different from “an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic”.

The U.S. military inquiry into the so-called Havana syndrome, the mysterious illness claimed by a litany of American intelligence officers, is tapping a controversial contractor: a private surveillance firm that once boasted of its ability to stalk American intelligence officers.

Documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that technology from the Virginia-based startup Anomaly 6 has been used to assist the “Anomalous Health Incidents Cross Functional Team,” the Pentagon’s official Havana syndrome investigatory task force. That group studies a cluster of strange symptoms claimed by personnel from U.S. spy agencies, the State Department, and elsewhere in the federal government.

Related

American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo’d Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA

In 2022, The Intercept revealed that Anomaly 6 had used a provocative demonstration of its surveillance prowess in a closed-door business pitch. The company, which purchases bulk cellular location data harvested from millions of unwitting smartphone users around the world, showed a potential customer that its data stores were so vast and accurate that it could pinpoint the movements of employees of both the CIA and NSA, tracking them as they commuted between their homes and their respective agencies headquarters. It was a remarkable demonstration of the advanced capabilities of private sector surveillance brokers, who lean on unscrupulous smartphone apps and advertisers that indiscriminately share and sell users’ location data.

For any military, the appeal of this technology is obvious, and the Pentagon has used commercial device tracking for years. Although Anomaly 6 previously marketed its wares by showing how it could spy on fellow Americans, the pitch also showed how the company could track a foreign adversary’s naval assets abroad, for example.

It’s not clear on what basis the U.S. Air Force Concepts, Development, and Management Office chose Anomaly 6 for its Havana syndrome investigation; federal records note the contract is worth nearly $6 million and set to run through September.

Anomaly 6 and the Air Force did not respond to a request for comment.

The Air Force redacted most of the document before releasing it to The Intercept, providing only fragments of information about how Anomaly 6 is help investigate “anomalous health incidents.” The contract, described in public procurement records as Project Yellowfin, notes that the Anomalous Health Incidents Cross-Functional Team will make use of the company’s “expertise in location intelligence” to “identify actors and activities of interest,” and that the “Contractor shall produce data visualization products capable of being utilized as stand-alone brief materials by decision-makers and senior leaders. These products will enable briefers to highlight geographical distribution, temporal patterns, patterns of life, and interconnectivity of events and actors.”

Related

TikTok Threat Is Purely Hypothetical, U.S. Intelligence Admits

This reference to actors of interest may relate to the intensely held belief by Havana syndrome patients that their suffering is due to a covert energy-based attack by a foreign government. In its 2022 pitch, Anomaly 6 singled out its ability to track the movements of Chinese and Russian military personnel, both countries that have been implicated in hypothesized Havana syndrome schemes.

Last year, the U.S. intelligence community released a report that stated most of its constituent agencies believe it is highly unlikely the symptoms are the result of actions by a national adversary.

When asked if Anomaly 6 location data had been used to investigate this proposed nexus or contributed to the intelligence report, the Air Force did not respond. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the reorganization of the Anomalous Health Incidents Cross-Functional Team, now a division of the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering, helmed by former Uber executive Emil Michael. Michael’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Company That Bragged It Could Track U.S. Spies Hired to Investigate “Havana Syndrome” appeared first on The Intercept.

Ed Davey voices concern about the Musk family foundation taking the far-right activist on a visit to Moscow

The UK must do more to defend its democracy after it emerged that Elon Musk’s family foundation had taken the far-right activist Tommy Robinson to Russia, Ed Davey has said.

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was brought to Russia by the Musks, the billionaire tech mogul’s father told the Guardian.

Chancellor says PM-in-waiting needs ‘worked through plan’, in what could be one of her final interviews in No 11

Rachel Reeves has urged Andy Burnham to arrive in Downing Street with a “worked through plan”, saying the incoming prime minister will be tested quickly by a range of incoming “shocks and challenges”.

In what could be one of the first female chancellor’s final major interviews while in No 11, Reeves said Burnham should remain focused on the priorities that first brought him into politics.

Prof Channa Jayasena says growing online sales of unregulated drugs risk fatalities as responsibility falls between regulators

• Fitness influencers linked to wellness brand helping run illegal steroid market on Telegram

The UK has become a “wild west” for people peddling experimental peptides, steroids and other substances, a leading expert has said, warning action must be taken to avoid fatalities.

Prof Channa Jayasena of Imperial College London, a consultant in reproductive endocrinology and andrology at Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals, said he is now encountering patients “day in, day out” who are taking experimental peptides.

In an exclusive interview, the legendary con man known as Fat Leonard, back in prison, tells The Post about his wild escape and his bid for a presidential pardon.

Two drugs are being trialled in the Ituri region in a programme set up just six weeks after the outbreak was declared, with hopes it will reduce mortality rates

There is no approved drug to help the medical teams scrabbling to save lives in the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but there are hopes that could change within months as the first patients are enrolled in a treatment trial.

It is a record pace to set up and start this kind of research, scientists said, with patients enrolled just six weeks after the outbreak being declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 17 May.

Facial recognition technology in U.K. shops "will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders," reports The Guardian, "with civil liberties groups warning of a 'dangerous escalation' towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector." Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury's, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to "alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match". Facewatch's chief executive, Nick Fisher, said the "unique technical development" would be launched in autumn and would warn police in an average of four seconds when the "worst offenders" were flagged on its network... Charlie Whelton, the policy and campaigns officer at [civil liberties nonprofit] Liberty, said it was concerned about this "untested, opaque development" and the way facial recognition technology had been allowed to "proliferate without anything to govern it". "It's not against the law to walk into a shop even if you've committed crimes in the past," he said. "The idea of calling the police on somebody who hasn't committed a crime, but there's a concern they might, is really upending the way we do things. And of course, it's not infallible. These systems do make mistakes, and it's very hard to argue with that when it happens to you." A number of people have been forced to leave shops after being falsely identified by Facewatch technology as a shoplifter, with some describing it as "Orwellian" and saying they felt as though they were "guilty until proven innocent"... The use of the Facewatch technology looks set to quickly expand, with Sainsbury's recently announcing plans to increase its use from 55 stores to more than 200 by the end of the year. Facewatch said it alerted retailers almost 300,000 times that a "known repeat offender" had entered a store during the first six months of 2026, and that its system allowed staff to intervene "before theft, abuse or violence could occur or escalate"... [E]xperts argue the use of facial recognition technology in shops to catch shoplifters is disproportionate. Nuala Polo, the UK public policy lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, which studies the impact of AI on society, said: "There are other, much less intrusive means that you can use to catch shoplifters where you don't need to be scanning millions of faces every day, virtually without consent...." The campaign group Big Brother Watch has criticised police for "inserting themselves into this cowboy operation" and said people would be matched against "a secret blacklist compiled by unaccountable businesses and private security guards".

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Sisco and his girlfriend Karen Harkness were gunned down in her Topeka, Kansas, home in 2002. Authorities believed it was a crime of passion. Sisco's daughter set out to help prove it was her mother, Dana Chandler, who was responsible.

Fraudsters create false articles that appear to be from publishers such as the Guardian to share on social media

The Guardian article looks interesting. It says the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has stormed out of a BBC interview after presenter Laura Kuenssberg revealed details of his personal financial affairs – and now the episode has been removed from iPlayer.

Among the detail in the piece is that Ratcliffe has been using an online investment platform to make money. The report says although the site has been kept secret, other people have used it too, and they have made a fortune. There is a link to the site where you can trade cryptocurrency, stocks and shares.

• Bout with Holloway in Las Vegas finishes in first round

• UFC chief Dana White: ‘We’re assuming a blown ACL’

• Irish star’s last fight before Saturday was five years ago

Conor McGregor’s return against Max Holloway at UFC 329 in Las Vegas ended after just 69 seconds of the first round because of a knee injury.

Fighting for the first time in more than five years, the 37-year-old McGregor flew across the ring with a left roundhouse kick when the bout started and landed awkwardly on his right knee.

Foreign ministers will discuss options on Monday but decision on imports is not expected for months

The EU has been accused of dragging its feet over upholding international law, on the eve of a long-awaited debate about banning trade with illegal Israeli settlements.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday will discuss a possible ban on imports from the settlements, against an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where a UN inquiry found Israel to be committing a genocide, and surging state-backed violence in the occupied West Bank, which has killed at least 235 children.

Discontent with Trump-backed government mounts as Chávez heirs struggle to respond to disaster for which they seem ill-prepared

Even before two powerful earthquakes reduced the OPPE 25 government housing project to an anarchy of shattered concrete and broken lives, the foundations of Hugo Chávez’s populist “Bolivarian” revolution were shaking in what was once a hotbed of support.

Gabriel González remembers his elation when, in 2013, he received the keys to his freshly completed apartment in one of the 12-floor tower blocks El Comandante had ordered to be built in an affluent corner of the resort town of Caraballeda.

Sudden shift may be linked to affinity for Erdoğan but what might be consequences of erratic behavior towards alliance?

Donald Trump’s relationship with Washington’s Nato allies is nobody’s idea of a happy marriage.

But the US president’s volatile performance at the western military alliance’s annual summit in Ankara this week seemed extreme, even by Trumpian standards. As commentators sought to explain what happened, their usually capacious stock of Trump-fitting cliches was at risk of exhaustion.

Police say two people exchanged gunfire in shooting that mayor called an ‘irresponsible act of violence’ in festival attended by families

A shooting near a Toronto street festival killed two men and wounded four other people on Saturday evening, police said, adding that what initially prompted an active-shooter warning was an exchange of gunfire between two people targeting each other.

Toronto police deputy chief Frank Barredo said investigators recovered two firearms after the shooting, which was reported at 8.12pm near St. Clair Avenue West and Arlington Avenue, where the Salsa on St Clair festival was underway.

The Associated Press reports: An islandwide blackout struck Cuba on Friday for the second time this week as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade... Authorities reported that they have already begun restoring power to some areas. On Monday, another massive blackout affected nearly 10 million people nationwide. Authorities reported during the week that service was gradually being restored from that outage. "While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it's unusual for back-to-back ones to hit just days apart..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least two people were killed and several more wounded in a shooting Saturday evening at a street festival in Toronto, Canada, authorities said.

A rare draft of the Declaration of Independence, now on display at the Library of Congress, was written by Thomas Jefferson and contains edits from fellow Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.

"Meta has axed a controversial feature that allowed users to modify photos from public Instagram accounts using AI," reports TechCrunch: The feature, which wasn't designed to alert a user if their photos were used in this way, prompted immediate backlash... The company issued a blog post Friday announcing that it was removing the feature. Puck News founding partner Dylan Byers was the first to share the company's decision... Byers notes that the decision to do away with the feature came "amid scrutiny from users and talent agencies, including CAA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Jersey is one of more than a dozen states that are working to collect, remove and destroy all of their aqueous film-forming foam.

The Seattle Seahawks are being sold to the Khosla family in accordance with the wishes of late team owner Paul Allen, the team announced on Saturday.

Plucky defeats decorated with patches of excellence will not cut it for Australia with a home World Cup now looming large

The camera found Joe Schmidt shortly after France had completed a 22-point swing. Australia’s coach had seen a 21-12 half-time lead obliterated in 16 brutal minutes. Schmidt, one of rugby’s sharpest minds, looked short of answers. The trouble was that the questions confronting him had obvious answers but almost impossible solutions.

Why had Australia’s discipline deteriorated? Because they were under pressure. Why had their tackle intensity and ruck speed fallen away? Because France had introduced fresh power from the bench. Why had the Wallabies gone from a nine-point half-time lead to a 13-point deficit in barely a quarter of an hour? Because one team had more large, skilful, Test-quality rugby players than the other.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the Strait of Hormuz would be closed until further notice, accusing the United States of interfering in the waterway.

Famed art museum, one of 31 buildings to test positive, has already completed remediation, health department says

New York City’s famed Solomon R Guggenheim Museum was among a number of Manhattan buildings that recently tested positive for the bacteria that causes legionnaires’ disease.

