Polls have closed for primaries in several states on Tuesday, including the most expensive House primary in history.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Kentucky primary on Tuesday, handing a victory to the president in a race seen as a referendum on Donald Trump.
It also reaffirmed the grip of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in GOP politics.
AIPAC’s super political action committee and two other groups backed by pro-Israel donors poured more than $15.8 million into the race either opposing Massie or supporting his opponent, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, according to Federal Election Commission reports released through Tuesday.
That blizzard of cash may not have been as important for Republican primary voters as Trump’s hatred of Massie. Still, it helped make the 4th Congressional District race the most expensive House primary in history, with overall spending reaching $32 million, topping the 2024 New York Democratic primary in which AIPAC’s super PAC aided Westchester County Executive George Latimer in ousting then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Massie is a libertarian contrarian who reliably votes for the conservative position on measures in the House — but he has generated headaches for Trump on everything from the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein to the NSA’s surveillance of Americans.
He has also been a critic of U.S. funding for Israel and the war on Iran. His vote has helped make every attempt at blocking the conflict through a war powers resolution bipartisan, although so far all of them have fallen short.
A spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, described Massie as “the most anti-Israel Republican in the House.”
The Kentucky representative says he is taking a stand on principle: He has always opposed foreign aid in general.
“I have never voted for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Israel or to Ukraine,” Massie told CBS News. “But the ones in Israel, since they’re the biggest recipients of it, that makes them a little bit mad.”
Republicans still overwhelmingly support Israel, according to public opinion polls. But the share who do so has declined significantly over the last few years, and younger GOP voters are much less supportive of unconditional funding for Israel.
The race was dogged by accusations of antisemitism and salacious, negative advertising. Massie’s opponents seized on a pro-Massie super PAC’s television ad that featured a picture of anti-Massie donor Paul Singer with a rainbow Star of David and that accused Gallrein of being backed by “the gay mafia.” Meanwhile, the anti-Massie camp created a deepfake artificial intelligence ad pointing to the few times he crossed party lines to accuse him of being in a “throuple” with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
Singer was the largest donor to MAGA KY, the Trump-supported super PAC that was created specifically to oust Massie.
Also spending against the representative were the United Democracy Project and the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund.
The post Thomas Massie Loses His Seat in a Win for Trump — and AIPAC appeared first on The Intercept.
President Trump endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District.
President also endorses hardline ally Paxton over veteran senator for Senate race in Texas amid latest test of Trump’s grip on GOP
Trump told reporters he is giving Iran until the weekend or early next week, to make a deal to end the war.
He said that yesterday he was within an hour of deciding to resume bombing Iran but that his negotiators had reported progress in talks.
I never tell anybody when. But they knew that we were very close. I would say we were. I was an hour away from making the decision to go today, and we would probably not be talking about a beautiful ballroom today. We’d be talking about that.
I had made the decision, so they called up. They had heard I made the decision. They said, sir, could you give us a couple of more days because we think they’re being reasonable.
Well, I mean, I’m saying 2 or 3 days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday something. Maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon.
Continue reading...A smart scale provides various metrics right from your bathroom.
A security guard who was among the victims killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego is being hailed for his heroism and bravery during the attack.
Single strike on the village of Deir Qanoun al Nahr in the coastal Tyre province killed 10, including three children and three women, health ministry says
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed at least 19 people, including four women and three children, Lebanon’s health ministry said, the latest in near-daily attacks from both sides that have not stopped despite a fragile, US-brokered ceasefire.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the casualties or specific incidents, but said that between Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon, it had targeted more than 25 sites of Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
Continue reading..."These subjects did not discriminate in who they hated," said Mark Remily, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego Field Office.
Altadena group pans report as ‘pages of deflection’ and cites reliance on ‘department insiders’ rather than residents
Los Angeles county fire officials did not discriminate on the basis of race or socioeconomic status and did not delay in their evacuation orders during last year’s deadly Eaton fire in Altadena, a consulting firm found on Monday.
At the behest of the county and its fire department, the California-based firm Citygate Associates conducted an investigation into how evacuation alerts were deployed last January, after emergency response officials came under fierce scrutiny for reported delays.
Continue reading...Commentary: Just as AI Overviews are starving digital publishers of search traffic, AI-driven YouTube features will likely trigger a drop-off in video creation.
The imam of a San Diego mosque that was targeted in Monday's shooting told CBS News that his community has seen a "rise" in "Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment" in recent years.
Retail sources rebuff government proposal as ‘unjustified’ and likely to push costs up across board
UK supermarkets have been asked by the government to consider freezing the prices of some essential foodstuffs to protect the public from inflation fuelled by the Middle East conflict.
Retailers rejected the plan, criticising its potential cost amid rising taxes, fuel and energy costs and arguing it could push up prices for shoppers overall.
Continue reading...National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’
The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.
Continue reading...The government must act to redress the unequal impact of climate change, or risk rising temperatures making disparities worse
It may not always feel like it, but Britons are going to have to get used to living in a hot country.
Temperatures are already 1.4C above the historic norm, and heading for a 2C rise in the next two decades. This may not sound like much, but it will mean far higher temperatures in summer – heatwaves as high as 45C lasting for more than a week, dwarfing the previous record of 40C in 2022 – as well as more frequent droughts and severe flooding, according to a major report published on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Landmark report calls for widespread air conditioning and says UK temperatures forecast to exceed 40C by 2050
British homes will need air conditioning to survive predicted levels of global heating, the government’s climate advisers have warned in a report, as measures such as drawing curtains, opening windows and growing trees for shade are not likely to be enough.
Air conditioning should be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which published a major report on adapting to the impacts of global heating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...In new Netflix documentary, pop superstar says she ‘got through it, again’, referring back to successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005
Kylie Minogue has revealed that in early 2021 she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, after diagnosis and successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005.
The pop star discussed the previously unannounced diagnosis in a new Netflix documentary entitled Kylie, available from today. “My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself … Not like the first time,” she said, referring to her highly publicised first treatment.
Continue reading...BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Plex is raising the price of a new Lifetime Plex Pass from $249.99 to $749.99 on July 1. That's a $500 increase for media server software. Plex says it needs the money for "long-term development" and future features, but a lot of self-hosting folks are already wondering if this is basically a soft way of killing the Lifetime option without officially removing it. At nearly $750, are people just going to move to Jellyfin instead? As for those future improvements, Plex said the roadmap includes better downloads support, restored music and photo library support in mobile apps, NFO metadata support, IPv6 support, playlist editing on mobile, audio enhancements, and transcoding improvements.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications) running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM.
A custom emulator-independent launcher is provided, and all OSes and emulators are pre-installed and pre-configured. The launcher includes a snapshot feature to quickly revert broken installations back to a working state. Hypervisor installers and shortcuts to run the VM on Windows, macOS, and Linux are also included.
↫ Andrew Warkentin’s Virtual OS Museum
These types of preconfigured archives exist in the gaming world, but I’ve never seen something like this for operating systems. The amount of love, work, and care that have gone into this effort must’ve been immense, as it contains more than 1700 installs, more than 520 platforms, and more than 570 distinct operating systems, all wrapped into a single download, with a nice launcher on top to make using all of this as easy as possible. You can either download the full offline version at 121GB zipped, or a version that downloads each image as you fire them up for the first time at 14GB zipped.
The contents span just about everything from early mainframes to desktop operating systems to all kinds of mobile platforms, from the late 1940s to today. I haven’t yet found the time to download the whole thing, but I am absolutely going to, as there are so many names in here that I’ve been wanting to play around with for ages, but just never got the time to set up virtual machines or emulators for.
This is going to be an amazing resource for the kinds of people who read OSNews.
The Emirates erupted as the Gunners were crowned champions – with expats, drivers and a boy in pyjamas out to celebrate
‘Twenty-two years,” said the father to his son, shaking his head reflectively. “Twenty-two effing years.” Standing outside the Emirates Stadium among an ever-growing crowd, he was not alone in trying to get a handle on his feelings. Arsenal had just won their first league title in a generation, after all.
From the moment Eli Junior Kroupi gave Bournemouth a first-half lead over Manchester City, the red part of north London was preparing to party. Arsenal’s only rivals for the title had to win to take their duel to the final day. A half-time deficit was not a good start. The landlord of the gridlocked Gunners pub on Blackstock Road had a glass of champagne in his hand, though it may have been something to do with the prospective takings.
Continue reading...Hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the wind-driven fire in the Simi Valley area as at least one home is destroyed
More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.
The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Commentary: Forget "Ask YouTube." Google should prioritize the AI work it's doing in science.
Four Republicans voted with nearly all Democrats to advance the Iran war powers measure, with GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy joining the Republican defectors for the first time.
Republican defeated in primary says backing Trump’s conviction ‘may have cost me my seat, but who cares?’
Returning to the US Capitol after a stinging primary re-election loss, Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator of Louisiana, said he had no regrets about his “momentous” vote to convict Donald Trump on 2021 impeachment charges during his first presidency.
“I voted to uphold the constitution. It may have cost me my seat, but who cares?” Cassidy told reporters in the Capitol. “I had the privilege of voting to uphold the constitution – isn’t that a great thing?”
Continue reading...President says $400m building costs to be funded by private donors, but has asked for taxpayers to cover security costs
Shouting over the banging and clanging sounds from heavy construction equipment, Donald Trump on Tuesday gave a group of reporters a closer look at the construction for the White House ballroom he’s building on the site of the former East Wing to mount a defense of the project that has hit a speed bump in Congress.
The administration has asked for $1bn from taxpayers for security additions on the White House campus, including for the ballroom. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled the proposal could not be included in a bill to fund immigrant enforcement agencies for three years, and several Republican lawmakers have balked at the price tag in an election year where voters are grappling with gasoline, grocery and other prices spurred to new heights by the Iran war and the disruption in oil supplies.
Continue reading...But most GOP voters want candidates who'd back most or everything Trump wants.
Chamber advances bill for first time as four Republicans join all but one of Senate’s Democrats in favor
The Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a war powers resolution aimed at forcing Donald Trump to end the war in Iran unless he receives congressional authorization to continue it.
Tuesday’s 50-47 vote marks the first time the chamber has advanced the bill, the eighth attempt at doing so since the conflict began in February.
Continue reading...Hit me up on discord please.
CBS News was unable to determine what type of mines were in involved in this latest assessment.
US vice-president appeared to align with attendees of Tommy Robinson’s ‘unite the kingdom’ rally in London
The US vice-president, JD Vance, has urged anti-immigration activists in the UK to “keep on going” after tens of thousands gathered for a rally in London.
Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended a march on Saturday where the far-right activist Tommy Robinson told supporters to prepare for the “battle of Britain”.
Continue reading...Luigi Mangione supporters have loudly made their feelings known outside every court appearance, but several are now in court with official press passes.
Google is giving its iconic search box its first major redesign since 2001. The new design incorporates, you guessed it, artificial intelligence, "getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries," reports the New York Times. "In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google's main search page." From the report: The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models. [...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails. "The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The man may have saved many lives by radioing his warning before he was killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, along with a shopkeeper and a neighbor, the center's director said.
The firearms the shooters, aged 17 and 18, used in the fatal rampage were registered to one of their parents
The two teenage assailants responsible for a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said.
A security guard shot and struck one of the shooters, according to members of the mosque – but the attacker continued charging. The guard also alerted administrators of the school at the Islamic Center, telling them to go into lockdown, before he was shot and killed. “If it was not for him … The carnage would be much worse,” said imam Taha Hassane. “He sacrificed his life.”
Continue reading...May 19, 2026 — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) leaders, scientists and engineers joined national voices at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) AI+ Expo May 7-9 in Washington, D.C., highlighting how AI is reshaping science, security and energy innovation.
On May 7, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director Kim Budil, fourth from left, joined a public-private panel on AI for science, where she highlighted LLNL capabilities and AI focus areas, including the National Ignition Facility, El Capitan, high-fidelity modeling and simulation and advanced materials and manufacturing. Photo credit: Jeremy Thomas.
The public Expo brought together government, industry, academic and Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories for three days of sessions, demonstrations and exhibits focused on AI, national security and U.S. technological competitiveness. It was the third such event hosted by the SCSP, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on U.S. competitiveness in AI, emerging technology and national security.
For LLNL, the conference offered a national stage to show the Lab’s efforts in AI for science and how DOE’s Genesis Mission is moving from concept to capability, with Lab leadership and researchers participating in panels, technical talks and live demonstrations spanning AI-enabled design, molecular discovery, bioresilience, high-performance computing (HPC) and fusion energy.
LLNL’s presence was especially visible during a busy stretch of programming on May 7, with Lab representatives contributing to sessions across the Expo. LLNL Director Kim Budil joined a public-private panel on AI for science, where she pointed to LLNL capabilities and AI focus areas, including the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the exascale supercomputer El Capitan, high-fidelity modeling and simulation and advanced materials and manufacturing.
Budil said the Lab is using AI and machine learning to speed cycles of learning, improve simulations and rethink how advanced manufacturing can support national security missions. Bringing AI into manufacturing, Budil added, could change not only how components are built, but how technologies are designed in the first place.
Budil also discussed how the Genesis Mission is designed to bring the national laboratories’ scientific workforces, large-scale experimental facilities, advanced computing capabilities and mission focus together in a new AI-enabled framework.
“The goal for Genesis is to revolutionize how we execute all those missions and incredibly enhance the productivity of our researchers,” Budil said. “Bringing together all this intellectual horsepower, with these incredible experimental and computational capabilities, is our opportunity to transform the way science is done in America.”
Across the venue, Brian Spears, technical director for the Genesis Mission, joined a panel on Genesis and framed the effort as a national-scale push to harness AI for science, technology and security. Spears said Genesis could use AI to double the impact of U.S. scientific research and development while delivering what he called “innovation overmatch” for national security superiority. He said Genesis is intended to connect AI with the DOE complex’s distinctive strengths, from HPC and precision experimentation to high-consequence production.
“We sit inside a computing revolution,” Spears said. “These AI technologies are transformative. The Genesis Mission is AI to uplift the entirety of the U.S. ecosystem — public and private.”
Meanwhile, in a conversation on bioconvergence, biosecurity and bioresilience, LLNL Bioresilience Incubator Director Shankar Sundaram highlighted LLNL’s pioneering role in connecting frontier science and national security needs in biodefense. He emphasized that AI-enabled progress in building national bioresilience depends on bringing together biological data, predictive models and compute at scale.
“National labs have the ability to bring scientific and technological depth along with a national security mission and mindset,” Sundaram said. “Data, especially functional data, is a strategic asset.”
DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil, director of the Genesis Mission, visited a demo by Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology (LIFT) researchers, who discussed AI-driven tools to support the design and eventual operation of fusion power plants. Pictured (l-r) are LLNL staff scientist Derek Mariscal, DOE’s Gil, Savannah River senior scientist Holly Flynn and National Ignition Facility & Photon Science Communications Director Thomas Lynch. Photo credit: LIFT team.
Over the past decade, LLNL has developed and demonstrated AI and computation-driven methods that are reshaping preparedness — improving early detection and accelerating the development of countermeasures against emerging biological threats, while working with the private sector to help broaden their application in the health sector, Sundaram explained.
The Lab’s presence reflected a larger DOE message that opened the Expo on May 7. In a fireside chat, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright framed the Genesis Mission as a way to connect AI tools, national laboratory capabilities, scientific data and private-sector partners to accelerate progress on major science and energy challenges.
“Take AI tools, take our national labs, take the data sets, take awesome partners, and rapidly increase our ability to innovate things that take years to test, diagnose and figure out how they work,” Wright said. “How can we do that in months so we can massively accelerate the pace of scientific discovery? That’s the Genesis Mission.”
DOE Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil also emphasized the speed and scale of the effort during his fireside chat on May 9. Gil said Genesis’ recent call for proposals has drawn thousands of submissions from more than 800 institutions, adding that the response reflected a broad national push to organize universities, laboratories and industry around AI-enabled science.
“Ultimately, we seek to double the productivity and impact of America’s trillion-dollar-a-year R&D engine within a decade,” Gil said.
LLNL’s participation extended beyond the main-stage conversations. LLNL computer scientist Brian Van Essen delivered a technical talk at the DOE booth on FLASK Copilot, an AI-enabled tool for molecular and materials discovery. The project stems from a Laboratory Directed Research & Development Strategic Initiative led by Van Essen (Foundation-Learning Artificial Intelligence for Synthesis Knowledge) and is designed to help researchers identify new molecules and optimize molecular properties.
In practice, the tool is intended to help scientists move more quickly from a desired material or molecular property to candidate molecules and possible synthesis pathways, reducing the time spent navigating disconnected tools and computational environments.
Van Essen said FLASK Copilot is designed to accelerate discovery by connecting commercial frontier AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with LLNL-developed chemistry tools, HPC resources, custom models and human domain expertise. The goal, he said, is to reduce the friction between scientific ideas and computational workflows.
“AI by itself cannot solve our national science and security problems,” Van Essen said. “We need to couple it with our traditional modeling and simulation tools, our domain experts and our unique experimental resources.”
That coupling is only useful if scientists can actually use the tools in the environments where they work, Van Essen added, explaining that the broader promise of FLASK Copilot and similar agentic systems is that they can extend team science into AI-enabled workflows.
“These agentic, multidisciplinary workflows can bring the team together and make everybody better outside of their domain,” Van Essen said.
At the AI+ Expo, LLNL computer scientist Brian Van Essen delivered a technical talk at the DOE booth on FLASK Copilot, an AI-enabled tool for molecular and materials discovery. Photo credit: Elisa Esme Abadi.
At the DOE booth, Van Essen also demonstrated the Multi-Agent Design Assistant (MADA), an LLNL-developed AI framework that combines large language models with simulation tools to help interpret natural language prompts from human designers and generate physics simulation inputs. MADA has been used in fusion target design work to generate simulation decks for MARBL, the Lab’s next-generation 3D multiphysics code, and to explore variations in inertial confinement fusion capsule geometry using LLNL supercomputers like El Capitan and Tuolumne.
In another booth demo on May 9, Derek Mariscal and Mackenzie Nelson from LLNL’s Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology discussed AI-driven tools to support the design and eventual operation of fusion power plants. The demo, which Gil visited ahead of his fireside chat, connected to LLNL research on high-repetition-rate laser systems — the kind that would be needed for future inertial fusion energy power plants — where lasers ignite targets 10 times or more per second and require AI-enabled prediction, control and operations.
“This tool represents a joint effort from national lab and academic partners to pool our expertise and apply frontier AI models to advancing the national goal of commercial fusion energy, in concert with the Genesis Mission,” said Mariscal.
Throughout the three-day event, LLNL’s presence reflected a central theme of the Expo: AI is moving from a standalone technology to connective tissue linking data, simulation, experimentation, manufacturing and mission execution.
For LLNL, that shift does not mean replacing scientists, but giving them new ways to move faster through complex design spaces, ask better questions and connect national laboratory capabilities to urgent challenges in security, energy and discovery science. Realizing that future, Budil said, also will require new ways of collaborating with industry and other external institutions.
“We’re learning how to work in a very different way with the private sector,” Budil said. “They’re peer organizations and partners in a way we’ve not experienced before.”
Source: LLNL
The post LLNL Showcases AI-Enabled Science, National Security and Energy Innovation at AI+ Expo appeared first on HPCwire.
A bipartisan bill would ask electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid drivers to pay annual fees because they don't pay gas taxes.
We can inter Google Search to the Google Graveyard.
At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined “intelligent search box” — what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago.
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.
↫ Sarah Perez at TechCrunch
The attack on online search has been ongoing for a long time, and it has already resulted in most people with a higher-than-average interest in technology to either no longer use Google, or just to not use online search at all. I used DuckDuckGo for a long time, until I switched to Startpage somewhere last year, and I have never looked back. Startpage (and many others like it) is a very simple, basic search engine: it just gives you a list of links. That’s it. That’s all I ever want from a search engine, as the task of then vetting each link for relevancy, accuracy, trustworthiness, and so on, is up to me, where it very well belongs.
I do not want – and the world should not want – a massive technology corporation like Google, with a deeply vested, existential interest in guiding you towards websites from the companies that pay them for ads, to guide your online browsing experience. Google Search is already riddled with ads, but at least they’re labeled and somewhat obvious. With these new “AI” chatbot-style interfaces, not only are its sources nebulous and tucked away, if they even exist at all, but they also just make shit up, fail at the most basic of tasks, and generally just suck at what they’re supposed to be doing. This will make online search with Google worse.
Worse yet, this will make it even easier for the billionaire Epstein class to sow dissent among the population, creating rifts and hatred where none should exist, solely to keep the peasants occupied fighting each other so they don’t turn their anger towards the real reason their lives suck. Panem et circenses has transformed into divide et impera, and these nebulous chatbots with complex, invisible levers and dials will only make the divide easier.
LEUVEN, Belgium, May 19, 2026 — This week at ITF World, imec is presenting a world first: a quantum dot qubit device fabricated using High NA EUV lithography. This achievement marks a milestone toward the industrial scaling of more reliable qubits, the basic computational units of quantum computers. To the best of the company’s knowledge, this is the first integrated hardware device created using High NA EUV lithography.
Of the various quantum platforms currently under investigation, silicon quantum dot spin qubits are considered a promising candidate for industrial scaling and are often referred to as ‘the industry qubits’. Their production process is largely compatible with the production of standard computer chips on silicon (CMOS), a research domain in which imec has built global authority over the past decades.
“We can leverage decades of semiconductor innovation and reuse the entire ecosystem of silicon scaling, moving quantum devices beyond lab experiments to large-scale, manufacturable systems,” said Sofie Beyne, project leader and quantum integration engineer at imec. “This is where silicon-based qubits have a clear advantage.”
Silicon quantum dot spin qubits confine an electron within a silicon nanostructure (the gate layer). The ‘spin state’ of the trapped electron is used to store quantum information. Gaps between the various gates must be minimized to limit environmental noise. Imec has succeeded in fabricating a functioning network of qubits with gaps of barely 6 nanometers. Thanks to the nanoscale of this hardware component, millions of quantum bits can theoretically be integrated onto a single chip.
“High NA EUV enables the precise patterning of silicon quantum dot qubits,” said Kristiaan De Greve, imec fellow and program director for quantum computing. “As the coupling strength between neighboring quantum dots increases exponentially with the gap between them, we need to reliably pattern gaps of a few nanometers between the control electrodes of the quantum dots. This is a true engineering feat, thanks to our integration and patterning teams and ASML’s outstanding high NA EUV technology.”
This demonstration builds on imec’s previous results with silicon quantum dot spin qubits,which showed that CMOS-compatible processes can lead to low charge noise and stable qubit operation. By adding High NA EUV lithography to the production process, the focus shifts from individual demonstration devices in the lab to 300mm fab-compatible, reproducible quantum bits.
While it’s obvious that High NA EUV lithography will be crucial for sub-2nm logic and high-density memory technologies that fuel the rapid growth of advanced AI and high-performance computing, it is now becoming clear that it will also play a pivotal role in hardware for future quantum computing.
About imec
Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies. Leveraging its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and the expertise of over 6,500 employees, imec drives innovation in semiconductor and system scaling, artificial intelligence, silicon photonics, connectivity, and sensing.
Imec’s advanced research powers breakthroughs across a wide range of industries, including computing, health, automotive, industry, consumer electronics, aerospace and security. Through IC-Link, imec delivers customized solutions, from concept to full-scale manufacturing, to meet the most advanced design and production needs. Through imec.ventures, imec creates, co‑creates new ventures, and supports existing semiconductor deep‑tech companies to scale-up.
Imec collaborates with global leaders across the semiconductor value chain, as well as with technology companies, start-ups, academia, and research institutions in Flanders and worldwide. Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, imec has research facilities in Belgium, across Europe, the USA and the GCC region, and representation on three continents. In 2025, imec reported revenues of €1.2 billion.
For more information, visit www.imec-int.com.
Source: imec
The post Imec Debuts 1st Quantum Dot Qubit Device Built with High NA EUV appeared first on HPCwire.
The Internal Revenue Service is permanently barred from pursuing claims against President Trump or his company based on prior tax returns, part of a controversial settlement deal between the Justice Department and Mr. Trump.
The following is a hands-on introduction to Futhark through a collection of commented programs, listed in roughly increasing order of complexity. You can load the programs into the interpreter to experiment with them. For a conventional introduction to the language, Parallel Programming in Futhark may be a better choice. For more examples, you can check our implemented benchmarks. We also maintain a list of projects using Futhark.
Some of the example programs use directives for plotting or rendering graphics.
↫ Futhark homepage
As a non-programmer, I just think the name is cool.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, appeared frustrated with questions from House Democrats who pressed him on a range of issues about the conflict.
 | Anyone in Houston? Suck so bad over here 😭 [link] [comments] |
I have a spare gts setup and would like to vesc it without breaking the bank. There are a couple concerns I have with thor 400 but it seems like the only controller that could work with the gts 113v battery. It also seems to be sold out all the time. I've checked the 1st of the month and the 15th but no luck. Are there any other alternatives that will work with a 113v battery pack?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the US power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas generation, and renewables. The $67 billion deal combines NextEra's size and reach with Dominion's positioning as the local utility for the world's largest concentration of data centers in northern Virginia. But the results are likely bad for consumers and the environment, creating a company with enormous financial and political strength that will be difficult to effectively regulate, according to consumer advocates and analysts. For perspective, only Exxon Mobil and Chevron would be larger based on market value among US-based energy companies. "Mergers are not about consumers; they're about shareholders," said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. "For the Dominion shareholders, they are selling their shares at a premium. The executives are getting massive payouts for facilitating this, assuming it all goes through, and obviously NextEra believes the transaction is going to add value to the company. Ratepayers are all an afterthought." The deal makes financial sense for both companies, said Andrew Bischof, an equity analyst for Morningstar. "We view the transaction as allowing NextEra to accelerate its data center ambitions, which had trailed those of its regulated peers, by using Dominion's expertise and relationships to expedite NextEra's data center hub plans," he said in a note to clients. NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, includes Florida Power & Light, the largest regulated electricity utility in the state, and NextEra Energy Resources, a wholesale electricity supplier that owns power plants across the nation. Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, includes regulated utilities serving much of Virginia, parts of North Carolina and South Carolina, and other assets across the country. The company would be called NextEra Energy, and NextEra CEO John W. Ketchum would serve in the same role after the deal closes. Robert M. Blue, Dominion's CEO, would be the CEO for regulated utilities for the merged company. The parties said they expect regulatory approvals to take 12 to 18 months. NextEra shareholders would own 74.5 percent and Dominion shareholders would own 25.5 percent, respectively, of the combined company in the all-stock transaction. "We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever -- not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies," Ketchum said in a statement. Although the companies claim the deal would produce savings, including $2.25 billion in Dominion customer bill credits, former regulator Marissa Paslick Gillett said she was "flabbergasted by the tone deafness," arguing that major utility mergers rarely deliver the promised "synergies" and often create "a behemoth" that is harder to regulate. Others warned that a larger NextEra could use its political power "to the disadvantage of ratepayers," while climate advocates said expanding methane gas plants to serve data centers would worsen pollution and leave vulnerable communities "at the short end of the stick."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The World Health Organization’s chief said on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda that has resulted in a spike in deaths — to at least 130 — and more than 500 suspected cases. The outbreak is complicated by the rare strain of the disease, known as Bundibugyo, that standard field tests often miss and for which there are no vaccines or therapeutics.
Experts say Trump administration policies — like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and withdrawing from WHO — have further undermined global health security and negatively impacted the response to the outbreak. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of emerging cases in urban areas, including reports of cases in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and Goma, a crossroads city in Congo that borders Rwanda.
The Intercept reported on the porous borders and worrying public health responses in Goma during an Ebola outbreak in 2019. At the time Anthony Fauci — then the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — laid out the dangers of Ebola spreading in that urban center. “Since Goma is a city of millions of people, and since it has an international airport, it is a great concern,” he explained. “If Ebola could get into Goma and spread in Goma, that increases the likelihood that it could spread beyond the DRC into neighboring and distant countries.”
Experts have expressed alarm that the virus has been spreading undetected for weeks at least — and likely months — in Ituri Province, a remote area of eastern Congo that borders South Sudan and Uganda. The region, long riven by conflict, is home to many displaced persons and a haven for itinerant workers and smuggling operations. It has weak medical and public health infrastructure, making contact tracing is extremely difficult.
“The province of Ituri is highly insecure. … Conflict has intensified since late 2025, and fighting has escalated significantly over the past two months, resulting in civilian deaths. Over 100,000 people have been newly displaced, and in Ebola outbreaks, you know what displacement means,” said Tedros. “The area is also a mining zone, with high levels of population movement that increase the risk of further spread.”
Previously, USAID supported NGOs and healthcare workers in rural communities on the front lines of such outbreaks. “They’re the people standing between us and disaster,” said Margaret Harris, a former senior WHO official and a medical doctor who responded to Ebola outbreaks in West Africa in the mid-2010s and Congo in the late 2010s.
Harris praised the past work of USAID, and the U.S. in general, in responding to previous outbreaks of Ebola. This current outbreak can be managed, she said, but that it will take funding, training, equipment, and supplies — like personal protective equipment, medications, and fluids — for local healthcare workers. Harris, now a global health specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research said that while some might argue that governments should pay for their own healthcare workers, she noted such front-line personnel provide a service that extends far beyond a nation’s borders. “They are protecting global health security,” she told The Intercept, adding: “And they were also simply doing good for ordinary people.”
A U.S. government official with experience working with foreign non-governmental organizations, who spoke on background because they were not authorized to talk with the press on the subject, told The Intercept on Tuesday that there was “no question” Trump administration policies have helped to undermine the global public health response. This indictment was echoed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn, the ranking member on the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee.
“Infectious diseases do not respect political borders.”
“The Trump administration has systematically dismantled much of our global health infrastructure, without giving a thought to the consequences. Now, we are seeing those consequences play out,” DeLauro told The Intercept, noting that the administration dissolved USAID, cut the United States off from the WHO, and carried out mass layoffs across the domestic global public health space.
“This will not be the last outbreak of a deadly infectious disease,” DeLauro said. “We must invest in global health infrastructure. Not only to be reliable and effective partners, but to be prepared for the next outbreak. In public health, isolation is not a strategy. Infectious diseases do not respect political borders.”
On Monday, the State Department announced that on “May 15, 2026, within 24 hours of learning of the confirmed cases, the Department leveraged its outbreak response and humanitarian assistance capabilities.” The WHO actually issued an alert of a high-mortality outbreak in Ituri, which included deaths among healthcare workers, 10 days prior. On May 14, blood samples were finally analyzed across the country, in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. A day later, the analysis confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease, a strain of Ebola.
“I cannot help but wonder if the administration had not taken such drastic action to dismantle so much of our global health infrastructure, that we would have been able to identify this outbreak earlier and stop it from spreading as much as it has,” DeLauro said in a separate press release.
“It is false to claim that the USAID reform has negatively impacted our ability to respond to Ebola,” a State Department spokesperson told The Intercept. “In fact, by bringing USAID global health functions under the new GHSD bureau at the State Department, our efforts are more aligned and effective. Funding and support to combat Ebola continue, working with allies and partners.”
When asked about the lag between the first notification of a disease outbreak and the U.S. response, the spokesperson did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
On his first day back in office last year, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO and cutting all funding for the U.N. health agency. “World Health ripped us off,” Trump said at the time. The withdrawal process was completed January of this year.
Tedros announced that WHO has a team on the ground supporting the national responses to the African outbreak, noting his organization had “deployed people, supplies, equipment and funds,” including millions from an emergency fund.
“The outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus in the past two weeks show why international threats need an international response,” Tedros said on Tuesday, also referring to the recent outbreak on an expedition cruise ship of a rare virus carried by rodents. “They show why the world needs the international health regulations, and why it needs WHO.”
The post Ebola Outbreak Rages After Trump Gutted Global Health Safeguards appeared first on The Intercept.
The indictment, which was first reported by CBS News, marks the latest in a series of probes by the Justice Dept. related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google's annual developer conference kicked off with a keynote Tuesday. We'll be bringing you updates throughout the conference.
Google Docs Live, Ask YouTube and Project Aura made the top of my list. But the future also looks somewhat slop-py.
Starlink says the price increases will support ongoing improvements to its network.
A summer job was once a seasonal tradition for millions of American teenagers. No more — here's why fewer young people are expected to clock in when school ends.
HERNDON, Va., May 19, 2026 — ShorePoint, LLC, a leading cybersecurity services firm dedicated exclusively to strengthening federal customers’ cyber resilience, today announced the launch of its new HPC Security Hub. The hub is an online resource built to help federal agencies, national laboratories, and industry partners better understand the growing cybersecurity challenges surrounding high-performance computing and advanced computing environments.
“Federal agencies are advancing toward increasingly interconnected HPC and AI ecosystems,” said Matt Brown, co-founder and CEO of ShorePoint. “However, proper security guidance designed for these environments remains limited. We created this hub to help close that gap by providing practical resources, terminology guides, expert perspectives and industry events for agencies and organizations that are operating some of our nation’s most mission-critical supercomputing systems.”
Resources on the hub include two reference assets designed to build a shared understanding of advanced computing security language:
New content, including analysis and educational resources, will become available regularly as the hub expands.
“HPC systems were originally designed with speed and performance as the priority, often relying on physical isolation and trusted-user models as primary security controls,” added Ian Lee, Director of Advanced Computing Solutions at ShorePoint. “As these environments become increasingly connected to external systems, technology leaders and practitioners are reevaluating how to apply security frameworks that align with today’s threat landscape. This hub was created to support those efforts.”
Learn more about ShorePoint’s HPC Security Hub here.
About ShorePoint
ShorePoint is an elite, fast-growing cybersecurity services firm dedicated exclusively to strengthening the cyber resilience of federal agencies and their missions. With deep expertise and a forward-looking approach, ShorePoint’s experts operate where tomorrow’s threats are already taking shape — from AI and high-performance computing security to supply chain assurance — helping customers stay ahead of an evolving threat landscape. ShorePoint is based in Herndon, VA.
Source: ShorePoint
The post ShorePoint Debuts HPC Security Hub as Federal HPC and AI Security Needs Grow appeared first on HPCwire.
CLEMSON, S.C., May 19, 2026 — Clemson University is advancing South Carolina’s quantum research capacity through a $650,000 initiative supporting the Scalable High-Performance and Quantum Computing Systems Lab (ScaLab), an effort focused on improving how quantum programs are optimized and executed on real hardware.
Led by Dr. Rong Ge, ScaLab focuses on improving how quantum software runs on real machines. Quantum computers operate very differently from traditional systems, and writing programs that perform efficiently on physical devices remains a central challenge in the field. The lab develops tools that help adapt software to the unique constraints of quantum hardware, improving reliability and performance in real-world settings.
The project supports core research, talent development, and statewide capacity building. Of the total investment:
The initiative builds on South Carolina’s earlier statewide investment in quantum information science and technology. In 2023, state leaders committed $15 million to coordinate quantum readiness across institutions and industries. ScaLab reflects a continued shift toward sustained, project-based research that strengthens technical depth while building the human infrastructure necessary for long-term quantum capability in the state.
“As quantum hardware matures, performance increasingly depends on how well software is adapted to the physical system,” said Dr. Rong Ge, Director of ScaLab. “By integrating physics-informed machine learning into the compilation process, we are improving how quantum programs run in practice while training students to contribute meaningfully to this rapidly evolving field.”
Through research collaboration and statewide engagement, ScaLab positions Clemson as a contributor to the evolving software and systems layer of quantum computing while strengthening South Carolina’s quantum ecosystem.
Source: Quantum in South Carolina
The post Clemson Strengthens South Carolina Quantum Ecosystem Through ScaLab Investment appeared first on HPCwire.
Waiting for my Supercharged X7 to arrive which I ordered last month. I have since purchased both of these rails. Does anyone have any opinions on which will provide a better ride with a Thundercat BTG Tire?
Receiver tested positive for marijuana
Player must serve 30 days in jail
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice has been ordered to serve 30 days in jail after violating his probation with a positive test for marijuana.
Rice was booked Tuesday afternoon in Dallas County, Texas, and is due to be released on 16 June. The timeline means he will miss organized team activities and a mandatory minicamp.
Continue reading...Many Americans are signaling disapproval of the technology amid fears that it will eclipse already competitive entry-level jobs.
President Trump says he scrapped a planned attack on Iran at the request of Gulf allies as "serious negotiations" on a peace deal are underway.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 20, No. 1,074.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 20, No. 1,796.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 20, No. 604.
The popular battle royale video game is now available everywhere, except Australia.
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival AI lab Anthropic. "The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent -- and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds," reports Axios. From the report: Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's pre-training team, which is responsible for the massive training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to Anthropic. Karpathy will help launch a new team focused on using Claude itself to accelerate pretraining research -- an increasingly important frontier as AI companies race to automate parts of AI development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D," Karpathy said in a post on X. Karpathy is a rare AI figure with credibility across research, industry and education. He was a founding member of OpenAI before serving as Tesla's director of AI, where he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot. Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" and recently described himself as being in a "state of AI psychosis" since December -- embracing "tokenmaxxing" and aggressively stress-testing frontier models.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 20 No. 808.
Commentary: Google's new content-generation tool is joining an oversaturated market of AI stuff we don't want.
Family seeks answers after incident at uncovered maintenance hole near Cartier building late at night
The family of a New York woman is struggling for answers after the 56-year-old fell to her death upon stepping out of her car and slipping down an open maintenance hole on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
The woman in question died on Monday night and was identified by family members as Donike Gocaj, from Briarcliff Manor, a commuter belt area north of New York City.
Continue reading...One Republican lawyer close to the administration told CBS News that they expect the fund to face court challenges even though "a lot of people in MAGA world are already counting their money."
 | Any suggestions for digital shaping settings for a first timer? [link] [comments] |
Back-to-back visits to Beijing by the American and Russian presidents are highlighting how China's Xi Jinping is the world leader to be reckoned with and courted.
Outcome of contest for seat just outside Wigan could change the course of British politics for years to come
Andy Burnham will face Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon in next month’s crucial Makerfield byelection in a clash that could change the course of British politics for years to come.
Reform are billing Kenyon, a plumber and army reservist who contested the seat just outside Wigan in the 2024 general election, as a local champion taking on a professional politician who is using the seat for his own advantage.
Continue reading...Granta publisher says ‘perhaps we never will know’ true authorship of work that won Commonwealth prize
A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI.
The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story, said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true.
Continue reading...Addendum quietly slipped into widely criticized agreement creating a $1.7bn fund to compensate president’s allies
The justice department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.
The addendum, signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.
Continue reading...Another Google I/O 2026 announcement: A new AI running in the background to handle scheduling, emails and more.
President Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday in the Texas Senate race, seeking to bring to an end a costly contest just a week ahead of the scheduled runoff.
Struggling to hire specialized talent? These strategies can help you reach qualified candidates in today's market.
The BSC quantum infrastructure, MareNostrum Ona, has completed its evolution with a new 35-qubit processor, which is available to the research, public, and business communities through the Spanish Supercomputing Network
May 19, 2026 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has taken another step forward in the development of its quantum partition, MareNostrum Ona, with the incorporation of a new 35-qubit chip. This system, developed with 100% European technology and under an open-access model, positions BSC as a benchmark in Europe for the deployment of quantum systems with these characteristics.
The development of the system is part of the Quantum Spain initiative, driven by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service through SEDIA.. Credit: BCS
Since its launch, the system has undergone a progressive evolution through the addition of various processors, moving from an initial capacity of 5 qubits to reaching its current configuration of 35 qubits, which was recently installed.
This advancement constitutes the final milestone of Quantum Spain, an initiative coordinated by BSC and driven by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, through the Secretariat of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA). The project, which began in 2022, is financed by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and is framed within the España Digital 2026 program, as well as the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA).
Quantum Spain is a collaborative effort involving 27 benchmark research and supercomputing institutions in Spain, including 14 nodes of the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) and other institutions such as CSIC, ICFO, and universities like the University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Madrid, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, among many others.
“The addition of this 35-qubit processor completes the technological roadmap we had set for ourselves. Quantum Spain aimed to demonstrate the technological maturity of the field and move from experimental quantum computers to the deployment of an operational machine. But most importantly, all this development maintains its open nature: any research group or company can access real quantum hardware integrated into a supercomputer like MareNostrum 5, something that is still exceptional in Europe,” indicates Alba Cervera, BSC researcher and coordinator of Quantum Spain.
The system was installed and commissioned by the Spanish joint venture (UTE) Qilimanjaro-GMV. Based on superconducting technology, it is integrated into the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, enabling the exploration of new forms of computing that combine classical and quantum capabilities.
“This system marks the transition from experimental quantum to operational quantum. Qilimanjaro, along with GMV and BSC, has proven that we have the industrial capacity in Spain to produce, deploy, scale, and maintain real quantum systems in production, integrated into one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe. And, above all, accessible from day one for the scientific and industrial community to accelerate adoption and pave the way for the new ideas that will define this new quantum revolution,” states Marta P. Estarellas, CEO of Qilimanjaro.
The scientific community, companies, and public bodies can request its use through the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) and run their algorithms on real quantum hardware, allowing them to validate results and develop new applications in a real environment.
To date, the RES, as a distributed Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS), has granted access to its quantum resources to a total of 45 projects. Together, these have accumulated nearly 4,000 computing hours and led to the development of several scientific papers, showcasing the growing interest of the scientific and technological community in this type of infrastructure and its application in real-world environments.
“After months and years of intense work and preparation, we have brought a European quantum computing system into production, which is part of a Spanish ICTS and one of the largest and most complete computing systems in the world. Now, with the system stable, our job is to support the users of this infrastructure,” comments Sergi Girona, Operations Director at the BSC.
Quantum computing promises to revolutionize multiple disciplines by facilitating the analysis of phenomena at the atomic scale. Its potential uses range from chemistry—where it could boost the creation of new materials and pharmaceuticals—to solving complex challenges in fields like logistics or finance.
Furthermore, its capacity to improve process efficiency positions it as a strategic tool, particularly when integrated with artificial intelligence to design more advanced machine learning algorithms. In terms of security, it could redefine cryptography, posing both unprecedented challenges and more secure solutions.
Currently, MareNostrum Ona is being further reinforced with the installation of a new analog quantum computer, which is part of one of the quantum computing nodes of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. This system will expand and enhance the center’s research capabilities and will also be available to users.
More from HPCwire: EuroHPC Signs Procurement Contract for MareNostrum-Ona Quantum Annealer in Spain
Source: BSC-CNS
The post BSC Expands Its Quantum Computer Capacity and Consolidates Open-Access Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.
LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 19, 2026 — Verkor, Inc., an enterprise agentic AI startup, today unveiled VerTQ, the industry’s first TurboQuant silicon IP. VerTQ is an accelerator IP implementing Google’s TurboQuant algorithm, which reduces the KV cache memory requirements of large language models (LLMs) by 4.3x.
By significantly lowering memory demands, VerTQ enables LLM inference applications to operate more efficiently using less memory — a resource increasingly in short supply — while also improving performance by reducing pressure on memory bandwidth.
VerTQ Block Diagram
Google introduced TurboQuant (TQ) in March 2026. According to Verkor, VerTQ represents the first hardware implementation of the TurboQuant approach.
VerTQ compresses KV-cache data while also accelerating the computationally intensive attention process. By performing Flash Attention operations — including online SoftMax — directly on-chip and without decompressing KV-cache data, the accelerator reduces memory bandwidth demands and improves inference efficiency.
The design targets edge AI deployments, including autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics systems, where performance, power efficiency, compact form factors, and cost remain critical constraints.
According to Verkor, VerTQ was developed using Conductor 2.0, progressing from algorithm to a fully functional, timing-verified FPGA implementation in approximately 80 hours.
The VerTQ deliverable package is available immediately and includes product and microarchitecture specifications, verification IP, unit- and system-level testbenches, commented RTL, FPGA netlists and downloadable images, test plans, and supporting design documentation.
“Conductor 2.0 compresses the chip development cycle from years to weeks,” said Suresh Krishna, CEO of Verkor. “We’re constantly enhancing Conductor, running it on ever-larger chip designs, to deliver complex silicon IPs from impactful algorithms.”
For more information on VerTQ and Conductor 2.0, please find the technical paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05170.
About Verkor
Founded by top AI/LLM researchers and semiconductor veterans, Verkor is an enterprise agentic AI innovator and a technology leader in the development and deployment of end-to-end semiconductor design automation platform. Since its inception in May 2025, Verkor has delivered three generations of Conductor, Verkor’s design automation agent, with each generation building exponentially larger designs. The latest generation of Conductor can now build FPGA, ASIC, or SoC for data center, edge computing, networking, communication, automotive, security, industrial, etc., verticals.
Source: Verkor
The post Verkor.io Unveils VerTQ TurboQuant Accelerator for Edge AI Inference appeared first on HPCwire.
Social Security recipients may be in line for a 4% COLA adjustment. Here's how they can earn 4% on their savings now.
Online publication Puck previously reported Weiss could be moved to a new role with less oversight of the network
CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, is standing by CBS News’ editor in chief, Bari Weiss, amid a torrent of controversies and lagging ratings on some programs.
The network released a statement supporting her after a report that senior leadership at the company has discussed changing Weiss’s role to lessen her oversight of CBS News – and, potentially, CNN, if the company’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery receives government approval.
Continue reading...There is no shortage of entertainers in Carlo Ancelotti’s picks for this summer’s tournament. They’ll also need a solid base if they are to win a sixth title
In their attacking heyday, Brazil never struggled to find a winning complement in defence. Individual attacking brilliance only comes off if others nearby are doing the hard yards; for every Ronaldinho, there is a Roque Júnior.
The current generation doesn’t lack entertainers. Of Carlo Ancelotti’s 26-man squad for the World Cup, which was announced on Monday, nine players are listed as attackers, a high number for most squads, with nine defenders left to sweat their responsibilities whenever possession changes hands.
Continue reading...I installed some fangs and hadn't crashed with them on yet so I wasn't sure how good they were.
Finally took a real ride on my GT last night after a bad crash last august where I broke my cheekbone (Dirt and rocky trail, don't think I'll do that again) Have been terrified to get on it again since then and haven't travelled more than a block since.
Got a wild hair last night to give it a spin up on some local non busy roads and rode it with some more speed. While going up a hill I nose dived but my fangs gave me enough time to react and roll when I landed instead of getting immediately slammed. Gentlest crash on that thing ever and I don't think I'd ever ride another OW without them.
Business owners often have a million things to juggle with day-to-day operations. Have you taken the time to slow down and think about what you can be doing now to prepare yourself and your business for later in life? If the answer is no, you aren’t alone. Although 76% of business owners plan to transition over the next 10 years, only 35% of businesses have a formalized succession plan in place.
You’ve worked hard to grow your business, so it’s important to think about what will happen when you want to move on from the company – whether that’s retirement, selling the business or trying something new. Thoughtful planning in advance can help give business owners peace of mind knowing that both you and your business will be cared for in retirement. A plan can also ensure your employees are cared for and, if you choose, allow your business to continue serving the local community.
Here are some tips for business owners to consider:
Planning ahead can help give you peace of mind and avoid unnecessary stress in the future. Everyone’s situation is unique, so make sure your plan incorporates your personal needs and desires. A financial advisor can be a helpful partner in putting together your plan. They can also identify how you can work toward your personal and retirement goals, separate from the equity you may have in your business.
Also consider working with an estate planning attorney to help incorporate your business into your estate plan. A basic estate plan for most business owners should include: a revocable trust, a will, a financial power of attorney, a health care power of attorney, and beneficiary designations. Make sure to review these documents periodically with your attorney to ensure they still reflect your wishes.
Assembling a team of trusted professionals can play a big role in making sure your preferences are honored after you transition away from the business. They can also help evaluate the value of your business, which can be important to know in the succession planning process.
Consider including your financial advisor, certified public accountant, business and estate planning attorney, insurance advisors, business valuation professional, investment bankers, and/or business brokers. Spending time, effort and money now to build a team of people you trust can help drive more favorable outcomes in the end.
When it comes to investing for retirement, the sooner the better – whether you are a business owner or not. Starting with investing now can give your money more time to potentially grow.
If you don’t have a company-funded 401(k), there are other retirement planning options for business owners to consider, like an IRA or solo 401(k). Make sure to consult your tax advisor, as they can help you understand the tax implications of each option and identify which one may be right for you.
Taking the time now to thoughtfully plan for your retirement as a business owner may seem daunting, but it can help ensure peace of mind later in life. There’s a lot to consider, so staying informed is key. If you’re looking for more resources in your financial journey as a business owner, visit our library of free educational content at chase.com/theknow.
The post Protect what you’ve built: Here’s why business owners should think about their succession plan appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Polymarket users can now trade on private companies' valuations, IPOs and secondary market activity.
The London-headquartered lender Standard Chartered announced plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs by 2030, with CEO Bill Winters saying the bank will replace some "lower-value human capital" through automation and AI while offering retraining to affected workers. "It's not cost-cutting. It's replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in," CEO Bill Winters told reporters. "So, the people that want to reskill, that want to carry on, we're giving every opportunity to reposition," Winters said. Reuters reports: The cuts, alongside higher shareholder return targets announced in a strategy update, come as StanChart is at the tail-end of a decade-long effort to transform itself from a potential takeover target to a steadily profitable lender. Its London-listed shares, which have risen 65% in the last 12 months, fell 0.5% in early trading, as analysts said the new targets were at the conservative end of their expectations. "In a world full of uncertainty, performance may prove more challenging further out," said Ed Firth, analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, citing how the bank has benefited in recent years from high interest rates and huge wealth flows. StanChart's move to streamline operations and rein in costs comes as more global firms slash jobs by deploying AI to improve efficiency. Japanese lender Mizuho in March unveiled up to 5,000 job cuts over a decade. And banks globally are scrambling to integrate frontier AI models and fend off rising cyber threats. The most affected roles will be in the bank's back-office centres, including those in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw, according to Winters. "Of course we're using AI along the way and AI will be a huge facilitator and enabler of that," he added, referring to its ongoing revamp to automate more of its core banking system. StanChart said it would deliver over 15% return on tangible equity in 2028, more than three percentage points higher than in 2025, and building to about 18% in 2030. Meta also announced plans to reassign 7,000 employees into AI-related initiatives, just ahead of layoffs expected to affect roughly 8,000 workers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Multimodal Gemini, including voice input, and Google's new autonomous AI assistant, will arrive on MacOS over the coming months.
US vice-president says Iran must agree to never have a nuclear weapon; Tehran warns US against resuming hostilities
Iran’s army has warned it would “open new fronts” against the US if it resumes attacks on the country amid reports that Donald Trump is weighing up restarting military operations in Iran amid an impasse in negotiations.
“If the enemy is foolish enough to fall into the Zionist trap again and launches new aggression against our beloved Iran, we will open new fronts against it, with new equipment and new methods,” army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.
Continue reading...As campaigners take to the streets for what could be the most significant byelection for decades, the Reform leader’s absence remains a mystery
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Why Should Delaware Care?
Michael Purzycki served as mayor of Wilmington, the state’s largest city and its economic engine, for eight years, including through COVID. Prior to his public service, Purzycki led the economic revitalization of the city’s Riverfront.
Michael “Mike” Purzycki, the former two-term mayor of Wilmington who oversaw a downtown revitalization after first spearheading the redevelopment of the city’s Riverfront district, has died. He was 80.
Purzycki died following a “hard-fought battle with cancer,” according to Wilmington Mayor John Carney’s office.
After serving for eight years, Purzycki decided not to seek a third term in the 2024 election, citing his age and a desire to spend time with his family. That cleared the way for then-term-limited Gov. Carney to make an unprecedented run for city office.
Calling him a “giant” and the closest thing to the big brother he never had, Carney said in a statement, “He was so many things, and, above all else, Mike had the heart of a public servant. I can’t think of anyone who has had a greater impact on this city.”
Purzycki’s legacy may best be encapsulated with the work he achieved before being elected mayor in 2016, having led the state-chartered Riverfront Development Corp. to turn a dilapidated section of warehouses along the Christina River into a significant commercial sector.
He is survived by his wife, Bette Richitelli, three children and two grandchildren.
Growing up in Newark, N.J., Purzycki made his way to Delaware through his first love in life: football.
He earned a scholarship to the University of Delaware and found success as a wide receiver, breaking all the university’s position records for the era. That performance on the field earned him a free agent contract with the NFL’s New York Giants, but the joy would be short-lived.
He injured his knee in training camp, got cut by the team and was never able to play professionally again.
In a 2020 interview with the Delaware Business Times, Purzycki recounted how he fought to receive compensation following his injury at a time when players’ rights were often ignored.
“When I got cut, I came home, and I told my father I thought I should get paid because I got injured,” Purzycki told DBT. “I didn’t get cut because I wasn’t good enough. He told me I was crazy.”
Not satisfied with that, Purzycki called the team offices and asked for storied owner Wellington Mara, and surprisingly, he connected with him. He later met with Mara in New York City and pleaded his case. A few weeks later, checks started arriving.
“I had tears when I drove out of camp … but I’m pretty resilient,” Purzycki said. “I’ve never been one to collapse.”
After the end of his football career, Purzycki would eventually end up in the real estate business, brokering sales and investing and developing properties as well, ranging from residential to commercial to golf courses and marinas.
Purzycki would earn a law degree in his early 30s before serving as legal counsel to the Delaware Senate in the early 1980s. In 1982, he was elected to the New Castle County Council, serving nine years before stepping down.
In 1996, then-Gov. Tom Carper tapped him to become the first executive director of the Riverfront Development Corp., a nonprofit tasked with selling a redevelopment of a dilapidated industrial stretch of the city along the Christina River.
From the start, Purzycki envisioned the area as an economic engine for the city, directing the construction of the Chase Center on the Riverfront where the former Dravo Shipyard once stood. Just two years later, the convention center opened for a world-class exhibit on the last Tsar of Russia.
“[Then-Gov. Carper] looked around, and he said, ‘I have no idea how you did this, and I don’t think I want to know, but I’m glad you did,’” Purzycki recalled in a 2021 interview.
About 560,000 people came through the exhibit at the then-First USA Riverfront Arts Center in a five-month run.
“It was remarkable,” Purzycki added. “It just kind of gave us a sense of what the possibilities were.”
From there, shops, restaurants, hotels, apartments, a movie theater and corporate offices for Barclays Bank and AAA Mid-Atlantic have joined the Riverfront, fulfilling the vision that Purzycki laid out.
Megan McGlinchey, the current executive director of the Riverfront Development Corp. and a protégé of Purzycki, said the Riverfront transformation was remarkable not just for the physical change it brought, “but the psychological shift it created for Wilmington.”
“For decades, many people viewed the city through the lens of decline. The Riverfront gave Wilmington a visible success story. It helped attract residents back into the city and created momentum that extended beyond the Christina River into Market Street, adjacent neighborhoods, and now Riverfront East,” she told Spotlight Delaware, referring to the next expansion on the eastern bank of the Christina River.
When Purzycki pursued the mayor’s office in 2016, he entered a crowded field that already had six candidates, including incumbent Dennis Williams.
The city was still recovering from growing violence on its streets and a battered image brought upon by a Newsweek cover story that deemed the city “Murdertown USA.”
Purzycki, who by then had led the Riverfront revitalization for 20 years, said his city was “troubled by the sharp rise in crime, the lack of confidence in city leadership and the loss of optimism in Wilmington’s future.”
He narrowly won the primary race by 234 votes over Eugene Young, a rising young Black community activist who would later join Carney’s gubernatorial Cabinet. For years, critics argued Purzycki had come out on top by convincing a wave of Republicans to switch parties and back him in the Democratic primary – the city is so heavily Democratic that it acts as a de facto general election.
“He was a good man, and while we politically went up against each other in 2016, I had the pleasure of working with him on a variety of projects since, especially during my term as head of Delaware State Housing,” Young told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday. “So we got to work together on a variety of projects impacting and helping the people of the city, and my heart goes to his family.”
Purzycki served two terms from 2017 to 2025, including the entire span of the COVID pandemic.
He helped to bring economic revitalization to the Market Street corridor, working in particular with the Buccini Pollin Group – the city’s largest for-profit developer – to build new apartments, restaurants and attractions in the stretch. The total investment by the firm founded by local brothers Chris and Rob Buccini has eclipsed $1 billion – a figure that was once unthinkable in the city.
New businesses like Bardea, which has received vaunted James Beard Award nominations, have also brought significant attention to the changing nature of the corridor.
Purzycki also brought BPG’s Chase Fieldhouse – and subsequently the Philadelphia 76ers’ Blue Coats G-League team – and a major HBCU Week exhibition to the city during his tenure.
All of that growth helped to stabilize the city, which had seen a falling population in the years prior, and has since reached 73,000 residents, a level not seen since 2009.
In 2022, he laid out a $50 million plan, paid for by COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, to invest in neighborhoods across the city. He worked with nonprofit developers to build new homes or rehab existing ones on the East Side. Purzycki also worked with REACH Riverside to build new public housing and resources in the community.
After COVID, however, Purzycki was faced with a changing economic climate in the city, as employers began leaving downtown high-rises for remote work opportunities. New development just north of the city limits also drove more tenants from the city’s downtown district.
Some of those buildings have now been converted into apartments, which will change the nature of the city’s future downtown core.
Hanifa Shabazz, who served as city council president for Purzycki’s first four years, called the late mayor a “visionary” and an “innovative developer.”
She said that many will remember him by his work on the Riverfront and what he brought to the city, but Shabazz remembers him as a friend and an excellent singer.
She recounted some 10 years ago, when she and Purzycki would sing duets at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show, where they would imitate songs by Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, changing the lyrics to express what mattered most to them as leaders in the city.
“Just to be engaged with him … we were able to see what could possibly be for Wilmington and use our resources to get it done,” she said.
One of Purzycki’s first major tasks as mayor was to try to ease the level of gun violence in the city, and he tapped Robert Tracy, a veteran of the New York and Chicago police forces, to take the helm of the Wilmington Police Department.
Through the use of data-driven policing strategies and violence intervention efforts, shootings and murders fell sharply in the city, but they rebounded during the COVID era. As of the last year of his mayorship, Wilmington saw 81 shootings and 14 deaths – the city’s lowest totals in two decades.
Haneef Salaam, a longtime criminal justice and civil rights advocate in Wilmington, also pointed to Purzycki’s work before becoming mayor, when he chaired the Wilmington HOPE Commission in the mid-2000s. Purzycki was supportive of reentry initiatives in the city, including to help fund a reentry conference hosted by the HOPE Commission and the Delaware Center for Justice, securing space at the Chase Center and helping cover food costs, Salaam said.
“He was always willing to give financially and be a part of the conversation when it came to reentry, before reentry was even a big deal in Delaware,” he added, noting that Purzycki donated to two other reentry nonprofits that he operated.
Salaam said he appreciated Purzycki’s vision, which he feels is responsible for the fine dining downtown that Wilmington has today, but he wished the former mayor had done more to include residents in his efforts.
“I didn’t mind his vision. I just thought that he was excluding the current residents from being a part of the vision,” he said.
Despite the drop in bloodshed, the WPD also saw a 5% spike in complaints against officers during Tracy’s four-year tenure from 2017 to 2021. The lack of diversity in the top ranks of the police force – in a city that is majority Black and Latino – also led to a resolution of “no confidence” against Tracy by the city council.
In the last months of his mayorship, Purzycki likewise came to a loggerheads with council over a proposal to nix the residency requirement for city employees. Ultimately, a vote of no confidence in the mayor was rejected by council members, but a comment likening the debate to “mob rule” by the white mayor elicited claims of racism.
Even after he left office, his push to rehabilitate the historic Gibraltar estate – which neighbors his own home – drew controversy, particularly after Spotlight Delaware revealed that the city had spent millions to stabilize the property.
Bud Freel, a longtime friend who has been assisting Purzycki on that project, said the news of his passing was “like a gut punch.”
“He loved this city, and he loved the people that made up the city of Wilmington,” Freel told Spotlight Delaware. “He was just a hardworking, decent guy who just tried to do his best, and I just think everybody in Wilmington owes a debt of gratitude to Mike for what he’s done over the years.”
This is a developing story that will be updated.
The post Former Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki dies at 80 appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
May 19, 2026 — Agentic AI has always called for a different kind of CPU. NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang introduced the answer — the standalone Vera CPU — at GTC San Jose in March as NVIDIA’s next multi-billion dollar business.
On Friday, that CPU went from NVIDIA’s labs into customer hands.
Ian Buck hand-delivered the first NVIDIA Vera CPU systems to Anthropic, OpenAI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and SpaceXAI — marking the moment agentic CPUs move from announcement to production.
The first NVIDIA Vera CPUs arrived at three of the world’s leading AI labs on Friday — Anthropic in San Francisco, OpenAI in Mission Bay, SpaceXAI in Palo Alto — followed by a delivery to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Santa Clara on Monday. NVIDIA Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing Ian Buck hand-delivered them.
“Agentic AI is creating a new CPU moment in the AI factory — as models move from answering to acting, Vera is purpose-built to keep that work moving at scale,” Buck said.
The big idea: imagine you could work 10x faster. Could your computer keep up? Agentic AI puts more demand than ever on the infrastructure used to do all kinds of work — from building slides to compiling and testing software, analyzing data, searching files or even running simulations.
AI agents don’t run on GPUs alone. Every agentic sandbox, every tool call, every orchestration layer, every long-context retrieval operation — that’s CPU work. Vera is a new class of CPU designed with that reality as its starting point.
This gauntlet of concurrent, real-time tasks puts pressure on CPUs in ways traditional core-density focused designs were never built to prioritize. Vera packs 88 custom NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores, 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth and 50% faster per-core performance. Under constant load, work completes more quickly — increasing the efficiency of the entire AI factory and helping users get their work done with faster responses.
Vera Heads to San Francisco and Anthropic
The first delivery landed at Anthropic’s sleek SoMa offices in San Francisco.
James Bradbury, Anthropic’s head of compute, took the handoff from their conference room near the Bay.
Buck, aided by a bare NVIDIA Vera CPU motherboard he carried as a guide, walked Bradbury through the server built around the new CPU, talking through the features that make Vera different.
“Scaling compute is an important accelerant for the growth of models,” Bradbury said. “We’re excited to see Vera emerge as a promising part of the ecosystem when solving for agentic workloads.”
Feeding OpenAI’s Workloads
At OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters, the handoff moved outside — to an open-air balcony off the main offices.
The famously moody San Francisco weather cooperated on this day as Sachin Katti, head of compute infrastructure at OpenAI, thanked Buck for bringing the server over.
Buck walked through Vera’s features and, at one point — retrieving a screwdriver from his pocket — pulled off the lid to reveal the system’s insides.
On the Peninsula With SpaceXAI
The day’s final delivery took place at SpaceXAI’s offices in Palo Alto.
NVIDIA’s team walked Elon Musk through the system’s interior. Musk listened, then started asking questions — about cores, about memory layout, about cooling.
