James Cameron's Avatar is no longer the highest-grossing movie in box office history. That honor now goes to the Disney/Marvel Studios film Avengers: Endgame. Variety explains:
"Avatar" spent a decade as the biggest release ever until "Avengers: Endgame" overtook the record in 2019 during its initial run on the big screen. "Endgame" dropped to No. 2 on all-time charts in 2021 when "Avatar" returned to theaters in advance of 2021's "Avatar: The Way of Water." Five years later, and Earth's Mightiest Heroes have triumphed over the Na'vi again.
Disney is popping Champagne no matter which big-screen behemoth claims the No. 1 spot. "Avatar" was released by 20th Century Fox, which Disney now owns after the companies merged in 2019... [Last week's] re-release of "Endgame" has generated more than $126 million worldwide.
Together the 38 Marvel Studios movies "have generated more than $35 billion worldwide," notes an announcement on Disney's web site, "making the Marvel Cinematic Universe the most successful film franchise in history."
Their announcement adds that Disney "is responsible for seven of the 10 highest-grossing films of all time." That list also includes James Cameron's Titantic and his first two Avatar movies, but also this summer's Spider-Man: Brand New Dayand the earlier film Spider-Man: No Way Home, plus Marvel's 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War. Also among the top-10-of-all-time are Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) at #7 and last year's Zootopia 2.
Meanwhile Coyote vs. Acme was released for rent or purchase on streaming platforms Tuesday, and became the No. 1 most-watched movie in the Apple TV store for America and Canada, according to CBR. (Citing a report from FlixPatrol ) "On Rotten Tomatoes, Coyote vs. Acme has a near-perfect 96% Certified Fresh Tomatometer score based on critics' reviews, and a similar 94% Verified Hot Popcornmeter score based on audience reviews... Frank Scheck from The Hollywood Reporter called it "one of the best live-action/animation films ever."
Preorders have just opened for its DVD and 4K disks, and Coyote vs. Acme is also coming to Blu-ray writes IGN, "along with some hilarious outtakes that he described as 'not PG-rated.'"
Celebrating the film's $100 million box office take last week, the movie's distributors posted a very Coyote-like koan on social media. "It's only over when you stop trying."
Two people were killed and another 35 were hospitalized with injuries after a shooting broke out at a neighborhood block party in Georgia, authorities said.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is standing against Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of the presidential race
The incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is up against Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is in prison for plotting a military coup. The president in Brazil is directly elected, and candidates need more than 50% of the vote to avoid a second round. Polls close at 17.00 BRT / 21.00 BST.
Justice Samuel Alito discussed his opinion in the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the leaked draft and its aftermath, same-sex marriage rights and why he's not retiring yet.
(The Center Square) – A coalition of bipartisan lawmakers introduced legislation into both the House and Senate with hopes of bringing the movie and film production industry back home, an occurrence that would protect and create U.S. jobs as well…
Minnesota's law banning AI "nudification" images has been put on hold after a federal appeals court sided with Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company.
“Welcome to the NFL’s home away from home,” was the rallying cry from former running back and current in-stadium hype man Ronde Barber before the league’s 19th year holidaying in the UK began. And welcome Washington’s injury bug which must have stowed away on the flight to London. The mighty Commanders defense that overwhelmed the Colts at times could not overcome having another quarterback knocked out of commission. Indianapolis capitalised on the misfortune with crafty running back Jonathan Taylor carrying them to a 30-13 victory.
The Commanders were already missing starting quarterback Jayden Daniels with an elbow injury and their pesky interloper wasn’t satisfied that Washington had endured enough torment. The game-defining moment came early as a knee injury forced backup passer Marcus Mariota out of the contest after a strong start. Rookie third-stringer Athan Kaliakmanis replaced him and though he delivered the play of the game with an incredible showcase of vision and accuracy on a 47-yard touchdown throw, it was too much, too soon for the 23-year-old.
A fast-growing wildfire in the Angeles national forest north-east of Santa Clarita, California, has triggered evacuation orders and warnings in the area. Firefighters battled the blaze, which had spread to 1,000 acres by Saturday evening, from the ground and air, while authorities ordered residents in surroundings areas to leave as the fire spread quickly across the rugged terrain. The cause of the fire was not immediately reported
"Physicists smashed gold nuclei together at nearly the speed of light and found an unexpected pattern in the particles..." writes Live Science.
"If confirmed, that pattern could help reveal how the hot soup of quarks and gluons that filled the universe in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang cooled and condensed into the protons and neutrons that make up ordinary matter today."
In every collision, particles are flung out sideways; how hard they are flung, on average, varies slightly from one collision to the next. Physicists expected the size of these variations to change smoothly as they adjusted the collision energy. Instead, the variations dipped, shrinking and then growing again. This dip could be a sign of a long-sought "critical point," a special set of conditions at which nuclear matter changes the way it transforms from one form to another.
The signal, detected by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, is strong enough that it is very unlikely to be a statistical accident. However, the researchers cautioned that the dip is a tantalizing hint, not proof of the long-sought transition. They published their findings Sept. 22 in the journal Physical Review Letters...
The team analyzed roughly 1 billion collisions, measuring how hard charged particles were flung sideways out of the fireball, according to the article.
The dip "does point to a set of conditions where the behavior of nuclear matter changes, and it gives theorists a new, precise measurement to test their calculations against," study co-author Rutik Manikandhan, told Live Science.
Home secretary warns people traffickers will exploit asylum seekers because they decide who comes to the UK
Nearly all women who try to reach the UK in small boats from northern France have been raped on their journey, Shabana Mahmood has claimed.
In an interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast, the home secretary said far-right, balaclava-wearing activists would “kill” or “kick me out of my own country” if they took power.
On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Zach Lahn, Iowa GOP nominee for governor, join Margaret Brennan.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Zach Lahn, Iowa GOP nominee for governor, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that President Trump was "well aware of the risks to energy flows" before launching the war in Iran earlier this year, but argued "the world cannot sustain a nuclear-armed Iran."
Clayton, who leads the US’s 18 intelligence agencies, previously served as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan and led the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term.
Motion calling for single Palestinian state, which is opposed by most Green MPs and expected to be challenged, passes by 1,022 votes to 813
The Greens have formally adopted a policy that equates Zionism with racism and calls for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state, a move opposed by the bulk of the party’s MPs and which is expected to face legal challenge.
Zack Polanski, who heads the Greens in England and Wales and missed the vote at the party’s conference in Brighton to campaign in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, has faced criticism for a perceived lack of leadership on a hugely divisive issue.
In a district shaken by deaths of 11 workers, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez faces a stiff challenge to keep her seat
On a misty morning in May in south-west Washington state, Laura Oltmann, a 41-year-old dietitian, had barely clocked in when an unfamiliar overhead announcement echoed through the hospital.
“We get overhead pages for different types of emergencies. But this one, we don’t get very often,” recalled Oltmann.
Car thefts in San Francisco are down almost 59% for the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same months in 2022, according to analysis of police department statistics by NPR's Planet Money — and car break-ins are down more than 82%.
"San Francisco's law enforcement leaders tell us that greater use of surveillance technology — including a controversial, AI-powered license plate camera system made by Flock Safety — has been crucial to this drop in car crime."
How much credit does Flock actually deserve...? [In July of 2022, San Francisco District Attorney] Jenkins began taking a more aggressive approach to prosecuting people accused of crimes. Meanwhile, the SFPD beefed up its tactics to fight car thefts and break-ins. In 2023, for example, the police increased patrols in tourist areas known for car break-ins and used "bait cars" to catch and build cases against organized car burglars. But, Jenkins says, "one of the most important factors" behind the drop in crime came when the city introduced new crime-fighting technology. In March 2024, San Francisco voters approved Proposition E, which, among other provisions, made it easier for SFPD to use drones and high-tech surveillance cameras. That same month, the SFPD began installing Flock cameras in strategic locations... In a statement to Planet Money, a spokesperson for the SFPD said, "ALPR has been instrumental in driving down crime in San Francisco. These tools enable our officers to identify crime vehicles with precision, and ALPR is assisting in reducing crimes that were previously very challenging to solve, like auto burglaries."
Jenkins described how Flock cameras and drones can work together to catch suspected criminals. In one case the SFPD publicized, the department says Flock cameras spotted a moving vehicle linked to an auto burglary the previous day and alerted officers. Officers deployed a drone, which flew in from above and then began recording suspects in real time as they smashed windows and stole luggage out of a parked SUV. The police then moved in and arrested them. They can do all this, Jenkins says, "without putting innocent people in danger with dangerous police chases." Meanwhile, the surveillance system creates an evidence trail that [Jenkins'] office can use to prosecute suspected criminals... Jenkins also believes high-tech surveillance helps deter crime, although that's harder to prove...
The most ambitious study of Flock's system so far is a recent one by University of South Carolina crime researchers Ian Adams and Scott Mourtgos. They analyzed data from 216 law enforcement agencies that introduced Flock cameras, comparing crime trends with places that had not adopted Flock. They found that deploying Flock cameras was associated with an 11% drop in car thefts in the first year. This is only one study, and it has yet to be peer-reviewed. It's also not a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for finding the actual causal effect of something. Other factors, beyond Flock, could still help explain the decline.
That study attempted to control for variables, the article points out — like how San Francisco's decline coincided with a broader drop in crime across American cities as America emerged from the pandemic...
But the article also notes another worry shared by "countless citizens" and political leaders. Are these systems handing too much power to law enforcement to "invade our privacy, trace our whereabouts, and stomp on our civil liberties."
On Friday the Times revealed that Katie Lam, the communities secretary, told a meeting in private earlier this year that the state pension system needs a fundamental overhaul.
Speaking in June, when she was a frontbencher but not yet in the shadow cabinet, Lam was asked at a meeting with activists if she thought the pensions triple lock was sustainable. She replied:
Ultimately I think what we will need in the end is an entirely new pension system.
I mean, a baby that is born today has a 20% chance of living to be 100 and I don’t think we can fund one in five people half of their lives, you know, for the first 20 and the last 30 years. But obviously if you are 90 you probably can’t go out and get a job right, so I think you have to be realistic about how you would taper that and bring that in across the population.
The fact is, the triple lock and pensions are things that people have contributed to.
Conservatives believe that if you have contributed, then you deserve to get your state pension.
In a CBS News interview, Biden-era Middle East adviser Brett McGurk recounted the administration's response to the Oct. 7 attack, its handling of the Israel-Hamas war, the role of Iran and the long-sought push to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Attack shortly after Friedrich Merz arrived on unannounced visit intended to underline Germany’s backing
Russia has struck another major bridge in Kyiv as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, arrived in the capital in a show of support for Ukraine.
A Russian drone hit Kyiv’s key Northern Bridge over the Dnipro River, marking the fourth consecutive day that Russia has targeted bridges used by tens of thousands of residents commuting between the city’s two banks. Video footage showed cars driving across the bridge as the drone plunged into the roadway and exploded in a burst of fire. Two people were injured in the strike, said Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
The following is the full transcript of the interview with Brett McGurk, who served as a top Middle East adviser to former Preident Joe Biden, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Energy Secretary Chris Wright that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
"Sunday Morning" talked with passengers who heroically helped avert disaster this past Wednesday by subduing the co-pilot attempting to crash their Boeing 737 Max into the Arabian Desert.
"Free your BIOS today!" urges the web page for GNU Boot, calling it "a 100% free software project aimed at replacing the nonfree boot software (like BIOS or UEFI) of computers with free boot software.
GNU Boot is only a distribution: it reuses existing software projects like Coreboot, GRUB, SeaBIOS, etc. So it's not very different from 100% free GNU/Linux distributions like Trisquel or Guix.
Last month the Free Software Foundation announced they'd fiscally sponsor the project:
"The BIOS is a delicate but essential part of software freedom for computing today," said Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF. "GNU Boot aims to make sure that we can continue using our computers in freedom. With the way it builds on the work of others to replace UEFI, we know it can remain firm in the free software philosophy and stay vital to digital autonomy and user freedom." Free boot firmware, such as GNU Boot, is responsible for loading the computer's operating system.
The work done by GNU Boot contributors has similarities to work done by GNU/Linux distributions: they package software like Coreboot or GNU GRUB, contribute to the upstream repositories of these projects, and assist them with documentation, among other tasks... When asked about their project joining the FSF's fiscal sponsorship program, co-maintainer Adrien Bourmault stated: "Making this decision with the FSF allows us to focus more on what we do best: writing and debugging code that keeps our machines fully free." Projects whose scope and purpose align with the FSF's mission and further mission-related activities can become fiscally sponsored by joining the FSF's Working Together for Free Software Fund.
At least 25 injured at block party shooting in Georgia and three wounded in Baltimore park shooting, officials say
Two people were killed and at least 25 others injured when a shooting erupted at a homecoming block party in Vienna, Georgia, early on Sunday, according to authorities.
In another high-profile mass shooting in the US over the weekend, a 12-year-old girl was shot and killed and three others were wounded after gunfire evidently broke out over a parking spot in a Baltimore park on Saturday, officials said.
Calls for release of six Matsadaash staff after one is charged, while whereabouts of other five remain unknown
An Egyptian journalist has been charged with joining a terrorist group, days after an entire newsroom was detained in what rights groups have said is a crackdown on press freedoms.
Last week, authorities arrested six journalists from the independent fact-checking and investigative platform Matsadaash – literally meaning “don’t believe” – accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and publishing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partly closed on Monday as authorities brace for another week of student protests.
Lessons will be totally or partly suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, the education minister, Édouard Geffray, said on Sunday.
Reform UK leader was interviewed for half an hour last month over money from crypto billionaire
Nigel Farage has been interviewed by the standards commissioner for an investigation into whether he should have declared a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
The Reform UK leader spent about half an hour being questioned over the money, the Sunday Times reported. Farage maintains the gift was for his personal security.
Lawyers and campaigners have condemned the “horrifying” scale of child-on-child sexual abuse in schools after a Guardian investigation revealed thousands of sexual offences against under-13s, including multiple rapes, are reported to police every year.
Close to five sexual crimes against children aged 12 and younger were recorded on average by police every day in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, according to Guardian analysis of police data for 2021-25.
Mourners in Springfield, Ohio, blamed Pierre Damas Bel’s death on President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign. Trump’s supporters said ICE needs to do more.
Private companies are taking cremated remains and stunt payloads to the moon. Former NASA attorney Steve Mirmina warns that there’s nothing stopping them.
At least 5,000 people, mainly teenagers, have been arrested while dozens of people, including students and teachers, have been injured
Germany is Ukraine’s largest donor and has sent Kyiv more than €43.3 billion ($48.8 billion) since the war began, along with equipment and weapons.
Zelenskyy thanked Merz for visiting the Ukrainian capital describing him as “A leader of a country that consistently demonstrates leadership in protecting the lives of Ukrainians from Russian strikes.
We are grateful for all the support, and today we are preparing decisions to give us in Ukraine, and all of Europe, greater capabilities to defend ourselves. There will be important agreements between Ukraine and Germany. Russia must be stopped together.”
Zelenskyy in the past hour has been tweeting about the strikes and the German chancellor’s visit, thanking Merz for his support.
On the Kyiv strike this morning he confirmed it had been a drone on the Northern Bridge (Pivnichnyi Bridge).
He noted too a drone attack on a pharmaceutical warehouse in Sumy which killed one person and a strike on a communications facility in Dnipro.
A U.S. banking group just sued the government agency that issues America's federal bank charters, reports CoinDesk, "accusing it of exceeding its legal powers in granting national trust-bank status to crypto firms."
The agency's move "creates a gaping hole in financial regulation," according to the lawsuit by The Independent Community Bankers of America, one of America's largest banking advocacy organizations. It argues the move will "perversely allow entities engaged in highly risky cryptocurrency and digital assets activities to enter the banking system under lightly regulated national charters" which actually preempt many state regulations, including consumer protection laws.
But the move would also "place community banks at a severe competitive disadvantage," the lawsuit argues, "by allowing the national trust banks to offer many of the same services as community banks without complying with the same costly banking laws and regulations that apply to the community banks." This competitive advantage could "siphon deposits out of community banks and into deposit alternatives like cryptocurrency," which they describe as "highly volatile, prone to market crashes, cybercrime, and fraud" and lacking protections like deposit insurance.
They also warn that America's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "has not managed an uninsured bank receivership in nearly one hundred years. But failures of risky uninsured national
trust banks could spread instability throughout the nation's financial system, including by spreading contagion risks to other traditional banks like community banks."
CoinDesk reports:
[The Independent Community Bankers of America] also played a significant role in pushing back against the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act that failed to advance in the U.S. Senate last month — in part due to the bankers' objections that its stablecoin provisions didn't protect them against direct competition with the deposit accounts that are core to their businesses.
Now, the group is targeting the trust charters crypto firms are pursuing as an entry point into the U.S. banking and payments system.
"Congress did not create the national trust charter as a side door into the banking system for crypto firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter," ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in a statement..
The latest book by the bestselling author of "The Big Short" and "Moneyball" profiles federal workers targeted by President Trump and his mega-donor Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Alan Alda, now 90, best-known for his role as "Hawkeye" Pierce on the classic TV series "M*A*S*H," talks about living with Parkinson's disease, which he refuses to let define him.
Sixteen years after "The Social Network," his Oscar-winning film about Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Sorkin turns from Facebook's origins to its consequences with "The Social Reckoning," about a Facebook whistleblower.
The hosts of the next major United Nation climate conference, Turkey and Australia, are facing criticism for being partners in a coal supply chain while remaining near silent on the need for a global deal to rapidly get off fossil fuels.
With the Cop31 summit in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya just a month away, the two countries running the fortnight-long talks have been accused by activists of a “vacuum of action” on plans for a transition away from coal, gas and oil – a key goal of many nations at the talks.
A standard business practice offsets future costs by funding a reserve for returns – but many small businesses don’t do it
In my 30-plus years of being an accountant I have learned many business lessons from people who were much smarter than me. Jerry Crawford was one of those people. Jerry taught me about product returns.
Jerry – who sadly passed away a decade ago – sold carpets wholesale from a nondescript little building in south Jersey. He employed about 50 people and counted many local and national carpet retailers as his customers. When I reviewed Jerry’s books, I noticed a large reserve for “returns”.
Six passengers and crew onboard still unaccounted for after medical plane vanished off coast of Massachusetts
Researches found debris from a medical transport plane that was carrying six people when it vanished over the Atlantic early on Saturday during a flight from Bermuda to Boston, the US Coast Guard said.
A statement from the Coast Guard issued on Saturday evening said crews searching off the coast of the Massachusetts island Nantucket “located a debris field confirmed to be from the aircraft”, described as an air ambulance.
The idea of universal health coverage in the US is embraced by party’s left but is often considered a liability by centrists
Last week, 1,500 unionized nurses gathered in a large conference room at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco to cheer for a cause they’ve championed for years: Medicare for All.
Considered a radical and even fringe idea for decades, interest in sweeping healthcare reform has surged as progressive Democrats have won a series of primary victories ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. Most prominent among its advocates is Democratic US Senate nominee from Michigan Abdul El-Sayed – who took the lectern before these nurses.
Considered Republican frontrunner for presidential election, Vance is cozying up to the movement – as it splits
JD Vance, widely considered to be the Republican frontrunner for the presidential election in 2028, is aligning himself with the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement as some say it is shedding its grassroots supporters in favor of political and corporate interests.
The US vice-president has positioned himself as the inheritor of Make America Great Again (Maga), and attaching himself to Maha, which many in the Trump administration believe helped to win the 2024 election, signals a greater overlap between the two movements as the administration’s popularity plummets amid the war in Iran and rising prices.
Hany Farid, a leading expert on deepfakes and digital manipulation, estimates that half of the content widely viewed on the Internet is fake. What does this mean for our ability to detect images generated or hallucinated by artificial intelligence?
Cape Henlopen senior Jameson Tingle recovers a fumble for the Vikings in their win over Hodgson. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
The Cape Henlopen Vikings (4-0) defeated the Hodgson Silver Eagles (1-4), 35-28, on October 3 to remain undefeated to start the season. The Vikings are 4-0 for the first time in over a decade.
MIDDLETOWN, DE — Normally when Cape Henlopen senior Jameson Tingle is mentioned in correlation to a football game it’s because of his talents on the offensive side of the ball. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, Tingle’s impact on defense was what earned Cape Henlopen its fourth win of the season and first 4-0 start in 12 years.
The Silver Eagles trailed the Vikings by seven when their final drive of the game started on their own three-yard line with a little over eight minutes remaining in the game. Hodgson quarterback, senior Kevin Browning, connected with fellow senior Dorian Wilson on a 31-yard pass and subsequent runs from Browning brought Hodgson into Cape Henlopen territory. The Silver Eagles drove the ball to the Viking 18-yard line, needing inches to extend the drive on fourth and less than a yard.
Browning rushed the ball into the middle of the Cape Henlopen defense and was met by Viking junior Geoffrey Davis rushing in from his spot in the secondary to make the tackle. Davis’ tackle hit the arm of Browning and jarred the ball loose. Tingle quickly jumped on the ball securing possession for the Viking offense with 1:25 left to play.
“Coach just called a blitz on my part so I was already in the mix,” Tingle said postgame. “I seen my teammate knock the ball out and after I see that it’s just look around and try to find the ball and then I found it and I dove. I could’ve been scared, I could’ve did this, but I didn’t really care. I see ball, get ball, and luckily I was able to get it.”
Tingle’s defensive play completed a strong second half for the University of Delaware commit as he led the Vikings to a comeback victory.
The Silver Eagles started the game with a recovery on an onside kick and turned the possession into eight points on the game’s first drive. Senior running back, Keytwan Sabur, scored the touchdown on a 23-yard run and scored Hodgson’s second touchdown on its next drive via a four yard run. The Vikings answered the pair of touchdowns with a couple short yardage touchdown runs from Tingle, tying the game, 14-14, forty seconds into the second quarter.
Hodgson senior Keytwan Sabur runs the ball for the Silver Eagles. Sabur scored Hodgson’s first two touchdowns. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
Hodgson fired right back with its senior signal caller on a 14-play drive that ended with a one-yard Browning touchdown and a completed two-point conversion pass from Browning to sophomore Julian Coleman. Tingle and senior Aidan Lehmuth connected on a 26-yard catch and score, but the two-point try was no good, leaving Hodgson in the lead, 22-20. Browning completed the first half scoring with his second rushing touchdown, putting the Silver Eagles ahead, 28-20.