The city health department on Friday released a list of 31 buildings on the Upper East Side that have been ordered to clean and disinfect their cooling towers as the city deals with the latest outbreak of the disease, which is a serious form of pneumonia.

A chaotic bull run at Spain's San Fermin festival in Pamplona on Saturday left 13 people injured, including one runner who was pierced by a horn in the face.

Since February, New York state police have arrested 48 people for trespassing on a former IBM campus in Somers, New York, reports the Wall Street Journal. 30 of the arrests were teenagers. The long-vacant site has become a magnet for so-called urban explorers, who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories and any other disused structure they can breach... [I]t's been turbocharged by artsy videos on Instagram and TikTok that spur others to create their own posts, luring still more curiosity seekers... In Somers, social-media images of the old IBM campus — a sprawling, pyramid-studded 1980s complex designed by the late I.M. Pei's firm — show dystopian scenes: busted windows, tossed rooms and graffitied walls. But they also give eerie glimpses of conference rooms and cubicles unchanged since IBM left a decade ago, as if employees had fled the daily grind one day and never returned... One man in his mid-20s faces felony charges; police allege he had a loaded 9mm gun and took a Sony camera and power strip among other souvenirs. Andrew Proto, a defense lawyer, said "a 15-second clip" isn't worth a criminal record... Proto said he has represented or advised several minors arrested on the campus. The Somers town court clerk said some defendants received a 6-month "adjournment in contemplation of dismissal," meaning charges will be dropped and their arrest sealed if they avoid trouble. Some explorers who have posted about the IBM site say they follow an observe-and-preserve ethos and reject vandalism. They say they're driven by curiosity, the thrill of roaming forbidden spaces and a zeal to document discoveries — and that they're careful and know their limits. "It actually gives me hope when I hear that kids are out there getting into trouble," says Bradley Garrett, a cultural geographer and author of the book "Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City," about his own urbex adventures. He sees urban exploration as "a gateway drug in a good way, sometimes, into intellectual curiosity about history and culture." But Garrett said popular spots can be "loved to death" online — and then shut down, looted or set ablaze. "Trespassers were blamed for a March 30 fire, reports a local newspaper, "that damaged one of the buildings and required volunteer firefighters to spend three hours extinguishing the blaze."

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Suspect arrested in South Yorkshire after ex-politician was found dead at her Devon home on Thursday

A 28-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Ann Widdecombe, police said.

The suspect, who is a white British national, was arrested at an address in the South Yorkshire area on Saturday evening and is in police custody.

Warframe Tau might be Digital Extremes' version of Bungie's Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape.

More than 200 people at Camp Taum Sauk in southeastern Missouri were rescued after 6 to 12 inches of rain fell along the Taum Sauk Reservoir.

For nearly two years the Free Software Foundation has been fighting web crawlers (including many aggressively scraping training data for AI models). A botnet controlling about five million IPs hit one system for six months in 2025. Their systems administrator wrote this week that they view these as distributed denial-of-service attacks. How are they fighting back? We noticed patterns in the scrapers that were abnormal, which gave us material for writing regular expressions. Searching for the regular expression then gave us a large lists of IP addresses. Looking up the origin of those IP addresses revealed that some of the crawlers were using botnets of residential IP addresses to scrape faster and avoid detection. We looked for what kinds of botnets might be generating the kind of traffic that we were seeing, and one that we suspected was called the "Vo1d" botnet, comprised of smart TVs running some sort of compromised app... We got confirmation that at least some of the botnet traffic hitting GNU Savannah was originating through the Vo1d/Popa botnet. We placed our regular expressions in fail2ban, and found that we were hitting the maximum rules that could be added to UFW firewall rules on our systems which showed degradation around 65,000 rules... We learned about ipset and configured fail2ban to add IP addresses that it found to IP sets. Using ipset, we kept building larger IP sets and did not find instability with as large as five million rules... We eventually found a promising project on Framasoft's forge Framagit called reaction written by ppom... After we ran into scaling issues with our initial implementation, we developed a much faster implementation where the reaction shutdown process would export the IP sets to disk and the reaction startup process would restore the IP sets. This allowed us to have nearly instantaneous restarts of the service to apply new rules. We published both of our configurations upstream to reaction's wiki so that everyone can benefit from it. reaction's getting started documentation now leads to the method that we proposed... Many sysadmins know about fail2ban, but not enough people know about reaction. I am very grateful to ppom for the help they have provided and for the tremendous project they have released to the world with reaction. We have implemented other defenses as well, but reaction is doing the majority of the automated work keeping our sites online.

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As the agriculture industry in Louisiana contends with major energy cost hikes brought on by the Iran war, some farmers are unsure if their businesses will survive.

Nerds.xyz reports: DuckDuckGo just gave its browser a feature that a lot of people have been waiting for. The privacy-focused browser can now block most video ads on YouTube, letting users watch videos without sitting through the pre-roll and mid-roll interruptions that have become part of everyday life on the platform. The feature is already enabled by default for iPhone, Windows, and Mac users running the latest version of the browser. Android users can turn it on manually... with DuckDuckGo planning to enable it by default in a future update... To make it work, DuckDuckGo relies on the same community-maintained filter lists used by uBlock Origin, along with some of its own compatibility rules. The company says you might notice a bit of extra buffering before a video starts, but once playback begins, most ads should be gone. Slashdot reader BrianFagioli argues that the feature raises questions about how creators are compensated when ad revenue is bypassed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On a hot Wednesday afternoon in the Palestinian village of Zanuta, California Rep. Ro Khanna walked through the ruins of a Palestinian school demolished by Israeli settlers several years earlier. 

In 2023, Israeli settlers took firearms and bulldozers to the village, destroying the school and other buildings and displacing dozens of Bedouin Palestinian residents from their homes. 

While standing amid the rubble, one of Khanna’s staffers spotted an Israeli settler wearing a large smile on his face with an assault rifle draped around his shoulder, peering at the group through a broken window.

Khanna and his small delegation of his staffer Cameron Kasky, their driver, and a security guard hurried back into their van, Khanna and Kasky, a Parkland school shooting survivor and former congressional candidate, said in interviews with The Intercept.   

Settlers had parked their car directly in front of them, blocking their exit along a narrow dirt road that juts from Highway 60 with rocky slopes and dry grass on both sides.

Over the next 75 to 90 minutes, Israeli settlers, who carried what appeared to be M4 assault rifles, intimidated and harassed Khanna and his group, who felt their fear rising from inside the van. The settlers proceeded to menace the Americans: They prevented the group from leaving the village, brandished their rifles, laughed and yelled taunts at the group, kicked the van’s tires, and wiped down the windows with their hands to gawk inside, recording the group and snapping photos. Khanna and Kasky said their security aide identified the men as members of the Hilltop Youth, an extremist settler group with a history of violent raids, which prompted more concern among the delegation. 

“It’s the most powerless I have felt,” Khanna told The Intercept. “They paraded around the van, laughing, smiling, brandishing the M4s. I have not been treated that way in any other country I’ve traveled to, including China. In any place that I have traveled, it’s the most arrogant and humiliating treatment of American citizens I have endured — I was quite shocked.”  

Two white pickup trucks later pulled up and out stepped more armed settlers, according to video and footage reviewed by The Intercept. Later, another vehicle arrived carrying a group of four men and women dressed in green military uniforms, which their security aide identified as Israeli military, Khanna and Kasky recalled. Rather than attempting to resolve the situation, the soldiers joined the group, laughing and talking with the settlers, and at one point, smoking cigarettes together, they said. 

Even after the security aide identified the group as an American delegation with a member of Congress, the settlers and soldiers did not budge. “The security person said this is the most concerned he’s ever been, and he’s done tours for decades,” Khanna recalled.

In response to a request for comment by The Intercept, the Israeli military acknowledged that “a report was received regarding Israeli civilians who were unlawfully blocking the vehicles of foreign nationals and members of the media.” The statement directly contradicted Khanna’s and Kasky’s account, with the military claiming soldiers had helped clear the group of settlers.

“Upon receiving the report, IDF troops were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road,” the military said, adding, “The identity of the armed individual is currently under review.”

Kasky, who joined Khanna’s office in January following his own visit to the West Bank and has been working with Khanna on his Israel and Palestine policy, said he was afraid the incident would turn more violent, recalling accounts of settler attacks.

“I was sitting there like, ‘Are the Hilltop Youth about to blow a bunch of holes in our vehicle?’” Kasky remembered saying to himself. “I’m a Jewish school shooting survivor, and I’m sitting here looking at Jewish kids who have the eyes of a school shooter. So it was a very surreal experience for me.” 

Harassment from Israeli settlers and military has long been a regular occurrence for Palestinians in the West Bank, who face severe restrictions on daily movement throughout the territory. Palestinians are subject to a military court system where the accused lack due process rights and thousands are imprisoned indefinitely, oftentimes without charge. Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, 2023. That figure includes a growing number of Palestinian Americans and other American citizens.

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Harassment of foreign delegations in the West Bank is more rare. In September 2023, European Union diplomats reported harassment by Israeli settlers during a visit. In May 2025, Israeli soldiers fired warning shots toward a delegation of diplomats visiting Jenin, which included officials from the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Ireland. The last reported instance of harassment toward an American delegation was in 2015, when settlers hurled rocks at diplomats investigating reports of settler attacks in the area.

Members of Congress have visited the West Bank in the past, but Khanna’s run-in with settlers is the first known instance of direct harassment by Israeli settlers toward a sitting U.S. lawmaker. 

During the incident, Khanna said he phoned an official in the U.S. Embassy, which urged the group not to escalate the situation. After more than an hour, the group of settlers and soldiers suddenly drove off. Shortly after, Israeli police arrived and instructed the group not to return under threat of arrest. 

“I thought to myself, if they can do this to an American member of Congress and to American citizens, imagine what life is like for ordinary Palestinians who do not have a national platform, who can’t just pick up the phone and call the American embassy,” Khanna said.

The recent trip wasn’t Khanna’s first visit to the West Bank. In 2022, Khanna joined a delegation of lawmakers, led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and visited with leaders in Israel and Palestinian leaders in Ramallah. Khanna’s remarks praising Israel’s tech industry drew criticism from pro-Palestine advocates, who at the time accused the lawmaker of using the visit as a “photo op” to “whitewash Israeli apartheid.”    

Khanna had long branded himself as an anti-war figure. In 2004, he ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress centered around his opposition to the Iraq War. And after being elected to Congress in 2016, Khanna would help spearhead an effort to halt U.S. military support to Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen’s civil war. 

Israel, however, remained a blindspot. But since the October 7 Hamas attacks and the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khanna has evolved from a pro-Israel Democrat who regularly voted to send military aid to Israel into one of its staunchest opponents, especially as he gears up for a potential 2028 presidential run. 

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Khanna is a co-sponsor to the Block the Bombs bill and in April said he opposes the transfer of all U.S. arms — both offensive and so-called defensive weapons — to Israel. Last month, he attempted to strike a portion of the National Defense Authorization Act that seeks to codify Israel’s joint development of weapons with the U.S. and said he would also urge senators to oppose the pro-Israel proposal. Khanna is also a co-sponsor on the West Bank Violence Prevention Act, which seeks to codify sanctions on Israeli settlers, and in January, introduced a resolution opposing the expansion of settlements. In his war powers resolution against the Iran war, he said in June 2025, “U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Iran is a red line.”

After the run-in with Israeli settlers, the congressman put a finer point on the need to stop arming Israel.

“We’re supplying them the M4s that they’re using to detain American citizens,” he said. “We’re supplying them the weapons that they’re using to kill Palestinian Americans. We’re supplying them the weapons that they’re using to commit terror on the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
It is simply inhumane, and the United States needs to not just sanction these extremist settlers — we need to demand that the IDF start to demolish the outposts in the West Bank.”