SpaceXAI is evaluating Vera for reinforcement learning workloads and the agent-based simulation pipelines that drive its training stack.
Vera Comes Home to the South Bay and OCI
On Monday inside the Oracle AI Customer Excellence Center, a team from OCI, including Karan Batta, who leads overall product management, and Gary Miller, chief customer and partner success officer, took a tour of the unboxed Vera CPU system. In the background, an NVIDIA GPU rack spun through OCI customer workloads from around the globe. The center is where Oracle customers come to kick the tires on a variety of AI workloads.
Buck explained how Vera will help.
“When AI models are posed a question, the answer, often, isn’t already prepped and ready to go. “The models actually have to generate some Python code to arrive at the correct answer,” Buck said. A task at which the Vera CPU excels. “That’s why we are seeing the demand for CPUs skyrocket,” Buck continued.
A trend the OCI team was also witnessing.
“OCI plans to deploy hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA Vera CPUs beginning in 2026 because agentic AI demands sustained performance at massive scale,” said Batta. “Vera’s architecture is purpose-built for high-throughput reasoning workloads, delivering the efficiency, density and footprint OCI needs to power the next generation of enterprise AI.”
OCI is the first cloud provider to deploy Vera at hyperscale. For enterprise customers, that means production-grade agentic AI infrastructure at a scale no other cloud provider can match today.
The OCI team was eager to put Vera to work, offering their customers another system to customize and validate their agentic AIs and workloads, Miller said. “I am really looking forward to the reaction of people who come through here, and working together to get the most from Vera,” he said.
What Vera Delivers
Vera is part of NVIDIA’s extreme co-design story, alongside the NVIDIA Rubin GPU, BlueField 4 DPU, Spectrum-X and MGX rack architecture.
In addition to powering standalone CPU systems, Vera is the host processor for Vera Rubin NVL72 where it pairs via second-generation NVIDIA NVLink-C2C to a pair of Rubin GPUs.
In these systems, Vera and Rubin share a unified memory architecture that keeps accelerated compute highly utilized.
Vera’s fast CPU cores and interconnect handle orchestration, control, and data movement needed to feed GPUs at 2x the energy efficiency of traditional infrastructure.
The age of agentic AI has a purpose-built CPU, and its name is Vera.
Learn more about the NVIDIA Vera CPU here.
Source: Ian Finder, NVIDIA
The post NVIDIA’s Vera CPU Lands at Leading AI Labs as Agentic AI Demand Grows appeared first on HPCwire.
New region strengthens Vultr’s commitment to affordable, high-performance cloud infrastructure and Europe’s thriving open source and AI ecosystem
MILAN, May 19, 2026 — Vultr today announced the launch of its 33rd global cloud data center region in Milan, coinciding with AI Week 2026 at Fiera Milano Rho, where over 700 international speakers will gather for Europe’s largest AI event. Vultr is a platinum sponsor and is also co-hosting the AI Agent Olympics Hackathon with over 1,000 participants.
Milan becomes Vultr’s ninth European cloud data center region, joining Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Manchester, Paris, Stockholm, and Warsaw. This launch represents the company’s latest expansion of a global network reaching 90% of the world’s population within 2–40 milliseconds. Vultr’s cloud data center location will be delivering Vultr’s full-stack AI infrastructure, including Vultr’s flagship cloud compute offering, VX1, in addition to Vultr’s full range of bare metal and cloud GPU offerings from NVIDIA and AMD.
The region will serve enterprises and developers running demanding workloads, including AI, SaaS platforms, databases, analytics, ERP software, microservices, and APIs. Vultr Cloud Compute plans are available from 2 to 192 vCPUs, offering dedicated compute resources with broad software compatibility, easy integration, and transparent billing.
Vultr benchmarks show Cloud Compute delivers up to 23% better performance and 33% lower cost than comparable hyperscaler compute plans – resulting in up to 82% better price-to-performance.
“Italy is one of Europe’s fastest-growing cloud infrastructure markets, and Milan is at the heart of it,” said J.J. Kardwell, CEO of Vultr. “Vultr is here because the enterprises and developers driving that growth need high-performance cloud infrastructure without the cost and complexity of the traditional hyperscalers. This is a long-term investment in Italy and in European AI innovation.”
To further enhance regional connectivity, Vultr is now a connected Autonomous System Number (ASN) at the Milan Internet Exchange (MIX), enabling direct peering with other ASNs on the exchange to keep traffic local, reduce latency, and increase bandwidth for regional users.
About Vultr
Vultr is on a mission to make high-performance cloud infrastructure easy to use, affordable, and locally accessible for enterprises and AI innovators around the world. Vultr is trusted by hundreds of thousands of active customers across 185 countries for its flexible, scalable, global Cloud Compute, Cloud GPU, Bare Metal, and Cloud Storage solutions. In December 2024, Vultr announced an equity financing at a $3.5 billion valuation. Founded by David Aninowsky and self-funded for over a decade, Vultr has grown to become the world’s largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company.
Source: Vultr
The post Vultr Expands European Footprint with 33rd Cloud Data Center Region in Milan appeared first on HPCwire.
PARIS and HAMBURG, Germany, May 19, 2026 — Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, today announced the delivery and inauguration of a new supercomputing infrastructure for Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace company, as part of a multi-year supercomputing contract. This key milestone follows the entry into service of two new supercomputers, and their respective modular data centers, delivered in Toulouse in 2025 and more recently in Hamburg in 2026.
Increasing demand on Airbus’ HPC infrastructure, driven by the rapidly evolving aerospace market, has created the need for a more powerful and flexible solution. By delivering this HPC infrastructure, Bull helps to triple Airbus’ simulation capacity, enabling engineers to both enhance existing products and design the next generation of aerospace solutions, while maintaining the highest standards of safety. Airbus is using its new HPC environment for critical tasks such as aerodynamic design, acoustics (cockpit, fuselage, cabin, etc.) and structural stress analysis.
As Airbus’ strategic HPC partner, Bull has progressively deployed its supercomputing infrastructure across multiple sites. The first system was delivered and entered into service in Toulouse in 2025, just 14 months after contract signature. The delivery of the Hamburg supercomputer in 2026 now marks the completion of this major program and paves the way for the inauguration of a fully operational, multi-site supercomputing infrastructure.
As part of this multi-year high-performance computer contract, Bull delivers a full turnkey solution, covering computing systems, storage and data centers, in an HPC-as-a-service model. Based on a unique design approach, these modular data centers bring together a set of several pre-built and interchangeable modules in which the HPC system is pre-integrated at Bull’s flagship factory in Angers (France), before being assembled on-site, forming a complete, turnkey data center.
The system’s energy efficiency is maximized with Bull’s Direct Liquid Cooling technologies enabling Airbus to optimize power consumption. Thanks to this patented solution, the heat generated by the system is reused to supply neighboring buildings.
In addition, Bull’s expert engineers in industrial HPC, based in Germany, have provided specialized expertise in the development of innovative simulation environments, including application optimization support, further strengthening Bull’s leading role in providing advanced HPC solutions.
“This long-term strategic and technological collaboration highlights the critical role of HPC in driving innovation and breakthrough programs across the aerospace and manufacturing industries,” said Martin Matzke, head of Central Europe and Northern Europe, at Bull.
“Our collaboration with Airbus to deliver a turnkey HPC solution is a cornerstone for Bull and our high-performance computing business. Being recognized as an HPC strategic partner by a global, world-renowned industry player is an honor for our teams,” said Bruno Lecointe, head of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing at Bull.
About Bull
Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with c.720m€ in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data and to drive progress for the benefit of the planet.
Source: Bull
The post Bull and Airbus Inaugurate Multi-Year HPC Infrastructure Across Europe appeared first on HPCwire.
Spurs can seal its survival with a win away at its London rivals.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Until this past weekend, a contractor for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) maintained a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials to several highly privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and a large number of internal CISA systems. Security experts said the public archive included files detailing how CISA builds, tests and deploys software internally, and that it represents one of the most egregious government data leaks in recent history. On May 15, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Guillaume Valadon, a researcher with the security firm GitGuardian. Valadon's company constantly scans public code repositories at GitHub and elsewhere for exposed secrets, automatically alerting the offending accounts of any apparent sensitive data exposures. Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn't responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive. The GitHub repository that Valadon flagged was named "Private-CISA," and it harbored a vast number of internal CISA/DHS credentials and files, including cloud keys, tokens, plaintext passwords, logs and other sensitive CISA assets. Valadon said the exposed CISA credentials represent a textbook example of poor security hygiene, noting that the commit logs in the offending GitHub account show that the CISA administrator disabled the default setting in GitHub that blocks users from publishing SSH keys or other secrets in public code repositories. "Passwords stored in plain text in a csv, backups in git, explicit commands to disable GitHub secrets detection feature," Valadon wrote in an email. "I honestly believed that it was all fake before analyzing the content deeper. This is indeed the worst leak that I've witnessed in my career. It is obviously an individual's mistake, but I believe that it might reveal internal practices." "Currently, there is no indication that any sensitive data was compromised as a result of this incident," a CISA spokesperson wrote. "While we hold our team members to the highest standards of integrity and operational awareness, we are working to ensure additional safeguards are implemented to prevent future occurrences." The GitHub account in question was taken offline shortly after CISA was notified about the exposure. However, according to Caturegli, the exposed AWS keys remained valid for another 48 hours. "What I suspect happened is [the CISA contractor] was using this GitHub to synchronize files between a work laptop and a home computer, because he has regularly committed to this repo since November 2025," Caturegli said. "This would be an embarrassing leak for any company, but it's even more so in this case because it's CISA."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Some employees will be moved to new teams focused on AI agents and cloud infrastructure
As Meta races to recenter itself around artificial intelligence, the tech giant is mandating that more than 7,000 workers must move to new teams, and it’s radically changing some employees’ jobs. The Guardian has also learned that some of these reassigned employees will shift to two new teams: one building AI cloud infrastructure and another that’s building an internal AI agent codenamed Hatch.
Late last week, Meta employees received a notice that engineers had been “selected” for reassignment and would begin reporting to the cloud infrastructure and Hatch teams by the end of this week. Meta made a similar move last month when it reshuffled at least 1,000 engineers on to a new data labeling team called Applied AI, or AAI – at first giving them the option to volunteer, but later telling workers: “Transfers aren’t optional.”
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Google is handing more of Search over to AI with new features announced today at the Google I/O conference in California.
Buyers can still find lower-cost homes in some midsize cities, especially across the Rust Belt and Sun Belt, a new analysis finds.
Agents can handle the comparison shopping and the payments. And you can put everything in one Universal Cart.
AI infrastructure and software company Scale AI has signed an MOU with the Department of Energy to support the Genesis Mission – the collaborative AI for science initiative bringing together leading national labs and advanced computing environments.
The move adds another commercial AI infrastructure player to an ecosystem that is increasingly centered around integrating AI models with scientific datasets and high performance computing systems. Some of the big tech players that are already connected to the initiative including Nvidia.
Public details for the Scale AI and DOE agreement are not available. No specific projects or deployment timelines have been announced. At this stage, it remains more of a collaborative framework rather than a fully defined operational initiative.
Much of messaging by Scale AI is based around the challenges surrounding scientific data infrastructure. There is greater emphasis on “unlocking the right data”. That is not surprising as industry trends and reports show data has emerged as the critical element in the success of AI systems.
In its announcement, Scale AI framed fragmented and difficult to operationalize research data as one of the biggest obstacles in allowing AI systems to be fully integrated into scientific discovery workflows.
The DOE national labs generate enormous amounts of data but often struggle to derive full value from it. That’s where Scale AI’s core expertise of data labeling and annotation could be useful in helping operationalize scientific data.
Most of the attention in AI for science went toward bigger models and more compute. The data itself is becoming a greater part of the problem. A lot of scientific data still sits across disconnected systems and highly specialized research environments that modern AI systems were never really designed to navigate. The goal now is to make large scientific datasets usable inside operational AI systems.
The Scale AI team aims to change this. They shared in a blog that “the massive amounts of data generated across America’s 17 National Labs represents a strategic resource that, if utilized properly, can unlock transformative advances in U.S. scientific leadership…This is the “data bottleneck,” not a lack of data, but the gap between data that exists and data that is actually usable for AI-driven discovery.”
(VideoFlow/Shutterstock)
The partnership comes at a time when Scale AI continues expanding its footprint. Earlier this week, Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) reportedly expanded its agreement with Scale AI from $100M to $500M.
Scale AI is also involved in the Defense Innovation Unit’s Thunderforge program, which focuses on bringing AI into military planning and operational decisions. This is part of President Trump’s Golden Dome homeland defense initiative.
These moves underscore Scale AI’s growing role in operational AI infrastructure beyond its original data labeling business.
Scale AI was founded in 2016 by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo as a data labeling company. The early focus was to help ML teams prepare training data for AI systems. However, demand for LLMs and operational AI systems accelerated. To meet that demand, the company expanded into broader AI infrastructure solutions.
In recent times, Scale AI has focused more on getting data into a usable state for real world AI deployments. That positioning fits naturally with many of the challenges emerging inside scientific computing environments.
Last year Wang departed for Meta’s superintelligence initiative. Former Uber Eats executive Jason Droege later took over as CEO. Despite change in leadership, Scale AI has continued expanding further into operational AI infrastructure. Meta has become a major backer of Scale AI.
The Genesis Mission itself is also evolving. Much of the early attention surrounding AI for science focused heavily on compute scale and frontier models. However, now the attention is shifting toward the infrastructure required to operationalize AI across complex scientific environments.
(IR Stone/Shutterstock)
Scientific AI systems face a different set of constraints than traditional enterprise AI deployments – reproducibility, traceability, and domain specific validation within simulation based workflows. All this makes data orchestration and operational reliability increasingly important layers of the stack.
The bigger problem is not the AI models themselves, but connecting them with existing research systems and scientific workflows. That aligns with the direction of the Genesis Mission itself.
Partnerships with companies, such as Scale AI, that are focused on operational AI infrastructure helps the initiative move beyond isolated AI experiments toward larger scale integration across scientific computing and research environments.
Scale AI shared “Signing this MOU is an important step in getting the data layer right in this mission. It allows Scale to engage more directly with DOE, align on shared priorities, and discuss how AI is applied across some of the most important scientific challenges facing the country.”
The agreement gives Scale AI a much closer role in how the DOE may eventually connect AI systems with scientific data and national lab research environments.The company could play an important role in how advanced computing environments integrate with national lab research workflows, while strengthening its position inside large scale government backed AI infrastructure initiatives.
This story originally ran in BigDATAwire.
The post Scale AI Joins DOE’s Genesis Mission as Scientific AI Shifts Toward Data Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.
Eight states have moved to draw new maps after supreme court ruling that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act
The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to boycott athletic programs of public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”.
In the announcement of the “Out of Bounds” campaign, the civil rights giant name-checked eight states – Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia – whose flagship public athletic programs generate more than $100m in annual revenue. Each of those states has moved to draw new maps to limit Black voting representation, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...Capture every moment of your summer adventure with our top picks for cameras and gear from GoPro, Insta360 and more.
The grocery store coffee aisle gets a bad rap. As a former barista, I'm here to tell you some of it is genuinely great if you know what to reach for.
The world’s best BSD (I’m kidding, I love them all equally) has released version 7.9, now available through your update tools and on mirrors the world over. OpenBSD 7.9 brings a ton of changes, fixes, and improvements, such as delayed hibernation support on amd64. This will allow OpenBSD laptops to briefly wake up from sleep, to then immediately drop into hibernation. A small but incredibly welcome change is that sysupgrade will now handle low space on /usr more gracefully, which will make quite a few people who once hit that limit very happy.
OpenBSD 7.9 also brings VA-API and open Widevine support to its Chromium (and derivatives) port, and OpenBSD can now run as a guest under Apple’s hypervisor for M-series Macs. There’s initial low-level support for the FUSE API, the maximum support processor count on amd64 has been raised from 64 to 255, there’s improved support for managing complex core configurations in the scheduler, and many more changes. There’s also the usual new versions of LibreSSL and OpenSSH, of course, but that’s a given.
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The latest drone alerts come as Ukraine and Latvia were this morning forced by Russia to repeatedly refute Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was preparing attacks against Russia from Latvia.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed that Ukraine does not use the territory of Latvia for its operations against Russia and refuted Moscow’s claims.
“Russia is lying about Latvia allowing any country to use Latvian airspace and territory to launch attacks against Russia or any other country.”
Continue reading...Jonathan Andic released on €1m bail after being questioned in connection with death of Isak Andic in 2024
The son of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, has been released on bail of €1m (£866,000) after being arrested and questioned in connection with his father’s death in Catalonia almost 18 months ago.
Andic died in December 2024 after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking in Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death aged 71 prompted tributes to him from politicians, journalists and the fashion world.
Continue reading...Two off-duty officers allegedly assaulted a sex worker in a taxi in Ciutat Vella, according to police in Catalonia
The Toronto police force, which is already under intense public scrutiny, is facing fresh questions after it emerged that three off-duty officers on vacation in Barcelona were arrested in connection with a sexual assault last week.
According to police in Barcelona, the alleged assault occurred in the early hours of 13 May, when the trio of police officers were travelling in a taxi with a sex worker in the Ciutat Vella neighbourhood of the Catalan capital.
Continue reading...  | State park mb trails [link] [comments] |
There is concern among some in the Justice Department that the pending charges against him are weak, sources said.
Unsure whether a robot mower could handle my complex lawn, I signed up for a robot mower subscription. Here's how it went and what surprised me.
Microsoft is launching three new Intel-powered Surface devices for businesses: the Surface Pro 12, Surface Laptop 8, and a smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop model. These new machines come equipped with newer Intel chips, a few business-focused upgrades, and notably higher starting prices. "The high pricing of these three new Surface devices is a sign of things to come for whatever consumer models Microsoft is planning this year," notes The Verge. From the report: This time around Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Intel's latest Core Ultra Series 3 processors first, ahead of similar models with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 processors later this year. The new Surface Pro 12, or as Microsoft calls it the Surface Pro for Business 13-inch (12th Edition), will be available for businesses today, starting at an eye-watering $1,949.99. The base model will include an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the regular 13-inch PixelSense LCD display. Businesses will have to pay extra for models with Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The top spec Surface Pro 12 with a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage will be priced at $4,399.99, and there are also OLED screen options and models with 5G connectivity. The Surface Pro 12 5G starts at $2,249.99, with a Core Ultra 5, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. [...] Microsoft is also launching two new versions of the Surface Laptop for businesses today. The Surface Laptop 8, or Surface Laptop for Business 13.8 or 15-inch (8th Edition) as Microsoft calls it, will also be available with a range of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chips. It launches alongside a smaller 13-inch model, which is confusingly labeled the Surface Laptop for Business 13-inch (1st Edition). The 13.8-inch model starts at $1,949.99, and includes Intel's Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. While Surface devices for businesses have typically had higher pricing than consumer models, the $1,949.99 starting price for a Surface Laptop 8 is almost double the original price of the Surface Laptop 7. RAMageddon really has come for Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices, after recent price increases meant the existing consumer models are now $500 more expensive than their original starting price. The max configuration for the 13.8-inch Surface Pro 8 will include a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $4,299.99. A similar version of the 15-inch model (with an x7 processor) will be priced at $4,499.99.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Liberal justice warned court could be seen as political after recent decisions backed by conservative supermajority
The US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a rare public rebuke of the nation’s highest court, declaring that it “can and should be better” in the wake of a string of controversial moves by its conservative supermajority.
Weeks after writing a solo dissent as the supreme court effectively gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson – its newest member and fiercest liberal voice – delivered a stark warning over the risk of the court being seen as political.
Continue reading...A fast-growing brush fire that started on Monday morning in southern California has prompted evacuation orders for thousands of people and damaged at least one home.
The Sandy fire was reported just after 10am in Simi Valley, a city in Ventura county about 30 miles north-west of Los Angeles. The blaze spread to more than 1,300 acres by its second day. Several neighbourhoods in nearby northern LA were put under evacuation warnings. Under an evacuation warning, residents are not required to leave immediately but are encouraged to be alert and be prepared to leave if conditions worsen
Continue reading...Investigation launched as video circulates online showing officer firing at vehicle and colleagues dragging away body
Authorities in Jamaica have launched an investigation after CCTV footage of a woman’s fatal shooting by police sent shock waves across the Caribbean nation.
Footage circulating on social media shows a police officer firing at a vehicle during a protest on Sunday in Granville, in Jamaica’s north-western parish of St James. The bullet hit Latoya Bulgin, 45, who was behind the wheel of the vehicle.
Continue reading...Filings reveal $220m to $750m in trades on US president’s behalf in first quarter of 2026, including securities linked to largest US companies
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in Eli Lilly on Donald Trump’s behalf earlier this year, according to financial disclosures, as the US drugmaker benefited from his administration’s move to expand access to blockbuster obesity treatments.
Ethics filings revealed several thousand trades on the US president’s behalf tied to stocks and bonds in the first quarter of 2026, with a cumulative value of between $220m and about $750m.
Continue reading...WHO chief said he was ‘deeply concerned’ after at least 500 suspected Ebola cases and 130 deaths reported in outbreak of Bundibugyo strain
Global health leaders are considering whether vaccines or medicines still in development could be used to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as the World Health Organization’s chief said he was deeply concerned by the outbreak’s speed and scale.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been at least 500 suspected cases of Ebola and 130 suspected deaths in DRC since the new outbreak began – up from about 200 cases and 65 deaths when it was announced on Friday.
Continue reading...An American medical missionary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was evacuated after testing positive for Ebola.
Investigators have been looking at a handful of Chinese firms that together control the majority of unrefrigerated shipping container manufacturing around the globe, the sources said.
A long and bitter legal battle between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman has culminated in victory for the OpenAI boss. Musk has vowed to appeal the verdict. But what did the trial reveal about big tech and the global AI race. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian US tech and power reporter Nick Robins-Early - watch on YouTube
Continue reading...CNET, Lifehacker, Mashable, PCMag and ZDNET are giving away prizes to readers who can predict the future correctly.
Microsoft is turning Azure Linux into a general-purpose, Fedora-based cloud distribution available to all Azure customers, while also productizing Flatcar as Azure Container Linux for immutable container hosts. "When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you're shipping a Linux distribution," Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's CEO, said in response to Microsoft's surprise announcement. "That's amazing." ZDNet reports: Until now, [Lachlan Everson, Microsoft's Principal Program Manager on Azure's open-source team] noted, "we had Azure Linux only available to third-party customers through AKS specifically, and that was Azure Linux 3.0." Going forward, this will be ACL. Everson emphasized that Azure Linux 4.0 is the culmination of years of internal usage and the evolution of the earlier Mariner distribution. "So we've been running Azure Linux for many years internally, and we got through to 3.0, and we only allowed it on as a container host on AKS. What we've done is make it a general-purpose, so this is all the learnings that we've had in the heritage of Mariner." Under the hood, Azure Linux 4.0 is based on Fedora Linux and is delivered as an open distribution on GitHub. This code is available now. Yes, Red Hat knows that Microsoft has done this. Everson continued, "So, we made a decision to use Fedora as an upstream, so it's using RPMs in the Fedora ecosystem. Microsoft curates the packages and the supply chain to fit Azure's cloud platform." Microsoft also created "it to be purpose-built for Azure, which integrates vertically into all of our infrastructure to give you the best Azure Linux experience on Azure." While Azure Linux will ship as a VM image, Microsoft is already preparing a developer-friendly path onto Windows desktops: "And as of today, we have it as a VM image for your VM host on Azure. We're going to announce WSL images as well." While developers will be able to run Azure Linux locally through WSL, Microsoft is not positioning it as a traditional desktop Linux. Asked whether he could run it on his laptop, Everson said: "I will be able to run it on my laptop, or what have you. Yes, on Windows 11." However, when pressed about a desktop experience, Everson was clear that there are "no plans" for a graphical environment. "It's optimized for server-side in the cloud," he said, adding that even on a developer machine, users should expect a lean environment. "Minimal packages, yeah. The idea is that we offer you a consistent experience to do your development on your machine, and that you can take your workloads as you develop them on your machine and run them with VS Code. You can run your applications on that, and know that the platform is the same that you're running on the cloud, so that you have that kind of consistency between environments." Flatcar itself remains the upstream project, but Microsoft is packaging it for Azure customers. Everson described Flatcar as "purpose-built, immutable, secure by default, production-ready operating system, and Azure Container Linux is the productization of that, but we're still investing in the upstream Flatcar ecosystem and pulling that downstream into a productized exterior experience just for container workloads, so it's a container hosting in AKS." To underscore the immutable model, he added that "Everything's baked in, so there is no package manager. We bake the bits into the immutable, and they're in the immutable version. So Azure Container Linux is the immutable version. So you shouldn't be changing any system packages or any application packages. Anything that you need to change is customer workloads run in containers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A decade after Sony released its first 1000X noise-canceling headphones, it's marking the milestone with a swanky new $650 model called 1000X The Collexion. Is it worth $200 more than the XM6?
Debt collectors can be aggressive, but Social Security survivor benefits may be more protected than you'd expect.
Is your CD account maturity date on the calendar this June? Here are three things to consider doing right now.
Officials from Baltic states say Moscow behind latest such incident but also tell Kyiv to be more careful with its routing
A Romanian F-16 Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday in what appears to be the latest case of Russian electronic jamming diverting long-range Ukrainian drones into the alliance’s territory.
A local resident told the Estonian public broadcaster, ERR, that he had seen two fighter jets – part of a Nato force policing the skies over the Baltic states – flying in the area before a loud bang that brought the drone down. He said the drone had crashed about 30 metres from the nearest residential building.
Continue reading...Officials will determine if standard process was followed before lethal strikes in Caribbean and eastern Pacific
The Pentagon’s internal watchdog has opened an investigation into whether US military commanders followed proper procedures when conducting boat strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
The office of inspector general at the Department of Defense is examining whether military commanders stuck to the standard six-step process the US military is required to follow before approving and carrying out lethal strikes, according to an 11 May memo initiating the review.
Continue reading...Commentary: One of the most distinctive and prolific actors of our time is the topic of an upcoming film, and I can't wait to see it.
Russian leader says relations between two countries have reached ‘unprecedented level’ on eve of 25th visit to China
Vladimir Putin has arrived in Beijing for a state visit, four days after Donald Trump left China.
The Russian leader’s visit to China – his 25th, according to Chinese state media – reflects Beijing’s growing confidence on the world stage as a centre of global diplomatic activity.
Continue reading...Player was actually NFL offensive player of the year
Receiver made a total of three tackles last season
Jaxon Smith-Njigba has built a justified reputation as one of the most electrifying receivers in the NFL. So it was understandable that the Seahawks star was surprised when he received a trophy for the league’s defensive player of the year.
Smith-Njigba actually won the NFL’s offensive player of the year after setting franchise records with 119 receptions and 1,793 receiving yards last season. But when he received his trophy the engraving read “Defensive Player of TheYear”.
Continue reading...Darren Jones says release will be ‘one of the largest government publications ever laid in this house’
On Friday parliament’s intelligence and security committee issued a damning statement about the government’s response to the humble address requiring the release of documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. It said the government was not fully complying with what is in effect an instruction from the Commons. For good measure, the committee also accuses the government of not keeping proper record of its decisions and of doing far too much business by WhatsApp. Here is our story, by Henry Dyer and Paul Lewis.
At 12.30pm Jeremy Wright, deputy chair of the committee and a former Tory attorney general, will ask a Commons urgent question about this. He is asking Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, to reply.
Continue reading...  | Back in March I recieved an older OW2114xxxxxx Pint (5313 hw and 5040 fw) with a known bad battery. The board had sat for at least 2 yrs, but I was able revive the battery and balance the cells enough to get it back riding. They would balance to 62.6v (4.18 ea) but then 2 of the cells would lose voltage pretty quickly. Clearly 2-4 bad cells (last picture). I was able to use this as an extra/driveway board for friends...but had to constantly rebalance the cells after each session...while also closely monitering battery temp to <130F. After the latest rebalance, the board will show 62.6v and then immediately drop to 22.5v and die when unplugged...but individual cells still show 4.17+... Battery is obviously shot and I would like to replace the battery w an OnlyAmps or Nexus to extend the range...but am worried the BMS may be shot too. Any thoughts on how to bench test a BMS? They seem hard to come by and I dont really want to buy a whole new FW pack for $300...rather go aftermarket battery and use my existing BMS, if possible. Appreciate any help/experience. [link] [comments] |
Former first lady delivered veiled but sharp remarks on US politics during speaking tour that began in Melbourne
It was a curious question: who was going to pay $895 (US$640, £476) to see Michelle Obama speak at 12.30pm on a Tuesday in Melbourne? While she is an indisputably excellent public speaker, the ticket prices for Obama’s first-ever speaking event in Australia raised a few eyebrows, ranging from the $895 “platinum” package (which promised a priority seat, an “exclusive” brunch, and a “commemorative lanyard and tote bag”) to the cheapest seats at $195 a pop.
A sign that expectations may have been bigger than our wallets in a cost-of-living crisis: two weeks ago, my “cheap” seat at the back was suddenly upgraded to a much better spot due to “a recent change in production requirements” that was left unexplained. Another: the visibly empty patches at the front of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
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Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. tools and apps, Janelle Gale, Meta's head of human resources, said in an internal memo. The organizations will use "A.I. native design structures" and have fewer managers per employee than other parts of the company, she said, adding that company leaders will send details about the new roles on Wednesday. The restructuring "will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," Ms. Gale wrote. Meta declined to comment further on the changes. The move comes shortly before Meta begins laying off roughly 8,000 employees, or 10 percent of its work force. Ms. Gale also mentioned Wednesday's layoffs in her memo. "We know days like this are extremely hard, and we appreciate you showing up for each other," Ms. Gale said. According to the NYT, employees have been asked to work remotely that day and emails about the layoffs would be sent at 4 a.m. local time. Employees in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two extra weeks for every year they worked at Meta.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Karim Khan is wrong to say he has been exonerated of sexual misconduct. The case must proceed swiftly
The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.
It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.
Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he served as a federal prosecutor in New York and Washington
Continue reading...President Trump has been openly mulling a takeover of Cuba similar to the operation that toppled Venezuela's Nicolás Madoro. What it would mean for the regime's leaders remains to be seen. Here are some of the figures to watch.
Independent scientists say the technology, while impressive, lacks some components to be truly considered an artificial egg.
Attack marks first time military action has forced a fully operating nuclear power plant to rely on backup generators
• Middle East crisis – live updates
A drone strike that cut off external power to a nuclear reactor in the United Arab Emirates this week has revived concerns over the safety of nuclear plants during wartime.
Reactor no 3 at the Barakah nuclear plant lost vital off-site power for about 24 hours after the attack on Sunday, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators.
Continue reading...Darren Jones says there are good reasons not to disclose certain details and next batch will be released next month
A senior minister has defended the government’s decision to withhold information relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador from a powerful parliamentary committee.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, told the Commons on Tuesday there were good reasons not to disclose certain information, adding that the next tranche of documents would not be published until next month.
Continue reading...Garden featuring giant woman carved out of tree makes designer one of few female artists to win
Featuring a giant, sleeping woman carved out of a fallen tree, Sarah Eberle’s hauntingly beautiful garden has won the top prize at the Chelsea flower show.
Eberle, now the Royal Horticultural Society’s most decorated gardener, is a rarity; she is one of only three women to have won Best in Show at Chelsea as solo designers in its 100-year history.
Continue reading...Cornwall Insight predicts rise in price cap of nearly 13% in Great Britain as Iran war pushes up gas costs
Energy bills for households in Great Britain could increase by more than £200 a year to almost £1,900 from this summer in “a kick in the teeth” for millions struggling with the cost of living crisis.
A typical gas and electricity bill is forecast to rise to the equivalent of £1,850 a year from July under the industry regulator Ofgem’s quarterly price cap, according to analysis by the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight.
Continue reading...I really enjoy my XRC that has over 700 miles now. It's definitely an improvement over the XR+ I had before. I ride mostly paved paths, and my usual top speed is around 19mph. I'm 155lbs and I haven't felt pushback or heard the haptic buzz so far. I do get worried that riding close to 20 may be in the danger zone. That's why I'm considering the X7 Sport. Does it make sense to upgrade? I wouldn't worry about riding near the limit anymore, but is that enough of a reason to buy a new board when this one has been flawless? Is there an adjustment getting used to the X7 rails vs straight? I'm almost 70, which makes me consider the crash more than I did 20 years ago. Help me out of my decision paralysis!
Frank Cottrell-Boyce tells MPs to focus on early-years reading, with more support for parents and nursery workers
The children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce has urged the government to prioritise pleasure over learning in children’s reading.
Giving evidence to MPs on the education committee, which is investigating the crisis in reading for pleasure among children, the screenwriter and novelist said conversations about children’s reading too often revert to attainment in school.
Continue reading...Enthusiasts track down weapon used to fell fleeing Eli Wallach amid preparations for 60th anniversary of film’s release
Six decades after Clint Eastwood nonchalantly used a cigar to light its fuse and fell a fleeing Eli Wallach, the Manchester-made cannon that appeared in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been rediscovered in a museum in south-east Spain.
The artillery piece was tracked down by the Sad Hill Cultural Association, a group of volunteers dedicated to restoring the graveyard near Burgos, northern Spain, built for the climax of Sergio Leone’s seminal spaghetti western.
Continue reading...Odai Shanah details being among the children forced to huddle in a classroom during attack at the Islamic Center
A nine-year-old boy has described witnessing Monday’s deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, saying that he “saw bad stuff” and huddled in closet during the attack.
Odai Shanah, whose mother emigrated from war-torn Gaza and settled in southern California two decades ago, told Reuters that he heard a barrage of gunshots coming from outside the walls of the mosque complex, which also houses an Islamic day school.
Continue reading...Want to buy a home or refinance your current one? Here are the mortgage interest rates you'll need to know now.
Get ready for the end.
Abstract expressionist’s Number 7A, 1948, becomes the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction
A Jackson Pollock painting has sold for a record $181.2m (£135.3m) at Christie’s in New York.
The sale on Monday made Number 7A, 1948 the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction, according to ARTnews.
Continue reading...May 19, 2026 — The Director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Mateo Valero; the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities of the Government of Spain, Juan Cruz Cigudosa; and the Minister of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Núria Montserrat, met this Tuesday at the BSC with the Under Secretary of the United States Department of Energy, Darío Gil, to sign a letter of intent aimed at advancing scientific and technological collaboration.
The collaboration includes disciplines such as artificial intelligence, healthcare, quantum information science, high-performance computing, and the applications of AI and computing to drive scientific discovery broadly.
The signatory parties reaffirmed the importance of scientific cooperation in scientific disciplines with a global impact, including artificial intelligence (AI), healthcare, quantum information science, high-performance computing, and the applications of AI and computing to drive scientific discovery broadly.
They also agreed that “scientific discovery and technological innovation drive progress and prosperity worldwide.”
As they noted, joint scientific cooperation among all parties “is especially critical now, with the ever-accelerating race for global technology dominance.”
Promotion of Joint Research
They also agreed that “each side will aim to expand and strengthen laboratory-to-laboratory collaboration in critical technology areas.” They will promote joint research, researcher exchange, shared infrastructure, and public-private partnerships for mutual benefit. Additionally, they share an interest in reinforcing research security and aligning practices to protect innovation.
The announcement of this collaboration highlights “the importance of our shared commitment to shape the future of next-generation innovation and to ensure that their citizens benefit from those investments.” The parties share expertise in scientific disciplines ranging from high-performance computing to quantum technologies and will synergistically drive progress on innovation and discovery.
Finally, during the meeting, all parties looked forward to future engagements to usher in a new chapter of collaboration.
Source: BSC-CNS
The post BSC Hosts US-Spain Initiative for Next-Gen Research Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.
Smotrich vows to retaliate by waging ‘war’ on Palestinian Authority and orders evacuation of a West Bank village
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said the international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor has sought a confidential arrest warrant against him, and promised to retaliate by waging a “war” on the Palestinian Authority.
He said he had ordered the evacuation of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as part of measures against the authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank under agreements with Israel.
Continue reading...New electoral maps are erasing Black representations. The effort takes its cues from American history
Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.
A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.
Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...Iranian state media showed wedding ceremonies in Tehran for dozens of couples said to have volunteered for "self-sacrifice" in the war with the U.S.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun popcorn flick, with little story and no purpose. Just shut off your brain and you'll be fine.
Conflict, mistrust and delayed detection could complicate response to emergency caused by Bundibugyo variant
To be around the centre of an Ebola outbreak is to become used to the smell of chlorine. At hospitals and government buildings, surfaces are sprayed with it and hands washed in a 0.05% solution that can kill the virus in 60 seconds.
Infrared handheld thermometers take temperatures at airports and border crossings. Any indication of a fever prevents passage. Contact-tracing teams crisscross the countryside.
Continue reading...Ruling blocks detentions at three federal courthouses except in rare cases amid protests over tactics
A federal judge in New York has banned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting immigrants in or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan, where vigorous confrontations have played out since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Under an order issued on Monday by P Kevin Castel, a US district judge, federal agents are no longer allowed to make arrests of immigrants except under exceptional circumstances at the sites where hearings are held before immigration judges.
Continue reading...The new DG started by stressing the need for ‘velocity’. First, he’ll have to navigate staff cuts, culture wars and a sea of fake news
Matt Brittin’s message was pretty clear on his first day as director general of the BBC. It was echoed in a schedule that included an introductory LinkedIn video as well as meetings with the newsroom, podcast, radio, current affairs and research and development teams. It was there in his first all-staff email, which used the word “velocity” twice and invoked the second world war to call for a “sense of urgency”.
Alongside Brittin’s affection for the BBC and public service broadcasting, his message can best be summed up as “move fast but break nothing”.
Jane Martinson is an academic and Guardian columnist. She is a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group, and writes in a personal capacity
Continue reading...44-year-old lost comeback fight in just 17 seconds
Carano hints she may return to compete again
Gina Carano has admitted she would have faced serious harm if she hadn’t tapped out of her comeback fight against Ronda Rousey on Saturday night.
The 44-year-old hadn’t fought since 2009 when she faced Rousey in the contest, which was part of a high-profile MMA card on Netflix. The fight was a complete mismatch and lasted just 17 seconds, with Carano tapping out after Rousey, who was making her own comeback after nearly a decade away from competition, put her opponent in an armbar.
Continue reading...Survivors say they'd asked for more medical support before the Iranian drone strike that killed six U.S. soldiers at their command post in Kuwait in the war's first 24 hours.
The Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to resettle White Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, proposing to increase the government's refugee cap to welcome thousands more of them, according to a plan obtained by CBS News.
Thirty years ago, a Cuban fighter jet shot down two civilian planes operated by Florida-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, an incident that inflamed U.S.-Cuba relations.
In yet another staggeringly corrupt and unprecedented move, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department on Monday announced a $1.776 billion slush fund, drawn from public coffers, to funnel payouts to Trump loyalists.
The fund is part of a deal decided by the Trump administration to drop its weak $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over a leak of the president’s tax returns. The entire lawsuit had itself become an egregious example of self-dealing: Trump’s Justice Department suing Trump’s IRS on behalf of Trump.
Over 90 House Democrats recently signed an amicus brief to the presiding judge asking that she dismiss the suit. A settlement, the Democrats wrote, would create a “specter of corruption unparalleled in American history.”
With his popularity at historic lows, Trump can only turn to these kinds of payouts for his allies and dwindling base.
Before the judge could respond, however, Trump withdrew the lawsuit and moved to set up something even worse than that specter: a slush fund beholden entirely to Trump, with little in the way of judicial or congressional oversight.
According to the Justice Department announcement, the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund — to remedy the purported weaponization of the U.S. government — will be paid out to Trump allies who claim they were targeted by President Joe Biden’s administration. The irony that the fund itself is just one of Trump’s countless weaponizations of the government should be lost on no one.
The fund amount — $1.776 billion — is, of course, an on-the-nose reference to American independence and tells us everything we need to know about this deal. For most of the country, there is little of substance in this too-cute-by-half dollar amount. Instead, the material benefit will go to the largely to the white ruling classes with some crumbs for Trumpian militia members convicted under Biden.
Trump’s reckless and brutal presidency is materially harming the American working classes — even the white working class. With his popularity at historic lows, Trump can only turn to payouts like this, pardons, and the spectacle of white supremacist violence; these are all he has to offer his allies and dwindling base.
That’s what this slush fund does: nod to Trump’s allegiance to his supporters, the vast majority of whom will get little other than the mood elevation that comes with having their resentments recognized — what W.E.B. DuBois once called the “psychological wages” of whiteness, a benefit that is only felt by virtue of the greater oppression of others.
Trump’s authoritarian capitalism will not, after all, uplift the white working class; there aren’t enough U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signing bonuses or slush-fund payouts to go around.
The slush fund money would come directly from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, which is typically used to pay legally reached settlements and court judgments. But in this case, a commission picked by Trump’s attorney general will apparently hand out payments as it pleases.
No specific recipients have been named yet, but beneficiaries could reportedly include Proud Boys and other January 6 Capitol rioters, many of whom have since pardoned by Trump.
The fact that any payouts will be funded by taxpayer dollars is not mentioned in the Justice Department’s fund announcements.
“This is a theft far worse than Watergate,” wrote civil rights attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnik on social media. “There is no other word for it. They are stealing $1.78 BILLION dollars to pay Trump’s allies, despite knowing that these people are not legally entitled to any money.”
The Trump regime hopes programs like this “anti-weaponization” fund can appease just enough of an active base to hold power under minority rule, while enriching all those in Trump’s inner circles who in turn stick by his side regardless of what happens in elections.
The Trump regime hopes programs like this fund can appease just enough of an active base to hold power under minority rule, while enriching all those in Trump’s inner circles.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the New Republic that he sees the fund as Trump and his lawyers “figuring out a way to refund the January 6 militia, presumably to get them ready for the next round of battle.”
Raskin added that, should the Democrats retake the House and Senate in the midterms, they would shut down the fund and demand transparency about any payments made. According to the Congress member, any payouts to January 6 participants would violate the Fourteenth Amendment by aiding in an insurrection against the U.S. It is, however, no easy task to claw back money once doled out.
“It is my personal opinion that this is a criminal act and people should respond accordingly,” noted Reichlin-Melnik.
The problem is that for Trump’s regime and its loyal Supreme Court, the distinction between presidential criminal corruption and permissible executive action has all but evaporated.
The challenge, then, is to show that Trump’s meager offerings are not worth accepting.
The post Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization” Fund Is a Handout to His Hardcore Supporters appeared first on The Intercept.
The enhanced features are coming to VoiceOver, Magnifier, subtitles and more later this year.
Tommy Carstensen oversees one of the most sophisticated archives of Epstein materials, while Tristan Lee’s database allows searches of faces who appear in the files
Before the US Department of Justice (DoJ) missed a legally mandated, December 2025 deadline to release unclassified files related to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, the Denmark-based data scientist and bioinformatician Tommy Carstensen was not especially concerned with the case of the accused sex trafficker.
“I hadn’t even watched the Netflix documentary,” he said.
Continue reading...If you’re using or planning on adding a red light therapy mask to your skin care regimen, here’s what experts want you to know.
As resistance to datacenters grows, Musk and others are painting a rosy picture. But the US must institute protections
As Americans grow increasingly worried that AI will wipe out millions of jobs and create a permanent new underclass, tech billionaires are rushing to reassure us not to worry – the subtext being: please don’t bring out the anti-AI pitchforks.
Even Elon Musk, who recently merged SpaceX with his AI company, has joined the effort, essentially telling people “don’t worry, be happy” about AI. Musk wrote last month that “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government” would save everyone thrown out of work by AI.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues
Continue reading...The only person with Mango clothing chain founder Isak Andic when he died on a hike was his eldest son, and his testimony was reportedly "inconsistent."
Retired NHS worker Nicholas Stone died after becoming unwell at protest against far-right Bristol Patriots
The police watchdog is investigating the use of force against a retired NHS worker who attended a counter-demonstration against the far right and died shortly after contact with officers there.
Nicholas Stone, 65, who lived in Bristol, died on 10 January after becoming unwell at a protest opposing the rightwing group Bristol Patriots, who were demonstrating in the city centre.
Continue reading...Pub owner’s sale to Barcelona-based brewer Damm is latest takeover of a British beer by an overseas buyer
Pub chain Greene King has agreed to sell its Old Speckled Hen ale brands to the Spanish owner of Estrella lager, making it the latest in a series of British beers to be snapped up by overseas buyers.
Barcelona-based brewer Damm has agreed to buy Old Speckled Hen brands, including its non-alcoholic and golden ale versions.
Continue reading...Police in Spain arrested the son of Isak Andic, the billionaire founder of the Spanish fashion brand Mango, for allegedly having played a role in his December 2024 death.
Gemini AI, Android XR, smart glasses and more are all on deck for today's keynote.
Political chaos has engulfed Britain, with six people holding the U.K.'s top job in a decade, including one prime minister who lasted only 45 days.
Amazon is adding AI-generated "podcasts" to Alexa+, letting users request custom audio explainers on any topic featuring two synthetic co-hosts. Variety reports: Seemingly to dispel the notion that these "podcasts" will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure "accurate, real-time news and information." Those include the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico and USA Today; publications from Conde Nast, Hearst and Vox Media; and more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S. In an example clip shared by Amazon of the new Alexa Podcasts feature, the two AI-generated hosts discuss "the latest music releases." A male Alexa+ narrator says more than 50% of music listening now comes from unsigned artists. "The monoculture is just gone," a female-voiced Alexa+ narrator chimes in. The male Alexa+ host says there has been "stoner metal," indie pop and experimental hip-hop music "all dropping on the same Friday," and adds, "That's not chaos -- that's the healthiest the music ecosystem has ever been." [...] To use Alexa Podcasts, users can simply tell Alexa what topic they're curious about and "it does the rest in minutes." Alexa+ will provide an overview of what it plans to cover, and let you adjust the length and direction before it generates the podcast. When your episode is ready, you'll get a notification on your Echo Show device and the Alexa app.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
San Antonio Spurs 122-115 Oklahoma City Thunder (2OT)
Spurs take Game 1 of best-of-seven series
Victor Wembanyama had 41 points and 24 rebounds, Dylan Harper finished with 24 points and a team playoff-record seven steals, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-115 in a double-overtime classic to open the Western Conference finals.
Wembanyama sealed Monday night’s game with a pair of dunks in the final minute, one of them leading to a three-point play as the Spurs stole home-court advantage and beat the Thunder for the fifth time in six meetings this season.
Continue reading...A bear mauled to death a man at Vitosha, a mountainous region just outside the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, authorities said.
Our research has uncovered young entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka and Pakistan using AI tools to make deeply objectionable content – and money
Niamh McIntyre is a senior reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Scroll through any Facebook feed in Britain and, between the baby announcements and petty neighbourhood beefs, you’re likely to come across an account with a union jack profile picture and a vague, generic name like Britain Today.
These accounts – and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of them – present themselves as the work of British patriots. In one typical, AI-generated video, a middle-aged man claims his local cafe “has stopped serving pork, bacon and sausages just to avoid offending people”. Another post from the same account includes a sepia-tinted set of images of Victorian London, mourning a time when the city “was English, first-world and beautiful”. Alongside this type of reactionary nostalgia, it’s not unusual to see memes that call Islam a “cancer”, decry Muslims praying in public as an “invasion of the west” or promote the “great replacement theory” (which claims that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants).
Niamh McIntyre is a senior reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Continue reading...The global population is aging faster than care systems can manage. Is AI the solution to keeping older people safe and independent in their homes?
We tested Samsung phones spanning from $300 to $2,000. Our top recommendations include one that won a CNET Lab Award for having the fastest charging.
Trump’s approach to Taiwan could jeopardize its future. Indo-Pacific allies are taking note Expert comment LToremark
Trump’s comments on Taiwan after his meeting with Xi and an apparent move towards ‘strategic stability’ with China could have consequences for Taiwan’s future and erode trust among US allies.
When US President Donald Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, there was concern that he might negotiate the future of Taiwan to strike a deal with China. For Beijing, Taiwan is the most important issue in the US-China bilateral relationship. Xi even warned that if the issue is mishandled, it could trigger ‘clashes and even conflicts’.
Reports in the run-up to the meeting suggested that China would seek a change in America’s long-standing position on Taiwanese independence. Rather than merely ‘not support’ it, China wants the US to ‘oppose’ Taiwan’s independence and to endorse Beijing’s goal of unification. Such a shift in US policy might appear symbolic, but it would be disastrous not only for the self-governing island, but also for America’s posture in the Indo-Pacific and the region’s security.
In the end, such a shift did not materialize. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio even asserted that America’s position remains unchanged. But the momentary respite has merely deferred the underlying anxiety.
A better insight into Trump’s thinking on Taiwan comes from an interview with Fox News, that aired soon after he departed Beijing. Three things stood out. First, Trump said that he will use a $14bn weapons sales package to Taiwan that requires his approval as a ‘very good negotiating chip’ to deal with China. Earlier this year, the president deferred the multi-billion-dollar sale of missiles, anti-drone equipment and air-defence systems until after the summit to avoid derailing it.
Trump also said he has consulted with Xi on the matter and seems willing to negotiate a future arms sale to Taiwan with Beijing. This runs against one of the 1982 US Six Assurances to Taiwan, which states that the United States will not consult with China on its arms transfers to Taiwan. The assurances serve to reassure Taipei to restrain it from provocations and bolster its defensive capabilities to deter Beijing. Further delaying arms deliveries could operationally weaken Taiwan’s defensive capabilities, upend the military deterrent – and make Taiwan more jittery.
With Trump and Xi reportedly set to meet at least three more times this year, the temptation to hold back US arms transfers in order to preserve the summit cadence will only grow. It could also tempt Beijing into asking for more concessions that weaken US security guarantees, such as restrictions on cabinet visits to Taiwan or curtailing US transits by the Taiwanese president.
Second, when asked about whether the United States would come to Taiwan’s aid in case of a conflict, Trump maintained the US line of strategic ambiguity. But he also said that the US was not looking to fight a war 9,500 miles away. Ambiguity only works as deterrence when underwritten by credible resolve – and Trump’s comments cast doubt over that. The statements also come as US military resources have been diverted from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East and its munitions stockpiles are depleted. Beijing could read this as an opportunity to test American credibility, and slowly chip away at Taiwan’s resolve by ramping up its intimidation tactics.
Third, during the interview Trump parroted Beijing’s view of who is to blame for tensions in the Taiwan Strait. ‘We are not looking to have somebody say let’s go independent because the United States is backing us’, he said. Beijing has framed Taiwan’s desire for independence as the main reason for the deterioration of relations. Trump also failed to mention Beijing’s relentless coercive pressure on Taiwan and actions in the Taiwan Strait. His tacit endorsement could serve to legitimize Beijing’s narrative and tactics.
Taken together, Trump’s comments undercut the precarious balance that has characterized US policy on Taiwan for decades. It would sow doubt among the Taiwanese public about the credibility of the US security guarantee and their own ability to defend the island. They could also embolden Xi, who seeks a fourth term next year and has vowed to not let the Taiwan issue pass onto the next generation.
Another concern arising from the summit is Beijing’s new framing of the US-China bilateral relationship as pursuing ‘constructive strategic stability’. Marco Rubio also echoed this phrase in his interview with NBC News during the summit, implying Washington has endorsed this idea, at least rhetorically. What it actually means is unclear. Beijing has long preferred vague formulations because it can change their substance based on its interest. This could have implications for Taiwan. Any US action contrary to Beijing’s core interests on the issue could be framed as a violation of this strategic stability, with Washington cast as the disruptive party. How much the Trump administration cares about the framing is unclear. But if it does, the pattern of withholding assistance to Taiwan as leverage could harden into the new baseline.
Teenage suspects died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, say officials. Plus, why American women want to leave the US at twice the rate of men
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Good morning.
Authorities are investigating a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego as a hate crime.
What do we know about the suspects? The mother of one of the suspects had called police about two hours prior, informing them that her son was missing along with several of her weapons and her vehicle. Police were looking for the teenager and his friend when they received a 911 call from ICSD.
What is Trump claiming now? That the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia approached Washington over the chance of making a deal that would be “very acceptable” to the US, and stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
… and Iran? Its foreign military spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, claimed Pakistan had shared Iran’s latest proposal with the US. There were contradictory reports from Islamabad, which has acted as mediator: one source appeared pessimistic, while others said Tehran had made concessions.
Continue reading...Capture that once-in-a-lifetime moment with these great cameras.
Russia's army has started three days of nuclear weapons drills involving thousands of troops across the country, as Kyiv escalates its drone attacks and with President Vladimir Putin headed to China.
The bodies of two Italian divers have been brought to the surface after the Maldives' worst diving disaster, with two more yet to recover, a government spokesman says.
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Why our worst days might be saving us
The Blockchain Leaks: How Wall Street's new betting obsession became a National Security threat
Video Break: Psyche Spacecraft prepares for Mars flyby
Markets and Disposable People: The fifty-year failure of the Ebola response
The Architecture of Distraction: Why loud quotes outlive lasting policy
What I’m Watching: The Fall of Ruby Franke
Jukebox Playlist: Count Basie Corner Pocket
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy wrote some of the most brutal, sun-scorched landscapes in American literature. And he wasn’t exactly known for handing out cheerful life advice. But in his novel No Country for Old Men, he came up with this:
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
It is a fantastic piece of wisdom because it completely flips the script on how we handle things when life goes sideways.
I’ll admit that for me the jury is out when it comes to “luck” in general. People who profess a belief in a higher power (and I’m one) usually put the concept of luck somewhere on a back shelf, where it becomes less of a tenet and more a figure of speech. Which is how I’ll use here because, frankly, the point is too good to pass up.
So let’s pretend we’re on the way to an important meeting and get rear-ended on the freeway, or a relationship we thought would last forever suddenly falls apart. That’s when we look up at the ceiling and ask, Why me?
Bad luck is no longer a toss of the dice but a targeted strike from the universe.
But McCarthy’s quote suggests that life is a massive, chaotic web of cause and effect, and we are only ever seeing one tiny thread at a time.
Think about the classic example of missing a flight because you got stuck in a nightmare traffic jam on the way to the airport. You may be sweating or swearing or both. To add insult to injury, you’re stuck with a rebooking fee. But later you find out that your missed flight experienced severe turbulence, or worse, an engine failure.
Suddenly, that curse of a traffic jam has turned into a shield.
The problem is, we rarely get that dramatic of a reveal. Most of the time, if our bad luck saves us from a disaster, we will never even know a thing about it.
When a door gets slammed in our face, whether it’s a job rejection, a relationship, or a failed investment, it forces us to change our trajectory. To take a detour. And that detour may have just avoided whatever disaster was barreling down the main road we wanted to take. In other words, we don’t get to see that alternate timeline where we got exactly what we wanted…and it completely ruined our life.
I’m not saying we should celebrate when bad things happen. Pain is real, disappointment stings, and nobody likes losing. But McCarthy’s quote isn’t a cheesy “everything happens for a reason” slogan. It’s much grittier. It’s an admission that we are fundamentally blind to the bigger picture. It’s a reminder to have a little humility when we judge the events of our own lives.
Or, let’s say none of that is true. Let’s say bad luck saves us from nothing. How’s that feel? Is it helping? Whereas, on the flip side, the admission that we don’t know everything can take the sting out of frustration.
So the next time a plan falls apart or “bad luck” derails your week, you can take a deep breath, look at the wreckage, and think: Huh. I wonder what bullet I just dodged.
Researchers found over 1,600 primates listed for sale on Facebook, TikTok and more over a six-week period in 2025
A new report from leading wildlife and conservation organizations has revealed a sharp rise in the online sale of primates across major social media platforms in the US, raising concerns about wildlife trafficking, public safety and animal welfare.
The report, titled Primates for Purchase: The Surge in Sales on Social Media in the US, was released Tuesday by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Continue reading...Election in Allentown pits three establishment insiders against a firefighter with a populist message
Allentown, Pennsylvania, is the kind of place the national media brings up every now and then to talk about the troubles of the working class. That’s for good reason: the city is a great stand-in for America’s blue-collar blues. Billy Joel even wrote a song about it. The same goes for neighboring Bethlehem, which once was home to the largest steelmaking operation in the world. That operation shuttered in 2003 and was replaced by a casino.
No doubt the Lehigh valley has seen better days. But it’s not all in the rear view. In fact, this week this blue-collar bastion could decide the future of the Democratic party.
Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623
Continue reading...As many as 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they want to migrate, citing better work life balance to Trump’s politics
It was in 2022, when Americans were reeling from the news that the supreme court had overturned Roe v Wade, that Jen Barnett got a firsthand glimpse of just how viable her new business could be.
Days before the court ruling, she had launched a website aimed at Americans looking to move abroad. As confusion and consternation set in over what the ruling meant for US women, Barnett watched traffic to her website steadily tick upward. “We had this huge spike.”
Continue reading...Ben Crump says $4.85m police settlement over fatal traffic stop helps to show how ‘truth must always come to light’
“No amount of money can erase” the pain that motorist Ronald Greene’s death at the hands of Louisiana police inflicted on his loved ones, but a $4.85m settlement which the state has agreed to pay his family helps illustrate how “the truth must always come to light”, their attorney has said.
Ben Crump recently expressed those sentiments in a statement that served as one of his and his clients’ first public reactions to news first reported by the Guardian that mediation talks on 12 May had yielded a settlement between Louisiana authorities and Greene’s family.
Continue reading...Republican critic of president faces challenge from Ed Gallrein, while Georgia and Pennsylvania hold key contests
The biggest day of primaries yet arrives Tuesday, with voters in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho, heading to the polls to select candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections.
While many primaries will be resolved with little drama, some have shaped up to be among the most contentious elections of the year so far, serving as gauges of Donald Trump’s control of Republicans, and the direction Democratic voters are looking to steer their party as they seek to retake control of Congress.
Continue reading...
At the beginning of his three-year federal prison sentence for felony tax evasion, Roger Shoffstall lost his telephone privileges when a guard caught him running his small Alaska phone company from behind bars.
He’s lost a lot of privileges over the years. Shoffstall, 75, can’t serve on a federal jury. Unlike most Alaskans, he doesn’t receive an annual Permanent Fund dividend check. And he is not allowed to own a gun.
One thing never changes, however: Each year, the federal government sends his company, Summit Telephone, more than $1 million.
The money comes from a special government subsidy program that Congress created to bring fast, affordable phone and internet service to hard-to-reach places. You help pay for it.
Pull up your latest phone bill and look for a line labeled “Universal Service Fund.” Some phone companies list it as a “Universal Connectivity Charge” or fold it into a “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee.” It’s all the same thing: a surcharge added to the monthly bill of phone customers throughout the United States.
The federal government and phone companies don’t call it a tax — but it acts like one. Carriers must currently contribute 37 cents of every dollar of their interstate and international phone revenues to the fund.
In Alaska, where many communities can only be reached by plane or boat, the Federal Communications Commission has given telecommunications companies $4.6 billion in these subsidies since 2016. That’s more than $600 per Alaskan per year. More per resident than in any other state.
Yet after all that spending, Alaska still ranks near the bottom for access to the very land-based, high-speed internet service the money was meant to deliver.
Some communities have yet to be wired at all. In others, fiber-optic cables or microwave towers offer internet with speeds that were recently clocked, statewide, as the slowest in the country. Even with the subsidies, the service comes at a steep price to customers: often hundreds of dollars a month for internet one-tenth what the FCC considers broadband quality.
The federal program has kept money flowing to companies like Shoffstall’s whose operators have troubled pasts. It also gives money to companies like Shoffstall’s regardless of how many people use their services. And fewer and fewer Alaskans have done so since low-earth satellites from Starlink entered the market at better prices. (Satellite internet doesn’t qualify for the subsidy but costs about $90 to $130 per month for download speeds up to 280 megabits per second in the same service area as Summit Telephone. According to Summit’s website, its fastest internet plan in the same region maxes out at 25 Mbps and costs $135 a month.)
Alaskans pay the most for phone and internet but get the slowest service. Please fill out our quick survey to share how much it costs you to get online and what you think of the service.
All of these excesses appear to fall within the program’s rules or the FCC’s discretion.
A telecom on the Aleutian island of Adak receives more than $350,000 a year to provide phone and low-speed internet services to 306 buildings, according to FCC records, even though the state Department of Labor says the island is home to fewer than 80 people. One business owner said everyone he knows on the island has moved on to Starlink anyway.
GCI, the state’s largest telecom and its largest subsidy recipient, got $466 million just two years after its settlement with the federal government for alleged fraud related to the same subsidy program. (The settlement said it was neither an admission of guilt by GCI nor a concession by the Justice Department that the claims were not well founded.)
Shoffstall and his attorney did not respond to repeated interview requests or answer detailed questions sent by email. On Thursday, Shoffstall sent two documents to the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica asserting that he is a sovereign citizen of the United States, an ideology that the FBI has described as “those who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States.” The FBI has categorized the extremist version of this movement as “domestic terrorism.”
Larry Mayes, the owner of Adak Eagle Enterprises, the company that receives the subsidy to provide internet on Adak, declined to answer questions about the funding. “You’ll have to talk to the FCC about that,” he said, hanging up the phone.
In a written response to questions, GCI said it and other Alaska telecoms depend heavily on the subsidies to provide services across the state.
“Before and after the settlement, GCI continued to work with the FCC and customers to provide high-quality communications services in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” the GCI statement said. “The settlement did not change Alaskans’ growing demand for these services, GCI’s willingness to provide them, or the criticality of USF funding to the sustainability of those services.”
The FCC did not respond to requests for comment. The agency is weighing the future of the program and recently circulated a proposal to overhaul or potentially sunset elements of the subsidy that funds companies like Summit.
Alaska telecom lobbyists and executives said that the state provides some of the most challenging geography to serve in the United States, and that they have made great progress in bringing internet access to Alaska.
Christine O’Connor, executive director of the Alaska Telecom Association, said the subsidies have improved access and lowered costs for rural Alaskans.
“There is simply no way that rural Alaskan communities could be connected with Anchorage or with the rest of the United States and the world” if consumers living in rural Alaska communities had to pay the full cost, she wrote in a statement to the Daily News and ProPublica.
But Daniel Lyons, a former attorney whose law firm represented Verizon and AT&T and who now teaches internet law at Boston College Law School, said the subsidy program is broken. The fundamental problem: No one has ever rigorously tested whether it works.
“It’s not proven how successful it is,” said Lyons, who specializes in telecommunications and internet law, “because the FCC is not very good at auditing its program.”
In Shoffstall’s case, the FCC pays his company what works out to about $800 per month per customer. Lyons has advocated scrapping this approach and sending the subsidy directly to consumers instead, letting them choose which provider gets their money. In Alaska, that might mean Starlink, though some new users say they are being charged a “high demand” fee of $1,500 to sign up, or its future satellite competitors like Amazon Leo.
“If the goal is to make sure everybody gets online,” Lyons said, “you try to find the families that can’t afford service at market rates and you give subsidies to them directly.”