That’s when the quarterback Cape Henlopen senior Stephen Sivels nicknamed “Thanos” took over.
“I call him Thanos [because] he do it all [on] both sides of the field,” Sivels said about Tingle. “He got a fumble recovery, passing touchdowns, punching it in, all that so I call him Thanos.”
Tingle completed eight of ten pass attempts in the second half for 168 passing yards and a touchdown. Tingle’s passing touchdown was a 46-yard catch and run to Sivels that tied the score after a run from Tingle on the two-point conversion. Sivels’ touchdown grab was one of five catches he hauled in throughout the game. Sivels ended the game with over 100 receiving yards.
“Jameson, he’s a great quarterback. He can swing it from the opposite side and hit me right on the spot, so yeah, I really love playing with Jameson because he’s a really good quarterback,” Sivels said.
Tingle makes a leaping throw to a receiver down field. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
Tingle scored the go-ahead touchdown on a three-yard rush with a little over eight minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. It was the first time Cape Henlopen led during the afternoon. Tingle finished the game with 295 passing yards, 109 rushing yards and five total touchdowns.
“Just my teammates man. It’s just what we’ve been through, summers since we’ve been young, I’ve been playing with these guys for a long time, so they’re able to give me the courage, be able to keep me level-headed and yeah they just give me the courage to do everything,” Tingle said about how he’s able to stay composed in adverse game situations. “All kudos to them.”
Cape Henlopen’s next game is a homecoming matchup against Appoquinimink on October 9. The game will be played in Lewes, Delaware, and start at 7:00 p.m.
The Silver Eagles next game will be against St. Georges on Friday, October 9, at 3:45 p.m. St. Georges has won the matchup two years in a row.
Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro face off in battle between leftwing incumbent and far-right son of jailed ex-president
Brazilians are going to the polls in the first round of a highly polarised and high-stakes presidential election that could change not only the direction of Latin America’s largest country but that of the entire region.
The election on Sunday pits the leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is seeking a fourth non-consecutive term, against the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of Donald Trump and the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup after his failed 2022 re-election attempt.
Suspect allegedly killed woman at hotel in Okinawa as prime minister calls crime ‘exceptionally brutal and vicious’
A US marine stationed on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa is accused of murdering a Japanese woman and has been arrested on suspicion of murder, police said on Sunday.
The suspect allegedly “killed [a] 39-year-old woman at a hotel in Naha and stole her wallet” as well as her backpack, local police told news media outlets.
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Food and Drug administration has proposed a rule that aims to close a long-neglected regulatory food safety loophole, but consumer advocates warn the effort amounts to a “regulatory mirage.”
In 1964 Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters" rode a bus named "Furthur," fueled by music, alcohol and LSD. This icon of the counterculture movement, which has fallen into a rusted state, is now on display in San Francisco, on a journey to restore it to its former glory.
President Trump announced the formation of a "Super Intelligence Force" after meeting with leaders of the country's largest artificial intelligence companies last week.
Studies show people who hold grudges have greater levels of cardiovascular trouble, and higher levels of depression and anxiety. Experts say those taking steps towards forgiveness can have better outcomes.
Women hold just a fraction of new AI jobs but are overrepresented in roles with high risk of AI disruption
There’s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the “permanent underclass”, a phrase describing the fate of those who won’t have upward mobility in the age of AI.
The phrase usually describes a future in which AI automates human jobs. But for women in tech, it’s starting to look like the present.
A statewide initiative pairs climate-focused coursework with community service – and is spreading to other states
As a student at a high school not far from Denver’s main airport, Anthony Muñoz wondered whether the jet fuel from airplanes flying above his campus was harming living things.
An avid gardener, Muñoz partnered with a local university to create a garden on the campus of his charter school, Vista Academy, filling it with native plants that could detect ground-level ozone pollution. He also worked with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federal office in nearby Boulder, who directed Muñoz on what data to collect, what the condition of leaves reveals about air quality and why milkweed matters for monarch butterfly migration.
The FlyDubai alleged attempted hijacking was likely a lone wolf attack, an early investigation by Israel shows, according to people familiar with the matter.
After Macklemore was barred from opening for Ed Sheeran at Gillette Stadium for pro-Palestinian comments, musician Zach Bryan wore a "Free Palestine" shirt during his Friday show.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy credited the team’s legendary late broadcaster Bob Uecker for an unlikely boost in the ninth inning to help preserve a 3-2 victory over visiting San Diego in the opener of their playoff series on Saturday.
With one out in the ninth and the Brewers clinging to a one-run lead, San Diego had a runner on first when Ty France hit a drive to left field off closer Trevor Megill. But the ball struck a roof cable, stayed in play and was caught by Jackson Chourio for the second out. Megill then retired Jackson Merrill on a fly ball to right field to give Milwaukee the victory.
A recent arrest suggests that underground invaders of city’s sewer system are lured by the promise of lost valuables
There’s been one thing in particular that has been intriguing New Yorkers this summer: the existence, and whereabouts, of so-called “mole people” – a mysterious group of individuals who spend at least some of their time wading about in the city’s sewers.
New Yorkers learned a bit more about the phenomenon this week, when two men were caught red – or perhaps another color – handed, after allegedly emerging from a tunnel in Manhattan. Their arrests have shed some light on a slew of instances where people have been witnessed lifting manhole covers and clambering underground.
These 15 Halloween party recipes cover spooky sweets, hot dips, smoky wings, snack boards, and mummy dogs, giving you a mix of playful bites and filling savory food.The post 15 Halloween party recipes that bring the fright and the flavor…
As he prepares to face his home nation, the Canada manager reflects on his adopted country’s soccer, its prime minister, and its place in the world
Peak leaf hasn’t yet arrived in Montreal but the bursts of gold and butterscotch up on the hill that gave this place its name still mushroom out by the hour.
Sitting in a glass-panelled hotel mezzanine at the foot of Mount Royal, Canada men’s coach Jesse Marsch has his mind on another harvest. When this extended autumnal international window ends, he will decamp to Italy, where the olive crops at his Tuscan villa are ready for reaping.
Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas(R) announces Northstar, a "minimalist" web browser written entirely from scratch in C — now available in version 1.0.11:
One window, one page, one process — about 160,000 lines of original C, small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end. It carries no upstream browser engine: no Gecko, no WebKit, no Blink. It is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, and it runs on Linux, macOS and Windows...
Compliance is not inherited from an upstream engine; it is measured, section by section, against the specification text... Private by construction. No telemetry, no update pings, and no AI assistant or AI-style web APIs. Safe browsing checks a top-level navigation's host against a local SHA-256 blocklist before it is fetched — the check never leaves your machine. Cookies, storage and the cache are partitioned by origin.
It's logo reminds me of the old Netscape logo. (And I love the "Best viewed in..." GIF at the upper-right of its web site.)
These 17 vintage recipes cover casseroles, Southern classics, old-fashioned sides, skillet dinners, and retro desserts for nights when familiar flavors sound better than anything new.The post 17 vintage picks worth making when you want dinner to feel like a memory…
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s political operation is deploying tens of millions of dollars into competitive congressional races as Republicans try to maintain control of Congress in the final month before the midterms.
Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., and affiliated groups No Going Back PAC and Safety & Affordability PAC have reserved well over $100 million in advertising across Senate and House contests. Trump previously said his political network could ultimately spend between $400 million and $500 million helping Republican candidates.
No Going Back has concentrated heavily on Senate races, including Michigan, Ohio, Alaska, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Georgia. Safety & Affordability has focused primarily on House districts, while MAGA Inc. itself has invested heavily in Texas to support Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton.
The spending comes as Republicans face an increasingly competitive political environment. The Hill and Decision Desk HQ’s latest polling averages show Trump with a 37.7% approval rating, while several Senate and House races remain closely contested.
The money gives Republicans significant late-campaign resources, although super PACs generally pay higher advertising rates than candidates themselves, meaning the delayed spending buys less airtime than earlier reservations would have.
Maybe the key to life is being able to bench press 300lb at 75. But do we need more muscle-bound, angry guys around?
I loathe going to the doctor.
Not a controversial opinion, compared to some of the other ones in this section of the Guardian. I’m not exactly arguing for universal basic income or for Manchester City to be relegated to the Saudi Pro League here. No one looks forward to a doctor visit, with its recriminations for bad habits or various intrusive blood tests. People don’t have cocktail parties to celebrate their yearly check-up, and yet, it seems like every day, there’s a new reason to go get prodded by a stranger in a lab coat.
Rallies have been mainstay of president’s brand but even some in his own party fear voters are sick of the sight of him
“Get your asses in that car.” That was Donald Trump’s order, he later recalled, to his motorcade after foul weather grounded Air Force One in Texas on Thursday. The 85-mile dash to Oklahoma at nearly 100mph was proof that nothing can keep Trump from a Trump rally.
Which might not be the good news for Republicans it once was. As the US president embarked on a 32-day campaign blitz aimed at helping them defend narrow congressional majorities in next month’s midterms, some fear that he is driving them towards an electoral wipeout.
Efforts to consolidate the Black vote here were frustrated, handing the Democratic nomination to a white party insider
A major plot line of the hyper-partisan, mid-decade redistricting arms races – launched at the urging of Donald Trump – has been the elimination of traditionally Black congressional seats in the south. In the midst of that battle, a subplot emerged: a challenge to one of those Black seats from inside the Democratic caucus itself as the veteran congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose own district was splintered, chose to seek re-election in Florida’s 20th congressional district, which had been represented for decades by a Black legislator.
Her candidacy and primary win raise prickly questions about the value of lived experience as a prerequisite for effective representation of minority communities, about how Black Democratic candidates should deal with friendly fire from non-Black opponents, and about internal economic vulnerabilities of so-called Black seats which are in districts where candidates generally raise less money than others.
Rainy evenings call for a heavy pot on the stove. These 13 Dutch oven recipes bring beef, chicken, shrimp, curry, soup, pasta, bread, and slow-simmered sauces to nights spent indoors.The post 13 dutch oven recipes made for damp, drizzly nights…
The Supreme Court kicks off its term Monday with cases involving climate change, President Trump's immigration policies and the Second Amendment among the most high-profile disputes.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday over a bid by Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy to block a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Boulder over the effects of climate change.
Immigration court judge finds ‘unsafe journeys’ policy was applied unlawfully to two families
A decision by the Home Office to block mothers and children in Gaza from joining their families in the UK has been quashed by a court.
Families abroad who have had their applications approved to reunite with loved ones in the UK usually have to undergo biometric checks, including fingerprinting and facial images at a visa application centre. But the VAC in Gaza has been closed since October 2023 and it is difficult to get out of the territory.
Trump supporters may be surprised to learn the state takeover of means of production is not driven by the left
Americans will never accept the Democratic party’s slide to the left, or so desperate Republicans are hoping.
With the midterm elections fast upon us, Zohran Mamdani’s promise of a few city-run bodegas in New York City will scare the bejeezus out of middle America. Disgust over the democratic socialists’ unicorn-and-puppy promises of a world without capitalism will keep the Republicans in power.
The US president has taken credit for far-right victories across Latin America, but those wins have had more to do with fears of gang crime than his meddling
Donald Trump has enjoyed very few foreign policy victories since returning to power. From failed wars to failed peace processes, his second term in office has been marked by one costly blunder on the world stage after another. In Latin America, though, the US president has a different story to tell.
His administration’s national security strategy outlined how the US wanted to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”. It was a brazen document, laying out how his government would interfere in the political life of countries it considered part of its sphere of influence, rewarding governments and movements that are “broadly aligned with our principles and strategy”.
Former Tory minister defends UK decision to enter war in podcast with US rightwinger and Putin sympathiser
The former Tory minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has found himself defending Britain’s decision to fight against Adolf Hitler after inviting the US rightwinger and Vladimir Putin sympathiser Tucker Carlson into his home for an interview.
During the encounter, Carlson repeatedly suggested the west was to blame for inviting aggression from Russia and said of the prospect that Britain could have lost to Hitler: “Who cares?”
Devin Jacob Ballard was arrested in the killing and robbing of Anna Yagi, police told Japan’s public broadcaster. He denied the allegations, a spokesman said.
Alito, 76, delivers comment in rare interview with CBS News scheduled to air on Monday
Samuel Alito, the conservative US supreme court justice, has said “I think I have to” contemplate retiring every year at his age.
Alito, 76, delivered that comment in a rare interview with CBS News scheduled to air on Monday, a little more than six months after a widely publicized hospital visit invited speculation about his potential retirement.
Bobby Pulido has a strategy: show up at the 15th birthday parties that are a rite of passage in the Texas borderlands – and flip a key House district for Democrats
It took all of two minutes for Bobby Pulido’s electoral stealth weapon to come into play. The Tejano music star turned Democratic congressional candidate had barely begun canvassing in the high school football stadium in Edinburg, Texas, when a 15-year-old girl came rushing up to him.
“Señor Pulido! Señor Pulido!” she cried. A few months ago, she told him, he had made a surprise appearance at her quinceañera, the coming-of-age girls’ 15th birthday party that is a rite of passage in these US borderlands.
Most counties don’t have their own health agencies, and some specific population groups have low vaccination rates
Pennsylvania is bracing for a wave of measles cases, with some public health officials concerned that it’s “only a matter of time” until the disease spreads beyond the outbreak’s epicenter.
An elderly couple charged with murdering their son-in-law, New York Times gaming engineer Jonathan McKinsey, battled with him over gender identity, according to court records.
Boulder, Colo., is hoping its novel lawsuit will be the environmental equivalent of the landmark litigation that produced billions in damages and settlements against Big Tobacco and opioid makers.
Network at receiving end of White House press ban recently chose red state to host fan event as part of broader outreach
In 2024, Donald Trump and JD Vance carried Tarrant county, Texas, by 42,125 votes. So why, on the afternoon of 26 September, was the arena at the University of Texas-Arlington filled with nearly 5,000 super fans cheering for liberal media darlings Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell like they were rock stars?
After two years of hosting the network’s annual fan event in dark blue New York City, MS Now (formerly MSNBC) got wind that something was happening in Texas. The state, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the US Senate in 37 years, might do so next month, when 37-year-old James Talarico, Texas state representative, goes up against the Republican nominee, Ken Paxton, a well-known but controversial figure who ousted incumbent John Cornyn in the party’s primary with Donald Trump’s backing.
Costa Ltd reports operating profit of £20m in year to 31 December 2025 after losses of £13.5m in 2024
Costa’s main coffee shop arm has returned to an operating profit after revamping its high street outlets and broadening its menu with iced drinks, matcha and fresher pastries.
The chain, which has 2,700 outlets in the UK and Ireland out of 4,000 globally, and employs about 20,000 people, also opened a net 50 new outlets in the UK last year – its first net increase in several years.
Ivy League school’s president promises action after woman alleged she was drugged and raped by fraternity members
Cornell University will examine the role of fraternities and sororities on campus after an outcry over the school’s handling of a student’s rape allegations, the Ivy League school’s president has said.
A civil lawsuit filed last month by the woman, who alleges she was drugged and raped in 2024 by several members of the Chi Phi fraternity, has prompted outrage and soul-searching at Cornell over its campus culture at the school in Ithaca, New York.
Thousands of Glasgow council workers face being sacked and reappointed under less favourable terms in one of the UK’s biggest ever “fire-and-rehire” exercises, after union negotiations broke down once again this week.
About 23,000 workers – all of the council’s non-teaching staff – first heard they were affected last week when talks between the SNP-led council and the GMB, Unison and Unite unions fell apart. Those negotiations concerned a new pay and grading system designed to resolve historical pay equality issues. Unison refused to ballot its members on an offer that would mean pay cuts for 11% of council employees, prompting the council to begin issuing fire-and-rehire letters.
A salvage crew has been working to stabilize the SS Richard Montgomery, which sank a few months after D-Day in 1944 with 1,500 tons of explosives in its holds.
Industry says a phased end to racing, to avoid sudden jump in caring responsibilities, is unworkable
Wales’s greyhound racing ban – a UK first – has run into difficulties regarding how and when to wind down the practice, potentially risking the animals’ welfare, a charity has warned.
The law, which received royal assent in April, includes a three-year window for the ban to come into effect and is overseen by a Welsh government working group, which includes racing industry representatives and animal health and welfare organisations.
Charity calls for faster progress on humane slaughter laws for farmed fish in England and Wales
Up to 77m fish are slaughtered each year in the UK but there are no routine or mandatory inspections of fish slaughterhouses in England and Wales, it can be revealed.
Concerns within government about the way fish are slaughtered date back decades but all of the official bodies responsible for animal welfare and food standards in England and Wales said they do not undertake regular inspections.
David Robinson joins other insiders in urging industry to take more care over rapidly developing technology
A safety leader at OpenAI has quit the company, warning that its culture was broken and that AI firms were not “being nearly careful enough” about developing the technology.
David Robinson, who led the writing of safety reports that accompanied the ChatGPT developer’s product releases, explained his resignation in an essay headlined: “I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken.”
Politico EU reports:
The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams — but officials using it aren't impressed, with one describing the tool as "absolute shit."
The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a "sovereign back-up to Teams," according to an internal staff memo seen by POLITICO. The platform is intended to provide a fallback for Commission communications if U.S.-based Teams becomes unavailable.... But three officials have questioned why the Commission needs the new system — and whether it works well enough to serve as a genuine backup. "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology...
The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems... Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe... Element CEO Matthew Hodgson told POLITICO in a call using Element software that the Commission is still trialing it. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," he said, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.
The article adds that earlier this year, France announced millions of civil servants will switch to home-grown alternatives to American video-conferencing tools including Microsoft Teams and Zoom by 2027, while Austria's military also replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice last year.
FOI request shows wildfire risk scheme scrapped, as survey highlights many fire services lack proper protective gear
The government quietly scrapped plans to prepare the countryside in England for wildfires, it has been revealed. This was despite new data showing fire crews do not have the proper protective gear to tackle them.
This summer has been a potent reminder of the scale of the threat posed by the climate crisis, with the UK experiencing record-breaking wildfires after punishingly hot and dry weather turned large parts of the countryside into a tinderbox.
‘AbortOmat’ in Warsaw offers novel way to challenge country’s restrictions and allow women swift, anonymous access
They call it the “world’s first parcel locker for abortion pills”. Polish campaigners have launched a new means of distribution as part of their ongoing effort to skirt the country’s near-total ban on abortion.
Painted pink and framed by zebra-striped curtains, the 22-compartment “AbortOmat” in Warsaw allows women to access the pills swiftly and anonymously using a six-digit code. The service was envisaged for those who cannot or do not want to wait days for mail delivery due to a missed miscarriage or health complications, or who worry about receiving the pills at home.
Britain under pressure to put tariffs on cheap Chinese vehicle imports ahead of protectionist trade measures
Britain’s car industry is grappling with a “difficult trade-off” between China and Europe, as manufacturers struggle to balance the benefits of both markets ahead of looming trade measures that could restrict UK exports to the EU.
Sullivan became the youngest-ever goalscorer in USMNT history, while Mexico self-implodes with mistakes and a red card. Read Alexander Abnos’ play-by-play.
The players are in the tunnel. The lights are flashing. The little kids are getting high fives. It must nearly be kickoff time.
A really interesting note from Pardeep Cattry at CBS Sports: This will be the first time Gio Reyna has started six consecutive matches for club or country since 2020.
The first time the United States and Mexico played at this building, Jimmy Conrad and Landon Donovan provided the goals in one of several 2-0 wins for the US. On Saturday, the US squad included eight players who hadn’t yet been born when that happened.
This young US team went one better than their forebears, though, silencing a sizable pro-Mexico contingent in a composed 3-0 triumph that fully announced the arrival of an exciting new generation of players. Cavan Sullivan, just a few days after turning 17, became the youngest goalscorer in the history of the program with an eye-catching long-range chip. Julian Hall, 18, scored his third goal in as many games. Malik Tillman capped the scoring in the 85th minute, humbling a 10-man Mexico after they’d opened the match with far more strength.
Cornell's president said his school's administration "must do better" amid the criticism of its investigation into allegations made by a former student that she was gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.
Neighbours say crowds drawn by TikTok to Fabel Friet are clogging the picturesque canal street and attracting litter, gulls and rats
People living in one of Amsterdam’s most exclusive neighbourhoods have taken the city to court for licensing a chip shop that has gone viral on TikTok.
On busy days, the queue for Fabel Friet on Runstraat stretches across a bridge on the Keizersgracht – one of Amsterdam’s most famous canals – a court was told last week. The narrow street itself is crowded by tourists waiting for their orders seven days a week. And loitering with intent – on parked cars, on the street itself, and on steps and porches – gulls wait to swoop.
The plane was undertaking a medical evacuation from Bermuda with six people onboard when it lost contact
The US Coast Guard said late on Saturday it had found debris from a medical transport aircraft off the shore of Massachusetts’ Nantucket Island and was searching for the six people who were on board.
The jet lost contact with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during a flight from Bermuda to Boston on Saturday morning. In a statement to the Guardian, an FAA spokesperson said that the agency issued a search-and-rescue alert notice for a Gulfstream G-100 at about 1.20am local time Saturday.
"Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago," writes the New York Times. "And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us."
Phys.org explains that it's "both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes."
BC200 is found only in humans and related primates and was discovered in the late 1980s as an abundant noncoding RNA in human neurons. Although BC200's physiological function is poorly understood, evidence suggests it may be involved in regulating the translation of neuronal messenger RNAs into proteins... The researchers also suspect that BC200 jumped in skin cells because these are the only cells known to be infected by molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV). The gene is also abnormally expressed in some tumors and overexpressed in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, suggesting its jumping ability could play roles in these diseases.
[Cedric Feschotte, a senior author of the study] said he and his colleagues would like to explore whether the molluscum contagiosum virus uses BC200 to manipulate human host cells. They are also interested in better understanding the gene's role in disease, including breast and other types of tumors in which it is abnormally expressed, and whether it jumps in cancer cells and causes mutations.
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
Treasurer says ‘very substantial and intensifying pressure’ on federal budget as he points finger at private sector for driving up inflation amid Middle East conflict
Jim Chalmers has warned of “very substantial and intensifying” economic pressures on the horizon but insists he’s not planning for a recession, as he prepares to find new ways to cut the budget ahead of its mid-year update.