Khanna said he still differentiates between settler outposts and larger, long-standing Israeli settlement communities that function as suburban neighborhoods. While he believes outposts should be dismantled, he said the larger settlements should be subject to a land swap with Palestinians as part of a broader political deal to grant Palestinians sovereignty. Yet he still opposed the expansion of the larger settlements and said U.S. funds should not be used to construct such developments.

As Congress took its summer recess, Khanna took the three-day visit to the West Bank this week at Kasky’s urging. The American journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who extensively covers the West Bank and facilitated Kasky’s previous visit, had invited Khanna to visit and connected the group with local Palestinian residents, businesses, activists, and leaders. 

When Khanna and Kasky landed in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Kasky said Israeli airport security took him to a back office where officers questioned him for 40 minutes while showing him a printed screenshot of his Twitter profile where he had previously written in his bio “Stop funding genocide” and a separate printout of a tweet by a pro-Israel user who had spotted Kasky at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in December 2025. The officials continued to hold Kasky despite Khanna identifying him as a part of his office.

After his release, Kasky said he received notification that the Israeli government had revoked his travel visa.

“I’m probably never going to get into the country again,” he said.

During the wide-ranging trip, the delegation spoke with Palestinian shopkeepers in Hebron, who reported harassment from neighboring Israelis who from the upper floors hurled rotten vegetables and acid, and urinated on their stores below. Mayors of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala told Khanna of water shortages and the Israeli military-imposed restrictions on Palestinians from drilling new wells, while Israeli settlers enjoy unfettered access to water. Khanna met with the relatives of Amer Mohammad Saada Rabee, the 14-year-old Palestinian American from New Jersey who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in April. Other Palestinian residents, including American citizens, spoke of settlers destroying their cars and raiding their homes. The brother of Awdah Hathaleen, who was shot dead by the Israeli settler Yinon Levi in July 2025, told Khanna how he still sees Levi roam free as Israeli prosecutors mull whether to charge him. 

On Wednesday, the same day of the incident with Israeli settlers, Khanna’s group had been held up for more than an hour by Israeli officials in Masafer Yatta, where the Israeli government constructed a large metal gate on the only road in and out of the area. Khanna, who is Hindu and of Indian descent, said he has never been more acutely aware of his identity as when he was in Palestine, with Israeli guards constantly asking about his race and religion. 

Khanna — who is a ranking member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Innovation Technology, and Information Systems — urged other members of Congress, especially other ranking members in foreign policy committees, to also visit the West Bank in Palestinian-led visits. 

He said he would raise the issue of the settler incident with the State Department and his colleagues in Congress.    

“I am convinced that the most pro-Israel candidate — who may dispute my characterization of genocide by legal means, who may disagree with me in my belief of a Palestinian state, who may argue with me about Israel taking preventive measures, in their view, to minimize civilian casualties — even such a person, if they spent one day in the West Bank,” Khanna said, “if they visited the Palestinians side of Hebron, if they visited Um al-Khair, if they visited Palestinian towns and villages in Areas A and B, if they saw the settler’s outpost, they would conclude that it is apartheid, that it is unjust, that it is a perversion of Judaism in any form of civilized human existence.” 

The post Armed Israeli Settlers Detained Ro Khanna. He Wants Their Illegal Outposts Demolished. appeared first on The Intercept.

Warren Lyttle, who was in his 40s, died from his injuries after incident on the Braniel estate on Friday

A man in his 40s has died after falling from an Eleventh Night bonfire in Belfast, police said.

The incident occurred on the Braniel estate in the east of the city on Friday night.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 12, No. 1,127.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 12, No. 861.

By tying housing costs to immigration, Pauline Hanson promises a simple solution to a multilayered problem

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In the three decades since Pauline Hanson entered federal politics, Australia has experienced numerous bouts of voter frustration with the mainstream parties.

But it is only lately that the negative sentiment towards the majors has propelled One Nation to unprecedented polling numbers and delivered Hanson higher net approval ratings than the prime minister and opposition leader.

Anthony Albanese will deliver a landmark speech on AI this week as MPs are torn between attracting datacentre investment and protecting the rights of creatives

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When Anna Funder stood before a pack of journalists at Parliament House this month, she presented herself not just as a writer but also a “victim of crime”.

The Stasiland author was using the analogy to illustrate how technology companies have flagrantly “hoovered up” her literary works for their own profit.

Temperatures will stay above 30C on Sunday, with warnings of wildfires and heat health alerts in some areas

The scorching heatwave conditions experienced by much of England and Wales will last until at least next week, the Met Office has said.

Temperatures in parts of England and Wales will continue to exceed 30C on Sunday and into next week, the forecaster said.

Environmental groups want America's FCC "to slam the brakes on orbital datacenters," writes The Register. They're arguing for an environmental impact assessment for what could be 1 million satellites: Earthjustice, acting on behalf of DarkSky International, Environment America, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed a petition this week... The filing doesn't target any single company. Instead, it asks the regulator to put the entire emerging orbital datacenter sector on hold while it assesses the cumulative effects of proposals from SpaceX, Starcloud, Blue Origin, Cowboy Space, and any similar applications that follow. According to the petition, those proposals collectively seek "well over a million datacenter satellites" in low Earth orbit.... " increasing the existing volume of satellites in low-earth orbit by multiple orders of magnitude." The groups argue that the FCC is trying to apply licensing rules written for much smaller satellite constellations to an entirely new class of infrastructure. "If ever a situation warranted a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement [PEIS], it is this one," the petition says. It argues that a single review would allow the agency to examine "the risks, alternatives, needs, costs, and impacts of this sudden transformation of Earth's exosphere" before deciding whether any of the projects are in the public interest. The petition raises concerns about rocket launch emissions, pollutants released as satellites burn up during atmospheric reentry, depletion of the ozone layer, orbital debris, light pollution, impacts on wildlife, and interference with astronomy. It also argues that the combined effects of these constellations cannot be understood by evaluating applications one at a time.... "It is difficult to imagine a better example of multiple projects presenting essentially identical impacts and risks that compound synergistically and cumulatively than the present proposals..." The petition argues that the FCC's current approach, which generally treats satellite licenses as categorically excluded from detailed environmental review, is no longer fit for proposals measured not in dozens or thousands of spacecraft but in hundreds of thousands and, potentially, millions. If the FCC agrees, orbital datacenter operators will have a mountain of paperwork to clear before sending their hardware skyward.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commentary: Netflix's Worst Neighbor Ever is the latest true crime installment from Blumhouse, exploring riveting, heartbreaking real-life horror stories that hit close to home.

"Flexible, app-based scheduling lets large pools of part-time workers choose four-hour shifts and even select the type of work they prefer," writes long-time Slashdot reader Tony Isaac. While the system started during the pandemic when factories faced severe labor shortages, the model is now "supplying hundreds of trained workers each week... while giving people — from retirees to sidejob hustlers to longtime employees — control over their hours." NPR says it's attracting "people who may not be seeking a traditional career in the industry or even a 40-hour workweek," It's a change that manufacturers including Stanley Black & Decker and Georgia-Pacific are embracing... Today, in any given week, about 450 flexible workers — roughly half the pool — pick up shifts at the [GE Appliances] plant, with workers putting in an average of 24 hours a week. Their contributions have been key to GE Appliances' $180 million expansion of the Georgia plant, completed last year, which added 600 new jobs... [Darcy Duvall, the plant's director of human resources operations] has also come to see that many workers prize flexibility despite the significant trade-offs — like lower pay and almost no benefits. MyWorkChoice employees can opt into their own group healthcare plan, but few do... The flexible work option has also helped GE Appliances keep longtime employees with decades of experience on the job.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Letter from Democratic senator outlines more no-bid contracts and second botched reflecting pool redo

The US senator Sheldon Whitehouse has sent a letter to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts detailing allegations from whistleblowers that some renovations were “rushed” and federal contracting laws “were ignored” to get the center ready for events, including for Donald Trump to receive the Fifa “peace prize” during the World Cup draw he hosted there in December.

“I have received allegations that the Kennedy Center has conducted rushed renovation and maintenance work with disregard to its commitments to Congress and the federal contracting standards the Center has long applied to its own procurements,” the Rhode Island Democrat wrote in the letter dated Thursday.

As England prepared for their World Cup quarter-final against Norway, all the talk was about a round of golf 18 months before

The brilliant Cold War Steve is back with the latest of his special World Cup 2026-themed collages. Look closely!

More from Thomas Tuchel. Seize the day is his message.

In March, Anthropic's Claude "quietly deployed software to spy on China-based customers," reports the Washington Post — apparently to unmask Chinese rivals "suspected of hijacking its technology to make their own AI tools smarter." Last week Anthropic removed the spyware "after a software developer revealed its existence and privacy advocates criticized Anthropic, saying it had surveilled its own users." Anthropic's tracking code was designed in part to catch Chinese firms "distilling" its AI models, a technique that involves pressing a large, expensive AI system to serve as a tutor to a smaller, cheaper one. Asking the larger system huge numbers of questions — hundreds of thousands or more — generates responses that can be used to upgrade the power of the smaller one on the cheap. Distillation isn't illegal, and it has been used for years in the AI industry. But distillation without permission is against AI companies' rules, and, used effectively, is giving Chinese AI companies a major leg up, American AI companies say... Anthropic and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have both accused Chinese AI companies of using this technique to build copycat AI models of their own. In a May blog post, Anthropic said that Chinese companies' use of distillation, along with evading U.S. export controls on high-end computer chips, has allowed them to "trail closely" behind U.S. models. But if these techniques can be blocked, it might be possible for the United States to "lock in a 12-24 month lead" on Chinese capabilities, the company said... This month, Anthropic said in a letter to U.S. senators that was obtained by The Post that it uncovered a campaign in which Chinese tech giant Alibaba's Qwen AI team used roughly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to generate more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude to improve its own technology. In February, Anthropic made similar accusations against the Chinese firms Deepseek, Moonshot and MiniMax and said the campaigns were "growing in intensity and sophistication...." Anthropic and OpenAI have appealed to the U.S. government, arguing that distillation amounts to intellectual property theft that harms the U.S. in the geopolitical AI contest.... That Chinese AI labs are using U.S. models to improve their own technology appears beyond dispute. In a February 2025 study, researchers from China's Peking University and the state-funded Chinese Academy of Sciences developed methods to detect signs of distillation in leading large language models. They concluded that, with the exception of ByteDance's Doubao, most domestic models they tested showed substantial evidence of distillation, mostly drawing from U.S. models... In one set of intensive tests, a Qwen model misidentified itself as Claude nearly a third of the time, the Chinese researchers found. U.S. firms have also used distillation to piggyback on AI systems made by others. In 2024, OpenAI released a tool to make it easier for customers to distill its own models and produce data sets for AI training. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in court testimony in May that his AI company xAI used distillation to train its models and that the technique is common throughout the industry. The article also notes that Anthropic "said it has banned nearly 700,000 accounts that were using Claude in China." But the article includes this quote from Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution's China Center. "Anthropic's framing is that this is a geopolitical contest for basically the future of the world and freedom and democracy. It's that this is not just undercutting the U.S. commercially, but undercutting American strategic advantage in the most powerful technology we know today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 17,000 injured and thousands more listed as missing amid calls by president Delcy Rodríguez and UN for financial help

The death toll in Venezuela’s devastating twin earthquakes has passed 4,300, the government said on Saturday.

At least 4,333 people were killed and 16,740 injured in the back-to-back quakes on 24 June that flattened entire districts in the coastal state of La Guaira, the Venezuelan parliament chief, Jorge Rodríguez, wrote on Telegram. Thousands more people are listed as missing.

Ro Khanna said settlers were armed with US-made weapons and Israel Defense Forces refused to intervene

The US congressman Ro Khanna says armed Israeli settlers detained him during a visit to the Israel-occupied West Bank recently, describing the experience as a first-hand view of the realities faced by Palestinians living under occupation.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday from a Palestinian village, the progressive US House Democrat from California said his detention happened the previous day while his delegation visited an area of the southern West Bank that has experienced repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.