Alaska’s outsized share of the subsidy traces back to a man memorialized with a life-sized bronze statue in the Anchorage airport.
Sen. Ted Stevens — “Uncle Ted” — spent 40 years delivering federal money to Alaska and was nearing the height of his power in 1996 when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, creating the modern Universal Service Fund.
It was before smartphones or Netflix. Most homes in America had no internet, and by the late 1990s “high-speed” service meant 200 kilobits per second — faster than dial-up modems but too slow to play high-definition video. Today, the FCC defines broadband, which is just another way of saying high-speed internet, as 100 Mbps. That’s 500 times faster than in the ’90s.
As chair of the committee that controlled the FCC’s budget, Stevens ensured Alaska telecoms received special treatment, according to Carol Mattey, a former FCC official who oversaw efforts to reform the subsidy.
“It would be suicidal to do something to make the head of the Appropriations Committee angry at you,” said Mattey, who served as deputy chief of the commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau.
Stevens lost reelection in 2008 while under a corruption indictment that was later dropped. He died two years later in a plane crash on a trip from a private lodge owned by GCI, the Alaska telecom giant. GCI’s current president and chief operating officer, Gregory Chapados, is Stevens’ former chief of staff.
A GCI spokesperson wrote that while Stevens chaired the Appropriations Committee, he did not at the time chair the Senate Commerce Committee, which drafted the Telecommunications Act and oversees the subsidy program. Chapados, who served as chief of staff for Stevens from 1986 to 1992, was not involved in developing the Telecommunications Act, the company said.
The company said it “maintains constructive working relationships with all members of our delegation to advocate on behalf of our customers and all other Alaskans.”
Nationally, the subsidy program allows payments to any company that the FCC or state regulators have designated as an “eligible telecommunications carrier.” How much they get depends on whether they want to provide internet to village schools, health care clinics or simply remote communities.
In its statement to ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News, GCI said, “There are no provisions in the Telecom Act extending special treatment for Alaska.” But the state is treated differently in practice. In 2016, the FCC created a program called the Alaska Plan specifically for carriers here, allowing them to negotiate their own performance targets rather than being subject to the same cost models applied elsewhere.
Alaska’s geography made it especially difficult for the agency to estimate the cost of serving customers in the state, Mattey said. The FCC assumed the companies would only set goals that they would be able to achieve.
They tried to adjust the national formula for distributing money to account for this factor, Mattey said, but Alaska telecoms kept pushing back and FCC officials gave up.
“We tried so hard not to treat Alaska differently because our goal was to create defined deployment obligations for all companies, and we failed,” she said of the 2016 reforms. “The political pressure was too strong.”
Summit has received $12 million over the past decade by promising to deliver internet to 337 locations across a collection of woodsy, roadside neighborhoods just north of Fairbanks. Filings by Summit report dozens of new connections in some years, a combined total of 271 as of 2025.
But according to the FCC’s interactive map of all locations U.S. telecoms report actually serving with internet, the number of customers using Shoffstall’s service is far smaller. In a phone interview, the company’s acting general manager, James Perry, said that Summit has about 120 internet customers and 160 in total.
Mattey said the rules of the program say nothing about making sure the lines that a subsidy recipient builds actually get used — only that they get built.
Companies that fall behind on building out their network can have their subsidies reduced. But they are allowed to go on collecting cash long after the technology they use has become outdated, customers have moved on to cheaper and faster alternatives or their community has become a ghost town.
“They’re playing by the rules, so to speak,” Mattey said. “It’s a flat amount of money the government has decided they are entitled to.”
Shoffstall’s penchant for setting his own rules first landed him in trouble in 1996. State prosecutors charged him with a misdemeanor when he mailed documents whose tone and language mimicked court orders to an Alaska bank, demanding money.
The trial ended without a verdict when Shoffstall agreed to change his plea from not guilty to no contest. He received a suspended imposition of sentence, a judgment entering a conviction with no jail time, contingent upon completing probation. Over the decades since, he has continued to file paperwork in state court, federal court and with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources claiming to be a sovereign citizen not bound by the same court systems as other Alaskans.
An electrical technician by trade, Shoffstall bought the business for about $675,000 in 2000.
Shoffstall’s customers live mainly in the hillsides north of Fairbanks. Some right off the highway. Some at the end of snowy roads littered with warning signs like: “You are no longer a trespasser. You are a target.”
People moved here when the famously independent and rough-edged city of Fairbanks felt too urbane. They moved here to get off the grid. Not on it.
Among Shoffstall’s customers was a Sunday school teacher who’d arrived in Alaska in 1981, answering phones for a small insurance company.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, still the days of landlines and dial tones, Lois Sannes found herself frustrated with a surcharge added to calls in the Summit service area. She began complaining to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
She wrote so many letters to the governor that someone wrote back. Sannes met with an attorney, who she said told her the IRS had launched a criminal investigation into Shoffstall.
Separately, Shoffstall’s company was under scrutiny from the regulatory commission itself.
When Summit sought approval for the rates it charged other telecom companies to use its phone lines, the commission allowed them to look at Summit’s unredacted financial reports. A consultant hired by the rival telecom companies testified to the commission that Summit’s spending appeared unusually high, poorly documented and in some cases tied to transactions between the company and Shoffstall himself.
Roughly 95% of the company’s revenue around this period came not from phone customers but the federal subsidy program and payments redistributed through the telecom industry itself, according to audited financial statements Summit filed with state regulators.
The dispute before the regulatory commission ended when Summit and its competitors agreed to a settlement. The commission issued no findings on whether there were indeed problems with Summit’s books, as the consultant’s report had outlined.
But a new legal issue arose for Shoffstall — this time from the IRS, whose investigation Sannes had heard about. On Sept. 15, 2009, a federal grand jury indicted Shoffstall on allegations of felony tax evasion. The charges said he “willfully evaded the payment of his income taxes” for at least eight years beginning in 1996.
Shoffstall’s former accountants testified against him.
“I told him that he was going to get nailed, that’s not a question,” certified public accountant Garry Hutchison told the jury. “The only question is whether or not it would bring the company down.”
A Fairbanks jury found Shoffstall guilty on Feb. 5, 2010, after a five-day trial.
The FCC has the power to cut off subsidies to recipients convicted of fraud and other financial crimes related to the subsidy program. How closely related the crime must be to the subsidy payments is up for interpretation by the agency.
On one hand, Shoffstall’s indictment said he used his position running a federally subsidized company to obstruct the IRS investigation. On the other, the conviction was for tax evasion related to money he personally owed the IRS.
There is precedent for the FCC closely scrutinizing a subsidy recipient who’s been convicted of evading personal income taxes.
The FCC Wireline Competition Bureau directed the Universal Service Fund’s administrator to look into whether Hawaii-based Sandwich Isles Communications misused its subsidy dollars. The action followed owner Albert Hee’s conviction on federal tax crimes in 2015.
The FCC fined Sandwich Isles and Hee $49.6 million and ordered the company to repay $27 million in what it described as improperly received subsidies. Hee’s attorneys contested the charges, arguing that he had concealed nothing and that the government mistook accounting errors for criminal intent. A jury disagreed.
It’s not clear whether the FCC investigated Shoffstall after his conviction; the agency did not respond to questions about the case.
But records show that Shoffstall’s company steadily continued to receive Universal Service Fund subsidies, even while Shoffstall was in prison. Two months after his release in January 2013, Summit reported collecting $1.1 million in annual subsidies.
When Shoffstall’s probation officer told a federal judge that Shoffstall was ignoring his probation requirements, he was arrested on Dec. 9, 2013, and went back to prison for several months. His company received $859,393 in Universal Service Fund subsidies during that time.
In the years that followed, the subsidies to Summit grew. FCC data shows Summit in 2016 received one of the highest levels of federal subsidies per customer in the country.
As of that year, Shoffstall’s company paid him an annual salary of up to $121,000 and paid an annual dividend of up to $155,000 to a holding company for which he was the sole shareholder. His company stopped publicly disclosing that information after 2016, as the Regulatory Commission of Alaska stopped requiring detailed annual reporting, leaving far less financial information available to the public.
Sannes, the former Summit customer who once pressured state regulators to take a closer look at the company, now lives in Wisconsin. Asked if she was surprised to learn that the company’s subsidies not only continue today, but have increased to $1.5 million a year, Sannes said she had assumed his criminal conviction alone would have been enough to cut off the money.
“I’m horrified,” she said.
Summit Telephone is named for a mountaintop, Cleary Summit, outside Fairbanks. Sled dogs can be heard howling from their plywood houses, and every so often a semitruck barrels down the highway, swirling snow as it hauls gold ore from open-pit mines.
In the winter, you might see a rocket launch from a valley a few miles north, from the world’s only rocket launch site operated by a university. The hills are known for world-famous aurora borealis displays, and a collection of Airbnbs and lodges line winding roads.
As the subsidies flowed to Summit, Shoffstall continued to create and distribute documents intended to look like court orders. He submitted paperwork in federal court arguing he didn’t have to pay taxes — in one 2017 filing accusing the federal government of “high crimes” against him, in another issuing what he called a “summary judgment” against President Donald Trump for “fraud, collusion and conspiracy.”
None of this stopped the state’s telecom industry from spotlighting him as a poster child. O’Connor, the executive director of the Alaska Telecom Association, cited Summit to state lawmakers in 2018 as an example of a company forced to “muddle along with the obsolete technology” rather than upgrade its network due the burden of state overregulation. Raising the rates to provide upgrades would have required Summit to make its case to regulators that the fee increases were necessary.
Asked whether it was an appropriate use of public funds for a company like Summit to receive roughly $10,000 per customer per year in federal subsidies, O’Connor did not directly answer. In a written response, the Alaska Telecom Association said the program “is specifically designed to support building and operating telecommunications networks in high-cost areas” and that participating providers “are subject to FCC program requirements, reporting obligations, and oversight.” Asked whether it stood by its 2018 characterization of Summit, O’Connor said her testimony was focused on the challenges facing smaller providers generally.
Shoffstall never upgraded to expand its service. According to the FCC broadband map, Summit’s equipment today remains incapable of delivering internet faster than 25 Mbps — one-fourth the FCC’s current definition of broadband.
Meanwhile, the internet marketplace has changed. Some Alaskans no longer need or want the slower subsidized service.
One recent Saturday, 74-year-old Philip Marshall shoveled a waist-high tunnel through the snow to a cabin near the top of the mountain. A wood carver, he wore a red ski cap decorated with the flag of Denmark. Asked about his internet access, he invited a reporter inside and made a pot of black tea.
Marshall said his wife, Janet, moved into this cabin before he met her. The construction boom for the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline had raised rents so high within Fairbanks’ city limits during the mid-1970s that she moved here out of town. Like many cabins outside Fairbanks, the home is “dry,” meaning there’s no running water. Old-timers hauled the building itself up the side of the mountain on sleds.
In interviews, several of Marshall’s neighbors said they have no complaints about the internet speeds Summit provides. One said she pays Summit $95 a month and the internet is fine for her needs. Another, who retired after a career working on remote Alaska radar sites, said he uses the service too. But he’s recently added satellite internet.
Others who have opted for the low-orbit satellite dishes, which deliver speeds up to 10 times faster than Summit for about the same price, have dropped their Summit plans altogether. One especially clear evening recently, Marshall stood in the snow and counted 18 satellites passing overhead within nine minutes. “Starlink,” he said.
The company and corporate parent SpaceX did not respond to questions and do not publicly release the number of users in Alaska. But Ookla, a company that offers tools people can use to test their internet speed, offered a proxy measure: About 1 in 10 Alaskans who tested their home internet speed through Ookla connected via Starlink, compared with roughly 1 in 67 in California.
The Marshalls haven’t felt the need to pay for either service. Their cellphones give five-bar, 5G service from a nearby tower. Finishing his tea, Marshall pulled on his jacket to head back outside. Still have to shovel a path to the outhouse, he said.
In the corner of the room, a plastic box the size and color of a concrete brick sat near the floor. It was for the Summit internet line that public subsidies pay the company roughly $10,000 a year to provide. Unplugged and unused.
The post This Convicted Felon Gets $1 Million a Year to Sell Obsolete Internet Service. You Pay for It. appeared first on ProPublica.
I reviewed Samsung, Roku, Amazon, and Hisense TVs under $300 and found one clear winner.
Apple's iOS 26 brought these summaries back to many iPhones in 2025.
Why Should Delaware Care?
As state lawmakers seek to further expand election transparency rules in Delaware, an ongoing legal battle could remove some of those same campaign finance disclosures entirely. As the lawsuit – waged by a conservative, billionaire-backed advocacy group – makes its way through the courts, some political candidates in the First State have already begun campaigning ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
A conservative advocacy group has filed a lawsuit challenging a key instrument of election transparency in Delaware, which, if successful, could upend nearly 15 years of campaign finance law months before the November midterm elections.
Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit advocacy organization funded by the influential Koch brothers, filed the lawsuit in federal court on April 17, seeking to overturn the Delaware Elections Disclosure Act on the grounds that its extensive campaign finance transparency requirements serve to discourage political speech and thus violate the First Amendment.
Similar legal battles waged by Americans for Prosperity have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And the group’s current fight in Delaware to scale back campaign finance requirements comes as lawmakers in the state House of Representatives consider a new bill, House Bill 216, which would further expand those disclosures.
Ross Connolly, the Northeast regional manager for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, said the group is not currently working in Delaware due to its disclosure laws, but would like to get involved in ongoing education and property tax debates.
“We would like to be in Delaware,” he said. “We just will not put our small or large donors … at risk of being singled out in an unfair way and being attacked because they believe in the cause of Americans for Prosperity and they want to help us in our mission.”
Along with its lawsuit, Americans for Prosperity also filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from enforcing its disclosure requirements while the case moves through the legal process. A hearing on that motion has yet to take place.
Originally passed in 2012, the Delaware Election Disclosure Act was touted as an innovative tool to combat dark money influences in Delaware politics. It was enacted in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision in 2010, which ushered in a new era of political financing by removing longstanding limitations on corporate spending on election campaigns through political action committees (PACs).
The law aimed to close a loophole in the state’s campaign finance laws through which a third-party organization from outside the state could conceal its donors as long as its political advertisements avoided explicitly advocating voters to choose a specific candidate in an election.
Lawmakers introduced requirements that any entity engaging in that type of political advertising within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election must disclose financial records detailing the funding of their ads and include ways for the public to find a list of their funders. The full names and mailing addresses of anyone contributing more than $100 to the organization during the election cycle also must be disclosed to the state.
Americans for Prosperity’s suit argues the law’s requirements “violate the right to private association, chill free speech and association, and overstep the government’s legitimate disclosure interests, all in violation of the First Amendment.”
“In the state of Delaware, there are onerous laws around disclosure of donors, which we view as a fundamental right of free speech in this country,” Connolly said. “It goes back to the founding [of the country], of being able to give money, time, resources to a cause without having to disclose who you are, your address, all these things.”
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware regarding the lawsuit, Attorney General Kathy Jennings condemned the Koch brothers, whose conservative network raised and spent over $500 million during the 2024 election cycle, as “a disease in America’s campaign finance system.”
Jennings and Delaware Election Commissioner Anthony Albence are named as defendants in the suit.
“Americans on both sides of the aisle hate dark money groups and the blank check that the Supreme Court handed them in Citizens United,” Jennings said in a statement. “Now the people who perfected the Super PAC and embodied our corrupt campaign finance laws are in Delaware fighting to keep dark money dark. Delawareans deserve to know who’s trying to buy their elections.”
Albence’s office declined to comment.
Connolly said other groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have joined Americans for Prosperity in previous legal challenges of similar financial disclosure laws, illustrating that these types of disclosure laws face opposition across the political spectrum. That includes the organization’s successful court battle defeating a California law that required charities operating in the state to confidentially disclose their major donors to the state.
Americans for Prosperity’s lawyers argued in that case that the state could not guarantee donor privacy, and the requirement represented an undue First Amendment burden discouraging people from potentially supporting certain charities. Charitable organizations already have to submit lists of their major donors to the Internal Revenue Service.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the California law violated the First Amendment and was too broad to be “narrowly tailored to an important government interest” – namely, election transparency.
Andrew Bernstein, civic engagement counsel for ACLU of Delaware, said the local chapter is not involved in Americans for Prosperity’s current lawsuit, though he confirmed the national group’s previous support of Americans for Prosperity efforts in other states.
He also said ACLU’s local efforts are currently focused on derailing HB 216, the bill that would further expand disclosure requirements for third-party advertisers engaging in political communications around elections.
“In the current political climate, we think this would create a severe chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of individuals to associate with organizations, as they may fear reprisal if they were listed in such a way,” Bernstein said.
Americans for Prosperity’s lawsuit is not the first time the state has had to defend the Delaware Election Disclosure Act in court.
After it was first passed, local conservative group Delaware Strong Families filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law using similar legal arguments outlined in Americans for Prosperity’s current lawsuit.
A federal court ruled in favor of Delaware Strong Families’ challenge, but the state successfully appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2015.
Then-Gov. Jack Markell, who signed the 2012 law into effect, said at the time it was an “important victory for transparency in Delaware elections.”
“Delaware voters deserve to know who is responsible for advertisements and other materials asking for them to support or oppose candidates,” Markell said.
Briefs from both sides addressing Americans for Prosperity’s request to temporarily halt the state from enforcing its election disclosure rules while the full legal case unfolds are due by the end of the month.
The post Conservative group challenges Delaware campaign finance law appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
The Post used AI to analyze 50 televised sports games for references to betting.
Trying to remove your personal information from the internet, and out of AI's training data, can be like "trying to remove pee from a pool," one expert said.
The billions of dollars in advertising invested annually by sports betting companies have profoundly changed televised sports in the U.S., the analysis showed.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The Mother African Union Church is one of the oldest Black-founded congregations in Delaware and served as a refuge for generations of people. A fire that destroyed the church building on Sunday brought faith leaders, neighbors and elected officials to an event to declare their support for the future of the congregation.
At first, JoAnn Eatmon was certain the video clip showing flames shooting high above her beloved church in Wilmington’s Cool Spring neighborhood had been created by artificial intelligence. The scene seemed too unbelievable to be real.
Then she noticed the flowers in a set of pots she had placed near the front door of the church just days earlier.
“I saw our flower pots and that let me know it was real,” Eatmon said.
Eatmon was one of several congregants of the Mother African Union Church who gathered Monday outside the charred ruins of the historic sanctuary for a news conference. Many embraced in disbelief as they reflected on the loss of the building, which had served as the physical home of the 200-year-old congregation since the 1960s.
Others — including the church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ronald W. Whitaker II — emphasized the congregation’s resolve to rebuild.
Whitaker described the fire as one of the “most painful moments” in the church’s history but said the congregation’s future remained bright.
“For more than two centuries, this congregation has survived hardship, injustice, storms and struggle, and by the grace of God we’re still standing,” Whitaker said during the news event, which drew elected officials, neighbors and members from other area congregations.
The commitment to rebuilding emerged as a central theme throughout the event. One speaker proclaimed that the congregation’s “latter state will be better than its formal state.” Another compared the devastating blaze to the 2019 fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral, which was rebuilt in the years later.
New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry, who lives in the city, said he would provide dollars to the church for the rebuild.
“Please count us in in helping this rebuild effort,” Henry said.
Also speaking at the news conference was Wilmington Fire Chief John Looney, who said fire officials were still in the early stages of an investigation to determine the cause of the early-Sunday morning blaze.
Looney said officials were awaiting an assessment from a structural engineer before sending investigators into the ruins. While he spoke, the stone walls of the historic church stood behind him. Most of the remaining structure was destroyed by the fire.
Pressed whether he could quell gossip that had spread about the blaze, Looney noted that he had seen several rumors online, but reiterated that it was too early to release information.
The fire chief did confirm that two firefighters suffered minor injuries while fighting the blaze.
Also speaking were elected officials who expressed their condolences, including Gov. Matt Meyer, and Lt. Gov. Kyle Evans Gay.
The speakers Monday also reflected on the historical significance of Mother African Union Church, describing it as a spiritual home for generations of Black people in Delaware.
The church’s former pastor, the Rev. Lawrence M. Livingston, told the story of how the congregation was founded in 1813 by Peter Spencer, a formerly enslaved man who became one of the country’s most influential religious leaders at the time.
Livingston called Spencer a figure whose significance to American history was “right up there with the Founding Fathers.”
“This congregation was the first incorporated African American congregation in the country,” Livingston said.
Spencer initially led about 40 people out of a predominantly white church in 1805, according to the church website’s history page. Then the groups later split from the Methodist Episcopal denomination after “it became clear the congregation of African Americans would not be allowed to select their own preachers or trustee leaders.”
Over the subsequent decades, the congregation spoke out about injustices beyond Delaware, according to newspaper archives. A public notice posted in a 1831 edition of the Delaware Gazette described how Spencer and other members of the church publicly opposed the ongoing colonization of Africa.
“Resolved that this meeting view with deep regret the attempt now making to colonize the free people of color on the western coast of Africa,” the public notice stated.
Shortly after founding the congregation, Spencer also started an annual gathering of members of his Methodist denomination. The event, called the August Quarterly, attracted thousands of Black people from across the region for generations.
It continues to this day.
“That has been happening every year since 1814,” Livingston said.
In recent years, the church has continued to be a site for activism. Community advocate and Alicia Clark, who also is a member of the August Quarterly organizing committee, recounted how a decade ago Livingston opened the church to accommodate an investigation she organized into claims of racism in state government.
Her team was able to interview individuals within the safety and comfort of the church building, which allowed them to candidly share their stories, Clark said.
“This was one of the locations where we hosted a town hall, which was really important because it’s based here in the community. It’s a trusted institution,” Clark said.
The post Historic Black Wilmington church leaders vow to rebuild following devastating fire appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
When leading California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra was state attorney general, his office pushed the state Supreme Court to artificially inflate a Black man’s IQ in order to execute him.
Following the lead of his predecessor, former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Becerra’s office was battling a defense that argued Robert Lewis, originally sentenced to death in 1991, was ineligible for execution because he was intellectually disabled. Lewis’s attorney, Robert Sanger, told The Intercept that while individual attorneys general can’t control everything their deputies do, he was disappointed with how Becerra’s office handled the case.
“I was kind of feeling like it would be a good time for the AG to say, ‘OK, we tried and he’s intellectually disabled. We got that determination made. Let’s just let it go,’” Sanger recalled. “Instead, it went all the way to oral arguments in front of the [state] Supreme Court.”
The effort failed: The Supreme Court of California overturned Lewis’s death sentence in 2018, and the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a measure banning the practice of adjusting IQ based on race in death penalty cases two years later.
Becerra is now polling first in the crowded race to replace term-limited Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His campaign had at first lagged behind his opponents, but then-Rep. Eric Swalwell was hit with explosive sexual assault allegations — which he denies — and dropped out, and Becerra surged to the front of the field. He’s just ahead of Trump-backed Republican candidate Steve Hilton, followed by Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire racking up endorsements from progressive groups including Our Revolution and praise from the California chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In Lewis’s case, Becerra picked up where Harris left off; her office had been the first to ask the courts to artificially inflate Lewis’s IQ so the state could execute him.
“On the one hand, he’s part of a long line of Democratic attorney generals who have taken this approach of, ‘It’s not my problem,’ not accepting responsibility for what their criminal attorneys are doing in court,” said Natasha Minsker, who leads the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition, which helped push the bill banning the practice of race-based IQ adjustments for people on death row. “On the other hand, it just demonstrates where their true priorities and values are.”
Becerra has not taken a clear public position on the death penalty in his gubernatorial campaign, but his critics have raised concerns about his pursuit of executions at a time when his party was moving in the opposite direction. He has said he has “serious reservations” about the death penalty and voted for a 2016 state ballot measure to abolish it in California, where the state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006. Still, two years after his vote, Becerra’s office argued to execute Lewis. Though Newsom imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2019, Becerra fought to uphold death penalty sentences during the Covid-19 pandemic. And though he oversaw law enforcement for four years in California, a state that has significantly cut its prison population in recent years and adopted other reforms under pressure from activists, Becerra’s criminal justice record has not played a large part in his gubernatorial campaign.
After serving as California attorney general, Becerra was named secretary of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration. His name recognition from that post, plus 24 years in Congress, have earned him endorsements from Democrats including Reps. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; state and local elected officials; and several labor unions including SEIU California, California State Council of Laborers, and the United Nurses Associations of California.
Still, his former colleagues from his time leading HHS raised eyebrows as his campaign gathered speed after Swalwell’s exit, and some of Becerra’s critics have seized on his overseeing of migrant children as HHS secretary. Also looming behind his surge is a criminal trial involving his former political adviser and Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty on Thursday to three felonies in a corruption case involving scheme to steal money from Becerra’s campaign. In a statement last week after the plea, Becerra said; “As I said from day one, I was not involved, I did nothing wrong. And now the record confirms it. We can close the book on this.”
Becerra’s criminal justice record has received less scrutiny in the gubernatorial race, where Becerra is competing with Republican opponents stressing their own tough-on-crime bonafides.
Becerra’s campaign website outlines his priorities as fighting Donald Trump, building more affordable housing, lowering costs, building clean energy, improving California’s disaster preparedness, channeling AI “for human benefit,” and addressing homelessness. It does not have a specific page devoted to criminal justice.
“Democratic politicians want to take credit for the progressive things they did as attorney general, but they are not taking responsibility for the regressive positions that the office advanced under their leadership.”
In response to a questionnaire from the political arm of the California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, which declined to comment on Becerra’s record for this story, Becerra said he agrees with reforms like prioritizing prevention strategies over punitive sentencing and improving funding and staffing for public defender’s offices. He also said he would support banning facial recognition in police body cameras, more public access to police records, and having social service workers respond to homelessness and mental health crises instead of police.
“We see this repeatedly,” Minsker said. “Democratic politicians want to take credit for the progressive things they did as attorney general, but they are not taking responsibility for the regressive positions that the office advanced under their leadership.”
Becerra’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
While Becerra has not had to thoroughly address his criminal justice record yet on the campaign trail, the topic plagued his predecessor as attorney general, Kamala Harris, when she ran for president in 2020.
Harris, who served as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017 and San Francisco district attorney before that, faced myriad attacks from left and right that hampered her first presidential bid over her prosecutorial record while she campaigned as a reformer.
At the time, activists across the United States were animated by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, which set off a wave of protests and heightened scrutiny of so-called “tough on crime” politics. Six years later, the political winds have largely shifted.
Sanger, the attorney in the IQ death penalty case, said he felt that some of the attacks on Harris were unfair, because attorneys general “can’t go through and regulate every single thing that their deputies do in these very complex cases.” But, he added, he’s been generally dissatisfied with California’s last three top prosecutors.
“I have been disappointed in each one of those attorneys general in not taking a more active role with their deputy attorneys general, and with them not taking a position on the death penalty,” Sanger said.
As attorney general, Becerra also faced criticism for shielding police from measures designed to hold them accountable. Two major California newspaper editorial boards wrote scathing criticisms in 2019 saying Becerra sided with law enforcement “against public transparency” and had betrayed both “public trust and the law” by not complying with a state police transparency law.
At the time, Becerra threatened to charge journalists with crimes unless they destroyed a list of police officers convicted of crimes. Becerra took more than $300,000 in campaign funds from law enforcement unions in his run for attorney general. The political action committee for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a state prison guards’ union, gave $320,000 to a group backing Becerra and other candidates that cycle. News outlets raised questions about his ability to “police the police,” while owing much of his campaign support to their unions.
The prison guard’s union gave $25,000 in March to a group opposing Steyer. The group, “California is Not for Sale, No on Steyer for Governor 2026, a Coalition of Housing Advocates, Labor and Small Business,” is spending $24 million against Steyer and is backed by the state’s real estate and energy industries. Steyer is self-funding his campaign with more than $120 million. The CCPOA did not respond to a request for comment.
The prison guards’ union is one of many special interest groups that have played an outsized role in California politics, said James King, a formerly incarcerated prison reform advocate in Oakland. King, who is supporting Steyer, said the CCPOA was spending against Steyer because he is campaigning against those kinds of special interests. Plus, the union wants to preserve its budget, which has increased even as the state has shrunk its prison population in recent years, King said.
“It’s deeply ironic” that groups including the CCPOA “are funding an initiative called ‘California is Not for Sale,’” King said. “They have shown time and time again that they are only interested in advancing the status quo. And it’s clear that any candidate they are working to oppose and spending money to oppose, they must see as a threat to the status quo.”
In 2020, Becerra sided with law enforcement again to oppose a bill to require independent state investigations of police killings after previously having refused to conduct an independent investigation into the police killing of 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa, whom a police officer shot in the back of the head. Becerra’s office later launched an investigation into destruction of evidence in the case.
Monterrosa’s sister, Michelle Monterrosa, told the San Francisco Standard last week that she won’t vote for Becerra in the gubernatorial election. “How can we trust someone who continues to put his own advancement before actually standing with the people?” Monterrosa said.
The post Xavier Becerra Pushed to Inflate a Black Man’s IQ to Execute Him as California AG appeared first on The Intercept.
London-headquartered bank will reduce back-office jobs and aims to move some workers to new roles
Standard Chartered plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs over the next four years as it increasingly uses artificial intelligence.
The London-headquartered lender is one of the first major global banks to lay out plans to cut thousands of jobs, citing AI as a driver to make its operations slimmer as it seeks to increase its profitability and tackle competition.
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We’re investigating Alaska internet companies this year, and we need your help.
Alaskans pay higher costs for slower internet speeds than most Americans. The government has spent billions of dollars of public money to try to fix the problem, and we want to know how it’s really going in your community. Please fill out this quick survey to share how much it costs you to get online and what you think of the service.
Take our quick survey to help in the reporting.
If you know someone in Alaska who is not able to access the internet and wants to share their experience, they can contact reporter Kyle Hopkins at 907-854-8540 (phone or WhatsApp). We will add more options for participation soon — stay tuned!
We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We will contact you if we wish to publish any part.
The post We’re Investigating Alaska Internet Companies. We Need Your Help. appeared first on ProPublica.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners facing genocide with costs of resettling them at $100m
The US government has said it will increase the number of white South Africans it admits as refugees this year from about 7,500 to 17,500, claiming that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.”
Since starting his second term in office last year, Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners are racially targeted and face a “white genocide”, which South Africa’s government has furiously rebutted.
Continue reading...From the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the OnePlus 15, these are the best that we recommend buying. One of these even earned a CNET Lab Award for charging.
Athletes spend thousands of hours refining their game. But sometimes they try other measures to gain success
For Jason Terry, everything changed in 1997. It was the night before the NCAA national championship game and Terry’s Arizona Wildcats were set to take on the University of Kentucky. Terry shared hotels rooms with teammate Mike Bibby on road trips and the pair understandably had trouble sleeping before the biggest game of their lives so far.
“Mike Bibby and I were anxious for the game,” Terry says. “So, we both put our full uniforms on – socks, everything. And we slept in them. The next day, we ended up winning the national championship. After that, I was like, ‘OK, I think I’m superstitious and I need to keep this thing going.’”
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Milique Wagner always insisted that his 2013 murder conviction was built on an informant’s lie. But Wagner said he couldn’t persuade his trial lawyer to investigate that, even after the informant confessed to the murder and testified that Philadelphia police and prosecutors knew the truth.
In 2015, Wagner’s appeal failed, and he faced life in prison.
But Wagner had another chance at freedom under a state law that allowed him to get a new court-appointed lawyer to help him challenge his conviction. Court records show that the attorney never spoke with the informant or looked into the detective on the case, who made headlines after being benched for secretly paying a witness. Instead, Wagner’s lawyer urged the judge to shut down his client’s petition, writing in June 2017, “There are no meritorious issues that could be raised.”
Wagner would remain in prison another six years before prosecutors acknowledged that police had hidden evidence suggesting that the informant had committed the murder and the detective was corrupt. Although Wagner maintains his innocence, he agreed to a plea deal for third-degree murder that allowed him to leave prison.
The opposition Wagner faced from his own lawyer is permitted under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, the law that allows people in prison to raise newly discovered evidence or argue that their previous lawyer mishandled the case. The state provides a lawyer in these cases, but with a catch: The attorney can argue against the client’s claims and withdraw from the case by filing what’s known as a “no-merit” letter.
A Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica investigation found case after case in which court-appointed attorneys did minimal work to examine their clients’ claims and rejected what later turned out to be legitimate legal issues. The findings reveal that Philadelphia’s post-conviction system repeatedly delayed or denied justice for wrongfully convicted people who then spent years or decades behind bars.
The news organizations reviewed 250 of Philadelphia’s reversed convictions and sentences since 2018 in violent felony cases. Wagner was one of at least 50 people whose lawyers said there was no basis to challenge their cases, only for judges to later decide they deserved new trials or sentences.
While in some cases the exonerating evidence did not emerge until years after the no-merit letter was filed, a majority were tossed out based on issues the PCRA lawyers overlooked or rejected.
Three years of invoices appointed attorneys submitted to the court, covering 83 homicide PCRA cases in which the lawyers filed no-merit letters, show the extent of lawyers’ efforts.
Those attorneys did not arrange a single phone call with the client, contact the trial lawyer or obtain the police or prosecution case files about three-quarters of the time. Those case files have been a key source of evidence in overturned convictions since Philadelphia’s district attorney began making them available to lawyers six years ago.
Homicide cases are the most serious ones a lawyer can handle. But many lawyers handling homicide Post Conviction Relief Act cases never spoke with their clients before rejecting their claims. Here’s how often they took basic steps in 83 cases.
In some cases, records show the attorneys rejected their clients’ claims just days or weeks after being appointed and submitted filings with factual errors, including the wrong defendant’s name. They filed no-merit letters despite red flags, such as a client’s co-defendant having already been exonerated or a detective who locked the client up having been arrested for assaulting witnesses or tampering with evidence.
Daniel Anders, the administrative judge who oversees Philadelphia’s court-appointed counsel system, did not respond to requests for comment.
Judge Barbara McDermott, who oversaw many PCRA cases before recently retiring from Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, defended the system and said it is working as intended.
“We’re never going to be a perfect system, but within the system we’ve had we’ve done the best we can,” she said, adding that no-merit letters play an important role in shutting down pointless challenges. “At some point, there has to be finality to cases.”
In Pennsylvania, a person looking to challenge their conviction starts by filing a PCRA petition, often handwritten on a state-issued form. If it’s a person’s first PCRA, a judge will assign a lawyer to amend it.
Robert Dunham, a lawyer who spent years training attorneys across the state to litigate death-penalty appeals, said appointed lawyers are too often limiting their review to the issues their clients raised. He said the job is to reinvestigate the entire case to catch things previous lawyers missed.
“[The clients are] not lawyers. In many cases they are impaired,” Dunham said. “They don’t have the ability to conduct a factual investigation because they’re in jail.”
Stephen T. O’Hanlon, the attorney appointed to Wagner’s case, sent no-merit letters to nine clients who would later have their convictions or sentences overturned. That was more than any other attorney identified in the Inquirer and ProPublica examination, but O’Hanlon also handled among the most PCRA cases.
Five of the nine cases were later overturned in state or federal court based on issues with the trial or plea he rejected or did not raise.
O’Hanlon said the attorney code of ethics prevents him from making arguments he knows to be false or frivolous and that, in each case, the judge and prosecutor agreed with him at the time.
“Yes, it’s good that they got off on some kind of five-years-later technicality,” he said, “but it’s wrong to suggest there was any problem with” the no-merit letters.
O’Hanlon said he conducted a diligent review of Wagner’s case and exchanged numerous letters with him. According to court records, he sent an investigator to interview multiple witnesses.
“I knew he wasn’t going to fight for me.”
Milique Wagner
Wagner provided the Inquirer and ProPublica a copy of a letter he said he wrote to O’Hanlon in 2016, asking him to look into Philip Nordo, the corrupt homicide detective who’d typed up the informant’s statement. O’Hanlon said Wagner never raised Nordo as an issue at the time. Pointing to Wagner’s eventual plea deal, he said Wagner is “factually guilty” of the murder.
Wagner said O’Hanlon seemed to be against him from the outset. He pointed to a letter O’Hanlon wrote him, six weeks after he was appointed, seemingly unaware that Wagner had been convicted by a jury. “Didn’t you eventually enter a plea on your case? I’m having a hard time understanding how your issues can get around [that].”
Wagner asked the judge for a new lawyer, arguing the letter proved O’Hanlon was not interested in advocating for him.
“I knew he wasn’t going to fight for me,” Wagner said in a recent interview.
The judge kept O’Hanlon on the case.
The roots of Pennsylvania’s no-merit letter go back to the case of Dorothy Finley, who in 1979 filed a PCRA challenging her conviction for a robbery-murder in North Philadelphia. As required in Pennsylvania, a judge appointed her a lawyer.
After Finley’s lawyer decided her conviction was sound and asked to be taken off the case, a Philadelphia judge told him to file a letter with the court explaining why there was no merit to the issues she raised.
The state appeals courts agreed with Finley that her post-conviction lawyer didn’t do his job adequately. But in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that she did not have a constitutional right to a lawyer once her case hit the post-conviction stage. The decision left it to Pennsylvania to decide what counts as effective representation and what’s required of a lawyer who wants to drop a case.
Justice William Brennan Jr., in dissent, warned that the ruling would create a double standard in the justice system. Guaranteeing a lawyer to people who couldn’t afford one and then allowing that lawyer to oppose their client’s case turns the right to counsel into “a meaningless ritual,” he said. Meanwhile, a defendant who can afford private counsel would receive a “meaningful review” of their claims.
Finley died in prison a decade later. The no-merit letter that attorneys file in PCRA cases is now commonly known as a Finley letter.
The requirements to file a Finley letter are minimal: A lawyer only needs to describe what was done to review the case, list each claim the client wants raised, explain why the claims are bogus and notify the client of their rights.
“It puts the burden on the client, and it sets up the defense lawyer as an extra prosecutor.”
Jennifer Merrigan, co-founder of the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black
Nationally, few states have set standards for post-conviction representation. But appeals standards published in at least 10 other states urge lawyers to avoid filing no-merit briefs when possible. The National Legal Aid & Defender Association says there should be “extremely strict” limits on them and that they should never be filed if clients are serving life terms. In Philadelphia, court data and invoices show, appointed lawyers file them in about half of all homicide PCRA matters.
Court records are filled with examples of Philadelphia lawyers filing letters attacking clients who would eventually prevail in court, calling their claims “self-serving and unfounded,” “unfathomable,” “outrageous” and “specious.”
“The fault lies with [my client,] not the courts,” lawyer Earl Kauffman wrote in a 2021 Finley letter. Pennsylvania’s Superior Court rejected Kauffman’s determination in a 2023 opinion.
In an interview, Kauffman said he didn’t recall the case but stands behind his work.
“Whatever they decide, they decide — whether they agree with me or disagree with me,” Kauffman said of the higher court’s opinion. “I did what I did. I saw what I saw. I analyzed what I analyzed.”
O’Hanlon wrote a 2015 no-merit letter calling his client’s actions unjustifiable, in that he “emptied his gun, firing eight shots, at a fleeing car in a public street” — even though a federal judge, in ruling that he deserved a new trial, would interpret the same evidence as supporting the client’s self-defense claim. Asked about that finding, O’Hanlon said the judge’s observation had no bearing on the case.
Jennifer Merrigan, a co-founder of the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black, said Finley letters routinely contain adversarial language and often breach confidentiality to use information lawyers have uncovered against the clients. She viewed these as “some of the most egregious ethical violations I’ve seen in my career.”
“Some read like a prosecutor’s closing argument,” she said. “It puts the burden on the client, and it sets up the defense lawyer as an extra prosecutor.”
Merrigan helped analyze 100 Finley letters filed in Philadelphia homicide cases for a recent Harvard Law Review article. The authors of the study — an attorney at Merrigan’s firm and a Finley letter recipient who later got his conviction overturned — concluded that the letters revealed “entrenched routine disloyalty and incompetence, even in extremely high-stakes criminal cases.”
Clients can pay a steep price, said Dunham, the longtime appeals lawyer. “Sometimes any lawyer is better than having no lawyer — but sometimes having any lawyer is worse than having no lawyer,” he said. “What happens when you get a bad lawyer in the Finley process is you lose your rights.”
That’s because if a lawyer discards a valid issue, it is forfeited forever.
That’s what happened to Quahir Trice, who argued that when Philadelphia prosecutors used a statement by his co-defendant to convict him, the move improperly prevented Trice’s lawyer from cross-examining the witness against him.
Trice’s new lawyer, appointed by the court to handle his PCRA, filed a Finley letter. But by the time Trice’s case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices wrote that although Trice would have had a winning claim, the issue was dead. Trice’s lawyer had missed an “obvious means” to raise it in his PCRA and was now barred from doing so.
Trice was ultimately freed in 2022 after the Philadelphia district attorney’s office let his lawyers access his police file, which contained long-hidden evidence that police had alternative suspects and that witnesses lied at his trial.
But five lawyers who handle court-appointed cases said the process set up by the Pennsylvania courts has made clear that their duties in PCRA cases are limited, and that digging into the police file or even speaking with the client is, in many cases, unnecessary.
“Sometimes any lawyer is better than having no lawyer — but sometimes having any lawyer is worse than having no lawyer.”
Attorney Robert Dunham
George S. Yacoubian Jr., who has filed close to 100 Finley letters since 2018, said the courts have made those parameters clear. “A PCRA attorney is not supposed to be going back to the very beginning and investigating every possible thing,” he said. He added that while he has an ethical duty to his client, he has a “higher obligation to the system of law” to not present frivolous cases.
Yacoubian has written Finley letters in about 80% of his PCRA cases since 2018, court records show. He said that’s to be expected.
“If a client pleads guilty and there is nothing in the transcript to suggest the plea was coerced or forced or involuntary or unknowing, there is very little if anything that can be done for those defendants,” Yacoubian said.
However, dockets showed that a majority of his Finley letters were for clients who had gone to trial, not taken pleas.
Three Yacoubian clients, whose claims he rejected, would later be granted new trials after privately retained lawyers found valid claims to raise. Teri Himebaugh, the lawyer who won one of those PCRA cases, said it “really wasn’t all that difficult” to crack, but she said the prior lawyers had done little to investigate the case.
Pennsylvania’s Superior Court sent three other Yacoubian cases back to the lower court. Twice they determined his clients deserved a hearing on the issues Yacoubian had rejected. In the other case, the higher court said it was unclear whether he’d understood his client’s claim, because there was no indication they had ever spoken.
Yacoubian declined to discuss specific cases but said his filings were based on the issues in front of him.
“There are some claims that a petitioner makes that are completely baseless,” he said. “Sometimes Finley letters are just necessary.”
O’Hanlon, the lawyer who handled Milique Wagner’s case, has filed more than 100 Finley letters since 2018. Half, dockets show, were filed less than a month after he was formally appointed.
That’s a tight window in which to thoroughly investigate a case, said attorney Daniel Silverman, who in 2021 won a new trial for one of O’Hanlon’s Finley letter recipients. In a court filing, Silverman wrote that O’Hanlon’s Finley letters suggest he “often performs little or no investigation in these cases and views his role more as an agent of the courts, helping to quickly dispose of cases, than as an advocate for his client.”
That case was thrown out based on a flawed jury instruction. The federal court partly blamed O’Hanlon for “overlooking obvious issues.”
In another case that was overturned, prosecutors wrote in a court filing that O’Hanlon had “failed to fully read” a PCRA by a client who said his lawyer had neglected to call a key defense witness. O’Hanlon wrote, incorrectly, that his client had not named any such witness. A federal judge agreed to toss out the conviction.
O’Hanlon said in an interview that he didn’t overlook the issues, but based his Finley letters on Pennsylvania court precedent and the factual circumstances of each case.
O’Hanlon said that Finley letters often result from clients having missed filing deadlines. And, he said, he had to work with the issues his clients raised, not manufacture new ones.
“If there are negotiated guilty pleas, almost all of those should be Finleys,” he added, because those clients have stated on the record that that plea was knowing and voluntary. But in three guilty-plea cases, the Superior Court later disagreed with him and said his clients’ issues at least merited a hearing. In one, the appeals court eventually threw out the client’s sentence altogether.
O’Hanlon said he has won relief for numerous clients in PCRA cases and digs deep into each case, but sometimes he uncovers more evidence of guilt. He emphasized that even those who won new trials ended up taking pleas. “They’re still substantively guilty of murder,” he said.
In seven of the nine cases that would later be overturned, O’Hanlon’s Finley letters reflect his certainty that his clients are guilty, often describing the evidence of guilt as “overwhelming” or “compelling.”
One client O’Hanlon said had no claims that could outweigh his “overwhelming” guilt was Byshere Lawrence, who was 15 when he was arrested for murder in 2011. Court records show that his trial lawyer never met with him, which Lawrence claimed resulted in an unfair trial.
Another, Ronald Rogers, argued his lawyer should have objected when the judge overseeing his 2011 murder trial threatened a recanting witness with a perjury charge and “the maximum consecutive sentence” unless he reverted to his prior testimony accusing Rogers.
O’Hanlon sent Finley letters to both rejecting those claims. Judges would later throw out each conviction based on the ineffectiveness of each man’s trial lawyer, and both took plea deals rather than continue fighting their cases.
Rogers described that as a decision born of desperation.
“I thought, I gotta get home,” he said. “I gotta see the people I love one more time.”
He was released in December after nearly 17 years in prison. His two children had to grow up with their father behind bars.
O’Hanlon said that he could not have raised the issues that later won the clients’ relief, either due to the clients’ instructions at the time or due to state court precedent.
“There are years and years of subsequent procedural history, with multiple courts agreeing with me and some not agreeing with me,” he said.
But former clients said the letters undermined one of their last shots at freedom.
Hakeem Moore, who received one of those letters before his family finally hired a lawyer who uncovered evidence that led to his conviction being overturned, said getting that letter in his prison legal mail was devastating. O’Hanlon noted Moore ultimately took a guilty-plea deal, and said the evidence that freed him was not available when he handled the case.
“It’s like a betrayal. You’re supposed to be fighting for me,” Moore said. “I was scared that I was going to have to die in jail.”
For almost 40 years, the requirements created in the Finley case have set the minimum for what’s required of court-appointed PCRA lawyers in Pennsylvania. Beyond that, lawyers are largely left to decide what constitutes a meaningful review.
They are subject to some oversight: Pennsylvania courts require judges to independently review the record before accepting a Finley letter. And the whole court-appointed system is overseen by a supervising judge who has the power to review complaints and remove lawyers.
The analysis of invoices in homicide PCRA cases showed that even though most lawyers filing Finley letters did not take basic investigative steps, judges approved of the work that attorneys had done in more than 90% of the letters filed.
“There are years and years of subsequent procedural history, with multiple courts agreeing with me and some not agreeing with me.”
Stephen T. O’Hanlon, the attorney assigned to Milique Wagner’s case
And even if judges take issue with lawyers’ work, that does not necessarily affect their ability to take more cases. Once on Philadelphia’s court-appointment list, lawyers can remain there indefinitely.
That’s a sharp contrast to the federal court for Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, where lawyers must reapply every three years, self-reporting everything from previous case outcomes to disciplinary actions to judicial findings that they were ineffective in court.
In Philadelphia, the supervising judge has the authority to remove lawyers from the list in response to complaints. But formal reprimands from the state disciplinary board and criticism from the state appeals court have not affected some lawyers’ eligibility to continue taking appointed cases.
One lawyer, Lee Mandell, was officially reprimanded last year for waiting six years to schedule a PCRA hearing, during which time two key witnesses died. James Lloyd was reprimanded in 2020 for failing to contact his client for 10 months after being appointed, then making up a letter to cover up that fact.
Judges still appointed both to handle cases, and Philadelphia’s court leadership in 2022 tapped Lloyd to lead a training on PCRAs for other lawyers.
Lloyd did not respond to emails or phone calls requesting an interview. Mandell declined to comment.
Also continuing to receive appointments is attorney Douglas Dolfman. The state Superior Court criticized his PCRA work six times over the last six years, finding he abandoned two clients and “deprived [another] of meaningful representation.” In one case, the Superior Court said the lower court could consider “sanctions including, but not limited to, reporting him to the disciplinary board.” The state bar directory shows no disciplinary action followed.
In an interview, Dolfman said he diligently investigates each case and fights hard for his clients.
“If the person has been in jail for 20 years, you’re pretty much not finding anything. Most likely everything has been exhausted already,” Dolfman said. He didn’t address the appellate court’s criticism.
As for Milique Wagner, after receiving the Finley letter he’d spend another nine years in prison for the murder to which the prosecution’s star witness had confessed.
But in 2022, the disgraced detective who built the case against him, Nordo, was convicted of raping informants and funneling them crime reward money.
A year later, the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed that the prosecutor’s failure to disclose evidence about Nordo and the informant who testified against Wagner had resulted in an unfair trial.
Wagner came home from prison in January. He’s starting over in life at age 37 and looking for work. He married a woman who has been taking care of his ailing grandmother.
He said he has not given up on clearing his name in court, but he’s decided to represent himself going forward. He no longer has faith that a lawyer would help him.
“It’s like a game to them,” he said. “I’m not going to gamble. I know how it turned out before.”
The post With a Chance at Freedom, They Faced an Unexpected Obstacle: Their Own Lawyers appeared first on ProPublica.
An uptick in people skipping Obamacare premium payments in many states suggests the Affordable Care Act's rising costs are hitting home for 2026 enrollees.
After a month stranded, a ship's Filipino crew voted under mounting pressure to risk the perilous six-hour journey, made treacherous by mines and Iranian attacks.
Zainab Sheriff unjustly sentenced to four years in prison for incitement and threatening language, say activists
Lawyers, politicians and activists have called for the release of one of Sierra Leone’s best-known celebrities, who they said was unjustly imprisoned as part of a government crackdown on free speech and political dissent.
Zainab Sheriff, a singer and reality-TV show contestant who became a political opposition figure, was sentenced in April to four years and two months’ imprisonment for incitement and using threatening language.
Continue reading...Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures
The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.
In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.
Continue reading...Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades. PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I was never able to kill my px in a day, I tried. idk if the extra power will make me just plain ride it more but is it worth the extra 400?, and if you think it is, what have you done with the extra range? grocery runs? mountain bike trails? 25 miles seems like SOOOO much NGL
Rising volume of components imported from China prompts warning of cannibalisation of European industries
Europe is facing a fresh China shock that threatens to cannibalise local factories, leading to job losses and de facto colonisation of industry by Beijing, trade analysts and representatives have said.
They fear the plunging exchange rate and support for Chinese “zombie firms” has echoes of the crisis in the US 25 years ago when the term “China shock” was coined. It referred to the impact of China bursting on to the global trade stage after becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, with soaring imports displacing local industries and causing the loss of up to 2.5m jobs.
Continue reading...Dr Sharmila Chandran suspended until 20 September as Royal Australasian College of Physicians agrees to work with regulator to meet its obligations
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The charities regulator has suspended the president-elect of one of Australia’s oldest medical colleges for allegedly contravening a direction from the NSW work health and safety watchdog.
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) on Monday issued a notice suspending Dr Sharmila Chandran as a responsible person of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which is a registered charity, until 20 September.
SafeWork NSW advised that Chandran’s alleged failure to comply with a directive not to contact RACP staff was exposing them to “immediate and serious risks” to their psychological health and safety, the ACNC said in a public statement.
The intervention follows months of conflict within the RACP’s board, which culminated in an extraordinary general meeting last month to which police were called.
Continue reading...HMAS Farncomb had been due to be retired this year, but is now expected to operate until about 2036
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Taxpayers will fork out an extra $11bn to extend the lifespan of Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines for another decade, bridging the capability gap before the scheduled arrival of the first Aukus vessels in 2032.
Originally designed to have a 30-year working life, the six Adelaide-built submarines have already been operational for between 23 and 30 years. The Albanese government announced in 2024 that it would undertake so-called “life of type extension” works to keep the six Collins class boats in the water for an additional 10 years.
Continue reading...What will Apple announce this year? Guess correctly to earn chances for a grand prize.
Commemoration of atrocity at Nova music festival confronts those who deny its gravity, says Elkana Bohbot
Two police vans waited expectantly near the front entrance. Officers patrolled the pavements while suited security men with ear pieces stood stern-faced, casting suspicious looks at those approaching. The location in east London had not been disclosed until that morning but no chances were being taken.
It was not for a visiting dignitary or even an embassy of a country in conflict that all this was deemed necessary but the Nova exhibition, a commemoration of the 378 people massacred at a music festival on 7 October along with the 44 taken as hostages and the 19 of those who died in Hamas captivity.
Continue reading...Port has upgraded offshore wind facilities and is to expand quays, ferry terminals and cruise ship services
The operator of Belfast harbour plans to spend £1.3bn over the next 25 years to take advantage of strong economic growth in Northern Ireland, in what would be one of the largest non-governmental investments in the region’s history.
The Belfast Harbour Commissioners said the money would be spent on upgrading the port, with the possibility of residential property developments that could add another £750m in investment on top.
Continue reading...Prosecution is seen as landmark step towards justice over abuses of refugees trying to reach Europe from Africa
A former militia commander accused of overseeing murder, rape, enslavement and torture in Libyan detention centres has appeared at the international criminal court for a hearing that campaigners say is a landmark step towards “justice, truth, reparation and deterrence” of abuses of refugees trying to reach Europe from Africa.
The prosecution of Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity is the first to reach a courtroom resulting from the ICC’s investigation into crimes in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Continue reading...The dawn of a strange new European consensus.
Pope Leo takes the Vatican where Francis could not.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the MTA and LIRR unions reached "a fair deal" to end the strike after three days.
Apple sells five iPhone models, and we've tested them all. In fact, one iPhone won a CNET Lab Award for fastest wireless charging.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sony reportedly won't release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation's studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC versions of last year's Ghost of Ytei and "other internally developed games." Online games will still come to multiple platforms following this change in strategy, Schreier reported at the time. In recent years, Sony has released many of its biggest games on PC, including Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, both The Last of Us games, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 and Marathon. Two years ago, Hulst committed to releasing PlayStation's live-service games "day and date" on PC and PS5, but its single-player PC releases have been less consistent, with Hulst saying that the company takes a "more strategic approach." In April, Microsoft's new Xbox chief Asha Sharma said the company is "reevaluating" exclusive games for the platform. "Players are frustrated," she wrote in a memo. "New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented." "The model that got us here won't be the one that takes us forward," the memo adds.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Banner was unveiled during Sunday’s game
Suspects fled the stadium after incident
The Washington Nationals have identified at least one person who will be banned from the ballpark after a banner promoting a white nationalist website was unfurled in the crowd during Sunday’s game.
A team spokesperson also said the Nationals are coordinating with District of Columbia police on an investigation.
Continue reading...I’m currently riding a pint X with quite a few mods (no vesc) and there is a fairly good deal around my area for a GT, and they keep dropping the price it’s gone from 1800 to 1300 in the last three weeks and it isn’t looking like anyone’s interested, I am 250 pounds and 6’ 2” should I buy it?
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware’s corporate franchise industry contributes about a third of the state’s multi-billion-dollar budget, allowing the state to offer a lower tax climate to residents. A spate of deincorporation moves to other states, started by billionaire Elon Musk, has raised concerns about the future of that industry, though.
Delaware’s top official overseeing the state’s corporate franchise industry had a simple message for the masses wringing their hands over whether the First State would remain the leading state for incorporation: Mellow out.
Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez detailed Delaware’s incorporation data during Monday’s hotly-watched meeting on financial projections – the first meeting since Gov. Matt Meyer dismissed a member of the state’s financial oversight board after he questioned a lack of data on the industry. She reported that all categories of entities saw increases.
In total, the state was home to more than 2.28 million entities at the end of 2025, or an increase of about 130,000 entities over the prior year. Those businesses will raise more than $2.1 billion in state revenue, or about $100 million more than 2024.
“I think that the general climate at the beginning of 2025 has really mellowed out over the last calendar year. Senate Bill 21 and just some marketing that we have been doing pretty much from day one of this administration has really helped to settle everyone’s potential anxiety or unease about Delaware,” Patibanda-Sanchez told the members of the panel known best by its acronym, DEFAC.
The early release of the detailed data – it isn’t typically shared until the Division of Corporations’s annual report is published – may help to assuage lingering concerns by state legislators, business leaders and the public.
A collection of taxes and fees on the industry that handles legal and regulatory filings for corporate America feeds more than $2 billion to the state budget, or about a third of all revenue. That funding has long been cited as the reason Delaware can continue to not impose a sales tax and keep other taxes low compared to neighboring states.
But a constant drip of proxy statements from companies seeking shareholder approval to move their incorporations – often to competing states like Nevada or Texas – has made the Meyer administration’s task of changing the narrative more difficult.
While they began with celebrity billionaire Elon Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX – after he lost a lucrative contract dispute in state courts – those ranks have grown to include others like Dell, Coinbase, and Dropbox, among others.
A Newsmax headline touting the $3 trillion combined market value of those departing companies was widely shared in conservative circles and promoted by the Delaware Republican Party. The story did not interview anyone from the state, nor disclose that Newsmax’s parent company had been among those reincorporating.
Market values don’t factor into Delaware’s incorporation industry, however, which caps annual payments at $250,000 for the largest corporations.
Patibanda-Sanchez, who has spent much of the last year attending legal and industry conferences around the country to discuss the benefits of incorporating in Delaware, called out those flawed criticisms in her comments.
“Conjecture, misinformation, and exaggeration must never be part of any discussion regarding the franchise,” she said. “The impact those types of statements have can ripple far beyond this room.”
Newly created corporations or those moving to Delaware do not create the same headlines, but the new data showed the number of those largest entities grew by more than 24,000 last year. They will contribute an additional $13.6 million over the prior fiscal year, or an increase of about 1%.
A slight decrease in the percentage of initial public offerings (IPOs), or companies listing on the stock market for the first time, choosing to incorporate in Delaware last year raised some questions from DEFAC members.
Patibanda-Sanchez replied that the Division of Corporations was watching those numbers and meeting with advisory law firms to discuss the state franchise. However, she noted that the vast majority of IPOs that did not come to Delaware ended up incorporating internationally, particularly in Caribbean countries, rather than other U.S. states.
“We are still the No. 1 choice for venture capital,” she added. “The forms that venture capital rely upon still require Delaware law.”
The slow rate of growth in the state’s franchise tax – the annual fee that allows corporations to keep their domicile in Delaware and powers the industry’s budget impact – also raised some questions.
Rick Geisenberger, a former Delaware finance secretary who spoke during public comment, said it was “totally unprecedented to have back-to-back, essentially flat revenue growth when domestic equity markets are as strong as they’ve been the last two years.”
“I’m glad this body is asking probing and perhaps even uncomfortable questions, and that the Secretary is studying the drivers,” Geisenberger said. “Those answers are going to be critical in understanding the underlying causes and what the state can and should do on all matters of important public policy considerations, not just with respect to our corporate laws, but also whether it is prudent to increase Delaware’s reliance on a closely related revenue source, unclaimed property.”
Money from unclaimed property – derived from a range of different sources like dormant bank accounts, security deposits, utility refunds, uncashed stock dividends, unspent gift cards, and more – adds nearly $400 million to state coffers annually. But it has been under the microscope, following a loss for one revenue source in a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2023.
On Monday, the DEFAC board also approved the latest projections for the upcoming fiscal year, which added $196 million in funding largely on the back of higher than expected personal income tax returns. That pushes the annual appropriation limit for the state budget that will begin July 1 to $7.3 billion, easing any concerns of revenue declines this year.
The post DExit fear has ‘mellowed out’ as entities grow, secretary says appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 19.
This blog is now closed. See our latest full report: Trump claims planned attack on Iran postponed after Tehran makes new proposal to end war
Friedrich Merz has been embroiled in a row with Donald Trump over his war on Iran ever since the German chancellor suggested the Trump team was being outplayed in its negotiations with Tehran and said he would not advise his children to study or work in the US in the current climate.
The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, has looked at the declining relationship between the two leaders in this story. Here is an extract:
Disputes over trade and military aid for Ukraine have fuelled tensions between the US and its European allies and tested the Nato alliance.
Merz is struggling to revive an anaemic German economy and has said the impact of the US-Israeli military action in Iran and the ensuing closure of the strait of Hormuz has been severely damaging to European interests.
We strongly condemn the renewed Iranian airstrikes against the United Arab Emirates and other partners. Attacks on nuclear facilities pose a threat to the safety of people throughout the entire region. There must be no further escalation of violence.
Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA, stop threatening its neighbours, and open the strait of Hormuz without restrictions.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed.
Democratic reactions to the news about Trump moving to withdraw his lawsuit against the IRS are coming in. Ron Wyden, a top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Trump deserved no credit for dropping the lawsuit, regardless of his reasons.
“Even by his standards the move he’s trying to get away with now is a stunning act of corruption,” said Wyden in a statement. “What Trump wants is a $1.7bn slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion, and if he follows through, it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”
Continue reading...Democratic senators called extension ‘indefensible gift’ to Vladimir Putin as supply concerns keep Brent oil above $110 per barrel
The US has announced another 30-day extension of a sanctions waiver allowing purchases of Russian seaborne oil to aid “energy-vulnerable” countries hit by the Iran war, reversing plans not to grant an extension.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said the Treasury was issuing the 30-day general license after a previous waiver lapsed on Saturday. This will allow temporary access to Russian oil and petroleum products stranded on tankers without violating severe US sanctions on Russian oil majors, he said.
Continue reading...Democrats criticize deal as a slush fund that ‘funnels taxpayer dollars’ to president’s political allies
The justice department announced on Monday it was creating a loosely controlled and secretive $1.776bn fund to compensate Donald Trump allies as part of an agreement in which Trump and his sons dropped a $10bn longshot lawsuit against the IRS.
The money, which critics said was essentially a slush fund, will be overseen by five commissioners – four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general and removable by Trump – who would oversee the body’s work. A fifth commissioner will be appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership. The fund also has the power to issue “formal apologies” and will send a quarterly confidential report to the US attorney general outlining who has been paid from the fund. There is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public.
Continue reading...Former House speaker, who had not yet weighed in, declared Connie Chan ‘best prepared’ to represent city
Nancy Pelosi on Monday endorsed Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, in the race to succeed her as the city’s representative in Congress, calling her the candidate who “stands above the rest”.
Pelosi, the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, will retire at the end of her term and had not yet weighed in on the contested primary for the San Francisco district she has held for nearly 40 years. But as early mail-in ballots trickle in ahead of the 2 June primary, Pelosi declared Chan the “leader best prepared to carry forward the fight for San Francisco in the Congress”.
Continue reading...With inflation hitting its highest point since 2023, Kiana Powell told CBS News, "I cannot let a deal go to waste if it's something that I am using daily."
I have major trouble riding during the day. Call it social anxiety or the spotlight effect or just me being a baby, but it seriously hinders my ability to have fun. I talk myself out of it almost every time for fear of being noticed. Is exposure the only way to get over this? Any other tips from riders who have faced a similar issue?