The treasurer on Sunday called on critics of government spending to name the services that should be cut, as he points the finger at the private sector for driving up inflation in Australia amid the protracted conflict in the Middle East.
(The Center Square) – NASA has not provided a single total cost estimate for its Moon-to-Mars effort, a federal auditor told The Center Square, because the agency does not maintain one.
Australian security agencies have launched an investigation after it emerged that the flydubai co-pilot who allegedly tried to hijack an Israel-bound flight spent about two years in the country as a student.
Disaster was narrowly averted on Wednesday when passengers and crew intervened to stop the co-pilot’s attempt to take control of the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, which had 182 people onboard and plunged 16,625 feet (5,067 metres) in just over 30 seconds.
While most magnets have two poles (north and south, or positive and negative), recent advances in quantum mechanics have revealed an "octupolar order," writes Phys.org, where a pattern of particles in a crystalline structure "behaves as if it has eight magnetic poles rather than the familiar two."
Now, a team led by quantum physicists at the University of Toronto has established a new method for observing quantum magnetic states using light to probe the atomic vibrations produced as electrons spin. The work is a critical first step toward harnessing multipolar magnetism for practical technologies, including next-generation data storage and computing devices.
"We identified new signatures of a hidden type of magnetic state which cannot be detected using ordinary probes," says Arun Paramekanti, a professor in the Department of Physics and the Center for Quantum Information & Quantum Control in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, and senior author of a study published in Physical Review Letters that describes the findings.
"Our research opens up the possibility for using higher-order magnets in several applications including controllable read-write memory elements found in everyday computers...."
By directing a special type of rotating light at magnetic materials, the team observed a clear optical fingerprint of the otherwise hidden magnetic order.... The findings offer a new tool for uncovering and manipulating previously inaccessible forms of magnetism, opening new avenues for quantum technology development.
404 Media reports:
"We will not add facial recognition to our devices," Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to "close that gap." A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company's product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon [body-worn camera] data in "one searchable platform...."
VIDIZMO's CEO, Nadeem Khan, told 404 Media on a video call that the company has not yet started running facial recognition tech on footage from Flock cameras, and that it has not actually built the specific tool that would export data from Flock's system to its own platform (though the company advertises this capability online, and the company already sells other facial recognition products). But Khan said VIDIZMO "would love to do the integration," and that he believes facial recognition "is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be," and that he thinks Flock should offer the capability itself in a way that "balances privacy, security, and the freedom that we enjoy in this country."
The article notes that VIDIZMO says on its website, "You can identify individuals from seven races: White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino Hispanic." VIDIZMO adds that stores or cities can also then do "demographic analysis" for marketing purposes by determining the races or ages of people showing up....
Spaceflight Now reports:
"A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America's spy satellite agency... The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy, which consists of three Falcon 9 boosters and an upper stage, topped by a payload fairing.
The powerful rocket, which lifts off under the power of 27 Merlin 1D engines, was introduced to great fanfare in 2018 and made its 14th flight Thursday night... NROL-97 was SpaceX's third Falcon launch of the day. In addition to the Crew 13 mission, the company launched 130 payloads on the Transporter 13 rideshare mission from its West Coast pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was the first time the company has landed four boosters in a single day.
CNN reports:
As Starship flights ramp up, SpaceX has made clear that the company will phase out the use of two of its most iconic creations: the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 rocket, which for a decade has dominated the global launch market.
These vehicles not only revolutionized the space industry in their own way, they're also still very much essential to ongoing work in Earth orbit, without clear backup options in place. The prospect of this loss is already spurring panic among some satellite operators, said Caleb Henry, director of research at analytics firm Quilty Space... Henry said he expects that most of the remaining space on board Falcon 9 rockets has already been sold and — beyond early 2029 — such flights may be reserved solely for the US government. Even NASA, which currently counts the Dragon capsule as the only US-made spacecraft capable of getting its astronauts to and from the ISS, has also acknowledged the looming retirement of SpaceX's workhorse vehicles....
Despite the success of Falcon and Dragon, a peek at SpaceX's business book may hint at financial reasons for retiring the vehicles. In its first quarterly earnings report, SpaceX revealed its space segment — which includes Falcon, Dragon and Starship — lost $542 million. By comparison, its Starlink internet and connectivity business made nearly $1.7 billion. Starship is expected to continue to cost SpaceX untold millions as it moves out of the prototyping phase. But one reason SpaceX is willing to bet big on Starship is that it's simply "much better" for achieving the company's own long-term goals, said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell at a recent conference. So it makes sense to shift resources toward the megarocket's future....
This rocket supply crunch has been looming since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine — which immediately removed Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets from the commercial market, Henry noted. On top of that, Amazon — which is deploying a space-based internet constellation to rival SpaceX's Starlink — stepped in to buy more than 100 launches from various rocket makers.... Though some satellite manufacturers are hopeful that space onboard future Starship launches will be offered to satellite operators, it's not clear when or if that will happen.... It is possible that a launch supply crunch could be averted, noted Micah Walter-Range, a space analyst and contributor to the VettaFi Space Index. But satellite operators may be wary because newer rockets that have for years promised to step up to compete with the Falcon 9 have not yet begun flying with any regularity.
"The space industry hates uncertainty, particularly when it comes to planning of launches," Walter-Range said.
The article notes that Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, United Launch Alliance, and the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin "have not yet reached the scale or launch cadence that the industry is demanding."
The alleged attacker, Hamam al-Hammami, had been banned from flying with Oman Air because of concerns about his radical views, a person familiar with the matter said.
Latino Democratic leaders are renewing calls for the Democratic Governors Association to invest more heavily in Texas after a new poll showed Gina Hinojosa narrowly leading Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
U.S. President Donald Trump "doxxed" a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number "as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent."
When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump's post, a recording said the mailbox was full and could not receive messages...
[Senator Tom] Cotton has long detested the idea of making daylight saving time permanent. In a Senate floor speech last year, Cotton said doing so would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," particularly harming kids. The Senate was only able to unanimously pass the bill in 2022 because Cotton was reportedly unaware the vote was taking place, though the measure stalled out from there. The Arkansas Republican didn't back down in a post on Saturday. "Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first," he posted on X.
Trump continued his tear against Cotton soon after. "If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so," he posted on Truth.
US president urges Americans to call Tom Cotton to support bill to make daylight saving time permanent
Donald Trump on Saturday put pressure on the US senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas to support a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, urging Americans to call what appeared to be the personal cellphone number of his fellow Republican and the chair of the Senate intelligence committee.
The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House in July, but it faces roadblocks in the Senate, where some Republicans are strongly opposed to it. Proponents, including the president and his administration, argue that the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active. Detractors said permanent daylight saving time would lead to darker and potentially more hazardous winter mornings when children will be waiting for school buses and parents will be driving to work in darkness.
Forty-year-old victim declared dead at the scene in East Acton in a ‘senseless act of violence’
A murder investigation has been launched after a 40-year-old man was shot dead in a “senseless act of violence” during a memorial service in west London, police have said.
Police were called on Friday at 7.47pm after multiple shots were heard in East Acton.
NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of securities of Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BZAI) between July 18, 2025 and April 28, 2026, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"),…
Mariann Budde gained national attention for calling on US president to consider immigrants and LGBTQ+ people
Rev Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington DC who gained national attention when she called on Donald Trump to “have mercy” on the country’s immigrants and LGBTQ+ community after his second inauguration, is resigning.
Budde shared in her resignation letter that she will be leaving her post on 3 June 2028 after the consecration and ordination of the new diocesan bishop.
Kemi Badenoch says those earning more than £100,000 should not be discouraged from working more
The Conservatives have unveiled a proposed £700m childcare giveaway for high earners ahead of their annual conference, saying they would end the “cliff edge” where free entitlement ends at salaries above £100,000.
The plan, set out the day before the event begins in Birmingham, follows the earlier proposal by Kemi Badenoch’s party to abolish most stamp duty, another change to taxation that would disproportionately benefit wealthier people.
Phoronix reports:
Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results... indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%... Steam's Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of the Steam population. Usually those large month-over-month swings where Steam China use shoots up dramatically is a boost to Windows and a detriment to Linux. Some attribute the large increases in Simplified Chinese use to being a reporting/sampling issue.
When diving into the Steam Linux data exclusively, CachyOS has spiked by another 2.65% to now account for 18.12% of the sampled Linux gaming population. That even outperforms SteamOS Holo coming in at 17.37%. Among Linux gamers on Steam, AMD CPUs still account for the high 60 percentage space thanks to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using AMD APUs and their open-source/Linux support being popular with enthusiasts.
"The winner of the Nikon Small World in Motion competition is under investigation," writes the photography news site PetaPixel , "after scientists accused Dr Ning Xu of using AI in his video."
The Nikon competition is about showcasing the beauty, complexity, and artistry of the microscopic world. The entries are abstract, often baffling to laypeople. But when Dr Xu was announced as the winner last month, members of the scientific community began to cry foul. "There are many serious problems with this video," Edward Phelps, associate professor at Florida University, says on LinkedIn. Phelps points out that "purple structures pop in and out of existence" and "green cilia also appear from nowhere and do not match the known size."
Dr Xu's video is supposed to show the movement of cilia, which are hair-like structures that line part of the lungs... However, since Dr Xu won the prize, Nikon Small World updated its LinkedIn post celebrating his triumph with a note that reads: "Regarding questions raised about this year's Small World In Motion winning video, Nikon is carefully re-reviewing the information provided during the initial vetting, along with additional supporting materials from the entrant." Nikon adds that Dr Xu is "respectfully complying and has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video."
Worse still, Ian Donovan, an MD/PhD Student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says he ran the video through Google Gemini, and the result came back with an invisible Google SynthID watermark that indicates at least some of the video is AI-generated. Dr Xu, an optical engineering researcher at the National University of Singapore, reportedly responded to the LinkedIn post. According to Nature, Dr Xu accepted that he had used an AI model to assist with post-processing but denied breaking the rules of the competition, which clearly state that "AI-generated videos are not permitted."
"It was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology," he wrote. However, Dr Xu's messages on the LinkedIn post can't be found as of today (October 1), and his LinkedIn profile now appears to have been deleted entirely.
Meanwhile, some college students "see a double standard when colleges penalize them for outsourcing academic work to AI but allow similar use by institutional leaders," writes Entrepreneur magazine:
According to a recent report from The New York Times, Dartmouth College students are calling out a top professor for allegedly using AI to help with writing... The school's provost, Santiago Schnell, faced allegations of AI use last week from the college's student-run newspaper, which detected AI in some of his published writing. The college said it was launching an investigation into the written work. Schnell said in a statement to the student-run newspaper, The Dartmouth, that he used AI "for language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient." The newspaper ran his statement through an AI detector, which said that Schnell had used AI to write it, too.
(The Center Square) – Mercurial and bullying to anyone in his path, President Donald Trump and a number of key people in his administration have had their turns in conflict with U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, parts of which are exposed…
Frank Strada leaving position as state launches independent investigation into what went wrong
Tennessee’s top prison official is stepping down in the aftermath of the failed execution of death row prisoner Christa Pike, the state’s governor Bill Lee announced Saturday.
Frank Strada, the department of correction commissioner, will leave his position later in October as the state launches an independent investigation into what went wrong during Wednesday’s botched execution of Pike, according to Lee.
Raleigh, NC — The feud between retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis and President Donald Trump escalated again this weekend after a senior White House official attacked Tillis over profanity-filled private texts he sent to the president earlier this year.
Politico previously obtained two messages that Tillis plans to include in his forthcoming book, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents. In one May text, Tillis told Trump he would not tolerate his “bullshit” and said the administration was failing. A June message said that if Trump had directly threatened him with a primary challenge, Tillis would have told the president to “fuck yourself” and immediately announced his retirement.
Responding to the disclosures, an unidentified senior White House official told Politico that sending the messages rather than confronting Trump personally was a “pussy move” and questioned Tillis’s character.
The exchange reflects how badly the relationship between Trump and Tillis has deteriorated. The North Carolina senator has increasingly criticized Trump and other administration figures while preparing to leave Congress.
Tillis has also argued that too many Republicans are unwilling to challenge Trump publicly, while the president has repeatedly attacked lawmakers who resist his agenda. The newly disclosed messages provide a particularly blunt glimpse of that internal Republican conflict.
The Guardian reports that California governor Gavin Newsom signed laws on Wednesday "aimed at protecting California workers from the threats of artificial intelligence , including potential job losses and workplace surveillance."
The laws ban employers from using the technology to predict a worker's emotional state by using their biometric data, require employers to send written notices to workers if AI is responsible for mass layoffs and ban employers from relying on AI to decide to fire someone... The governor signed a law this month requiring operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and an executive order requiring the state to consult with experts to further improve oversight over the industry.
The law includes "expanded tracking of AI's economic effects" leading to recommendations on how to best "adapt job-training and public-benefit programs," according to the governor's office. "California has also launched an AI Unemployment Tracker and solicited statewide public input on AI's economic impacts through Engaged California."
But two weeks ago Politico reported that the governor also signed executive orders to "explore proposals like requiring that AI companies develop a 'kill switch' for their most advanced models."
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for a slowdown in AI development amid existential risk concerns, said... that while a kill switch "could be a good idea," it was no "panacea...." [California lawmakers] were generally supportive of Newsom's plan and showed signs of coalescing around the kill switch idea, which was stripped out of legislation proposed two years ago. Rep. Ted Lieu, who introduced bipartisan kill switch legislation in the House, boosted Newsom's call for Congress to mirror California's approach.
But not everyone supports this approach, including the Free Software Foundation's campaigns manager, Greg Farough:
FSF: Having control over the technology we use is a fundamental part of software freedom. Without it, you simply don't have the basic freedoms you deserve when doing any type of computing, large or small. Don't let "artificial intelligence" be an exception: all users everywhere deserve complete control over their own computing. While it's understandable to be pleased by this news from California, Newsom's executive order also invites questions about the "kill switch" itself that could matter a great deal for freedom. Assuming such a kill switch was developed, who would really control it?
We hope our readers understand the problems inherent in giving one single or a small number of kill switches to anyone. Newsom wisely wants an independent organization to verify their functionality, but even this still sets too dangerous of a precedent. We cannot allow such centralization of power over our computing to become commonplace, especially by the corporations that provide these models in the first place. We also cannot trust even the most well-intentioned "independent organization" to take care of its verification.
Giving users the freedom that they deserve over large languages models would be an enormous departure from how most are developed and used today. But, if any group is capable of coming up with such a plan, it's the experts mentioned in Newsom's order. Like he states at the beginning of his executive order, the vast majority of them are already right there in California. We urge the Government Operations Agency to consider the precedent they are setting, and ask them to write their recommendation to the governor in ways that puts the freedom and dignity of the individual user first and foremost.
The Guardian adds that Newsom also signed an executive order this week "to require state agencies to continue to refer to the technology as 'artificial intelligence' instead of the term 'super intelligence' as Donald Trump recently ordered US diplomats to use."
Roger Fortson was shot by deputy when he opened door with gun in hand after a false domestic disturbance call
A Florida jury recently found former sheriff’s deputy Eddie Duran not guilty of manslaughter with a firearm in the fatal shooting of Roger Fortson, a Black US air force airman who was killed inside his apartment after authorities responded to an unfounded report of a domestic disturbance.
An Okaloosa county jury acquitted Duran, 38, on Thursday after about two hours of deliberations. He had faced up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang died after apparently ingesting kratom product last month
Federal authorities investigating the recent deaths of two University of Mississippi students have charged a store clerk and his son with selling an illegal kratom product, prosecutors announced on Friday.
A drug taskforce in Mississippi had previously urged people to avoid kratom, an herbal substance that acts as a stimulant at low doses and a sedative at high doses, after authorities found packages of kratom derivatives while investigating the deaths on 21 September.
The Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors held its inaugural Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit on Thursday, Oct. 1, and Friday, Oct. 2, at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, 1301 Coastal Highway.
Two-day Dewey Beach gathering brought community leaders together Thursday before more than six hours of training Friday focused on recognizing victims and improving Delaware’s response.
By George Rotsch, Delaware LIVE News.
DEWEY BEACH, Del. — Delaware leaders spent two days this week examining how the state identifies and responds to human trafficking, beginning with a closed-door executive roundtable Thursday and continuing Friday with an all-day summit for health care workers, social workers, law enforcement, advocates and other professionals.
The Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors held its inaugural Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit on Thursday, Oct. 1, and Friday, Oct. 2, at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, 1301 Coastal Highway.
Thursday’s program was an invitation-only executive roundtable that brought leaders and decision-makers together to discuss Delaware’s response to trafficking. Friday’s public and professional summit ran from 8:00 to 4 p.m. It included keynote presentations, professional education, survivor perspectives and discussions involving medical providers, mental health professionals, law enforcement and direct-service workers.
Marcia Ferranto, president of the Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors, said the organization wanted the event to do more than raise awareness.
“Human trafficking affects Delaware communities, but too often it remains unseen or misunderstood,” Ferranto said. “We need residents, business leaders, educators, health care professionals, faith communities and policymakers to understand the warning signs and recognize that each of them can play a role in prevention.”
The two-day format reflected that goal.
Thursday concentrated on the people in positions to influence policies, organizations and systems. Friday focused more directly on the professionals and community members who may encounter trafficking victims but not immediately recognize what they are seeing.
The invitation-only roundtable brought together senior leaders from health care, law enforcement, government, social services, victim advocacy, education, behavioral health and community organizations. It also included political and public-sector leaders representing multiple levels of government, including federal homeland security officials, representatives of the governor’s office and county leaders.
Organizers said it was the first time Delaware had convened such a broad group of high-level decision-makers specifically to focus on human trafficking as a shared statewide challenge. The potential benefit is significant: stronger relationships among agencies, clearer referral pathways, more consistent training, better coordination when victims are identified and a greater chance that warning signs seen by one institution are connected with information held by another.
The coalition billed the gathering as Delaware’s inaugural statewide Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit. National experts and Delaware professionals participated as speakers, moderators and presenters.
A full day of training
Friday’s program began at 7:45 a.m. and continued until 4 p.m.
Nemours Children’s Health offered six continuing education hours for nurses and six continuing education credits for social workers participating in the program. The stated audience included nurses, social workers and others interested in human trafficking education.
Presenters included retired special victims detective Kevin McNeil; survivor, author and speaker Marti MacGibbon; Jennifer Cooper, BSN, RN, SANE-P; Andrea Repine, MSN, APRN, CPNP; attorney Shea Rhodes; Jose Alfaro; Jeanne Allert; Dana Kaplan, MD; and Heather LaRocca, LCSW.
The educational program was designed to help participants recognize behavioral, physical and situational indicators of trafficking, understand gaps in identifying victims and develop cross-disciplinary teams to support survivors.
Training included discussion of warning signs such as a victim lacking control of personal possessions or identification, inconsistencies in a person’s account, signs of branding or other physical indicators and behaviors that could suggest someone is being controlled.
The program also addressed the underrepresentation of male and LGBTQ+ trafficking victims in national data and how those gaps can affect the ability of professionals to identify victims.
Victims may already be in the system
A central message emerging from the summit was that trafficking victims frequently encounter institutions that could help them without ever announcing that they are being trafficked.
A nurse may treat an injury.
A teacher may notice chronic absences.
Police may encounter someone during a domestic dispute.
A social worker may see unstable housing.
A nonprofit organization may encounter someone unable to meet basic needs.
Those individual encounters may appear unrelated unless the people involved understand the larger patterns associated with exploitation.
Ferranto said that makes education across professions particularly important.
“Trafficking does not happen only somewhere else; it is affecting people here in Delaware,” Ferranto said. “When the public understands what exploitation looks like and knows how to respond, we become better able to protect vulnerable people, support survivors and make Delaware a much more difficult place for traffickers to operate.”
The summit’s professional education program specifically emphasized multidisciplinary, trauma-informed and survivor-centered responses rather than expecting a single agency or profession to identify and solve the problem alone.
Trafficking does not always begin with kidnapping
Presenters also challenged one of the most common public perceptions of trafficking — that victims are usually abducted by strangers and physically imprisoned.
That can happen, but speakers said trafficking frequently develops differently.
Victims can be manipulated through relationships, housing, employment, financial dependency, drugs, threats or promises of security.
The process may occur gradually through grooming rather than through a single dramatic event.
Someone who appears free to leave physically may believe leaving would result in violence, homelessness, withdrawal, financial ruin or harm to someone else.
That psychological control can make trafficking difficult for family members, employers, medical professionals and even victims themselves to recognize.
Why health care workers matter
Medical professionals were an important part of Friday’s program because health care may provide one of the few opportunities for someone outside a trafficking situation to interact privately with a victim.
The summit included training aimed at nurses and other medical providers on recognizing trafficking indicators and responding in ways that do not further traumatize patients.
Jennifer Cooper served as course director for the continuing education program, with Andrea Repine and Suzanne Rouleau among the planners.
The program emphasized that professionals need to know not only what to notice, but also what to do next.
Its learning objectives included establishing cross-disciplinary teams capable of supporting trafficking survivors.
That means a nurse identifying a possible victim needs to know who to call. Police need to understand available survivor services. Social workers need relationships with medical and behavioral health providers. Community organizations need to know where safe housing and other assistance can be found.
From executive discussion to front-line training
Holding the executive roundtable Thursday and the professional summit Friday created two levels of discussion.
One focused on leadership and institutional response. The other focused on people likely to encounter potential victims in their daily work.
For Ferranto and the coalition, connecting those levels is a major part of the effort. Delaware already has law enforcement agencies investigating trafficking, hospitals caring for vulnerable patients and nonprofit groups assisting survivors.
The challenge is ensuring those organizations understand what others are doing and know how to connect victims with the appropriate help.
The summit’s emphasis on building cross-disciplinary teams suggests organizers see coordination as an essential next step rather than treating trafficking solely as a criminal justice, medical or social-services issue.
The test comes after the summit
The event ended Friday afternoon, but the larger question is what happens next.
Participants returned to hospitals, police departments, schools, nonprofits, government agencies, and community organizations with a common set of questions:
Are staff members trained to recognize trafficking?
Do they know what to do when they suspect it?
Is there a clear referral process?
Do organizations know what services other groups provide?
Are victims being identified early enough?
And when someone is ready to leave an exploitative situation, does Delaware have the housing, treatment, and support necessary to help?
Those are questions the Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors hopes the two-day gathering will continue to push beyond a conference room in Dewey Beach.