Colt Gray is scheduled to appear in Barrow County Superior Court on July 24 for a plea hearing, court documents show.

• Historic 11-under 60 sets LPGA major mark

• South Korean opens three-shot final-round lead

• Ryu chasing second major in three weeks

Haeran Ryu set the scoring record for LPGA majors on Saturday with an 11-under 60, giving the South Korean player a three-shot lead in the Evian Championship as she goes for a second straight major.

Two weeks after winning her first major at the Women’s PGA Championship, Ryu birdied four of her last five holes at Evian Golf Resort. She had a chance at tying the LPGA scoring record of 59 but settled for a lengthy two-putt birdie putt on the closing hole.

"We need you in the fight," says the American legal expert in privacy, surveillance, AI, and Internet freedom of speech who became the EFF's new executive director in March. As EFF celebrates the anniversary of its founding 1990, "Each headline is different, but they tell one story: Many of the threats that once seemed hypothetical are now reality, and EFF's work to ensure technology supports rights, justice, freedom, and innovation for all people has never been more critical." Governments and large corporations possess surveillance capabilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Ever greater concentrations of power are shaping speech, creativity, markets, and democratic institutions. Governments are increasingly seeking to control the internet and people's ability to access information and communicate freely. Our community's work is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives... These are perilous times. It is also a moment of extraordinary possibility. The future of AI has not been written and we can work together to get it right. We can make sure our laws reflect the needs of the modern digital age. We can build the technologies that empower rather than marginalize communities. For me, the work starts with recognizing that digital rights are not a siloed policy issue. We must fight and win on the digital terrain to organize, speak freely, access healthcare, find work, receive an education, and participate fully in democracy. We can and must reject a false choice between innovation and civil liberties, and build power across movements to make sure technology truly works for people... EFF's founders understood something remarkably prescient: Technology and civil liberties would become inseparable. Now we all live digital lives, and the important digital rights issues that EFF has worked on since 1990 have become kitchen-table issues all around the world. EFF's founders understood that how technology is built, developed, used, and controlled deeply intersects with rights, justice, freedom, and democracy. EFF's unique combination of world-class lawyers, activists, and public interest technologists pursue change simultaneously in the courts, legislatures, companies, and our communities, and pierce through false choices. This integrated, intersectional approach, grounded in deep legal, policy, and technical expertise, is a linchpin in fighting and winning against some of the most powerful forces in the world — both governments and trillion-dollar companies. We defend people against unlawful government data collection and challenge license plate and face surveillance in our communities. We shape AI law and policy to protect civil liberties and support creativity and innovation. We push companies to strengthen encryption, fight to ensure you have the right to own what you buy, and build public interest technologies like Privacy Badger and Certbot that millions of people rely on every day. This work matters because it all answers the same question: Will technology empower or control us? Major battles the executive director sees on the horizon" "Challenge increasingly sophisticated government and corporate surveillance systems that endanger our rights, democracy, safety and security." "Preserve strong encryption and online anonymity." "Ensure AI is developed and used in ways that respect fundamental rights and works for those who build it, use it, and are affected by it." "Confront the concentrations of power that limit access to new creativity and defend the rights of developers to build and innovate." "To meet these challenges, we must not only utilize the powerful levers of successful litigation, smart policy interventions, and effective public interest technology tools. We must also build a broader movement that recognizes that fights on the digital terrain are integral to all our fights for rights and justice... Together, our EFF community can help broaden the public conversation about technology's role in society and continue building the collective power necessary to shape the future rather than react to it.... "I'm looking forward to meeting more of you at my first EFFecting Change livestream on August 12 with Cory Doctorow, and hope this conversation is just the beginning of finding new ways to work together..." The blog post ends by noting that "We need you and others in the fight. Please renew your membership, become a recurring monthly supporter, and introduce someone new to EFF by snagging them a gift membership. "Everything we accomplish — every lawsuit, every policy victory, every public interest technology tool, every campaign — is possible because people like you are committed to ensuring technology strengthens freedom, privacy, creativity, and opportunity for everyone. "The future we want and need will be built by people and movements working together to ensure technology empowers rather than oppresses. "Let's build that future together."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Body of Nolan Wells, 18, found after he traveled to Horn Island over Fourth of July weekend with three white friends

A mother on Friday pleaded for anyone to come forward with information about what happened to ⁠her son, Nolan Wells, a young Black man whose body was found on an island off the coast of Mississippi after he traveled there over the Fourth of July weekend with three white friends.

“We just want ⁠to know what happened and ⁠why our baby ​didn’t come home,” Christine Wonsley, choking back tears, said at a news conference about her son.

Dave Portnoy founded "Barstool Sports" after quitting a sales job he hated and deciding to strike out on his own.

Jayden Adams' death was confirmed by South Africa's minister of sport, arts and culture on Saturday.

Congressman Ro Khanna said members of the Israel Defense Forces spoke with the settlers and moved a car to block the road.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the outbreak is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak recorded on the continent.

Errol Musk says far-right activist is ‘a fine young man’ and held meetings with Russian business figures

Elon Musk’s family foundation took Tommy Robinson to Russia, according to the billionaire X owner’s father, who was with the British far-right activist in Moscow as he encouraged anti-migration protests in Britain.

Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – appeared last month in Moscow, from where he issued calls for supporters to take to the streets after a knife attack in Belfast. He shared video of himself in a luxury Moscow hotel with the older Musk, whose son has been a vocal supporter of Robinson.

The subpoenas were issued after the New York Times reported on alleged security concerns with the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One.

Meta "said in a court filing on Monday that four states were seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties," reports Reuters, "over accusations the company designed its Facebook and Instagram platforms to addict young users and misled the public about their safety." Meta put forward the figure in its response to the attorneys general's filings on how penalties should be calculated if the states prevailed at trial. The number, which has not previously been disclosed and is close to Meta's market capitalization of around $1.5 trillion, comes ahead of an August trial in Oakland, California, over the claims brought by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey against the company. Meta said the amount was unsupported by the evidence. "A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement," the company said in the filing. "The plaintiffs' outlandish calculations have no basis in fact or law," the company said in a statement, adding that it would continue to defend itself against the states' demands. A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement the lawsuit "alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children. The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial in August...." Meta has denied the allegations, saying the attorneys general have no evidence it misled consumers about its platforms' alleged addictiveness because "social media addiction" is not an established psychiatric condition, and therefore statements that its platforms were not addictive could not be false... Last month, [U.S. District Judge] Rogers rejected Meta's bid to cancel the trial, saying there remained factual disputes over whether its social media platforms were addictive, whether Meta falsely denied it designed them that way, and whether it "partially" directed the platforms at children. "A further 14 states have brought claims under their own laws, which will be heard at a separate trial in February..." Thanks to Slashdot reader Sparkatron for sharing the article.

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Biden sued Patrick Byrne for defamation over claim that he sought bribe to lobby his father to free $8bn in Iran assets

A federal judge on Friday awarded Hunter Biden $1.7m in punitive damages in a defamation lawsuit he filed against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

Biden sued Byrne – a Donald Trump ally who denied the results of the 2020 election and funded efforts to overturn them – in 2023, accusing Byrne of lying in an interview that Biden had previously sought a bribe from Iran’s government in the fall of 2021.

Devon and Cornwall force now looking for suspect ‘believed to be a white male’ after man arrested on Friday was released without charge

Alison and Simon Gilbert, who have lived in in Haytor Vale for over a decade, said Ann Widdecombe was a well-known figure locally. Ms Gilbert told PA media:

She was a nice woman, really nice woman, and she had a great sense of humour. It’s a lovely area – you talk to strangers.

Everyone saw her as quite an opinionated politician, but to us she was just a person in the community.

I never met (Ann Widdecombe) although I’ve lived here all my life.

It’s tragic, someone gives all their life to public service and then they end like that.

The only thing cooler than an eclipse or a sunset is when both happen at once.

"Are you armed?!" the police officer screamed. "Get out of the car!" A writer for the car-news site The Drive describes how "a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement... led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl's parking lot in suburban Minnesota." After dropping off our Amazon returns, we'd just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in... The Plymouth Police Department had been tracking me for days using Flock license plate cameras, waiting for the right moment to strike, because they thought I'd stolen the Range Rover. And the reason I was ID'd as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California, creating an edge case within an edge case that Flock's AI camera network was unable to handle... "The plates on this car are stolen," Officer Ganshyn said... This made absolutely no sense. Car companies keep meticulous track of the fleets they loan out to the media. The vehicles all have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time one enters or exits... The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock's system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle... Flock's AI tech wasn't registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town... I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in [Range Rover manufacturer] JLR's media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure — 34 ## DTM — and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock's system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call. Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I'd probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: "You're lucky we're in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would've come at you with guns drawn." Ironically, even the original license plate wasn't stolen either, the article points out. It was reported misplaced during a Los Angeles photo shoot, and "The corporation had to report the plate as lost to law enforcement," according to the police report — and even then, the plate "was reported as NJ 34DTM instead of NJ 3403DTM." The author's conclusion? "Once these systems have you in their crosshairs, there's pretty much only one way it can go... A simple data-entry error, magnified and broadcast nationwide by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, led police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to take me down. I mean, they even had a drone flying overhead during the 'bust'... "Thank God our kids weren't with us." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

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Outlet said journalists subpoenaed to testify before grand jury after story detailed security concerns with Qatar-gifted plane

The Trump administration has issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists after the newspaper reported on security concerns with the president’s new plane, according to the outlet.

The Times said its journalists were subpoenaed on Friday by the US justice department to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan five days later, marking the latest effort by the Trump White House to compel testimony from journalists under the threat of penalty. Agents delivered some of the subpoenas to the Times reporters at their homes, the paper added.

The fire has scorched some 25 square miles of forest and farmland, about the size of Manhattan.

New Trump administration rules would undermine longstanding research practices. It’s death by a thousand cuts

A politician who aims to gradually privatize and ultimately destroy an institution funded by tax dollars – say, a public school system or public transportation network – may choose to do so by strategically disinvesting resources from that institution until it becomes barely functional, leading users to look elsewhere to meet their needs. Eventually, the user-base of the public system gets so low or frustrated that it seems reasonable to scrap the thing entirely, or re-direct public funds to private companies as contractors to provide the needed “service”. We’ve seen this strategy play out many times in states and city councils across America.

It appears that the endgame of the Trump administration’s attacks on science and the research funding ecosystem is similar: grant freezes and administrative disarray at federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), new layers of project review by political appointees hunting for forbidden keywords such as “disparity” and “marginalized”, and proposed new restrictions to make international collaboration difficult or impossible all point towards a world where it’s just too onerous to do federally-funded scientific research. Is the goal to make scientists simply give up on the endeavor?

Daniel Malinsky is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University

The president wooed farmers in his campaign, but now the USDA is yanking funding, citing ‘DEI’ and wasteful spending

It’s just an eighth of an acre, but for Lawrencia Rogers, the plot where she grows broccolini, lettuce and beans on land once tilled by poorhouse residents in eastern Iowa is the closest she has come to living her dream.

Iowa is one of the most agriculturally productive states in the country, but getting into farming is not easy, particularly for people like Rogers who have no family connections to the business. It’s nonetheless been a lifelong passion for the 33-year-old Iowan: at age six, she planted a rosebush that’s still alive today, and managed to grow cantaloupe on a strip of dirt and chain-link fence next to the driveway of her grandmother’s house.

• Adebayo and Herro involved in altercation

• Young unfazed by scrutiny over Wizards deal

• NBPA vows fight against second apron

Former Miami Heat teammates Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro had a brief verbal and physical altercation at a practice facility for the NBA’s Summer League in Las Vegas on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Adebayo struck Herro at least once during the encounter, said the person, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because neither player nor their teams revealed any details publicly.

A total of 22,141 fans wore the caps in London's Hyde Park on Friday ahead of his set at the British Summer Time festival.