President’s remarks about Taiwan arms deals being a ‘negotiating chip’ with Beijing have been seized on by Chinese state media
It has been an unsettling few days for Taiwan’s government. When Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, many feared the unpredictable US leader could upend Washington’s longstanding support for Taipei.
But beyond a starkly worded statement from Xi stressing China’s claims over Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory despite never having ruled it, initial signs appeared good for Taipei.
Continue reading...Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 19, No. 1,795.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 19, No. 1,073.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 19, No. 807.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 603 for Tuesday, May 19.
Massie said the president is worried about his preferred candidate Ed Gallrein's chances in the Kentucky race.
Three people were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, and two suspected shooters were found dead inside a vehicle nearby, police said.
Fire on Santa Rosa Island in Channel Islands national park becomes state’s largest this year and threatens rare plants
A wildfire that broke out on an island in the Channel Islands national park has become California’s largest wildfire so far this year, burning through more than 10,000 acres, destroying historic structures and endangering rare plant communities that conservationists had struggled to reclaim.
About six dozen firefighters have been deployed to control the blaze, which broke out on Friday, but their efforts have been undermined by strong winds. The fire is currently at 0% containment, according to a Cal Fire incident report.
Continue reading...The New York Times sued the Defense Department Monday for the second time in recent months over media access.
OpenAI’s plans now seem all but guaranteed, given that the world’s richest man couldn’t put a stop to them
On Monday morning, a jury in Oakland, California, handed a resounding victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI in their long, bitter courtroom battle with Elon Musk.
The federal jury found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup. The unanimous verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer’s claims that Altman “stole a charity” through his leadership of OpenAI.
Continue reading...The Swedish brand's most critical EV yet arrives with 307 miles of range, 800-volt charging and the weight of an entire electrification strategy on its shoulders.
I've ridden a lot of onewheels over the years around 3,000 miles across a few boards, I sold mine a few years ago and I really want to get back onto it. Seeing the group riders gather at the park by my house is making me remember how much fun it was and I can finally get one of my own,
I've seen a lot on vesc and float wheels and don't know which to go with. Im looking around the 2.5k amount there's a bunch of used boards for sale around me and and in was looking at a used GT or XR and then upgrading it. But I just saw some videos on the float wheel and I can't decide anymore
Hey reddit! I got a onewheel pint that I had modded with the custom firmware a few years back and its been a couple years since ive used it and now the battery is shot, so im thinking of selling it and got a few questions for yall?
How much do you guys think would this onewheel sell for? As is and if I get a new battery for it?
Does having it molded with the custom firmware make it more valuable?
Any where I can go to get a new battery? (Live in Toronto, canada BTW)
Let me know what you guys think!
Iran executed more than twice as many people last year as it did in 2024, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
 | The stand is also 3D printed, and holds the charge brick and cables. [link] [comments] |
The Spectra supercomputer built by Penguin Solutions using Maverick-2 chips from NextSilicon received fully system acceptance by Sandia National Lab, NextSilicon announced today. The news marks a milestone for the chipmaker and could pave the way for a new generation of more energy-efficient supercomputers that adapt themselves to tackle big workloads rather than throwing more watts and FLOPS at the problem.
Spectra is the second system deployed under Sandia National Laboratories’ Vanguard program, following the installation of the ARM-based Astra system back in 2018. Spectra is a 64-node machine equipped with 128 Maverick-2 accelerators using Penguin Solutions’ OCP-based Tundra servers and a negative pressure coolant system from Chilldyne.
Sandia has put the new supercomputer through its paces in anticipation of using this new type of supercomputer for HPC workloads, namely modeling nuclear reactions. Sandia has successfully run several workloads under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program on Spectra, including HPCG, the molecular dynamics simulation LAMMPS, and SPARTA, the lab announced in December.
NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 is based on a ICA dataflow architecture
While it’s the second supercomputer in Vanguard, Spectra is the first supercomputer to use NextSilicon’s new chip architecture. That’s important for scientific computing, which is looking for alternatives to GPUs, which have gotten bigger, hotter, and more energy hungry, while they haven’t necessarily gotten better at running scientific workloads.
Maverick-2 is the latest chip based on NextSilicon’s Intelligent Compute Architecture (ICA), a data flow architecture that NextSilicon says allows the chip to virtually rewire itself to adapt to changing workloads. ICA is a major departure from traditional von Neumann architectures, which NextSilicon Founder and CEO Elad Raz says wastes 98% of a processor’s computing capacity on overhead.
According to NextSilicon, Maverick-2 can deliver 10x the computational performance of the latest Nvidia GPUs, but while consuming just 60% of the electricity. The company says the new chip, which started shipping last fall, can run Cuda, allowing it to function as a drop-in replacement for Nvidia GPUs. It can also run Python, C++, and Fortran code with porting or rewriting the programs.
“This is a significant step toward what we have been building: an accelerator that delivers performance while reducing power consumption,” Raz stated. “For HPC organizations evaluating next-generation infrastructure, Spectra begins to show what Maverick-2 can do when put to the test.”
Spectra runs in a Penguin Solutions’ Tundra server using Chilldyne’s negative pressure liquid cooling (Image courtesy Sandia National Lab)
GPUs have become common components in supercomputers, thanks to their capability to crunch through massive datasets in a parallel manner. Nvidia and AMD have developed generations of GPUs used in thousands of supercomputers built for the Department of Energy’s National Labs, university supercomputing centers, and private industry.
While GPUs are still highly sought after for scientific workloads, it’s clear that they are not the only game in town. Chips like Maverick-2 show that non-Von Neumann architectures could have a future in powering modeling and simulation workloads, which have been the bread and butter of scientific computing.
Having a diversity of suppliers is also important, as the supply chain crunch has made it difficult to obtain highly popular GPUs, such as those from Nvidia, as well as common computing components, like DRAM. Nvidia’s pivot to favoring lower precision workloads in its most recent GPUs, including Blackwell and Rubin, is another factor in the DOE’s sourcing equation. That is something that AMD is seeking to capitalize on, as it continues to emphasize the FP64 capacity of its line of GPUs.
“We have to keep available options to complete our mission, because the mission is not optional,” James Laros, a senior scientist at Sandia who oversees a program to test new computing architectures at Sandia, told Reuters.
Related Items:
Genesis Mission Will Lean Heavily on Ozaki Scheme for FP64 Capability
AMD Hints at Big FP64 Increases in MI430X GPU as Ozaki Underwhelms
NextSilicon Says Maverick-2 Delivers 4x Performance-Per-Watt Vs. Blackwell GPU
The post Sandia Lab Gives Approval to Spectra Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.
UK foreign secretary says urgent pressure needed to get strait of Hormuz reopened and fertiliser and fuel moving
Global fertiliser supplies must be freed up within weeks to avoid disaster, with harvests suffering and food prices rising, the UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said.
The war in Iran has frozen shipments of fertiliser through the strait of Hormuz, creating a supply crunch that has already damaged farming in the UK, Europe and the US and is having its worst impacts in the developing world, where farmers cannot afford the higher prices now being charged.
Continue reading...Figures disclosed by nursing union show big rise on reported incidents which may only be ‘tip of the iceberg’
Racist abuse of NHS nurses has jumped by 86% in the last few years, which their union’s boss has blamed on the normalisation of extreme views in politics and the media.
One nurse was called a monkey by a colleague, a patient threw a hot drink at a nurse and followed up with racial abuse, and in several cases others were called the N-word, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) disclosed.
Continue reading...Tracker of attitudes towards artificial intelligence also finds almost half of the public would prefer to avoid it
One in three university students think AI will wipe out jobs so rapidly it will trigger civil unrest, according to a survey by King’s College London (KCL).
Students are among the heaviest users of AI, the poll found, with 77% using it at least a few times a month – compared with 46% of workers – and 27% using it daily or almost daily.
Continue reading...The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: "The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement," a statement of work, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads. ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades, but has become more pervasive in recent years. The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information. The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million. The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI's Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency's intelligence mission. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community. The report notes that the contract appears aimed at vendors like Flock or Motorola Solutions, since they're some of the only companies able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking. Further reading: Small Town Fights Over Flock's AI-Enhanced Network of License Plate-Reading Cameras
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of the fund as part of the settlement of President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns.
After a blowout year in 2024, HPC spending slowed a bit in 2025, posting a more modest–but still very impressive–gain of 16.9% over the previous year, led by strong growth in AI workloads, GPUs, and cloud computing, according to Hyperion Research.
Hyperion Research’s most recent data shows global HPC/AI spending totaled more than $70 billion in 2025, which was roughly $10 billion more than the world spent on HPC and AI servers, storage, software, services, and cloud computing in 2024.
Led by vigorous spending for on-prem HPC servers, total spending in 2024 was up 23.5% compared to the previous year, making it the hottest year for HPC spending that Hyperion CEO Earl Joseph had seen in the past three decades. “We’re seeing this explosive growth in HPC right now,” Joseph said at SC25 in St. Louis, Missouri.
How the $70 billion in 2025 HPC and AI spending is divied up (Source: Hyperion Research)
The $70 billion spent in 2025 is nothing to shake a stick at and represents solid and continued growth in high-end systems, but it fails to match the huge increase in HPC and AI computing from 2024. That’s not surprising, as sustaining that level of growth would have been extremely difficult, even amid an AI boom.
According to Joseph’s presentation from Hyperion’s recent HPC User Forum event, which was held earlier this month in Austin, Texas, spending for on-prem servers in 2025 cooled from the red-hot 23.4% rate that we saw in 2024. Globally, $29.4 billion was spent for on-prem servers in 2025, representing a 15.0% increase over 2024, when about $25.2 billion was spent.
HPE accounted for about 22.1% of the 2025 on-prem HPC sales, or about $6.5 billion, down from $7.2 billion in 2024. Dell Technologies increased its share to 18.2% on the back of $5.3 billion in HPC sales, up from $3.9 billion in 2024. Lenovo and Inspur brought in $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion in on-prem HPC sales, respectively, followed by Sugon, Penguin, Atos, IBM, Fujitsu, and NEC. Penguin passed IBM and Atos with $508 million in on-prem HPC sales compared in 2025 to $356 million in 2024.
Total spending for on-prem servers is projected to amount to about $32 billion in 2026, reaching about $54 billion by 2030, driven by strong demand for supercomputer-class ($10 million to $150 million) machines. The weakest segment growth-wise continues to be workgroup-level HPC machines, which Hyperion defines as medium HPC entry-level ($250,000 to $1 million) machines.
(Source: Hyperion Research)
The AI boom is driving insatiable demand for pricey GPUs that consume lots of power and demand liquid cooling. That is changing what HPC systems look like, with much fewer nodes deployed globally and a big increase in price per node.
Josph’s presentation nodes that, after peaking around 2.2 million HPC nodes in 2021, only about 500,000 nodes have been delivered per year during 2024 and 2025. And the revenue (or cost) per node has skyrocketed, from an average of less than $10,000 per node to more than $50,000 per node today.
Meanwhile, spending in the cloud surged to $12.4 billion in 2025, as the cloud has become a viable option for many HPC workloads, according to Joseph’s presentation.
Cloud spending last year increased 29.7% over 2024, when about $9.6 billion was spent, Hyperion data shows. The 2024 cloud spending figure was a 21.3% increase over 2023 cloud spending levels. Hyperion projects HPC and AI to drive $30 billion in spending in the cloud by 2030.
Demand for storage continued to be strong in 2025, with $12.8 billion spent on storage globally, representing roughly a 27.5% increase over 2024 storage spending levels. Continued investments in storage are likely, as the AI boom drives the need for much larger data sets, Joseph said in his report.
The post HPC Spending Cooled in ‘25, Hyperion Says appeared first on HPCwire.
Teenage suspects die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials say, as FBI investigates shooting as hate crime
Three people were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, in what authorities said was being investigated as a hate crime.
Two suspects, aged 17 and 19, were also dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said. The FBI said it was looking for information from the public as it investigated the shooting. The bureau had set up a tip line.
Continue reading...OpenAI CEO and president found not liable for breaking contracts made with Musk when founding the startup
A jury ruled in favor of Sam Altman in the culmination of a long and bitter legal battle that pitted the richest person in the world against a leader of the AI boom.
The federal jury in Oakland, California, found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup.
Continue reading...Trump claims number of medications available via the discount program will increase nearly sevenfold
Donald Trump has announced a major expansion of his prescription drug website, TrumpRx, claiming the number of medications available via the discount program will increase nearly sevenfold.
Experts raised questions earlier this year about the limited number of drugs listed on the site, suggesting they would appeal to a relatively small group of patients.
Continue reading...LIRR commuters are taking shuttle buses and subways into New York City as the largest commuter rail system in North America remains shut down.
A researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a new Windows zero-day dubbed MiniPlasma, which BleepingComputer confirmed can grant SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 11 systems. The researcher claims the bug is effectively a still-exploitable version of a 2020 flaw Microsoft said it had fixed. From the report: At the time, the flaw was assigned the CVE-2020-17103 identifier and reportedly fixed in December 2020. "After investigating, it turns out the exact same issue that was reported to Microsoft by Google project zero is actually still present, unpatched," explains Chaotic Eclipse. "I'm unsure if Microsoft just never patched the issue or the patch was silently rolled back at some point for unknown reasons. The original PoC by Google worked without any changes." BleepingComputer tested the exploit on a fully patched Windows 11 Pro system running the latest May 2026 Patch Tuesday updates. In our test, we used a standard user account, and after running the exploit, it opened a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges, as shown in the image [here]. Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also confirmed the exploit works in his tests on the latest public version of Windows 11. However, he said that the flaw does not work in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary build. The exploit appears to abuse how the Windows Cloud Filter driver handles registry key creation through an undocumented CfAbortHydration API. Forshaw's original report said that the flaw could allow arbitrary registry keys to be created in the .DEFAULT user hive without proper access checks, potentially enabling privilege escalation. While Microsoft reports having fixed the bug as part of its December 2020 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Chaotic Eclipse now claims the vulnerability can still be exploited.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Far more American children have likely been separated from their parents during immigration sweeps than previously understood, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings.
The report published Monday estimates more than 100,000 U.S. citizen children have had a parent detained since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year. The analysis cites reporting from ProPublica on the detention of parents, which can often lead to family separations.
During Trump’s first administration, a policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border ended after widespread outrage. Now, the breakup of families is happening amid sweeps by immigration agents across the country.
About 400,000 people have been detained by immigration agents since Trump returned to office, Brookings noted. But it’s nearly impossible to know how many family separations that has caused, since the administration does not track it.
Families are also now being split up in ways that are more dispersed, more hidden and harder to track.
Brookings created its estimate by using census information to approximate the number of children that detainees have. It estimated that roughly 200,000 children, including 145,000 American kids, have had a parent detained. The think tank notes that the actual number could be somewhat higher or lower.
ProPublica used a different, more conservative, approach that relied on government data obtained through a public information lawsuit by the University of Washington. We found that in just the first seven months of Trump’s second term, at least 11,000 American children had a parent detained. We also found that Trump has been deporting about four times as many mothers of American children per day as President Joe Biden did.
As we noted, our figures are almost certainly undercounts. For instance, the government data relies on detainees self-reporting whether they have children. In some cases, agents may not ask and parents may not share details about their families out of fear of what might happen to their children.
“There are a lot of families that are in the situation that are not being written down,” said Tara Watson, one of the authors of the Brookings report. It’s “important both for transparency and from a child health and wellbeing perspective to know what’s happening to the kids. How many of them are leaving the U.S.? How many of them are staying in the U.S. with close family? How many of them do we really not know what their situation is?”
ProPublica also followed multiple families through their sudden separations and found a wide variety of outcomes for the children.
Doris Flores, a mother from Honduras, was separated from her breastfeeding infant after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested her and her fiance at the same time. In the rush to find someone to care for the baby and Flores’ 8-year-old daughter, she called on their local pastor to take the children in.
In response to the Brookings findings, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, sent an oft-repeated statement that the agency “does not separate families,” adding that parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or instead to have them placed with a person the parent designates. DHS said this is consistent with the practices of past administrations.
However, guidelines for ICE officers encountering parents have changed. A document known as the Parental Interests Directive was given a new name under Trump — the Detained Parents Directive. Its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was “humane,” has been stripped of the word.
The post More Than 100,000 American Kids Have Had a Parent Detained in Immigration Sweeps, Report Estimates appeared first on ProPublica.
Apple's annual conference is expected to focus on AI integration in advance of the next iPhone.
Estimated £1bn per year is laundered through vape stores, barbers, mini-marts and sweet shops, officials say
“Dodgy” retail outlets such as vape stores, barbers, mini-marts and sweet shops suspected of being used to launder £1bn of criminal money will be targeted by a new specialist unit, the government has said.
A £20m National Crime Agency cell will run and coordinate investigations and raids into UK businesses suspected of acting as fronts for gangsters, the Home Office said.
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Eleven journalists from across the country join the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program, which seeks to expand the ranks of editors in newsrooms across the country whose work is aimed at accountability and impact.
Established in 2023, the program has trained more than 31 journalists to date. It begins with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually throughout the course of the year for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.
Alumni continue to work in the field in newsrooms like The Boston Globe, KQED, The Texas Tribune, ESPN and ProPublica. This year, more than 130 journalists applied for a spot in the program.
“Each year, we are thrilled by the number of people who reach out to us for this training,” Managing Editor Ginger Thompson said. “It’s ProPublica’s way of supporting investigative reporting at a time when our mission couldn’t be more vital.”
Introducing the 2026 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:
Aaron Sankin is the data editor at The Marshall Project, a criminal-justice-focused nonprofit news organization. He was previously an investigative reporter with The Markup, where he won the Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting on predictive policing, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Journalism Award for an investigation into racial and socioeconomic disparities in internet service pricing, and the Gerald Loeb Award for an innovative online privacy inspection tool. He also covered online extremism at The Center for Investigative Reporting and helped launch HuffPost’s San Francisco vertical. He is a graduate of Rice University and lives in New York.
Deblina Chakraborty is senior science editor at CNN, where she oversees coverage of science and space, leading a team of writers and editors who explore intriguing discoveries, scientific breakthroughs and daring missions. Previously, she was a general features editor and an off-platform editor for CNN. She’s also managed editorial teams at Denver7 and HLN Digital and hosted the award-winning podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class.”
Josh McGhee is the Chicago bureau chief of MindSite News and covers the intersection of criminal justice and mental health with an emphasis on public records and data reporting. He previously reported for Injustice Watch, The Chicago Reporter, DNAinfo Chicago and WVON covering criminal justice, courts, policing, race, inequality and politics.
Kynala Phillips is the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Neighborhood Dispatch, a new initiative that partners with residents to cover community voices, concerns and improvements. Previously, she led the events program at Kansas City PBS, and worked as a service journalism reporter at The Kansas City Star, where she covered housing, public services and marijuana legalization. She holds a master’s degree in engagement journalism from the City University of New York and an undergraduate journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Karen Chávez is executive editor of USA Today’s Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina. During her more than 20-year career at the paper, she served as investigations editor, assistant sports editor and an outdoors and environment editor. Previously, Chávez, a New York native, also worked as a reporter in Montana, Idaho and Arizona. Chávez’s reporting exposed a district attorney’s wrongdoing and led to his removal for willful misconduct in office (which won a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award). Her reporting also exposed a decadeslong pattern of alleged sexual abuse of students at the Asheville School by faculty and other students (which won North Carolina Press Association awards). At the Citizen Times, Chávez led national coverage of Tropical Storm Helene, the deadliest and costliest natural disaster in North Carolina history. The team she led was honored for their dogged coverage, including a first place National Headliner Award for public service journalism.
Kevin Uhrmacher is the deputy news applications editor at ProPublica, where he leads a team of developers who use code to report and build interactive stories and databases. He joined ProPublica in August 2025 after 11 years at The Washington Post as a reporter and editor on the graphics team focused on politics and public policy. At ProPublica, he led the development of the Rx Inspector database that shows patients which factories made their prescription generics. He has edited graphics for three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. Uhrmacher graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Margaret Ho is an assistant editor in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where she collaborates with reporters who cover the Justice Department, the rule of law and political fact-checking. She started at the Times in 2010 as a copy editor on the business desk after working as a grant writer for a charter school in Harlem, New York.
Padma Rama is a senior political editor at NPR focused on national politics. She works with NPR’s network of member stations. Previously, she was a congressional reporter and senior producer at The Associated Press and worked at CNN’s D.C. bureau.
Rosalie Chan is a senior editor helping to drive editorial strategy for Business Insider’s tech coverage. She joined the company as an enterprise tech and cloud reporter, reporting on key industry players like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Broadcom, VMware and more. As a reporter, she has broken scoops on those companies and delved into a wide array of topics, like the open source licensing wars, the rise and fall of various developer startups, coding boot camps and sexual harassment in tech. Most recently, she was an editor on a Business Insider team investigation into the environmental and economic impacts of data centers that won the George Polk Award. Chan holds a bachelor of science degree in journalism and computer science and a master of science in law from Northwestern University.
Thy Vo is an investigative editor for InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom covering the Pacific Northwest. She’s worked as a community journalist in the West for nearly a decade, covering government, politics, courts and immigrant communities for outlets like The Colorado Sun, Law360, The Mercury News and Voice of OC. Vo grew up in Anaheim, California, and now lives in Colorado.
Yoohyun Jung is The Boston Globe’s data editor, leading a team of computational journalists focused on delivering compelling data-driven journalism. She was part of the Spotlight team honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025 for its investigation on Steward Health Care, a troubled Boston-born hospital chain that ultimately collapsed. Previously, she was the deputy data editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she worked on some of the organization’s most ambitious data-driven storytelling projects. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Jung began her journalism career in Arizona, where she worked for two of the state’s largest newspapers in Phoenix and Tucson covering numerous beats, including criminal justice and education.
The post ProPublica Selects 11 Journalists for Investigative Editor Training appeared first on ProPublica.
Musk's suit alleged multiple defendants colluded to steal a charity, corrupting a technological nonprofit from within.
The US president says plans for a US military strike on Iran have been paused because ‘serious negotiations are now taking place’
Iran has made a new proposal for a deal to definitively end the war in the Middle East, officials in the region said on Monday, with Donald Trump claiming he had postponed new military strikes so talks could continue.
But while the US president has regularly used social media to threaten Tehran, and to claim that a peace deal was within reach, there has been no sign of an immediate breakthrough in the stalled negotiations to end the war.
Continue reading...When Apple's AI assistant gets major renovations with iOS 27, what does that mean for privacy?
All month, people all over the world have been nervously watching as the Hantavirus spread aboard a cruise ship called the MV Hondius. Three people from the ship died and as the virus spread to other passengers, people wondered – is this the next pandemic? It isn't. But as Guardian health correspondent Melody Schreiber tells host Kai Wright, the outbreak revealed how Trump's cuts to government funding for public health and a climate of rampant misinformation have affected our readiness for the next pandemic.
Continue reading...U.S. wage growth is lagging inflation for the first time since 2023, eroding consumers' purchasing power.
Nintendo is trying to secure a touchscreen-specific monster-catching patent that could be relevant to Palworld Mobile. Japan's patent office has initially rejected the application for lacking an inventive step over prior art, but the company could appeal or amend the claims. Games Fray reports: The Japan Patent Office (JPO) has now made a new monster-catching patent application by Nintendo public. Patent Application No. 2026-019762 covers monster-catching of the kind already asserted against the PC and console versions of Palworld and is from the same patent family as two of the three patents Nintendo is already asserting against Palworld, but with a touchscreen focus. Potential targets are the upcoming Palworld Mobile game and Tencent's Roco Kingdom: World, which is presently available only in China but likely to expand internationally. Nintendo filed the application this year with a request for a fast-tracked review. The JPO has indeed been quick, and the response is that Nintendo's application lacks an inventive step over the prior art. Nintendo already amended the claims in February and can try to amend them again. It can try to persuade the examiner and potentially appeal the decision. But the initial rejection suggests that Nintendo will not obtain the desired touchscreen monster-catching patent quickly. The rejection was communicated on April 24, 2026. Nintendo could abandon the application now, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they are more likely to try to persuade the examiner to arrive at a different conclusion, even though the reasons for the rejection are strong. In many patent examination processes, the initial rejection is essentially just an invitation to present one's best arguments. Here, however, the rejection notice is so well-reasoned that it will be an uphill battle for Nintendo. Nintendo's application would cover a touchscreen-controlled game in which a player moves through "a field in a virtual space," uses "a capture item for capturing a field character," and can summon "a battle character" to fight that creature. During combat, the game would display "a plurality of commands including at least an attack command and an item command," selected through "an operation input using the touch panel." The key claim is that when the capture item is used "during a battle" or "in a non-battle state," the game performs "a capture success determination," and, if successful, "the field character is captured and set to a state owned by the player."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fire reported in Simi Valley, north-west of LA, as mandatory evacuation orders were issued for over 20,000 residents
A fast-growing brush fire ignited on Monday morning in southern California, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people and damaging at least one home.
The Sandy fire was reported just after 10am in Simi Valley, a city in Ventura county about 30 miles north-west of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...It's better buy a used pint x and upgrade it with the kit pintv power kit by floatwheel or buy a fkoatwheel atom?
Final price is about the same
Trump administration unveiled sweeping restrictions on press access at the US defense department last September
The New York Times has filed a second lawsuit against the Pentagon, arguing that its recent policy requiring journalists to have official escorts when on Pentagon grounds is unconstitutional.
The Trump administration unveiled sweeping restrictions on press access at the US Department of Defense, which it calls the Department of War, last September.
Continue reading...Concerns over lithium-ion batteries — not the bots' personalities — keeps them off Southwest flights.
EPA outlines effort to kill Biden-era rules as critics condemn RFK Jr and Lee Zeldin’s ‘hocus pocus’
The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.
Continue reading...AI-driven tools are transforming accelerator and detector design, will improve performance and enable real-time data analysis
May 18, 2026 — Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are shaping major design and research decisions for the planned Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a next-generation nuclear physics research facility that will collide electrons with protons or nuclei to probe matter’s structure.
The EIC — being built at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in partnership with DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) — will reveal the inner structure of matter in unprecedented detail. It is the world’s first collider designed with AI and machine learning integrated into both its accelerator and detector systems.
Kevin Brown (left), Vincent Schoefer, Weijian (Lucy) Lin, and Levente Hajdu, pictured here in the Main Control Room of the recently retired Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, are members of the EIC-BeamAI collaboration. This group is developing and testing AI tools, such as machine learning, using real accelerator systems at Brookhaven Lab to inform the design of the future Electron-Ion Collider. Photo credit: Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory.
“EIC is a new facility that can take advantage of AI and machine learning from the start,” said Tanja Horn, a professor of physics at The Catholic University of America, and co-chair of AI4EIC, a working group devoted to developing AI for the EIC. “A wide array of AI tools is now available — perfectly timed for the EIC.”
Brookhaven and Jefferson Lab, along with more than 300 collaborating institutions around the world, are designing the 2.4-mile (3.9-kilometer) ring-shaped accelerator, with two beams circulating in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. A house-sized particle detector, ePIC, will act as a high-speed 3D camera to capture what happens when these beams — each about the width of a human hair — collide.
The EIC will reuse key components of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a DOE user facility at Brookhaven Lab that completed operations in February 2026. Building on RHIC’s foundation, the project’s scientists, engineers, and collaborators are combining decades of expertise with AI-enabled systems to optimize both the design — and the future operation — of this new DOE Office of Science user facility.
“AI will be embedded across the accelerator that produces collisions between electrons and ions, the detector that captures data from those collisions, and the systems that record, share, and analyze that data,” said Abhay Deshpande, associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at Brookhaven Lab and the EIC science director. “The goal is to ensure that the EIC is ready with AI-enabled systems that speed the path to discovery when it turns on in the mid-2030s.”
The AI tools developed to enhance the EIC may also have impacts on how other future facilities built for science or broader applications are designed, optimized, and run for years to come.
Using AI to Optimize Accelerator Performance
AI has long been used to improve accelerator operations, particle identification, and data analysis at facilities such as RHIC and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In earlier facilities, however, these AI capabilities were often added years after construction. For the design of the EIC, teams such as the EIC-BeamAI collaboration are developing and testing AI tools, such as machine learning, using real accelerator systems at Brookhaven Lab — enabling faster, more precise tuning from the outset.
AI-assisted simulations can quickly reproduce the kinds of signal patterns particles leave in a detector, helping scientists test detector designs and analyze collision data more efficiently. These images compare two ways of simulating how a pion, a type of particle, would appear in a detector. The Geant4 image on the right is the reference simulation. Geant4 is the standard detailed detector simulation widely used in particle physics, producing highly accurate but slow simulations, while the AI-assisted version, as shown on the left, is designed to produce similar detector patterns much faster. Image credit: Cristiano Fanelli.
“What’s exciting is that machine learning lets us operate accelerators in ways we simply couldn’t before,” said Kevin Brown, a physicist at Brookhaven Lab who served as head of control systems for RHIC and its injector accelerators. “We’re not just tuning machines — we’re teaching them how to tune themselves.”
By “tuning,” Brown refers to adjusting tens of thousands of parameters that keep beams stable and maximize collisions — a complex task traditionally managed through constant manual adjustments.
“It’s very difficult for a human being to keep on top of all these settings and beam characteristics all the time,” said Georg Hoffstaetter de Torquat, a Cornell University professor with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab. “With machine learning, what we write is essentially computer supervision — the system monitors conditions and adjusts controls automatically.”
To train these self-tuning models, scientists rely on real accelerator data. The EIC will use decades of operational data from RHIC to train and validate AI tools. BeamAI collaborators have already demonstrated this approach in RHIC’s pre-accelerators, where machine learning algorithms can maintain beam quality comparable to that achieved by expert human operators.
“And the routine can run all the time,” Hoffstaetter said. “It’s like having an operator dedicated to the task continuously.”
These systems also generate a “digital twin” — a virtual model that mirrors the accelerator in real time, allowing scientists to test adjustments without interrupting operations.
“As the system optimizes, it learns parameters of the real accelerator, like the misalignment of magnets,” Hoffstaetter said. “That makes future adjustments even better.”
Researchers emphasize that AI enhances, rather than replaces, human expertise. Operators can monitor AI-driven changes in real time, while built-in safeguards ensure systems operate within safety limits.
“Machine learning has the potential to make operation safer,” Hoffstaetter said. “A digital twin, for instance, can identify unusual magnet behavior and prompt a shutdown before the machine is at risk.”
Optimizing Detector Design with AI
AI’s role at the EIC extends beyond controlling beams in the accelerator. Scientists are also applying these tools to design the massive detector where collisions occur.
Scientists design detectors by modeling their geometry digitally and running simulations of particle collisions to evaluate performance. They iteratively refine these designs before construction begins — a process that traditionally requires millions of computationally intensive simulations.
To streamline this work, EIC collaborators are applying AI and machine learning to automate key parts of the workflow. One leading effort is the DOE-supported project AI-Assisted Detector Design for the Electron-Ion Collider (AID2E), a collaboration among Brookhaven Lab, The Catholic University of America, Duke University, Jefferson Lab, and William & Mary.
“We are building a framework that allows AI to assist the design of large-scale detectors,” said Cristiano Fanelli, associate professor of data science and director of technology at William & Mary, the lead principal investigator of AID2E, and co-convener of the AI4EIC working group. “These systems involve complex optimization problems that are difficult for humans to explore efficiently but well suited to AI-assisted approaches.”
Researchers are training algorithms to predict how design changes affect the detector’s ability to identify particles, allowing them to explore many configurations in a fraction of the time required for full simulations.
“AI can identify optimal solutions, but only within the objectives and constraints defined by physicists,” Horn said.
By combining physics expertise with AI-assisted optimization, researchers can more efficiently refine detector design while reducing computing costs and energy use.
Enabling Real-Time Data Analysis and Event Reconstruction
Once the detector is built, the challenge shifts from design to data — capturing and interpreting an enormous stream of collision events as they occur.
The EIC detector, known as ePIC, will use cutting-edge technologies to detect particles created in collisions between high energy electrons and protons or ions — the nuclei of larger atoms — moving close to the speed of light. These collisions generate complex signals and background “noise” that can obscure key information. Traditional approaches rely on fixed rules and manual tuning, but the EIC will use AI-driven systems to filter and prioritize data in real time. This image shows simulated particle hits and tracks. Credit: Sean Preins/VIRTUE.
“We’re trying to develop algorithms that can handle data flying at you at a rate of 500,000 collisions per second,” Horn said. “It’s an interesting challenge.”
These collisions generate complex signals and background noise that can obscure key information. Traditional approaches rely on fixed rules and manual tuning, but the EIC will use AI-driven systems to filter and prioritize data in real time.
The facility is expected to produce data streams of up to 100 gigabits per second — comparable to tens of thousands of high-definition video streams running simultaneously — requiring a powerful readout network that can process data almost as quickly as it is generated.
“We want a fast response to flag information,” said Alex Jentsch, a staff scientist at Brookhaven Lab who specializes in detector systems and is part of the AID2E collaboration. “Machine learning can help us disentangle interesting things from things we don’t care about.”
Beyond filtering data, AI is also transforming how scientists reconstruct collision events. Deep learning models translate the tiny traces particles leave behind as they pass through the detector into detailed information about their energy and momentum, improving both the speed and accuracy of event reconstruction.
“Deep learning is uniquely suited to modeling complex, high-dimensional detector responses directly from data,” Fanelli said. “It complements established methods and human expertise to improve reconstruction and analysis.”
Together, these AI-driven approaches improve how detectors are developed and how collision data are processed, allowing researchers to extract insights more quickly.
“We are contributing to a broader effort across nuclear and particle physics to advance near real-time data analysis,” Fanelli said.
As the first collider designed for the AI era, the EIC represents a new model for how science is done — shaping the design of future research facilities for decades to come.
About Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
Source: Amber Aponte, Brookhaven National Laboratory
The post Brookhaven’s Electron-Ion Collider Embeds AI Across Accelerator and Detector Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
 | I ate it shortly after the video... thankfully sand is more forgiving than pavement [link] [comments] |
Victim in his 20s was beaten up in north London street having stepped outside a property to use his phone
A Jewish man is being treated in hospital for injuries to his face and body after being attacked by a number of men in north London.
Police were called in the early hours of Monday morning following reports that a Jewish man had been assaulted by a number of men outside a property on The Grove in Golders Green.
Continue reading...California jury dismissed all charges, finding that Musk missed the three-year statute of limitations to file suit.
President Trump said he received a request from the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
President Trump had accused the Treasury Department and IRS of unlawfully allowing a government contractor to leak his tax returns and those of his sons and company.
President Trump had warned Sunday that "the Clock is Ticking" for Iran to accept a peace agreement.
The Trump administration announced it's restricting people who don't have U.S. passports from entering the country if they have been in Congo, South Sudan or Uganda amid the Ebola outbreak.
Christian Castro charged with five counts over shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in Trump immigration crackdown
The federal officer who shot a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s militarized immigration crackdown in Minnesota was charged with assault on Monday.
There is a nationwide warrant for the arrest of Christian Castro, 52, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot Julio Sosa-Celis on 14 January. A state investigation into the incident had been hampered by federal agencies’ refusal to share information with state prosecutors.
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MOLLY PENHALE
Staff Writer
From Graham King and the creators of Queen’s biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Michael” explores Michael Jackson’s journey to becoming one of the most influential pop stars in history. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, this film highlights the star’s story, beginning with the Jackson 5, then transforming into the solo artist so many know and love.
Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s own nephew, steps into the role as Michael himself. Jaafar is the son of Jermaine Jackson, who was an original member of the Jackson 5, but later left the group.
Another notable actor in this film is the iconic Colman Domingo who plays Joseph (Joe) Jackson, Michael’s father. The makeup team did a great job of transforming him into the paternal leader of the Jackson family. The heavy makeup and cosmetics on his face made him nearly unrecognizable.
I was initially turned off by this film due to the bad reviews it was receiving. I knew I had to see it for myself before forming an opinion on it since I have always been a Michael Jackson fan — and it is safe to say I was not disappointed. In fact, my roommate and I could not sit still in our seats.
The film opens in Gary, Indiana in 1964, shortly after the formation of the Jackson 5 when Michael was still a young boy. The opening scene shows the brothers rehearsing under the strict expectations of their father, who demands perfection. After a late-night performance, Joe tells his sons they need to go practice immediately rather than going to bed. In response, Michael says he thought they had done really well.
This angers Joe and from this moment on, establishes the man that he was: strict and controlling, but also extremely ambitious. He wants his boys to make it big and knows that Michael specifically has a gift in singing and dancing. He knows he has to use Michael to his full potential.
Once the Jackson 5 make it big, including being featured on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Michael expresses a desire to experiment with solo work, independent of his father and brothers. His father, however, does not approve and wants the brothers to work strictly as a group.
On his own time and apart from the Jackson 5, Michael records his first major solo studio album, “Off the Wall,” in 1979, opening the door for a new wave of fame solely for Michael. People loved Michael while he was performing with the Jackson 5, so hearing him on his own was exciting for his fans.
From there, Michael’s fame only grew. In 1984, Michael won eight Grammys, seven alone for his studio album “Thriller,” earning him the record for most wins in a single night and worldwide recognition. The film features iconic moments throughout Michael’s career, including the famous “Thriller” music video, the “Beat It” choreography and so much more.
The movie also touches on the pressure Michael was under from his father to keep performing with his brothers. Despite the popularity and money the Jacksons got from the success of Michael’s solo work, his father felt that Michael was betraying the family by pursuing his own music. Michael goes as far as firing his own father as his manager due to his overbearing presence and the decisions being made over his own music.
One of the most talented actors in this film is Jaafar. Not only does he portray Michael, but in my opinion, he is an embodiment of him. This being his acting debut proves the natural talent that comes from the Jackson family. He nailed Michael’s mannerisms in dancing and in talking perfectly. At some points throughout the film, I was second-guessing whether it was Jaafar or Michael himself since Jaafar looks so much like his uncle.
Personally, I’m glad that they chose a family member to play Michael. I don’t believe that anyone else could have played Michael better than someone blood-related to him. There are countless Michael impersonators online, but none of them could have portrayed the artist as convincingly as Jaafar did.
Some other notable performances include Juliano Krue Valdi, taking on the role of young Michael at just nine years old when he was cast. Much like Jaafar, Valdi bears a striking resemblance to Michael. He was chosen for the role because of his ability to impersonate the artist through viral dance videos. His performance is extremely impressive given the size of the role at such a young age, and he nailed it.
The movie recreates some of the shows from the Jacksons’ iconic “Victory Tour,” one of the last tours where the Jackson 5 performed together before Michael officially went on his own. This scene showcases some of Michael’s songs, such as “Human Nature” and “Workin’ Day and Night.”
Perhaps my favorite part of the film was the recreation of Michael’s “Bad” tour. The intensity and energy of the scene made it feel as though I were actually attending one of his concerts. It was the perfect way to wrap up the film and tease the second “Michael” movie that will also star Jaafar Jackson.
Whether you are a Michael Jackson fan or not, I highly recommend giving this film a watch for its strong performances and entertaining recreations of Michael’s most iconic songs throughout. Since watching this movie, all I listen to is Michael Jackson — and I’m sure you will as well.
Meta is expected to begin cutting about 8,000 jobs this week as it pours more money into AI infrastructure and looks to "offset" other investments, with additional layoffs reportedly possible later this year. According to CNBC, the morale has worsened inside the company. "Internally, there's an emerging sense of dread across wide swaths of the company," the report says, citing current and former Meta employees. "That's in part because more cuts are expected this year, including a potential round of layoffs in August, followed by another round later in the year, some of the sources said." From the report: [...] Whatever anxiety investors are experiencing, the feelings inside the company are more intense, with some longtime staffers questioning Meta's AI pursuits under AI chief Alexandr Wang, while also weighing if now is the time to leave for opportunities at other companies in the AI race, according to current and former employees. Data aggregated by Blind, an anonymous professional network that requires users to verify their employment with a work email address, reveals some of the internal malaise. Meta's overall rating by employees on Blind has declined 25% from a peak in the second quarter of 2024 to the current period, with a 39% drop in its culture rating. In every category other than compensation, Meta has seen a ratings decline and dramatically underperforms rivals Amazon, Google and Netflix, the Blind data reveals. The company's full-court press with AI included the recent debut of an employee tracking tool intended to collect data from staffers' actions, such as mouse movements and keystrokes on their work computers. The Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, as it's called, is part of Meta's efforts to train AI models to power digital agents that can perform various coding and white-collar tasks. Employees have characterized the data tracking tool as "dystopian," according to messages viewed by CNBC, with some workers expressing fear that personal information could be leaked. Some Meta workers have noted that their workplace computers appear slower since the company initiated the project, adding to their frustration, sources said. Meta workers responded by creating an online petition that urges Zuckerberg and leadership to shutter the project. "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace," the petition says. "It should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of AI training." Further reading: NYT: 'Meta's Embrace of AI Is Making Its Employees Miserable'
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers from Argonne will both serve on committees and as speakers at the May conference. Topics include AI accelerators, reproducibility, scaling and more.
May 18, 2026 — The 40th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) provides a forum for engineers and scientists from around the world to present their latest research findings in all aspects of parallel computation. Taking place in New Orleans on May 25-29, 2026, Argonne researchers are serving on several IPDPS program committees, including Valerie Taylor (Applications), Ian Foster (Measurement Learning and AI), Zhiling Lan (Measurement, Performance, and Experiments), and Avinash Kumar Maurya (System Software). Swann Perarnau is Tutorials co-chair.
Workshops
A distinguishing feature of the IPDPS conference is the many co-located workshops. Argonne researchers are involved in several of these.
HPC for AI Foundation Models & LLMs for Science (HPAI4S’26) will address high performance, scalability and energy efficiency of foundation models through a combination of system-level and algorithmic aspects, parallelization techniques, data reduction strategies and low-overhead checkpointing, as well as evaluation and benchmarking.
Argonne organizers are Franck Cappello (General Chair), Bogdan Nicolae (General Vice-Chair), Avinash Maurya (Organizing Chair), Robert Underwood (Program Committee Chair), Romain Pereira (Program Committee member).
Argonne paper presentations:
8th Workshop on Parallel AI and Systems for the Edge (PAISE 2026) seeks to gain feedback and solutions to challenges facing edge computing, including control flows, infrastructure, data flows and applications. Argonne organizers are Yongho Kim and Seongha Park (Program Committee members) and Raj Sankaran (Workshop organizer).
Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop (HCW) will seek novel ideas from both the research and industry communities on theoretical and practical aspects of computing in heterogeneous computing environments. Argonne organizer: Murali Emani (Technical Program Committee member).
Sixteenth International Workshop on Accelerators and Hybrid Emerging Systems (AsHES). This workshop focuses on understanding the implications of accelerators and heterogeneous designs on the hardware systems, porting applications, performing compiler optimizations and developing programming environments for current and emerging systems. Argonne organizer: Jiayuan Meng (Steering Committee member).
7th Workshop on Extreme-Scale Storage and Analysis (ESSA 2026). This workshop brings together researchers and developers in data-related fields — such as storage, I/O, processing, and analytics — on extreme-scale infrastructures, including HPC systems, clouds, edge systems, and hybrid combinations to discuss advancements and potential solutions to the new challenges encountered. Argonne organizers: Matthiew Dorier (Program Committee member) and Franck Cappello (Steering Committee member).
29th Workshop on Jobs Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP 2026). JSSPP aims to enhance scheduling techniques, reproducibility, and real-world impact by providing a forum for research papers, workload traces, and open problem descriptions.
Argonne paper presentations:
Tutorials
Building Scalable Agentic Systems for Science: Concepts, Architectures, and Hands-On with Academy. This half-day tutorial will introduce participants to the design, deployment, and management of scalable agentic systems for scientific discovery. Argonne’s Ian Foster is presenting.
For further program details, visit the IPDPS 2026 website at ipdps.org.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
The post Argonne Researchers Play Key Role at Parallel Computing Conference appeared first on HPCwire.
Content creators, get ready to put aside your handheld action cams -- the Robot Phone is coming.
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 18, 2026 — Western Digital Corporation today announced a significant step in next-generation infrastructure security with the integration of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into its newest high-capacity Ultrastar UltraSMR hard disk drives. As AI infrastructure evolves from compute-centric deployments to data systems that persistently retain information across every inference, training run, and interaction, the durability and security of that data becomes foundational, not optional. These drives are currently in qualification with multiple hyperscale customers, reflecting strong early interest in quantum-resilient storage architectures.
AI data systems generate and retain massive, long-lived data sets. Securing that data over decades, not just years, must be a core requirement of modern infrastructure. WD’s launch of the first hard drives to implement NIST-approved quantum-resistant algorithms marks a definitive industry transition — from theoretical planning to deployed hardware-level defense. By hardening the root of trust, WD provides a critical safeguard against threats like harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) and similar attacks. This helps protect the massive data lakes fueling today’s AI innovations against the cryptographic protection-breaking power of tomorrow’s quantum computers. WD is among the first to bring post-quantum cryptography into production storage infrastructure, helping lead the industry’s quantum transition with deployed, standards-aligned, infrastructure-level protection, setting a new baseline for trust in AI-era data systems.
Why Post-Quantum Storage Security Matters Now
As AI infrastructure and workloads generate and retain data in perpetuity, the value of that accumulated data grows, and so does the urgency to protect it against threats that are advancing faster than most organizations anticipate.
WD’s PQC Implementation
WD’s PQC implementation on the new Ultrastar DC HC6100 UltraSMR is designed to help protect device trust chains from manufacturing through field service. This implementation represents more than a feature enhancement; it reflects a broader shift toward embedding quantum-resilient security directly into the foundation of data infrastructure. The focus is on securing device-level trust, including firmware integrity and key management, rather than data-at-rest encryption.
Key elements include:
“As AI data compounds and becomes more valuable and long-lived, securing it for the future is no longer optional. Quantum computing represents one of the most significant technology transitions of our time, and it is advancing faster than many organizations anticipate. The security architectures that have protected enterprise storage for more than a decade will need to evolve,” said Dr. Xiaodong (Carl) Che, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at WD. “Integrating post-quantum cryptography into our Ultrastar enterprise-class drives is part of our commitment to helping customers stay ahead of threats that are already present in the form of HNDL attacks. By aligning with NIST standards and CNSA 2.0 today, we are helping enterprises build a clear, low-friction path to quantum-safe storage infrastructure.”
As quantum security requirements advance, data protection at the infrastructure layer is becoming a baseline requirement for AI-driven enterprises. WD is helping define the next baseline for trust in AI infrastructure, where security is embedded at the foundation of the system, not added as an afterthought. WD expects to expand PQC capabilities across additional enterprise hard drive product lines over time.
About WD
WD, also known as Western Digital, builds the storage infrastructure that powers certainty in the AI-driven data economy. At the forefront of innovation, WD partners with the world’s leading hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and enterprises to deliver reliable storage solutions that are proven and trusted at scale. Driven by a culture of innovation and execution, WD helps customers store, protect, and use the world’s data with confidence. Follow WD on LinkedIn and learn more at www.wd.com.
Source: Western Digital Corportation
The post Western Digital Brings Post-Quantum Cryptography to Ultrastar Enterprise HDDs appeared first on HPCwire.
A man armed with a rifle carried out a string of attacks, killing at least six people and wounding eight others, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
The pope’s encyclical will address ‘the protection of the human person in the age of AI’, the Vatican says
In the first major text of his papacy, Pope Leo will address the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
The Chicago-born pontiff will present the document, known as an encyclical, at the Vatican next week during an event attended by Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic – a US-based AI firm that has clashed with Donald Trump’s administration.
Continue reading...Champion’s childhood coach recalls his early promise while a six-year-old fan hopes to follow in Rai’s footsteps
There was a real buzz and sense of pride at the 3 Hammers golf complex in Wolverhampton, the old stomping grounds of Aaron Rai, who on Sunday became the first Englishman since 1919 to win the US PGA Championship.
It was the first major title of the 31-year-old’s career and Rai described it as “truly a dream come true”. “It’s phenomenal to think of how many things have gone into it and extremely rewarding to be stood here,” he told Sky Sports.
Continue reading...CHICAGO and WARSAW, Poland, May 18, 2026 — Argentum AI has announced the signing of a landmark 300MW AI data center infrastructure agreement valued at approximately $2.5 billion with Boosteroid and DL Invest Group, marking one of the largest independent AI compute infrastructure deployments in Europe.
The agreement establishes a long-term framework for hyperscale AI infrastructure deployments supporting enterprise artificial intelligence workloads, advanced model training, and next-generation inference systems. Under the agreement, Argentum AI will deploy institutional-scale GPU infrastructure within a new high-density AI data center platform designed specifically for large-scale compute operations.
The project is expected to support tens of thousands of next-generation GPUs, including future deployments of NVIDIA GB300 systems, providing dedicated AI compute capacity for global enterprise and AI-native customers.
“This agreement represents another major step in building the independent infrastructure backbone required for the global AI economy,” said Andrew Sobko, CEO of Argentum AI. “The demand for large-scale AI compute continues to accelerate globally, and institutional-grade infrastructure deployment is becoming one of the defining challenges of the technology industry. This project positions Argentum AI at the center of that transformation.”
“We are excited to partner with Argentum AI on one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects in Europe,” said Ivan Shvaichenko, CEO of Boosteroid. “The future of AI will belong to the companies that can deliver massive compute capacity quickly, reliably, and at scale. That is exactly what we are building together.”
The facility will deliver high-density colocation infrastructure, advanced cooling systems, redundant power architecture, and enterprise-grade network connectivity specifically optimized for AI compute environments.
Boosteroid brings deep operational knowledge to the project, backed by the high-density GPU infrastructure it has already deployed and continues to run across 29 data centers in Europe, North America, and South America. Managing this global footprint has given its engineering teams a practical understanding of how to build and maintain reliable, low-latency networks at scale. That track record gives the new AI facility a strong foundation for meeting the performance demands of complex enterprise computing.
Argentum AI continues to expand its global AI infrastructure footprint through strategic partnerships, power-backed deployments, and long-duration compute agreements designed to meet the rapidly growing demand for dedicated GPU capacity worldwide.
Argentum AI is actively engaged with top-tier U.S. financial institutions and global investment banks to structure and provide large-scale financing solutions supporting hyperscale AI infrastructure deployments. As demand for AI compute continues to accelerate, the company is focused on combining institutional capital, power-backed infrastructure, and GPU deployment into a unified platform capable of supporting multibillion-dollar AI expansion globally.
“The partnership with Argentum AI and Boosteroid represents one of the key projects supporting the development of independent AI infrastructure in Europe. At DL Invest Group, we are consistently building a European real estate and digital infrastructure platform dedicated to hyperscale AI solutions. Our competitive advantage is our fully integrated operating model covering the entire investment process – from real estate and power infrastructure, through development and execution, to long-term asset management. This enables us to deliver scalable infrastructure that allows our technology partners to accelerate growth and strengthen their competitive advantage. Our ambition is to become one of the leaders of digital transformation and AI infrastructure development in Central and Eastern Europe” concluded Dominik Leszczyński, Founder & CEO of DL Invest Group,
About Argentum AI
Argentum AI is an independent, institutional-grade AI cloud platform focused on deploying large-scale GPU infrastructure for enterprise artificial intelligence applications, advanced compute systems, and next-generation AI workloads.
Source: Argentum AI
The post Argentum AI Signs $2.5B 300MW AI Data Center Agreement with Boosteroid and DL Invest Group appeared first on HPCwire.
Review: Apple's bold redesign begs you to look its way -- especially in orange -- but the best-in-class battery and superb cameras are the real reasons to go Pro.
Samsung delivers modest but meaningful upgrades to the Ultra's design, cameras and battery. And yes, the phone is packed with new AI features -- and most of them are actually pretty useful.
After three weeks of testimony, which was covered extensively here on Slashdot, a U.S. jury on Monday ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, finding that he waited too long to bring his claims that the company betrayed its nonprofit mission. Reuters reports: The trial had widely been seen as a critical moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should be used and who should benefit from it. Following the verdict, Musk's lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, but the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was a factual issue. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said. In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman of manipulating him into giving $38 million, then going behind his back by attaching a for-profit business to its original nonprofit and accepting tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Musk called the OpenAI defendants' conduct "stealing a charity." OpenAI was founded by Altman, Musk and several others in 2015. Musk left its board in 2018, and OpenAI set up a for-profit business the next year. OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, said in his closing argument. The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments where Musk's and Altman's credibility came under repeated attack. Lawyers for OpenAI embraced each other after the verdict was announced. Microsoft faced an aiding and abetting claim. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims as untimely." Recap: Musk Accused of 'Selective Amnesia', Altman of Lying As OpenAI Trial Nears End (Day Twelve) OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven) Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine) Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight) Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven) Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former contestants claim there was not enough protection for cast during making of Channel 4 show
Two women have alleged they were raped during the filming of Married at First Sight UK, one of Channel 4’s biggest shows, and a third alleged she was subjected to a non-consensual sex act.
The show did not do enough to protect them, the women told an edition of the BBC’s Panorama outlining their allegations.
Continue reading...Have $7,500 that you're looking to protect and grow? Here's how much interest you'd earn with these three accounts.
Kalshi announces two-year investment to National Council on Problem Gambling ‘focused on trader health and safety’
The prediction market Kalshi, which maintains it is not a gambling platform, has announced plans to give $2m to the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) as it continues to ride a nationwide surge.
While prediction markets allow users to bet – or “trade” – on the outcome of almost anything, from elections to sports to geopolitical events, the industry has vehemently fought efforts by state officials to regulate its platforms like those of conventional gambling giants.
Continue reading...XR sat for a few months at probably around 80%. I finally got around to replacing the rails and tire and took it for a ride. It rode perfectly normal for a few hours and then after taking a tumble it powered off. We tried to turn it back on and now every time we power it on, it gives me an error 16 and cuts the power. It won’t ride for more than a few seconds every time I cycle it. I am able to connect to the board via the Onewheel app, but the battery always reads as 0%. I’ve tried draining the battery to see if maybe at a lower percentage it might reconnect. I’ve plugged my buddy’s XR battery into my controller and it works fine. Guessing it’s a battery issue but wondering if anyone has ran into this before. I don’t really want to buy a new battery if I don’t have to but willing to, I just want to ride. 😩
Health officials to take ‘proactive measures’ in response to the ongoing Ebola virus epidemic in the DRC and Uganda
US health authorities confirmed on Monday that an American has developed Ebola after being exposed during their work in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); officials also said that they were taking “proactive measures” to protect US citizens in response to the ongoing Ebola virus epidemic in the DRC and Uganda.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the case on Monday and said the individual was being evacuated to Germany. They developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive late Sunday, said Satish K Pillai, an incident manager for the CDC’s Ebola response in a press conference.
Continue reading...Britain likely to face ‘warm, welcoming stance’ if it seeks re-entry but also a ‘hard-headed one’ – with no special deals
Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit negotiations have said.
The warnings came as senior Labour politicians jostling for the leadership of their party and country talk openly about wanting to return to the union at some point in the future.
Continue reading...LAS VEGAS, May 18, 2026 — Dell Technologies has announced a broad set of advancements to the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, delivering the foundation enterprises need to move from AI ambition to realized outcomes. With more than 5,000 customers already deploying the Dell AI Factory, these portfolio additions are designed to help organizations adopt AI with confidence, scale with purpose, and achieve results on infrastructure they control, with data they trust.
Credit: Shutterstock
Most enterprises don’t have an AI ambition problem. They have an AI execution problem. Data availability and quality remain the top implementation challenges across organizations at every stage of AI maturity. Without a trusted, AI-ready data foundation, even the best infrastructure falls short. Pilots stall before they reach production, and the promise of agentic AI remains out of reach. Dell and NVIDIA address this with a simplified, integrated approach that can accelerate time-to-value by up to 84% and gives enterprises the confidence to scale.
Agentic AI at for Every Workload
As agentic AI workloads grow in complexity, cloud costs are becoming increasingly unpredictable. Organizations are seeking a more controlled approach to deploying autonomous AI where performance, data sovereignty and cost efficiency are paramount.
Dell Deskside Agentic AI, a new solution powered by Dell’s high-performance workstations and NVIDIA NemoClaw, allows enterprises to more securely build and run autonomous agents locally with data that never leaves the device. Supported by end-to-end Dell services, the solution is designed for specialized groups in software engineering, academic research and regulated industries, converting variable cloud token costs into a controlled infrastructure investment. With Dell Deskside Agentic AI, organizations can break even versus public cloud API costs in as little as three months.
NVIDIA OpenShell, the secure runtime for autonomous agents, is now supported across the entire Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. This allows organizations to build, deploy and govern agents with privacy controls, from Dell Pro Precision towers and Dell Pro Max with GB10 and GB300 through to Dell PowerEdge XE servers. The Dell-NVIDIA AI-Q 2.0 Reference Architecture, powered by the Dell AI Data Platform with NVIDIA, extends this foundation with a production-ready multi-agent research workflow for regulated industries.
Turning Enterprise Data into AI Fuel
AI is only as good as the data it can find, trust and act on. Dell is announcing significant advancements to the Dell AI Data Platform that make enterprise data AI-ready at scale across the full lifecycle, from discovery and preparation to analytics and AI-driven experiences.
Next-Generation Infrastructure Built for the Demands of Modern AI
Dell is expanding its AI infrastructure portfolio with new systems built for modern enterprise AI workloads. As the top rack-scale infrastructure provider, shipping more than twice the number of rack-scale servers compared to the closest competitor, Dell is adding PowerRack to the industry’s broadest AI infrastructure portfolio.
Dell PowerRack is a fully integrated system – compute, networking and storage engineered as one – with thermal design, power management and software optimization built to work together from the ground up. The result is accelerated AI and HPC workloads at enterprise scale, without the integration overhead of component assembly. Dell PowerRack for storage and networking are simplified, rack‑scale platforms delivering factory‑integrated dedicated Dell Exascale storage and Dell PowerSwitch networking with a system‑level approach to performance, power and cooling, managed consistently through the Dell Integrated Rack Controller.
Additional infrastructure updates include:
Scalable Solutions with an Expanding Open Ecosystem
The new Dell AI Ecosystem Program gives AI software providers a structured path to validate solutions on Dell AI Factory infrastructure, turning fragmented innovation into proven, deployable outcomes. For enterprises, this means lower-risk paths to production-scale AI, faster POC-to-production and the ability to run AI solutions where data lives.
Bringing AI leaders and frontier models to the enterprise helps organizations maintain control over their data, models and operations within their trusted environments.
In addition, ServiceNow customers will be able to leverage the Dell AI Factory to bring together infrastructure and enterprise workflow automation, enabling organizations to discover, govern, and operationalize AI focused on business outcomes
New validated AI solutions for common enterprise outcomes spanning agentic AI with Mistral, computer vision with Fogsphere and Ipsotek, an Eviden business, immersive AI with UneeQ Digital Humans, and code assistants with Poolside — are deployable directly from the Dell Automation Platform catalog. New security solutions and services using CrowdStrike, Fortanix and F5 provide full-stack, 24/7 protection and confidential AI across AI infrastructure, data, models and applications for more resilient AI foundations. JFrog and Dell deliver a central hub for securely managing AI models, MCPs, Agent Skills and software artifacts at scale.
About Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry’s broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.
Source: Dell Technologies
The post Dell Unveils Broad AI Factory Upgrades to Accelerate Enterprise Agentic AI Deployment appeared first on HPCwire.
A truck driver was sentenced to over 13 years in prison for smuggling $9.4 million worth of cocaine in a shipment of Skims, Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand.
Expected candidate in Makerfield byelection says party ‘needs to change if we are to regain people’s trust’
Andy Burnham drew the battle lines for the future of the Labour party on Monday as the Greater Manchester mayor promised he would “change Labour” and win back the voters the party had lost.
Burnham, who is expected to be Labour’s candidate in the Makerfield byelection, claimed it would be no ordinary campaign and said he would make it about national issues where Labour was failing, in a direct challenge to the prime minister.
Continue reading...Residents of Ituri province fear spread of disease and economic impact of outbreak six years after the last
“On public transport, in bars and at mass gatherings, everyone is talking about Ebola,” said Gloire Mumbesa, a resident of Mongbwalu, a mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He said cases of the disease had been reported locally and panic was engulfing the area because of the lack of a vaccine for the Bundibudyo strain. “The fear is that this disease may spread to many other areas.”
Residents of Ituri province in eastern DRC, where the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of Ebola last week, are living in growing fear of the possible continued spread of the disease and its deadly impacts, nearly six years after the last outbreak in the region ended.
Continue reading...Ofcom to update codes of practice amid rise in ‘revenge porn’ and AI-generated deepfakes targeting women and girls
Social media, messaging platforms and online forums that publish intimate image abuse – often intended to humiliate women and girls – are being instructed to follow new guidelines to stop it spreading.
Ofcom said it would change its codes of practice to force service providers to detect and quash intimate image abuse – sometimes called “revenge porn” – and crack down on AI-generated deepfakes. A wave of deepfakes emerged in January when Elon Musk’s Grok AI was widely used to create sexualised videos of women in bikinis.
Continue reading...Here are the highly rated series you should check out on HBO Max, plus new additions in May.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Going back to grad school has long been the Plan B of young professionals who aspire to climb higher in their careers or struggle to get promoted in a tough job market. New data show that getting a master's degree isn't the guarantee it used to be. The unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a master's degree has rarely been higher in the past 20 years, according to the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-market think tank focused on the future of work, which analyzed data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics going back to 2003. At the same time, the unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a Ph.D., law degree or medical degree has rarely been lower. "For most of the past two decades, these lines moved together -- not anymore," said Gad Levanon, chief economist of Burning Glass. Levanon has a theory about why the payoffs for advanced degrees have uncoupled: "More degrees chasing fewer of the positions those degrees were meant to unlock." [...] While degrees from law school and medical school amount to a license to practice, master's degrees are more of a signal, Levanon said. And a signal loses value when so many people have one, he added: "It's hardly a sure bet to securing a good job." Now master's-degree holders under 35 are at the 77th percentile of unemployment, where the 50th percentile is normal, according to the Burning Glass analysis. Even associate-degree holders have had a higher employment level for the past year. Unemployment among master's-degree holders has been worse only about a quarter of the time in the past 20-plus years. There was a stint during the Covid-19 pandemic when this cohort was out of work at higher rates, and a more prolonged stretch as the U.S. climbed out of the recession in 2008 and 2009. "Every indication is hiring managers now are more receptive than ever to the idea that a person doesn't need a graduate degree to be competitive," said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of SHRM, the chief lobbying group for human-resource professionals. "We are seeing that, hands down, especially in the last two or three years with AI," he said of job readiness. Employers just want to know, "Can you do it?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho was locked down following the midair crash during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show.
About 36% of children whose parents were detained were younger than six, Brookings Institution study found
More than 145,000 US children have probably experienced a parent being detained by immigration authorities since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new report published by a reputed US thinkthank.
The report, released on Monday by the Brookings Institution, estimates that about 146,635 children who are US citizens have had a parent detained during the mass deportation campaign the Trump administration embarked on after he retook office in early January. The study further found that of those children, more than 22,000 experienced the detention of all of their co-resident parents.