The coalition, formerly known as Meet Me at the Well, works in education, advocacy, survivor support and outreach and connects trafficking survivors with services including housing, employment and treatment.
Friday’s summit represented its most visible statewide effort yet to bring the different parts of Delaware’s response together.
The next measure of success will be whether those relationships produce lasting changes in how Delaware recognizes trafficking and helps the people caught in it.
To Go Box
What: Delaware Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit
Where: Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, 1301 Coastal Highway, Dewey Beach
Organizer: Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors
Participants: Survivors, health care professionals, nurses, social workers, law enforcement, mental health professionals, direct-service providers, community leaders and advocates
Professional education: Six continuing education hours were available for nurses and six continuing education credits for social workers.
The Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit, organized by the Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors, began Thursday with an invitation-only executive roundtable and continued Friday with an all-day public and professional program at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach for over 150 people.
Two-day Dewey Beach summit brought together government leaders, law enforcement, health professionals, survivors and advocates while challenging common assumptions about how trafficking begins and who can become a victim.
By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE news.
DEWEY BEACH, Del. — A two-day human trafficking summit in Dewey Beach brought together government leaders, law enforcement, health care professionals, survivors, advocates and community organizations this week to examine how Delaware identifies and responds to trafficking — and to challenge some of the public’s most common assumptions about what the crime actually looks like.
The Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit, organized by the Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors, began Thursday with an invitation-only executive roundtable and continued Friday with an all-day public and professional program at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach for over 150 people.
One of the clearest messages to emerge from the summit was that trafficking often does not begin with kidnapping, physical restraint or a stranger forcing someone into a car.
Jennifer Cooper, a Forensic Nurse Coordinator from Nemours Children’s Health and one of the summit organizers with the coalition, and fellow nurse Andrea Repine, Pediatric Nurse Practioner from Nemours led a “Human Trafficking 101” session focused on separating myths from reality.
“Most people think, when they think trafficking, that there’s a pimp involved,” Cooper said. “Human Trafficking involves a third party trading sex for value and can involve a boyfriend/girlfriend, family member, or employer and others” She also pointed out “When it comes to minors, you don’t need that third party.”
Trafficking also does not necessarily involve an exchange of cash.
“It doesn’t have to be an exchange of money,” Cooper said. “It could be that they want food.”
That can mean a vulnerable young person exchanging sex for a place to sleep, food, transportation or something else of value.
Not always kidnapping either!
Cooper and Repine told participants that trafficking often develops gradually through grooming, manipulation, dependency, fraud or coercion.
A victim may never be kidnapped.
There may be no locked room.
And the person doing the exploiting may be a boyfriend, girlfriend, employer, acquaintance or someone who initially appeared to be helping.
Cooper described the session as an effort to explain “what trafficking is” by “breaking down the myths versus the reality.”
The distinction becomes particularly important when children are involved.
That means exploitation of a minor does not require a traditional pimp or third-party trafficker.
A person can be trapped without being locked up
Opening keynote speaker Kevin McNeil, a nationally recognized victim advocate, brought both law enforcement experience and personal experience to the discussion.
McNeil is a retired police officer and a survivor of trafficking and sexual abuse. His presentation, “Stuck in Traffic,” focused on how someone can feel trapped in a trafficking situation even when no physical barrier prevents that person from leaving.
The analogy began with something familiar: the frustration of sitting in traffic with nowhere to go.
For a trafficking victim, however, the barriers can involve fear, financial dependency, threats, homelessness, addiction or emotional attachment to the person doing the exploiting.
That type of psychological control can make trafficking considerably harder to recognize than the popular image of someone being physically held by a stranger.
Substance abuse can deepen the problem
Marty McGibbon brought another survivor’s perspective to the conference.
A therapist, author, comedian and trafficking survivor, McGibbon addressed the intersection between substance abuse and trafficking. She returned later in the program to discuss mental well-being, self-care and trauma-informed approaches for people working with survivors. Pasted text(20260818-140439)
Her presentations reinforced another theme of the summit: Trafficking often overlaps with other problems rather than occurring by itself.
A victim may also be dealing with addiction, homelessness, previous abuse, financial instability or an unhealthy relationship.
Those vulnerabilities can become tools for someone seeking control.
Cooper previously described the intersection between substance abuse and trafficking as “a huge problem, particularly here in Delaware and the surrounding area.”
Vulnerability matters
Presenters stressed that traffickers often exploit vulnerability rather than targeting one particular type of person.
A teenager without a stable place to live may be vulnerable to someone offering housing.
Someone struggling with addiction may become dependent on the person supplying drugs.
A worker may rely on an employer for transportation, housing or access to personal documents.
A person seeking affection or security may become emotionally dependent on someone who later begins exploiting the relationship.
Those situations do not automatically mean trafficking is occurring.
But understanding how dependency can turn into control can help families, teachers, medical professionals and others recognize when something may be wrong.
Why Delawareans should care
The summit’s message was not that every troubled teenager, unhealthy relationship or difficult workplace situation involves trafficking.
For people whose image of human trafficking still involves strangers, kidnapping and locked rooms, summit speakers offered a more practical starting point:
It was that trafficking can look remarkably ordinary from the outside.
It can look like a teenager suddenly depending on an older boyfriend or girlfriend for a place to stay.
It can look like someone working for an employer who controls transportation, identification or money.
It can look like a young person exchanging sex for food, shelter or something else of value.
And it can involve someone who technically can walk out the door but believes there is nowhere safe to go.
For parents, teachers, neighbors and other Delawareans, the goal is not to become investigators. It is to better understand what exploitation can look like so they recognize when something does not seem right.
Almost 700 victims connected to 330 human trafficking cases in Delaware since 2007, with 29 cases of trafficking in 2025. Advocates caution that these figures represent only reported and identified cases. The actual number of victims is believed to be significantly higher because many victims never come to the attention of authorities or service providers.delaware
Look for vulnerability, dependency and whether someone is using those vulnerabilities to control another person.
To Go Box
What: Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors
What it does: Provides education, advocacy, training and survivor support related to human trafficking.
Summit: The Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit was held Friday, Oct. 2, at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach following an invitation-only executive roundtable Thursday, Oct. 1.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were among the officials to meet on Friday to discuss a path forward.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea," Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that's not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game's timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behind that, a series of CedarDB tables tracks the game geometry and state, while about 1,300 lines of SQL queries spread across 89 common table expressions implement the game logic and generate 35 bitmap framebuffers per second.
In this, SQLDoom is a major improvement over Vogel's previous DoomQL project, which last year set out to build "a multiplayer Doom-like shooter entirely in SQL." Unfortunately, that effort ended up with raycasting-based, grayscale ASCII graphics that were more akin to the simplistic 90-degree-angled maps of Wolfenstein 3D. The newer SQLDoom, on the other hand, generates full-color 640x480 frames that look like they could have come from the original Doom executable. [...] If you want to run a Doomtabase on your own local machine, you can do so simply with the GitHub code, a copy of CedarDB, and a Doom WAD file. Or you can jump into a free online hosted demo match to test it out without all the setup [...].
No one can ever know what goes on between two people in a relationship. But yesterday, when Shivon Zilis, former partner of Elon Musk and mother of their four children, took to Musk’s own platform, X, and revealed Elon had abruptly ended their relationship, she posted several paragraphs in response which have prompted me to write.
Zilis’ response to the dumping was, on the surface, measured and loving. She talked about being a safe space for Elon, what he taught her and the good wishes she had for him. Then, as though to communicate how it really is, she included text messages that showed only 48 hours earlier, he referred to her as his significant other. He said, “Love you too.”
I’m not a psychologist, a relationship expert, nor would I dare to say I know what the dynamic between these two was. But I am a human being, a woman, and this kind of response feels frighteningly familiar to me.
When we love, we at times love hard. We give our body, our cells, our entire lives to support and champion another human being. Sure, we bask in the love they give us, even if we’re not sure it’s always true. Sometimes we can never know what is true, swept away in our chosen utopia. When we have given our blood, our truth, our family to another person, sometimes, we see what we want. Sometimes we don’t know that in fact, we’re taking crumbs.
In no universe can anyone be this deep-down measured when blindsided in the way Shivon Zilis was, or so many of us have been. Love may exist enough to create a runway for some carefully typed sentiments, but the path to comprehending where we suddenly fit into the love story we have co-created with another person, when that love story is literally hit with a ten-tonne grenade, is, let’s not shit ourselves — now a godforsaken blackened abyss.
Her words of love and support, when held a little deeper, actually feel like a woman shocked, scorned… disposed of.
I, too, have sometimes tried to behave rationally through the most maddening situations of marriage, separation and well, existence. I’m guilty of gaslighting myself into whatever creation suits me in the moment. But time slowly chips away at these grand performances, and soon you realize, your creativity is a feeble match for the heart. Eventually, the Heart and its wingman, Truth, walk out onstage to say, “Here we are. Deal with us, motherfucker.”
I would be a fool to try to get inside the mind of Elon Musk. But when people fail to have the capacity to give and show up, sometimes the easiest thing is to pull the plug.
Why? Because the alternative is too much. Too time-consuming. Too painful. To face who we are takes balls, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Sometimes I think to face the truth of any matter requires cancelling absolutely everything you have for weeks or months, crawling into flannel, crying for hours, journaling up the wazoo, struggling to stay alive and afloat. Not every human is up for this. Certainly not the richest man in the world.
Much easier would it be to say — thank you, next.
Photo by Nick Russill
They say on your deathbed you don’t care about how much money you made. They say you think of love, family and the mystery of time.
I don’t know what lies ahead for Shivon, but for anyone who has been abruptly discarded after giving their life, their loyalty and deepest self to a relationship, to a family, to a man… may you find a place where you can rage, cry, and lose your fucking mind until you find the soul inside yourself that can save you.
Because only you can save you, and that’s what I’m slowly learning as I stumble through the wonderment and chaos of life and love.
TSA says rule change is meant to keep officers ‘alert’, but union says it ignores safety and ‘common decency’
US airport security officers who verify boarding passes and IDs ahead of security checkpoints will no longer be allowed to sit down while working.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was moving forward with this change in policy to keep officers “alert”, the agency confirmed recently.
Ryan Anderson says he reached out to Blanchard’s father to offer support after apparent overdose death of Ken Urker
The ex-husband of Gypsy Rose Blanchard has said he was “shocked” by the recent death in Louisiana of her former partner Ken Urker – and that he would be there for Blanchard and her daughter “if she needs me”.
Ryan Anderson made those remarks during an appearance on The Sarah Fraser Show podcast on Friday, providing a noteworthy reaction to the latest chapter involving Blanchard, who achieved an unusual level of celebrity in the US after spending time imprisoned for a role in the murder of her abusive mother in Missouri.
Investigation revealed thousands of voyeuristic videos taken on Munich beer festival’s Teufelsrad, or Devil’s Wheel
Women have been given free cycling shorts to prevent upskirting on a famous amusement ride at the Oktoberfest in Munich, after an investigation revealed tens of thousands of voyeuristic videos circulating online.
The Teufelsrad,or Devil’s Wheel, which rapidly spins around while people try to sit on it for as long as they can, is one of the beer festival’s oldest rides. But many of the videos discovered by German journalists focus on women whose traditional dirndl dresses have ridden up, often showing their underwear.
Exclusive: Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith told party members last year he had discussed making further savings if they win next election
The Conservatives are planning to make sweeping cuts beyond the £47bn announced last year if they win the next election, according to leaked comments by the shadow chancellor.
Speaking last year when he was shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith told Conservative members he and fellow shadow cabinet ministers had discussed making further cuts in “every part of government”.
Flock's cameras offer "indiscriminate mass surveillance," a U.S. federal judge wrote in a ruling Thursday, as does any system with "continuously updated" location histories for all the vehicles filmed by automated license plate-reading cameras.
The judge's ruling included italics for emphasis when describing "the question of why is it the government's business where everyone goes all the time?"
Judge Hill: We might reasonably expect our friends and family to tell us something like: "Hey, I saw you out driving by the store last week." But we do not expect people we know — let alone strangers, and especially not law enforcement — to randomly approach us to say: "Hey, I have been following your car for the last 30 days, and here is a detailed log of every place your vehicle has been with supporting photographic evidence. I am also going to share this information with law enforcement throughout the country so they know your whereabouts, too...."
Cell phones also move in public places where people can see you in plain view. But it becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient... [I]t is also consequential that we are
not just dealing with stationary cameras. The cameras on [police officer] Alaniz's vehicle itself feed information into these systems... It is also no longer difficult to imagine law enforcement using a fleet of drones hovering over an entire city so they don't miss the movement
of a single vehicle.
Officer Alaniz had used Flock's travel history for a car when deciding to pull over its driver, which eventually led to a vehicle search and charges of possessing drugs with intent to distribute. But the judge wrote that because this violated reasonable expectation of privacy, "all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree." The judge granted a motion to "suppress all evidence obtained as a result of these unconstitutional searches
and seizures."
The Washington Post got this comment from a Flock spokesperson about the judge's ruling: "we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned." (Flock's spokesperson added that the ruling "does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies' continued use of these important public safety technologies.")
But meanwhile, on Friday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act. The proposed bill bans federal agencies in America from using automated license plate reader systems "without explicit statutory authorization". The bill also lets certain federal agencies (including the Homeland Security Department) withhold grant money from State and local governments that use automatic license plate readers.
TechCrunch reports:
Despite its title, the bill doesn't call out Flock in the text and covers any and all ALPR systems. The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and for uses that Congress approves in future legislation, which would have to limit data retention to no longer than 48 hours.... Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) are co-sponsors.
Greek PM hopes handover of Tsar Samuel to Bulgaria will persuade Britain that time has come for ‘truth, reason, justice and morality’
In a ceremony replete with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for great events, Greece and Bulgaria have formally exchanged “a treasury” of relics and bones, sealing a cultural deal negotiated over decades.
The handover involved priceless religious objects removed from Greece at the height of the first world war, as well as remains thought to belong to Tsar Samuel, Bulgaria’s revered medieval warrior ruler.
Demonstrators take to the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities after new legislation fails to pass
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Madrid and other Spanish cities as they step up demands for action to tackle a mounting housing crisis after government measures were struck down by the opposition.
Demonstrators on Saturday waved posters calling for a general strike after the measures drawn up to address mass anger over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid, and other housing issues, were rejected in parliament on Friday.
Eaton county prosecuting attorney’s office had said court ruling forced removal of Nassar’s name – but he wasn’t on list because he was imprisoned out of state
Michigan has removed more than 20,000 entries from its sex offender registry, but convicted serial abuser Larry Nassar is not one of them – the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor was not in that system, as a local prosecutor’s office claimed, because he was serving an out-of-state federal prison sentence, according to state police.
On 9 September, the Michigan supreme court ruled that the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act (Sora) cannot be applied retroactively to cases involving offenses committed before the law’s relevant date. Michigan’s state police, as a result, removed more than 20,000 people whose offenses occurred before 1 July 2011 from the agency’s online sex offender database.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
The state, which is home to many AI companies, is one of the first to roll out workplace regulations targeting the technology
California’s laws aimed at protecting workers from the impacts of artificial intelligence could pave the way for broader workplace safeguards across the US as calls for regulating the technology mount. As the federal government goes hands-off on AI, California is taking the reins to address workers’ biggest fears.
On Thursday, California governor Gavin Newsomsigned a suite of new laws that ban bosses from relying entirely on AI to decide whether to fire workers, using it to predict employees’ emotional states or collecting neural data, meaning the information from electrical signals of someone’s brain or nerves. They also require companies to notify workers if layoffs were caused by AI and prohibit AI surveillance in workplace bathrooms.
Rhonda Jewell was sentenced to 17 years for forgetting 10-month-old Ariya in car’s back seat, leading to child’s death
A state appeals court in Florida reversed the felony murder conviction of a woman who accidentally left a baby in her car, resulting in the child’s death.
In July 2023, while babysitting four children from two different families, 46-year-old Rhonda Jewell forgot 10-month-old Ariya Paige was in the back of her car, and went inside to care for the other kids. Strapped into her carseat in the Florida summer heat, Ariya died of hyperthermia before Jewell realized her mistake. Jewell was convicted the following year of third-degree felony murder, predicated on the underlying felony of leaving a child unattended in a vehicle. She was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
President says payments, to be sent in early October, are meant to offset cost of monthly insurance premiums
Donald Trump has said the US government will send a one-time $90 payment to more than 20 million Americans enrolled in Medicare, the health insurance program for elderly people, to help offset the cost of their monthly medical insurance premiums.
The president said on social media late on Friday that the payments would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which he said was given $2bn by Congress to improve the Medicare fee-for-service program.
Blue Hen quarterback Braden Streeter throws a pass against Merrimack in the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens first game of the season. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
The Liberty Flames (4-1, 1-0 CUSA) defeated the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens (2-3, 0-1 CUSA), 30-6, on October 2.
NEWARK, DE — UD needed a spark. The Blue Hens trailed, 20-0, a little more than halfway through the third quarter and as the offense jogged on the field, a switch was made at quarterback. Braden Streeter took over for the first time starter EJ Archfield Jr.
Streeter threw three passes on his first drive. The first was a completion that lost a yard, the second fell incomplete and the third ended up in the hands of Flames’ linebacker Deuce Spurlock. Spurlock returned the interception to Delaware’s nine-yard line. The Flames ended the drive with only a field goal, but any chance of a comeback was dashed by the turnover.
Liberty defeated the Blue Hens, 30-14, Friday night.
“I do think that we just played against a good football team who beat us pretty good. I don’t know that it had to be the kind of game that it was,” head coach Ryan Carty said postgame. “If we’re being honest and if it was an honest assessment it was so it is what it was, they beat our butts, but I think if we played a little cleaner, that would have been a pretty darn good ball game.”
Streeter got other opportunities behind center in the game’s final 22 minutes and led Delaware to its first score of the game. Freshman Tyler Bell led the Blue Hens’ final scoring drive at the end of the fourth quarter. The touchdowns were scored by Donovan Lewis and Matthew McKinley-Daniels.
Delaware played three quarterbacks throughout Friday nights’ action choosing to give Archfield Jr. the starting assignment in his first ever collegiate game. Archfield finished the game with ten completed passes for 137 yards and a fumble. The fumble occurred on a run which would’ve given the Blue Hens a first down and positioned them in the red zone on their second drive of the first half.
It’s the first time this season UD’s lost a fumble.
“It’s a tough situation to go in there against one of the better teams in our conference, you know, in his first time seeing any action in the game and, you know, not just first time starting, it was the first time since high school getting in a game,” Carty said. “I think he did an admirable job.”
The offense never found a rhythm after that, crossing mid-field once between the turnover and Streeter’s touchdown drive. UD’s offense finished the game with 359 total yards and two conversions on 13 third down plays.
Despite the score, Delaware’s defense put together a respectable performance against Conference USA’s (CUSA) top scoring offense.
The Blue Hens defense held the Flames to field goals on their first two drives and forced a punt on Liberty’s third drive, despite being on the field for over half the first quarter. The Flames continued to wear down the Blue Hen defense in the second quarter and scored their first touchdown on a 56-yard run by junior Kam Davis. Liberty’s second touchdown was scored by senior running back Peyton Jones. Jones’ three-yard touchdown run completed a 12 play, 98-yard drive by the Flames offense that sent the Blue Hens into halftime trailing by 20.
The Delaware defense performed better in the second half and allowed only ten points. The defense held Liberty’s running game to 83 yards in the second half following the first half in which the Flames rushed for 199. The Blue Hen defense finished the game giving up 440 yards of total offense.
“We obviously didn’t play to our standard,” senior defensive tackle Dominick Brogna said postgame. “We got to go watch film, we got to lock in on the small details, the communications, the adjustments, the rotations, everything and we need to get it changed.”
The Blue Hens have 11 days to correct their mistakes and prepare for a road matchup against their second CUSA opponent, the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders. It’s unclear which of Delaware’s quarterback options will get the starting assignment, but it is unlikely to be Nick Minicucci whom coach Carty says is “week-to-week”.
“I was kind of out of answers on the back end, and at that point, I wanted to see what everybody can do, and kind of give a chance to everybody and see, you know, if we could evaluate that and then continue to leave it up for competition,” Carty said. “Where we go from here is gonna be us as coaches, you know, in that room and hopefully somebody pulls away with it when they get the opportunity too and proves that they’re the guy if Nick is out for a long time.”
Delaware’s game against the Blue Raiders is Tuesday, October 13. The game will be played in Tennessee and be nationally televised on CBS Sports Network. The game starts at 7:00 p.m.
This live blog is now closed, you can find more of our UK political coverage here
Ali says Britain is a multiracial, multicultural democracy that needs to protect “everyone’s equal right to belong.”
At a time when Britain is facing unprecedented levels of racist violence and intimidation, the country needs leadership.
So I’m calling on Andy Burnham to recognise this as a national emergency.
Because this is not just a policing problem. It’s a test of whether a diverse democracy can protect the equal right of everyone to belong.
People making the journey to the green party because they see we offer a real alternative.
He says people are looking for a different kind of politics that recognises how multicultural the UK is.
Britain is becoming more diverse, not less. Can we build a country confident enough to live with difference? To protect everyone’s equal right to belong and to make diversity work with us all.
Approval ratings for Tory leader and her party have crept up as she has asserted her style and authority but big challenges lie ahead
A year ago, Tory MPs were braced for the prospect of yet another leadership battle to topple Kemi Badenoch as the party sunk to historic lows of 14-16% in the polls.
At the time, the word “November” was uttered in hushed tones – this being the decisive month when rebels would be able to mount a challenge, Badenoch having served 12 months in office.
Rahman Salehi, 34, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, were charged with preparing attacks on city’s Jewish community, including Heaton Park synagogue
Two Iranian men identified a Manchester synagogue previously subjected to a fatal terrorist attack as a target for an alleged homemade bomb plot, a court has heard.
Rahman Salehi, 34, from Salford, and Salam Ahmadyan, 36, from Liverpool were charged with preparing to commit an act of terrorism or assisting another to commit an act of terrorism on Friday.
The Ukrainian capital’s left and right banks are connected by eight bridges — and Russia has been targeting both its North and South bridges in recent days.