The New Yorker writer's new book examines how, in 1898, white supremacists staged a coup against Wilmington, N.C.'s multi-racial government – a case study in the sabotage of American democracy.

Baseus' new 0.27-inch-thick PicoGo Air AM71 is a wireless magnetic power bank for iOS and Android phones. Here are my thoughts, along with a $30-off CNET-exclusive discount code.

Watchdog says public being put in danger by closure of premises that accommodate most dangerous offenders

Nearly one in ten probation hostels where England and Wales’ most dangerous offenders live after leaving prison have been closed after a staffing crisis.

As ministers prepare the early release of thousands of inmates in September, a leaked memo revealed that “staffing challenges” have led to temporary closures of the heavily-supervised “approved premises”.

Here are my recommendations for the Blu-ray player you should buy.

Another 20 people were rescued from a campground after a building collapsed due to heavy rain and flooding

Heavy rainfall and widespread flooding battered parts of Missouri on Friday, forcing the helicopter evacuations of more than 200 children and staff from a summer camp and the rescues of about 20 people who had moved to safety on a campground building that then collapsed.

With nearby roads washed away and more rain in the forecast, the children were trapped at Camp Taum Sauk in the small south-eastern community of Lesterville, according Sgt Eddie Young of the state’s highway patrol. The army national guard used Black Hawk helicopters to fly them to a nearby elementary school and reunite them with their families, he said.

The former ITV, BBC and Sky News journalist died peacefully at home in London on Saturday, his family say

The former BBC and Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan has died aged 68 after a “period of illness with prostate cancer”, his family have said.

The journalist, who was long a fixture on British TV screens, was also known for hosting the quizshow Eggheads.

Jenney Bitner feared she wouldn't get to see her children grow up after a tumor in her brain revealed she had Stage IV melanoma.

The names of those on board the plane have not been released by officials but members of Da Pond Band were among the dead, according to a source.

A landmark housing bill automatically became law overnight after President Trump declined to sign it.

The former US Senate candidate’s spectacular fall has upended the Maine Senate race and left voters fuming at the party

Almost exactly one year ago, Graham Platner, who has no political experience, was cherry-picked by out-of-state political activists.

According to a person familiar with the campaign, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who have made a name for themselves by recruiting populist candidates across the country, traveled to Maine and rented a house near Platner’s home in Sullivan to convince him to run for the US Senate. Throughout the process, Moraff became Platner’s “right-hand man”, the person described, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of backlash.

Stunning images captured by astronauts aboard Artemis II using a Nikon Z9 have now been used to help researchers learn more about astronomy.

Increase in sightings may not reflect increase in sharks with little evidence that threat to swimmers has risen

Experts say that despite recent increased investment in drones to monitor for sharks in states like New York, the machines have limited usefulness as a public safety tool and there does not appear to be evidence that the threat to swimmers from sharks has increased.

There have, however, been more reports of sharks around local beaches.

The senator’s health is shrouded in mystery after he was hospitalized. Why can’t we get a clear answer?

Is Mitch McConnell dead?

This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. The response is either “yes”, “no” or something along the lines of “he’s on life support but appears to be brain dead”.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Small busines owners say they’re being unfairly targeted – but disability advocates say violations must be dealt with

Rodrigo Nogueira was met with a surprise in April 2025 when lawyers contacted him out of the blue. They asked whether he needed legal assistance over a summons his restaurant received for violating Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

It was the first he had ever heard of it. The lawsuit listed 35 violations against No More Cafe, his restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village.

Vigilantes also took part in the fight that raged all night and the following morning, residents say

Nigerian soldiers killed more than 300 members of kidnapping and cattle bandit gangs in the north-western state of Zamfara this week, according to a government official.

Government troops targeted the gangs in Gummi district in a two-day operation that “led to the elimination of more than 300 terrorists”, Zamfara’s information commissioner, Mahmud Muhammad Dantawasa, said in a statement.

Ukrainian military said its air defenses shot down or suppressed two missiles and 111 drones, while Russia claims its forces targeted drone production facilities in Kyiv.

A federal judge on Friday agreed to dismiss the convictions of four members of the far-right Proud Boys group for their actions in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Exclusive: CCRC will test serial killer as part of inquiry into whether Michael Stone was wrongly convicted of 1996 murders

The serial killer Levi Bellfield will have his DNA taken in an attempt to establish if he murdered Lin and Megan Russell in 1996.

Michael Stone has protested his innocence since his conviction in 1998 for the killing of Lin, 45, and her daughter, six-year-old Megan, as well as a vicious attack on Megan’s sister Josie, nine, who survived.

Exclusive: Alarming shortfall of specialists stops about 4,000 procedures a day, many for patients in urgent need of surgery

The NHS is unable to perform 1.5m operations a year because of a drastic shortage of anaesthetists, a report reveals.

More than 8 million patients are on waiting lists across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Many are in urgent need of a surgical procedure.

Acting is about human connection across cultural and social divides. But we can’t expect much of that in the ‘Tillyverse’

Rejoice, cinema lovers. Tilly Norwood is back! Not familiar? I don’t blame you, as she’s not exactly a household name yet – though a fleet of well-fed publicists is certainly trying to rectify that. Tilly Norwood is an “AI actor”, as in, an actor that’s not actually an actor at all. Just a series of digital blobs and lines of code designed to resemble a young woman in the lucrative 18-to-49-year-old target demographic. Thus far, Tilly has lived exclusively in easily digestible social media clips and hyperbolic press releases about the “future of entertainment”. But now, “she” (I feel like a complete buffoon for assigning a gender to a computer program) is finally ready for the world of feature films. The company Particle6, which spat out this risible creation, announced that it has commenced development on a motion picture starring this very elaborate and expensive cartoon avatar.

The film, titled Misaligned, will see Tilly seduced by a rogue program into experimenting with human emotions – “desires, impulses, and ambition”, as described by Variety. The company claims that the film will be a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos”. I can’t help but wonder what resonance a “coming-of-age story” can have if the protagonist is a computer program that doesn’t understand the concept of time, ageing or mortality. Does Tilly Norwood understand the concept of a 24-hour day? Does “she” know the glorious warmth of a mid-afternoon sun? Has “she” ever forgotten to move her car because it’s street cleaning day on her block? Tilly Norwood, being an animated sprite, is neither “coming” nor “of age”. But then again, isn’t acting all about accessing experiences you’ve never had?

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

The ruthless gutting and reforming of the Department of Homeland Security has traumatized both workers and the most vulnerable immigrants

Federal officials tasked with implementing the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” program faced an extraordinary campaign of intimidation inside the Department of Homeland Security during the final months of Kristi Noem’s tenure and the arrival of her successor, a Guardian investigation found.

Over the past four months, the Guardian spoke with more than three dozen current and former Department of Homeland Security officials who described a climate of fear driven by Trump loyalists in senior positions, who sidelined or removed career officials who raised concerns about possibly illegal acts, and threatened termination or arrest in order to stop dissent. Several have also claimed they were subjected to polygraph examinations conducted by US military personnel.

The FCC has approved (PDF) Reflect Orbital's Earendil-1 test satellite, which will use a 60-by-60-foot mirror to reflect sunlight back to Earth after dark. "The reflected light from the satellite is supposed to span an area about 3 miles wide on the ground," reports PCMag. It comes despite objections from astronomers and environmental groups who are concerned that the satellites will unleash intrusive light pollution. From the report: The approval is only for one satellite, dubbed Earendil-1, which is meant to test Reflect Orbital's technology for shining sunlight back to Earth. The satellite will boast a steerable thin-film reflector measuring about 60 feet by 60 feet, with the goal of powering solar farms at night or illuminating disaster-struck areas after dark to help rescue teams. Reflect Orbital envisions operating over 50,000 satellites by 2035, effectively surrounding the Earth with a fleet of mirrors. The proposal has faced stiff pushback from environmental groups and astronomers who are concerned that the satellites will unleash intrusive light pollution. The opposition has been so strong that the FCC received over 1,800 public comments on the application, many of them objecting to Reflect Orbital's plan for Earendil-1. [...] [T]he FCC approved the satellite, noting the grant is only "for a single demonstration satellite" to test an innovative technology that could advance American leadership in space. "The Communications Act states that it is the policy of the United States to 'encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public,' and Reflect Orbital's demonstration satellite is an example of a potentially groundbreaking technology that the Commission has found is in the public interest to support," the order says. But on the most controversial aspect of the satellite, the FCC said the concerns around Reflect Orbital's solar reflector are "unrelated to the Commission's role in authorizing use of radiofrequency spectrum, and even if the Commission had authority to review and condition these operations (which it does not), these harms are unlikely to occur. In addition, the commission said that U.S. courts have blocked the FCC from using "a generalized public interest requirement beyond its statutory authority in regulating communications. Accordingly, the operations of a solar reflector in space would not be reviewed as part of the Bureau's public interest analysis." The regulator also noted that conducting an environmental review for the satellite went beyond its authority. Even if the FCC did have the power, the commission emphasized that the grant is for a single satellite, not 50,000. "The majority of these comments focus on a hypothetical plan to deploy tens of thousands of satellites, and those who argue the single satellite will harm the human environment do not demonstrate with specificity the potential harm will be caused by the single satellite, but rather rely on the same studies as the commenters objecting to a larger constellation," the FCC adds.

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Experts say there will still be opportunities ahead in everything from teaching to hotels and the law

Entering the world of work often brings some uncertainty, but now there is another question: how can I AI-proof my career?

We asked people from across various industries what they think the impact of AI will be on careers, and which jobs may be less affected. While it is still early days for the tech, many had ideas about how you can best prepare yourself for a successful career in this new world.

Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boom

Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.

In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France.

Last spring, President Donald Trump issued the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, taking aim at federal parks, monuments, museums, and sites that have cast the United States’s “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” On the Fourth of July this year, the White House published its 162-page “Saving America’s Story,” attacking the Smithsonian Institution directly for “anti-white activism,” “illegal alien activism,” “transgender activism,” and more broadly for adopting “an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”

“We’re in this moment where we are fighting over how America tells its past,” journalist Rebecca Nagle tells The Intercept Briefing. “It can be scary in a moment when it feels like the stakes are really high to really interrogate the myths that we all carry, that we all hold about who our country is and where it started because it’s really tempting to want to think, ‘OK, if we just wind the clock back 10 years, if we just go back a few election cycles, we’ll be back to a democracy that’s strong, that’s stable, that’s solid, and we’ll all be fine.’ It’s much more scary to say, ‘Oh, actually, if we want to talk about where authoritarianism comes from in the United States, it’s actually at the foundation.’”

As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday this year, the Trump administration has been ramping up its efforts to erase not just the dark parts of U.S. history but also the contributions of basically anyone who isn’t a white, Christian man. That project has included taking concrete steps to remove all traces of the history of people who don’t fit that description, Black people, immigrants, civil rights advocates, women and gay and trans people — including the first people to live on this land: Native Americans.

This week on the podcast, Nagle speaks to host Akela Lacy about her new podcast series “First America,” which examines how Native people have been largely written out of the American story, and how that story informs the current political crisis in the U.S.

“One of the big claims that the series makes is that the foundation is in itself is a myth. Because at the same time that our founders were building a democracy, they were also building an empire. The way that you govern an empire, the way that you govern other people by force, is not democratic,” says Nagle, a citizen of Cherokee Nation. “This identity crisis we’re having around authoritarianism and democracy, and how could authoritarianism be sneaking into our democracy — what we argue is that it’s actually always been there.”

“A lot of what is happening now — it’s not new, it’s not un-American, it’s not unprecedented. Sometimes it’s not even unconstitutional! It’s actually just taking these parts of our government that for a long time most Americans didn’t know was there or didn’t really think about, and Trump is just pulling it into the center,” says Nagle. 

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept. 

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this year. 

President Donald Trump kicked off festivities by hosting a UFC cage match on the White House lawn to also celebrate his 80th birthday. 