Continue reading...⬇️ Note: this post is sticky. New posts appear below it, so scroll down! ⬇️
To celebrate my 21 years and 20000 posts as OSNews’ managing editor, it’s time for a massive fundraiser: €1 for every story I’ve posted over the past 21 years, for a long-term total goal of €20000. Because OSNews is ad-free and independent, I rely entirely on your donations and support for my income and OSNews’ continued survival. Your donations ensures OSNews remains free of ads, corporate influence, and other commercial interests that have ruined so many great websites.
Why support OSNews?
I want to make sure I can run OSNews for another two decades and another 20000 posts, and I need your help to do so. Since my wife, who has a tough, underpaid job in elderly care, is largely unable to work due to health reasons caused by that very same job, my income has become a lot more crucial for our kids, my wife, and myself. With OSNews readers being more skeptical of subscription-like things like our Patreon than most people, it’s exactly these one-time donations that make up the bulk of your support.
To sweeten the deal, I’ve come up with a bunch of silly incentives that will unlock at certain thresholds:
I know many of you don’t really care about incentives and silly things like these, but I think they’re fun and add some interesting things to donate to. The donations already started coming in, so we’ve got a small head start. Also, if anyone has any idea on how to add a cool progress bar to OSNews to keep track of the donations and incentives, please let me know. I’m sure some of you can whip something up or point me to something.
OSNews was founded in 1997, so we’re almost 30 years old. Let’s keep this wonderful little corner of the people-focused web alive for just a euro per post. Everyone here deserves it, because y’all are great. ♥️
Big news from the Haiku forums: the Haiku ARM port is running on M1 Macs now.
This is bare metal, no VM. m1n1+u-boot deal with the Apple-specific parts of booting, so we can boot UEFI images from USB like any PC.
↫ smrobtzz on the Haiku forums
USB is apparently broken, but all 8 cores are functional, and it boots to a desktop. It’s still early days, for the ARM port in general and the M1 Mac port specifically, but it’s a great start.
Pouria Zeraati, who worked for a dissident Farsi-language broadcaster, was attacked outside his home in 2024
The stabbing of a journalist in London was a planned attack ordered by a third party acting on behalf of the Iranian state, a court has heard.
Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin, had worked for Iran International, a Farsi-language dissident broadcaster, when he was stabbed in the leg outside his west London home in 2024.
Continue reading...If most popular Labour politician cannot win this seat then party’s electoral problems run deeper than Keir Starmer
The Makerfield byelection is bigger than Andy Burnham. Of the Labour MPs who were back on the constituency’s doorsteps in Hindley Green and Winstanley, just after an intensive local election campaign, many said the fight felt existential.
It matters because it is probably the closest the UK will ever come to a direct presidential-style election, run through one single constituency and likely to decide the future of the Labour party.
Continue reading...The "ongoing market conditions" are making gaming a very expensive hobby.
A court case in New York has highlighted how Iran is using technology to recruit agents who may not even be regime supporters
When on Friday a 32-year-old Iraqi was brought before a court in New York to be charged with planning to attack Jewish community sites in the US, a curtain was suddenly lifted on a corner of a shadowy world.
The detention of Mohammed Saad Baqer al-Saadi in Turkey last week revealed rare details of Iran’s efforts to use terrorism to sow discord among communities in Europe, the UK and the US – but also the outlines of an uncertain and threatening future.
Continue reading...The return of Google Glass? Why smart glasses could be at the core of Google's future ecosystem.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum denies any links between her Morena party and organized crime
Pressure is mounting on Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, after two former top officials from the country’s Sinaloa state – both members of her Morena party – gave themselves up to US authorities over alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
The state’s former security minister Gerardo Mérida Sánchez crossed the border into Arizona last week and was taken into custody by US marshals, Mexico’s security ministry said. Sinaloa’s former finance minister, Enrique Díaz Vega, was taken into custody in New York.
Continue reading...All it takes is a few smart tweaks to your hiring strategy to help your job ads reach more qualified candidates.
From old PCs to dusty printers, here's where to drop off your outdated tech without paying a cent.
Microsoft is testing long-requested Windows 11 customization options, including a resizable taskbar, smaller taskbar buttons, and a more configurable Start menu that lets users reduce recommended content. BleepingComputer reports: Starting with Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493, the taskbar can now be configured to use smaller buttons and moved to the bottom, top, left, or right side of the screen. "The ability to move the taskbar to the top or sides of the screen has been one of the most requested features, and we are bringing it to Windows 11," said Diego Baca, partner director of Microsoft Design. "With this update, when small taskbar is enabled, you get smaller icons, a shorter taskbar, and more vertical space for your apps (see video below). No restart or sign-out is required." [...] Microsoft is also rolling out changes to give Windows users more control over the Start menu, allowing them to toggle off recommended content and customize its size. "These controls are designed to work together. If you want a Start menu with just your pinned apps, you can turn off Recommended and All," Boca added. "If you want a full Start that shows everything, you can leave it all on. The goal is simple: it is your choice, and it should be easy to make." However, Microsoft will maintain a list of recently installed apps, as it is a key way for users to discover new applications alongside the Microsoft Store. Furthermore, Microsoft is improving file relevance by adjusting how files are displayed and ordered to prioritize the most relevant items, and will also allow users to hide their name and profile picture from the Start menu. [...] In addition to taskbar and Start menu improvements, the company plans to reduce notifications, simplify Windows settings, and ensure that device setup on new Windows PCs requires fewer reboots. Microsoft is also working on improving Windows search, aiming for a more consistent experience across the Start menu, taskbar, File Explorer, and Settings.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Gemini will now have more control over your apps and tasks. It could be the start of a wider shift in how we use our phones.
Surprise: The series won't make its streaming debut on HBO Max.
‘Tank Day’ event causes outrage with ‘malicious mockery’ of deadly crackdown during dictatorship era
The chief executive of Starbucks in South Korea has been dismissed after the company ran a promotional event using slogans that evoked a massacre of pro-democracy protesters during the country’s dictatorship era, sparking outrage and boycott calls.
The coffee chain launched a “Tank Day” campaign on 18 May for its “Tank” tumbler series. The date coincides with one of the most politically sensitive days in South Korea’s calendar, when citizens commemorate the 1980 democratisation movement in Gwangju, 167 miles (270km) south-west of Seoul.
Continue reading...North America will host this summer’s tournament
European fans encouraged to visit Canada for World Cup
Canada’s sports minister, Adam van Koeverden, has expressed confidence that hosting the World Cup this summer could be the key to agreeing a new trilateral trade deal with the United States and Mexico.
The three World Cup hosts are facing a deadline of 1 July for a mandatory review of the existing free trade agreement between the countries, the USMCA, and initial discussions have been problematic.
Continue reading...  | I have a gt but idk if i want a thor 301 or gtv kit from tony but i wondered if this list is decent or not. Im super new and i have a friend who will help with the settings. [link] [comments] |
Luigi Mangione’s notebook allegedly contains writing related to the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Other items, including a phone, are not admissible.
The former German chancellor added that diplomacy alongside military deterrence is crucial when dealing with Russia.
Elsewhere, we are getting a line from Rome, with the Italian foreign ministry confirming that rescuers have located the bodies of four Italian divers believed to be deep inside an underwater cave in a Maldive atoll, AP reported.
Five Italian divers are believed to have died while exploring a cave at a depth of about 50 meters in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday, according to Italy’s foreign ministry, way below the recreational diving limit of 30 meters.
Continue reading...How does artificial intelligence use tokens, and should we be worried that AI now has claws? Here's a quick primer on the vocabulary of today's inescapable technology.
Deal would create largest regulated US utility, serving 10 million customers as AI-driven demand for power surges
NextEra, a US energy giant, announced on Monday that it will buy Dominion Energy in a $67bn deal, creating what the companies say will be the world’s largest regulated utility business.
The deal comes as the appetite for energy sources has swelled with the construction of massive datacenters across the country, built largely to supply rising demand for AI.
Continue reading...Spokesperson for Indian Ocean island nation says they will try to recover explorers in next couple of days
Rescuers have located the bodies of four Italian divers deep inside an underwater cave in an atoll in the Maldives, four days after they were reported missing.
Searches had resumed after being suspended following the death of a local military diver during a perilous mission to try to reach them.
Continue reading...A New York judge ruled Monday on whether evidence found in Luigi Mangione's backpack during his arrest can be used during his state trial.
The Trump administration has placed intense pressure on Cuba's communist leadership.
The CFTC says it is ramping up efforts to catch insider trading and market manipulation in prediction markets, using AI tools, blockchain tracing, and other surveillance systems to flag suspicious bets. It's also monitoring activity by U.S. traders accessing offshore platforms like Polymarket through VPNs. Wired reports: [T]he Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees prediction markets, wants you to know that it's watching very, very closely. The agency is searching for suspicious behavior from traders within the United States who have been sneaking onto offshore markets, including Polymarket's crypto platform -- which is blocked stateside -- by using virtual private networks. "We're going to find them, and we're going to bring actions," agency chairman Michael Selig told WIRED this week, speaking from the CFTC's headquarters in Washington, DC. Selig says the agency, which is especially lean right now, is staffing up. Like so many other AI-pilled workplaces, the CFTC is also leaning into automation to handle the growing workload, including tools that analyze trading patterns and flag potential manipulation. "You've got so much data," Selig says. "When we feed it into AI, we get really great information. It can help us understand things, like where we might want to investigate, or when we might need to send a subpoena to a trader." In addition to proprietary surveillance systems developed in-house, the agency's arsenal includes third-party blockchain tracing tools like Chainalysis for crypto platforms, and market abuse detection software including Nasdaq Smarts for centralized markets. (Beyond Nasdaq Smarts, the agency did not specify which AI tools it uses and declined to share more specific examples.) [...] Selig recently told Congress that the company is pursuing "hundreds, if not thousands" of insider trading tips. Investigations are not limited to federally regulated exchanges. "We're surveilling the markets on a global basis," he tells WIRED. Selig says that the agency will exert extraterritorial jurisdiction -- its legal ability to enforce its laws beyond traditional boundaries -- when it finds suspicious activity on offshore platforms like Polymarket, though he says it's a case-by-case approach. "We use it in extreme circumstances," he says, with an eye towards whether charges have a strong chance of sticking in court. "In any extraterritorial litigation, there's going to be challenges to our authority, and that could also impair our ability to bring cases in the future." According to Selig, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allows the CFTC more leeway to pursue this kind of enforcement action, by giving it more authority over foreign swap activities that impact the US. When appropriate, the agency works with regulators from other countries, too. "For cases where we're not sure we'll win, or it's less in our wheelhouse and more of a foreign matter, we would relay it to a foreign regulator," he says. "We're constantly referring cases." [...] Selig is insistent that the CFTC is only just getting started. The agency will identify wrongdoers, he says -- no matter "how large or how small."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The combined company will serve about 10 million utility customers across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
A mother and daughter hid in the basement of the home they moved into just two weeks ago when a destructive tornado tore across their Nebraska community.
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, May 18, 2026 — Aramco, one of the world’s leading energy and chemicals companies, in partnership with Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, today officially inaugurated the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s first quantum computer.
Aramco and Pasqal also unveiled the first commercial Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) platform in the Middle East, opening a new chapter in building regional expertise and accelerating the development of quantum applications across the energy, materials and industrial sectors.
Marking a major milestone in the region’s technological advancement, QCaaS enables remote cloud access for potential clients around the globe. Located at Aramco’s data center in Dhahran, the computer provides customers with immediate, low-latency access to quantum hardware through a secure cloud platform to address complex industrial challenges.
Ahmad O. Al Khowaiter, Aramco Executive Vice President of Technology & Innovation, said: “This quantum milestone belongs to our Saudi researchers, engineers and scientists. By investing in joint training and research, we are building world‑class quantum expertise right here in the Kingdom—an expertise that will power the next generation of energy solutions, accelerate lower‑carbon fuel development, and enhance reservoir and supply‑chain optimization. Let this achievement be the catalyst for an innovation‑driven economy, creating high‑impact, future‑ready jobs for our youth and advancing Saudi Vision 2030.”
Wasiq Bokhari, Pasqal CEO, said: “Aramco is not just waiting for quantum computing, it is helping to shape it as a global leader. This inauguration is evidence that the most demanding industrial challenges in the world are now being tackled with Pasqal’s quantum processors, software and specific solutions. For Pasqal, deploying our system for use in Aramco’s business-critical operations, while also being available to the region’s enterprises and research community, is a part of our core mission: to enable practical and secure quantum computing at scale today.”
Pasqal has been designing and building high-performance hardware and cloud-ready software since 2019, to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Following its initial deployment in November 2025, the Pasqal Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) is powered by neutral-atom technology and controls 200 programmable qubits. Today’s inauguration formalizes its entry into active operation across a growing portfolio of industrial use cases and enables enterprises to explore and develop quantum-enhanced solutions for real-world industrial challenges.
Under the terms of the partnership, Aramco will progress a roadmap of use cases on a production-ready QPU as a foundational customer, accelerating development of quantum-hybrid solutions for its programs across energy, materials and industrial operations. Other external organizations, including research institutions, universities, and enterprises, can use Pasqal’s cloud platform to access one of the few quantum computers in the world.
Aramco’s domestic venture capital arm, Wa’ed Ventures, initially invested in Pasqal in January 2023, reinforcing efforts to localize advanced quantum technologies and accelerate the development of the regional quantum ecosystem. Since then, Aramco and Pasqal have built a structured quantum program targeting high-value operational challenges across multiple workstreams, where quantum-hybrid approaches unlock capabilities beyond classical computing. These Aramco workstreams include port logistics optimization, CO₂ storage optimization, well placement, rig scheduling, building the Kingdom’s quantum workforce, and making quantum computing available throughout the region.
More from HPCwire
About Aramco
As one of the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals companies, our global team is dedicated to creating impact in all that we do, from providing crucial oil supplies to developing new energy technologies. We focus on making our resources more dependable, more sustainable and more useful, helping to promote growth and productivity around the world.
About Pasqal
Pasqal is a global leader in delivering practical quantum computing at scale utilizing neutral atom technology and dedicated software for industry, science, and governments. Since its founding in 2019, Pasqal has leveraged Nobel Prize winning research to build high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software designed to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Headquartered in France, Pasqal employs over 275 people and serves over 25 clients and partners, including Aramco, CMA CGM, OVHcloud, Thales, IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network), and Sumitomo. Backed by more than USD 500 million in total funding from leading international investors, Pasqal is pursuing a listing on Nasdaq in partnership with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II (Nasdaq: BBCQ) and is accelerating the adoption of scalable, high-performance quantum computing worldwide.
Source: Pasqal
The post Pasqal and Aramco Launch QCaaS Platform for Saudi Quantum Computer appeared first on HPCwire.
Creditors can sue you in retirement, but they certainly can't take everything. So, what's protected and what isn't?
The prime minister said he wouldn’t be setting out a timetable to stand down if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield byelection
Jakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.
The European Commission has been asked about its response to the renewed talk about Britain’s potential future attempt to rejoin the European Union – but did not take a bait.
At this stage, there are discussions on closer cooperation in a number of areas, that’s where we are, and that’s what we are doing precisely in preparation for the next summit rather than speculating about big or renewed issues.
We are not there. If we ever are in that situation, I will gladly reply to [this question].
I just wanted to come here to Labour party headquarters to say a big thank you to you. The election results were not the ones that we wanted, they were really tough. But you worked your socks off.
It’s not been easy circumstances in the last 10 days. But you have just got on with the job that we asked you to do.
If you look at just some of the figures that came out last week. We had growth figures that were the best in the G7. That’s because of the hard work that we’ve done in government. On the economy we’ve got ourselves into a good position, having inherited a real basket case from the last government.
The NHS figures were really good, which again vindicates what we did, which was invest in the NHS, which is what we said we would do.
And that’s on top of all the other things … The Employment Rights Act. The biggest upgrade in renters’ rights in a generation.
And then of course all the work that we are doing around child poverty, of which I am really proud. What a game changer that will be for a whole generation and will be measured for years and years to come because the children will feel the impact for the rest of their lives. They will have chances they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
The election results tell us that people are frustrated, they don’t feel that their lives have changed quickly enough.
We need to build up the urgency of what we do. We need a bit more hope in there. And we need to remember at all times what we are here to do. We were elected to government to serve the people of this country.
And I remind myself every day that in July 2024 millions of people voted for us to come into government, to get on with the job, to govern, and to bring about the change that they want.
So I am focused on the job that I was asked to do, which is to serve my country and to carry out my duties as prime minister of this country. Delivering for the very many people who voted us into office, who are saying, ‘just get on with it, get on with the job, get on with the change that I need to see in my life’. And that is what I am going to be doing.
We now have an important by-election coming up. It is Labour versus Reform. We will know very shortly who the candidate is. Whoever they are I am going to support them 100% and I want every member, everyone in our movement, to support them. A Labour candidate to beat Reform. That is the fight that we are in.
I’ve seen some wild projects in my day, but this one is definitely up there as one of the more ambitious.
Stock Microsoft Windows CE 2.11 running on a real Nintendo 64. A custom HAL drops the unmodified
nk.libkernel onto VR4300, brings up the CE 2.11 GWES desktop and shell, mounts the EverDrive-64 X7’s SD card under\SDCard, treats the N64 controller as a mouse, plays sound through the N64 AI hardware via the standard CE wave stack, and runs third-party CE 2.11 EXEs straight off the SD card.This is a hobby reverse-engineering project: there is no official CE 2.11 port to N64 from Microsoft. Everything below the unmodified
↫ ThroatyMumbonk.lib(HAL, OAL, display driver, FSD, kbd/mouse PDD, wave PDD, RDP-accelerated GDI fill, ed64-X7 driver) is part of this repo.
Getting a fully operational desktop on Windows CE 2.11 is a lot harder than it appears at first sight, because this earlier version of Windows CE didn’t come with many of the reference implementations of components that later versions would add. OEMs were supposed to develop their own user interfaces for Windows CE 2.11, so the entire desktop you see here on this N64 port – window manager, taskbar, file manager, and so on – consists of custom code developed by ThroatyMumbo, using the standard Windows CE APIs.
That’s not all, though, as the same applies to the various drivers needed to make Windows CE 2.11 talk to the hardware in the Nintendo 64. Windows CE 2.11 contains the interfaces for drivers but OEMs were supposed to write their own device drivers. So ThroatyMumbo did: the display driver, input drivers, sound driver, cartridge driver, and so on, are all written from scratch. Absolutely incredible. Note: it seems “AI” has been involved in this project, but it’s unclear to what extent. I didn’t see any telltale signs, but readers have reached out to me about this.
The result of all this is that you can now run Windows CE 2.11, including a familiar shell, on your N64, and run any Windows CE applications as well. Absolutely wild.
Why Egypt is helping to end the Iran war Expert comment thilton.drupal
Cairo is working with regional partners for a diplomatic resolution to the war as it aims to improve its economy, counter Israeli dominance and restore focus on Gaza, Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
Egypt has responded to the Iran war by actively engaging in diplomacy and mediation. This strategy is not aimed at fighting for influence or competing with Pakistan for the role of the main mediator. Rather, it is designed to achieve Egypt’s central objective of ending the war.
This reflects Egypt’s wider approach of risk-management in a volatile region as it seeks to defend its interests, establish stability near its borders and revive its ailing economy, which has been further strained by the war.
Egypt condemned Israel’s previous strikes on Iran in June 2025, and reportedly pushed for de-escalation before the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February 2026. However, Cairo did not publicly condemn these US-Israeli strikes, reflecting the depth of US deep involvement this time.
Since then, Cairo has condemned Iran’s strikes on Gulf countries. It has deployed Rafale fighter jets and air defence systems to the UAE and other Gulf states.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has toured the Gulf twice since the outbreak of the war. He publicly urged President Donald Trump to stop the war in March.
Egypt has also formed part of a new informal quadrilateral grouping in the region along with Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These four countries share concerns over the regional agenda being pushed by Israel and its partners, including the UAE, and fear that a collapse of the Iranian regime would tip the regional balance in Israel’s favour.
Since mid-March, the quad members have engaged in several diplomatic meetings to end the war. Alongside these meetings, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has led a diplomatic blitz, coordinating closely with the quad members, Gulf states, the US and European powers.
In mid-March, Egypt’s General Intelligence Service reportedly initiated backchannel contacts with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and proposed a five-day truce as a confidence-building measure for a ceasefire. According to reports, these discussions contributed to President Trump embracing a more diplomatic approach, which eventually resulted in the Pakistan-mediated ceasefire agreement.
Egypt’s efforts to end the war are part of a long-term risk-management strategy to safeguard its security and economic interests amid regional volatility. To this end, it has four main objectives.
First, Cairo wants to preserve the safety and freedom of navigation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea by preventing any single power from establishing hegemony in the Horn of Africa and encouraging the Yemeni Houthis to stay out of the conflict.
Second, it seeks to counterbalance Israel’s ambitions to achieve dominance in the region.
Third, Egypt wants to see the Trump administration’s attention returned to other conflicts that Cairo views as more serious threats. These include the faltering ceasefire in Gaza, the ongoing war in Sudan, and Egypt’s dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Finally, Egypt wants to see continued commitment from the US and Gulf states to invest in and support its economy, which has been among the most vulnerable to rising energy prices and the flight of foreign debt investors. Since the outbreak of the war, fuel prices have increased by up to 30 per cent, while the Egyptian pound has decreased in value.
The end of the war may add momentum to these goals. However, de-escalation alone will neither remove long-term threats near Egypt’s borders nor slow Israel’s regional dominance. Egypt’s conflict with Ethiopia over Nile waters will also remain regardless.
Even before the Iran war, Egypt played key mediation roles in regional conflicts, from the war in Gaza to internal rifts between Gulf states. Mediation has been a safe policy choice that reflects Cairo’s inherent risk aversion and its efforts to increase its diplomatic relevance and restore its reputation as a bulwark of stability.
Domestically, mediation also helps to bridge the gap between opposing views within the establishment over whether to adopt a proactive regional posture or pursue strategic inaction.
Alongside diplomacy, Egypt has recently shown a growing tendency to deploy its military. For example, Egypt deployed troops in Mogadishu in February this year, in the context of countering Ethiopia and Israel’s ambitions in the Horn of Africa. Its deployment of troops to the Gulf also signals its alignment with Gulf partners.
This foreign policy is not without challenges. Egypt’s vision for the post-war regional order is built on old formulas of pan-Arab national security that do not necessarily have broader support across the region.
For example, on 8 March, Foreign Minister Abdelatty revived President Sisi’s 2015 call to establish a joint Arab military force. Yet Arab elites are split over whether Iran or Israel is their main adversary and lack a unified stance. The plan also faces disagreement over the force’s command and structure, and potential opposition from the US.
Chancellor has been under pressure to extend 5p temporary cut at an estimated cost to government of £2.4bn a year
Rachel Reeves is planning to cancel a rise in fuel duty this week when she unveils a package of measures to reduce the cost of living.
The chancellor will announce she will not put up the tax by 1p as was due to happen in September, government sources said, and she could cancel all of a 5p rise that is due to happen in stages over the subsequent six months.
Continue reading...Can a new trial bring justice in the case of the disgraced South Carolina lawyer whose conviction for killing his wife and son has been vacated after court clerk’s misconduct?
Alex Murdaugh was not in court last Wednesday when a South Carolina appeals court vacated his 2023 double-murder conviction in the latest stunning twist in a legal saga that has captivated America and the world with its southern gothic tale of murder, betrayal and financial skullduggery.
Prison regulations had prevented the disgraced lawyer from watching a live stream at the high-security McCormick correctional institution. Nor were any of his relatives present, including son Buster, the only surviving member of his immediate family.
Continue reading...It is believed the tiger was owned by a woman who describes herself as Germany's "Tiger Queen," CBS News partner BBC News reported.
There is one specific way in which the non-corporate open source projects typically document how their infrastructure work: not at all, and Flathub is no different. The full picture likely lives only in my brain, and while it could be sorted out by anyone (especially in this LLM age, yay or nay), why should it only be me thinking at night about all the single points of failure?
Like any system that evolved naturally, it’s all over the place. It’s tempting to tell its history chronologically, but even then, it’s difficult to find a good entry point. Instead, this post focuses on what happens when users call
↫ Bart Piotrowskiflatpak install; later entries will cover the website and, finally, the build infrastructure. Buckle up!
As time goes by and more and more issues with Flatpak are addressed, I feel my attitude towards the technology change somewhat. I’m still very much a traditional package manager type of person, and will opt for my distribution’s repository if the versions they have are up-to-date, but I’m no longer audibly groaning if an application I want is only really available as a Flatpak. For the increasing number of normal, average users switching to Linux, Flatpak is probably the right way to go, especially since it can easily coexist with your traditional package manager.
The only part of the linked article that made me raise my eyebrow was the reliance on Fastly, which seems to form an important linchpin of the whole Flathub stack. Fastly is an American company, and while they support Flathub entirely for free, the state of the world does have me wonder if this couldn’t evolve into a problem in a myriad of ways, perhaps through questionable people acquiring Fastly or through pressures from the clown car US administration.
I’m sure it’s all fine, but it’s hard not to think of these things in this day and age.
Bankruptcy can halt many garnishments — but Social Security is a different story. Here's what to know.
MEGAN MCGRATH
Managing News Editor
David Redlawsk, better known as Dave, has served as chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations for the past 10 years, in addition to teaching courses at the university, like Local Government and Politics. This year, as elections approach in November, Redlawsk will step down as chair, and has planned a leave of absence to focus on his campaign to represent the 23rd District in the Delaware State House of Representatives.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Redlawsk became involved with politics from a young age through local volunteering and elections. He always knew politics would play a major role in his life.
“I was the kid in high school that everybody said, ‘Oh, you’re gonna be president someday,’” Redlawsk said.
While he did not necessarily see himself running for office at that level, the thought of entering the world of local politics was something that often lingered in Redlawsk’s mind. When he began his college education, he worked toward a degree in political science to truly solidify this dream.
Between studying at Duke University in North Carolina and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and living in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Iowa, Redlawsk has developed a deep understanding of local politics in different parts of the country.
Much of his political work has occurred alongside his wife, Aletia, beginning when they were both recruited to get involved in their rural community in Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
“I was a kid,” Redlawsk said. “I was basically 25 years old, something like that, and I was running the planning commission, and working on zoning, planning, development, all those kinds of issues. And it gave me the bug to do things in the community, to do things that I thought mattered.”
In New Jersey, while working as a political science professor at Rutgers University, he got further experience by running the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, a long-standing poll on public opinion. Even though this required him to limit his involvement in partisan politics, Redlawsk remained engaged with the local community.
In 2016, Redlawsk was hired as chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the university. Since moving to Delaware, he and his wife have become active members in local organizations, particularly in local politics.
“We work a lot as a team,” Redlawsk said. “And so we threw ourselves into supporting the Democrat Party and Democratic operations in New Castle County.”
As a political science professor at the university, Redlawsk is particularly involved with the student population here in Newark. He partly attributes his campaign to his teaching.
“Watching my students get engaged and pushing students to get engaged as I’m at this stage of my career, I thought, I have some time,” Redlawsk said. “I probably ought to do what I say. I ought to be more visible and see what I can use my talents for, to the benefit of the community.”
His dedication to the district is reflected in his involvement with a variety of local groups, where he has ingrained himself as one of the locals, despite not growing up in the state. Redlawsk found himself wanting to represent such a community.
“We came to Delaware because of the job,” Redlawsk said. “We’ve stayed, because I absolutely love it. I want to continue to offer something to the community, and this seems to be an opportunity to do that.”
Looking ahead, Redlawsk has identified policy issues that he is prioritizing in this campaign and that he plans to focus on if elected.
He underscored the importance of solving the state’s affordability crisis. Within that, his major concerns are minimum wage, the current tax system and electricity rates.
“There should be higher brackets with higher rates, so that those at the top are doing more to contribute, because they can do more to contribute,” Redlawsk said. “And those who are just trying to get by, get a break.”
When it comes to the electricity rates, it is the recent proposal of data centers across the state that worries Redlawsk.
“They draw so much power, proposed data centers, that draw more power than all of the state combined, all the households in the state combined,” Redlawsk said. “To do that costs everybody more, because we socialized the expense in the current way we designed the system.”
Additionally, he emphasized issues within Delaware’s education system for K-12 schools.
“It’s 80 years old,” Redlawsk said. “It’s stuck in the past. It doesn’t support those students who need the most support.”
He noted that while there have been recent developments in this area, with proposals beginning to make their way through the legislature, this work is not done.
Redlawsk also highlighted his commitment to healthcare in the state. Specifically, he stressed that he will work to secure a constitutional amendment that permanently protects reproductive rights in the state of Delaware.
In a small state like Delaware, Redlawsk aims to have a significant, positive impact on his potential constituents.
“I think I have the unique experience and knowledge to hit the ground running in Dover, to represent the people of the 23rd,” Redlawsk said. “I understand government. I’ve been studying it and teaching it for many, many years. I’ve been engaged in the political process. I know the people involved, but I also know the city of Newark, and the University of Delaware.”
If elected, students may miss seeing Redlawsk in the classroom next year, but he emphasizes that it is they who got him there.
“I get really depressed sometimes, looking at what’s going on, and then I go into my class, and I see almost fifty kids in my local politics class, local government class, and I just have this hope,” Redlawsk said. “I have this really positive feeling, and I want to take that to Dover.”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency. The announcement was made a day after Africa's leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the country was linked to dozens of suspected deaths. By Saturday, cases had also been confirmed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the W.H.O. said. In Congo's Ituri province, where the outbreak was first identified, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths attributed to the virus had been reported, although only eight cases had been definitively linked to the virus through laboratory testing. There is no approved vaccine and no therapeutics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak, according to the W.H.O. The scale of the outbreak could be far larger than has been detected and reported, the W.H.O. said in declaring a "public health emergency of international concern." It added that there were "significant uncertainties" about the precise number of people infected and the "geographic spread." The W.H.O.'s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response, and is intended to prompt member countries to prepare for the virus to spread and to share vaccines, treatments and other resources needed to contain the outbreak. [...] The risk of the outbreak spreading is exacerbated by a humanitarian crisis, high population mobility and a large network of informal health care facilities in the area, the agency said. Containing an Ebola outbreak depends on the speed and scale of the public health response. The virus is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, putting family members and caregivers at particular risk. Tracing people who may have come into contact with sufferers, isolating and treating victims promptly and safely, and burying the dead properly are all viewed as critical steps.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Other evidence found backpack must be suppressed, says judge, because McDonald’s search was warrantless
The judge overseeing Luigi Mangione’s Manhattan state court trial ruled Monday that some evidence gathered during his arrest would be barred from court.
“The evidence found during the search of the backpack at the McDonald’s must be suppressed, including the magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet and computer chip,” Judge Gregory Carro said in his 18 May decision.
Continue reading...Étienne Davignon, 93, was last living person targeted in investigation into assassination of DRC’s first PM, Patrice Lumumba
A 93-year-old Belgian former diplomat who became the first person to be charged in the murder of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba has died before he could stand trial.
The death of Étienne Davignon, an aristocrat who served as a European commissioner during a decades-long career as one of Belgium’s leading diplomats and industrialists, was confirmed by the Jacques Delors Institute thinktank, where he had served on the board.
Continue reading...I just bought myself a used XR, and boy I'm hooked! It's a crazy good feeling riding these things.
However, when I look for replacement parts or accessories, like footpads, sensors etc. there seems to be a drought everywhere. I'm based in the EU (Sweden), so the options are even worse, but even when I look for retailers outside of the EU there doesn't seem to be much out there. Not even TFL seem to stock what I need.
My front footpad seems to have some issues as it ghosted on me the other day, but I can't for the life of me find replacement sensors, or complete footpads that aren't from FM. Does anyone have any insights or suggestions on where I can find this without paying as much in shipping and tariffs as for the part itself?
Thanks a bunch!
Microsoft is finally rolling out one of the most requested set of features to Windows 11: a movable and resizable taskbar. Windows 11 did away with the ability to move the taskbar to any side of the screen, as well as a various other taskbar customization options, that had been there since the very first iteration of the taskbar in Windows 95. Now they’re finally bringing it back.
Microsoft is finally rolling out two of the most requested features: the ability to move the taskbar and make it smaller, so you have more screen space. I tested Windows 11’s new movable taskbar integration, and it’s just as good as the original Windows 10 version, which let you move the taskbar to the top or sides.
↫ Mayank Parmar at Windows Latest
It works exactly as you’d expect it to, with icons, text, menus, and other user interface elements adapting to their new location on the sides or top of the screen. I feel absolutely stupefied that I need to make a news item about this in this, the year of Our Lady 2026, but I know a lot of people stuck on Windows 11 were really missing these basic features.
Rejoice.
Burnham vows to have ‘relentless domestic focus’ in Makerfield in first speech since announcing byelection run
Andy Burnham has said he will not try to return the UK to the EU, saying Britain would be stuck in “a permanent rut if we’re just constantly arguing”.
Burnham said Labour’s offer in general to voters had “simply not been good enough”, in his most explicit comments yet that he intends to stand to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister, should he win the Makerfield byelection. “If I get to stand, a vote for me will be a vote to change Labour, because Labour needs to change if we are to regain people’s trust.”
Continue reading...US president’s approval rating falls to 37% days after he said Americans’ financial situation is not motivating him to broker deal with Iran
Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point of his second term, amid mounting frustration over the cost of living and the US-Israel war on Iran.
As November’s US midterm elections loom, most American voters believe Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was the wrong choice, according to polling released on Monday.
Continue reading...Closure of local shops and poor public transport leaves households struggling to access healthy and affordable food
Rural Britain is becoming a “food desert” for lower-income families as the closure of local shops and poor public transport leaves them at disproportionately high risk of hunger and cost of living pressures, research shows.
Over half of households with an annual income of under £40,000 a year living in the countryside struggle to access affordable and healthy food including fresh fruit and vegetables, the University of Sheffield study estimates.
Continue reading...Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, says any US strike would be catastrophic after reports of 300+ drones
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has warned that any US military action against his country would lead to a “bloodbath” with incalculable consequences for regional peace and stability.
“Cuba does not represent a threat,” Díaz-Canel said in a post on X.
Continue reading...At issue in the cases was who can bring lawsuits in federal court to address potential violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Pandemic report warns of growing global threat as health teams in Africa move to contain Ebola outbreak
The world is becoming less resilient to outbreaks of infectious diseases, experts have warned, as health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda scramble to contain an outbreak of Ebola.
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) said in a report published on Monday that “as infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent they are also becoming more damaging”, warning that pandemic risk is outpacing investments in preparedness and “the world is not yet meaningfully safer”.
Continue reading...The unofficial arrival of summer brings some outstanding sales on our favorite warm-weather gadgets, beauty products and running gear
14 of the very best deals from REI’s 2026 anniversary sale, vetted by an outdoor enthusiast
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Memorial Day is many things: above all, a holiday to honor US military personnel fallen in the line of duty, but unofficially also the start of summer, and for savvy shoppers, a sales bonanza. That is why, while the three-day weekend is best spent poolside or by the grill at a backyard barbecue, it’s also one of the prime opportunities to get a generous discount on some of the summer upgrades you’ve been holding off on.
From rugged Bluetooth speakers for beach trips to a slushie drink maker that will floor your guests, we’ve pinned down the very best Memorial Day deals on items Filter staff have personally tested and recommend.
Continue reading...Ebony Parker is accused of ignoring warnings that the student brought a loaded gun to a US elementary school
A former assistant principal at an elementary school in Virginia is due in court for trial on criminal charges of ignoring warnings that a six-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school which was later used to shoot his first-grade teacher.
Ebony Parker’s criminal trial is set to start on Monday in Newport News.
Continue reading...Chinese state media say Beijing emerging as ‘focal point of global diplomacy’ with Russian leader arriving on Tuesday
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin exchanged “congratulatory letters” on Sunday ahead of the Russian president’s visit to Beijing this week, four days after Donald Trump left China after a high-stakes summit.
Xi said bilateral cooperation between Russia and China had “continuously deepened and solidified”, Chinese state media reported, with this year marking the 30th anniversary of the two countries’ strategic partnership.
Continue reading...The upcoming El Niño could trigger frequent and widespread flooding in coastal areas around the United States, even when storms aren't actively taking place, scientists warn.
Never documented archaeologically before, evidence points to First Nations people caring for and nursing the animal
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The discovery of a millennium-old dingo burial site in western New South Wales, including evidence of a “feeding” ritual never before documented archaeologically, has shed new light on the longstanding relationship between the canines and First Nations people.
The dingo was buried along the Baaka, or Darling River, in Kinchega national park near the Menindee Lakes.
Continue reading...SHERBROOKE, Quebec, May 18, 2026 — Nord Quantique, a pioneer in the field of quantum error correction and quantum computing, today announced the closing of a $30 million investment to support the advancement of the Company’s roadmap towards fault tolerance in 2030.
“Our hardware-efficient approach to quantum computing requires a fraction of the qubit overhead and a fraction of the capital. We aren’t interested in building the biggest or most expensive machine. Our goal is to build the most efficient one,” said Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO and Co-founder, Nord Quantique. “This investment, and the investor interest behind it, is validation we are on the right path.”
This new funding builds on significant non-dilutive funding momentum. Previously, Nord Quantique secured $16 million USD through the Canadian Quantum Champions Program, a federal initiative designed to boost scalable quantum computing development in Canada. The company also advanced to Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), securing $5 million in funding, with an opportunity to receive up to an additional $10 million during this phase of the program. The next stage of DARPA QBI, Stage C, brings the potential for up to $300 million in additional funding.
The combination of private investment and competitive government funding reflects growing confidence in Nord Quantique’s technology roadmap and execution strategy. Investors in Nord Quantique now include BDC, certain fund(s) managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, Panache Ventures, Presidio Ventures, Quantacet, Quantonation, and Real Ventures.
Nord Quantique differentiates itself through a highly efficient approach to quantum error correction. Instead of relying on extensive qubit redundancy, the Company’s architecture leverages bosonic codes and multimode logical qubits to correct errors directly at the qubit level. This approach achieves a 1:1 logical-to-physical qubit ratio, maximizing computational efficiency, enabling faster clock speeds and scalable, data-center-compatible quantum systems. As part of its roadmap towards utility scale quantum computing, Nord Quantique is focused on building useful, fault tolerant quantum computers by 2030.
About Nord Quantique
Founded with the vision of reinventing computing from the qubit up, Nord Quantique is advancing 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 Raises $30M to Advance Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing Roadmap appeared first on HPCwire.
Mayor’s attempt to beautify the city with murals of mascot and plum paint jobs criticised as waste of resources
The giant purple axolotl peered up at Manuel Martínez from the black bitumen of the street. It was the second such painting of the rare amphibian he had walked past that morning. In recent weeks he had seen axolotl murals pop up in neighbourhoods across Mexico City.
“It’s a waste of money,” he said. “You could use that budget for fixing potholes, traffic lights, security cameras. They’re spending on something that doesn’t benefit us at all – it’s just for tourists.”
Continue reading...Here are the best Windows laptops most similar to Apple's MacBook Neo, Air and Pro models, tested and reviewed by CNET's experts.
RMT union says two 24-hour stoppages from midday on Tuesday have been suspended
Planned strikes by drivers on London Underground this week have been called off, the RMT union has announced.
The union said the two 24-hour stoppages from midday on Tuesday, which were set to disrupt travel over four days this week, had been suspended.
Continue reading...‘Actions appear to be random,’ says mayor as suspects also allegedly took aim at buildings and houses in Texas city
Three youths are in police custody after a spree of at least 10 shootings wounded four people who appeared to be targeted randomly in Austin, Texas, according to authorities.
The suspects who were arrested in connection with the shootings also allegedly took aim at various buildings and houses while driving around the capital city in stolen cars, the Austin police chief, Lisa Davis, said Sunday. Before the suspects were jailed, city officials temporarily ordered people residing in a large southern section of Austin to shelter in place, an exceptional public safety measure that spoke to the indiscriminate nature of the spree.
Continue reading...Startup has declined to release Claude Mythos AI model publicly amid fears it could be used by hackers
Anthropic is to brief the global finance watchdog on the implications of its Claude Mythos AI model, whose potential threat to cyber defences has alarmed experts.
The US startup will discuss Mythos with the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which is chaired by the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey.
Continue reading...Pew research shows Americans are more worried than excited about AI as graduates voice fears over jobs
A former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, was met with students’ boos at a university commencement address in Arizona on Sunday when he raised the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effects.
Schmidt – who led the tech giant for more than a decade, acquiring a multibillion-dollar fortune in the process – was speaking to as many as 10,000 graduating University of Arizona students when he addressed the impact of modern technology on society.
Continue reading...TEL AVIV, Israel, May 18, 2026 — NextSilicon, a leader in next-generation computing solutions for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), has announced that Spectra, the second system deployed under Sandia National Laboratories’ Vanguard program, has met all system acceptance requirements. This result demonstrates that NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 runtime-reconfigurable accelerators can operate within the requirements of a national security HPC environment, executing mission-relevant workloads as part of Sandia’s Vanguard evaluation process. Full system acceptance marks a significant milestone in Sandia’s ongoing evaluation of Maverick-2 as a candidate architecture for future HPC deployments.
Spectra is Sandia National Laboratories’ newest supercomputer and the second in the Vanguard program, which explores advanced computer architectures for national security applications. Photo credit: Craig Fritz.
Spectra comprises 64 compute nodes equipped with 128 Maverick-2 dual-die accelerators. The system was built and deployed through a collaboration among Sandia National Laboratories, NextSilicon, and Penguin Solutions, and supports the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. Vanguard is a multi-lab program that includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
System Acceptance Under Vanguard Program Marks Key Milestone
To qualify for acceptance, Spectra demonstrated performance, stability, and application compatibility across workloads. Unlike conventional GPU accelerators, Maverick-2 adapts its computational resources to each application at runtime. During evaluation, Spectra executes HPCG, LAMMPS molecular dynamics, and SPARTA Monte Carlo simulations as part of the acceptance process.
“System acceptance at Sandia is not a checkbox. It means Maverick-2 ran mission-relevant workloads, demonstrated system stability, and showed the computational scientists at Sandia what this architecture can deliver,” said Elad Raz, Founder and CEO of NextSilicon. “This is a significant step toward what we have been building: an accelerator that delivers performance while reducing power consumption. For HPC organizations evaluating next-generation infrastructure, Spectra begins to show what Maverick-2 can do when put to the test.”
How Sandia’s Vanguard Program Evaluates Emerging HPC Architectures
The Vanguard program serves as Sandia’s primary mechanism for evaluating novel computing architectures against real mission workloads before any decision to scale into production. Spectra is only the second system ever fielded under this program, following Astra, which demonstrated the viability of Arm-based processors for HPC workloads in 2018. Vanguard acceptance evaluates performance, stability, and application behavior under real operational conditions.
“The Vanguard program exists to put new architectures through rigorous evaluation against workloads that are directly relevant to our mission,” said James H. Laros III, Senior Scientist and Vanguard Program Lead at Sandia National Laboratories. “Our partnership succeeded in executing all benchmarks and applications specified, meeting acceptance criteria we defined for this phase in the program. This outcome is exactly what our process is designed to test, and it gives us a solid basis for continued evaluation of this technology.”
“Being selected to build the system with the capability of testing NextSilicon’s transformative accelerators at scale is a great opportunity, and Penguin Solutions is proud to be part of this groundbreaking project,” said Phil Pokorny, chief technology officer at Penguin Solutions. “Sandia’s Vanguard program is designed to select new technologies and challenge them with the toughest problems faced by American science and engineering teams. The Spectra cluster will enable extensive research that may eventually demonstrate further acceleration of mixed physics and AI workloads.”
Maverick-2 is currently deployed at dozens of customer sites worldwide. Successful acceptance at Sandia extends that footprint to one of the most closely evaluated computing programs in the U.S. government. For commercial HPC buyers assessing alternatives to GPU-based infrastructure, Spectra offers a reference point grounded in rigorous evaluation against mission-critical workloads in an operational national security environment.
More from HPCwire
About NextSilicon
NextSilicon builds computing infrastructure for algorithmically complex workloads. The company’s Maverick-2 accelerator uses a runtime reconfigurable dataflow architecture to deliver up to 10x performance over leading GPUs at less than half the power, with no requirement to rewrite existing applications. Maverick-2 is in production at customer sites across HPC, AI, and national security computing environments. NextSilicon is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in Minneapolis, MN, in the United States.
Source: NextSilicon
The post NextSilicon’s Spectra System Meets Sandia Vanguard Acceptance Requirements appeared first on HPCwire.
TORONTO, May 18, 2026 — HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd., through its wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing Inc. (BUZZ HPC), today announced that BUZZ is advancing a major infrastructure investment in Ontario, anchored by a planned new industrial-scale AI infrastructure facility, also known as an AI gigafactory, in the Greater Toronto Area with approximately 320 megawatts of utility capacity.
The project is expected to become one of Canada’s largest AI gigafactories, designed to support fully vertically integrated AI supercomputers and host more than 100,000 GPUs at full build-out. An AI gigafactory is the industrial infrastructure of the intelligence economy: a facility that converts compute into intelligence, helping make Canadian businesses more competitive.
BUZZ High Performance Computing Inc. acquired land comprising approximately 21 acres for a purchase price of $46 million, as well as an additional parcel of land adjacent to the Main Parcel, measuring approximately 4 acres, for a purchase price of $12 million. The Main Parcel and the Additional Parcel collectively comprise a contiguous site benefiting from a 320 MW power allocation. BUZZ has secured major milestones along the project’s 320 MW power pathway to develop sovereign AI infrastructure in the Toronto–Waterloo innovation corridor. The project is designed to place massive industrial-scale compute directly inside Canada’s largest metropolitan economy and one of North America’s most important hubs for technology, financial services, and artificial intelligence.
The vision of sovereign AI infrastructure is to provide the physical backbone for Canada’s intelligence economy. Compute is the new sovereignty. Countries that own the machines will write the future. Countries that rent compute from data centers abroad will not contain sensitive data within their borders.
Located within one of the most important 100-kilometer corridors in global AI, the project is positioned between Geoffrey Hinton’s legacy, the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute to the east, and Waterloo’s world-leading systems and engineering talent to the west. This places the facility at the intersection of research excellence, enterprise demand, and low-latency global network connectivity.
Key Highlights:
Frank Holmes, executive chairman of HIVE and BUZZ, commented: “AI is the new industrial base and compute is the factory floor. Canada produced the Godfathers of deep learning but kept renting the factories. That era is over. Between Toronto and Waterloo, BUZZ is building the sovereign AI infrastructure that turns Canadian intelligence into Canadian dominance. At full build-out, this intelligence factory will deploy over 100,000 GPUs, creating one of North America’s largest domestically controlled AI clusters. Low-latency inference, AI agents, financial platforms, healthcare breakthroughs, scientific discovery, and national priority workloads will finally run on Canadian iron, under Canadian control. Our vision is to build AI infrastructure that will serve humanity, with the potential to improve quality of life for millions of Canadians.”
Aydin Kilic, president and CEO of HIVE Digital Technologies, said: “We have been strategically land-banking by regional substations, and we are very pleased to announce this expansion. HIVE now has over 850 MW of power globally; this includes our 450 MW of operating data centers plus a pipeline of 400 MW of capacity, which we expect to bring online in 2027. Globally diversified growth, this includes our 100 MW of operating data centers in Canada, now with a pipeline of 320 MW for 2027. BUZZ has done a phenomenal job expanding our footprint in Canada. With 5,500 GPUs online today doing AI compute, along with our 70 MW New Brunswick Grand Falls site, and now our 320 MW GTA site, we have the land and power to develop a pipeline of infrastructure to support approximately 130,000 GPUs. This puts HIVE and BUZZ at a global scale, with the largest AI native clouds.”
Craig Tavares, president and COO of BUZZ HPC, commented: “This investment is nationally important to Canada’s efforts to build the infrastructure required for the next generation of AI innovation. Compute is the new engine of the AI economy. If Canada wants to lead in AI, we need to build the factories that produce intelligence here at home. Canada has the clean energy, network connectivity and research ecosystem to lead AI innovation around the world. BUZZ is building the infrastructure layer that turns Canada’s AI ambition into reality. This gigafactory is the engine Canada needs to lead the intelligence economy. This facility anchors BUZZ’s national AI platform spanning British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. It is being built as a fully vertically integrated, Canadian-governed supercomputing platform for the age of inference and enterprise AI. Being a Greater Toronto Area resident, it is an honor to build Canada’s first AI gigafactory in our community. I believe the jobs and economic development this project will offer, will provide tremendous value to the community.”
About HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd.
Founded in 2017, HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. was among the first publicly listed companies to prioritize mining digital assets powered by green energy. Today, HIVE builds and operates next-generation Tier-I and Tier-III data centers across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay, serving both Bitcoin and high-performance computing clients. HIVE’s twin-turbo engine infrastructure-driven by hashrate services and GPU-accelerated AI computing-delivers scalable, environmentally responsible solutions for the digital economy.
Source: HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd.
The post HIVE’s BUZZ HPC Announces 320 MW Sovereign AI Infrastructure in Greater Toronto Area appeared first on HPCwire.
The streamer will offer content in one place for this year's tournament.
Mordecai Kurz argues tech oligarchs erode democracy through monopolies – and predicts how the trend may end
The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality. In his new book, Private Power and Democracy’s Decline, publishing 19 May, he argues the US is living through an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy.
According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society – so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy. During the first Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, as the US was enjoying its first ascent as an industrial powerhouse, wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller “invented all kinds of theories about human evolution”, twisting the logic of social Darwinism to convince themselves that their success was a sign they had been selected by nature to influence society, Kurz explained. Now, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, has suggested his technology has a mystical potential to become a transcendent good. He has also openly acknowledged it could lead to mass unemployment.
Continue reading...Do you deal with constant buffering, or does your internet hold up to its promise? We want to hear about it.
I ordered a GT last week before finding this sub. I’m wanting to return it and pay a $50 restock fee so that I can have time to look at other brands and models. I really like the fungineers models and build better now that I’ve had time to look. I’m a bigger build at 6ft and 240lbs so I’m trying to make sure I don’t buy a product that can’t carry my weight.
The problem is that the onewheel site says you can return the product unopened, however the support page gives no option to process the return.
Can anyone help me with a link or how I process my request? Thanks in advance for any help!
 | Yet, sooo far away!🤣 [link] [comments] |
Mayor Kirk Watson said no motive has been identified and the shootings appear to be random.
Two Americans were arrested in Japan after social media posts showed a person jumping into an enclosure at the zoo where viral baby monkey Punch found fame.
The World Health Organization this week declared the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda a "public health emergency of international concern."
Also: Guilherme helps Houston lift off, Wilfried Zaha strikes back and Orlando City bide their time as Antoine Griezmann waits
There are simple adages which help us navigate this mad world. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When it heaves a beer your way on the field at PayPal Park, you give it a hearty chug.
The San Jose Earthquakes have been the season’s surprise outfit, storming to the top of a competitive Western Conference in Bruce Arena’s second season. In their final home fixture before the World Cup break, they stormed back against a valiant FC Dallas to find an 80th minute leveler, giving the crowd dreams of a comeback before the final whistle.
Continue reading...Use of AI is a valuable tool for weather prediction but only when it’s trained with ample data, experts say
As the US prepares for hurricane season and a summer of record-breaking heat, experts fear the Trump administration’s cuts to climate and weather data programming could make the federal government’s weather forecasts less reliable when they are needed most.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) late last year launched a suite of artificial intelligence-powered global weather forecast models which it said would improve “speed, efficiency, and accuracy”. In March, an agency official said those models are being trained with centuries of weather data.
Continue reading...After being excommunicated from the GOP, Geoff Duncan is trying for a comeback on the Democratic ticket
In the Georgia governor’s race, Geoff Duncan’s candidacy tests American politics as much as it tests his political appeal.
The former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia is a current Democratic candidate for governor, with former Biden official and Atlanta ex-mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms currently holding the lead in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. A Republican is still favored to win, with billionaire Rick Jason up against the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and the lieutenant governor, Burt Jones.
Continue reading...Masters champion points out fan to security
McIlroy has had problem with American crowds before
Rory McIlroy clashed with a fan on Sunday in the final round of thePGA Championship as chanting from the gallery once again drew his ire.
McIlroy was among the challengers on the final day but found heavy rough on the 16th as his bid for victory petered out. His next shot rebounded into a bunker, although he would go on to par the hole.
Continue reading...Airline’s CEO says uncertainty is making travellers book later, keeping summer holiday fares down
Ryanair said it has “almost zero concerns” about its jet fuel supplies this summer amid fears over widespread cancellations linked to the Iran war but warned that holidaymakers booking their flights later this year could face higher fares.
The budget airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said Europe had now found plenty of alternative sources of jet fuel, but persistent consumer uncertainty had led to lower summer bookings than usual, keeping fares down.
Continue reading...John Lennon's last interview — just hours before he was shot on December 8, 1980 — has become a documentary directed by Steven Soderbergh, debuting Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. In a new interview with the Associated Press, Soderbergh defends the film's limited use of AI to visualize concepts from that two-hour interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono: Soderbergh was resolved to let the audio play. He could finds ways to visualize much of the film, but that still left a large gap where the conversation grows more philosophical. "I worked on everything that could be solved except that for as long as I could," Soderbergh says. "Then there was the inevitable moment of: OK, but really what are we going to do? We just started playing and ran out of time and money. That's where the Meta piece came in." Soderbergh accepted an offer to use Meta's artificial intelligence software to conjure surreal imagery for those sections, which make up about 10% of the film. When Soderbergh let the news out earlier this year, it prompted an uproar. One of America's leading filmmakers was using AI? In a film about a Beatle, no less? The AI parts (overwhelmingly slammed by critics in Cannes) are fairly banal and don't differ greatly from special effects — there are no deepfakes of Lennon. But they put Soderberg at the forefront of an industrywide debate about the uses of AI in moviemaking. It's a conversation the director, who has made movies on iPhones, is eager to have. While the film follows John and Yoko's conversation, "I needed a way to follow them in flight visually," Soderbergh says, "or I'm not doing my job." Though when asked about the strong negative reaction, Soderbergh acknowleges that "I knew what was coming. I take it very seriously, and I understand why people have an emotional response to this subject. As I've said before, I feel like I owe people the best version of whatever art I'm trying to make and total transparency about how I'm doing it." AP: Some fear generative AI will tear apart the film industry. You don't see it as a bogeyman, though. SODERBERGH: I think most jobs that matter when you're making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech. As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection, then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting. We haven't seen yet someone with a certain amount of creative credibility go full-metal AI on something, and see how people react. I think it's necessary. How do you know where the line is until somebody crosses it? "I don't think what I'm doing crosses it. Some people may disagree. I don't know where my line is yet. I'm waiting to see...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US president says there ‘won’t be anything left’ of country if it does not reach agreement. Plus, how to become emotionally mature at any age
Good morning.
Donald Trump has voiced impatience at the deadlock over peace talks with Iran, posting on social media: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”
What else is happening in the region? The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies, describing the incident as a “dangerous escalation”.
Why is Massie Trump’s nemesis? Massie has been a consistent thorn in Trump’s side, voting against his signature tax and spending cuts bill, helping to force the justice department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and insisting on congressional oversight over the military actions in Venezuela and Iran. Now he faces a bruising primary against his Trump-endorsed challenger, Ed Gallrein.
Continue reading...Deputy PM’s comments come as Starmer says he will back Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate ‘100%’
Keir Starmer is not about to set a timetable for his departure from Downing Street, David Lammy, one of the prime minister’s closest cabinet allies, has said, urging Labour to get beyond the “spectacular own goal” of repeated leadership speculation.
The prime minister visited Labour HQ on Monday and told staff the whole party should show “100%” support to help win the crucial Makerfield byelection, as sources said he was not considering stepping aside for Andy Burnham should he win.
Continue reading...Cleveland clinch series with blowout victory
Cavaliers will play Knicks for place in NBA finals
Pistons’ Bickerstaff praises team’s progress
Donovan Mitchell scored 26 points, Jarrett Allen and Sam Merrill each added 23 and the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons 125-94 on Sunday night in Game 7 to advance to the Eastern Conference finals.
The fourth-seeded Cavaliers ousted the East’s top seed and will face the third-seeded New York Knicks. Game 1 of the series tips off on Tuesday in New York.
Continue reading...Nine people died at the scene from gunshot wounds and one woman died while being transported to the hospital, prosecutors said.
Washington-based fund praises Rachel Reeves for aiming to cut budget deficit as it upgrades growth forecasts
The International Monetary Fund has urged Britain to “stay the course” to cut government borrowing amid growing bond market concerns over a Labour leadership challenge.
As Keir Starmer battles to cling on to power, the Washington-based fund said it was important to continue reducing the budget deficit “given market pressures and elevated implementation risks”.
Continue reading...Singer says she has faced ‘years of public shaming’, as court rules tax agency made mistake over her 2011 status
A court in Madrid has ordered Spain’s tax authority to pay Shakira back more than €55m (£48m) after ruling that it had wrongly imposed huge fines on the Colombian singer and philanthropist because it had made mistakes over her tax status.
In a statement released on Monday, the Audiencia Nacional said it had accepted an appeal from Shakira against the fine she was handed five years ago after the Agencia Tributaria claimed she had not paid the necessary tax in Spain in 2011. At that time, the singer was in a relationship with the FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué.
Continue reading...Participants who got single dose of psilocybin were more likely to abstain from cocaine than those who got placebo
Results from a new clinical trial show that a single dose of psilocybin could be an effective treatment for cocaine addiction.
The study, published in Jama Network Open this month, showed that 19 participants who received a single dose of psilocybin were more likely to abstain from cocaine than 17 participants who received a placebo of diphenhydramine, a common antihistamine.
Continue reading...Epstein said retired cop turned cocaine dealer attacked him, then retracted claim, before he was found dead in jail
In the murky world of criminal misadventure, what happened at the Likquid Lounge in Chester, New York, on a night in April 2016 may have some bearing on Jeffrey Epstein’s death in federal custody three years later.
In many ways what happened there has become a conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory. For while speculation about the actions of Epstein and his circle has long spread across the US, the Likquid Lounge is at the center of a fresh mystery of exactly how Epstein died.
Continue reading...If you have a toddler and sleep is a struggle, make sure their room is the right sleep environment.
The Ring 2026 Battery Doorbell Pro has more features than any doorbell I've tested, but it tries to do too much at once.
The cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak has docked at the Dutch port of Rotterdam for disinfection, wrapping up a troubled journey that put world health authorities on alert.
The 38-year-old man had been spearfishing with friends when he was attacked on a coral reef off Rottnest Island, police said.
Singer took lead vocal on UK No 1 When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman, and had numerous other transatlantic hits
Dennis Locorriere, the guitarist and singer with the chart-topping soft rock band Dr Hook, has died aged 76.
A statement from his management company said he died on Saturday “after a long and courageous battle with kidney disease … Dennis faced his illness with remarkable strength, dignity, and resilience throughout, and remained deeply cherished by all who knew him”.
Continue reading...True to its name, this slender laptop's second-gen Snapdragon X2 chip has truly impressive performance. However, you'll need to keep looking if you're after strong graphics performance.
Proposed IRS data sharing with immigration authorities and ICE raids have made filing risky for those who are undocumented
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown could cause the US to potentially lose up to $479bn in lost tax revenue over the the next 10 years, with enforcement deterring undocumented workers from filing their taxes this year, according to tax experts.
Tax advisers say major changes, including proposed data sharing with immigration enforcement, have made filing taxes risky for undocumented immigrants. Tax benefits for immigrant parents have also been removed, further removing incentive to file taxes at all.
Continue reading...Challenger Graham Platner may have amassed a rare kinetic energy, but the moderate conservative has served the state for almost 30 years
For three decades, Susan Collins has styled herself as a moderate conservative who delivers for Maine, even when it means defying Donald Trump. But as the incumbent Republican seeks a sixth term, national Democrats see her as newly vulnerable – zoning in on the state as a clear path to reclaiming the Senate.
Collins, 73, will now face off against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, a 41-year-old marine veteran and oysterman with no national political experience and a controversial past. Despite dredged-up racist, sexist and homophobic online posts – and a now-covered-up tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol – Platner continues to amass a rare kinetic energy that has seen hundreds of Mainers flock to town halls across the state to hear his gravelly voiced excoriation of Washington. His rise ultimately forced the state’s two-term governor Janet Mills to suspend her primary bid, citing dwindling financial resources.
Continue reading...Utah’s heavily Mormon population is largely opposed to all gambling, even on financial exchange platforms
Utah is home to some of the strongest anti-gambling laws in the US, with vehement opposition dating back more than a century. But as prediction markets have surged – allowing users to bet on almost anything, from elections to sports to geopolitical events – the state has not escaped the nationwide boom.
Its Republican leaders are fighting back, setting up a battle between one of the country’s most conservative states and a rapidly growing industry that is embraced by a Republican administration in Washington – and members of the US president’s own family.
Continue reading...A CBS News investigation into youth residential treatment programs finds allegations of abuse, a lack of federal oversight, and families left to navigate a multibillion-dollar industry largely on their own.
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 we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.
Below you will find information about the most important or interesting public meetings happening in Delaware this week.
The Senate is set to finally consider primary healthcare reforms on Tuesday, after amendments to the highly anticipated Senate Bill 1 were released late last week. Lawmakers and lobbyists negotiated amendments to the bill for nearly two months.
The biggest changes made to SB 1 – which would set price caps on how high Delaware hospital systems can negotiate costs with insurers – would create a phased and more specific process for implementing those price caps.
By taking aim at how high Delaware healthcare providers can negotiate their prices with insurers, in addition to making those insurers spend 11.5% of their medical costs on primary care, the state hopes to better compensate providers proactively working to improve Delawareans’ health outcomes.
In its original form, SB 1 capped the amount of money a provider could be reimbursed by insurers at 250% of what the federal government pays providers through Medicare.
The amended bill creates a tiered structure for those price caps based on the type of service being provided, delineating costs for inpatient and outpatient services. The bill also now includes a phased timeline, creating a longer runway for hospitals to reach that 250% Medicare price cap.
Another big change in the amended version of SB1 expands price cap exemptions for certain types of hospitals. The legislation now includes more specific pathways for rural hospitals that depend largely on Medicare along with urban hospitals that depend largely on Medicaid to become exempt from adhering to the state’s proposed 250% price cap.
📍 The Senate is scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday inside Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
Separate from SB 1, Delaware lawmakers will consider a slew of other bills in legislative committees this week as they continue their final sprint toward the end of the 153rd General Assembly on June 30, including proposals that would:
📍 Delaware residents can attend committee hearings in person or participate virtually through the General Assembly’s online meeting system. To view details of all hearings, scroll through the “What’s Happening” box here.
Also this week, Delaware’s budget forecasting committee will meet for the first time since Gov. Matt Meyer fired a longtime member who had criticized the administration’s reports of revenue flowing from the state’s prominent corporate franchise.