Keep the oven busy on a gray afternoon with these 15 sheet pan recipes. Roast chicken, salmon, vegetables, and meatloaf, or make pizza, nachos, eggs, and quesadillas on one tray.The post 15 sheet pan recipes warming the kitchen on cool,…
The US defense secretary who hates ‘beardos, weirdos and wimps’ has announced an Office of Religious Affairs at the Pentagon
Apart from money and McDonald’s, there’s nothing Donald Trump seems to love more than a “big, beautiful” wall. The government is currently spending billions of taxpayer dollars to fulfill the president’s fantasy of lining the US-Mexico border with 30ft steel bollard walls and high-tech surveillance.
What the Trump administration is apparently not so keen on is the wall of separation between church and state. While the president may hawk bibles as a side hustle, he is not exactly devout; he serves only mammon. The top levels of his government, however, are stuffed full of religious fanatics who appear hellbent on remaking the country as a Christian theocracy.
Black voters reveal a generational divide, with younger voters drawn to the Democratic Socialists of America, and older voters focused on what can realistically be achieved
One of the most heated debates in the Democratic party is how left it should go – especially after a year that has seen several democratic socialists win their primary races. Moderate Democrats worry that left-wing candidates will struggle to win general elections, while progressive voters want fresh solutions to healthcare and the rising cost of living. But largely left out of this debate is one of the most critical bases of the party: Black voters.
A Pew Research Center study found that among Democrats, only 21% of Black voters are likely to positively view candidates who align with democratic socialists, compared to 40% of white, 30% of Asian, and 20% of Hispanic voters.
President’s popularity has plummeted in solidly Republican state – will his presence at midterm rallies help or hinder?
Kelly Savage-Radich grew up in a Republican-supporting Ohio family and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But today the mother of three, who lives in a Montgomery county suburb of Dayton, is facing the prospect of having to sell one of her family’s vehicles due to the high cost of gas. Her grocery bill has gone up about $100 a week.
She lays the blame squarely at the Trump administration’s door.
Fuel costs are biting for crop growers, trucking firms and a host of other industries as Iran war stokes record prices
Joe Hamilton farms corn and soybeans on 2,500 acres in Indiana’s Delaware county. Next week, when his soybean harvest kicks off, four tractors, two combine harvesters and five semi-trucks will roar to life.
And with that, a record bill for about 9,000 gallons of diesel awaits him.
These 17 comfort food sides round out heavier fall suppers with buttery potatoes, golden stuffing, vegetable fritters, warm cornbread, creamy spinach, and fresh biscuits.The post 17 comfort food sides for the heavier suppers fall brings back appeared first on Food…
Attorney general says ‘terrorist attack’ was attempted by suspect who is said to have been barred from flying by Oman because of extremist views
The co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 used an axe to attempt to carry out a “terrorist attack” during the Israel-bound flight, the United Arab Emirates prosecutor general has said.
Disaster was narrowly averted on Wednesday when passengers and crew intervened to stop the co-pilot’s attempt to take control of the plane, which had 182 people onboard and plunged 16,625ft in just over 30 seconds. The descent was so extreme that part of the rudder was ripped off.
When homework and school projects take over the evening, these 13 easy slow cooker picks keep dinner moving. Choose beef, chicken, pork, meatballs, soup, or a family-style casserole.The post 13 easy slow cooker picks worth starting before your kid’s first…
Nashville, TN — Tennessee Correction Commissioner Frank Strada is facing mounting scrutiny after Christa Pike survived a failed lethal injection, marking the fifth execution described as botched or seriously problematic under his leadership in Tennessee and Arizona.
Pike, 50, remained unconscious and on a ventilator Friday after receiving two doses of pentobarbital. Her attorneys say improperly placed IV lines allowed the drug to enter surrounding tissue rather than her bloodstream, leaving her arms swollen, burned and blistered. Gov. Bill Lee has suspended executions for the remainder of 2026 and ordered an independent review.
Strada previously oversaw execution operations in Arizona, where three executions in 2022 were classified as botched by the Death Penalty Information Center after teams repeatedly struggled to establish IV access. Tennessee then hired him as correction commissioner in 2023.
Since then, Tennessee has experienced two failed execution attempts. Tony Carruthers’ May execution was abandoned after officials spent more than an hour trying to establish required IV access. Pike survived Wednesday’s attempt after lethal drugs were administered.
Critics also note that Tennessee eliminated a previous training requirement involving practice IV insertion under Strada. A 2022 state-commissioned review had already documented serious failures in Tennessee’s execution procedures.
An estimated 2.3 million cancer cases worldwide in 2024, about one in eight, were attributable to infections, according to a study published in The Lancet Oncology. "This recent Lancet data is a profound reminder that a significant portion of our global cancer burden is fundamentally preventable," said David Greenberg, MD, of Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center, in a news release. "We have historically siloed infectious diseases and oncology, but they are deeply intertwined. By shifting our focus toward aggressive infection control, we can literally vaccinate and treat our way out of millions of future cancer diagnoses." From a report: The study found that an estimated 2.3 million new cancer cases were attributable to infections globally in 2024, equivalent to 12% of all cancer cases. Of these, the largest number (760,000 cases, or 4%) were caused by H. pylori, followed by HPV (750,000 cases, or 4%), HBV (360,000 cases, or 2%), EBV (260,000 cases, or 1%) and HCV (160,000 cases). More than three quarters of infection-attributable cancers occurred in low- and middle-income countries. Eastern Asian had the largest burden, with 990,000 cases (42% of the global total). Rates were also higher than the global average in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
Public outcry to punish the alleged perpetrators in the Cornell case misses the point – the only solution is political, legal and cultural equality of women
Sometimes a story is so so appalling, it captures the public’s attention, including the attention of people who don’t focus on the issue otherwise. Such is the case with the alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University.
For feminists who focus on violence against women or anyone who has ever cared about campus rape, the claims made in Jane Doe’s civil lawsuit against the alleged perpetrators may be unusual in its severity – but we know the statistics that show that somewhere between 20% and 25% of women college students will be the victim of a sexual assault (no statistics tell us what percentage of men students will be rapists).
The Guardian found that 7-Eleven and Circle K stores frequently charge customers more at the register or pump for snacks, gas and other items than the prices they promise on the shelf or on outdoor fuel signs.
When Donald Trump returned to power, 20 long months ago, some state leaders wrung their hands, worrying what explicit resistance might cost their citizens – and their careers – during the second term of a vengeful president. JB Pritzker was not among them.
Two days after Trump’s re-election, the Democratic governor of Illinois warned the president would need to “come through me” to reach the people of his state. He waited all of 30 days after the inauguration before drawing a comparison with Nazi Germany.
Authorities crack down on trade they says risks spiralling out of control – but operators say they are being targeted unfairly
On the edge of Piazza Navona, one of the grandest squares in central Rome, Barry and Linda, visitors from Texas in the US, stepped out of a golf cart. They planned to cross the square on foot, perhaps stopping to admire Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century Fountain of the Four Rivers, before being picked up by their driver at the opposite end.
The couple had already done a walking tour on day one of their trip, and had been so exasperated by a stifling three-hour shuffle along a corridor towards the Sistine Chapel on day two that by the third day they wanted to give their tired feet a rest.
Frank Strada will leave role next month after uproar over execution attempt, which sent Pike to hospital in critical condition
Tennessee’s prison chief is resigning after the failed execution of Christa Pike, which lawyers say was the fifth “botched” execution under his leadership across two states since 2022.
Frank Strada, the commissioner of the Tennessee department of correction, has faced mounting questions about the state’s highly secretive death penalty protocols since Wednesday evening when Pike became the first death row prisoner in the US to to be injected with lethal drugs and survive.
Western Libya’s GNU say working with Saddam Haftar ‘impossible’ as US-backed merger plan breaks down
Allegations that the son of the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar oversaw a “terror cell” that launched drone attacks on fuel storage facilities and power stations in western Libya have upended plans for the Tripoli-based government of national unity (GNU) to continue cooperating with Haftar on a plan to unify the country.
Saddam Haftar, the deputy commander of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), has increasingly been seen by the US as an important figure in its plans to unify Libyan security, judicial and political institutions.
John Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas is the least affordable city in the US for the middle class, a recent Brookings Institution analysis found
Nestled between two mountain ranges at the crook of central California’s coastline sits a valley known as the “salad bowl of the world”.
Farm workers stoop over neatly lined rows of crops off Highway 101 to harvest more than half of the nation’s supply of lettuce and nearly a third of its strawberries. The soil here is so rich that author John Steinbeck made the Salinas valley the promised land in his literary depictions of people chasing the American dream: immigrants, farm workers, westward-moving hopefuls, hungering for a better life.
In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. The agency was examining interactions between Collins and a top donor: Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek.
According to Kao, in 2019, the head of the pro-Collins super PAC met with him and other Navatek execs and asked for a $500,000 donation. Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. For the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.
To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Kao sent an initial $150,000 to the super PAC using a shell company, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. The head of the super PAC knew Kao was behind the donation. “Very smart,” he replied in an email viewed by ProPublica.
Weeks later, Kao told his team Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts.
But the FBI saw through Kao’s shell company ruse. In 2022, a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. Facing years in prison, Kao revealed the full scheme to the FBI, hoping to reduce his sentence. What he told them has never before become public.
Kao and his close associates donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with more than $40 million a year in government funds. Collins, Kao said, was Navatek’s most important patron.
Then President Donald Trump returned to office — and the FBI and Department of Justice teams that handled public corruption cases were eviscerated. The investigation died, and the government stopped talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.
ProPublica revealed the existence of the case for the first time.
Collins’ deputy chief of staff said that her office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-for-play made by Kao and that her office “fully cooperated” with the FBI. After our story was published, the senator mustered a defense that was full of incorrect and misleading claims, calling ProPublica’s reporting a “smear job” that took “the words of a twice-convicted felon over my office, campaign staff and me.”
ProPublica reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and thousands of pages of legal records, and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations and the FBI inquiry to conduct our own investigation.
The White House referred us to the FBI. A spokesperson said the FBI “ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins” or her campaign. The FBI spokesperson did not address questions about the new phase of the investigation prompted by Kao’s account.
Navatek founder Steven Loui said Kao’s methods were “unethical and illegal” and that the company fully complied with law enforcement.
Watch our video to learn more on how we independently corroborated much of Kao’s account.
Revelation comes amid mounting concern over online prediction market’s effects on integrity of financial system
UK authorities are being urged to intervene after it emerged that the online prediction market Polymarket has been taking thousands of dollars worth of bets over whether HSBC and Lloyds will fail.
Polymarket – the US-owned company which holds bets on anything from football matches, to the existence of aliens, to when a bomb drops on a city – has allowed users to take $77,507 (£58,530) worth of positions on whether the world’s biggest banks will go under by the end of this year.
Companies race to switch households to ‘voice over internet protocol’ services by the end of January
BT has been accused of “bullying” customers by temporarily cutting off their broadband to pressure them to upgrade to a digital landline, as providers race to switch households over before the January deadline.
Telecoms companies have so far migrated 16-17m lines from the old copper network to digital voice over internet protocol (VoiP), which uses a broadband connection instead, in the biggest technological upgrade since the early 00s, when analogue TV was switched off.
Shortly after his controversial speech to the United Nations general assembly in September, Donald Trump gathered a dozen like-minded Latin American leaders and boasted that rightwing candidates had won all seven presidential elections held in the region since he began his second term.
“Everybody I’ve endorsed has won,” the US president said in New York to most of the leaders of the Shield of the Americas, an anti-drug cartel coalition of 15 countries governed by the right or far right.
Longtime Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis shares a report from NPR: Google just put a refrigerator-sized satellite into space, part of a research project the company hopes can pave the way for orbiting AI data centers powered by the sun. The prototype satellite has four specialty chips in it called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, that Google designed for machine learning and has already deployed in data centers on Earth. The chips will run a version of the company's Gemma AI model for 15 minutes at a time due to heat management constraints, using the open weight model to answer simple queries.
In a blog post, Google said the mission will gauge how the TPUs handle "the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space." The satellite launched October 1 is a prototype that Travis Beals, senior director and lead of Project Suncatcher, called "a very minimal test" to make sure the chips can run in space. A SpaceX rocket carried it into orbit, and Planet will get it up and running. Beal said Google will then fire up and test the TPUs. The goal is for the mission to be operational for a year.
Who is really in charge – the people or the markets? In the first episode of Radical Thinking, a new series from the Guardian, senior economics commentator Aditya Chakrabortty speaks to the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. What was it like during the eurozone crisis when Varoufakis went head to head with those who wanted to stop his reforms?
Watch Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty here.
Citizen environmentalists create online platform that flags spills in real time and highlights repeatedly polluted spots
The easy thing for the people who live on the banks of the River Dart in Devon might have been to grumble and groan about the sewage spills that blight their beloved waterway.
Instead, citizen environmentalists in the area have created a unique online platform that flags up spills in real time, highlights spots that are repeatedly polluted, and sets out where improvement work is planned – and where it isn’t.
Hammersmith and Fulham says it faces ‘biggest financial challenge in living memory’ as government cuts bite
A flagship Labour authority has warned it may have to impose a 150% council tax rise on residents to maintain current services following central government cuts under a new funding settlement.
Hammersmith and Fulham council’s cabinet has concluded in a report due to be published on Monday that such a rise would cost Band D households an additional £29.11 a week in 2027/28.
Sadler’s Wells East, London An interrogater tries to get to the bottom of a surreal scandal while green screen actors meddle with the story in Jess and Morgs’ inventive production
What audiences remember most from a political interview, a voiceover tells the prime minister (Kennedy Muntanga) as he prepares to face his TV interrogator (Rebecca Bassett-Graham, coiffed à la Emily Maitlis), is less the words themselves than the tone of voice and the tenor of the body. Muntanga is on point, then: his arms sweep, his fingers beetle and his hands spread out, as if he were wordlessly fielding fly-by questions and offering open statements. It’s the moves and the staging that count.
This setup lands right in the zone for creative duo Jess and Morgs (Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple), whose turf is a congenial mix of choreography, film and theatre. In Deepfake, along with writer Jeff James, they explore the various unravellings of an encounter in which the interviewer tries to find the truth behind a surreal – but maybe real? – story in which the PM was seen variously spattered with yellow paint, with his flies undone, and partaking in a ritual involving a deer’s head.
OpenAI says its review in response to the Medicare and Hugging Face agent attacks is costing the company more than US$500,000 per day, as it deploys AI to examine data that would take a human 66m years to read.
The company has warned the review is ongoing, and more organisations may be informed they’ve been targeted in the near future.
Pyongyang fires towards sea a day after Kim Jong-un sister denounces South Korea for claiming North’s mines wounded South’s soldiers in DMZ
North Korea fired a ballistic missile towards the sea on Saturday, South Korea and Japan said, a day after it rejected Seoul’s accusation of its mines wounding soldiers.
The missile was launched from the Wonsan area at about 6.30am towards the East Sea – also known as the Sea of Japan – and flew more than 700km (434 miles), the South Korean military said. Seoul and Washington were analysing the test for details, it added.
Exclusive: Findings will bolster those in No 10 who want to negotiate on re-entry but some senior figures remain wary
Andy Burnham’s personal preference to rejoin the European Union after the next election is supported by almost half of all voters, a new megapoll has found, although cabinet ministers concerned about reopening Brexit divides are privately urging him to proceed with caution.
The poll by the Messina Group (TMG) found that renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU could boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points, if the prime minister offered a fresh referendum in which he campaigned to re-enter the bloc.
When the new ‘department of government efficiency’ sent young techies to disrupt federal agencies, not everyone complied. Here’s what happened when one worker fought to protect immigrant data
In the early hours of Saturday 22 February 2025 the following email landed in the inboxes of the entire US federal workforce:
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The state of New Mexico asked a judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data on Facebook in a case that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Attorneys for New Mexico made the request at a hearing in a lawsuit brought following revelations that the British political consulting firm, which worked on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. The jury returned its verdict on September 25. Judge Francis Mathew, who oversaw the trial in Santa Fe, will decide how much Meta must pay in financial penalties. [...] State law allows the judge to decide how much to fine Meta per violation, up to $5,000. At the hearing on Thursday, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process. But the judge should order a significant payment that will impact the company, McGinn said.
"This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," McGinn said. She said $35 billion to $40 billion, which represents about 20% of the possible penalties that could be awarded under state law from the verdict, would impact the stock price while complying with Meta's right to due process under the Constitution. At the hearing on Thursday, Matt Nicholson, a lawyer for Meta, called the state's request an "astronomical penalty that would obviously violate a host of constitutional provisions." In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion. The jury may have said it found Meta's statements misleading, but the evidence shows that Meta does not sell user data and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer had actually been misled, the company said in court filings. The judge said he expected to issue a ruling later this month.
Ithaca, NY — Cornell University is facing renewed scrutiny over campus sexual violence after a university survey found that 35% of undergraduate women who responded reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact during their time at the school.
That figure rose sharply from 23% in 2023 and 20% in 2021. Among undergraduate men, 8% reported nonconsensual sexual contact in 2025, compared with 9% two years earlier. Nearly half of all respondents also reported experiencing sexual or gender-based harassment.
The findings come as Cornell faces intense criticism over its handling of a separate 2024 alleged gang rape involving members of the Chi Phi fraternity. That case has prompted a civil lawsuit, a reopened criminal investigation and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to appoint Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor.
Cornell officials caution that the 2025 survey had a significantly lower response rate than previous editions. Only 926 of 6,000 invited students participated, a 15% response rate, compared with 36% in 2023. That means the results should not automatically be treated as representing every Cornell student.
Still, Cornell’s own task force has described sexual assault as a persistent campus problem and recommended expanded prevention, education, reporting and accountability efforts.
With 40 dead and a disaster declared across all 50 city districts, experts warn extreme flooding will only worsen across south-east Asia
Bangkok is used to absorbing the sudden afternoon downpours that inundate the city during the rainy season. Even streets in many central high-rise districts can briefly turn into rivers, with rats and cockroaches racing out of sewers and taking temporary refuge on trees and buildings as the subterranean world is flushed out.
But every city has a breaking point, and this year rain fell so fast and so hard that whole neighbourhoods of the Thai capital have been transformed, not into rivers, but stagnant lakes. In parts of the city, roughly 300mm of rain – the equivalent of half a year of average rainfall in London – fell in about two days.
And as we bring you the latest on how the jobs report stands to impact voter sentiment ahead of the November midterms, my colleagues have done all the hard work in mapping out the battle for Congress and the key states, candidates and districts that will ultimately decide the balance of power on Capitol Hill.
Many indicators of voter sentiment suggest the Democrats are favored to take back control of the House of Representatives, and potentially the Senate. Winning either would be a significant victory for the party and give it the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration.
Jon Avery, who parks cars at the Roswell Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, says his goal when interacting with patients is to "have a meaningful encounter that's not hollow."
Announcement from US officials comes after CDC declared end to outbreak that infected nearly 13,000 people
The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday its inspectors had detected cyclospora at the Mexican farm blamed for the largest foodborne illness outbreak of the parasite in US history.
FDA inspectors said Friday they found cyclospora in two places: a wastewater tank and a drainage ditch used for lettuce cultivation. They said it was unclear how the lettuce became infected.
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck Victoria in the early hours of Saturday morning, shaking Melbourne and waking people across the whole region.
Geoscience Australia said it detected an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8 at 2.01am near Leongatha, 130km south-east of Melbourne, with the tremors felt across the city’s eastern suburbs.
The race for control of the Senate is changing in the final weeks before the midterms, with the GOP defending several traditionally red-leaning states.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump personally directed budget officials to find federal money for television advertisements promoting his presidency, according to new reporting that adds detail to an already controversial taxpayer-funded media campaign.
The New York Times reported that Trump asked Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to locate money inside the federal government after expressing enthusiasm for promotional ads featuring himself. The administration ultimately shifted $20 million available to Customs and Border Protection into a Department of Homeland Security account designated for “commemorative events.”
The following day, CBP awarded Maryland marketing company LMD a $20 million contract for a national media campaign.
At least four advertisements have since aired on major networks. One closely resembles a Trump 2024 campaign commercial, while others feature flattering imagery and praise for his administration. Each carries the disclosure “Paid for by the U.S. government.”
The campaign has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans who question whether taxpayer-funded advertising centered on Trump violates longstanding restrictions against government propaganda, particularly weeks before congressional elections. Reuters reports lawmakers have requested independent investigations into the spending.
The White House maintains the advertisements are legal public-service announcements and do not explicitly ask voters to support Trump or Republican candidates.
Kenan ‘Ken’ Urker, 34, who died of apparent drug overdose, was partner of woman convicted of murder of mother
The on-and-off partner of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who spent time in prison for her role in the murder of her abusive mother, was found dead inside his Louisiana home on his 34th birthday on Thursday in what authorities described as an apparent drug overdose.
The sheriff’s office in Lafourche parish, Louisiana, confirmed Kenan “Ken” Urker – the father of Blanchard’s daughter – was discovered on Thursday after relatives asked police to conduct a welfare check at his residence.
Plan to install barriers through popular national park sparked outrage from advocates and politicians alike
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from expanding the border wall and other security infrastructure across the Big Bend region of west Texas, where contentious plans to build roads and vehicle barriers through a popular national park have led to furious backlash and public protests.
US district judge Kathleen Cardone’s ruling after a Friday hearing in El Paso deals a major blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to expand the border wall through west Texas at breakneck pace, while riding roughshod over the objections of local business owners, landowners, public land advocates and politicians from both parties.
The co-pilot who earlier this week allegedly made a violent attempt to crash a passenger aircraft was previously fired from a position with Oman Air for holding "extremist views," multiple sources told CBS News.
In a possible blow to the Trump administration's efforts to charge noncitizens with voting, a judge has dismissed a case against a Jamaican national accused of illegally voting, finding the law she was charged under is unconstitutional.
Body camera video shows Altoona police arresting Luigi Mangione, questioning him about a fake ID and recovering evidence later linked to the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, and Stanford have built an AI called Ataraxos that finally cracked Stratego, beating four-time world champion Pim Niemeijer 15 games to one with four draws. Its key advantage was a second neural network that estimates the identities of hidden enemy pieces, letting the system search plausible game states rather than brute-force a massive hidden-information space. Ars Technica reports: Just like [DeepMind's DeepNash, introduced in 2022], Ataraxos learned by playing against itself -- 163 million games in total. In these self-play sessions, moves that led to wins were reinforced and played more often in future matches, while moves that led to losses were played less, which was the same simple training idea. The difference was in how much Ataraxos adjusted after each game, because hidden information tends to send self-play learning algorithms around in circles. The team addressed this by making big, bold changes in strategy early in training and small, careful ones later.