[Horns playing]

CBS: President Trump and UFC President and CEO Dana White kicked off the historic event that started with the national anthem and a joint Air Force and Navy flyover.

VO: From the south lawn of the White House. 

[Clip ends]

AL: Then there was Trump’s two-week-long Great American State Fair in D.C., which aside from the Fourth of July, ended up being a giant bust. 

[Clips montage]

MS Now: Donald Trump’s long-awaited Freedom 250 Great American State Fair went off with a whimper this weekend with what looked like tens, dozens of people showing up for the event. 

FT: Donald Trump has said that this event is packed with happy people loving it, but it is 6 p.m. in the middle of the week, and there is hardly anyone here. 

MS Now: This was the scene on Tuesday when there were actually more people in the band on stage than there were in the crowd watching them.

AL: Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been ramping up its efforts to erase not just the dark parts of U.S. history, but also the contributions of basically anyone who isn’t a white, Christian man. That project has included taking concrete steps to remove all traces of the history of people who don’t fit that description: Black people, immigrants, civil rights advocates, women and gay and trans people — including the first people to live on this land: Native Americans.

After reviewing nearly 2,000 flagged materials from National Parks and Monuments, The Guardian found that one Trump executive order resulted in the targeted removal of signs about “Native American history, slavery, the climate crisis, and the civil rights movement.”   

Native American history is already poorly understood or misunderstood in the U.S. A new podcast series called “First America” examines how Native people have been largely written out of the American story. Host and creator Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of Cherokee Nation, argues our current political moment is 250 years in the making.

[Clip plays]

Actor: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Nick Estes: The Declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered sentences and paragraphs about Enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it.

Actor: The merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages …

Nick Estes: If we don’t understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won’t understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself.

Rebecca Nagle: So, it’s been 250 years since 1776. How’s this democracy of ours going?

[Ambient sounds. Clip ends]

AL: Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning advocate and writer focused on advancing Native rights and ending violence against Native women. You might remember Nagle from her hit podcast “This Land,” which focused on treaty rights and tribal sovereignty in Oklahoma. She joins me now.

Rebecca Nagle, welcome to The Intercept Briefing. 

Rebecca Nagle: Thank you so much for having me.

AL: Before we jump in, I want to let our listeners know that we’re also going to drop the first episode of “First America” into our feed so you can listen.

Rebecca, you have a new podcast series out, called “First America.” In the first episode, you open with this scene where you and history professor Nick Estes visit Fort Snelling in Minnesota. It’s January 2026. Set the scene for us? Why did you start the series there?

RN: Nick is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and a historian. We were visiting Fort Snelling, which was a concentration camp in the 1860s during the Dakota Wars.

Dakota families were held there as actually part of a broader effort to force all Dakota people to leave the state of Minnesota, and that effort included death marches, it included open-air prisons, it included mass executions. It was extremely violent. We were there, actually, really to just see how the site talked about it.

The site doesn’t really know, it seemed like, how to integrate the history. There’s this giant replica for it that school kids visit that’s mostly celebrating the military history of the site. Then in this sort of tucked away corner, if you walk down a long, snowy path, there’s a memorial to the victims of this chapter of genocide.

The history of the fort is not really integrated in the way that Minnesotans tell the history at that site. While we’re there that day, Nick got a call from his wife that ICE had just shot and killed someone; it was the day that ICE killed Renee Good. The next day, I was actually back at Fort Snelling — this time not to visit the historic fort, but actually for a protest.

Related

“Uptick in Abductions”: ICE Ramps Up Targeting of Minneapolis Legal Observers

So where ICE is headquartered in Minneapolis is on the Fort Snelling campus. There’s the historic fort, but then there’s this broader Fort Snelling campus. ICE is there because it’s federal land, and it’s federal land because it was once a military reservation. So what you see is the federal government doing the same thing — rounding people up and detaining them — in the same place.

When I first started this project, I thought I was just making a history podcast. I thought I was talking about the founding and how Native people have been left out of that story and correcting the record. The project actually started as conversations between me and Nick about how Native people are left out of American history and the American story.

And then this thing kept happening where I would be somewhere learning about America’s past, and the same thing would happen in our present. What I realized is that this history — that as a country we don’t know how to talk about, that we haven’t reckoned with — the history that we keep in a memorial that’s tucked away in a corner, that history is why the present moment is happening.

AL: I also want to mention for our listeners, Nick Estes has written some really great reporting for The Intercept, which I encourage people to check out. 

We’re talking about your series a few days after the Fourth of July weekend, and the United States is still celebrating its 250-year birthday which dates back to, obviously, the Fourth of July signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a document which you dive into in the podcast.

But I will quote for our listeners who might not have it on hand. The Declaration reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” while also describing Native Americans as “merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

It’s well known that this and many other contradictions exist in our founding document, but why was this important for you to underscore here? What does it tell us both about our history, but also about today?

Rebecca Nagle: One thing that is important is the meaning of the word “savages,” and what does it mean for our founders to call Native people savages?

We all know the part of the Declaration of Independence that we’re taught in school — that all men are created equal; life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. But alongside those Enlightenment ideals, the founders included really their deep hatred for Indigenous people. The word “savages” has a really specific meaning in the late 1700s, which is that there are societies and groups of people that are seen as civilized, as deserving of human rights, and then there are people that are something less than human, and those are savages.

It’s a term that at the time carries a lot of meaning, and the founders are saying, “We’re not going to extend these Enlightenment ideals to these Indigenous people, to these savages.” The other reason that it’s really important is because it was important to our founders, right?

This isn’t just a throwaway line in the Declaration of Independence. Many historians think that the Declaration of Independence has an order. A lot of people, we know the preamble, but we don’t actually know what the majority of the document is. So the majority of the document is just this long list of grievances, and it’s basically the founders’ reasons for why they’re rebelling against the Crown.

A simple way I like to explain it is that it’s almost like a breakup letter — at least like a bad breakup, where you tell the person everything that they did wrong. The founders are doing that to King George, where they’re just like, “And you were a jerk, and you left your laundry everywhere.” It’s kind of like that list.

A lot of historians think that that list has an order and that it starts with smaller things and then ends with the things that the founders were most upset about.

The last grievance — the 27th grievance — is this line about “merciless Indian savages,” and there’s a whole history to why that line is in the document.

That history tells us a different story than the one we’ve all grown up knowing: It was about taxation and representation, and this is why the Revolution happened. This is what the founders were fighting for. What we see in that last grievance and the history behind it is that actually one of the main motivating factors for the Revolution itself was hunger for more Indigenous land.

The colonists wanted to expand west. The king of England was telling them no. They were really angry about that. They did a lot of different things, but they also put that anger in the Declaration of Independence. To me, it just goes to how deeply Native people are erased from the American story. It’s not like you have to rifle through Thomas Jefferson’s personal papers to be like, “Oh, look here. He said here in this journal that he was mad about Indigenous people.” They put it right there in our country’s most famous document. But somehow as Americans, we don’t know this story.

AL: We’re talking about this in the U.S. particularly when it comes to the “founders.” As you mentioned, most people don’t know that the first president, George Washington, was a land speculator interested in seizing Indian land. Can you tell us a little bit more about that history?

RN: For people who don’t know, and it’s not just George Washington, a lot of the gentry men of this era —

AL: The good men.

RN: — are involved in this business called land speculation. Actually George Washington’s family did it. It was a pretty well-established practice. But basically what they would do is they would buy land that either England and then later the United States claimed in this racist, abstract way where they would sail somewhere and plant a flag and be like, “This is our land.” But it’s still governed and controlled on the ground by Indigenous people.

They would buy that land, and then like a modern-day real estate developer would flip it, they would flip it. Once Indigenous people were forced off that land, they would sell the land to settlers for a profit. Sometimes they would sell the land while Indigenous people were still living there.

What happened is in the 1760s, there was this Indigenous uprising where a group led by an Odawa chief named Pontiac sacked a bunch of British forts.

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So Britain, in a very loose way, claims all this land in the Great Lakes region. The way they claim that land on the ground is by having these forts; they’re these military outposts. And Indigenous nations sack a bunch of them.

The Crown is looking at fighting a very expensive war in North America. It’s just been fighting this big global war, sometimes called the French and Indian War, sometimes called the Seven Years’ War, and it’s broke — the Crown is broke. It doesn’t want to fight another war with Indigenous nations. What the Crown does is it makes this line, this proclamation, issues a royal proclamation, and that royal proclamation draws a line basically down the Appalachian Mountains, and it tells settlers, colonists: “You can live to the east of this line, but everything to the west is reserved for Indigenous nations.”

And what we have is George Washington telling his kinda business guy, “Hey, ignore the proclamation and continue to buy land and speculate in land west of the King’s boundary. We’re not going to follow this law.” We know that the elite didn’t like the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and it also upset regular folks too who felt entitled to more Indigenous land out west.

AL: You’re talking about this project as a way to correct the record, as you said, when it comes to U.S. history and Native peoples. It brings to mind another effort by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones who published “The 1619 Project,” recasting the way we understand how slavery shaped the founding of the country.

There was a massive backlash to that project. I’m curious, have you gotten any pushback on this series in that vein?

RN: Not to the extent that “The 1619 Project” did, by a long shot. 

AL: It would be hard to replicate that. 

RN: Yeah, I also just think we don’t have the visibility of The New York Times. It’s a different cultural moment. There have been a few right-wing websites that have criticized the podcast and perhaps there’ll be more. We’ll see what happens. 

What I will say, broadly speaking, is that we’re in this moment where we are fighting over how America tells its past. That fight is really important, which is also why projects like “The 1619 Project” are really important and are definitely an inspiration for the work we’re doing with First America.

But I think that the fight over who we are as a country, where we come from, how we started — that fight is so bitter because so much power flows from the stories that we tell ourselves. The stories that we tell ourselves as a country about who we are and where we come from, I believe, really shape public policy and public sentiment, and how we have these conversations around law, around equity, today.

What I will say as a Native person is what I often feel like I experience is both sides leaving us out. So we’re left out of the “America was great, 250, rah, rah, rah, the founders were perfect” version of the story, because obviously genocide doesn’t fit easily into that version. But we’re also left out of the more progressive side, too — things like the No Kings protest, or this idea of wanting to go back to this democratic foundation.

One of the big claims that the series makes is that the foundation is in itself is a myth. Because at the same time that our founders were building a democracy, they were also building an empire. The way that you govern an empire, the way that you govern other people by force, is not democratic. So this identity crisis we’re having around authoritarianism and democracy, and how could authoritarianism be sneaking into our democracy — what we argue is that it’s actually always been there. I don’t think people, on both sides of the aisle, I feel like most people aren’t having that conversation.

[Break]

AL: There are a lot of people — similar to the critics of “The 1619 Project” — there are a lot of people out there who might brush off efforts to look into the past, as you’ve mentioned, or say they’re not reflective of how much progress has been made since then on things like racial equality or civil rights.

As you’ve said, this is a history that is uncomfortable for people that they don’t want to talk about. But what’s your response to someone, including potentially people among our listeners, who might have that perspective?

RN: I’ll just give one example. So there’s been a lot of talk around presidential war powers and what power the president has to go to war, to bomb another country without congressional oversight.

There’s been a lot of moments of controversy in Trump’s second term: bombing boats in the Caribbean, abducting the leader of Venezuela, the war with Iran. A lot of people have said, “Oh, the president really shouldn’t be able to do this without congressional approval, without a formal declaration of war.”

The first undeclared war that the U.S. fought was fought under the George Washington administration in the late 1700s. It was a war with Indigenous nations. That war is not only precedent for why presidents can fight wars without congressional oversight, but is also why we have such a big military, is why we even have a central military. At first, we didn’t actually really have a big standing army, and the founders didn’t want one. It also is a big part of why the wars that the U.S. fight is plagued by human rights abuses.