The firing of the member, Mike Houghton, sparked a backlash from lawmakers who claimed it amounted to “undue political interference.”
Established in the 1980s, the committee – the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Committee, or DEFAC – periodically forecasts the amount of money Delaware could bring in annually from taxes and fees. Those figures are crucial to budget negotiations carried out each spring between lawmakers and the governor’s office.
DEFAC’s meeting this week will be particularly consequential because it will be the last before the state’s Joint Finance Committee begins writing the government’s operating budget a week later in a process known as a markup.
Given the controversy surrounding Houghton’s firing, DEFAC’s next revenue estimates for Delaware’s Division of Corporations, which oversees the state’s sprawling, and lucrative, corporate franchise – could either dampen or fuel criticisms of the state over its role as a favored legal home for corporations.
The Delaware corporate franchise generates about a third of Delaware’s general fund revenue.
In recent months, the Meyer administration has publicly celebrated a jump in the number of companies that domicile in Delaware to 2.2 million entities. But several big-name companies have also left Delaware over the past year in favor of states that largely limit shareholders’ ability to sue businesses and their leaders.
📍 DEFAC is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Monday at the Buena Vista estate, which is owned by the state government and located at 661 S. DuPont Highway in New Castle. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
The Sussex County Council is getting ready to vote on reforms that could change the course of development in southern Delaware.
On Tuesday, the council will host hearings on ordinances that would change the county’s affordable housing program, open space requirements and density limits.
In particular, Ordinance 2026-01 would raise limits on rent, and lower the required number of affordable units for a housing development to qualify for a county program that incentivizes developers to build affordable rental units, specifically in areas near the Delaware beaches.
The program has only brought in two projects in the last 20 years, and county officials hope changing the requirements will accelerate the construction of more affordable housing.
The ordinances came from recommendations of the Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group, tasked by County Council with coming up with ways the county could ease the impact ongoing growth has had on affordability, road conditions, services and the environment.
📍 The Sussex County Council is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. on Tuesday inside the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
Separate from its County Council meeting, Sussex County also will hold a public workshop Tuesday to discuss a proposal that could make a stretch of U.S. Route 9 west of Route 1 an area targeted for growth.
The workshop follows a governor’s executive order, issued in January, that directs state officials to, among other things, conduct a coordinated planning effort with Sussex County to define land-use plans for certain corridors, ahead of the county’s comprehensive plan update process.
📍 The workshop is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Cheer Community Center, located at 20520 Sand Hill Road in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
Last month, Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez revealed that her office would negotiate with the Port of Wilmington’s private operator, Enstructure, over how to close a $185 million funding gap for construction of a new container terminal in Edgemoor.
This week, the state’s port oversight board will meet to discuss a resolution that would amend Delaware’s and Enstructure’s joint operating agreement, which outlines how each party is to fund the state’s port and oversee its expansion.
While it is not certain the amendment relates to a potential deal over the cost overruns, state officials have repeatedly expressed their desire to expedite the Edgemoor expansion following years of delays.
Last month, Patibanda-Sanchez said she expected the negotiations to happen in good faith “and hopefully very quickly.”
📍 The Diamond State Port Corporation is scheduled to meet at 8 a.m. Friday at the state’s Buena Vista estate, located at 661 South DuPont Highway. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
The post Get Involved: Healthcare reforms, DEFAC, Sussex growth, more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Cali Overs spent her senior year lobbying local, state and federal officials after Homeland Security bought a warehouse near her Arizona high school.
Why Should Delaware Care?
In his second year in office, Wilmington Mayor John Carney says he will double down on encouraging affordable housing in Delaware’s largest city. But several council members, concerned about how new money would be spent, are supporting an alternative proposal to send dollars directly to people struggling to secure housing.
A divide between the Wilmington City Council and Mayor John Carney over affordable housing spending is intensifying, with council members pushing forward a competing housing initiative that they say would help more low-income residents at a lower cost to the city.
During a Thursday meeting, council members discussed the initiative, which would create new housing assistance programs, including eviction-prevention aid and homeowner repair grants.
To incentivize development, the plan would also allocate at least $10 million into a city housing trust fund to be overseen by the City Council and the mayor’s office. The city would then ask the state to match the city’s contribution to the trust fund.
In all, the $12.5 million plan was presented as an alternative to Carney’s proposed $20 million housing initiative, which relies on subsidizing developers to build affordable housing.
If passed, the measures could be funded through the upcoming city budget.
The competing initiative has been spearheaded by council members Christian Willauer, Shané Darby, and Coby Owens. WIllauer called it a more “fiscally responsible” way to carry out housing.
“The big difference between what the city has proposed and what council members are working on is that we are trying to address different sets of housing issues, we’re trying to have a greater impact with more people with less money,” Willauer told Spotlight Delaware.
Daniel Walker, Carney’s deputy chief of staff, previously said the proposed amendment would increase long-term costs for city residents. He also said it relies unrealistically on still-uncommitted state government dollars.
Carney’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Thursday’s meeting follows weeks of council scrutiny of Carney’s plan, which he unveiled during his budget address in March. In the budget speech, Carney noted that the city had added 4,000 new housing units since 2016 – 800 of which were affordable.
“It’s time to build on that progress,” he said then.
But during past week’s meetings, council members pressed officials from the mayor’s office about whether his plan would do enough to help low-income and current Wilmington residents.
They also expressed skepticism over whether it would create opportunities for minority developers, and whether the city should be spending such a large amount from its reserves for a one-time initiative.
“We need a lot more details and guardrails on any spending around the construction of affordable housing,” Willauer said during a meeting last month.
During the Thursday council meeting, Darby proposed a measure to create the Housing Trust Fund, which she said she has been working on for the past few years.
The fund would aim to support the development of more affordable housing, create supportive housing for the homeless, and fund programs to help residents become homeowners, among other measures.
The legislation would also establish a community advisory board made up of representatives from neighborhood-based housing groups, landlords, and people who have struggled to find housing. The board would work with the mayor’s office and council to help make recommendations about how the money should be used.
During the meeting, a debate over the Housing Trust Fund quickly collided with concerns over the Christina Park homeless encampment. Last week, the city notified residents of the city’s only sanctioned homeless encampment that they must leave by June 15.
“I’m for anything that y’all can do to help those people out, to get them into permanent housing, and whatever you can do to stop the evictions until everybody down there gets housing,” said one resident, Lip Betley, during the meeting.
Several other residents and advocates used public comment to support the council’s initiatives, while also questioning how the city can close the encampment before more long-term housing options are available.
One Christina Park resident told the council he was working to secure housing but needed paperwork from Social Security, with an appointment scheduled after the park’s closure deadline.
He said the timing could leave him with nowhere to go for several days.
“Until then, I literally have no place to live,” the resident said.
Beyond herself and Willauer, Darby said the measure has support from council members Owens and Alex Hackett, as well as Council President Trippi Congo.
Willauer also proposed three separate bills related to the alternative housing plan, including an eviction settlement program that would make one-time payments to help tenants avoid eviction.
Lisa Lessner, who coordinates Delaware’s right-to-representation program, said Wilmington saw an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 eviction filings in the past year. She and Jennifer Perez, managing attorney for Community Legal Aid Society’s housing unit, said that small settlement payments can often help resolve cases quickly, especially when a tenant owes a limited amount of back rent.
Perez also noted that the funding matters because eviction cases move quickly once they are filed. The money would help attorneys negotiate settlements before tenants lose their homes.
In a letter to the council, Cerron Cade, Carney’s chief of staff, said the administration could not support the measure because it relies on a fixed list of legal aid agencies, which could discriminate against smaller nonprofits.
He also noted that it does not require financial counseling or case management to prevent repeat evictions and does not ensure that funds would go directly toward back rent or eviction settlements.
Separate from the council’s housing plan, Darby also discussed an ordinance, to create an online rental registry, which would require landlords to register properties with the city and update the information regularly.
The goal is to give city officials better enforcement and oversight of the rental properties in Wilmington.
Darby said the measure has support from the mayor’s office.
Hackett also proposed a pilot program to help eligible Wilmington residents cover the upfront cost of moving into a rental unit. The measure would allow the Department of Real Estate and Housing to provide up to $2,000 in assistance.
The post Wilmington City Council, mayor push competing affordable housing initiatives appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Energy security comes from using local, renewable resources to power, heat and cool communities, as Ukraine is doing
Donald Trump’s unjustified war on Iran and the resulting global fuel crisis is a continuing reminder that true energy security and independence will continue to elude us so long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels.
Whether it’s wars over oil and gas resource access or attacks on fossil fuel power plants and energy grids, this reliance on finite resources only worsens a country’s threat profile. News this month of Russia’s deadly attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian drones swarming Ukrainian power stations and Kyiv running out of time to prepare for another winter of attacks on its energy grid illustrates this urgency.
The US representative Lloyd Doggett serves Texas’s 37th district in the House of Representatives and is a member of the Ukraine caucus and the House sustainable energy and environment coalition. Michael Shank PhD is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
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It was their dream home, a newly built, 2,500-square-foot modern farmhouse with a playroom that Mitch and Kara Meredith had saved for 12 years to buy for their growing family. During construction, family members had written their favorite Bible verses on studs throughout the house. For four idyllic years on Darlene Lane, the couple hosted birthday parties for their two young daughters, who became fast friends with the other children in the recently built subdivision in Fort Gibson.
Then one evening last summer, five weeks after the couple’s third child was born, their bathroom flooded.
When their 7-year-old ran into the garage to report that water was all over the floor, Mitch assumed a pipe had burst, or perhaps the toilet was backed up.
Then he entered the bathroom. A thick, black fluid with an oily sheen covered the floor. Kara yelled from their bedroom for him to come quickly; the same substance was flowing out of the floor next to their bed.
Mitch, along with several family members, fought the flood all night, vacuuming up the sludge and emptying buckets out the window. Black goo covered their arms. Shiny rainbow patterns covered their shoes. After pulling the bathtub away from the wall, Mitch saw that the substance was gushing through the house’s foundation. It was clear this wasn’t a plumbing problem.
Around 5 a.m., Mitch’s uncle turned to him. “I think this is oil,” he said. The family called the fire department, and Kara rushed their three children, including their infant, to her grandmother’s house.
“And that’s the last time we got to be in our home,” Mitch said.
The Frontier and ProPublica’s reporting on oil and gas pollution in Oklahoma over the last year has shown how old oil wells abandoned by the industry pose severe public and environmental health risks. Officially, the state lists 19,000 orphan wells that state regulators are responsible for cleaning up, but the true figure is likely over 300,000, according to federal researchers.
State records suggest that the Merediths’ house may have been built on top of an improperly plugged oil well drilled in the 1940s. And on that fateful Saturday last August, something woke it up.
Mitch drilled a hole into his home’s concrete foundation in hopes of diverting the sludge out of the house and into the yard. It worked: The foul-smelling water began to pour out of the cavity, filling a deep trench they had dug.
Many of their possessions were ruined. A strong smell of gas hung throughout the house, permeating clothes, sheets and mattresses.
After leaving Darlene Lane, the family moved four times in four months — at times paying their mortgage and rent simultaneously.
At the outset of the crisis, the family had pinned most of their hopes on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the regulatory agency responsible for overseeing oil and gas — including pollution from the industry and plugging old wells. They wanted the agency to figure out what happened — and help them clean it up.
It did not take long for their hopes to transform into anger.
State regulators, according to the family, have done little to help them.
“They wanted to act like it would go away,” Mitch said.
In October, more than a month after the flooding began, Jeremy Hodges, the director of the commission’s oil and gas division, met with Mitch and Kara at the house.
He told them that when his team stuck a gas reader into the hole in their bathroom floor, where the oily water continued to flow, it showed gas concentrations at explosive levels, according to a recording that the Merediths provided to The Frontier and ProPublica.
The local public works authority had also brought out a gas reader. It found gas levels that constituted a “serious and immediate hazard,” according to a report.
Old, unplugged wells — like the one that state records indicate is near or possibly under the Merediths’ house — are known to leak gas and toxic fluids.
Hodges also told the couple that the agency would likely have to tear down the house to look for the well and plug it. Subsequent sampling conducted by the commission showed salt readings that suggested the presence of wastewater resulting from the production of oil and gas. Other testing by the state’s environmental quality department found elevated levels of heavy metals commonly found in oil field wastewater including barium and bromide. Mitch took his own samples and paid an environmental lab to test them. The results also pointed to oil and gas pollution.
But as the months wore on, the agency never stated explicitly that the mysterious substance contaminating the Merediths’ home was the byproduct of oil and gas production. It simply referred to the pollution as “water” in public statements.
In a packed town hall in March convened after the family began criticizing the agency on social media, community members grilled Hodges and several other high-ranking agency representatives about the Merediths’ situation for two hours, pressing them about the environmental risks and demanding action. About half of Oklahomans live within 1 mile of oil and gas wells.
“Would you live there?” a woman in the audience asked Hodges.
“I’m not going to answer that,” he responded, prompting jeers from the crowd.
“So you’re saying that you don’t want to answer the question of whether you would actually live in that house?” asked Mitch’s brother, Matt Meredith.
“That’s a hypothetical,” Hodges said. “I’m not going to answer that.”
Homeowners facing such an event should file damages with their insurance companies, Jim Marshall, an administrator with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, said from the front of the community center conference room. But the family’s insurance company had denied their claim last fall — citing exclusions for pollution and water damage — without ever inspecting the damage, according to the Merediths’ attorney. The Merediths have sued American Mercury, their insurance company, which did not answer questions about the case because of pending litigation, as well as their developers, who did not respond to requests for comment.
At the public meeting, Marshall suggested underground water sources could be pushing fluid into the home, noting that the Merediths’ neighborhood once contained several ponds. If the culprit is not oil and gas, that would shift the responsibility for cleanup to other state agencies. Marshall, Hodges and an agency attorney repeatedly told the crowd that with the house likely blocking access to the well, the agency had reached the end of its legal ability to help the Merediths.
Jack Damrill, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, did not answer questions about what the agency thinks is causing the pollution but said it “recognizes the seriousness of the concerns raised regarding the Meredith family matter, as well as the broader public interest.” The agency, he said in a statement, has “devoted significant investigative time, technical expertise, and regulatory resources to reviewing the situation and will continue to evaluate any new, relevant information as it becomes available.”
Last week, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill introduced by the Merediths’ state senator, Avery Frix, that would create a fund to compensate homeowners whose houses have been damaged by oil and gas pollution. While hopeful that the legislation will help them, Mitch noted that it requires the commission to confirm the presence of an old well, something the agency has yet to do at the Merediths’ home.
On Darlene Lane, the flow of contamination increased in late April and continues to seep into their neighbor’s yard.
“What I’ve begged for from the beginning is for them to help me contain it,” Mitch said. “They have refused to do anything.”
Nine months after they were forced to flee their dream home, the family of five is crammed into a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom bungalow on Mitch’s parents’ farm where the couple had lived as newlyweds. The girls share a bunk bed. The baby sleeps in Mitch and Kara’s room.
The girls often ask to play with the neighbors they had to leave behind, along with many of their possessions. Their toys still line the shelves of their bedrooms in the house on Darlene Lane, awaiting their return. Wet clothes sat in the washer for months. Half-packed boxes are scattered around the floor, evidence of the family’s panicked retreat last August.
The house is stuck in time, like a museum of the Merediths’ old life.
We’ve reported on oil and gas pollution contaminating drinking water, killing cattle and damaging property. We need your help to show how this affects people across the state.
The post Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help. appeared first on ProPublica.
Why Should Delaware Care?
If Republicans lose just one seat in the Delaware House of Representatives this November, Democrats will gain a supermajority that would allow them to enact state constitutional amendments with no bipartisan support. Two recent announcements by GOP representatives that they will not seek reelection this fall could further complicate Republican efforts to hold on to any piece of legislative power in the First State.
Recent announcements by state Reps. Kevin Hensley (R-Odessa) and Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck) that they will not seek reelection this fall could add a new wrinkle to House GOP efforts to block Democrats from gaining a supermajority in the General Assembly’s lower chamber.
Republicans must now defend five of their 12 currently-held seats in the House. Losing just one would give Democrats a key two-thirds supermajority – allowing them to amend the state Constitution without any bipartisan support.
And Hensley’s seat, House District 9, could present a unique challenge. The southern New Castle County district that covers Odessa, Townsend and Port Penn boasts nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
As of May 1, the district was home to nearly 24,000 registered voters – 10,164 Democrats; 5,854 Republicans; and 7,799 voters unaffiliated with either party.
Republican officials last week acknowledged the importance of holding on to Hensley’s seat, but they also said finding the right candidate to succeed the long-serving representative – along with the four other retiring members of their caucus – is top of mind.
“We still have to find the right people in the right districts,” said House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) . “…Hopefully those people will be able to knock on enough doors and and let the constituents of those areas know how important keeping some semblance of balance in state government is.”
Hensley announced his decision not to seek reelection last week during a monthly coffee meeting with his constituents. A recent health diagnosis spurred his decision, he said.
His announcement followed a similar one from Hilovsky days prior, in which the Long Neck-area representative said in a statement that he would retire following the end of this year’s legislative session.
Hensley and Hilovsky’s respective announcements follow four other long-serving Republicans — Reps. Charles Postles, Ron Gray, and Richard Collins along with State Sen. Dave Lawson — saying they would not seek reelection.
Currently, nearly one-third of Republicans serving in the General Assembly will retire this fall. Spiegelman, the House Minority Whip, told Spotlight Delaware he was not aware of any other Republican representatives considering retirement.
He acknowledged it can be difficult as a Republican lawmaker in a predominantly Democratic state. But that dynamic, Spiegelman said, makes the upcoming election cycle that much more important.
“Of course we’re getting tired of losing battles,” Spiegelman said. “But again, the most important thing is preserving some semblance of balance in a very blue state.”
He added that Hensley’s retirement was solely due to the Odessa-area representative’s health, and not because of his 2024 drunk driving arrest or because he is tired of serving his constituents.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Hensley reflected on his 12 years in office. First elected in 2014, he said he was most proud of his work championing education. He specifically pointed to legislation he sponsored to create Delaware’s School Safety and Security Fund, and his work advocating for students with disabilities.
While Hensley said he is stepping away from government to prioritize his health, he did not rule out a return to public service in the future.
“I’m taking life on a day-by-day basis,” Hensley said. “However, I would never say never.”
Hilovsky’s decision to retire, the lawmaker said, was because of his desire to play an active role in his grandchildren’s lives. He said he wants to be able to pick up and visit them on his own schedule, not the General Assembly’s.
He highlighted his legislation surrounding diabetes care and improving financial literacy for Delaware students as work he is particularly proud of.
Hilovsky also stressed the importance of preventing Democrats from winning a supermajority in the House, a move he said would be “catastrophic.”
“I really think that only in the most significant circumstances that the [state] Constitution should be changed,” Hilovsky said. “And if we lose one seat, it will change overnight. Multiple things will happen that are not representative of the 45% of Delawareans that are not voting for Democrats.”
Hilovsky said he supports the Republican candidate running to succeed him, Dan Zitofsky. A Democrat, Gregg Lindner, is also running for the District 4 seat.
There currently is not a Republican candidate officially in the race to succeed Hensley in District 9, but he said multiple people have reached out to him expressing their interest in running.
Two Democrats, Gemma Lowery and Michelle Wall, have tossed their hats in the ring and are slated to face off in the Sept. 15 primary election.
“Frankly, my No. 1 goal is to make certain that somebody is in my seat that will work in the best interest of all of our constituents in the ninth district,” Hensley said.
The post More Republican retirements hit Delaware statehouse appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the technical workforce at remarkable speed. For fresh graduates and early-career professionals, this creates both excitement and uncertainty. AI can now automate many technical tasks once considered secure: generating infrastructure code, monitoring systems, analyzing logs, optimizing deployments, and increasingly managing operational workflows.
This raises an important question: How do technical professionals remain indispensable in a world where automation continues to expand? The answer is not to compete with AI on routine execution. It is to move upward – toward systems-level orchestration, computational strategy, and domain-specific operational expertise. This is where the combination of DevOps and SimOps offers a powerful career path.
DevOps operationalized software delivery by automating infrastructure, streamlining deployment pipelines, and creating shared responsibility between development and operations. SimOps extends these same principles into high-performance computing (HPC), engineering simulations, and AI-driven computational workflows. Together, they create a uniquely future-proof skillset.
Professionals who can automate software delivery and orchestrate computational innovation are not easily replaced by AI. These roles require architectural judgment, cross-disciplinary collaboration, performance optimization, and strategic decision-making – areas where AI serves best as an assistant rather than a substitute.
The professionals who thrive in the AI era will not resist automation. They will direct it.
Over the past decade, DevOps transformed how software is built and delivered. It solved the traditional disconnect between developers writing code and operators running production systems. Its major strengths include:
Despite its success, DevOps was designed primarily for software applications. Engineering simulations and scientific workloads introduce fundamentally different challenges.
These limitations create a gap between modern DevOps practices and computational engineering needs. Now, SimOps fills that gap.
Simulation Operations (SimOps) applies DevOps principles to engineering simulation, computational science, and AI-enabled modeling. It operationalizes computational innovation.
While DevOps focuses on software delivery, SimOps focuses on the orchestration of engineering simulations, high-performance computing, scientific workflows, AI-enhanced modeling pipelines, and engineering data lifecycle management. Its greatest strengths include:
Successful SimOps implementations focus on several core principles:
SimOps offers major opportunities, but especially for advanced SimOps practices, it also introduces additional complexity, like:
The move from DevOps to SimOps is less a career pivot than a strategic extension.
DevOps transformed software engineering. SimOps is doing the same for engineering simulation, AI-enabled product development, and computational science. For DevOps practitioners, this is not abandoning existing expertise – it is extending it into one of technology’s most advanced operational domains. The organizations building tomorrow’s digital twins, autonomous systems, climate models, and next-generation products will depend on professionals who can operationalize massive computational workloads with the same discipline DevOps brought to software.
In the AI era, career resilience will not come from doing what machines can automate. It will come from mastering the systems that make automation possible.
DevOps teaches you to operationalize software. SimOps teaches you to operationalize innovation. Together, they prepare you not for the jobs of yesterday, but for the computational leadership roles of tomorrow.
The SimOps Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to standardizing and automating simulation operations (SimOps) within the High-Performance Computing (HPC) and engineering sectors. By bridging the gap between engineering simulation and IT infrastructure, the Foundation provides a vendor-neutral framework for improving the efficiency, scalability, and reproducibility of complex data flows. Through its tiered certification programs, the “SimOps-compliant” software stack, the compute and data best practices, and a global community of practitioners, the Foundation empowers organizations to accelerate AI-powered innovation and streamline product development. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the SimOps Foundation is built on a decade of expertise and over 200 real-world engineering use cases. For more information, visit www.simops.com.
The post From DevOps to SimOps, And the World of High-Performance Computing, AI, Cloud, and Engineering Simulation Is Within Reach appeared first on HPCwire.
The bitter Michigan Senate primary was heating up earlier this month when a mystery group bought $5 million in TV ads boosting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s preferred candidate in the Democratic race, Haley Stevens.
The group had an anodyne name — the Center for Democratic Priorities — and no track record in Michigan politics. It was incorporated in Delaware seven months ago under a shroud of secrecy.
Online sleuths soon discovered, however, that whoever was behind the group had used the same consulting firm employed by a super PAC affiliated with AIPACs to buy the ads. Suspicions fell on the pro-Israel lobbying shop or its super PAC affiliate, which has repeatedly created so-called “pop-up” super PACs to influence elections elsewhere. AIPAC issued a denial that it was funding the ads.
Thanks to Federal Election Commission rules, voters may not know the true source of the ad campaign for months.
With the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision 16 years ago, special interest groups began using a raft of loopholes to pour money into elections without disclosing who was doing the spending. Super PACs can take in unlimited donations and spend unlimited amounts — as long as they do not coordinate directly with candidates. Now, big money forces in politics are growing ever more sophisticated about exploiting legal loopholes to obscure their identity.
Today, groups are setting up pop-up affiliates, gaming disclosure deadlines, and using party-specific conduits — akin to a sub-political action committee — to help deflect attention away from the origins of their cash.
“All their spending on election ads immediately before a primary or general election is anonymous to voters — particularly when they use names that have no meaning.”
“All their spending on election ads immediately before a primary or general election is anonymous to voters — particularly when they use names that have no meaning and have no indication of the broader groups they are tied to,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center and a former attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement division. “They are very damaging to transparency for that reason.”
In the 2026 election cycle, front groups are proliferating, with cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries getting in on AIPAC’s game.
Groups aligned with the two tech industries have split their operations into Democratic- and Republican-aligned affiliates. The benefit can be twofold: obscuring the ultimate source of the donations, while also attracting from the large pool of partisan funders who want to give donations solely to one party.
The “pop-up” super PACs and party-affiliate PACs are not always “dark money” — a loosely defined term that generally refers to political operations that don’t disclose their donors’ identities. Nevertheless, the way they are set up can make it much more difficult for voters to follow the lavish campaign spending.
Campaign finance experts say the trend is poised to continue unless Congress and the FEC decide to act. Until then, here is a guide to who is funding the groups, what they are called and how they work.
AIPAC used a complicated web of political committees to influence the Illinois primary elections in March. Whether or not it is using the same tactics in Michigan — the group did not respond to a request for comment — observers expect it to continue to hide its campaign spending in the months to come, as primary candidates battle over AIPAC’s influence.
AIPAC itself is a tax-exempt nonprofit, which prohibits direct engagement with electoral politics. But the group is publicly affiliated with a traditional political action committee that can take donations of up to $5,000 per year; AIPAC PAC can donate directly to candidate campaigns.
AIPAC’s supporters can also give to United Democracy Project, a so-called “super PAC.” United Democracy Project is openly affiliated with AIPAC, an increasingly toxic brand among Democrats.
As AIPAC weighed involvement in the recent Illinois primaries, three new “pop-up” super PACs took advantage of campaign finance reporting loopholes to hide their donors’ identities. The groups — Elect Chicago Women, Affordable Chicago Now, and Chicago Progressive Partnership — were created so late in the campaign that they were only required to disclose their donors after voting in the primary was over.
The groups were created so late in the campaign that they were only required to disclose their donors after voting in the primary was over.
The groups’ donors were finally revealed after the election. They included two wealthy Chicago political donors: Michael Sacks, the CEO of an asset management firm, and Anthony “Tony” Davis, the co-founder of a private equity firm.
Before those groups filed official campaign finance reports, journalists had built a circumstantial case linking them to AIPAC through the use of campaign vendors linked to the pro-Israel lobby group.
Eventually, the hard truth emerged. FEC reports filed after the election revealed that Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now got funds from United Democracy Project. Then Elect Chicago Women turned around and handed $1 million to the third group, Chicago Progressive Partnership.
That complicated two-step helped Chicago Progressive Partnership conceal its donors as it was running ads that many observers said were misleading. In Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, the group attempted to boost one pro-Palestinian candidate in an apparent attempt to harm another, the influencer Kat Abughazaleh. Abughazaleh ultimately lost.
In the same congressional race, Elect Chicago Women spent money to support state Sen. Laura Fine and oppose progressive Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who won.
In other races, it was easier for voters to track how AIPAC-aligned groups were spending their money. In some of the contests, the pop-up super PACs never popped up. Instead, United Democracy Project spent directly.
In Michigan, the new group Center for Democratic Priorities has yet to file any registration documents with the FEC. If it is classifying itself as a super PAC, it will not have to file disclosures revealing its donors until July 15, according to Ports.
With AI and crypto becoming increasingly ubiquitous, Washington is trying to sort out the regulations that could have huge impacts on these industries. In turn, crypto and AI businesses are making huge investments in electoral politics. So far, however, crypto and AI have taken a different approach to influencing elections than AIPAC. Rather than using “pop-up” super PACs, they have divided their influence operations into Republican and Democratic affiliates.
The biggest crypto super PAC is called Fairshake. The group is funded by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, as well as two crypto companies the firm has invested in, Coinbase and Ripple Labs.
The venture capital firm’s co-founder Marc Andreessen rose to fame in the 1990s for co-founding the web browser Netscape. More recently he has become notable as one of Donald Trump’s biggest defenders in the tech world and a frequent visitor to Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.
Fairshake spends money on Republican primaries through its GOP affiliate, Defend American Jobs, and Democratic races through an outfit called Protect Progress. Fairshake has portrayed itself as an equal-opportunity shop, but the group’s extraordinary spending in favor of Republican candidate Bernie Moreno in 2024, when he ousted former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, opened it up to accusations of partisanship.
Brown is now running to return to the Senate against JD Vance’s Republican replacement, Jon Husted. His rhetoric this time around has been notably more muted when it comes to crypto.
Fairshake’s split personality allows donors to pick a single-party affiliate for its campaign giving. Democratic megadonor and angel investor Ron Conway donated to Protect Progress in 2024, for instance, only to announce later that year that he was breaking from the network over its support of Moreno.
The model of using party-specific affiliates may be less deceptive than “pop-up” super PACs, Ports said, but it is still misleading.
“They know that a Republican voter doesn’t want to hear from a super PAC that supports Democratic candidates. [Republican voters] are not going to trust that messaging as much, or vice versa,” she said. “They are dividing this money up to try to present their message as persuasively as possible to their target audiences.”
Fairshake’s spending on Republicans has not gone far enough for some figures in the fractious crypto world. The Winklevoss twins — the brothers behind a top Coinbase competitor, a cryptocurrency exchange called Gemini, which is distinct from Google’s AI assistant — have given millions’ worth of bitcoin to the Digital Freedom Fund PAC, which is explicitly opposed to the Democratic Party. The Digital Freedom Fund has also drawn donations from crypto exchange Kraken, another Coinbase competitor. So far the PAC has not spent heavily on political campaigns, but that could change as the midterm election season heats up.
Yet another crypto political action committee, The Fellowship PAC, is chaired by an executive at the domestic affiliate of the international stablecoin company Tether, which has recently begun mounting a push into the U.S. market. The company is backed by $10 million in donations from Cantor Fitzgerald, the bank that holds the U.S. Treasury notes backing Tether’s stablecoins. Former Cantor Fitzgerald chief Howard Lutnick serves as Trump’s commerce secretary. The PAC has endorsed only Republican candidates thus far.
Two of the artificial intelligence industry’s biggest players are backing rival political influence operations. OpenAI and Anthropic have picked their fighters in a battle over how much of a role the government should play in regulating AI.
On one side, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife have donated to Leading the Future, a super PAC that aims to be an umbrella organization for the industry along the lines of Fairshake.
Perplexity AI and Andreessen Horowitz — which was an early investor in OpenAI — have also given money to the umbrella super PAC.
Leading the Future has a Democratic affiliate, Think Big, as well as a Republican arm, American Mission. Conway, the Democratic megadonor, has given only to Think Big, while Joe Lonsdale, the voluble right-wing venture capitalist, has given to American Mission.
If that structure sounds eerily similar to Fairshake, that is no accident. One of Leading the Future’s shot-callers is Josh Vlasto, a political operative who once worked for two powerful New York Democrats: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
OpenAI has generally favored a more relaxed approach to AI regulation. One of its top competitors, Anthropic, has staked out a position — at least rhetorically — in favor of stricter rules.
To pursue that aim, Anthropic recently created a traditional corporate political action committee, AnthroPAC, that can donate directly to politicians.
The $380 billion company has also made a major donation to a political nonprofit called Public First Action. That group sits at the heart of a network of affiliated super PACs: the bipartisan Public First PAC, the Democratic-aligned Jobs and Democracy PAC, and the Defending Our Values PAC for Republican causes.
The Republican and Democratic affiliates are led respectively by former Reps. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, and Brad Carson, D-Okla.
Public First Action has donated to all three super PACs. In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson called the three PACs “aligned” but said they all operate independently and that Anthropic does not play a role in directing any of the groups’ political spending.
“Public First Action did not establish Jobs and Democracy PAC, Public First PAC, or Defending Our Values PAC, all of which are independent from Public First Action and were established separately,” said the spokesperson, Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez.
In a recent North Carolina primary, Public First Action’s Democratic affiliate spent $1.6 million boosting incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee over her opponent Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner who has supported a moratorium on AI data center construction.
Allam told The Intercept that she believes the Anthropic-backed super PAC network has split its spending arms into Democratic and Republican affiliates to blunt attacks like those that have dogged United Democracy Project. AIPAC’s super PAC has long faced criticism in Democratic primaries for drawing donations from Trump-supporting billionaires.
Anthropic and its backers “are trying to confuse folks to say, ‘we’re not the same,’ so that their spending is not on the same FEC reports,” she said.
Anthropic voluntarily disclosed its donation to Public First Action. But since the group is set up as a nonprofit rather than a campaign committee, voters may never know who Public First Action’s other donors are. And the group does not intend to disclose them, Rivera-Rodriguez said.
“We’d welcome a broader conversation about transparency in political spending, starting with the hundreds of millions Big Tech companies are spending to prevent any regulation of AI whatsoever,” he said. “That said, Public First Action, Jobs and Democracy PAC, Public First PAC, and Defending Our Values PAC make all public disclosures required by law either to the FEC or the IRS, and those filings are publicly available online. Additionally, all advertisements by those groups include the required disclaimers identifying who is paying for the advertisement.”
Allam is convinced that spending from AIPAC and the Anthropic-backed groups helped tip her race. She claimed 48.2 percent of the vote compared to Foushee’s 49.2 percent.
“For the incumbent to not receive more than 50 percent of her district’s support, that shows you that working families want change, they want something different,” she said. “We can build a progressive grassroots movement without being aligned with the same people who gave us Trump and MAGA Republicans.”
Correction: May 18, 2026, 12:53 p.m. ET
A graphic previously featured the Winklevoss twins as represented in the 2010 movie “The Social Network”; the images have been replaced with photos of the Winklevoss twins.
The post Who’s Spending in Your Congressional Election? We Tracked the Front Groups Fueling the 2026 Midterms. appeared first on The Intercept.
Temperatures in France and England could rise by 15C, while hot air could to give way to snow in parts of US
After a prolonged spell of cool conditions across much of Europe, a dramatic swing in temperatures is expected in the coming days as warmer air surges north into western and central parts of the continent.
A large blocking high over the North Atlantic and slow-moving low pressure across southern Scandinavia dragged Arctic air southwards last week, sending temperatures 10-15C below the seasonal average for more than a week.
Continue reading...The historian won $50,000 for her nonfiction book Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions, which judges praised as deeply researched, ‘highly original’ and ‘vividly alive’
A “highly original” nonfiction by Melbourne historian Clare Wright, charting the creation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions – a seminal moment in Australia’s history of land rights – has won book of the year at the NSW literary awards.
The Petitions were landmark documents presented by Yolŋu elders to the Australian parliament in 1963 on painted bark frames, which sought government intervention after a portion of Arnhem Land Reserve was licensed to a French mining company. Though it didn’t halt mining on the land, the petitions led to the first land rights legislation in Australia, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
Continue reading...Civilians left increasingly exposed as a dangerous new front opens up in the country’s decades-old conflict
As night fell over southern Colombia, and a group of children began their weekly Tuesday football match, a drone appeared overhead.
The children looked up, and the drone dropped a grenade, its blast killing a 10-year-old boy and injuring 12 more civilians. The child’s death, in southern Cauca in 2024, marked the first known time a person in the country had been killed in a weaponised drone attack.
Continue reading...
I recently wrote about babies dying from a rare but fatal condition called vitamin K deficiency bleeding. To report the story, I analyzed hundreds of rows of data, contacted more than 50 hospitals and birthing centers, and filed nearly 90 public records requests. But autopsy reports — one record of how these babies died — painted the clearest picture of these tragedies.
I’m sharing some of the most critical lessons I learned from the autopsy reports in hopes of creating a greater awareness of this condition and highlighting what decades of research and interviews with dozens of doctors found: In almost every case, the deaths could have been prevented with a simple shot of vitamin K at birth.
ProPublica is not sharing the babies’ names, the dates or years of death, or the locations within a state to protect the families’ privacy.
Babies need vitamin K to help their blood clot, but they aren’t born with enough of it in their system. Two researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1943 for their discovery of vitamin K and its ability to form clots and stop bleeding in babies, and the vitamin K shot has been a standard intervention for newborns in the U.S. since the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended it more than 60 years ago.
But in recent years, parents have started refusing the shot. Although the vitamin K shot is not a vaccine, it has become entangled in the anti-vaccine movement. False and misleading information online has led some parents to believe the shot is harmful. In addition, some parents have voiced a desire for a more natural birthing experience, one without pharmaceutical intervention. And some simply don’t want their babies to go through the pain of an injection that they don’t believe is necessary.
Hospital data and research studies have documented this shift. In December, a national study of more than 5 million births found that the rate of babies not receiving vitamin K jumped 77% from 2017 to 2024. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that newborns who don’t get the shot are 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding. In many cases, there are no warning signs. The babies are healthy and happy just days and sometimes hours before they suffer catastrophic bleeding.
Not all deaths are investigated by a medical examiner or coroner, but I filed open records requests in several states and counties to obtain those that were. One of the first things that stood out was how clear the role of vitamin K was in many of the cases. Vitamin K deficiency was listed in the autopsies as the immediate cause of death or as contributing to it. Details about parents refusing the vitamin K shot also were usually included.
In this autopsy from Minnesota, the medical examiner determined the baby died of vitamin K deficiency bleeding. The second line included the fact that vitamin K was not received as part of preventive care after the baby was born.
Seeing vitamin K deficiency listed as a cause of death was important because it removed doubt that the bleeding could have been caused by another factor, such as an injury. The other autopsies I examined also used similar language.
One of the challenges around vitamin K deficiency bleeding is the data. State and federal agencies don’t track which babies don’t get the shot and which babies suffer bleeds or die. Many medical experts told me that the number of deaths directly attributed to vitamin K — fewer than a dozen annually — are only part of the story. Hundreds of babies die every year from spontaneous bleeding in the brain. Some of those deaths, these experts said, likely are related to vitamin K deficiency bleeding. This has led doctors to call for better reporting and tracking.
Most of the autopsies didn’t just list medical findings. They contained summaries and descriptions, including a baby’s weight, length, hair and eye color. One of the details that struck me is what the babies came to the morgue with: a hospital band around the ankle, an unsoiled diaper, a blue blanket.
It reminded me of Tim O’Brien’s classic collection of linked short stories, “The Things They Carried,” about what soldiers take with them, both physically and emotionally. These items were a heartbreaking reminder that these babies were just that — babies who had yet to take their first step or kick their first soccer ball.
The autopsies described, often in painstaking detail, what the babies endured. In this case of a 1-month-old from Alabama, the autopsy found that the baby had suffered subdural and subarachnoid hemorrhage, which are types of bleeds that occur in different areas immediately on top of the brain. The first, subdural, occurs when blood collects under one of the layers of tissue inside the skull that protect the brain. A subarachnoid bleed occurs in the space below a different layer. A cerebral edema is a type of swelling in the brain, and necrosis of the brain is the death of living brain tissue. The autopsy also described the cause as “hemorrhagic disease of newborn,” the previous name of vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which some clinicians still use.
Autopsies are official records and often are written as such. I reached out to pathologists and other doctors to help me understand and translate the medical terminology. As agonizing as it was, it was important to document. Our job as reporters is to bear witness to the truth, as distressing as it may be.
Some of the autopsies had a section titled “Evidence of Medical Intervention.” In it, the pathologists described what steps the doctors and nurses took to try to save the babies. Doctors inserted tubes into the babies’ airways, connected them to IVs, ordered blood transfusions. It’s an excruciating section to read because if things had gone differently, the baby may have survived.
In this case from Kentucky, the medical team attempted several lifesaving measures. Still, the baby coded twice. Doctors were able to resuscitate him the first time, but the second time, after about half an hour of trying to bring him back again, his parents finally told them they could stop.
The autopsies underscored just how preventable these deaths could have been. Seeing the tiny footprints of one of those babies in the autopsy records is a haunting reminder of that.
Parents frame their baby’s footprints to hang on the wall or tuck into keepsake boxes. The footprints often elicit a rush of happy memories.
But when those footprints appear in autopsy records, they transform into a tragic reminder of how tiny the babies were when they died.
I want to understand more about why families decline a vitamin K shot. I know how difficult it is to talk about losing a child and how hard it can be to process this kind of grief. Words can’t express how sorry I am for your loss. ProPublica’s goal is to give the public the best, most trustworthy information. If you have a story to share, I hope you will reach out to me when you’re ready.
Duaa Eldeib
Send me your tips, stories and documents. Reach me by email or securely on Signal at 312-730-4797. I take the protection of my sources extremely seriously.
The post Tiny Footprints, a Blue Blanket: What I Can’t Forget About the Babies Who Died of Vitamin K Deficiency appeared first on ProPublica.
A crisis pregnancy center in Sandpoint, Idaho, wants to expand women's healthcare three years after the labor and delivery unit at the town's hospital closed and its OB-GYNs moved out of state.
Trump warning over peace talks drives up crude price as UK gilts hit by uncertainty over Starmer leadership
Oil prices rose and global bonds wobbled on Monday, as fresh tensions in the Middle East fed inflation fears and bets that central banks will have to increase interest rates.
Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, rose on Monday, after an attack on a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates.
Continue reading...People’s party wins regional election but loses absolute majority, opening door to possibly months of negotiations
Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) won Sunday’s Andalucían regional election, but lost its absolute majority, leaving it dependent on the support or abstention of the far-right Vox party to form a new government.
After the poll in Spain’s most populous region – which will serve as a barometer of wider electoral opinion before next year’s general election – the socialists slumped to an all-time low and Vox picked up one additional seat.
Continue reading...With the LIRR strike entering its third day, the MTA and union leaders will resume talks at 7:30 a.m. Monday.
The final is the most expensive ticket on resale for this summer’s tournament. But there are surprising get-in prices elsewhere
It’s no surprise that the most expensive World Cup resale tickets are for the final. But the next priciest is a group game between two nations who have never reached that showpiece occasion.
A ticket to the Colombia v Portugal group game in Miami on 27 June is the tournament’s second-most expensive seat on the resale marketplace, with a cheapest asking price of $2,254 as of 17 May, according to TicketData.com, an analysis site.
Continue reading...Iran's government "wants to charge the world's largest tech companies for using the subsea internet cables laid under the Strait of Hormuz," reports CNN. Their article also notes that Iran's state-linked media outlets "have vaguely threatened that traffic could be disrupted if firms don't pay." Lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan last week which could target submarine cables linking Arab countries to Europe and Asia. "We will impose fees on internet cables," Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X last week. Iran's Revolutionary Guards-linked media said Tehran's plan to extract revenue from the strait would require companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to comply with Iranian law while submarine cable companies would be required to pay licensing fees for cable passage, with repair and maintenance rights given exclusively to Iranian firms. Some of these companies have invested in the cables running through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it's unclear if those cables traverse Iranian waters. It's also unclear how the regime could force tech giants to comply, as they are barred from making payments to Iran due to strict US sanctions; as a result, the companies themselves may view Iran's statements as posturing rather than serious policy. Still, state-affiliated media outlets have issued veiled threats warning of damage to cables that could impact some of the trillions of dollars in global data transmission and affect worldwide internet connectivity... Iran's threats are part of a strategy to demonstrate its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and ensure the survival of the regime, a core objective for the Islamic Republic in this war, said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East lead at Bloomberg Economics. "It aims to impose such a hefty cost on the global economy that no-one will dare attack Iran again," she said. The article notes that subsea cables "carry vast internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf," and that targetting them "would affect far more than internet speeds, threatening everything from banking systems, military communications and AI cloud infrastructure to remote work, online gaming and streaming services." CNN spoke to Mostafa Ahmed, "a senior researcher at the United Arab Emirates-based Habtoor Research Center, who published a paper on the effects of a large-scale attack on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf." Armed with combat divers, small submarines, and underwater drones, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) poses a risk to underwater cables, Ahmed said, adding that any attack could trigger a cascading "digital catastrophe" across several continents. Iran's neighbors across the Persian Gulf could face severe disruptions to internet connection, potentially impacting critical oil and gas exports as well as banking. Beyond the region, India could see a large proportion of its internet traffic affected, threatening its huge outsourcing industry with losses amounting to billions, according to Ahmed... Any disruption could also slow financial trading and cross-border transactions between Europe and Asia, while parts of East Africa could face internet blackouts. And if Iran's proxies decide to employ similar tactics in the Red Sea, the damage could be far worse.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Abu Dhabi denounces ‘dangerous escalation’ as Iran war ceasefire grows more precarious, and US president voices impatience at stalemate
The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies in what the UAE called a “dangerous escalation”.
The fire was just outside the Barakah nuclear plant and caused no injuries or radiation alerts, with the emirate’s nuclear regulator saying there was no radioactive leak or risk to the public.
Continue reading...Mid-range Android stands out with huge screen, slick software and dot-matrix display, but falls just short of greatness
Nothing’s latest quirky smartphone is a huge aluminium Android with three cameras and a big LED matrix screen on the back that challenges the notion mid-range phones can’t be just a bit more fun.
The Phone 4a Pro is a bit of a departure from UK-based Nothing’s previous glass-clad transparent designs. It still has a touch of those elements but only in the camera island at the top, with the rest of the body now solid aluminium – a rare sight in the world of Android phones.
Continue reading...Bought what I thought was an XR. Ordered a drop in battery for it. Should be coming in some time this week. In the process of getting a third party app working I realized I’m on hardware 3206. After a quick google search I realized I’ve been bamboozled and this is a first gen + with XR rail guards. Now what do I do with the battery that’s coming and what do I do with this old board that nobody supports anymore?
Just a quick vent! I’ve had such bad luck with this “sport”. But I love it so much I can’t quit. Got my first board, a GT stolen, pintX next, just stopped working one day, out of warranty and blew up the electronics trying to troubleshoot myself, bought a used pint because money is tight now, wasn’t just a bad battery, bought this used but working + but can’t go more than 3 miles. Car is still in the shop and I needed this thing to get around. F to the A! Ugh!!!!
I need a miracle from the Onewheel gods! Or monies…
The region must build its own security, not buy it.
Requests for gas connections by operators amount to more than 15 terawatt hours per year, endangering climate targets
More than 100 new datacentres in the UK plan to burn gas to generate electricity, some potentially doing so permanently.
British officials say this is an inevitable consequence of a years-long wait to connect to the National Grid, and raises an “interesting question” about the UK’s climate targets.
Continue reading...Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 18.
Four crew members are safe after incident involving aircraft during weekend air show at military base in western Idaho
Four crew members are safe after two navy jets collided and crashed to the ground on Sunday at an air show at Mountain Home air force base in western Idaho, officials said.
The collision involved two US navy EA-18G Growlers from the Electronic Attack Squadron 129 in Whidbey Island, Washington, said Cmdr Amelia Umayam, a spokesperson for Naval Air Forces, US Pacific Fleet.
Continue reading...Today Linus Torvalds announced another Linux release candidate on the kernel mailing list. But he also highlighted "documentation updates" to address a new problem. "The continued flood of AI reports has basically made the security list almost entirely unmanageable, with enormous duplication due to different people finding the same things with the same tools." (The new documentation says the security team has found "bugs discovered this way systematically surface simultaneously across multiple researchers, often on the same day.") TORVALDS: People spend all their time just forwarding things to the right people or saying "that was already fixed a week/month ago" and pointing to the public discussion. Which is all entirely pointless churn, and we're making it clear that AI-detected bugs are pretty much by definition not secret, and treating them on some private list is a waste of time for everybody involved — and only makes that duplication worse because the reporters can't even see each other's reports. AI tools are great, but only if they actually help, rather than cause unnecessary pain and pointless make-believe work. Feel free to use them, but use them in a way that is productive and makes for a better experience. The documentation may be a bit less blunt than I am, but that's the core gist of it. The new documentation offers this overview. "It turns out that the majority of the bugs reported via the security team are just regular bugs that have been improperly qualified as security bugs due to a lack of awareness of the Linux kernel's threat model." "So just to make it really clear," Torvalds said at the end of his post. "If you found a bug using AI tools, the chances are somebody else found it too. "If you actually want to add value, read the documentation, create a patch too, and add some real value on *top* of what the AI did. Don't be the drive-by 'send a random report with no real understanding' kind of person. Ok?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Singer and actor who has appeared in more than 40 films faces investigations in France and Belgium
The French singer and actor Patrick Bruel, the subject of multiple rape allegations, protested his innocence on Sunday and said he would not step away from his work.
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced earlier on Sunday that Bruel was the subject of at least four complaints of sexual assault in France, and that the cases would be investigated together.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
Continue reading...USC athlete dominates field with illegal +5.6m/s tailwind
Sprinter has twice run faster than Patrick Johnson’s 9.93s
Australian sprinter Eddie Nketia has clocked a staggering 100m time of 9.74 seconds at a college meet in the US – but it won’t count for record purposes because of a howling tailwind.
Nketia, who recently swapped his allegiance from New Zealand to Australia, did the 100m/200m double for the University of Southern California at the Big Ten Track and Field Championships in Nebraska on Sunday.
Continue reading...I’ve been riding my Pint X for a while now and am looking to upgrade, but I can’t seem to find out how much stronger the GT is in comparison. I live way out in the middle of Alaska, and some of the hills get decently steep. For reference, if needed, I’m 5'11" and 220 lbs.
Rai lauds ‘invaluable’ advice from wife Gaurika Bishnoi
‘Incredible’ to have name on trophy with Woods
Aaron Rai’s life changed on the 18th green at Aronimink, but his lifestyle didn’t. Rai, 31 from Wolverhampton, became the first Englishman to win the PGA Championship since 1919, earning himself $3,690,000, and a lifetime exemption to the tournament doing it, and promptly said he was going to celebrate it all by going to Chipotle. He didn’t seem quite able to take in what he had achieved, and had no idea about what would come next, whether it was a tilt at another major, or a run at the Ryder Cup, only that it would all begin with a visit to his favourite burrito joint.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead just yet,” Rai said when he was asked how he would celebrate. “He’ll probably have Chipotle,” his wife, Gaurika Bishnoi, cut in. Presumably he’s buying.
Continue reading...America's Library of Congress "is preserving a little piece of Hell," jokes Engadget, "by inducting the soundtrack to the original Doom into the National Recording Registry." The album of demon-slaying tracks is joined by several other notable 2026 additions to the registry, like Weezer's self-titled debut album (colloquially known as "The Blue Album"), Taylor Swift's "1989," Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) and the original "Mambo No. 5." "Doom" was created by Bobby Prince, a freelance composer who worked on lots of id Software games, and also scored Doom's '90s rival Duke Nukem 3D. The soundtrack draws clear inspiration from metal bands, but also touches on techno and ambient music throughout its track list, making for an eclectic soundscape for tearing through enemies. That it all fits together is also impressive in its own right: All of the music for Doom was written before the game had completed levels to play through, according to Prince. The official announcement from the Library of Congress says Doom "brought a heavy metal energy to MS-DOS systems across the globe," while also pioneering first-person shooter videogames. "Key to Doom's popularity was the adrenaline-fueled soundtrack created by freelance video game music composer Bobby Prince. Prince, a lifelong musician and practicing lawyer, was fascinated by the MIDI technology that rose in prominence in the mid-1980s as a means for instrument control and composition... For "Doom," Prince took inspiration from a pile of CDs loaned by the game's chief designer, John Romero, including seminal works by Alice in Chains, Pantera and Metallica. Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journey to hell and back. Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Float watch- can the order of the menus be changed? I am trying to get the shaping menu to be the second menu displayed after the speed/ duty cycle. I can’t figure out how to change it so the shaping options are more readily available. Would be nice to change shaping from street to trail on the fly without having to swipe left 4-5 times.
While the LIRR work stoppage has caused a mess for people heading to weekend events, the real concern is Monday morning's commute.
I’ve been wanting to upgrade my GT and I’ve been talking around
I want to get a 6 inch hub n52 magnets
GTV or Thor 301 kit
Indy speed control 20s2p pnp battery with bms
flight fins
The only question I have is what is better to do consider considering I’m new and I don’t have any experience. Should I try the Thor 301 I’ve never vesc anything before and I’m not sure if I want to screw up my GT by doing something wrong
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 18, No. 1,794.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 18, No. 1,072.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 18, No. 806.
At least 80 deaths have been reported in a new Ebola disease outbreak in Congo and Uganda, authorities said.
Senate parliamentarian ruled a proposal to fund $1bn in security additions for the White House failed to meet procedural rules. Key US politics stories from Sunday 17 May 2026 at a glance
A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperilling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
The decision by the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, deals a blow to Trump and his administration, which has sought the money for security purposes related to the ballroom.
Continue reading...Today former Google CEO Eric Schmidt "was booed multiple times," reports NBC News, "while discussing AI during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona." Schmidt had started by remembering how computer platforms "gave everyone a voice" but also "degraded the public square... They rewarded outrage. They amplified our worst instincts. They coarsen the way we speak to each other, and that way, and in the way that we treat each other, is in the essence of a society." But then Schmidt "drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos." "I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you," Schmidt said, addressing the crowd as many continued to boo him. "There is a fear ... there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear." He went on to argue that the future remains unwritten and that the graduating class of 2026 has real power to shape how AI develops — a claim that drew further disapproval from parts of the audience... He closed by congratulating the class and offering them closing words. "The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it." 404 Media shared a video on YouTube of the crowd's booing — and what Schmidt said that provoked them: SCHMIDT: "If you don't care about science that's okay because AI is going to touch everything else as well. [Very loud booing] Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done..." "You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. [Loud booing] When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on... The rocket ship is here."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
️ Aaron Rai put together one of the great closing rounds – and sunk a monster putt for the ages – to finally scatter a bunched field at Aronimink
️ Official leaderboard
Parish noticeboard. Shane Lowry finished his week as he started it, with a fine round of 68. He never really got over the top into the water at 17 on Friday; that Cognizant Classic collapse cuts deep. He’s +2 for his week’s work. Matt Wallace won’t become the first Englishman to win since Jim Barnes in 1919, but he ends his tournament with a 68 as well; he’s +2 too. A final round of 74 for last weekend’s nearly man at the Truist, Alex Fitzpatrick, who departs his maiden Stateside major at +8. And Europe’s Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald finishes a very respectable week in style, with a 69 that puts the 48-year-old veteran at +7.
While we’re on the subject of tournament records, let’s give fair measure to Kurt Kitayama. His round of 63 ties the lowest final-round score at any PGA Championship, set by Brad Faxon at Riviera in 1995. Faxon stays top of the list, however, on account of Riviera being a par 71, so his round was eight under par, compared to Kitayama’s seven. But we’re splitting hairs here. Kitayama deserves his flowers.
Continue reading...  | Had a blast one wheeling around DC! Thanks to friendwitha for making it all happen. [link] [comments] |
In a heartfelt sign-off, Cooper reflects on the stories, risks, adventures, and human connections that defined his two decades with television's most iconic newsmagazine.
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.
Prediction market users are profiting from bets on war. Analysts say suspiciously timed bets, and the high win rates of wagers on military outcomes , are likely signs of insider trading.
More than $1 billion has been bet online on military decisions and outcomes this year on Polymarket. Some wagers have been suspiciously timed, with information seemingly coming from insiders.
London black cab drivers, who are required to memorize thousands of streets to get their license, are being tested in a new way. Several companies are trying to bring robotaxis to the city's streets.
London's famed black cab drivers memorize 25,000 streets to get a license, but with robotaxis soon giving rides in London, cabbies could face new competition.
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."
Director Christopher Nolan imagines every movie is the last he'll ever make. He brought that mindset to "The Odyssey."
Sunday's win at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, is only his second PGA tour victory, after winning the 2024 Wyndham Championship.
Rai shoots 65 including 68-foot birdie putt on 17th
Last Englishman to triumph was Jim Barnes 107 years ago
There’s never been a PGA Championship quite like the one that’s played out at Aronimink this week. At the start of the last day, there were 21 players within four shots of the lead, and eight major winners among them, every one of them sure that they had a shot at winning the Wanamaker Trophy.
There was the six-time major champion Rory McIlroy, the 2022 Open champion, Cam Smith, the 2017 and 2022 PGA champion, Justin Thomas, the 2021 US Open and 2023 Masters champion, Jon Rahm, and on, and on, and on, all the way down the leaderboard, past Hideki Matsuyama, Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele, Patrick Reed and plenty of other contenders too.
Continue reading...Body says, on average, British women approaching retirement have half private pension savings of men – £81,000 versus £156,000
A shake-up of pensions in Britain must involve measures to close the gap in retirement savings between men and women, the revived Pensions Commission is to tell ministers.
According to the government-backed body, women approaching retirement have on average half the private pension savings of men, with a median pension wealth of £81,000 versus £156,000.
Continue reading...Justice secretary’s white paper will overhaul youth justice rules and could end lifelong criminal records for under-18s
David Lammy has promised to cut the number of children kept in jail while they await trial by a quarter as part of an overhaul of youth justice rules that could also end lifelong criminal records for under-18s.
The justice secretary is publishing a white paper on Monday that he says will reduce the number of children ending up in jail – something he admits was his greatest fear growing up in Tottenham in the 1980s.
Continue reading...Survey shows businesses ‘struggling to absorb latest economic shock’, while data says April vacancies down 7.7%
The worsening fallout from the Iran war is forcing businesses to halt their UK investment and hiring plans, bosses have warned, as Britain enters a renewed period of political and economic instability.
More than two months into the US-Israeli war on Iran, leading surveys of UK employers showed companies were increasingly prioritising cost management over growth as rising costs and global uncertainty weigh on confidence.
Continue reading...Two campaign groups claim that change to how NHS treatments are approved amounts to ‘unlawful power grab’
Campaigners against the UK’s controversial drug pricing deal with Donald Trump are threatening the government with legal action unless it scraps a key element of the plan.
They claim that a change to how drug treatments are approved for use by the NHS, which could lead to it paying even higher prices for them, amounts to an “unlawful power grab”.
Continue reading...Luke Grimes leads the Yellowstone sequel.
 | Note: The tie downs are temporary. Just have to go a couple miles to pick up my ratchet straps. Also moving the license plate to the back of the cargo tray. [link] [comments] |
160 miles north of New York City, a man was convicted of manslaughter "with the help of license plate reader technology," reports a local news station. In the small town of Troy (population: 51,000), the mayor described the cameras as "a critical tool" in that investigation. But locals and city officials "have raised concerns about who can access the data collected locally, along with data security, privacy invasions and use by federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reports WNYT: When Troy's contract came up for renewal, Mayor Carmella Mantello wanted to keep paying Flock and the council paused payments. The mayor then issued a public safety emergency declaration to keep the license plate readers active. The council has filed a lawsuit to overturn that..."If this illegal emergency order is left unchallenged, we give this mayor and any future mayor regardless of their political party or ideology, unchecked authority to issue an emergency declaration whenever they disagree with the council on any issue," [said Troy council president Sue Steele]. "The technology that's in place today is not the technology of six years ago," council president Steele told another local news station. "We have AI, we have rapidly changing and advancing technology. So that begs the need for regulations to protect certain data." The American Civil Liberties Union warns that Flock will use AI to let law enforcement search its trove of videos. But "Listen, if it was infringing on people's rights, people's liberties, we'd be the first to get rid of it. We have safeguards in place," [mayor] Mantello responded. Mantello noted that data captured by Troy's Flock cameras is only being shared with other local municipalities. Steele said the data had been shared nationally until she and other elected officials raised concerns. "As far as sharing with local law enforcement, that's necessary in the normal course of investigations. The concern is what Flock does with this data: sharing it with ICE, for instance, and other nefarious outlets," Steele said. As the debate continues over the small city's 26 Flock cameras, a columnist in Albany wrote that "it's a good thing. We should be asking questions about the growing surveillance state. We should be debating whether this is the future we want." As the American Civil Liberties Union noted, [Flock] has quietly built a broad mass-surveillance infrastructure, with cameras installed in 5,000 communities around the country, and is continually expanding how that network is used. Did we ask for that? Did we vote for it? Not really. The cameras have been installed in municipality after municipality, mostly with little discussion or controversy, which makes us like the proverbial frogs who didn't notice the water getting warmer until it was boiling. Suddenly, surveillance cameras are everywhere; we're always being watched... [T]he City Council's Democratic majority is considering legislation that, among other steps, would require that data collected by the cameras be generally deleted after 48 hours and that the city be more transparent about how the cameras are used. The controversy and pushback continues to draw local coverage. The mayor complains the proposed rules restricts the cameras "almost exclusively to cases involving individuals with outstanding felony arrest warrants or situations where officers can determine in advance that an incident will result in a felony charge... This is beyond reckless." But the Albany columnist still argues many of America's Flock cameras are unnecessary and are "being installed just because... It's worth considering where this might lead and whether the future we're installing is the future we want."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
So the Antic subreddit is now restricted and not accepting any posts. Anyone have any clue what the story is behind that?
I just got my Antic and it was DOA. I went back and forth with their support and replaced the throttle assembly, but that just made the situation worse. Starting to sound like a lot of them have issues and my suspicion is that the subreddit is restricted to suppress people posting about it.
At any rate, I was super excited, but after my experience and seeing that lots of others have issues i’d avoid the product for the time being. Unacceptable to have to replace parts myself on a $3,000 product vs. just having a replacement shipped out.
Hey everyone,
Just picked up a used XR and sorting out my safety gear. Helmet is done — now focusing on hands.
I work as a surgeon so protecting my hands and wrists is non-negotiable. After some research I'm leaning toward a modular setup — Flexmeter D30 Double Sided wrist guards with a separate full-finger glove (looking at the 100% Celium) worn underneath for finger and palm abrasion protection.
Has anyone run this combo or something similar? Keen to hear from experienced riders whether this works practically in terms of fit and comfort, or whether there's a better setup for full hand and wrist protection.
Cheers
British Chambers of Commerce survey shows firms ‘are dealing with rising levels of theft, fraud and cyber-attacks’
UK business leaders have warned that crime is becoming an increasingly “serious barrier” to growing Britain’s economy amid a rise in shoplifting, fraud and cyber-attacks against companies.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which represents tens of thousands of businesses across the country, called on the government to provide “a step change in the support businesses can count on” as it said two-fifths of companies had experienced some form of crime in the past year.
Continue reading...Tim Walz, the state’s governor, calls blazes ‘unpredictable and fast-moving’ as dry, windy weather fuels them
Minnesota’s national guard has been activated to help battle wildfires burning in the northern part of the state after the department of natural resources requested additional support.
Governor Tim Walz authorized the deployment by issuing an executive order that declared a peacetime emergency.
Continue reading...
RACHEL GEHRMAN
Staff Reporter
Coffee is ingrained in the everyday routines of many college students — sometimes keeping their eyelids wide during all-nighter studying, or other times just serving as motivation to make it from one task to another. The caffeinated beverage has been a prominent aspect in American culture since the Boston Tea Party in 1773, but today, coffee’s role in our society varies widely — especially here on a college campus.