The even bigger innovation was something DeepNash never had: thinking ahead before each move. AIs like AlphaGo refine their general strategy with a search just before acting. DeepMind couldn't make that work in Stratego because the search space was too large, leaving it an open question whether it was worth trying. "This is one of the things that we did figure out how to do," Farina said. The solution was a second neural network, a belief model, trained to guess the opponent's hidden pieces based on how they had been moving. This way, instead of iterating through every possible arrangement, Ataraxos samples plausible ones, plays out candidate moves in each, and picks based on how they turned out. And it shows in its playstyle.
[...] DeepNash was trained for two to three months on 1,024 of Google's specialized chips, a run the Ataraxos team estimates would cost $3 million to $4.5 million at 2025 prices. Ataraxos, in contrast, needed 16 GPUs for a week, plus an additional four GPUs for four days to train the belief model. Farina and lead author Samuel Sokota achieved this efficiency by writing a simulator that runs millions of moves per second on graphics cards. "At the scale that we are in academia, we don't really have access to an entire field of GPUs," Farina said. The algorithm also learned far faster -- it played about 34 times fewer games than DeepNash, and still ended up much stronger. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
The parasite was found in a wastewater tank at a processing facility and a drainage ditch, but the agency could not determine how contamination occurred.
The best Tuesday is a taco Tuesday. (Amirite?) Lucky for you, National Taco Day is coming up on Oct. 6, when a variety of restaurants celebrate with their own hard-shell and soft-shell deals and discounts.(In one case, there’s free food…
Kevin Warsh’s predecessor had been investigated over cost overruns related to central bank renovation project
The US justice department is not reopening a criminal investigation into former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for cost overruns related to the central bank’s building renovation project, a department spokesperson said on Friday.
Attorney general Todd Blanche – in comments to Bloomberg News, which first reported the development – said he has not ruled out continuing to look into the project’s oversight and potentially take action if evidence of wrongdoing came to light.
Jane Doe's attorney, Thomas Giuffra, tells CBS News the investigation into her alleged rape at a Cornell fraternity was a failure and university police "were in over their heads."
The justice and treasury departments said they sent $2m to Hamas through charities and cryptocurrency, while six people were arrested across the US and France
The Trump administration on Friday unveiled sanctions against three individuals allegedly related to the Islamist militant group Hamas and against two charities based in France while also announcing six arrests – actions that the government called an “extraordinary counter-terrorism work” to expose “a sophisticated, multi‑year financing architecture”.
Investigators alleged that the network moved more than $2m to Hamas “through deceptive charitable fronts and cryptocurrency channels”.
Judge unseals bodycam footage from officers who responded to 911 from McDonald’s in Pennsylvania
Police bodycam footage released Friday shows the moment officers located and arrested Luigi Mangione at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in connection with the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan.
In one video, officers ask Mangione to lower the face mask he was wearing to hide his identity.
Federal authorities investigating the deaths of two University of Mississippi students have charged a store clerk and his son with selling an illegal kratom product.
Longtime Slashdot submitter theodp writes: GeekWire reports that the University of Washington has moved its Global Innovation Exchange {GIX) program to Microsoft's campus in a rent-free deal (UW News release). GIX, an institute supporting tech leaders that offers an MS in Technology Innovation, is the first UW program to set up full-time operations at Microsoft, whose headquarters are just across Lake Washington from the university's main campus. Microsoft provided a $42 million in-kind donation to establish the embedded facility; the UW is leasing the new 48,500-square-foot GIX space in Microsoft's Building 92 rent-free. GIX debuted in 2015 as a partnership of the UW and China's Tsinghua University and received $70 million in Microsoft support at the now-abandoned GIX location in Bellevue (the Steve Ballmer Building), although indications are that a long-term arrangement did not come together as intended. In a Thursday LinkedIn post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote: "Last night we opened a door unlike any other. At the heart of Microsoft's campus, step into the new home of the UW's Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) and you cross from Microsoft into the University of Washington. No one has ever put a great research university and a leading technology company under the same roof quite like this. As far as I know, no one has even tried. The timing matters. Artificial intelligence is advancing fast. The question is whether the people building it understand the world it's changing. This calls for a new style of education and leadership. We need leaders who understand the technology deeply and see things through other people's eyes. Leaders who learn by collaborating on real projects with people from different countries and disciplines. That's what GIX is built for. Students will learn from faculty across the UW, take classes taught by Microsoft employees, and be mentored by people from across our industry here in the Pacific Northwest." Interestingly, Smith's contention that UW GIX students will benefit from a 'new style' of Microsoft and industry-influenced education sounds a lot like Smith's contention that K-12 school children are better off thanks to a new style of Microsoft and industry-influenced education. In an interview last month, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools author Natasha Singer told NPR (podcast, transcript), "For my book, I spoke to Brad Smith, who's the president of Microsoft, and he has been one of the leaders in the tech industry pushing for [K-12] computer science [and now AI literacy] in schools. [...] And Brad Smith said, philanthropy in the private sector is doing this work because public schools have failed to do what they were supposed to do. And his view is that public schools should be teaching modern subjects like computer science, and they were not equipped to do it fast enough and the tech industry stepped in to help. And is it better than if schools were able to do this themselves? He said, no, but it's certainly better than nothing. And he said to me, you know, think about where we would be on computer science if the tech industry hadn't stepped up. [...] Well, I've been having this conversation with him for 10 years, and when we started having it 10 years ago, I said to him, I get that, but when big tech companies put their finger on the scale, it tips education in certain ways that not only favor the tech industry but can obscure equally or more important things." So, is "The University of Washington at Microsoft" a good or bad idea?
Newly released police bodycam footage shows officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, approaching, searching and arresting Luigi Mangione at a McDonald's on 9 December 2024 in connection with the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The Guardian has edited the video from multiple cameras to show the moments of the arrest
A Democrat-backed ad in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race said Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson took money from people named in the Jeffrey Epstein files and then voted to withhold the files from public view.
“Her top donors appear in the Epstein files over 700 times,” the ad from WinSenate super PAC said, referring to thousands of documents related to criminal investigations into Epstein, the convicted sex offender. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
“In Congress, Hinson voted against releasing the files,” the ad continued. “When given another chance, she skipped the votes. Instead, she was raising money from a billionaire who’s in the Epstein files over 20 times.”
In a separate ad from WinSenate, a woman tells viewers that Hinson “took nearly $90,000 from people in the Epstein files and voted to keep those files secret.”
As a super PAC, the pro-Democrat WinSenate may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, including from corporations and unions, to campaign independently for candidates for federal office. Hinson faces Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek in the race to replace Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is not seeking re-election.
Federal Election Commission data show that Hinson received donations from people who were mentioned in the Epstein files. They’re among hundreds named in the files — but that alone doesn’t mean they were involved in wrongdoing or had close ties with Epstein, who interacted with many influential people regardless of political affiliation.
WinSenate’s ads mislead about Hinson’s votes on the Epstein files’ release.
Hinson opposed procedural efforts, but voted in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act
On July 14, 2025, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introducedan amendment requiring the attorney general to release the Epstein files within 30 days. The House Rules Committee voted against attaching that amendment to a cryptocurrency bill to be voted on the House floor.
The next day, Democrats pushed to defeat a motion to “order the previous question,” a procedural maneuver that would end debate and force a vote on the legislation at hand, which on that day included a defense appropriations bill and the cryptocurrency bill. If the “previous question” motion failed, it would have allowed further consideration of Khanna’s amendment on the Epstein files’ release. But the procedural vote passed 211-210 along party lines, with Hinson and other Republicans in the majority. The ad cited this vote as evidence for its claim.
Hinson called Epstein a “disgusting human being and an absolute pedophile” around that time, but said she disagreed with a separate effort to force a vote on the Epstein files’ release.
We found that Hinson also voted with the majority for other “previous question” motions in July 2025 and September 2025 that stopped a stand-alone bill on the Epstein files from being brought to the House floor. And she didn’t sign a discharge petition led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that eventually obtained enough signatures to force a floor vote on the Epstein files’ release.
But the ad did not mention that Hinson later voted in favor of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act introduced by Massie and Khanna. Facing increased pressure to release the files, President Donald Trump directed lawmakers to pass the measure requiring the Justice Department to publish online all its files on Epstein. It passed the House, 427-1, in November 2025.
The ad also cited an Aug. 27 article from the liberal American Journal News. The article said Hinson missed votes for Epstein-related motions in September 2025, including motions to restrict funds in favor of enabling the release of the Epstein files. Her campaign didn’t tell us why she didn’t vote.
Asked about WinSenate’s ad, Hinson spokesperson Billy Fuerst pointed to Hinson’s vote on the Transparency Act and described the July vote that the group cited as a “procedural motion to advance several bills, including a defense appropriations bill.”
Donations from people mentioned in the Epstein files does not equate to wrongdoing
This midterm election season, both parties have turned to the Epstein files to lob campaign attacks at one another.
WinSenate’s ad did not specify which of Hinson’s donors it was referring to, but news reports and FEC data show that Hinson received donations from current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Blackwater CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, all of whose names appear in the Epstein documents. They are not accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.
The Daily Beast reported that Hinson and her affiliated PACs accepted nearly $90,000 over three campaigns from donors whose names appear in the files. PolitiFact was unable to confirm the figure.
And not just Republican donors appear in the Epstein files. Hinson’s opponent Turek, for example, received a donation from venture capitalist and chairman of Kleiner Perkins John Doerr, who was also mentioned in the files. Doerr is not accused of wrongdoing, and the files don’t reflect that he directly corresponded with Epstein.
Our ruling
A WinSenate ad said Hinson voted against releasing the Epstein files.
Hinson opposed a procedural maneuver allowing a vote on the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files. She opposed two other similar procedural efforts related to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but later voted for the bill in November 2025. The measure passed.
(The Center Square) - Facing a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall, the Los Angeles County Superior Court is offering eligible full-time employees a one-time $35,000 buyout to voluntarily resign by Christmas Eve.
I like squirrels. Apparently, there’s a SquirrelOS. It’s a small hobby OS learning project from five years ago, developed by Immanuel Daviel A. Garcia.
A simple DOS like OS made in Assembly and C with a ported version of Stephen Brennan’s Shell.
President leads huge rally in Rio before election on Sunday seen as most important for decades
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has claimed he is the only thing standing in the way of far-right “fascists” reclaiming power, as he led a huge rally through the streets of Rio ahead of Sunday’s crunch election.
Speaking on the eve of the demonstration, the 80-year-old leftwinger said he had decided to seek a historic fourth term because he believed only he could prevent the family of his rightwing rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, returning to government.
(The Center Square) – Democrat Roy Cooper wants to “make stuff cost less” and Republican Michael Whatley is pushing to keep his party’s majority in order to enact the agenda of second-term Republican President Donald Trump.
Yeah, the FM flared footpad should work with a Pint/Pint X running the Pint V kit. Since it has a bigger sensor area, it might even help if your current footpad is having trouble registering.
I’d just make sure both sensor zones are working before riding. I never fully trust “plug and play” until I test it first lol.
Apple says it will tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls as increasingly capable AI agents raise the risks of apps gaining broad access to users' files, messages, mail, and browsing history. TechCrunch reports: Days after a journalist claimed that Meta's Muse app on Mac read their private messages -- a claim that Meta disputed -- Apple announced that it's introducing additional controls around a setting called "Full Disk Access" on macOS. The feature was designed to allow backups to function properly, but AI agents have now increased "the risks associated with this level of access," Apple said. [...] In Muse's case, the AI optionally allows users to enable Full Disk Access. This setting, Apple explains, gives an app permission to access files, mail, messages, and even browsing history.
"Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems... without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a new blog post aimed at developers. The company says that, going forward, it will introduce new controls aimed at ensuring that users who "genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access" can do so only with "every explicit user action."
"Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy," Apple wrote.
Yeah if they already confirmed the UBOX is compatible then that’s good. I’d still follow the Stoked Stock BMS datasheet exactly and double check polarity with a multimeter before connecting anything.
On the soldering, you may need to depending on how the battery and BMS leads are set up, but I wouldn’t solder anything yet until you have the battery in front of you and can see exactly what connectors/wires you’re working with.
(The Center Square) – Medicaid’s federal-state cost sharing system may disincentivize states from cracking down on fraudulent and improper payments, a new issue brief released by U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee Republicans finds.
Attorneys say hospital staff are working to clear pentobarbital she was administered from her system
Christa Pike remained hospitalized, unconscious and on a machine helping her breathe after her failed execution in Tennessee, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday.
The attorneys said hospital staff were working to save Pike’s life and clear the pentobarbital she was administered from her system as of late Thursday.
(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday celebrated Texas receiving the first reimbursement from the federal government for money Texas taxpayers spent on border security efforts through Operation Lone Star.
Dozens of residents testify to legislature’s redistricting committee in heated hearing, the last of eight
Hundreds of people gathered across from the Mississippi state capitol building on Thursday evening to rally against the aggressive Republican efforts to draw maps that favor their own party.
Shortly after the US supreme court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais, which severely weakened section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Tate Reeves, the Mississippi governor, moved in lockstep with other Republican governors and lawmakers to call for a special session to redraw maps. However, before that special session could occur, Reeves canceled it and wrote on X that he expected “lawmakers to redraw congressional lines BETWEEN NOW and 2027 elections!”
Hōlei sea arch, formed 550 years ago by erosion from ocean waves, no longer standing, National Park Service confirms
A famed centuries-old sea arch on Hawaii’s remote and rugged coastline has collapsed into the Pacific Ocean, the National Park Service confirmed on Friday, following a stretch of rough storms in the region in recent weeks.
The beloved landmark, Hōlei sea arch, stood at around 90ft high for over half a millennium in Hawaii’s Volcanoes national park, located on the dramatic southern coast of the Big Island. It was naturally formed around 550 years ago due to differential erosion by ocean waves.
Polls show midterm voters are angry that the Iran war — which President Donald Trump told them would be over in a matter of weeks — has led to higher inflation and energy prices, including for gasoline.
Now seven months into the conflict, Trump is defending his decision to attack Iran with Israel on Feb. 28, but he’s recasting his initial timeline for what he once labeled a “littleexcursion.”
“I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night!” Trump wrote in an Oct. 1 Truth Social post. “The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Later that day, Trump said during an Oklahoma rally that he is ensuring Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and that he said “numerous times that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat and I did it in one night.”
In a Sept. 28 Time Magazine interview, when reporters asked him why the war continued several months later, Trump said: “Only because I wanted to go further. I took them out. I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further. I didn’t want them — because I met my timeline.”
Time asked: “Do you think the American people misunderstood that? I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks.”
Trump said, “No, I think the press fed it to them.”
Trump’s rewrite needs a fact-check; he was the frequent source for the four- to six-week estimate.
When we asked the White House for examples of Trump making that distinction, a spokesperson responded with a statement that didn’t cite any such comments.
Trump said the war would last weeks at least five times
March 1: Trump said in a speech that “combat operations continue at this time in full force, and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved.” When The New York Times asked him how long the United States and Israel would continue the attacks, Trump said: “We intended four to five weeks.”
March 2: Trump said at a White House ceremony: “We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it’s OK.” He repeated that the initial projection was “four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”
March 2: Trump told CNN, “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
March 7: While speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump called it “a short excursion.” When asked how long he expected the attacks to continue, Trump didn’t directly answer the question: “I think we’ve accomplished more in one week than anyone thought possible.” On Truth Social he said “we’ve already won.”
March 13: When asked about gas prices, Trump told reporters he needed to end the nuclear threat first, “We had to end the nuclear threat in the Middle East and throughout the world, and we will have done that.” When asked about how long the war will last, he said, “I can’t tell you that. I mean, I have my own idea. But what good does it do? It’ll be as long as it’s necessary.”
Trump told Fox News Radio that day, “I don’t think it’s gonna be long” and said he would know when it is over when “I feel it in my bones.”
March 26: During a Cabinet meeting, Trump mentioned the four-to-six-week estimate twice, adding, “And we’re way ahead of schedule.”
March 31: During an Oval Office event held about a month after the war started, Trump said, “We hit them hard. We got rid of a lot of the radicalized lunatics along the Strait (of Hormuz),” and then added, “I would say that within two weeks maybe, two weeks, maybe three.”
A reporter asked Trump to clarify if the U.S. would be done with the war in two weeks.
“I think two or three weeks,” Trump said. “Yeah.”
After that, Trump said he had one goal: “They will have no nuclear weapon and that goal has been attained.” Then he said the U.S. military is finishing the job. “And I think within maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer to do the job, but we want to knock out every single thing they have.”
April 20: In a Truth Social post, Trump said Democrats “like to say that I promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran, and actually, from the Military standpoint, it was far faster than that, but I’m not going to let them rush the United States into making a Deal that is not as good as it could have been.” He said he was “under no pressure whatsoever” to make a deal, “although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!”
Hegseth: ‘As long as it takes’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth often made broader statements about how long the war would last. During a March 2 press conference, a reporter asked him if Trump’s four-week timeline “is wrong.” Hegseth said, “Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back.”
A few days later, Hegseth said, “Our timeline is ours and ours alone to control as long as it takes to ensure the United States of America achieves these objectives.”
During a March 10 press conference, a reporter asked Hegseth how far the U.S. was into its air campaign against Iran. Hegseth said: “From the beginning, from this podium, we haven’t stated how long it will take.”
Trump “gets to control the throttle,” he said. “So it’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle, or the end” of the conflict.
‘One night’?
Trump said he got rid of the Iran nuclear threat in “one night.”
The U.S. and Israel bombed Iran for hours Feb. 28, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
That attack followed U.S. military strikes in 2025, which likely set back Iran’s nuclear program, but did not eliminate it, military and nuclear experts told PolitiFact in August. The attacks in this year’s war have not further weakened Iran’s nuclear capabilities, they said, and the U.S. has not secured Iran’s highly enriched uranium. It’s also unclear whether any damage has been done to the machinery used to enrich more uranium.
Nevertheless, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly sent a statement that said “President Trump is right” and recapped his 2025 and 2026 attacks on Iran in an effort to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.
Our ruling
Trump said, “I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night!”
In multiple comments in the weeks that followed the launch of the war, Trump predicted it would last four to six weeks. He did not distinguish between a timeline for getting rid of the nuclear threat, which isn’t entirely gone, and the overall war. Experts have said attacks have set back Iran’s nuclear program without completely eliminating it.
A man wears a red “Gulf of America” hat as Donald Trump arrives in Houston’s Ellington Airport, on Aug. 27, 2026, ahead of a Republican National Committee fundraiser.Photo: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Donald Trump received Chinese President Xi Jinping and the visiting Chinese press pool last week as reporters from news outlets he had banished stood outside the White House gates. At one point, Trump joked that China, the world’s leading jailer of journalists, “has the friendliest press corps.” Now, his acolytes in Alabama are taking up Trump’s cause, emulating the Chinese Communist Party’s mastery of information control at the local level by decreeing what supposedly independent public radio reporters are allowed to say.
The Alabama legislature passed a bill in late March requiring all state and local entities to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” in line with one of the many executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office. The legislation does not set forth penalties for noncompliance, but its sponsor, state Rep. David Standridge, called it “an opportunity to make a patriotic statement” on the House floor in January. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Trump ally, signed the bill into law.
Birmingham public radio station WBHM told its listeners in a letter from Will Dahlberg, the station’s executive director and general manager, that due to the law, which took effect October 1, the University of Alabama at Birmingham is forcing it to use the legislature’s preferred language in its reporting. The move puts it at odds with NPR, of which it is a member station; The Associated Press, which publishes the style guide used by newsrooms across the country; and other journalistic institutions. The station is licensed to the university, making its employees both state and UAB employees. Still, WBHM’s Journalism Code of Integrity emphasizes the newsroom’s independence and states that the university “should not — and cannot — expect to exert influence on WBHM’s journalists and its independent editorial process.”
Dahlberg wrote that not implementing the new language “may result in disciplinary action or termination of employees and affect WBHM’s relationship and support from UAB.” But nothing in the law requires the university to discipline or fire anyone. In other words, the university took a toothless stunt of a law, gave it teeth, and used them to take a bite out of press freedom.
Dahlberg also announced in the letter that he is stepping down from his position and leaving the station. His resignation was supposed to be effective October 16, but he posted an update that the university told him on Monday morning that he should pack his bags immediately. We cannot say for sure whether the university hastened Dahlberg’s departure due to his message to listeners and the criticism it generated, but the timing is certainly suspicious.
So why did the University of Alabama at Birmingham choose to embarrass itself rather than stand up for journalists and the First Amendment? As ridiculous as Alabama’s Gulf of America law is, its text did not tie the university’s hands. The university would not even have needed to bring a legal challenge to contest the law — it could have just let WBHM ignore it and supported its employees.
The university could have taken the position that the government choosing which words reporters must say is impracticable and burdensome.
The law only refers to “state and local entities” and makes no mention of media. It contains no penalties for noncompliance and limits its mandate to “when practicable,” giving a pass when complying would “impose an operational or financial burden.” Compelled speech is never practicable because it’s unconstitutional, but the operational and financial burdens of compliance are also significant. WBHM picks up national content from NPR and The Associated Press, for example. Are they expected to reject stories that say “Gulf of Mexico,” and fill that time with original reporting they haven’t budgeted or hired for? Or should they somehow intercept and edit those stories, likely in violation of their contractual obligations?
There is also ample Supreme Court precedent for the proposition that the government cannot put words in reporters’ mouths. In a landmark 1943 case on whether the state could force students to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the court wrote that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” That means neither Standridge, Ivey, nor Trump is entitled to impose their definitions of patriotism on anyone —least of all the news media.
More recently, some conservatives celebrated 2024’s NRA v. Vullo decision, which found that public officials could not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” There is no exception for radio stations that receive public funding. In 1984, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on editorializing by public broadcasters that received federal money, holding that funding a station doesn’t entitle the government to control its journalism — a principle affirmed in March when a federal judge rejected Trump’s executive order to defund NPR and PBS.
The university could have taken the position that, for one, public radio stations are not state entities, and two, the government choosing which words reporters must say is impracticable and burdensome. Last but not least, the university should have taken the stand that the First Amendment still exists to protect us all, despite Trump’s best efforts to cast it aside.