So for people who want to say, in kind of a vague way of, “Oh, we shouldn’t be talking about history. We should be focused on the present” — I don’t think we can understand where we are as a country and how we got here without understanding where we came from. I actually think that so much of our current political crisis is from us not really knowing how our country started, and really what the full structure and character of our government is.

AL: On a similar note, you explore in the series how Native Americans have been erased and left out of the 250-year history of the United States. This has long been the case, as you lay out time and time again, absence in museums, cultural sites, National Parks, et cetera.

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Now we’re living under a president who wants to further erase that history. Why does Donald Trump want to try to further erase Native history, and what does he get out of it? What does anyone get out of that?

RN: I am not an expert in authoritarianism and fascism. We talk about it in relationship to colonialism in the podcast, but what I will say is that an important part of those types of leadership is having a very specific kind of national narrative.

What you see happening right now, whether it’s banning books, changing curriculum, taking down signs at National Parks, is really this effort to have a very specific type of image of the United States and a very specific kind of national narrative that aligns with people’s political goals.

It can be scary in a moment when it feels like the stakes are really high to really interrogate the myths that we all carry, that we all hold about who our country is and where it started because it’s really tempting to want to think, “OK, if we just wind the clock back 10 years, if we just go back a few election cycles, we’ll be back to a democracy that’s strong, that’s stable, that’s solid, and we’ll all be fine.

It’s much more scary to say, “Oh, actually, if we want to talk about where authoritarianism comes from in the United States, it’s actually at the foundation.” That’s really scary to think about, but it’s really important because if we don’t understand how deep it goes, we actually won’t be able to root it out.

It’ll be like chopping the head off of a weed; it’ll just grow back stronger. And I actually think we already saw that between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. We did the thing where we all voted, Trump was out of office. It was really scary — didn’t look like maybe there would be a peaceful transition of power.

Then the second administration has actually been stronger than the first, and accomplished, I would say, more of their goals. It’s really important for us to get really specific if we want to defeat authoritarianism in America, for us to get really specific about where it comes from, and that process is going to be, for all of us, interrogating some of the myths that we hold about the United States and about U.S. democracy.

AL: Something that’s interesting about this is the question comes up, OK, what is so horrifying about conceding that the founders were calling Indian savages, viewing people as less than human, owning slaves, fighting to keep themselves in the same socioeconomic class at whatever cost? And part of it is potentially that if living in the U.S. today is a product of a document that was rooted in authoritarianism, then do we know what authoritarianism looks like?

Obviously, we didn’t stop it, right? Because we’re now in Trump 2.0, and I think that it’s like we can confront all of these other horrific things in the world day in and day out, like how is this still a conversation that we’re having?

RN: The story we’ve been told about American democracy, it has been ingrained in us so deeply. Then at the same time, the other thing that’s been ingrained in us so deeply is the erasure of the people that our government colonized. We erase what our government did to Native people. Where we do talk about it, it’s in passing mention.

We also erase what our government did to places like Guam and Puerto Rico and the Philippines. So we have this long history of our government ruling through force, like taking over other people’s land by usually through extreme violence and military control.

It’s not just that we did that and it went away — we built a government to do that. We built departments and secretaries and methods and technologies and got better at it as we did it more, really to pull it apart is to see that at the same time that our founders were building a Constitution for themselves, they called it an empire of liberty, but they were also building an empire and an arm of the American government that did not operate with elections, that did not operate through consent, that did not have due process or freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

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At different times in U.S. history, the U.S. federal government has controlled where Native people can live, where Native people can even move their bodies, how we raise our children, if we can have children, what languages we can speak, what religion we can practice, what food we can eat — all against our will. That’s not democracy. Again, you can call it colonialism, you can call it empire, but it’s government by force, which is also another way to say authoritarianism.

What we have to pull apart in this moment is understanding how deep that goes. This is really from the scholarship of a legal scholar that we talk to pretty extensively in the podcast named Maggie Blackhawk, who is at NYU and is Ojibwe.

But what we’re seeing in the present moment is these practices of our government around how much power the president has, how much power the courts have to intervene, that have built up over time. Now we have someone like Trump in office, and oops, we gave the president a ton of power over war when we were fighting Indigenous nations. We gave the president a ton of power over things like the military and foreign affairs.

A lot of what is happening now — it’s not new, it’s not un-American, it’s not unprecedented. Sometimes it’s not even unconstitutional! It’s actually just taking these parts of our government that for a long time most Americans didn’t know was there or didn’t really think about, and Trump is just pulling it into the center.

AL: You’ve given a couple of examples of this, but I wonder if you can zoom out a little bit and connect the dots a bit more on how, as you’ve put it, the specific Native part of our history helps to explain the current political crisis.

RN: Again, this is from the scholarship of Maggie Blackhawk, who’s Ojibwe and her work is amazing. 

I’ll tell a story. The same summer our founders were drafting the Constitution in Philadelphia; at the time New York is where Congress met, the Congress at the time. A bunch of people actually leave the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia so Congress can have a quorum in New York.

So you’ve got these two meetings happening at the same time. In New York, Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance to govern an area that’s like Ohio to Minnesota. It’s like the Great Lakes region. The founders actually call this area America’s first colony, and they’re going to govern it like a colony.

The person who oversees the colony is appointed, is not elected. There aren’t elections, even for the white people — it’s majority Native — but even for the white people who are living there, they don’t have elections. They don’t have a representative in Congress. It’s not democracy the way that we would think about it.

It’s top-down government. That’s how we’ve ruled every territory as we stretch from sea to shining sea, and then as we stretch from the Philippines and Guam and Puerto Rico, and as we governed big, huge swaths of area that way. This isn’t a small subset of the United States. Under Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, two-thirds of the land mass of the United States was governed by unelected appointed leaders.

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The way that we governed those areas built up certain practices. It’s a big legal term, it’s called plenary power. But it basically built up a stronger president. These are areas where the president could get away with a lot and kinda do what the president wanted. It’s an area where also the courts have this tradition of saying, “Ah, like this isn’t really our business. We’re not going to intervene. We’re going to defer.” There are also areas where constitutional rights don’t apply as much. Native people were the first example of that. We’re the first example where we developed some of these areas of laws, but then it’s been applied to other groups of people. It’s been applied to places like Puerto Rico and Guam; it’s been applied to immigrants. What we’re seeing right now is it getting applied to everybody.

The other thing that’s happening is that the Trump administration is pushing on some of these weaknesses in our democracy. You can see that in the controversy over war powers. You can see that in the birthright citizenship case. Even in the fund for like January 6th defendants, part of the precedent for that fund comes from settlement funds with tribes that had been established under previous presidents.

The way I think about it is what our government did to Native people, it set up these fault lines in our democracy, and what we’re living through right now is the earthquake — those fault lines moving everything around to where it feels like it’s going to fall apart. There are these very concrete ways — whether it’s birthright citizenship, detaining migrant families, the war in Iran, threatening to annex places like Greenland or Canada or Panama — that actually come from this long colonial history in the United States that I think as Americans we’re not used to seeing.

We have this knee-jerk reaction as a public of “This is unconstitutional. This is unprecedented. This is un-American.” You heard that a lot around the ICE surge in Minneapolis of “This is unprecedented.” It’s not the first time a president has sent federal troops to the land that is now Minnesota to round people up and remove them. We’ve actually done that before as a government, and we never went back and said, “Oops. That’s bad. We don’t want to do that. That is against our values as a democracy. That’s dangerous.” It’s no surprise that a lot of that history is repeating itself.

AL: You have alluded to your answer to this question several times already, but I’m going to ask you directly. Knowing that you are not an expert in authoritarianism, but you’ve raised the question in the podcast, are we really a democracy? Can you give us your answer?

RN: I think we’re both.

AL: Sorry, both meaning authoritarianism and democracy?

RN: Yeah! I think there’s parts of our government that are democratic, and I think there are parts of our government that are authoritarian. Like a lot of empires, we thought we could keep those things separate. That we could have colonialism over there, and democracy over here. That we could rule this group of people by force, and we could rule this group of people by consent. But history tells us that’s not how it works, and what we’re seeing right now is those things come together.

There’s this theory of where authoritarianism comes from that actually became popular at the end of World War II as a way to explain the rise of fascism in Europe. What theorists said is, why are you surprised about the violence and the horrors of World War II and Nazi Germany when Europe has been doing these things to colonized people across the globe? Germany committed genocide in Africa before it committed genocide in Europe.

This theory is called the boomerang of empire, and the idea, like in the way that you throw out a boomerang and it comes back to you, is that colonialism works the same way. We oftentimes think about colonialism as just impacting the people who are colonized. So we think of the terrible history of what our government did to Native people as just impacting Native people, that’s the bad thing that happened to Native Americans.

But it changed our government. It changed the structure of our government permanently, indelibly. What we’re seeing in this moment is those arms of our government that we thought could be authoritarian towards some people coming back home and coming back to impact everybody.

AL: Speaking of that, this is an apt transition.

I want to pivot to some current issues affecting Native communities. Donald Trump is pushing Republicans to pass the so-called SAVE Act, which even members of his party have said is dead on arrival. This is a bill to require people to prove their citizenship in order to vote, an extremely restrictive measure that’s being compared to the controversial Arizona “Show Me Your Papers” bill.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Sunday that the House would pass the SAVE Act “one more time” through budget reconciliation despite that process holding many potential pitfalls, even for his own caucus. If passed and enacted, even though it’s a long shot, how would this legislation impact Native voters?

RN: Not everybody has the kind of documentation that the bill would require. It requires people to have things like a birth certificate or a Social Security card. A lot of folks just don’t have those papers, and getting them isn’t always easy and is sometimes also very expensive.

AL: Apparently, there’s more than 21 million Americans who do not have either their birth certificate or passport. Apparently, there’s half of Americans who don’t have a passport.

RN: It’s important that Native people have access to the vote. It’s essential, and it’s something that Native people have been fighting for a very long time. There are also times that our ancestors were fighting not to be U.S. citizens, and there are times that citizenship was the carrot and the stick was assimilation. The promise of citizenship was used to take more land. So that’s how my great-grandfather became a U.S. citizen, through the privatization and then the eventual taking over of Native land — of Cherokee land — by white settlers.

When we think about the weaknesses of our democracy, we think that voting and inclusion and equality are how we fix those weaknesses. That doesn’t actually fix colonialism. If your government is an invading army, you don’t want to vote in the invading army’s next election if they just burned your village to the ground, right? You want them to leave your land. That’s the demand that generations of Native people made, was not for citizenship, was not for voting, but was for us to have our own land, our own territory, our sovereignty intact.

In this moment, the crisis that we’re facing, because it has these roots in colonialism, we have to think bigger than just, how do we protect the vote. We have to ask some of these harder questions like why does the president have so much power to bomb another country without more oversight? What are we doing when we bomb school children in another country? How can we call ourselves a democracy and do that, right? How are we holding people — who the only thing that they did is live in the United States without papers — how are we holding them without due process? Those are questions that we also have to ask.

That whole voting election thing isn’t the only thing that’s breaking down right now. And if we only have that conversation, we’re not going to catch some of these other problems, if that makes sense.

AL: Are there any other major takeaways from the reporting that you’ve done that you want to mention that I haven’t asked you about yet?

RN: One of the things we talk about in the podcast is the Revolutionary War itself. In the United States, we have this very neat and tidy way we like to talk about the war, where it’s the colonists against England. We get to be David, England is Goliath. They’re bigger, they’re more powerful, but we’re brave, and we fight hard, and we beat them.

That’s not the full story of the Revolutionary War because it was also a sprawling conflict over who would control land in North America. Indigenous nations fought on both sides of that conflict. Also to stake out their claim, the U.S. was willing to commit some very extreme acts of violence.

My own ancestors experienced scorched-earth campaigns from colonial militias in Cherokee Nation, where about half of Cherokee villages were burned to the ground. During one of those campaigns, the militias purposely waited until it was too late in the growing season for the corn to be replanted to then invade and burn the fields of corn to the ground so that people would starve. They burned food storage. They took time to chop down fruit orchards and destroy fruit orchards so even when people returned, we wouldn’t have our fruit trees and that source of food. That was how much they wanted to destroy our way of life. 