Socialization among college students is a large part of their university experience, though apart from dorm life and nightlife, desirable hangout activities can be limited. A common go-to activity has become “grabbing a coffee” — minimal money required, a sit-down spot provided, plus you get a fun drink to accompany conversation.
Coffee runs are casual and versatile enough for friends who have a short window of free time, a date with someone you are not entirely comfortable with and even a relaxed business meeting with a boss.
Or, working the other way around, socialization can act as the justification for buying coffee. It is easier to convince yourself that a $7 latte is worth your money when you are also catching up with a friend. Coffee can even be viewed as a replacement for alcohol for a new generation of young adults — chatting at a cafe to replace a night spent at the bar.
However, younger generations are not only buying coffee for the social environment that often comes alongside it. For college students especially, a drink from Starbucks or Dunkin’ can work as a dopamine hit rather than a means to energize. With companies constantly releasing exciting new flavors and combinations, such as Dunkin’s recent banana-inspired spring menu, it is easy to crave a coffee for the sake of drinking something sugary and delicious.
Why bore yourself sitting through class without a coffee when a Starbucks cold brew makes it that much better?
In today’s coffee culture, people do not need to enjoy pure, bitter coffee to enjoy drinking it. There are so many ways to customize a coffee to satisfy your desired taste, whether that be through creamers, cold foams or syrups.
Speaking of customization, there is a psychological phenomenon that explains another aspect of coffee obsession. The “IKEA effect” describes how we often value things more when we are involved in its creation. The “IKEA effect” is highly applicable to coffee companies that encourage consumers to make the product their own. Especially with chain businesses, customers can easily alter a coffee’s sweetness, dairy, ice, syrups and toppings to create their signature, go-to drink.
Companies often capitalize on this desire for consumers to create their own orders, and with a growing market for sugar lovers, on the sweet tooths of those who dislike plain coffee. 7 Brew, a newly popularized drive-through drink chain, offers over 20,000 drink variations. Catered towards a vast expanse of sweet-oriented preferences, some coffee options include the Funnel Cake Macchiato, the Frosted Cookie Breve and the Toasted Marshmallow Cold Brew.
Though coffee will always be a reliable option for a bad night’s sleep or the start of a work day, the familiar caffeinated beverage has many more reasons to be purchased in today’s society. A justification for socializing, a creative outlet for customization or a sugary, trending dopamine boost, coffee now appeals to more people and more tastes than ever.
Forbes describes it as "definitely already out there, and under active exploitation according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, urging all organizations to prioritize timely remediation as the attack vector poses a significant risk." "We have issued CVE-2026-42897 to address a spoofing vulnerability affecting Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA)," Microsoft told SecurityWeek. "We recommend customers enable EEMS to be better protected, and to follow our guidance available here." Microsoft this week patched 137 vulnerabilities with its Patch Tuesday updates and the cybersecurity industry was surprised to see that the latest updates did not address any zero-days. However, a zero-day was disclosed just 48 hours later, on May 14... described as a spoofing and XSS issue affecting Exchange Server Subscription Edition, 2016, and 2019. "Improper neutralization of input during web page generation ('cross-site scripting') in Microsoft Exchange Server allows an unauthorized attacker to perform spoofing over a network," Microsoft said in its advisory. The company noted that the vulnerability affects Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA) and an attacker can exploit it by sending a specially crafted email to the targeted user. "If the user opens the email in Outlook Web Access and certain interaction conditions are met, arbitrary JavaScript can be executed in the browser context," Microsoft explained. CSO Online shares more details. "Admins should note there are known issues once the mitigation is applied either manually or automatically through the EM Service." - OWA Print Calendar functionality might not work. As a workaround, copy the data or screenshot the calendar you want to print, or use Outlook Desktop client. - Inline images might not display correctly in the recipient's OWA reading pane. As a workaround, send images as email attachments or use Outlook Desktop client... - Admins may get a message saying "Mitigation invalid for this Exchange version." in mitigation details. This issue is cosmetic and the mitigation does apply successfully if the status is shown as "Applied". Microsoft is investigating how to address this glitch. Forbes notes "It's been something of a rough few days for Microsoft Exchange on the security vulnerability front," since this week also saw a zero-day demonstrated at the Pwn2Own Berlin hacking event, "which has been responsibly disclosed and not released into the wild." The Berlin event got off to a flying start on May 14 as Windows 11 was hit by no less than three zero-day exploits. On day two, hacking teams were no less successful, chaining together three new vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange in order to achieve the holy grail of SYSTEM-level remote code execution. Such was the level of this achievement that Orange Tsai from the DEVCORE Research Team was rewarded with a $200,000 bounty payment in return for immediately handing over all the technical details to the event organizers. "This is, in fact, good news," Forbes writes, since "full details of the vulnerabilities underlying the exploits, along with the technical nature of the exploit code itself, will be handed over to Microsoft, which will then have 90 days to provide a fix before any details are made public."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hello, looking for guidance before buying a new battery for my Onewheel XR. I am dying after about 4 miles and my app is not displaying the correct battery life. Any insight here or links for other battery purchasing sites? Thanks!
The attack, the largest and most deadly to target the Russian capital region since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, showed Kyiv’s increasing ability to carry out long-range strikes.
Wave of almost 600 drones launched across 14 regions, after Moscow’s deadly three-day attack on Ukraine last week
One of Ukraine’s largest ever drone strikes against Russia’s regions, including Moscow, has killed at least four people and wounded a dozen more, the Russian authorities have said.
The wave of almost 600 Ukrainian drones struck overnight across 14 Russian regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday, with the area around the capital among the worst-hit.
Continue reading...President Trump said "there won't be anything left of them" if Iranian leaders do not "get moving, FAST."
"Call Her Daddy" host Alex Cooper said on Instagram that she and husband Matt Kaplan are expecting their first child.
 | My rally XL makes a repeating whirring noise that gets faster from around 5 to 8 miles an hour and then goes away. It's my first one wheel and I'm just wondering if this is normal, I bought it new and I've put 42 miles on it so far. You can hear it best in the beginning of the video before the wind picks up. [link] [comments] |
White House-backed event billed as ‘One Nation Under God’ criticized for blurring lines between church and state
Thousands of people streamed on to the National Mall for a daylong prayer rally on Sunday billed as a “rededication of our country as One Nation Under God”.
Against the backdrop of the Washington Monument, worship music blared from a stage that made clear the event’s Christian focus. Arched stained-glass windows, set underneath grand columns resembling a federal building, depicted the nation’s founders alongside a white cross.
Continue reading..."We may have accidentally detected dark matter back in 2019," writes ScienceAlert. "What if instead of trying to see dark matter, scientists attempted to hear it instead?" asks Space.com: New research suggests dark matter could leave a tiny but discernible imprint in the cacophony of ripples in spacetime called "gravitational waves" that ring through the cosmos when two black holes slam together and merge... Fortunately, when it comes to detecting gravitational waves from colliding black holes, humanity's instruments, such as LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), are getting more and more sensitive all the time... Vicente and colleagues searched through data gathered by LIGO and its fellow gravitational wave detectors, KAGRA (Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) and Virgo, focusing on 28 of the clearest signals from merging black holes. Of these, 27 appeared to have come from mergers that occurred in the relative vacuum of space. One signal, however, GW190728, first heard on July 19, 2019, and the result of merging binary black holes with a combined mass of 20 times that of the sun and located an estimated 8 billion light-years away, seemed to carry the telltale trace of this merger occurring in a region of dense, "buttery" dark matter. The team behind this research is quick to point out that this can't be considered a positive detection of dark matter, but does say it gives us a hint at what to look for and thus where to direct follow-up investigations... "We know that dark matter is around us. It just has to be dense enough for us to see its effects," said team leader Josu Aurrekoetxea, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Physics. "Black holes provide a mechanism to enhance this density, which we can now search for by analyzing the gravitational waves emitted when they merge." They published their results this week in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As the campaign draws to a close, we looked at what each of the teams did best this season in the English top-flight
“What enriches you is the game, not the result. The result is a piece of data,” the Spanish football coach Juanma Lillo once said. “The birthrate goes up. Is that enriching? No. But the process that led to that? Now that’s enriching.”
Let that serve as the thinking behind the first annual Football Style Awards, a celebration of process over results. These awards are not about who won, though they are about pieces of data. A club data scientist friend and I have spent the last year building a new football app called futi that measures not just who’s good but what they’re good at, based on detailed phase of play data and models that measure how teams and players play.
Continue reading...Reform, which won more than 50% of the local election vote, is likely to focus heavily on immigration and Brexit
Andy Burnham faces a perilous race to win the Makerfield seat, his allies have said, as he gears up to fight a byelection that could decide the long-term future of Labour and the country.
The Greater Manchester mayor is likely to be confirmed as Labour’s candidate for the north-west constituency later this week, but those close to him say he faces an uphill battle to beat Reform UK. Nigel Farage’s party won more than 50% of the vote at the local elections and polling suggests Burnham is only marginally ahead.
Continue reading...Canal+ head says he will not work with hundreds of actors and directors who signed protest against Vincent Bolloré’s political sway
The head of France’s biggest film producer, Canal+, has said the group will no longer work with hundreds of cinema figures who signed a petition voicing concern over the growing influence of the rightwing billionaire owner Vincent Bolloré.
The open letter, published earlier this week to coincide with the opening of the Cannes film festival, was signed by more than 600 figures, including the actor-director Juliette Binoche, the director and photographer Raymond Depardon, the French-Iranian film-maker Sepideh Farsi and the director Arthur Harari, who co-wrote the Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and is premiering his film The Unknown in the main competition in Cannes.
Continue reading...  | This just started where I will be riding and the motor with start jerking violently and make a horrible screeching noise. I think it's hall sensors or hall sensor wiring. Has anyone else had this issue?? [link] [comments] |
On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Ambassador Alexander Yui, Taiwan's Representative to the U.S., join Margaret Brennan.
DYLAN DEVINE
Staff Reporter
The Delaware Blue Hens men’s lacrosse 2026 season is officially over. The team will not head to Virginia to compete in the Atlantic 10 (A-10) Conference tournament, and will end the year 5-8 overall.
Despite the tough aches of the season, the team has learned more from each other than from its losses. The men’s lacrosse team embarked on a new chapter in its program’s history, leaving the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) and heading to the A-10 Conference. The team marked the end of its 23 seasons in the conference, finishing with two regular-season titles, as well as five CAA conference tournament titles.
This was one of the most anticipated and competitive seasons in program history. The Blue Hens faced off against many of the top 25 teams in either offense, defense, or both.
Delaware had started its 2026 season against Utah on the road in Wilmington due to weather complications in the Newark area. It proved to be a testament to a season of new challenges with unexpected twists and turns.
The team picked up its first win of the season on the road against the St. John’s Red Storm in a close 12-11 victory, but then lost its next five games. It struggled to secure a win at home until finally breaking the streak with a 9-4 victory over Binghamton University.
Head coach Ben DeLuca, in his eighth season with the Blue Hens, said he is proud of how far his team has come this year.
“Adversity reveals character, for sure,” DeLuca said. “We hit a lot of adversity, a lot of challenges throughout the year, most of which were unexpected, and that’s kind of the way it happens.”
The home win against Binghamton marked the beginning of the run that Delaware had desperately been looking for, as they went on to earn their first conference win of the season with a 12–6 victory over Hobart and William Smith College.
The third straight win during this streak, against the University of Massachusetts Minutemen, was the first victory for Delaware in Amherst since 2015. The confidence that Delaware had gained continued into the fourth straight win against St. Bonaventure University, with a 19-16 victory on senior day. The team would end its season with a 3-3 record in conference play.
Delaware was able to rally towards the end of the season, winning four straight games before heading into the last game of the season against a fierce opponent, Saint Joseph’s University (SJU). Delaware knows the Hawks all too well, having won 17 of the last 22 games against them.
Unfortunately, the Blue Hens’ efforts came up short in the last game of the season, losing to SJU 15-5. The game was a win-and-in situation for Delaware, as they would have clinched a spot in the A-10 Conference tournament.
Jason Kolar, a graduate student midfielder in his second season as one of the team’s captains, understands his role and the impact he has on his teammates.
“You’re always looking out for other guys, and making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and they’re being held to the same standard that you’re holding yourself to,” Kolar said.
The team understands the importance of sticking together through the hardships, injuries and losses. Players have all been able to hold the standard of community and professionalism both on and off the field.
“If I didn’t show up in practice one day and it looked like I started to quit, like I started to give up, then everyone else is gonna feel that way,” Kolar said. “So, it begins with us.”
The culture and community that Deluca, his staff, Kolar and the rest of the team have built is the key to the team’s success heading into their 2027 campaign. The Delaware program has turned hardships into valuable motivational lessons.
With the highly anticipated 2027 season ahead, DeLuca expects his team to carry the momentum from this season and use it as fuel to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2023.
Rescuers airlifted an injured hiker who fell about 50 feet from the summit of Washington state's Mount Si on Saturday.
Test scores "are lower than they were a decade ago in school districts across the U.S.," reports Times magazine, citing new data released Wednesday by Stanford researchers. "Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math." But Stanford's announcement notes that America's schools "were in a 'learning recession' for seven years before the COVID-19 pandemic, with student test scores in math and reading on a steady decline since 2013." This reversal ended two decades of progress, according to Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford Graduate School of Education, whose data forms the backbone of the new research... The study reframes the narrative of pandemic-era learning loss, arguing that the crisis of the last few years was an acceleration of a problem that was already underway. "The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement," said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and a lead author of the report... The study found that the slowdown in learning coincided with two major shifts in American childhood and education policy: the widespread dismantling of test-based accountability systems that defined the No Child Left Behind era and the rise of social media use among young people. Reading scores, in particular, suffered consistently, with the average annual loss in the years just before the pandemic being just as large as the loss during it... Today, 8th-grade reading scores on national assessments are at their lowest point since 1990. Compounding the problem, chronic student absenteeism remains a major obstacle to improving learning. Though down from its pandemic peak, 23 percent of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, far above the pre-pandemic rate of 15 percent. More context from Time magazine: Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math... "The decline started around the time that social media's use among teens was exploding, and this was also occurring in a number of other countries," says Thomas Kane, one of the authors of the Educational Scorecard report and a professor at Harvard University... [H]e maintains that it is at the core of the decline in reading achievement. He points out that social media use was shown to be heaviest among the lowest achieving students. "Some states and school districts are making progress," notes the Associated Press, "largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers." And "The picture is also brighter in math. Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 17, 2026.
Saturday night’s fight came a decade too late to be relevant. But it also provided a spectacle MMA’s most powerful organization has been lacking
When Ronda Rousey stepped into the cage for the first time in almost a decade on Saturday night to challenge fellow mixed martial arts trailblazer Gina Carano, the fight was over before it ever really began. In a flash, Rousey had Carano locked in her signature armbar, leaving her opponent little choice but to tap. The fight lasted a mere 17 seconds.
“I didn’t really want to hurt her,” Rousey said after her win. “It was beautiful martial arts, that’s what I think that was. It was art.”
Continue reading...US president writes ‘vote the bum out’ as congressman faces close race against Trump-endorsed Republican
With two days to go before the next big test of Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
Over an eight-hour period starting in the early hours of Sunday, Trump took to his bully pulpit on Truth Social to taunt Massie, one of very few senior Republicans who has dared to defy him. Massie is the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”, the rant began, followed by a mid-morning exhortation to Kentucky voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday”.
Continue reading...Excluding capital would be ‘missed opportunity’, says Sadiq Khan, given existing assets and ‘world-class infrastructure’
The mayor of London has criticised plans to explore a bid for the north of England to host the Olympics, saying that excluding London would be a “missed opportunity”.
Ministers have commissioned an assessment by UK Sport which could inform a bid for the international sporting event in the 2040s. If the campaign were successful, it would be the first time the Olympic Games and Paralympics were hosted in Britain since London 2012.
Continue reading...The Senate's rulemaker delivered a blow to GOP plans to fund security for President Trump's overhaul of the East Wing of the White House.
Bulgaria’s first-ever win in European song contest delivers ray of hope at turbulent time after years of political instability
Bulgarians have rejoiced in their country’s first victory at the Eurovision song contest as fans welcomed home the singer whose party anthem Bangaranga proved an unexpected breakthrough hit.
“Dara is yet more proof that Bulgaria can win,” declared the new prime minister, Rumen Radev, of Darina Nikolaeva Yotova, known simply as Dara. He hailed “a young artist who, thanks to her talent and professionalism, has managed to rise above all the complexities and prejudices surrounding the [Eurovision] voting process”.
Continue reading...Long Island Rail Road disruptions likely to affect weekday rush hour as Kathy Hochul says ‘I did not want a strike’
The shutdown of the Long Island Rail Road, North America’s largest commuter rail system, continued into a second day on Sunday after unionized workers went on strike a day earlier for the first time in three decades.
The railroad, which serves New York City and its eastern suburbs, ceased operations just after midnight Friday after five unions representing about half its workforce walked off the job.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek: When Fisker Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2024, it left roughly 11,000 Ocean SUV owners holding the keys to vehicles that cost them anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 — and that were rapidly losing the software brains that made them work. No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty. The manufacturer was dead. What happened next is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the electric vehicle industry. Instead of accepting that their cars would become rolling paperweights, Fisker Ocean owners organized, reverse-engineered their vehicles' proprietary software, hacked into CAN bus networks, built open-source tools on GitHub, and effectively stood up a volunteer-run open-sourced car company from the ashes of Fisker... Within months of the bankruptcy filing, thousands of Ocean owners formed the Fisker Owners Association (FOA) — a nonprofit that quickly grew to 4,000 members and began operating as something between a car club, a tech startup, and an independent automaker. The FOA hired independent tech experts who began reverse-engineering Fisker's proprietary software patches. Members taught each other how to flash firmware. They organized bulk purchases of replacement parts — negotiating the price of key fobs down from roughly $1,000 each to a fraction of that through coordinated group buys. They hosted free global key fob pairing events, saving each owner $100 to $250... What started as desperate troubleshooting has evolved into a genuine open-source ecosystem around the Fisker Ocean. On GitHub, a developer named MichaelOE reverse-engineered the API behind Fisker's official "My Fisker" mobile app and built a Home Assistant integration that exposes every cloud API value as a sensor — with all the app's buttons available as Home Assistant controls... [Community members have also been systematically mapping CAN bus files.] The article noes this "is not an isolated incident. Nikola also filed for bankruptcy, leaving its owners in a similar bind. Canoo and Arrival are headed for liquidation auctions..." Consumer advocates are now pushing for structural changes: mandatory software escrow funds that would keep vehicle software running even if the manufacturer disappears, open-source mandates in bankruptcy proceedings, and shared repair data requirements... European automakers, meanwhile, are moving in a different direction entirely — Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and eight suppliers signed a memorandum in 2025 to develop a shared open-source automotive software platform.... The Fisker Owners Association has proven that a dedicated community can keep orphaned EVs on the road. But they shouldn't have had to... [O]wners shouldn't need to become hackers and parts brokers and quasi-manufacturers just to keep driving the cars they already paid for.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Buoyed by his removal of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, the US president is intensifying an economic stranglehold and military menace
While the world watched the pomp of Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing, the US was turning up the pressure thousands of miles away. Its oil blockade has plunged Cuba into a humanitarian crisis, sparking nationwide blackouts that have prompted rare protests, closing schools and universities and leaving hospitals battling to treat patients. Surveillance flights are circling. US media reported this weekend that federal prosecutors are preparing an indictment for Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president and brother of Fidel. Mr Trump has casually observed, while bragging about the kidnapping of Venezuela’s then leader Nicolás Maduro in January, that “Cuba is next”.
A military assault on Havana would be vastly more fraught for the US – even without the war on Iran – and disastrous for Cubans. Washington hopes that threats and privation will be sufficient. UN experts warn that the blockade is unlawful, puts human rights at risk and may amount to collective punishment. The government admitted on Wednesday that fuel oil had run out. Tourism has collapsed. The Canadian mining company Sherritt pulled out of a joint venture and countries have axed their contracts for Cuban doctors – a vital source of income for the island, and trained medical staff for others. Havana may hope that it can stagger on. But Mr Trump is not patient.
Continue reading...Ronda Rousey used her signature armbar to stop Gina Carano just 17 seconds into a comeback bout between the two MMA fighters.
Officers were allegedly racially abused at Tommy Robinson march, which failed to draw huge numbers it was hoping for
Tommy Robinson’s “unite the kingdom” rally failed to get the huge numbers it wanted to march through London, with police confident that the crowd at his protest on Saturday was less than half the size of that at an event last year.
The far-right rally happened on the same day as a pro-Palestinian march, and the Metropolitan police said 43 arrests were made during the two events.
Continue reading...Gas prices, inflation weigh on Americans. Many see lack of clarity on what's happening in Iran.
The following is the transcript of the interview with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 17, 2026.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Ambassador Alexander Yui, Taiwan's representative to the U.S., that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 17, 2026.
Journalist Simone Stolzoff in a new book explores why modern life makes not knowing harder – and how to learn to live with it
Simone Stolzoff describes himself as “naturally an uncertain person” inclined to rumination and self-doubt. This tendency benefits him in his work as a journalist, but can otherwise be a double-edged sword.
While working for a magazine in New York, Stolzoff was approached about a job at a design firm in San Francisco. Now, he laughs at how tortured he felt “having to decide between two attractive career paths”.
Continue reading...Taiwan's representative to the U.S. Alexander Yui said on Sunday that "we want peace and stability" as Taiwan became among the most closely-watched issues in last week's summit.
Long-time Slashdot reader internet-redstar shares an interestging response to "the recent wave of Linux kernel privilege escalation vulnerabilities like 'Copy Fail' and 'Dirty Frag'": Belgian Linux sysadmin and Tesla Hacker "Jasper Nuyens" got tired of the idea of manually blacklisting dozens or even hundreds of obscure kernel modules across large fleets of Linux systems in the near future. So he wrote ModuleJail, a GPLv3 shell script that scans a running Linux system and automatically blacklists currently unused kernel modules, reducing kernel attack surface without requiring a reboot. The idea is simple: many modern Linux privilege escalation bugs target obscure or rarely used kernel functionality that is still enabled by default on servers that do not actually need it. ModuleJail works across major distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora, AlmaLinux and Arch Linux, generating 1 modprobe blacklist rules file while preserving commonly-used modules. Nuyens argues that the increasing speed of AI-assisted vulnerability discovery will likely turn kernel hardening and attack surface reduction into a much bigger operational priority for sysadmins over the next few weeks and months.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Exclusive: Families of men facing death penalty join opposition to proposals to run courses for defence ministry
The families of two scholars facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia have appealed to the University of Cambridge to drop proposals to run staff training courses for Riyadh’s defence ministry.
The Guardian revealed last week that Cambridge’s Judge business school has been authorised to offer “leadership development” and “innovation management” training for the Saudi defence ministry’s staff, despite internal opposition within the university over the kingdom’s record on human rights and academic freedom.
Continue reading...Tom Steyer has built his campaign for governor of California around affordability – he’s not the only Democrat testing the party’s appetite for a populist from the 1%
Tom Steyer has built his campaign for governor of California around affordability – and taxing the uber-wealthy.
It is perhaps an unusual message for a candidate with an estimated net worth of $2.4bn. But the hedge fund founder-turned climate activist and liberal mega-donor is pitching himself as a different kind of billionaire: one who wants people like him to pay far more in taxes.
Continue reading...Exhibition explores how artists mainly known for their paintings helped revive a skill that had fallen out of fashion
They may be best known for their vibrant oil paintings but an exhibition opening in the English West Country is focusing instead on the subtle printmaking skills of artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
More than 50 prints created mainly by impressionists, post-impressionists and cubists are going on display at the Holburne Museum in Bath.
Continue reading...
GIA JOELLA
Managing Arts and Culture Editor
The world of esports has, in recent years, launched initiatives to create new opportunities for marginalized genders. In 2021, Riot Games hosted its first VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Game Changers tournament, a top-tier competitive circuit for players of marginalized genders. The program has now reached its fifth year.
The university has followed this trend in its own esports program. In 2023, it introduced VALORANT Sphinx, its first team solely for marginalized genders. Soon after that, it introduced its second team, Overwatch Phoenix.
Kaitlyn Huynh, a senior animal sciences major and VALORANT Sphinx’s team captain, believes that having these spaces for marginalized genders has encouraged more players to participate in esports.
“You see it a lot when we’re at the Involvement Fair and we try to get people to join,” Huynh said. “Sometimes you see other girls that walk by and eye you down, and you can tell they play video games, but they don’t always walk up because they feel like they’re going to get judged. It’s so helpful to have other women standing at the booth.”
Sylv Chen, a sophomore majoring in game studies and esports as well as computer science, joined VALORANT Sphinx on a whim during their freshman year. They chose to join a team for marginalized genders because of the community it offered.
“With marginalized genders, it’s like you kind of all understand the struggles that you’re going through, so you’re all very supportive of each other,” Chen said.
Esports function very similarly to traditional sports. They hold tryouts, which usually take place at the beginning of the fall semester, and spend about 10 to 15 hours each week practicing in addition to six to eight hours of matches, depending on how many leagues they are playing in. Each team has a coach who reviews their gameplay, and every player receives a custom jersey.
Shelby Turner, a freshman cognitive sciences major who joined VALORANT Sphinx after participating in an esports camp with Huynh, feels that the team’s closeness is what makes it special.
“They’re genuinely the sweetest group of people ever,” Turner said. “I’m so happy that these are the people that I got to play my first full year with.”
Though Huynh has been asked to join the university’s coed team, she has chosen to stay with VALORANT Sphinx because of her teammates.
“I like the women and nonbinary teams because it feels more like friends rather than just competition,” Huynh said. “I’d rather just stay where I am even if I’m not competing at the highest level that I could be. I’m able to make memories with my friends and have a good time instead of just having the competition.”
The university’s esports program is still mostly male, but since the inclusion of VALORANT Sphinx and Overwatch Phoenix, the number of players of marginalized genders has grown from just a few to a third of the program’s players in only three years, Huynh said.
Chen believes that the advantage male players have over marginalized genders begins early in their lives.
“Men are kind of told to play games when they’re young, and they’re kind of told that it’s normal for them to, and so they get a lot better very quickly,” Chen said. “It’s not super normalized for marginalized genders to play competitive video games. So I think when that becomes more normalized as a whole, then we’ll start to see more of these players get a lot better.”
Turner’s earliest memory of video games was playing Minecraft with her father and LittleBigPlanet with her mother, while Huynh grew up playing Call of Duty with her father. They both believe that playing video games from a young age led them to eventually participate in esports.
“It’s insane to see so many of us that enjoy gaming and playing at the highest level that we can play, but also being able to keep each other up when there’s a lot of sexism and stuff in those games especially,” Huynh said. “It’s very interesting to see everyone come together and lift each other up.”
Humpback stranded on sandbank was unlikely to survive, experts had said, recommending it be left to die in peace
The German authorities have defended their decision to allow a risky rescue attempt of a stranded whale to go ahead, despite experts warning it was “inadvisable” because the animal was hurt and unlikely to survive.
The saga of the whale, known as Timmy, had gripped Germany since the beached humpback was spotted stranded on Timmendorfer beach, a sandbank in shallow waters near the coast, nearly two months ago.
Continue reading...Award to be officially announced on Sunday evening
Canadian aiming to deliver OKC back-to-back titles
Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been voted the NBA Most Valuable Player for the second consecutive season, ESPN reported Sunday morning.
The official announcement of the winner is set to come at Sunday at 7.30pm.
Continue reading...Researchers in Dublin discovered the oldest surviving English poem in a Roman library.
Are statistical programmers coalescing around a handful of popular languages? That's the question asked by the CEO of software assessment site TIOBE, which every month estimates the popularity of programming languages based on their frequency in search results: This month, the programming language R matched its all-time high by reaching position #8 in the TIOBE index once again. This is not a coincidence. The statistical programming language market is clearly undergoing a major consolidation. The biggest winners are Python and R, while many long-established alternatives continue to lose momentum. The era in which the statistical computing landscape was fragmented across many niche languages and platforms appears to be coming to an end. Several established players are steadily declining: — MATLAB is close to dropping out of the TIOBE top 20. — SAS is about to leave the top 30 for the first time since the TIOBE index began. — Wolfram/Mathematica remains well below its historical peak and is losing further ground. — SPSS dropped out of the top 100 last month.... Elsewhere in the index, Java and C++ swapped positions this month. Java gained momentum following the successful release of Java 26. Another notable riser is Zig, which is approaching the TIOBE top 30 for the first time. Zig's growing popularity appears to be driven by its rare combination of low-level performance, straightforward tooling, and relative ease of use compared to traditional systems programming languages. Their estimate for the most popular programming languages in May: PythonCJavaC++C#JavaScriptVisual BasicRSQLDelphi/Object Pascal The five next most popular languages on their rankings are Fortran, Scratch, Perl, PHP, and then Rust at #15. Rust is up for positions from May of 2025 — while Go has dropped to #16, seven ranks lower than its May 2025 position of #7.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The following is the transcript of the interview with former Defense Secretary Robert Gates that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 17, 2026.
"Sunday Morning" shares the love for three traditional foods in the City of Brotherly Love.
Ex-health secretary’s allies rally to defend him after culture secretary calls his comments about rejoining bloc ‘odd’
A row has broken out at the top of the Labour party over whether Britain should try to rejoin the EU after Wes Streeting said the country should eventually seek to regain membership.
Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last week in protest at Keir Starmer’s leadership, kicked off a war of words after he argued on Saturday that Britain’s future lay back in the EU.
Continue reading...Jon Favreau, creator of the "Star Wars" series "The Mandalorian," has now brought the father-son relationship of Pedro Pascal's bounty hunter and his charge "Baby Yoda" to the big screen.
Unspecified number of officers from royalty and specialist protection team being investigated, force confirms
Police officers accused of being asleep when they were supposed to be protecting the royal family at Windsor Castle have been placed under investigation.
An unspecified number of officers from the Metropolitan police’s royalty and specialist protection team are being investigated after concerns were raised, the force confirmed. The Sun, which first reported the story, said up to 30 officers were involved.
Continue reading...The French fashion house is today the world's largest luxury brand. "Sunday Morning" talks with artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière, who is shaping the future of Louis Vuitton by designing the unexpected.
Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, are small, fully-functional secondary homes located on the same property as a main home, usually in the backyard, filling a vital need where housing has proved scant or expensive.
Campaigners say symbolism of Magyar inauguration must translate into real change for Roma rights after years of Orbán discrimination
The clutch of young Roma boys in black bow ties were lined up beneath the ornate arches and royal frescoes of Hungary’s dazzling parliament. Moments after Péter Magyar was sworn in, bringing an end to Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power, the young musicians launched into the unofficial anthem of Roma in Hungary, leaving many MPs wiping away tears.
It was an extraordinary moment – one that fused the nationwide hope for change with the longstanding aspirations of the country’s most marginalised community. Roma rights campaigners have seized the moment, calling on the new government to ensure that the symbolism of last weekendtranslates into real change.
Continue reading...The Vaillancourt fountain, an enormous sculpture in place since the 1970s, has been equally reviled and revered
It was a surreal, fitting end for one of San Francisco’s most divisive public artworks: the Vaillancourt fountain, an enormous concrete sculpture looming over Embarcadero Plaza since the 1970s, had burst into flames.
The hulking fountain’s angled arms were being dismantled in early May after the city voted to potentially replace it with an open, grassy park – a decision mourned by skateboarders like myself, who argued the city was losing an important piece of its skate culture and architectural heritage.
Continue reading...Daniel Sikkema is accused of hiring someone to kill his husband, Brent Sikkema, amid a divorce and alleged fights over money
In the early morning hours of 14 January 2024, a hitman slipped into the renowned New York City gallerist Brent Sikkema’s Rio de Janeiro townhouse.
The alleged assassin, Alejandro Triana Prevez, grabbed a kitchen knife and traveled to Sikkema’s upstairs bedroom. An altercation unfolded near the bedroom door. As Sikkema, 75, struggled for his life, Prevez stabbed him, a lawsuit filed in New York state civil court alleges.
Continue reading...China is dominating the energy transition with astonishing result, while fossil fuel fascists in the US try to turn back the clock
“Farewell,” the flag-waving Chinese children chanted to Donald Trump as he strolled along the red carpet back to Air Force One at the end of his summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The US leader claimed he was leaving with a cluster of “fantastic” trade deals to sell US oil, jets and soya beans to China. That has not been confirmed by his smiling host, but one thing was crystal clear from the two days of meetings: the global balance of power is shifting, from the declining petrostate in the west to the rising electrostate in the east.
Continue reading...If your smartwatch is making you anxious, you're not alone. This is what research and experts have to say about it.
Incumbent GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who had occasionally broken with the Trump administration, lost his bid for a third term.
After record losses last year, beekeepers report a warm winter has led to bees ‘waking up earlier’ this year
After a series of record-breaking US heatwaves, the 2026 bee swarm season in North America has started 17 days earlier than last year, pushing beekeepers to adapt to a rapidly shifting season while raising new questions about how honeybees are responding to the climate crisis.
According to a new report published by Swarmed, a tracking network of more than 10,000 beekeepers, focused on safe and ethical honeybee relocation, this year’s unusually early swarm season follows several years of record colony declines worldwide.
Continue reading...James Clyburn could now find his district dismantled after supreme court effectively gutted Voting Rights Act
South Carolina has had exactly one Black representative in Congress since 1897: James Clyburn. A proposal to redraw the state’s political map would dismantle the district he represents.
The state’s sixth congressional district starts on its southern border with Georgia, in the suburbs of Savannah, moving a hundred miles north to wind around the heart of Charleston, before cutting through Black belt farmland to the state capital of Columbia, another 115 miles away.
Continue reading...39-year-old stops 44-year-old with signature armbar
Rousey says fight will be the last of her career
Ronda Rousey stopped Gina Carano with her signature armbar just 17 seconds into the two fighters’ double comeback bout on Saturday night.
After finishing the 44-year-old Carano with a ferocity that evoked her famous heyday, the 39-year-old Rousey reaffirmed that this was the epilogue to her historic MMA career. She insists she is headed into retirement after ending on a dominant victory.
Continue reading...The search for the remains of the four Italian divers was suspended Saturday, after a Maldivian military diver died.
xAI has launched Grok Build, "a coding agent of its own to serve as competitor to its rivals' products, such as Anthropic's Claude Code," reports Engadget: As Bloomberg notes, xAI has been trying to catch up to its rival companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, previously admitted that it has fallen behind its competitors when it comes to coding. A couple of months ago, Musk said he was rebuilding xAI "from the foundations up" after several co-founders had left the company. One of the company's executives reportedly told staffers to work on getting Grok to match Claude's performance across various tasks. More details from PCMag: Grok Build is currently available in beta to those with a SuperGrok Heavy subscription, which starts at $300 per month. Just download it from the xAI website and log in. It's described as "a powerful new coding agent and CLI for professional software engineering and complex coding work." In its early version, xAI is seeking feedback and looking to fix any bugs... Only a few features have been highlighted, including a plan mode that lets you review, edit, and approve a plan before execution, and support for existing plug-ins and workflows.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Lisa Nandy says no candidate has launched a challenge to Keir Starmer, despite ‘feverish speculation’ around Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting
The Conservative leader called accusations her party could not win a general election “very silly”.
Trevor Phillips, questioning Kemi Badenoch on Sky, suggested she was “reluctant to accept what the voters have said” in the local election results.
Continue reading...Experts say slashed funding and growing misinformation are some of the greatest challenges facing public health
The hantavirus outbreak, while unlikely to spark the next big pandemic, is shining a spotlight on the ways public health has deteriorated in the US: its ability to test for rare diseases, its expertise on outbreak prevention and response, its ability to battle misinformation and restore trust.
“Assuming everything goes well in containing this outbreak, which I hope it does, the takeaway from that should not be ‘we’re fine,’” said Stephanie Psaki, former White House global health security coordinator. “We’re not ready for this type of threat.”
Continue reading...Pilot program to reimburse patients for hemp-derived products could be undermined by ban passed by Congress
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently started a new pilot to reimburse patients for hemp-derived products – like CBD – but a hemp ban that Congress passed in November could derail the program.
The new program will make certain Medicare and Medicaid recipients eligible for reimbursement for up to $500 worth of hemp products each year and is intended in part to evaluate whether these products could reduce their other health related costs.
Continue reading...Known for his ‘Manitowoc Minute’ skits and midwestern humor, the journalist turned comedian is speaking out against the AI datacenter boom in Wisconsin
Last summer, journalist turned comedian Charlie Berens started getting social media messages from concerned Wisconsin residents about plans for a massive datacenter campus in their state.
The developer, Vantage Data Centers, claimed the $8bn project would largely run on zero-emission energy resources like solar, wind and battery storage. The company said the campus would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and potentially more than 1,000 permanent jobs to Port Washington, a city of 13,000 people about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. Residents opposed the project for what they said was lack of transparency and criticized the lucrative tax incentives offered to Vantage. They worried about the strain on local water and energy sources from an enormous 1.3-gigawatt project that could ultimately span 1,900 acres.
Continue reading...The FTC settled its case with Media Matters for America. But it doesn’t have to win in court to achieve its goals
Is there something “radically left” about being anti-Nazi? That was the question a judge put to the lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, which has no good answer.
This week, the FTC abruptly settled its case with Media Matters for America, a media watchdog the FTC had been investigating over its reports about pro-Nazi content running alongside ads on X. Those reports drove advertisers off the platform and prompted the X owner, Elon Musk, to threaten a “thermonuclear lawsuit”.
Continue reading...Russian defenses shot down 81 drones headed for Moscow overnight, state agency Tass reported, citing Sobyanin.
Paris police used teargas on Saturday and UK shops stayed shut on Sunday after rush for Royal Pop timepieces
Swatch closed its stores in the UK and in some cities in Europe and the US at the weekend after the launch of a limited-edition watch caused chaos.
Shoppers waited throughout the night, and in some cases for several days, hoping to buy the Royal Pop timepieces – made in collaboration with the luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet – on Saturday.
Continue reading...Actor says Ensemble 84 in Horden, employing local talent, is how a professional repertory company should be
It’s a chilly spring evening in what was once a Catholic church in a left-behind County Durham pit village, and Ian McKellen admits he is feeling emotional.
“This is the only company of actors in the United Kingdom and it’s in … Horden?” he says. “I’m feeling very emotional. This fulfils all my romantic dreams I’ve had ever since I discovered the joys of theatre-going and acting.”
Continue reading...The 2022 World Cup failed to deliver on its environmental promises. From air travel emissions to heat-related dangers, the 2026 edition will be even worse
Soccer fans are increasingly watching preparations for the 2026 World Cup through their fingers. The most popular sporting event on the planet is awash in controversy, whether it’s the eye-watering ticket prices, the question of Iran’s participation while the president of one of the host countries threatens war crimes against it, or the role that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement may or may not play in policing the event. And yet, lost in the political pyrotechnics is a fiasco that carries as much long-term peril as any: the tournament’s staggering contribution to runaway climate change.
The 2026 World Cup is not only the most politically combustible tournament in modern history, but it is also on track to be the “most polluting” World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. Scientists conservatively project that the tournament will generate around 9m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Air travel comprises approximately 7.7m tons of this carbon budget, and more than four times that of the average for tournaments held between 2010 and 2022. The researchers note that the worst-case upper estimate for air transport is about 13.7m tons of CO2. That may sound bad, but that’s just because World Cup emissions have never been worse.
Continue reading...Apple said that this isn't unusual and that it's temporary.
In Troy, New York, residents and city officials are at odds over police use of Flock cameras, which some call a safety tool and others see as surveillance.
Union representative concerned about safety as workers rush to finish repainting DC pool before 250th celebrations
Workers renovating one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic sites in a project ordered by Donald Trump may be risking their safety as they race to finish on time for the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations, a union monitoring the site has warned.
Trade union scrutiny has focused on the reflecting pool on the US capital’s National Mall – scene of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream speech” – after it was drained of water and fenced off from the public to allow contractors the chance to upgrade it by 4 July.
Continue reading...There were no big breakthroughs but also no blunders, and the summit positioned Xi Jinping as a leader at the height of his power seeking global stability.
Naegohyang FC due to play Suwon FC in semi-final of Asian Women’s Champions League on Wednesday
A North Korean women’s football club has arrived in South Korea for an AFC Women’s Champions League semi-final, marking the first visit by athletes from the isolated state to the South in eight years.
The delegation of 27 players and 12 staff entered the country on Sunday before Wednesday’s match between Naegohyang FC and South Korea’s Suwon FC Women in Suwon.
Continue reading...Conservatives expected to keep majority as socialists face drubbing and ballot tests trajectory of far-right Vox party
Voters in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía are casting their ballots in an election that is likely to deliver an absolute majority to the conservative People’s party (PP) and inflict another debilitating defeat on Pedro Sánchez’s embattled socialists in what was previously one of their proudest strongholds.
Sunday’s election in Spain’s most populous region – the last big poll before next year’s general election – will serve as a barometer of wider electoral opinion and could also reveal whether the popularity of the far-right Vox party is beginning to peak.
Continue reading...Despite the ban on disposables, waste professionals say the mountain of discarded devices is a £1bn-a-year issue
It is 2pm and Ana, 47, has just started the afternoon shift at the Suez recycling plant near Birmingham city centre, standing beneath a sign reading “Non-ferrous sorting station” with a bucket of vapes in front of her. Sorting and dismantling them is part of her job as a site operative.
Recycling them is not simple. Each bucket holds between 40 and 50 devices, and over the course of a shift, she gets through about half a bucket. Using a hammer, she has to smash each vape open, pry out the batteries and separate each component into a different container.
Continue reading...Computer Weekly reports on "the long-awaited reform of Britain's outdated Computer Misuse Act of 1990 — which has hamstrung the work of the nation's cyber security professionals and researchers for years." The Computer Misuse Act was passed 35 years ago in response to a high-profile hacking incident involving no less than the King's father, the late Duke of Edinburgh. It defined the offence of unauthorised access to a computer — which has been used successfully in countless cyber crime prosecutions over the years. However, as the cyber security landscape has developed into its current form, this language has become increasingly vague and for some years now, a growing number of bona fide security professionals have been arguing that it potentially criminalises their work because from time to time, they may need to gain covert access to IT systems in the course of legitimate research. Speaking to Computer Weekly in 2025, Belfast-based security consultant Simon Whittaker described how the police showed up at his front door after his research was erroneously implicated in the infamous WannaCry incident of 2017... Sabeen Malik, vice-president for global government affairs and public policy at Rapid7, added: "As AI-driven vulnerability discovery scales, defenders need to run automated scanning, agentic red-teaming, and large-scale vuln research at machine speed — activities the 1990 Computer Misuse Act's broad unauthorised-access provisions were never designed to accommodate, leaving UK researchers exposed to criminal risk for work their adversaries face no equivalent friction performing." The reforms are part of a new bill that's "enhancing the powers available to law enforcement and the security services," according to the article. It points out that the U.K. government also intends "to create a Cyber Crime Risk Order that can be applied to control the behaviour of cyber criminals, and new abilities to search people believed to be concealing evidence on behalf of suspected offenders." It's all part of a proposed bill "designed to make the UK a harder target for hostile foreign states and other dangerous groups to attack."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Will it fit my Funwheel x7 lr? Is it a good tire? Alternatives?
Exclusive: Then-home secretary justified proscription of group in newspaper column despite advice it might unfairly impact trial of six activists
Yvette Cooper wrote a newspaper column about Palestine Action despite prosecutors warning it could prejudice criminal proceedings against six activists from the group, it can be revealed.
The then-home secretary wrote the column justifying Palestine Action’s proscription even though the Crown Prosecution Service advised it might unfairly impact a trial concerning a 2024 break-in at an Israeli arms manufacturer’s factory.
Continue reading...In New Mexico, a man is charged with forgery & larceny – and convicted of putting out a hit on his estranged wife. Twenty-six years earlier, a fire in Monaco kills a billionaire and his private nurse. At the center of that mystery was the very same man — with a different name.
Carmakers aim to expand into UK defence sector, exploiting spending boom by Nato countries
Jaguar Land Rover and General Motors are considering an expansion into UK defence via a £900m military contract, as carmakers seek to exploit a spending boom by Nato countries racing to rearm.
The manufacturers are among a group of automotive firms vying to make thousands of 4x4s for the armed forces to replace an ageing fleet of Land Rovers that have been out of production since 2016.
Continue reading...Flight from Melbourne to Dallas forced to land in Tahiti due to man’s alleged disruptive behaviour
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A passenger has been banned from future Qantas travel after a plane travelling on a long-haul flight from Australia to the US was diverted at the weekend after the man allegedly bit a flight attendant.
The QF21 flight left Melbourne at 2.30pm on Friday en route to Dallas and was diverted to Papeete in Tahiti seven hours later when the behaviour of the disruptive passenger forced it to land.
Continue reading..."Survivor" 48 and 50 contestant Joe Hunter believes his sister Joanna, whose death was ruled a suicide, was murdered. He and their mother are working to be Joanna's voice and advocate for others who have experienced domestic violence.
Four months after Trump’s surprise raid, a political thaw has descended – but mingled with hope is trepidation for what comes next
When Ángel Linares heard a strange buzz followed by an explosion, his first thought was that neighbours were setting off fireworks to celebrate the new year.
Then his windows shattered, the building’s walls shook and its facade was ripped off, sending him flying on to the ground of an apartment suddenly reduced to rubble. His 85-year-old mother, Jesucita, feared Venezuela’s northern coast had been devastated by an earthquake, like the one she remembers from 1967.
Continue reading...Plummeting approval ratings for these three poisonous comrades-in-arms show voters are demoralised and tiring of forever wars – the west could soon breathe again
Feeling depressed about the state of the world? Worried about the future? You’re not alone. Pessimism about politics is the new normal among the peoples of the west. Major conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and the harms caused by right-left extremism, stagnating economies, inequality, corruption, terrorism, racism, big tech, mass extinctions and the climate crisis make for shared nightmares.
Growing numbers of people simply refuse to personally engage with current events via the news media, finding them too anxiety-inducing (so they probably won’t be reading this). In a Reuters Institute survey last year, 40% of respondents in about 50 countries said they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether, a rise of 29% on 2017.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Continue reading...Cassidy’s bid to win nomination for third term was imperiled by his vote to convict Trump after January 6 insurrection
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday, as voters in Louisiana opted instead to advance two challengers to a runoff election after an extraordinary intervention by Donald Trump to oust the incumbent.
Cassidy’s bid to win the Republican party’s nomination for a third term in the deep-red state was imperiled by his decision to vote in favor of Trump’s conviction after the January 6 insurrection. In what was widely seen as an effort to rehabilitate his standing with the president, Cassidy last year cast the deciding vote to advance vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, flying in the face of the senator’s support for immunizations and training as a physician.
Continue reading...Proposal to fund $1bn in security additions for White House campus and president’s new ballroom fails to meet procedural rules
A US Senate official on Saturday removed security funding that could be used for Donald Trump’s planned $400m White House ballroom from a massive spending package, Democratic lawmakers said, imperiling Republican efforts to devote taxpayer money to the contentious project.
The decision by the Senate’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, deals a blow to Trump and his administration, which has sought the money for security purposes related to the ballroom.
Continue reading...Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 17.
Unlike its Nordic neighbours, finding a place in the Swedish capital to bada bastu is hard, with years-long waiting lists at member clubs
There is little doubt that Stockholm is a city of sauna-goers. All year round, from early morning to late into the night, the city’s residents can be seen emerging from wooden huts, a trail of woodsmoke coming from the chimney, and lowering themselves into the deep brackish waters of the Swedish capital’s shoreline.
But, for locals and visitors alike, getting access to one of these saunas can be a bit like getting into the world’s most exclusive private members’ clubs: the most popular waterside venues have years-long waiting lists of thousands and when new places open up they disappear in minutes. While a proportion of spots are sometimes bookable to non-members, they are difficult to come by.
Continue reading...Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for May 17, No. 601.
Today Amazon ends support for first- and second-generation versions of Kindles and Kindle Fire tablets, along with the Kindle Touch, the 9.7-inch Kindle DX, and other devices released in 2012 or earlier. Owners can continue reading ebooks that they've already downloaded, and they can also still sideload books using a USB cable (from, for example, Project Gutenberg). And PCMag points out that "There are plenty of e-stores where you can buy DRM-free novels legally, such as ebook.com and Smashwords. If you want to try this process for free, public-domain repositories such as the one at Standard Ebooks are a great place to start." (eBook files can be converted for the Kindle with the open source tool Calibre.) New ebooks can no longer be purchased directly from Amazon. But most of Amazon's affected devices "have not received firmware updates for over a decade," notes the blog OMG Ubuntu, "and most lost on-device access the Kindle Store." Some Kindle owners are taking things even further: You can unlock the firmware of older devices to add extra functionality (custom screensavers, epub support) or run entirely different software. On the hardware hacks side, some choose to turn old Kindles into photo frames or online dashboards. TechCrunch offers some caveats about jailbreaking: This process allows users to install custom fonts, new screensavers, alternative reading apps, and even third-party tools that expand the Kindle's functionality... [I]t's important to note that jailbreaking a Kindle might violate Amazon's terms of service. In many jurisdictions, jailbreaking isn't considered a criminal offense for personal use, but it may become a crime if it involves copyright infringement, illegal software distribution, or the sale of modified devices. Many Kindle owners who opt to jailbreak view it as a method to gain control over a device they purchased that is still functional, rather than being forced to buy a new device. However, jailbreaking is technical and carries risks, including the possibility of rendering the device unusable if something goes wrong. It also isn't possible on every Kindle model or firmware version, so before proceeding, Kindle owners should first spend some time researching if their device is compatible. Alternately, PCMag notes, "If you're feeling particularly virtuous, you can donate your old Kindle to a local library or send it back to Amazon free of charge via its electronic recycling program."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I live in my city that installed protected bike lanes separated from traffic by rows of parked cars.
Whenever I ride that street I prefer sidewalk or main traffic lane at night with less traffic. Why?
Because the “bike lane” introduce a lot of unpleasant vibration at nose. It can be somewhat mitigated by carving but you are limited to carve due to narrow width, further impaired by trash from gummy stick balls not swept off and sidewalk crack seams further restricting space.
Rep. Julia Letlow, who was backed by President Trump in the primary against incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, has advanced to a runoff in the Louisiana Republican primary for Senate.
I’ve been eyeballing a Onewheel for forever and finally pulled the trigger. Three rides and about 5 miles in and I’m obsessed. I went with the GT as it was on sale and made sense given that I’m a bigger rider. Starting and riding have been great and getting easier with every passing minute. Why the hell do I dismount like a drunk toddler? I’ve tried simple stop but it seems like the motor never disengages. Not a fan of hopping off either. Is the quick stop my next option?
Just wanted to vent a bit. I've been riding for about 5 years now in my little neighborhood. It's a small spread neighborhood with maybe 100 homes.
Today I rode by a police officer and he proceeded to stop me and let me know I'm not allowed to ride on the roads in my neighborhood.
It's frustrating because sometimes I may only have 10-15 minutes to ride and can't jump in a car and go somewhere.
Anyone else have any similar experiences?
An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek: A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it's redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers, and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It's one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom's impact on everyday Americans... NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers being built by Google, Apple, and Microsoft around the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno, according to Fortune... Data centers drove half of all US electricity demand growth last year.... That dynamic — small residential customers losing out to massive industrial electricity buyers — is exactly what's driving the broader shift to distributed solar and storage. When the grid becomes unreliable or unaffordable because of data center demand, the homeowners who have solar panels and a battery in the garage are the ones with options. "The shift is measurable," they argue: Third-party ownership models (leases and power purchase agreements), which still qualify for the [U.S.] commercial investment tax credit through 2027, are projected to grow 25% in 2026 and capture up to 69% of residential installations, up from roughly 45% in 2025. Homeowners aren't waiting for incentives to come back — they're finding new ways to get solar on their roofs... [A] battery that can store cheap solar energy and deploy it during peak hours is increasingly essential. California utility customers alone are adding roughly 8,000 new home batteries per month — about 100 MW of new storage capacity. Municipal programs are accelerating the trend. Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently became the first US city to directly deploy solar and battery systems on 150 homes through its city-owned utility. Vermont's Green Mountain Power is offering home batteries at little to no upfront cost. These programs signal that utilities themselves recognize the value of distributed energy.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino joked that if someone does pay $2 million for a ticket to the World Cup final, "I will personally bring him a hot dog and a Coke."
Approximately 40 million people across the West depend on the Colorado River for water every single day. But the region could soon face drastic measures as the river keeps shrinking.
The war with Iran has created an additional strain for farmers, raising the price of diesel by about 50%. The cost of nearly everything else, from seed to fertilizer, is rising too.
Three paramedics at health centre among dead, while Hamas military chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad killed in Gaza strike
Israel carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon, killing at least six people, including three paramedics working at a health centre, just hours after its envoys had agreed with the Lebanese government to extend a ceasefire.
Israel also said it had killed the Hamas military chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, in a targeted strike in Gaza on Friday.
Continue reading...Kentucky winner Golden Tempo does not compete
Race staged at Laurel Park amid Pimlico renovation
Napoleon Solo held off Iron Honor down the stretch to win the 151st Preakness Stakes on Saturday, rebounding from a pair of fifth-place showings for his first victory of the year.
Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo was held out of the race, leaving a wide-open field of 14 horses to contest the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, which was held at Laurel Park in Maryland this year because Pimlico in Baltimore is being rebuilt.
Continue reading...If case is settled for full amount Trump is requesting, a $10bn payment would more than double his family’s net worth – key US politics stories from Saturday, 16 May at a glance
Donald Trump may agree to drop his massive $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the launch of a $1.7bn fund to compensate people he says were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to reports.
The case is the latest example of how Trump has taken over the justice department – which typically operates at arm’s length from the White House – and deployed it for his own ends.
Continue reading...Four-time MVP led Pittsburgh to division title in 2025
Rodgers reunites with ex-Packers coach McCarthy
Aaron Rodgers is running it back with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Two people with knowledge of the decision told the Associated Press that the four-time NFL MVP agreed to a one-year deal to return to Pittsburgh on Saturday, ending a protracted decision-making process. The people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been announced.
Continue reading...The Trump Mobile T1, which was supposed to launch in 2025, may actually be a modified version of a 2024 phone.
 | Had to cut that old tire off. It was gnarly, the stranded cable inside was tough. I really need one of those dang presses, or a wood clamp like that other guy that posted. Well, anyway, I'll get the job done. With or without. [link] [comments] |
Parents had sued to halt law, saying they had the right to make decisions regarding the health of their children
A Kansas judge has temporarily blocked a law banning gender-transition treatments for minors in the state.
The state district judge Carl Folsom III granted an injunction requested by the parents of two teenagers who want to continue gender-affirming treatment with medicines. Folsom’s decision halts the enforcement of a recently approved state law that banned such treatments.
Continue reading...The ethnic Hutu tycoon was indicted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly arming Hutu militias that massacred more than 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis in 1994.
"Every link leads to an entry that does not exist yet," explains the GitHub page for a Wikipedia-like site called Halupedia. "Until you click it, at which point an LLM pretends it has always existed and writes it for you, in the deadpan register of a 19th-century scholarly press..." Every article is invented on demand. The footnotes are also lies... The hardest problem with an infinite, on-demand encyclopedia is internal contradiction... When the LLM writes an article, it is required to add a context="..." attribute on every <a> it inserts, summarising the future article it is linking to (e.g. context="19th-century clerk who formalized footnote drift, Pellbrick's mentor")... When that target article is later requested for the first time, the worker loads the accumulated hints and injects them into the system prompt as "PRIOR REFERENCES — these are CANON". The LLM is instructed that the encyclopedia is hallucinated and absurd, but it must not contradict itself. Fast Company reports that Halupedia was created by software developer Bartlomiej Strama, who confessed in a Reddit comment that the site came about after a drunk night with a friend. In the week since launch, he says Halupedia has amassed more than 150,000 users." Beyond indulging in silly alternate histories, what's the point of using Halupedia? Strama hinted at one larger purpose in a reply to a donor on his Buy Me a Coffee page: "Your contribution towards polluting LLM training data will surely benefit society!" he wrote. The site is licensed as free software under the GPL-3.0 license. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The person was onboard the MV Hondius, the center of the outbreak that has claimed three lives
Canadian officials said on Saturday that a test for one of the four Canadians currently quarantining in British Columbia after being exposed to the hantavirus while on board the cruise ship where the outbreak occurred indicated a positive result.
Speaking at a news conference, Dr Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, said the individual developed mild symptoms, including fever and headache, two days ago, and that the individual and their partner, who had also been on board the cruise ship where they had been isolating together, were transferred to a hospital in Victoria for assessment and testing.
Continue reading..."Most of the plastic waste in California is about to lose the recycling symbol," writes the Washington Post's "climate coach." The "chasing arrows" symbol, created in 1970 by a college student inspired by the burgeoning environmental movement, has been stamped indiscriminately on plastic bottles, clamshell takeout containers, chip bags and more for decades. The majority of the items emblazoned with the mark have been virtually impossible to recycle for most people. California lawmakers say they want to end the charade: Under what's known as the Truth in Recycling law, plastics cannot use the symbol if they aren't collected by curbside programs serving 60% of Californians and sorted by facilities serving 60% of the state's recycling programs (with some additional requirements). If the law goes into effect as scheduled on October 4, more than half of the types of plastic packaging and products sold in the state can no longer carry the chasing arrows logo. That will affect plastic films, foam, PVC and mixed plastics... Food and packaging groups have sued the state of California, calling the law a form of censorship whose vague restrictions violate the First Amendment and due process rights.... Advocates of the law counter that corporations deliberately misled the public by turning the recycling symbol into a marketing device that masks the fact that only a small fraction of plastic packaging is ultimately recycled... The mark was originally intended to informwaste processors what polymers a plastic item was made from. But the public reasonably assumed anything stamped with the symbol was recyclable. Millions of tons of worthless plastic trash have since poured into recycling facilities unable to process it.... States are now taking action. Seven have passed laws shifting the cost of recycling onto packaging makers. Oregon and Washington have lifted requirements that plastic containers carry the chasing arrows symbol. The article notes that Norway already recovers 97% of beverage bottles, while Slovakia recycles 60% of plastic packaging. "But the U.S. only recovers about a third of its PET and HDPE bottles, and just 13% of plastic packaging, according to U.S. Plastics Pact, an industry-led forum. "It won't be easy for the U.S. to reach higher levels of recycling: The necessary infrastructure and incentives are chronically underfunded, no federal mandate exists for minimum-recycled-content that would create demand and a mix of mostly unrecyclable hydrocarbons still dominates the waste stream."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Businesses are advised against paying – but many are prepared to deal to protect users’ privacy
After a week of outages, hundreds of millions of students’ data stolen, delayed assignment due dates and school login pages being defaced by hackers, the US tech firm Instructure – which operates the education platform Canvas, used by education providers worldwide – announced it had “reached an agreement with the unauthorised actor” behind the ransomware attack.
Experts read the careful language as a sign that a ransom has been paid. The company has not confirmed this.
Continue reading...Cannes film festival: Succession of pointless AI-generated snippets does nothing for film about the artist’s final interview, which took place on the day of his murder
Coming just after his superb feature The Christophers, Steven Soderbergh has now made a surprisingly moderate documentary, dominated and frankly marred by uninteresting and pointless AI. It is about the inadvertently poignant final interview given by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on 8 December 1980 in New York’s Dakota apartment building, hours before his death.
The interviewers were Dave Sholin, Laurie Kaye and Ron Hummel from San Francisco’s KFRC radio station. On their way out of the building with the conversation on tape, they were accosted by a creepy stalker-fan; in attempt to calm the man down, Kaye gave him a brand new copy of John and Yoko’s new album Double Fantasy. This sinister man was Lennon’s future murderer who got him to sign an album – perhaps this very album – and later shot him dead. It is a chilling, stomach-turning twist of fate, although the film avoids emphasising the interview’s obviously macabre context, understandably preferring a positive emphasis. Inevitably, though, the unacknowledged irony flavours what we see and hear: a fundamentally happy, hopeful man looking forward to the future, behind whom a dark shadow is looming.
Continue reading...Two of the world’s richest people faced an airing of their dirty laundry amid their messy, bitter feud over OpenAI
A nine-person jury is set to decide whether Elon Musk’s allegations of “stealing a charity” against Sam Altman and OpenAI are legitimate, with deliberations to begin in earnest on Monday. Whatever its outcome, the case has been an illuminating, at times exhausting, look behind the scenes at the history of OpenAI and how some of the most powerful figures in the tech industry operate.
Attorneys for both sides have introduced reams of private text messages, emails and even diary entries to support their arguments. A who’s who of Silicon Valley testified in the trial, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the mother of some of Musk’s children, Shivon Zilis. Both Altman and Musk also took the stand for hours, facing combative cross-examinations that painted them each as untrustworthy.
Continue reading...Almost exactly 21 years ago, in June 2005, at a mere 20 years old, I took over the managing editor role at OSNews from Eugenia. I had already published a few articles in the years prior, and had given Eugenia enough confidence to suggest me as her replacement. It was, and is, a great honour.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things. Linux grew from a curiosity among nerds into a popular desktop operating system, and often a better choice for gaming than Windows. The BSDs flourish steadily, growing into even stronger and capable alternatives to desktop Linux than they already were. On the commercial side of things, new offerings challenged the hegemony of Microsoft and Windows. While Android and Chrome OS are at best merely tolerated, the idea that a newcomer would produce not one, but two operating systems that would successfully take on Microsoft and Apple seemed unimaginable when I started in 2005.
While many alternative operating systems of the early 2000s faded away, we’ve also seen success stories there. Haiku evolved from an unusable, unstable promise on the horizon into a stable, daily-drivable operating system. The unique Genode Framework and Sculpt OS keep exploring and redefining the boundaries of what a general purpose operating system should be. Redox has exploded onto the scene, and keeps making massive strides almost every month. OS/2 is still actively updated, maintained, and sold. The Amiga will outlast us all.
Internet culture, too, is changing, and while things definitely look bleak right now, there are sparks of hope and joy. The general attitude towards the big technology companies among the general public has shifted from admiration to mistrust and dislike, corporate social media seems to be crumbling, and the youngest generations absolutely despise the latest hype, “AI”. All is certainly not lost, and sometimes I feel shimmers of hope that the pendulum may swing back to a more people-focused web, a web we’ve been part of since 1997.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve also seen a lot of hypes come and go, hypes that if I didn’t embrace them, I’d surely be left behind. The “pivot to video“, the cryptocurrency mania, NFTs, virtual reality and the metaverse, “AI” – all technologies and concepts I recognised for the hypes that they were, and consequently ridiculed and ignored, much to the dismay of many believers. I’ve got the angry emails and comments to prove it.
This illustrates something about OSNews that I value and hold dear: OSNews doesn’t jump on bandwagons, doesn’t frantically try to follow the latest trends, doesn’t cave under the pressure of big money interests. OSNews is constant, stable, deliberate, patient. Since 1997, we’ve covered the technology industry with interest, excitement, and wonder – tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism. When you follow this industry for almost three decades, you learn to spot the patterns and see the threads before anyone else does.