Just as law firms, news outlets, colleges, and others that have settled with Trump to stay in his good graces chose to cave when they could have easily fought back (as others successfully have), the University of Alabama at Birmingham made the cowardly choice to comply in advance.
If anything, its capitulation is worse, because there’s no indication that the state intended to, or could, put up a fight. Is the Alabama legislature really so committed to Standridge’s silly law that it would waste taxpayer money litigating likely unwinnable constitutional battles? Maybe, but the university could have at least waited to see how, or if, the state would respond.
It is worth noting that Ivey is an ex officio member of the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. That same board published an annual freedom of speech report in August. It consists of a single identical paragraph, copy-pasted each year with the only change being the date and the number of “events” held on its campuses that year, concluding that “the requirements of the [free speech] Policies have been repeatedly satisfied without a single alleged violation, which further speaks to their effectiveness in appropriately achieving the Board’s objectives.”
One is left to wonder if, despite pressuring WBHM to echo Trump talking points, the university will once again copy-paste that conclusion next year.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko says Kyivans can no longer pretend it is ‘peacetime’ amid strikes on school, hospital and bridge
Valeriya Tkachenko was dropping her son off at school in central Kyiv when the air raid alert sounded. Staff hurried the children and parents into the shelter, where the frightened lawyer spent the next two hours with her son.
“I’m scared to death all day about what could happen to my son,” she said as she emerged from the shelter, already late for work.
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will operate under the Skydance name once their roughly $110 billion merger closes, which is expected on October 6. The combined company will bring together Paramount+, HBO Max, CBS, CNN, MTV and other networks, along with major franchises including The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, DC and Yellowstone.
Ellison said the Paramount and Warner Bros. brands will remain prominent. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one. Instead, we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. -- and all our extraordinary brands -- to remain in the spotlight."
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo are on the calendar, but what about the standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18E and rumored iPhone Air 2? When to expect Apple’s full iPhone lineup.
Dr. Dan Theodorescu is Nancy C. and Craig M. Berge Chair and Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center. (University Arizona Cancer Center via SWNS)
Senate Leadership Fund is redirecting ad spending from Michael Whatley’s campaign to support other candidates
A major Republican political action committee pulled the plug on financial support for its Senate candidate in North Carolina, Michael Whatley, according to multiple reports, as the party begins to triage resources amid increasingly dire midterm polling.
The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the campaign arm of the Senate majority leader, John Thune, has withdrawn its ad spending in North Carolina to redirect support to other candidates, Semafor reported on Friday. The New York Times, CNN and other publications have confirmed the report with sources close to the fund.
Ceremony will not be hosted at its traditional home for the first time since awards began in 1978
The Kennedy Center Honors will take place away from its traditional home this year for the first time in its history as the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remains in jeopardy amid Donald Trump’s ongoing battle to have it named after himself.
The Capital One Arena in Washington DC is now set to host the ceremony on 7 December, a Kennedy Center spokespersonsaid. The list of honorees this year has not yet been announced.
University denies allegations, saying it is committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all laws
The Department of Justice said on Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles illegally considered race in admissions.
The announcement follows a similar accusation against the university’s medical school and comes as the Trump administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students.
Joshua Kerry, 28, of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, charged with one count of preparation of terrorist acts, say police
The man accused of murdering Ann Widdecombe has been charged with engaging in conduct in preparation of acts of terrorism including against Nigel Farage.
Joshua Kerry, 28, of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, was charged by the Crown Prosecution Service on Friday with one count of preparation of terrorist acts. The charge relates to activity alleged to have taken place between 31 May 2024 and 8 July this year, counter-terrorism police said.
Buckingham Palace say the king will not ‘shy away’ from Britain’s role in slavery when he visits Commonwealth nations later this month
King Charles III will acknowledge the “darkest days” of colonial rule and slavery while touring Caribbean countries on a visit beginning this month, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said on Friday.
The king will first visit the Bahamas and Guyana alone, followed by a trip with Queen Camilla to Antigua and Barbuda, where Charles will give a speech at a meeting of Commonwealth heads of government, the palace said.
AmiMoJo shares a report from heise online: Anyone buying used hardware for a gaming PC needs to be careful: not just whether the components are still in order but also what the previous owner did with them. A case on Reddit shows this. Someone installed a used AMD processor, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, in their PC. Because the previous owner was caught cheating, the new owner cannot start several online games.
The problem was noticed in the first-person shooter "Valorant" from the development studio Riot. Right from the first start, the new owner was kicked out directly, according to their statement. Riot support confirmed that the previous owner had cheated. The processor is therefore on an internal blacklist -- and, with its installation in the PC, now apparently also some other components like the mainboard. Riot support does not remove such entries manually.
In addition to "Valorant," all other PC games from Riot are affected: the strategy game "League of Legends," the auto-battler "Teamfight Tactics," the card game "Legends of Runeterra," the fighting game "2XKO," and likely future titles as well. Riot's "Vanguard" anti-cheat system traditionally runs deep in the Windows kernel and starts with the PC, but a June 2026 update allows it to launch with a game if security features such as TPM and Secure Boot are enabled.
It's unclear how Riot uniquely identifies processors, though possibilities include hardware fingerprinting based on chip behavior or storing identification hashes in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which Vanguard accesses in the newer mode.
Leaders agree a coordinated drawdown after surge in prices and Donald Trump’s threat to cut off US supplies
Leaders of G7 nations are to release up to 100m barrels of their emergency diesel and crude oil stockpiles after Donald Trump threatened to cut off supplies of US diesel.
The French President, Emmanuel Macron, said ministers from some of world’s largest economies had agreed to release stocks from their strategic oil reserves after crisis talks on Friday.
CARLA, the Latin American High Performance Computing Conference, came to Córdoba, Argentina, for the first time this year. Between September 21 through 25, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) hosted the exciting event on its beautiful campus.
While there, I saw a consistent focus on one point – how can the region get more out of the machines it already runs?
A Second Life for Helvetios
On the first official day of the conference, UNC formally inaugurated Helvetios. This is a CPU-only cluster donated by EPFL in Switzerland. According to EPFL, the system has 288 compute nodes, each with two 18-core Intel Xeon Gold 6140 processors, 10,368 cores, 54TB of RAM, and 763 teraflops of peak performance.
EPFL made the decision to retire it in favor of newer infrastructure, but judged the machine still had real scientific value. Instead of recycling it, EPFL shipped nearly four Metric tonnes of equipment by sea in eight boxes, with the UNC rectorate paying for the shipping.
CARLA 2026 took place September 21–25, 2026, in Córdoba, Argentina (Image courtesy Kevin Jackson)
Helvetios is set to triple UNC’s current computing capacity. Antonio Russo, who leads computing platforms at EPFL, helped to arrange the deal while Dante Paz, an astronomy researcher at UNC, oversaw the transport. UNC Rector Jhon Boretto and Swiss Ambassador Andrea Semandeni joined Russo for the launch. Russo said the project started with a conversation, and his message to the room was never to abandon conversations.
“Keep talking,” he said, “because conversations are where ideas come from, and ideas become projects.”
Nicolás Wolovick, who directs UNC’s HPC center and served as CARLA 2026 general chair, framed the stakes in EPFL’s announcement.
“Without new hardware, technical staff lose interest, scientists stop running computations, and a downward spiral begins,” he said. “I’ve seen this story play out dozens of times across Latin America.”
At the ceremony, Boretto tied the donation to what he called a very serious funding crisis in Argentina’s science system, and said cooperation agreements like this one let UNC keep growing its supercomputing capacity when the investments it would like to make aren’t possible. Adding to this, Wolovick made the case for why it matters.
“A computer is basically a universal machine,” he said. “From an open platform at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, we are giving teraflops and terabytes of storage to whoever needs them in Argentina and in Latin America.”
The Machine You Have
Florina Ciorba, an associate professor at the University of Basel, titled her keynote talk “The Machine You Have: What Performance Alone Cannot Tell Us.” She argued that the old answer to “can we go faster?” was to add hardware, and that the answer is not longer sufficient.
Much of her evidence came from SPH-EXA, the astrophysics simulation framework that her group builds with collaborators at the University of Zurich. Domain decomposition eats roughly 10 to 20 percent of every time step. Her team tried decomposing less often, and the program abstract puts the wall-clock savings around 23%.
On one test case the result drifted visibly away from the analytical solution.
“We’re computing the wrong result faster,” Ciorba said. “That is what performance alone doesn’t tell us.”
On sustainability, a subject Ciorba seems extremely passionate about, she argued that allocation quotas reward users for burning hours rather than saving joules. She urged centers to ask vendors for energy to solution in procurement benchmarks, not just time to solution.
Tying her talk back to Argentina, Ciorba discussed her tour of Helvetios two days prior.
Florina Ciorba, an associate professor at the University of Basel, during her talk at CARLA (Image courtesy Kevin Jackson)
“A machine that is no longer suitable for Switzerland is absolutely suitable for another university, and this is the case for Helvetios,” she said. “I hope this is not the last.”
Agriculture’s Missing Data Layer with AgroHPC
Tuesday’s AgroHPC workshop, the first International Workshop on Agriculture Empowered by Supercomputing, brought to Latin America a series that Nicolás Erdödy of Open Parallel has run at SC, ISC, and SCAsia.
Erdödy and Juan Manuel Baruffaldi co-chaired, and the lineup put Argentine agtech next to research computing. DK Panda of Ohio State opened with the NSF ICICLE AI institute’s tools for digital agriculture. Juan Ignacio Cornet of Rosario-based DeepAgro described a retrofit spot-spraying system that runs on more than 100 machines across Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and the U.S., has covered more than a million hectares, and averages about 70% herbicide savings.
Fernando Scaramuzza, a precision agriculture researcher at INTA for two decades, described a problem specific to the Argentine production model. In one season a farmer may use different contractors for planting, spraying, and harvest. This happens on machines from different manufacturers, leaving records that don’t line up.
He proposed an offline-first, edge-to-HPC architecture that keeps the field history intact and independent of any single vendor. Erdödy walked through failure modes for Listen to the Land, a nationwide sensor and analytics platform designed for New Zealand. Mary-Francis LaPorte of the University of Arizona covered HPC in plant breeding, including cases from Latin America.
My own talk, on who owns agriculture’s data layer, argued that compute isn’t the constraint. Intersect360 Research’s market model has 16 industry verticals, and agriculture isn’t one of them, so the sector falls outside vendor roadmaps and funding lines. The technology arrived anyway.
A camera-equipped sprayer is effectively an edge inference cluster, and Iowa State’s independent trials measured herbicide savings above John Deere’s own published figure. The region already owns the expensive layers, in machines like Argentina’s Clementina XXI and Brazil’s Santos Dumont. What’s missing is control of the data. The talk’s recommendation was to put that data layer under agricultural cooperatives, not vendors or ministries, running on public compute, with data portability as a condition of sale.
Nicolás Wolovick, Full Professor at Universidad Nacional de Cordoba and CARLA 2026 chair (Image courtesy Kevin Jackson)
Scaramuzza had made the same case for vendor-independent records from the field side earlier that morning.
Capacity Isn’t the Constraint
Wednesday’s session on energy, cooling, and the effective use of HPC and AI in Latin America and the Caribbean paired regional evidence with a global view. Esteban Hernández of SCALAC presented “Indicadores de Uso HPC LAC 2025,” SCALAC’s survey of how the region’s centers use their systems.
While Wolovick joined the session representing UNC, I brough Intersect360 Research’s global survey and market data.
The argument was that power and cooling explain what hardware a center can buy, but not why an installed machine sits underused. A point I harped on quite often was that Intersect360 Research’s data puts Latin America and the Caribbean in common company with the rest of the world’s computing issues. Based on our figures, hyperscale AI infrastructure spending was about four times all enterprise AI including HPC-AI, so measured against hyperscale capital, every single research center in the world looks small. What’s more, everyone is struggling with cooling and energy requirements.
Sovereignty Above the Silicon
Friday’s HPC and AI sovereignty panel, moderated by Hernández, stayed on the same track. Leandro Neumann Ciuffo of Brazil’s RNP described how rising memory prices and geopolitical pressure pushed Brazil’s AI plan toward several technology routes rather than one supplier. “We should not put all our eggs in the same basket,” he said.
I could just change the word Brazil for Mexico and it would sound almost like the same story,” said Isidoro Gitler of Mexico’s ABACUS-Cinvestav laboratory. He described new public infrastructure paired with upgrades at distributed research centers and large-scale training.
(Image courtesy Kevin Jackson)
Nayat Sánchez-Pi of Inria Chile warned against a “silicon obsession.” She argued that sovereignty covers the whole stack, including data, models, governance and people. On regulation, she said adapting the EU AI Act “is not a copy paste exercise,” because the region lacks Europe’s regulators and formal labor markets.
Rodrigo Durán of Chile’s CENIA was blunt about scale. “We can’t compete with Anthropic,” he said. “But what we can do is contribute to have better AI for people.” For him, the region’s edge is data, starting with the Spanish and Portuguese corpus that dozens of institutions built for a regional model. “We don’t want HPC for AI,” he said. “We want HPC for healthcare.”
On regional cooperation, Gitler pointed to 15 years of SCALAC history. “In good moments, they get strengthened and then maybe they become thin, but they don’t disappear,” he said of those ties. Neumann Ciuffo agreed. “We cannot live in an island,” he said. Hernández closed by urging the region to move past what he called “reggaeton AI,” where AI is a word dropped into every phrase.
Across five days in Córdoba, the region’s HPC community kept circling back to the same argument. For Latin America and the Carribean, the next gains won’t come from waiting on bigger machines, but from getting more out of the systems, data, and people already in place. That’s a harder case to make to funders than a new flagship, but it’s the more realistic one for most of the region.
CARLA 2027 heads to Bogotá, Colombia, and I’m sure the question will travel with it.
About the author: Kevin Jackson is an analyst at Intersect 360 Research, a market intelligence, research, and consulting advisory practice focused on HPC data center trends, AI, cloud, big data, and hyperscale. He is the former editor of AIwire.
Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, saying she had lost faith in a county district attorney’s ability to oversee the case.
Greg Lui allegedly used false paperwork to smuggle export-controlled gear from US to third countries and then China
US authorities have arrested a man accused of smuggling more than $300m worth of computer servers to China, the Department of Justice announced.
Greg Lui, 38, of California, also known as “Yiu Kong Lui”, allegedly used false paperwork and shipments through third countries to smuggle the export-controlled computer servers to China, the justice department said in a statement on Thursday.
A decade after his infamous Access Hollywood tape, the gender divide is again shaping a pivotal midterm election
A decade ago, Donald Trump’s improbable presidential campaign was rocked – and nearly derailed – by the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape, a 2005 recording in which the real estate developer turned reality TV star boasted about kissing and grabbing women without their consent.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he said, a remark he later downplayed as “locker-room talk” before musing that the tape might be fake. (It wasn’t.)
NFL announces violation of personal conduct policy
York pleaded no contest after arrest at Ohio trailer park
The NFL suspended San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York for six games Friday after his arrest earlier this year in a prostitution sting in Ohio.
The league announced that York also was fined $500,000 for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. York has not attended any games or league meetings so far this season and was credited with three games served. He is eligible to return on 20 October, following the team’s game the previous night against Washington. The NFL’s fall league meetings begin that day in New York.
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority are now considering setting trained falcons on the urban birds
The mass transit authorities in the greater Boston region are clawing around for ways to mitigate the excessive local pigeon population – or more graphically, pigeon poo all over stations – and have swooped on the possibility of setting trained falcons on them.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), the public system commonly known as “the T”, issued a “request for information” (RFI) last month from falconry experts on the potential use of birds of prey, such as falcons, to control the crowds of urban birds widely considered a public nuisance.
The European Commission has rolled out Element Pro as a self-hosted "sovereign back-up" to Microsoft Teams and the reviews aren't great. Politico reported that several officials questioned its usefulness and usability, with one calling it "absolute shit." Politico reports: "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology. All the officials were granted anonymity to speak freely.
The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems. "That is not the case with Teams, where all we have is a guarantee that Microslop will not peek inside," a fourth official wrote, presumably referring to Microsoft, in internal communications viewed by POLITICO.
Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe. The application works much like Teams, allowing staff to hold "audio and video calls with Commission colleagues, send and receive files, and create dedicated 'rooms' for projects and conversations, much like chats and channels in M365 Teams," according to the Commission memo. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," said Element CEO Matthew Hodgson, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.
"Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-used program like Teams."
ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 2, 2026 — JEDEC Solid State Technology Association has announced the release of JESD264: Silicon Photonics Qualification and Reliability Requirements, the first industry-wide standard designed to bring consistent qualification and reliability practices to silicon photonics devices. By establishing a common baseline for testing and manufacturing controls, the standard helps reduce deployment risk and supports broader adoption of silicon photonics in high-speed datacenter, telecommunications and AI networks. Download JESD264 from the JEDEC website.
Silicon photonics (SiPh) technology is transforming high-speed connectivity by integrating optical and electrical functions on a single chip. As the technology has moved from research environments into large-scale deployment across datacenter and telecommunications networks, the need for consistent reliability and qualification practices has grown. Unlike traditional CMOS technologies, silicon photonics has lacked a standardized, industry-wide framework for reliability ownership and validation, leading to uncertainty across the supply chain.
JESD264 addresses these challenges by offering a unified framework for qualification and reliability testing across the silicon photonics ecosystem. The standard will help manufacturers, integrators and end users reduce deployment risk while supporting the integration of complex photonic chipsets that include lasers, modulators, photodiodes and passive optical structures. It also establishes clearer reliability responsibilities among foundries, OSATs (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) and system developers, helping improve consistency throughout the silicon photonics ecosystem.
Key Features of JESD264:
Comprehensive reliability protocols for SiPh dies and integrated chipsets.
Guidelines for component-level qualification, including modulators, photodiodes, and waveguides.
Clear requirements for assembly processes and laser integration.
Manufacturing process control and traceability expectations.
Mian Quddus, Chairman of the JEDEC Board of Directors, said: “As AI, cloud computing and high-speed communications continue to drive demand for greater bandwidth and performance, industry standards become increasingly important. JESD264 helps establish the reliability foundation needed for broader silicon photonics adoption, accelerating innovation and strengthening alignment across the industry.”
About JEDEC
JEDEC is the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry. Thousands of volunteers representing nearly 400 member companies work together with more than 100 JEDEC technical committees and task groups to meet the needs of every segment of the industry, manufacturers and consumers alike. The publications and standards generated by JEDEC committees are accepted throughout the world. All JEDEC standards are available for download from the JEDEC website. For more information, visit www.jedec.org.
Amazon said it will invest $1 billion over five years to support job education, energy affordability and other priorities in communities where its data centers are located.
PARIS, Oct. 2, 2026 — Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, today opened its new production building in Angers, marking a major milestone in the complete reconstruction of its historic industrial site. The transformation, representing a total investment of €80 million, provides the company with a unique industrial facility in Europe capable of designing, integrating, assembling, testing and validating supercomputers, artificial intelligence infrastructures, enterprise servers and, in the future, quantum technologies.
Through this investment, Bull underscores its ambition to support the growth and infrastructure needs of sovereign computing and artificial intelligence.
An Investment Designed for the Decades Ahead
The inauguration of the new building marks a major milestone in a reconstruction and modernization project due for completion in 2028. Driven by a long-term industrial ambition, the project combines industrial excellence, competitiveness, environmental responsibility and an enhanced working environment.
Designed to address the evolution of next-generation digital infrastructures, the new site is based on Industry 5.0 concepts, enabling production areas to be reconfigured whenever necessary and allowing for greater automation, virtualization and the use of collaborative robots.
From an energy perspective, the new building incorporates more than 3,500 photovoltaic panels with a combined peak capacity of 1,500 kWp, power supplied from renewable energy sources, and a heat recovery system that captures waste heat produced by equipment that will ultimately provide enough energy to supply the equivalent of 600 households.
The project also aims to provide employees with facilities that foster collaboration and creativity in a more modern and attractive working environment.
The new site at a glance:
20,000 m² total surface area
10,700 m² dedicated to production
2x increase in production capacity
+30% productivity
-30% building maintenance costs
3,500 photovoltaic panels across 7,000 m², with a combined peak capacity of 1,500 kWp
Waste heat recovery target: 5 GWh/year injected into the district heating network
The overall redevelopment of the site is being carried out by Alter Cités, a local public development company serving the Anjou region and the Greater Angers metropolitan area. The project has benefited from €1.2 million in funding through the Ecological Transition Acceleration Fund for Local Authorities (known as the Green Fund), an additional €213,000 grant from ADEME through its Heat Fund, and €1.5 million in support from the Pays de la Loire Regional Council.
A Unique Factory in Europe at the Heart of Bull’s Transformation
As the only industrial site in Europe capable of assembling large-scale supercomputers, the Angers factory manufactures, integrates, tests and validates some of the world’s most powerful and energy-efficient digital infrastructures. The site has significantly contributed to major projects such as JUPITER, Europe’s first supercomputer capable of one quintillion calculations per second, as well as the three most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world according to the Green500 ranking.
Today, Bull brings unique expertise in supercomputers, enterprise servers and quantum technologies together within the site, while accelerating its capabilities in artificial intelligence. The Angers factory is set to play a central role in the development of future European AI infrastructures, combining the latest innovations of its 800 R&D engineers with an ecosystem of market-leading partners. In 2027, it will deliver Alice Recoque, the next European exascale supercomputer hosted in France, and LUMI-AI, the system at the heart of the LUMI AI Factory hosted in Finland.
An ‘Open Factory’ Program Serving European Reindustrialization
As part of the inauguration, Bull is launching its Open Factory program, designed to make its industrial capabilities available to companies developing strategic technologies in artificial intelligence, advanced computing and quantum technologies. The program pursues a dual objective: reshoring infrastructure manufacturing to Europe and helping technology players cross the industrialization threshold by moving from laboratory or R&D environments to large-scale production.
Building on its expertise in the design, integration and assembly of complex systems, Bull intends to support the development of future AI GigaFactories, neocloud providers and hybrid architectures combining high-performance computing and quantum technologies. The recently announced strategic partnership with Foxconn represents the first tangible outcome of this approach. The initiative aims to design and manufacture AI servers in Europe, based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 platform, for AI Factories and cloud providers.
This first step further cements Bull’s Angers factory as a key industrial pillar of the European advanced computing and artificial intelligence ecosystem. Additional industrial partnerships enabling the industrialization of new AI and quantum technologies in Europe will be announced in early 2027 as part of the Open Factory program.