The Haudenosaunee was a powerful confederacy further to the north, in what is today New York state. Part of the confederacy sided with the British, and as punishment for that choice, George Washington ordered a scorched-earth campaign against the Haudenosaunee, which was later known as Sullivan’s campaign. That’s the name of the general who led it. 

The general took about a third of the Continental Army — this wasn’t some small campaign. It was a huge effort. They burned about 40 Haudenosaunee villages to the ground, and historians estimate that between direct killing, but then also exposure and malnutrition that winter, that about half of the population died. And so when we talk about the Revolutionary War, we really have to change the way that we tell the story of that war because it was also a campaign of genocide.

In the podcast, I talk about the history of that war, and then I’m trying to ask if this is how American democracy began, what does that mean? If this is the war that started our country, what does that even mean for our democracy? And where I get to is the stuff that we’ve been talking about, where a part of our government has always functioned through force and not elections and consent and due process and all these things that we hold dear. Oftentimes, that force was extreme violence because people don’t let you control their lives just because you ask nicely. You take over other people’s lands and territories, often only through extreme violence, and that’s how the U.S. government began.

AL: That is a fitting place to wrap up our conversation. Rebecca Nagle, thank you so much for joining us on The Intercept Briefing. We are excited to listen to the forthcoming episodes of “First America.”

RN: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

AL: Is there an issue you’re concerned about and what to see more reporting on? Let us know. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com or leave us a voicemail at 530-POD-CAST, that’s 530-763-2278.

That does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. 

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners find our reporting.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post Rebecca Nagle on the Boomerang of Empire  appeared first on The Intercept.

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“Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control ⁠over whether their public content could be referenced in this way,” Meta said in a statement.

The airfare for a baby on your lap could cost more than your own ticket. Here’s how airline charges and travel taxes can hit you

Ryanair recently stopped making parents pay to sit next to their children but depending on the airline the hidden extra costs involved in flying with children can be substantial. In some cases, you can even end up spending more for the baby on your lap than you paid for your own flight.

Your baby might not need a seat, but you are still likely to pay fees for them to travel. Some airlines offer discounts for children over two, while others whack families with the cost of a full-grown adult.

Plans specify tolls must not be compulsory as US officials urge Iran to make public guarantee of safe passage for shipping

Europe is studying proposals that could allow navigation fees to be charged in the strait of Hormuz, provided the payments are not compulsory and have the support of the UN agency that regulates maritime transport.

Britain’s deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said imposing mandatory tolls would be disastrous. But some cabinet colleagues said they recognised that payments for specific navigational services were permissible in many natural waterways, including the strait of Malacca and the English Channel.

President says he would refuse to sign housing bill without passage of voting legislation, but without veto it will still become law

A major housing bill has automatically become law without Donald Trump’s signature, after the president said he would refuse to sign the legislation because Congress has not approved new restrictions on voting nationwide.

The measure, known as the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, is the biggest change to federal policy for buyers, renters and homebuilders in decades, and Congress approved it with large margins last month after lengthy negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.

The people of Bryne are proud of local hero’s rise to the top of world football as Norway prepare to face England

Surrounded by red hats, No 9 shirts and Erling Haaland action toys at her fabric shop in the small Norwegian town of Bryne, Olinda Haaland – no relation but proud to share the now world-famous name – said everybody in the striker’s home town was a football fan these days.

“It’s been pure joy,” she said of her namesake’s rise to the top of world football. “We all love him so much and he’s doing so much for Bryne.”

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Apple on Friday accused OpenAI of stealing secrets about products still in development, setting up a legal face-off between two of the world's biggest tech companies. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the consumer tech giant said that OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence that has a new hardware business, had asked job candidates from Apple to share details about secret projects and to bring device components and prototypes to their interviews. Apple also accused an OpenAI employee of downloading internal documents from a laptop owned by the iPhone maker. OpenAI used the confidential information to approach Apple's manufacturing partners, including asking one partner to demonstrate Apple's technique for finishing metal on its devices, the lawsuit says. Apple sent a letter to OpenAI in February to raise concerns that confidential information could be "making its way to OpenAI's business improperly," according to the suit. OpenAI did not respond, Apple said. "OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets," Apple wrote in its lawsuit. [...] In its lawsuit Friday, Apple accused Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a former Apple executive, of coaching his hires from Apple on how to evade Apple's security processes for departing employees. Apple accused another former employee, Chang Liu, of using a former colleague's Apple-owned laptop to access and download technical documents while working at OpenAI. Mr. Liu told that Apple employee what information about unannounced products she should study before job interviews, Apple said. Mr. Liu also planned to access internal documents through an Apple-owned laptop that he didn't return when he left the company, according to the lawsuit. OpenAI had misled the manufacturing company it approached to learn about the metal finishing technique to believe it had Apple's permission to view it, according to the lawsuit. Apple is seeking an injunction that would prevent OpenAI from possessing, using or sharing Apple's trade secrets, as well as an order requiring OpenAI to return Apple's intellectual property.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 1.5-mile-long bridge, which spans the Detroit River and connects the Motor City with Windsor, Ontario, is expected to open on July 27.

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The Trump administration plans to erect new fences outside the White House, in the latest bid to boost presidential security, the Washington Post (paywall) reports, citing three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans.

According to the people, the White House and Secret Service would be able to close the new fences, planned where Pennsylvania Avenue intersects 15th and 17th streets NW, and prevent pedestrian access in front of the White House if they determine there are security risks.

Judge says he’s granting request to dismiss prosecutions even though request is clearly based not on facts or the law

A federal judge nominated by Donald Trump during his first term reluctantly agreed on Friday to grant the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions against leaders of the Proud Boys who were convicted by a jury of serious crimes during the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021.

The US district judge Timothy Kelly noted in a seven-page memorandum that the Proud Boy leaders Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were all convicted of multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy, and a fourth member of the group, Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assaulting an officer and “breaking a Capitol window, thereby helping to create the first entry point through which hundreds of rioters streamed into the building”.

NT police release body-worn camera vision of Bradley John Murdoch denying knowing where UK backpacker’s body is weeks before his death

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Infamous killer Bradley John Murdoch aggressively denied knowing where the body of still-missing backpacker Peter Falconio was during a police interview weeks before he died.

NT police released body-worn camera vision of the interview on Saturday, days before the 25th anniversary of the killing of the 28-year-old British man on the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek, in July 2001.

This week's guests include White House border czar Tom Homan and retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, president of The Citadel and former commander of U.S. Central Command.

Roman Butzlaff brought together a group of neighbors who say they would have barely known each other if not for a little boy, who lived in a neighborhood but needed a village.

Workers observed draining water from Lincoln Memorial pool plagued by algae blooms and peeling paint

Crews were observed Friday draining the plagued Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, a landmark at the heart of Donald Trump’s mission to beautify Washington DC.

Interior secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, told conservative podcaster Katie Miller in an interview released earlier this week that the new round of draining was planned. He also said that the water might still contain debris from an extensive Independence Day fireworks display over the National Mall.

The decision to suspend the pilots quickly led to backlash online and drew the attention of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The White House wants Iran to publicly acknowledge that shooting at the ships was a mistake.

Three men who witnessed a fatal shooting involving federal immigration officers in Houston say no officer was threatened, a lawyer who has spoken with them said.

Graham Platner had until 5 p.m. on Monday to formally suspend his campaign or he would remain on the ballot in November.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Inside Higher Ed: For the first time since he started teaching Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory nearly two decades ago, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his students a take-home midterm this spring. Quite a few students had expressed anxiety about being in a classroom after a gunman killed two students and injured nine in a December mass shooting at Brown, and so "it was appropriate," he said, to allow students to take their exams at home. But by the end of the semester, Serrano regretted the decision. Dozens of students in the class likely used artificial intelligence to cheat and earn perfect or near-perfect scores on their midterm, he said. Serrano in turn made the final exam in-person, which led more than a dozen students to drop the course and even more to fail it. Administrators' response to the widespread cheating event has been "meek," he said, and the incident has raised questions about how universities can -- and should -- respond to AI-enabled cheating at scale. "I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong," he wrote. "That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly." Serrano heard crickets from his students, but 18 of them subsequently dropped the class. Nine students remained enrolled but did not take the final exam. And Serrano said the results proved him right; three students earned a zero, and the average score on the final was 48.6 percent -- by far a historic low, he said. Previously, the average final exam score had never dropped below 65 percent. Only a few students scored similarly to how they did on the midterm.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, a British citizen of Zimbabwean heritage, was arrested on Friday in Kensington, Johannesburg.

Suit claims OpenAI poached Apple workers, coaxing them to share confidential material in bid to create hardware

Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday alleging the artificial intelligence firm stole company trade secrets in a move to create its own hardware device.

The suit claims OpenAI poached Apple employees, coaxing them to hand over confidential material, product designs and other tightly held information.

Habitat destruction strongest driver of species loss, with legislation keeping 99% of listed species from going extinct

The Trump administration repealed a crucial part of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on Friday, finalizing a new rule that will open habitats of imperiled wildlife to development, logging, mining and other uses.

For the last 50 years, the landmark environmental law included a broader understanding of the word “harm”, which ensured that not just the plants and animals themselves were protected but also the places that are critical to their survival. The inclusion of habitat in the “harm” definition was upheld by the supreme court in 1995, which ruled in support of old-growth forest protections relied on by endangered spotted owls.

Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, alleging the AI company has stolen the iPhone maker’s trade secrets to develop its own yet-to-be-unveiled AI gadgets.

In the suit, filed in the District Court of Northern California, Apple accuses OpenAI of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.

↫ Lisa Eadicicco and Hadas Gold at CNN

I find this about as interesting and watching artificial grass grow, but with the common wisdom being that Apple is behind on “AI”, it was honestly only a matter of time before the lawsuits came. After all, that’s usually what companies who can’t win in the market do. At the very least this will give corporate tech news websites a whole slew of new material.

I just hope they both implode. We’d all be better off for it.

Redox did the develop cools stuff thing again for a month, so we’ve got progress to talk about. This past month, GTK3 has been ported to Redox, as well as the Tcl programming language. Support for per-window fractional scaling has been added to Orbital, Redox’ desktop environment, but it’s still relatively limited for now. There’s also new USB gamepad support, which already works in quite a few emulators, as well as details about how Redox intends to improve its support for running in a virtual environment over the coming 12 months, an effort sponsored by NLnet.

Of course, there’s also the usual bugfixes and updates to various drivers, the kernel, Relibc, and more.

For removing stains and keeping your pearly whites bright, these are the best dentist-approved whitening toothpastes.

Apple alleges that OpenAI and two of its employees stole trade secrets and engaged in a "pattern of misconduct."

Dutch intelligence agencies say Russian hackers have been hijacking unsecured internet-connected cameras, including likely doorbell and security cameras, to spy on NATO military bases and transport routes used to move weapons to Ukraine. "Organisations with IP [internet protocol] cameras on these routes have now been warned so that they could take action," said the AIVD domestic security and MIVD military intelligence agencies. Targeted NATO member states include the Netherlands and Ukraine. The Telegraph reports: While the intelligence agencies did not specify the type of cameras hacked, the doorbell systems are frequently used by people to monitor their property from mobile phones. Hackers then use readily available apps to scan for devices that might be accessible. The Dutch investigation found that many of the cameras were unsecured, and "often have standard passwords, outdated firmware and standard configurations." They said: "When the IP camera is identified, the malicious party can attempt to access the IP camera via the internet. This is often relatively easy, because many IP cameras connected to the internet are insufficiently secure." [...] The practice is now considered easier and cheaper than using drones and satellites to gather intelligence. It also aids operational surprise because most camera owners are blissfully unaware their devices have been penetrated by hackers. Ground-based cameras offer a unique perspective on the terrain, which isn't the case with conventional aerial-based spy kit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.