That’s not to say we haven’t gone through changes. The most significant changes to OSNews happened in recent years, where instead of working on the site on a mostly voluntary basis with a pittance of ad revenue coming my way, I’ve turned my work for OSNews into my job. As part of this change, I removed all advertising from our website, morphing OSNews into a fully reader-funded endeavour. No ads, no corporate interests, no media network breathing down my neck. OSNews is a truly independent technology news website, a rarity these days. I don’t have to keep corporate overlords or advertisers happy, and you’d be surprised to learn just how rare that is on the modern web.
The OSNews website itself is fairly unchanging too, having gone through only a handful of redesigns since its founding in 1997. We’ve been using our current design, developed by Adam Scheinberg, for as long as I can remember (10-15 years?), and thanks to our independent, ad-free nature, any possible future redesign would only make the site simpler and even faster than it already is. There’s no redesign in the cards at the moment, but rest assured, if it ever comes, we’ll buck the trend of websites getting ever more complex and demanding and make OSNews lighter and even faster.
And yes, despite commenters making up far less than one percent of our readership, I’ll always opt to keep them. We might be a site of lurkers, but comments are a core part of OSNews. Even the annoying ones. Especially the annoying ones.
That being said, there’s going to be a small change to our design, rolling out today (it might take a few reloads for it to appear). To mark my 21 years and 20000 posts, OSNews is getting a new-ish logo, which combines the classic, intertwined beveled “O-S” from the early 2000s with the modern logo we’ve been using over the past 15 years or so. The O and S are intertwined once again, highlighting the continuity and stability I want OSNews to bring in this chaotic industry (I can write corporatese if I want to). Fun fact: this “new” logo was actually designed like 20 years ago, and we’ve had it in our back pocket ever since. Why create something new and of the times, when you’ve got something great sitting right there?
Aside from the new logo, I’ll be running a big fundraiser to mark this occasion early next week, with some silly incentives at various thresholds. If we reach the ultimate goal – a euro for every story I’ve posted – I’ll overcome some very deep-rooted fears and anxieties, and tattoo the OSNews logo on my body, as my very first tattoo. OSNews has been part of my life for more than two decades, and I have every intention to add at least another two – having such a core part of my life immortalised on my body only makes sense.
I’ve written about my anxiety disorder and how it affects me here on OSNews, and it’s been preventing me from getting various tattoos I’ve been wanting for decades (and not for the reasons you may think – it’s not the pain or the needles). No better way to get fucking over it by making a public promise to tens of thousands of people. You can start donating today, but I’ll publish a proper post about it on Monday.
Of course, OSNews wouldn’t exist without all of you, our hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you donate or not, whether you comment or not (you probably don’t!), each and every one of you contributes to making OSNews the steady success it’s been for almost 30 years. Few websites can boast such an uninterrupted lineage, and it’s thanks to all of you who keep coming back, every day.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. ❤️
A conversation with Orville Schell.
Which scheduler should you use for AI workloads, Slurm or Kubernetes? It’s a debate that generates passionate arguments on both sides. Both schedulers have their strong suits, and there’s no single universal answer that’s always correct. But Slurm and Kubernetes are not equal at all stages of AI, and choosing the wrong one could have a big impact on your AI deployment. A new project called Slinky could change that.
Slurm, which stands for Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management, came out of Lawrence Livermore Lab in 2002 as a way to manage HPC resources, as well as a way to grant users access to supercomputers. The software works by managing a queue of HPC jobs; allocating requested compute resources, such as nodes, CPUs, memory, or GPUs to those jobs for specific durations; and then executing them on compute nodes, typically using MPI. It also provides monitoring functions.
Today, Slurm is the most popular scheduling software in the HPC community, and is used on about 60% of the supercomputers on the Top500 list. According to 2024 data from Intersect360 Research, it has a 20% share of the overall supercomputer market, and is dominant in academic settings. The open source technology has been managed primarily by a company called SchedMD, which Nvidia acquired in late 2025.
Kubernetes is also a workload manager, but it works in a different way. The software (which is often shortened to K8s) works by defining a set of core building blocks that are used to deploy, maintain, and scale applications. Users tells K8s what kind of cluster they want, according to the number and type of processors and memory, and the workload manager automatically builds and maintains the environment.
Kubernetes emerged in 2014 out of Google, as many modern computing constructs have. Google developed Kubernetes internally as a way to manage its humongous fleet of servers, and it donated K8s to the open source community to foster its continued development, as it has done with many other technologies, such as PageRank, MapReduce, Bigtable, Android, TensorFlow, and Transformers, which gave us large language models.
(Manik-shah/Shutterstock)
The Slurm vs. Kubernetes question exposes deep-seated tribal faultlines within the technological community, said Stephen Watt, a Red Hat distinguished engineer and VP of the Office of the CTO.
“It’s partially technological, partially cultural. I think it’s quite interesting,” Watt said of the Slurm vs. Kubernetes divide. “We have sort of a pragmatic view.”
While Red Hat does sell an enterprise distribution of Kubernetes, that doesn’t mean it advocates for Kubernetes in all situation. In some situations, K8s makes the most sense, while in others, Slurm brings capabilities that Kubernetes just can’t match.
“If you are dealing with the standard operations tribe that are ensuring that applications that run….that’s a pretty simple conversation because they’ve got our enterprise Kubernetes distribution, which is OpenShift,” Watt told HPCwire in a recent interview.
“When you deal with a different tribe, which I’d call maybe the PyTorch tribe…it’s primarily a research-focused community, with research and frontier model providers,” he continued. “And those teams are typically supported by research IT infrastructures that have been running Slurm for decades.”
The two tribes have widely different perceptions of how the two workload schedulers work. The research and HPC community likes Slurm because it’s familiar and it just works. If you need to efficiently schedule a large number of batch on a massive supercomputer, it’s hard to beat Slurm, Watt said.
“There is this perception that, well, Slurm just works. And that’s true,” Watt said. “I would say if you’re doing model pre-training [Slurm] is what we would recommend you use, not Kubernetes. It scales to 30,000 nodes. Kubernetes scales to around 5,000. So while there are people using Kubernetes for pre-training, Slurm is quite a lot simpler to use.”
Watt, who cut his teeth on distributed tech such as Hadoop and Spark, recalls how eBay would use Slurm to manage 12-hour training runs every night to update their machine learning model. The model updates would improve the transaction processing for the online auction site.
“Slurm is super good for that,” Watt said. “But that’s different than saying, hey, somebody is depending on this thing every second of every hour. And if it goes down, there’s a business continuity problem and there’s revenue that gets lost. And that’s where Kubernetes guarantees that 100%, or 99.9% uptime. And that’s what’s different on inference.”
While Slurm holds advantages in scale and simplicity, Kubernetes holds advantages when it comes to guaranteeing uptime, which is critical for real-time workloads like AI inference.
Watt admits that Kubernetes is much more complicated, especially if you’re trying to trace performance problems through the K8s layer (good luck with that). However, the way that Google designed and built Kubernetes helps the software eliminate a lot of the management complexity that would otherwise be required to ensure resiliency in the event of cluster failures. 
“Kubernetes was specifically designed for ephemeral service. There’s no mean time between failure,” Watt said. “When [a node] goes down, you have a system that just handles that without the end-user knowing. The way that works is that Kubernetes has this simple proxy for inbound requests, and it has the same application running on a number of different servers. So if you lose one, it just routes round robins to a different one.”
Slurm cannot match this built-in simplicity, which is why Watt does not recommend using it for user-facing workloads, such as AI inference. If there’s downtime with a batch workload, like model training, the customer can recover the work with checkpointing, but it doesn’t impact the end user. To try and get five-nine availability with Slurm for a real-time, user-facing application like AI inference would be very difficult.
“The problem is if [a node under Slurm] goes down, there’s no inherent failover mechanism that’s as elegant or sophisticated as Kubernetes is,” Watt said. “So you end up doing unnatural things around the Slurm environment to try and get that. If you were just using the right tool, then you wouldn’t have to kind of build a Rube Goldberg machine to keep that thing running.”
Some folks in the HPC and AI communities are seeking ways to run Kubernetes and Slurm together. While there are discussion about running Kubernetes under Slurm, most discussions go the other way: Running Slurm under Kubernetes (which would allow Slurm to gain the availability benefit of its host).
SchedMD developed a project called Slinky that seeks to run Slurm within Kubernetes. The project allows Slurm components to be packaged as container images, as well as a Kubernetes an operator that handles deployment, scaling, and lifecycle management of Slurm components.
Nvidia engineers discussed Slinky in a blog post last month. In tests, the Nvidia engineers say Slinky has proven itself on clusters with up to 8,000 GPUs, running both AI training and inference workloads. They say benchmark tests show that the Slinky environment “matches the performance of noncontainerized Slurm deployments, with no measurable impact from the Kubernetes layer Slinky runs on.”
The Red Hat folks are also interested in Slinky. While it’s just an open source project on GitHub today, continued commercial interest could pave the way for potential commercial support down the road.
The post Slurm vs. Kubernetes in the Age of AI appeared first on HPCwire.
Malcolm Turnbull: AUKUS is ‘a huge wealth transfer from the Australian government to the US and the UK’ News release jon.wallace
Speaking at Chatham House, the former Australian prime minister strongly criticized the joint Australia–US–UK submarine project.
Malcolm Turnbull, former Australian prime minister, visited Chatham House on 11 May to discuss Australia’s foreign policy, its US alliance, and the role of middle powers in the context of US–China rivalry.
Asked about the AUKUS trilateral security partnership between Australia, the US and UK, which is meant to provide Australia with nuclear attack submarines, Mr Turnbull said it was a ‘huge wealth transfer from the Australian government to the US and the UK’.
‘It’s a submarine deal with no submarines…It was a terribly bad deal, a really stupid deal,’ he said, adding that US naval yards are not producing submarines at sufficient scale and speed to meet AUKUS needs.
Addressing the UK part of the deal, which would see joint development of a new nuclear submarine class, he said that ‘the UK shipbuilding industry, particularly the submarine industry, is in complete disarray…We shouldn’t have cancelled the deal with France’.
Malcolm Turnbull speaks at Chatham House
He said that it would be better for the UK to go into partnership with France to design a new nuclear submarine class, with the aim of developing common defence platforms for Europe.
During the event Mr Turnbull also discussed the summit between Chinese President Xi and US President Trump, Australian relations with the Trump administration, and Australia’s role in Pacific security.
Spotlight Delaware education reporter Julia Merola joins the “Beyond the Headlines” podcast to discuss the outcomes of this year’s statewide school board elections, the issues that were in play with them and what they might mean for the future of districts around Delaware.
The podcast was hosted by Editor-in-Chief Jacob Owens.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
So before we get into the actual horse races of who won what races and why around the state, I thought we should maybe start with explaining the role that our school boards play in Delaware.
Can you fill the listeners in on what powers and responsibilities these public servants have?
To start, I would say that Delaware is a really heavily focused local control state, meaning that the meat and potatoes of decisions are being made within school districts rather than at the Delaware Department of Education’s level or in the General Assembly.
So if you’re thinking about approving a budget or hiring a superintendent or holding referendums, those decisions are all made by board of education members.
Are these paid positions? Are these typically teachers or people with experience in education? Who are these school boards that we have around the state?
They’re volunteers. They’re not paid positions. Some of them are retired educators, some of them are parents, some of them are neither and are just community members who are looking to help the students in their area in whatever way they can.
I would say it’s really a mix of everything of the above.
School board elections in particular have long suffered from low turnout. But this year’s contest seemed to have really defied that trend. What did we see, and what might you attribute that change to?
I would start to say that it was certain school districts that defied that trend. Maybe it’s just where I was, but I went to Christina’s two Wilmington polls at the Maurice Pritchard Academy and the Pulaski Early Education Center, and those polls were pretty dead. I was not seeing a lot of people.
It was very quiet. But then, over in Red Clay and Appo there were definitely a lot more people and the polls were more lively.
I think that’s attributed to the fact that districts like Red Clay and Appo had a bit more going on, a little bit more controversy brewing, whereas in Christina, this was a calmer year.
Let’s maybe start with perhaps the biggest race of the day in the Appoquinimink School District that covers the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area, where two incumbents were being challenged by four different opponents.
What happened there, and what might have caused so many residents to come out to the polls?
I think with Appo in particular, the reason why so many people came to the polls was really because of what happened last spring, which was when the district revealed that it’d failed to properly track millions of dollars that it thought were in reserves.
After that, there were calls for the superintendent and for other board members to step down. We know that they didn’t step down, and then residents saw two of those incumbent board members were running for re-election. I don’t think that they wanted them to run for re-election, hence why they were not re-elected.
I think a lot of that tension stayed there with the residents. And, at a board meeting you can really only give public comments, so the way to really make your point is at the polls, which is what they did.
So who won that Appo election?
The two winners were Britney Mumford and Elena Brenner.
Elena is a retired educator, and Britney is the executive director of DelawareKidsCAN, which is an education advocacy organization.
Among the losers – which I hate to call them but that is unfortunately the reality of a race — was Richard Forsten, who was the president of the Appoquinimink School District board.
There was also Nichelle DeWitt, who was another incumbent board member.
Then there was also Mark Heck, who was looking to take one of those seats. He’s a veteran and an ROTC instructor at the Christina School District.
He came up short in getting a seat too.
It was an interesting race all around. The incumbents actually came in dead last out of the six candidates running, so it was really a display of some of the anger that was reflected at the polls in one of the largest school districts in the state.
Turning to the largest school district in the state, up in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, which covers the greater Wilmington area, along with Pike Creek and Hockessin, the board president there faced a challenger. What happened in that race?
It was a continuation of the trend of incumbents seeing their way out and new faces coming in.
Vic Leonard, the current president of the Red Clay Board of Education, lost his race to Jenny Howard, who is a mother of four and a former educator.
There was a big conversation in the district over what would happen to McKean High School, which is where I was yesterday.
The first voter who I talked to told me that she was voting for Jenny Howard because she didn’t want to see her alma mater close and become an innovation center. The voter added that she understood the purpose of an innovation center in general, but just felt that the way the board had handled it was very rushed.
She appreciated how Jenny Howard had spoken out during public comment against the innovation center, and just felt that a lot of what Jenny Howard was saying was resonating.
So this is an example of a resident who, willingly or unwillingly, became the face of opposition to the incumbency by showing up to a meeting and making her point heard during public comment.
Give us the rundown on that McKean Innovation Center project and where it stands today.
It’s at a standstill. and that’s because last month the Red Clay Board of Education voted to postpone the Innovation Center, which would transform McKean.
They made that decision because of a large pushback from community members who were concerned about this program that currently exists at McKean called the Meadowood program. It’s a program for students who have intellectual and developmental disabilities.
It’s something I’ve heard from parents about. Parents have called it a really good program that has been really helpful for their kids. And I think that there was a lot of confusion about what would happen to that program if it were to be moved to A.I. duPont High School.
It seemed like there were a lot of families who felt that their concerns weren’t taken into consideration, and instead the process was kind of rushed through. Then, here comes Jenny Howard, a parent who agrees with those sentiments.
She told me she wasn’t originally planning to run, and then when all of this happened, she was like, “Well, maybe, I can help change things and make sure that the board is actually listening to people.”
School boards around the state, but I think Red Clay in particular, are kind of in this difficult spot, where they have a lot of school buildings that maybe aren’t filling the capacity needs. And so Jenny is now going to be joining a school board where she’s gonna have to make some tough decisions about what to do with buildings that aren’t full of students.
I’ll note to our Spotlight Delaware readers that I’m working on a story about capacity rates, so keep an eye out for that exact topic.
But yeah, it’s definitely an ongoing conversation, especially in Red Clay, and I think it’s one that a lot of district leaders want to really tackle before any possible consolidation decision with the Redding Consortium is reached between the four districts.
You mentioned Redding. Did it feel like Redding was on the minds of voters or school board candidates?
It wasn’t something that I necessarily heard about at the polls, but some candidates brought it up on their own. Others responded after I asked them about it. I think it is a bit of an unknown.
Board of education leaders are not necessarily on the front lines of the Redding Consortium meetings. They’re welcome to attend just like everybody else, and I see plenty of board members there all the time, but they’re not on the front end of the decision-making.
I think that it’s something the board needs to at least be talking about and making a plan for students. That was a sentiment I heard a few times.
Down south in the Delmar School District, which sits along Delaware’s southernmost border, another well-known member was facing two challengers for two open seats. What happened there?
Shawn Brittingham was last sitting on the State Board of Education. He has previously served on the Delmar Board of Education, but he did not win the Tuesday race against Neil Baker and Jordan Johnson.
I honestly thought it was interesting because Shawn has a lot of experience on the Delmar Board of Education, and then almost a decade of experience on the State Board of Education.
In that district, there was a decent amount of talk about referendums and what could potentially happen with two new candidates on the board. I think it’ll be interesting to see what that board decides to do next in terms of whether they’ll have a referendum.
Fill us in again on what a referendum is, why a school district might go out for one, and how that works for the public.
A referendum is when the district comes to the voters in a community and says, “Hey, we’re looking to raise X amount of money to do things like better retaining teachers, providing better pay, maintaining programs, building schools and things like that.”
That’s where the residents come in to be able to vote on whether to raise their property tax rate to fund the money for these things.
So in Delmar specifically, there’s been this ongoing issue of there being limited capacity in their buildings with a growing number of students.
You need to be able to retain teachers who are comfortable working in these often tight spaces. There were conversations this past fall of a possible referendum in Delmar to help alleviate some of those concerns.
Ultimately, the Board of Education announced that they were not going to hold a referendum this year. Maybe in 2027, we’ll see.
I think that it was something that was on the minds of some voters, maybe not everyone per se, but I think when anyone hears that their taxes could potentially go up, it’s definitely something that they’re gonna be listening to.
Referendums have been increasingly difficult to get passed in the state of Delaware in recent years, because it’s one of the few times we get to vote on our own, on our own taxes. Is that right?
Yeah.
This is a little bit of a case where you’re farther up the food chain, voting for the people who may or may not propose such a referendum down the line. Of the two winners in the Delmar election down there, do you get a sense of whether they might support a future referendum?
It’s hard to say. We spoke to Jordan Johnson on Tuesday, and he told us, “If I feel that it’s right and we need it, then I’ll vote for it. If I feel it’s not right and we don’t need it, then I won’t vote for it.” It’s literally a 50-50, so we’ll see.
I didn’t have the chance to speak with the other elected board member, Neil Baker, but he had said that a strategic review was necessary. So again, it’s kind of like a 50-50
I know Shawn Brittingham was very pro-referendum, but as far as I know, he’s the only person who has outright said, “Yeah, I would support a referendum for these reasons.”
So perhaps the non-committal answers may have assisted in some of these races?
Possibly.
When you really look at the 2026 school board elections, do you think there will be any lessons or lasting trends?
I don’t know if I would necessarily call this a lesson, but a realization of just how much people feel that they needed pretty big changes in their schools.
If you look at Appo, Forsten has been on that board for nearly two decades.
So for people to really say, “No, we do not want you there anymore,” I think that really shows people in that district, in particular, were craving new faces.
I think the same can be said in other districts, like Red Clay. Vic Leonard wasn’t on the board for an extremely long time but, again, he was the board president.
That’s a pretty big role to play on a board. And for 60% of voters to say, like, “Nope, we prefer the other candidate,” it just shows that people really want big changes.
It’s starting to feel like at least a small but growing number of residents are really starting to pay attention to how their school districts are being governed and who is involved in that decision-making process. As we look to the future, do you think school board elections will be able to keep up this rate of engagement, or was this maybe just a reaction to an isolated incident in time?
I think it was probably a reaction.
I don’t want to think that. I want to think that we’re all gonna be more civically engaged because that is your one opportunity to actually change things.You can make a public comment, but the board doesn’t respond to that.
Who knows if they hear every single word said. They’re only human.
So really your only chance to make an actual difference is to go to the polls and vote. I would like to say Delaware is on an upward swing, but when I was at the two Wilmington polls it was really quiet, so I can’t confidently say that this is a positive trend.
I really do unfortunately think it’s just a matter of circumstance.
Well, Julia, thank you for covering Delaware’s public education system – a very challenging task with 19 different districts – and great job covering the varied races up and down the state this week.
Thank you.
The post ‘Beyond the Headlines’ podcast: Delaware voters seek school board changes appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Youth services for hundreds of New Castle County children face uncertainty as finances at the Police Athletic League of Delaware are probed. The nonprofit is one of dozens of private organizations that are regularly funded by taxpayers. For years, it also was one of a handful to be led by a state lawmaker.
The financial crisis facing the Police Athletic League of Delaware escalated in recent weeks after state officials demanded that the community center nonprofit repay nearly $900,000 in misspent pandemic relief money, New Castle County police chief Col. Jamie Leonard said Tuesday.
Speaking before the New Castle County Council, Leonard said the PAL — as the organization is known — does not have enough cash on hand to repay the money, which he said was awarded for capital projects in previous years, but instead was spent on day-to-day operating expenses.
Leonard said state officials are expecting the repayment “rather quickly,” because they want to redistribute the dollars before a spending deadline at the end of the year.
He also indicated the situation could involve criminal liability, but said it remains “difficult to unravel.”
“Financial crimes was never my thing, but it’s messy, for sure,” he said to the council.
A spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Finance declined to confirm that it is demanding repayment, stating “we do not comment on active investigations.”
The office of the U.S. Attorney for Delaware did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The police chief’s comments mark the latest chapter in the troubles facing the politically connected nonprofit, which operates community centers serving children in New Castle County. They first emerged publicly eight months ago after former Delaware House Speaker Valerie Longhurst quietly resigned as the executive director of the nonprofit.
At the time, two board members told Spotlight Delaware that the organization’s cash reserves had dwindled, even after it received a record $5 million in cash and rent assistance from taxpayers in the 2024 fiscal year – as well as hundreds of thousands more in 2025.
A portion of its revenues in recent years came from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, a 2021 law designed to jump start the COVID-era economy. While the money originated at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, it was awarded by then-Gov. John Carney.
Following Longhurst’s resignation, New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry announced that Leonard would take over as the PAL’s board chairman. Leonard then named one of his officers, New Castle County Police Lt. Angela Dolan, as its interim executive director.
During a New Castle County Council meeting last fall, Dolan described the array of activities offered by the PAL, including a basketball league, a flag football league, a soccer clinic, a Lego league, a book club, and an art club.
Then she expressed dismay over what she feared could be the organization’s future.
“When you see these kids come in and love what they’re doing and what they’re being exposed to, it’s really hard to think that this could end,” she said then.
In the months that followed, Longhurst did not comment publicly, even after reports surfaced that her former nonprofit faced a criminal investigation, and an audit that could force it to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On Wednesday, she broke her silence in an interview with Spotlight Delaware that primarily consisted of her suggesting several questions that should be asked of the PAL’s board of directors, including about the quality of their past oversight, and about a former staffer who she said had the authority to make spending decisions.
Last year, Spotlight Delaware learned that the organization’s board of directors had not held meetings on a regular basis.
Longhurst did not directly answer the question of why money granted for capital projects may have been used for operating expenses during her tenure.
“All I can say is, you know, were procedures put in place?” she said. “The people who were supposed to oversee that. Were they?”
When pressed that those spending decisions would have been hers to make as executive director, Longhurst said, “Actually, they weren’t.”
Instead, she claimed that a former bookkeeper at the PAL “had full autonomy over all the finances.”
Asked whether she has been contacted by either state of federal criminal investigators, she said she had not.
In her comments, Longhurst also showered praise onto the PAL and its mission. She said the organization with community centers across the county has an impact that is underestimated in Delaware.
“I have nothing but great things to say about how wonderful the PAL is,” she said.
The PAL of Delaware operates athletic, arts and academic programs at community center locations in Hockessin, Delaware City and suburban New Castle. The settings place children in contact with law enforcement as part of a founding principle “of building bridges between police officers and the communities they serve,” according to the PAL of Delaware website.
The nonprofit also has been an integral piece of Delaware’s political landscape, with elected officials regularly making public appearances at its locations.
Until 2024, it also was one of several prominent Delaware organizations led by a state lawmaker. That ended last September when Longhurst — then among the most powerful politicians in Delaware — lost her seat representing the Bear area to now-Rep. Kamela Smith, a Democrat.
At the New Castle County Council meeting Tuesday, Councilman John Cartier asked Leonard about the state’s deadline for the PAL to pay back its $876,000 debt.
That deadline, Leonard said, had already passed. He noted that state officials want to reclaim the dollars immediately so they could award them to another organization ahead of the end-of-the-year deadline to spend the dollars.
He also recounted a conversation last month with state officials, who described different scenarios that could result from their demand. The PAL could pay back the money in full. The state could place a lien on the organization’s property.
Or, federal and state officials could “look to the party responsible for the mismanagement at the time to recoup those funds,” Leonard said, without detailing who the responsible party might be.
Also at the council meeting, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick pressed the police chief about whether it was state or federal officials demanding the money back.
Leonard said it was both. All of his meetings with regulators have been through the state, he said, but with a U.S Treasury official in attendance.
“So the state would like the money back to redistribute, but Treasury has the ultimate say on any forgiveness,” Leonard said.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury did not respond to a request to comment on this story.
Kilpatrick then asked Leonard if he met with Delaware lawmakers. She suggested the state may have liability around any misspent money if officials had not conducted sufficient oversight.
Kilpatrick then noted that Delaware’s annual capital budget hearings are set to commence soon. In response, Leonard said the co-chairs of the state’s primary budget committee have been briefed on this “on a continual basis.”
He also noted that the PAL has applied to the Delaware grant-in-aid program for the next fiscal year. The program distributes tens of millions of dollars annually to Delaware nonprofits.
Last summer, lawmakers paused a grant-in-aid package to the PAL after evidence of its financial crisis first emerged. Ultimately, the state distributed more than $600,000 to the organization during the current 2026 fiscal year, which ends on June 30.
Asked about the nature of Leonard’s recent conversations with lawmakers, a spokesperson for the Senate Democrats said in a statement that they “welcome communication” from PAL leadership, but “in our current fiscal climate, we cannot commit to allocating state funds to cover their shortfall at this time.”
The spokesperson also stated that she would not characterize the PAL’s past outreach with legislators as “continual.”
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Leonard declined to go into details about the frequency of past conversations with lawmakers.
He also said the organization is not at risk of closing, stressing that all three PAL community centers are running at normal times.
To rebuild its finances, he said the organization has begun leasing its facilities out during off hours. He also stated that conversations with the state officials about an “appeal process or a forgiveness option” for the demanded money have occurred.
“We are working through possible ways to make good on our obligations,” Leonard said.
The post Crisis at the PAL escalates as the state demands an $876K repayment appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Q: Has President Trump asked for a billion dollars for the ballroom?
A: Since the White House announced plans in July for a ballroom, the president has promised to fund its construction without using public money. But in May congressional Republicans proposed $1 billion in federal funding for “security adjustments and upgrades” including at the White House and the ballroom site.
President Donald Trump has claimed that the new White House ballroom would be privately funded, using “not one dime of government money.” But Republicans in Congress have proposed $1 billion in public funds for “security” features, prompting criticism from Democrats that this means taxpayers are paying for the ballroom.
The White House has said the congressional proposal is strictly for security elements, not the ballroom itself.
When Trump first began touting the project shortly after he took office in 2025, he said he would foot the bill himself. When it was officially announced on July 31 at an estimated cost of $200 million, the president answered a question from a reporter about the source of the funding, saying, “It’s a private thing, yeah, I’ll do it, and we’ll probably have some donors or whatever.”
The press release for the project said, “President Trump, and other patriot donors, have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million dollar structure. The United States Secret Service will provide the necessary security enhancements and modifications.”
As recently as late March, when the estimated cost had doubled to $400 million, the president maintained that it would be donor-funded, saying, “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”
But following the April 25 shooting during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, some congressional Republicans cited security concerns and proposed public funding for the project, arguing that the White House needs to have a secure facility for hosting large events.
“If this is not a wake-up call, what would be?” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on April 27, referring to the shooting, while announcing legislation that would authorize $400 million to build the ballroom and fund a military installation below it. (More on that later.)
A week later, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced a proposed $1 billion for the Secret Service to provide “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements … relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” The ballroom is replacing the East Wing.
The funding was part of a $72 billion plan to fund the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029 without Democratic support. It followed a record-breaking partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that hinged on Democrats’ demands for changes to immigration enforcement policies after agents killed two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Democrats panned the proposal, with Rep. Jared Huffman of California saying, “They’re sending Trump $1 billion to build a gilded room for their balls,” and Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada saying, “The economy in NV is tanking, gas prices are going through the roof … and Republicans are throwing down $1 Billion for Trump’s ballroom.” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote on X on May 5, “Trump said, ‘Not one penny is being used from the federal government’ to fund his ballroom boondoggle. True, in the sense that $1 billion is a lot more than one penny!”
In a meeting on May 12, the Secret Service chief reportedly told Republican lawmakers that only $220 million of the $1 billion proposal would be used to fortify the ballroom with bulletproof glass, drone detection equipment, chemical filtration systems and other security elements. The rest would be used for training and security measures elsewhere, as a DHS spokesperson also told us in a statement.
Both the White House and Grassley’s office have responded to the criticism by pointing to language specifying that the $1 billion allocation would cover only “security”-related features. “None of the funds made available under this section may be used for non-security elements of the East Wing Modernization Project,” the legislation reads. We asked Grassley’s office for further details on what might qualify as a security feature, but we didn’t get an answer to that question.
Instead, we were provided a statement attributable to a Senate Judiciary Committee spokesperson that said, “The reconciliation text speaks for itself, providing funds for critical security enhancements to ensure Secret Service can fulfill their duties of securing the White House, protecting the President, members of the administration and White House visitors, and supporting broader public safety for designated events like America 250 and the World Cup.”
Likewise, a White House spokesman said, “The Ballroom will still be paid for with the private funds raised. The reconciliation package introduced was funds for DHS and USSS to better secure the WH complex.”
Here’s what we know so far about the project.
The Trump administration began demolition of the East Wing of the White House in October to make way for what it has described as a 90,000 square-foot ballroom that can seat 650 people, although the president has said that it will have a capacity of 999.
The move drew condemnation from some architectural and historical organizations, prompting a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In March, the federal judge handling that case ordered that construction of the ballroom should stop until plans receive authorization from Congress, although he allowed for the continuation of construction “necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House.” The administration has appealed.
Another lawsuit brought against the administration revealed in April the funding agreement for the project. The agreement cited a comprehensive design plan for the White House complex that the National Park Service published in 2000 after about a decade of research, planning and public comment.
That design plan “identified the need for expanded event space to address growing visitor demand and provide a venue suitable for significant events,” the funding agreement said.
That’s true, but nowhere in the plan does it suggest a ballroom to replace the East Wing of the White House. Rather, it emphasized the importance of maintaining the existing structure of the White House complex and recommended expanding space underground, including a new meeting and conference space near the West Wing that could accommodate up to 200 people. It also recommended building a special events plaza in the ellipse on the south side of the White House.
As for the donors who have contributed to the fund to build the ballroom, a reporter asked on May 7 for a list and Trump responded, “I have no problem with it. You’re not supposed to because it’s done under a way where you don’t have to do that, but I have no problem. They’re unbelievable people. These are great patriots.”
In October, the White House released a list that included both companies — such as Amazon and Meta — and individuals — such as the Winklevoss twins, who had accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea to build Facebook and now run a cryptocurrency exchange, and Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of alternative investment firm Blackstone. The list didn’t include any dollar amounts for donations to the ballroom. Trump, himself, was not listed among the donors.
In March, Trump began speaking more about the military’s involvement in the project.
“The military wanted it more than anybody,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on March 26.
Three days later, he said, “There’s not one dime of government money going into the ballroom,” but he immediately added that “the military’s building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction and we’re doing very well.” He described the ballroom as a “shed” over the subterranean military installation. “Everything’s drone-proof and bulletproof.”
There isn’t much publicly available information about plans for the new installation or the former bunker under the East Wing, which was built during World War II and has been updated over the years. “Known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), it can become a command center for the president as needed,” the White House Historical Association wrote in a 2024 social media post. “For example, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush and his team spent time in the PEOC.”
Trump was also taken to the bunker during his first term, amid protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020. He described the visit as an “inspection.”
The cost of construction for the new bunker and other security elements — which Trump has said would include “bomb shelters” and “very major medical facilities” — is also unclear.
But Trump said on May 7 that the $400 million he’s promised to collect in donations will pay for “the ballroom section of the ballroom,” while the $1 billion proposed in the reconciliation bill is “for projects having to do with safety … in a certain section of the White House grounds. That’s not all for the ballroom.”
We asked both the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, if they were paying for any of the construction. The Defense Department didn’t respond.
A DHS spokesperson provided this statement: “The $1 billion in funding included in the reconciliation bill will assist the United States Secret Service in delivering critical security upgrades at the White House to minimize threats, including, but not limited to, the security components of the East Wing Modernization Project, which will afford needed protection for the President, his family, and visitors, along with additional security functions. This hardening of the White House complex is long overdue, especially in today’s heightened threat environment. A majority of the money provided by the bill will fund other core critical missions for the USSS such as training, money for the Special Operations Division, and increased security measures to ensure safety at multiple upcoming events of national significance.”
Update, May 18: The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan professional position that assists in applying legislative rules — found that the $1 billion in funding couldn’t be included in a budget reconciliation bill, Democrats announced on May 16. Reconciliation bills can be passed with only a simple majority. But a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated in a social media post that Republicans would redraft that provision.
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The post Who’s Paying for the White House Ballroom? appeared first on FactCheck.org.
After nine execution dates, three last meals, and a Supreme Court ruling in his favor, Richard Glossip should soon walk free.
In conversation with Sir Michael Moritz 25 June 2026 — 17:00 TO 18:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House
Sir Michael Moritz, one of the most influential figures in modern technology and investment, for a discussion with Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House Director and CEO, about his latest book Ausländer.
Sir Michael Moritz, one of the most influential figures in modern technology and investment, for a discussion with Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House Director and CEO, about his latest book Ausländer.Born in Wales to Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, Michael Moritz began his career as a journalist for Time, where he wrote the first definitive history of Apple, before joining Sequoia Capital in 1986. Over nearly four decades, he orchestrated some of the era-defining investments in Silicon Valley, including Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Stripe and Klarna. Now a leading philanthropist through his foundation Crankstart and knighted for his services to the economy and charity, he remains a singular voice on global business, history and social responsibility.
In Ausländer, spurred by the discovery of papers after his mother’s death, he traces his family’s journey of escape and exile from the Holocaust – and the fate of those detained and murdered in those years. The book offers a raw and reflective exploration of identity, migration, fear and belonging, and the experience of being Jewish over the past century. Moving from the trauma of 1930s Germany to the Welsh valleys and eventually the boardrooms of California, Ausländer is an exploration of the shadow that ‘outsider’ status casts across generations and an assertion of the fragility of security.
The discussion takes place against a background of deep concern about antisemitism in the UK and ways of combating it. Following the terrorist attack in Golders Green in London, the UK raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe”. In Ausländer, Moritz asserts that “almost every day there is something that [President Donald] Trump does which makes me think of the past” and that he had applied for German citizenship; he ruled out the UK, saying to the BBC he believed that Britain was an uncomfortable place for Jews today.
Chaired by Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House’s CEO and Director, this conversation will explore how the lessons of Moritz’s family history should inform our understanding of this contemporary crisis and what must be done to protect the principles of a pluralistic society.’
For a year, White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka promoted the national strategy he was drafting, saying he was pouring his “life’s work” into a “massive” blueprint that would overhaul the U.S. approach to combating terrorist threats.
The finished product, released May 6 after months of delays, is a 16-page, typo-sprinkled document that ranks threats based on politics rather than intelligence assessments, according to several current and former counterterrorism officials and threat analysts.
Islamist militant groups, the perennial top concern, now come second to Latin American drug cartels. The violent far right, which the FBI has repeatedly called the leading domestic threat, doesn’t merit a mention. Meanwhile, militant leftists, a small subset of extremist violence in the United States, are portrayed as a threat on par with global terrorist networks such as al-Qaida.
“A new type of domestic terrorism has emerged,” the document says, “driven by violent extremists who have adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life.”
ProPublica’s still reporting. If you know more about U.S. counterterrorism efforts, please reach out.
Hannah Allam
I’m interested in tips about counterterrorism, court cases involving surveillance or civil liberties, national security personnel changes, threat assessments and the proximity of extremist movements to federal power.
Gorka’s strategy — the subject of a recent ProPublica report — lavishes praise on President Donald Trump’s national security agenda but offers few details about plans to tackle the administration’s top priorities: Latin American “narcoterrorists,” Islamist militant groups, and violent leftist antifascists and anarchists.
Gorka, who coordinates White House counterterrorism policy at the National Security Council, has called the document a “return to common sense” after a 2021 strategy by President Joe Biden centered on mostly far-right domestic threats. The new strategy mentions Biden seven times.
“What it tells me is that this administration is not paying attention to the data, to what our allies are seeing globally, or to where the biggest threats of violence come from or how they might be prevented,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University.
Republican leaders often portrayed Biden’s focus on the violent far right as the Democrats cracking down on conservative organizing. That idea fueled Trump’s blanket pardon of more than 1,500 defendants, including those who attacked police, in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Gorka did not reply to a request for comment. The White House, asked about criticisms of the plan, referred to a number of Gorka’s public statements touting it. Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, added in an email, “President Trump is crushing terrorist threats to the United States and will never let cartels, Jihadists, or the governments who support them plot against our citizens with impunity.”
Here are five notable aspects of the plan, compiled from interviews with counterterrorism personnel and researchers’ published critiques:
The counterterrorism strategy begins with a signed foreword by Trump, who sets the tone by claiming credit for ending “four years of weakness, failure, surrender, and humiliation under the last administration.”
Analysts say the rest of the strategy often reads like a valentine rather than a sober national security communique. Under Trump’s leadership, it states, “America is again the world’s most powerful nation, with the largest economy in history, the most advanced technologies, and the bravest and most skilled warfighters the world has ever seen.”
The strategy’s top threat categories align with the president’s pet issues, including the villainizing of Democrats and leftist dissent. The language also echoes debunked right-wing conspiracy theories the president has shared about a stolen election, a purported genocide of Christians and existential threats to Western civilization by what the strategy calls “alien cultures.” One section refers to Christians as “the most persecuted people on Earth.”
“This was once a serious document written by serious people” across Democratic and Republican presidencies, veteran terrorism analyst and former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem lamented on X. “Now it reads like a partisan screed.”
Analysts say the most obvious hole is the omission of violent far-right movements. Federal authorities have said for years that neo-Nazi and anti-government militia groups pose the most active and lethal domestic threats, though recently authorities have noted increases in leftist and mixed-motive attacks.
For example, on Sept. 10, the same day conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated at an outdoor event in Utah, a 16-year-old gunman who was steeped in online forums for white supremacy and mass-shooter fandom opened fire at a Colorado high school, critically wounding two students before killing himself.
The strategy is concerned only with the kind of violent extremism the White House ascribes to Kirk’s alleged shooter, who is labeled a violent left-wing “radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.” Terrorism analysts say the attack motives do not appear so clear-cut; the suspect, who has yet to go to trial, reportedly comes from a Republican family but had shifted politically and had expressed opposition to the “hatred” he said Kirk spread.
Just last week, a lawsuit related to a deadly shooting last year at Florida State University revealed that the gunman had used ChatGPT to explore “his interests in Hitler, Nazis, fascism” and other far-right topics.
In a social media post, Jacob Ware, a terrorism researcher who has written extensively about the militant right, called the case a “friendly reminder that the #Trump administration’s new United States Counterterrorism Strategy does not mention far-right violent extremism.”
Several of the White House’s stated counterterrorism objectives conflict with the president’s own actions, analysts say.
For one, the pledge of stepped-up efforts to thwart plots doesn’t factor in the diminished capacity of federal agencies since Trump slashed the national security workforce last year and diverted counterterrorism resources to his mass deportation campaign.
Terrorism analyst Colin Clarke, executive director of the security-focused Soufan Center and a Gorka critic, summarized the document as “highly partisan & mostly incoherent.”
It touts the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a U.S. military operation as the important capture of a “narco-terrorist outlaw.” But weeks before the Maduro raid, Trump had granted a pardon to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
Another U.S. goal is to aggressively counter anti-American propaganda by Islamist extremist groups, which the administration says have been driven from strongholds in the Middle East and are “exploiting the ungoverned spaces” across Africa. Places where “a resurgent terror threat is the reality,” according to the strategy, include West Africa, the Sahel region, Sudan and Somalia.
Yet efforts to counter anti-American messaging are undermined by increased U.S. airstrikes with civilian casualties, particularly in Somalia and Yemen, and the cutoff of humanitarian programs across the continent, conflict monitors say. U.S. aid has been a lifeline for communities whose desperation can be exploited by militant recruiters.
The strategy calls for a “light military footprint” in Africa, with the expectation that African leaders will take on a greater share of counterterrorism work. But Trump’s halting of foreign aid hobbled regional counterterrorism programs. Conflict monitors, now watching with alarm as Islamist militants capture territory and stage attacks in Mali, urge the administration to pay closer attention to the restive Sahel region and other hot spots.
“Terrorists are on the verge of recreating a new caliphate sanctuary that could serve as an incubator for attacks against the US homeland and interests abroad,” Alex Plitsas, a security analyst and former Obama-era Pentagon official, wrote this month after visiting U.S. Africa Command.
“The result is a warning for Washington: when the United States and its partners step back, jihadist groups and adversarial powers fill the space,” Plitsas wrote.
The strategy also disparages “failed ‘forever war’ policies” at a time Trump’s base is wrestling with his decision to launch the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism.
In a call with reporters after his plan was released, Gorka got defensive when asked how the Iran operation was not a “forever war” that could endanger Americans. He called critics “testicularly challenged.”
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, drew a distinction: “Unlike the ‘forever wars’ of the past with vague objectives and ever-expanding timelines, President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history, and he kept Americans apprised of the scope and defined objectives for Operation Epic Fury.”
Trump’s preface opens by celebrating counterterrorism achievements that analysts describe as inflated or lacking in nuance.
One example is the claim that, within 43 days of Trump’s return to office, the U.S. had apprehended “the terrorist mastermind” of the deadly Abbey Gate attack in Kabul. In 2021, a suicide bomber detonated in a crowd of civilians outside an airport gate during the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, killing more than 150 Afghans and 13 American service members.
In March, the Justice Department hailed the arrest of Afghan national Mohammad Sharifullah, an Islamist militant it said had “orchestrated” the attack. Gorka has publicly recounted the dramatic scene of waiting on the tarmac in the cold at 3 a.m., alongside several Cabinet members, to welcome the plane carrying the handcuffed “man who was responsible for the murder, the massacre.”
Last month, just before Gorka’s strategy was released, a federal jury dealt a blow to the “mastermind” narrative by returning a mixed verdict. Sharifullah was convicted of aiding the terrorist group known as Islamic State Khorasan, but the jury deadlocked on whether there was sufficient evidence to hold him responsible for the Abbey Gate deaths. The difference shapes how much time Sharifullah could spend behind bars — the more serious charge was eligible for a life sentence.
A Justice Department news release about the conviction (but not the deadlock) was scrubbed of references to Sharifullah as an orchestrator and did not use the “mastermind” language that appeared days later in the White House strategy.
Analysts also expressed skepticism about the blueprint’s claim that “hundreds of Jihadist terrorists in multiple countries” had been killed in recent U.S. counterterrorism operations. The administration releases virtually no details about the identities of those targeted or the circumstances of their deaths. Humanitarian groups say they fear the operations could be causing uncounted civilian casualties.
Rights watchdogs say the strategy hints at ways Trump administration officials will attempt to build terrorism cases against U.S. leftist and Muslim activists through nebulous or nonexistent ties to transnational militant movements.
A link to a foreign entity formally designated as a terrorist group opens the door for government surveillance and potential charges related to providing aid — “material support” in legal jargon — to a foreign terrorist organization.
Analysts say that’s why the Trump administration has pursued designations targeting leftist militant groups in Europe under the label of antifa, as well as some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood is a century-old Islamist group that renounced violence in the 1970s, though spinoffs such as Hamas remain active and on the U.S. blacklist. Republicans have long tried to portray U.S.-based Muslim advocacy groups as a foothold for the Brotherhood.
The document also calls for the rapid “neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” Researchers called the terms ill-defined and said they aren’t used in international counterterrorism work.
Miller-Idriss’ overarching concern about the Trump counterterrorism doctrine: “How damaging could it be? Both in the things it’s ignoring and the things that it’s emphasizing.”
The post Counterterrorism Czar’s Blueprint Targets Leftists, Ignores Far-Right Violence and Heaps Praise on Trump appeared first on ProPublica.
Trump–Xi summit will be about managing US–China rivalry, not resolving it Expert comment LToremark
The summit’s short agenda reveals a preference for continuing stability, which buys time. The question is how each side will use it.
When US President Trump and China’s President Xi meet in Beijing this week, the US list of concrete deliverables is short: keep rare earths flowing, create a board of trade mechanism for non-sensitive sectors, and secure Chinese purchase commitments. The gap between this short agenda and the long list of issues between two nations engaged in grinding, multidimensional competition reveals a shared preference for managing their rivalry rather than resolving it. But while Xi pursues this relationship management as strategy, Trump takes a more transactional and improvisational approach. With three more Trump-Xi meetings expected this year – at APEC in Shenzhen, the G20 in Miami and a Xi state visit – the question now is how each side will use this continued stalemate.
Laurel Rapp and Max Yoeli discuss the coming summit from the US perspective.
Trump brings a commercial focus to Beijing and will be accompanied by a CEO delegation, reflecting a turn away from focusing on more structural issues. Among his aims are Chinese purchases of American products like soybeans, LNG and Boeing aircraft. While such purchases, even if fulfilled, are unlikely to compensate for the damage to US businesses from the 2025 trade war, the optics are helpful for a politically vulnerable administration.
Xi also brings economic concerns – especially with further US tariffs pending – and will push on technology access. He has also signalled that Taiwan tops his agenda. China has long criticized US military support for Taiwan, which Beijing considers Chinese territory. The Trump administration approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan in December but has not yet followed through with delivery – even after Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan approved a special defence budget last week. On Monday, Trump indicated he would discuss the package with Xi, casting doubt on longstanding US policy regarding Taiwan.
The brief agenda spans only a fraction of the US–China relationship. On AI, officials seek to establish a communication channel rather than address underlying competition. On China’s nuclear build-up, Beijing has shown little appetite to engage. Although communication beats silence, such underwhelming efforts sidestep structural dynamics. Other issues like the South China Sea, industrial overcapacity and currency issues are marginal or absent. While the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed Iran up the agenda, the focus will be on immediate resolution levers rather than underlying Chinese support for Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Washington’s narrow focus is itself revealing. It partly reflects the Trump administration’s transactional, short-term approach. More significantly, the 2025 trade war and Chinese rare earth export controls reoriented leverage and exposed vulnerabilities – even more acute given depleted US munitions stocks amid the Iran war.
Going into the summit, both leaders face domestic constraints. Trump is navigating affordability politics, inflation, an unpopular war and setbacks to his trade agenda, with his approval rating at second-term lows. Agricultural communities, core to his support, have lost export markets and face rising fertilizer prices. For Trump, the pressure is on ahead of November’s midterm elections when his Republican party must defend Congressional majorities. He is also on the clock to resolve the Iran war.
Xi, meanwhile, faces debt, deflation, demographic headwinds and softening global demand. China’s latest economic growth target is its lowest since 1991, even as pre-war stockpiles and diversified imports help buffer Iran shocks. But Beijing operates on a longer timeline; Xi answers to party elites and the focus is on stability.
The US and China have taken very different approaches to managing their economic rivalry. As the two leaders seek continuing stability to buy time, how they use it is telling.
China has spent the past decade – especially since Trump’s first term – building its economic statecraft architecture, including export controls, the unreliable entity list, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, and rare earth export licensing. China’s October 2025 rare earth export controls showed a willingness to use its dominance over rare earth supply chains as leverage. Although these measures were largely suspended by the so-called ‘Busan truce’, earlier April 2025 controls on permanent magnets and heavy rare earths remain in place. Beijing’s recent order directing companies not to comply with US sanctions against five refineries, accused of importing Iranian oil, also points to China’s growing assertiveness.
Cohesive strategy and patient investment have strengthened China’s hand in other critical domains too. China installed more solar capacity in 2024 than the rest of the world combined and dominates battery and EV supply chains. It is also accelerating frontier technology progress and increasingly pushing towards indigenization – even after Washington opened a door by giving the green light for Nvidia H200 chip sales.
But there are gaps, notably advanced lithography, the machinery required to produce cutting-edge semiconductors. And China’s foundations are not unshakeable: fixed-asset investment struggled in 2025, the property sector continues to drag, and industrial policy draws mounting external backlash.
The US picture is more mixed. Trump administration policy is an uneven companion to private sector innovation – and often a hindrance. In areas with bipartisan support, consistent policy and strategic coherence can deliver progress. Continued export control coordination with the Netherlands and Japan on lithography is one example; efforts to develop alternatives to China’s critical minerals dominance are another, though they will take years to fully realize.
In other areas, progress is hampered by policy improvisation: the back-and-forth on tariffs, curtailed deployment of renewables, damaged research and state capacity, narrowing talent pathways, and a pattern of White House policy reversals. The US economy has nonetheless proven resilient, drawing on deep inherited advantages, such as AI infrastructure investment, energy abundance, deep capital markets, and innovation ecosystems. But tailwinds alone are insufficient. Without more coherent policy, including an industrial policy doctrine, gaps will emerge and grow.
For trade partners looking ahead, little will change. Hedging and trade diversification remain prudent policy. More broadly, evaluating the summit’s outcomes demands looking past immediate headlines and statements to the data and execution that follow. What commitments are made on the economic side – and whether they are fulfilled – are particularly important and will set the stage for future meetings.
Why Should Delaware Care?
On Tuesday, seven of Delaware’s 19 school districts held elections for their boards of education. Local school boards are the governing authority for school districts, and these elected officials can play a large role in the educational outcome for the state’s students.
Incumbent school board members generally had a rough day Tuesday when Delaware voters opted for several candidates who were fresh faces to their districts and who tended to push for greater transparency.
More than 12,100 people voted in the elections for school board members in districts in all three counties. While small compared to general elections, the turnout more than doubled the totals in 2024 when a similar number of districts held competitive elections.
Those results were particularly powered by the vote in the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area, where the Appoquinimink School District saw more than 4,000 voters turn out. Two years ago, fewer than 900 voters cast ballots.
Boards of education are responsible for a variety of governance-related tasks at their school districts, including hiring or firing superintendents, approving budgets, and determining when to ask voters for more money through a referendum request.
Contested races were held Tuesday in seven of Delaware’s 16 public school districts, including Appoquinimink, Christina, Colonial, Delmar, Caesar Rodney, Milford, and Red Clay Consolidated.
Below we’ll focus on the results for races in the Appoquinimink, Christina, Delmar, and Red Clay Consolidated school districts.
The Appoquinimink School District will swear in two new members to its board of education after Britney Mumford and Elena Brenner handily beat the incumbents by receiving 29% and 27% of votes, respectively.
Mumford and Brenner’s election comes nearly a year after the district revealed it had failed to properly track millions of dollars it believed were in reserve, sparking widespread criticism of school officials, including current board President Richard Forsten and member Nichelle DeWitt.
In September, a Change.org petition that garnered nearly 1,000 signatures called for the “immediate resignation” of the district superintendent, as well as of Appoquinimink school board members.
The crisis led to an investigation by Delaware State Auditor Lydia York, who found that the district’s deficit resulted from years of failure by staff and leadership to properly track and record expenditures.
Voters told Spotlight Delaware that trust was still an issue between the community and board members.
Chris, a parent of an Appoquinimink elementary and middle school student who only gave his first name, said he was concerned about a lack of transparency and accountability in the district following the controversy over finances.
“There needs to be a change,” he said.
Adrian, a teacher in the Appoquinimink School District who only gave her first name, said she voted for Brenner and another challenger, Mark Heck, who failed to garner enough votes to be among the top two.
Adrian liked that Brenner and Heck have had experience inside of a classroom.
“So they both know what is needed inside the schools. Hopefully they both are able to clean house a little bit … and really figure out what happened to that money,” she said.
Another Appoquinimink teacher, Katelynn Scott, said she always votes in school board elections, but was particularly concerned this year.
“I think, in this political climate, it’s really important to make sure we have people who are supportive of kids, teachers and the actual community here, and not politics going on nationally,” she said.
Neil Baker and Jordan Johnson were elected as the two newest Delmar Board of Education members, after beating Shawn Brittingham, who has previously served on both the Delmar and State Board of Education.
The Delmar School District made news last fall when then-Superintendent Andrew O’Neal warned of overcrowding, rising salaries and inflation as reasons the district might need to raise taxes.
Four months after the board announced it would not move forward with a referendum, Brittingham told Spotlight Delaware he would fully support a future referendum request because the district capacity challenges are growing. The Delmar district only has one building, where both its middle and high school students attend classes.
On Tuesday, Johnson said he would decide whether to support a referendum after reviewing additional information.
“If I feel that it is right and that we need it, I will vote for it,” he told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday, “and if I do not feel that it is right and that we do not need it, I will not vote for it.”
The other candidate, Baker, previously told the Laurel Star that “a strategic review is necessary.”
He said the review should account for enrollment growth, and “the relative value of school tax dollars in western Sussex compared to other districts statewide,” among other issues, according to the report from the Laurel Star.
Delmar Board of Education President Ray Vincent told Spotlight Delaware he was voting because it’s important for the community to “support the candidates of our choice so that we can continue to drive this district forward.”
Asked whether the possibility of a referendum influenced his decision, Vincent said the district will be moving forward with a referendum “once we figure out what the state’s new funding form is going to look like.”
But not all community members had a potential referendum on their minds when selecting their candidates.
Stacy Culver, a Delmar Elementary teacher, said she did not think about referendums when making her decision. Instead, she said she was voting “for somebody to stand up for our kids.”
The Red Clay Consolidated School District is one of four northern New Castle County districts that could be consolidated into one larger district, along with Brandywine, Christina, and Colonial.
Both board of education candidates aimed to address the district’s ongoing enrollment concerns before a possible consolidation.
But voters chose newcomer Jenny Howard over current Board President Victor Leonard, as she received 60% of the votes.
Howard, a mother of four and a former educator, told Spotlight Delaware that the distrust among community members regarding the board’s decision making is what inspired her to run against Leonard.
Last month, the Red Clay Consolidated Board of Education voted to postpone the transformation of one of its high schools into an “innovation campus,” following months of pushback from community members concerned about the future of a program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
If the plan had been successful, the McKean Innovation Center would have opened in August 2027, reducing the number of traditional high schools in the district from three to two, and increasing enrollment numbers at Alexis I. du Pont High School and The John Dickinson School.
The plan would also have moved the district’s Meadowood program for students with intellectual or developmental disabilities, serving students in kindergarten through age 22, from McKean to A.I. du Pont.
Some parents have voiced concerns for months to district leaders about the program’s future, saying they feel Meadowood has been an “afterthought.”
Howard also spoke against the innovation center at multiple meetings.
”The district and the board were not listening to the families and the community and just doing whatever they wanted,” she said. “I was like, ‘You know, maybe [my election] will change things.’”
Jane Marcozzi is a graduate of McKean High School and said her grandaughter currently attends the school. She ultimately voted for Howard because she felt the board’s original decision to close McKean was rushed, and does not want to see the school closed.
“I feel like it came up all of a sudden, and everybody kind of was like, ‘Oh, OK,’” she said.
Marcozzi, who said this was her first time voting in a board of education election, added that she admired Howard’s public comments toward the board regarding McKean during public meetings.
Tuesday’s election marked the second year in a row that the Christina School District community selected a representative for the board’s lone Wilmington-based seat.
Last May, the Wilmington-based seat on the Christina Board of Education was filled by Shannon Troncoso after she received 67% of the votes cast.
After Troncoso resigned in December, board members appointed Celita Cherry, a self-empowerment coach, to fill the vacancy until Tuesday’s election.
Cherry is one of the few incumbents across the state to retain her seat after obtaining 66% of the votes.
Cherry has a daughter in the Bayard School, and is also the president of Mothers Advocating for School Kids, an advocacy organization. In January, Cherry said she applied for the seat because she felt it was time for someone who grew up in Wilmington and attended Christina schools to “serve as a voice directly from the community.”
Cherry also said the person filling the vacant seat should serve as a bridge between the district and the city to better communicate how district policies are made.
Only 540 votes were cast throughout the Christina School District.
At the polls, one resident, Dawn Patton, said she voted for Cherry’s challenger, Charlene “Amina” Sams, because she felt Sams would be the best candidate to “implement change for the better.”
Patton does not have children in the district, but her granddaughter is graduating from Glasgow High School this year.
As a taxpayer, she noted the importance of education and voting for someone who could guide young people and “lead them in the right path.”
Other competitive races
Tim Carlin and Jacob Owens contributed to this report.
The post A slew of newly elected board members set to shake up Delaware schools appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Trump’s treatment of US allies has weakened his negotiating position with Xi Expert comment jon.wallace
The president has alienated partners that once acted as force multipliers. But there are still opportunities to create a united front on common points of tension with Beijing.
President Donald Trump travels to Beijing this week with the US’s alliance structure under enormous strain. Washington has fewer partners at its side, and a weaker hand to play.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Alone, the US has leverage against Beijing, through controlling access to its advanced chips, sanctions on Chinese purchases of Iranian oil, and a consumer market Beijing can’t ignore.
But Washington’s allies and partners provided strength that China has struggled to compete with – acting as force multipliers, aligning with the US on shared vulnerabilities.
The Trump administration’s dismissal of such countries has created justified resentment. Many of America’s closest partners, buffeted by threats to NATO and tariffs, have concluded that US commitment may be a relic of the past. That is leading them to forge independent approaches to China, beginning with commercial ties.
Beijing today benefits from greater economic connectivity with US partners and allies, fewer multilateral structures to bind its behaviour, and little political will on either side of the Atlantic to advance common projects.
Yes, allied cohesion on China has always been aspirational, limited by different risk perceptions and economic pressures. But US and allied approaches have increasingly diverged since January 2025. And the current situation weakens the US negotiating position, even on President Trump’s ‘America First’ terms.
Greater alignment by the US with its traditional partners on China policy – covering issues like critical minerals, semiconductors, synthetic drugs and beyond – is still possible and of benefit to both Washington and allied capitals. It shouldn’t be cast aside.
Today, the floor has fallen out of the US alliance structure, as relations with partners and allies has deteriorated.
The US has retreated from multilateral organizations, questioned the role of NATO, divided the G7 over tariffs, further hollowed out the WTO, launched UN-alternative structures like the Board of Peace, and gone to war with Iran.
This has pushed allies to chart independent paths, leaving China to take advantage. While the US spent the winter focused on Venezuela, Greenland and Iran, Beijing focused on commercial diplomacy.
In January, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung announced a ‘full scale restoration of ties’ between Seoul and Beijing, backed by new agreements on economic and trade cooperation, science and technology and the digital economy.
Two weeks later, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a comprehensive ‘strategic partnership’ with Beijing covering energy, agriculture, and Chinese electric vehicles, amounting to CAD$3 billion in new export orders for Canada.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s subsequent visit netted £2.2 billion in export deals and around £2.3 billion in market access.
In February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, though citing ‘difficult issues’ in trade relations, agreed to strengthen Germany’s ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ with Beijing through 17 bilateral cooperation agreements.
Trump will also seek bilateral deals – on products like American soybeans and Boeing aircraft, on top of the NVIDIA chips he recently approved for sale to China, despite national security concerns.
Benefits are therefore rapidly accruing to Beijing. If the US and its traditional allies cannot develop a collective bargaining strategy, grouping their economies along similar red lines, China will only extend its run.
The floor of the US alliance structure cannot be rebuilt overnight, and its foundations were always imperfect. But two significant agreements indicate the Trump administration has realized that – in discrete instances – Trump’s ‘I alone can fix it’ instincts don’t work.
Pax Silica, launched by the US in December 2025, aims to shore up silicon supply chains for semiconductor manufacturing and AI development. With 14 partners and counting, the initiative sees ‘allies and trusted partners’ like Australia, Finland, Greece, Japan, Norway, South Korea, and the UK align to reduce dependency on critical technology from China. Its viability will take time to evaluate, but this novel grouping addresses a common concern, and will only become more effective as it expands.
Meanwhile, to break dependencies on China’s critical minerals, the US launched the new Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), alongside co-chair Japan. They and 52 other partners now belong to a preferential trade-and-investment zone for critical minerals, guaranteeing price floors.
Like Pax Silica, it’s still early days. And shifting White House attention risks limiting full implementation. But both are encouraging datapoints that the Trump administration is slowly realizing that American unilateralism undercuts American power in certain instances.
Washington, European capitals, and Indo-Pacific allies should build on such initiatives, identifying areas where working with allies is clearly to the advantage of all.
This can take a few forms. First, groupings like Pax Silica and FORGE should be bolstered by renewed efforts to bring in new country signatories and investments. Strengthening these groups will both improve members’ hands with Xi and promise material benefits to all its participants.
Laurel Rapp and Max Yoeli discuss the coming summit from the US perspective.
Establishing or reviving other groupings, for instance on synthetic drug interdiction, is another obvious area for close US cooperation with allies. Fentanyl is a continuing source of American overdose deaths, with the US claiming that many of the chemicals used in its production originate in China.
But the Trump administration chose not to extend US leadership of a nearly 160 country coalition to counter production and distribution of illicit substances.
Revitalizing this network should be a priority. Both Biden and Trump hammered Xi on fentanyl, and US overdose deaths have fallen since 2023, possibly due in part to US diplomacy. But without a wider grouping of concerned partners, success may be limited or short-lived.
It is also crucial that trade talks by the US, Canada and Mexico starting in July are a success and deliver real constraints on China’s investments in North American manufacturing. Allowing internal divisions to prevent a protective arrangement would be an own goal and play into China’s strategy.
Finally, US allies and partners must identify shared red lines for bilateral cooperation with China that will be upheld independent of Washington. Most countries have national China strategies, and all have identified red lines for bilateral cooperation. But internal limits are not the same as a shared approach.
The logic of greater allied alignment remains sound even where US commitment is uncertain. If allies can establish common approaches on China policy in other areas, it may manage Washington’s frustration with their hedging.
And finding agreement may also prove useful for the future: the US may become more cooperative on some issues after President Trump leaves office. And the US’s structural rivalry with China looks likely to endure through successive administrations for some time to come.
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| Technology - CBSNews.com | XML | 2026-05-19 20:04 | 2026-05-19 22:04 |
| Technology | The Guardian | XML | 2026-05-19 20:04 | 2026-05-19 22:04 |
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