“Since opening in 1963, the Angers factory has been a key part of Bull’s history and major milestones,” said Bull CEO Emmanuel Le Roux. “Today, it embodies the company’s transformation: from a historic computing player to a leading industrial partner for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and sovereign digital infrastructures. This factory reflects our conviction that Europe must have the industrial capabilities required to produce tomorrow’s strategic digital infrastructures on its own territory. This new industrial facility will support the next generation of supercomputers, AI infrastructures and advanced computing technologies, helping nations and organisations strengthen their strategic autonomy.”
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.
Oct. 2, 2026 — As artificial intelligence continues to advance rapidly, computing power has become an essential foundation for scientific research, technological innovation, and industrial development. The National Center for High-performance Computing, National Institutes of Applied Research (NCHC, NIAR) established the NCHC Cloud Compute Center at the Tainan Science Park. Officially launched in December 2025, the center serves as both a large-scale AI and high-performance computing (HPC) hub and an international telecommunications node, further expanding Taiwan’s national computing, storage, and network service capabilities.
Credit: NCHC
As the scale of AI and HPC continues to grow, power supply, cooling, and energy efficiency have become increasingly important considerations for computing infrastructure. Energy conservation, seismic resilience, and high-standard infrastructure requirements were therefore incorporated into the overall planning and construction of the NCHC Cloud Compute Center from the outset. The center has received the Green Building Label from Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior with a Silver rating under the EEWH green building evaluation system, reflecting its commitment to energy efficiency and environmental sustainability while maintaining high performance and reliability.
Integrated Energy-Efficient Design Across Building and Facility Systems
The NCHC Cloud Compute Center incorporates energy-saving measures across its building envelope, cooling systems, electrical systems, lighting, and renewable energy facilities. The building uses exterior wall insulation and reduced window areas to minimize heat gain from the outdoor environment. Its cooling systems incorporate magnetic-bearing chillers, hot- and cold-aisle configurations, and EC fans (Electronically Commutated Fans) to improve cooling efficiency. The electrical systems are equipped with high-efficiency transformers, an energy management system, and high-efficiency uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems to reduce energy loss.
The center also uses LED lighting and a two-wire lighting control system, while an on-site solar photovoltaic system provides renewable energy. Together, these measures improve energy efficiency across both the building and its mechanical and electrical systems.
The NCHC Cloud Compute Center maintains an annual average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) below 1.3. PUE is an important metric for measuring data center energy efficiency. The closer the value is to 1, the lower the relative energy consumption of supporting systems such as cooling and power distribution, and the greater the overall energy efficiency. By improving the efficiency of these supporting systems, the center can reduce the energy required to maintain data center operations and direct a greater proportion of its electricity toward actual computing workloads.
Advancing High-Performance Computing and Sustainability Together
Receiving a Silver rating under Taiwan’s Green Building Label system recognizes the energy-efficient design of the NCHC Cloud Compute Center and reflects NCHC’s continued commitment to balancing the expansion of national computing capacity with energy efficiency and sustainable development.
Looking ahead, NCHC will continue to improve building energy efficiency, optimize PUE, and expand the use of renewable energy, further enhancing overall energy performance and laying the foundation for more efficient and sustainable data center operations.
Five defendants accused of being part of ‘black team’ tasked with overcoming security at Israel-linked firm Elbit near Bristol
Palestine Action activists brandished whips, hammers and kebab skewers to intimidate security guards and keep them at bay during a break-in at an Israel-linked arms factory, a court has heard.
Five defendants are accused by prosecutors of being part of a “black team”, wearing black jumpsuits, whose role was to overwhelm security guards, so that a “red team”, wearing red jumpsuits, could break into the Elbit systems factory in Filton, near Bristol, and smash up equipment including drones.
Patrick McCabe’s herculean feat shows limits and possibilities of special educational needs and disabilities system
Patrick McCabe is instantly recognisable in the early autumn sunshine, his wheelchair surrounded by fellow pupils at Fallibroome Academy in Macclesfield, Cheshire as they move from lesson to lesson, chatting, laughing and joking around.
His extraordinary GCSE success this summer has become the stuff of legend. The 16-year-old has cerebral palsy and it took four months for him to complete his exams using eye-tracking technology. Now Patrick has started his A-levels – French, business and media studies – and fresh challenges lie ahead.
Oct. 2, 2026 — IBM has announced expansions of two long-standing research collaborations in India: one with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, and another with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to accelerate innovation in agentic AI, sovereign AI, quantum computing and next-generation computing systems.
Credit: Taljat David/Shutterstock
Building on a collaboration that began with IIT Bombay in 2018, IBM researchers will continue to work alongside faculty and students to explore sovereign and Indic language model adaption, multimodal AI, as well as AI infrastructure and knowledge retrieval. With IISc, IBM researchers will continue a collaboration that began in 2021, which covers agentic systems, AI for applications, and quantum computing algorithm development.
Strategic Focus Areas of the IBM-IIT Bombay Collaboration
Sovereign and Indic language model adaptation: Advancing sovereign AI and Indic language models to improve multilingual AI capabilities for Indian languages through more efficient model adaptation and optimization techniques.
Multimodal AI systems: The collaboration will also focus on developing multimodal AI systems that strengthen software programming education, human-AI collaboration and intelligent operations across hybrid cloud environments.
AI Infrastructure and Knowledge Retrieval: Enhancing intelligent knowledge retrieval by developing AI systems that deliver faster, more accurate and scalable access to enterprise knowledge. The effort will be to optimize AI runtimes and distributed inference to improve the performance, efficiency and scalability of large language models.
Key Pillars of the IBM-IISc Research Collaboration
Agentic Systems: Agentic AI workflows that improve orchestration across hybrid cloud environments, enabling more efficient management of AI applications while balancing performance, cost and operational complexity.
AI for Scientific and Industry Applications: Creating lightweight time-series foundation models based on the IBM Granite model family for energy analytics to support forecasting, anomaly detection, load disaggregation and energy optimization, while contributing benchmark datasets to accelerate broader AI research.
Quantum Computing: Exploring orchestration for quantum and high-performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery through more efficient quantum-centric supercomputing workflows and next-generation quantum-HPC algorithms. These algorithms would leverage approximation-tolerant classical diagonalization algorithms to improve quantum subspace iteration methods.
Speaking on the collaborations, Dr. Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India and South Asia, said, “The next wave of computing will be shaped by advances in agentic AI, sovereign AI, and quantum computing. Our collaborations with IIT Bombay and IISc bring together world-class academic research and IBM’s scientific expertise to solve some of the most complex challenges in these areas. Together, we are advancing research that not only pushes the boundaries of computing but also creates practical technologies that can benefit enterprises, developers and society.”
Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Institute Chair Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay, said, “The power of AI is already being demonstrated in systems that can seamlessly understand and reason across languages, modalities and domains. Our joint efforts with IBM Research are laying the foundation for such intelligent systems through advances in multimodal AI models, knowledge retrieval, optimization techniques, agentic AI workflows, AI-assisted software engineering and education. By bringing together complementary strengths in AI, language, knowledge and intelligent computing, we envision trustworthy, inclusive and scalable AI technologies that can transform how people learn, work and access knowledge in India and across the world.”
Prof. Yogesh Simmhan, Professor in the Department of Computational and Data Sciences, IISc, said, “The future of computing will be shaped by the convergence of hybrid cloud, AI agents and quantum technologies. IISc and IBM bring complementary research strengths to jointly explore intelligent, cloud-native platforms that can reason, adapt and orchestrate quantum-classical, edge AI and agentic workflows at scale, translating frontier ideas into trustworthy, sustainable technologies with real-world impact for India and the world.”
As IBM extends its collaborations with IIT Bombay and IISc into their next phases, the research agenda reflects the evolving needs of enterprise AI—from trusted and sovereign AI to quantum-centric supercomputing workflows and intelligent infrastructure. By bringing together IBM’s expertise in AI, hybrid cloud and quantum computing with the academic excellence of two of India’s leading research institutions, the collaborations aim to accelerate innovations that align with national goals, are scientifically rigorous, industry-relevant and designed for real-world impact.
Since the inception of these collaborations, IBM, IIT Bombay and IISc have worked together to advance research across artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, distributed systems and quantum computing, while creating opportunities for students and researchers to tackle industry-inspired challenges. As the collaborations enter their next phase, they will continue to foster interdisciplinary research, nurture the next generation of scientific talent and accelerate innovations that help shape the future of computing.
About IISc
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was established in 1909 by a visionary partnership between the industrialist Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the Mysore royal family and the Government of India. Over the last 117 years, IISc has become India’s premier institute for advanced scientific and technological research and education. Its mandate is “to provide for advanced instruction and to conduct original investigations in all branches of knowledge as are likely to promote the material and industrial welfare of India.” In 2018, IISc was selected as an Institution of Eminence (IoE) by the Government of India, and it consistently figures among the top Indian institutions in world university rankings.
About IIT Bombay
The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, set up in 1958 as the second IIT, is recognised worldwide as a leader in the field of science and engineering education and research. The Institute was granted the status of ‘Institution of Eminence’ by the Ministry of Education (the then Ministry of Human Resources Development) on July 9, 2018. IIT Bombay is reputed for the quality of its faculty, cutting-edge research, industry relations, and the outstanding caliber of students graduating from its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The Institute has 40 Academics Divisions, 29 Research Centres and 9 Section 8 Companies. Over the last six decades, more than 78,000 engineers and scientists have graduated from the Institute. It is served by 770 faculty, including 121 women faculty (plus 241 part-time faculty), considered not only amongst the best within the country but also highly recognised in the world for achievements in the field of education and research. On June 18, 2026, IIT Bombay was ranked 2nd in India and 134th in the world in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings for 2027.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs, and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.
A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media accusing Google of harming publishers by using their content in AI Overviews and other AI search features without compensating them or providing a meaningful opt-out. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuits were filed in 2025, and Google requested a dismissal earlier this year. Chegg, an education and learning platform, claimed in its lawsuit that Google illegally scraped its educational content. This allowed Gemini models to essentially recreate that content and reduce the site's traffic. Penske, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and Variety, filed a similar case that alleged lost traffic. Specifically, the publisher claimed it was unfair that sites indexed for organic search would also have their content harvested for AI answers, with no way to opt out.
These arguments did not sway the judge, who noted that Google's implicit agreement with websites is not legally relevant. "Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an 'expectation' that Google will send them search "traffic if they make their content available for free," wrote Mehta. "But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works."
Since Google never had a formal arrangement with either Chegg or Penske, antitrust law doesn't apply. And Mehta is aware of the legal issues surrounding search. He also heard the DOJ's long-running search antitrust case against Google, eventually finding that Google violated the law. However, the government didn't get the harsh penalties it wanted in that case.
Hochul, who appointed the state's attorney general, Letitia James, as special prosecutor in the case, criticized how the alleged assault was handled by the school and promised a thorough investigation
NFL analyst and network mutually agree to part ways
Ex-Dallas Cowboys star was on $180m contract
Tony Romo will not return as an NFL analyst for CBS Sports, the network announced Friday, after his July arrest for operating a vehicle while under the influence.
“CBS Sports and Tony Romo have mutually agreed to part ways,” the network said in a statement. “We thank Tony for his contributions over the past nine years and wish him the best moving forward.”
Guarantee will remain until 2030 but MPs will vote on changes during this parliament, government says
Andy Burnham will pass legislation to scrap the state pension triple lock in this parliament, even though the guarantee will remain until 2030, the government has said.
The prime minister used his conference speech to announce a change to the policy, which guarantees that the state pension rises by the highest of 2.5%, inflation or earnings growth.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) also called on legislators to tighten a law limiting the ability to prosecute sexual assault if a victim voluntarily became intoxicated.
Opposition lawmakers join forces to defeat proposals made by Socialist-led coalition after eviction of 87-year-old
Rightwing lawmakers in Spain have rejected emergency measures put forward to tackle the country’s housing crisis, pitting a fractured parliament against the widespread protest movement that has swelled in recent days.
On Friday Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led coalition put forward two decrees that included a range of measures aimed at improving access to housing, from a ban on evictions until 2030 to the regulation of temporary lettings and lettings by room.
Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said on Friday that she would “ensure” that all the facts of the alleged gang-rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University “are brought into the light”, while harshly criticizing the elite institution for how it handled the 2024 case.
Hochul, a Democrat, said the woman in the case, was “failed” by people obligated to protect her, including the police and the county prosecutor.
This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here
Back to France, midday figures quoted by Le Figaro show that 564 schools and educational establishments have been disrupted by the ongoing unrest, and some 600 people have been arrested so far today as the high school protests continue.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced its annual funding opportunity of up to $400 million to advance the frontiers of scientific knowledge and lay the foundation for future technologies and innovation. The funding delivers on Executive Order Restoring Gold Standard Science by supporting rigorous, transparent, and mission-driven research across DOE’s Office of Science to strengthen America’s scientific and technological leadership.
“Foundational research is where the breakthroughs that shape America’s future begin,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “Through this investment, we are empowering our nation’s researchers to pursue bold ideas, push the boundaries of discovery, and build the scientific foundations for tomorrow’s technologies—strengthening America’s global leadership in science and innovation.”
The funding will support research across DOE’s Office of Science and its major programs to tackle some of the nation’s greatest scientific challenges and accelerate discoveries in areas critical to America’s future. Research will span Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Isotope R&D and Production.
The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), informally known as the “Open Call,” is issued annually at the beginning of each Fiscal Year (FY). It provides a vehicle for DOE’s Office of Science to solicit applications from institutions for research support in areas not covered by more specific, topical NOFOs issued by the office in FY 2027.
More details about this Notice of Funding Opportunity can be found here.
DOE’s Office of Science is the nation’s largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences, funds research at hundreds of universities nationwide, and stewards 10 of DOE’s National Laboratories.
Bangor, ME — Police are investigating after a driver appeared to steer toward Maine Wire reporter Joe Sokol while he was filming outside a Bangor addiction treatment center, nearly striking him before knocking over his camera equipment.
Sokol was reporting from public property near the Bangor Comprehensive Treatment Center when a driver stopped and accused him of violating patients’ privacy by filming the facility. Sokol responded that he was standing in public and conducting a news report.
Video later showed what appeared to be the same vehicle crossing a grassy area toward Sokol. He moved away as the vehicle passed close by and struck his camera setup. The driver then left the scene. Sokol was not injured.
The Maine Wire later published audio of a phone call with a man it identified as the driver. He denied trying to run Sokol over but acknowledged that the reporter’s coverage had angered him and said there was “no good reason really” for driving across the grass.
Bangor police confirmed they are investigating but have not announced charges or publicly identified a suspect.
The incident raises broader concerns about journalist safety. Whatever one thinks of The Maine Wire’s conservative editorial perspective, reporters should be able to gather news from public property without facing physical intimidation or a vehicle being driven at them.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A growing number of people think social media manipulates and divides people and harms democracy, Pew Research Center said on Thursday, echoing rising concern and tighter scrutiny across the world. Companies running popular social platforms, including Meta, Snap, and TikTok, have faced thousands of lawsuits and paid large sums to settle claims that they harmed users. Governments, meanwhile, have sought foolproof ways to protect their citizens' privacy.
Australia has proposed rules to let users opt out of algorithmically recommended feeds, after becoming the first country to ban social media for children under 16. Pew's latest survey showed that 82% of Australian adults support the government's move to restrict social media access for children. A majority of respondents said social media informs people and gives them a voice in politics, but there was a broad rise in those who now see social media as a "bad thing" compared to 2022, according to the report.
People in wealthier countries, including the US, Canada and UK, are more inclined to believe that social media is harming democracy, versus their counterparts in economies with lower gross domestic product per capita -- such as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. The US is among the most skeptical, with 64% of adult respondents saying social media harms democracy. The share of people who consider social media bad for democracy increased in 16 of 26 countries where older data was available. Pew Research said it surveyed more than 45,000 people in 37 countries, while polling an additional 5,511 US adults on American social media use.
Rolling stock companies, which also paid out nearly £400m to shareholders, accused of profiting at passengers’ expense
The chief executives of three firms that rent out trains to Britain’s railways were paid a combined £3.5m last year as they passed on almost £400m to shareholders in dividends.
Rail unions accused the rolling stock companies (Roscos) of raking in profits at passengers’ expense.
Experts sceptical flydubai co-pilot’s only motivation was to end his own life and say key question is means of radicalisation
At about 9.30 on Wednesday morning local time, Tali Manes was taking her six-year-old daughter, Nina, to the toilet on the regular flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv when she heard a series of heavy blows against the cockpit door.
Manes, an Israeli bank executive, immediately told a flight attendant seated nearby that something was wrong. When he did not react, she shouted at him: “Something is happening in there!” Seconds later, the man “simply went to the [cockpit] door and opened it”, Manes told Israel’s Channel 12 TV.
US says ship thought to be using common ‘dark fleet’ tactics was boarded and taken to Mexico as embargo continues
The US Coast Guard has announced that it intercepted a large cargo ship carrying fuel bound for Cuba, as the Trump administration’s crippling oil embargo against the island nation continued.
The vessel named Grace was stopped on 5 September in the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Mexico while using tactics to evade authorities, the Coast Guard said. The New York Times reported that the ship was 91 metres (300ft) long.
Rhun ap Iorwerth tells Plaid Cymru conference he asked PM to ‘put Wales on equal footing with Scotland as bare minimum’
The Welsh first minister has formally called on Andy Burnham to deliver a “new deal” in his first address to a Plaid Cymru annual conference since taking office.
Rhun ap Iorwerth told party members during a keynote speech in Llandudno on Friday that his government had a “clear mandate” for devolving more powers from Westminster.
From pillboxes and boaters to bicornes and buckets, characterful hats are making their way from the catwalk to the high street
“Here goes – an order for a million hats,” wrote Jackie Kennedy to Bergdorf Goodman before moving into the White House in the early 1960s. It’s a line that could have been uttered by any number of people working in fashion today, because the hat – and not just the ubiquitous baseball cap – has been enjoying a very characterful resurgence.
This season at the turbo-high-end brand Loro Piana, whose clothes are beloved by tech bros and Kendall Roy, almost every model was wearing a hat. At Thom Browne, straw boaters came shrouded in colourful mesh. At Chloé there were see-through hats to match see-through trenchcoats and white sailor hats atop all-white outfits. Courrège’s hats were space-age, Burberry had big buckets, Bottega Veneta had hats brimming with charisma.
I first became “loud” when I was sitting in the dark, purple slide during recess in second grade, my hands pressed against the warm plastic, firmly keeping me from sliding down.
We were hiding. Recess was conjoined that day because it was a half day, and we were with the third graders. The older kids used to hide in the slide, a subtle act of rebellion typically reserved for them, but they let us join in that day, and I felt cool and filled with childish excitement.
It was a little bit too warm on the slide and a little bit wet and my hair was full of static, sticking to both the tunnel and my face, but I didn’t care. I was included, and I was cool, and a toothy smile stretched across my little face, flushed from the warmth of the slide.
When we heard the recess monitors approaching, we began to get giddy, and as any elementary schooler would do, I gave in to the laughter bubbling up in my stomach. The girls above me nudged me, warning me to stop, which, naturally, only made me laugh harder.
Though I was nowhere near full-grown at the ripe age of eight, someone made a comment that made me feel exceptionally small.
“God, Rachel, why are you always so loud?!”
At that moment, I no longer felt cool or excited or included. As laughter from the other girls flooded the slide, my smile began to deflate, along with my pride.
My face flushed, this time not with giddiness, but embarrassment, and the slide suddenly felt too small, too warm and too wet. I became hyperaware of the hair sticking to my cheeks and the cramped tunnel around me.
I eventually joined the laughter of the other kids, but my smile was no longer toothy, and even my little second-grade brain could comprehend that they weren’t laughing with me, but at me.
That day I learned that laughing along was easier; it’s what’s expected from the loud girl. It’s easier to smile too; loud girls don’t frown, they are always happy and they are always loud.
I could have tried after that to stop being my enthusiastic and extroverted self. I could have sunk into a minor role, hung back and kept my head down — laughing at the jokes of others but never making them. Even then, at a small school like mine, that wasn’t much of an option; a stereotype was attached to you in your youth and stuck with you.
I always knew that my label had its perks — I knew everyone and everyone knew me. People thought I was funny and approachable and were aware that if they needed someone to talk to, I would be there to support them.
But as with almost any personality trait, my loud nature had another side. The line between “loud” and “embarrassing” often became blurred. But loud girls are supposed to be unapologetically loud. The embarrassment wasn’t supposed to concern me. Sometimes my stomach sank and my palms got sweaty and my fingertips reached for something to ground me, but to anyone else, I didn’t dwell on embarrassment — I didn’t even notice it.
With my reputation, I was constantly committed to the persona that I embodied. I had to remember, loud girls don’t frown; they are always happy and they are always loud.
My title of “loud” was a constant throughout my adolescence but was officially renewed within my first two weeks of college. As an out-of-state student, I didn’t know anyone, so I knew how important it was to make a new home for myself. I made it a point to talk to everyone I met, be the kindest and bubbliest person I could and smile as often as my cheek muscles allowed me to. Of course, no one wants to befriend a dud, even on the tired days I smiled wider, laughed harder and talked more.
One day, I heard a new friend say something about me in a hushed voice behind a closed door.
She was the miserable type who talked about people just to talk, and one of the first-week-of-freshman-year friends that accompanies you to the frat parties and dining hall a few times in a group setting before you find your people. Yet, the fleeting nature of our friendship didn’t stop me from the sinking feeling I felt when I heard her laugh about me.
She called me loud; not in the general sense — as that was something I couldn’t really deny — but in the way that meant I made unnecessary noise in a volume that was too high and too much. Not only was I loud, but I was also “always too happy.” Suddenly, I felt like an embarrassed second-grader again, like I was trapped back in the dark, purple slide that felt too small, too warm and too wet.
She didn’t know about the nights that I broke down silently, tucked into my twin XL bed after the lights turned off with a tear-soaked pillow and a heavy heart tainted by homesickness. She didn’t know the overwhelming fear I held of growing apart from my home and never finding the solid community that I once had. Because, as far as everyone else is concerned, loud girls are always loud and always happy, and I was no exception.
Eventually, I formed the closest friendships. I found the friends who will be the bridesmaids in my wedding and honorary uncles to my children. My loud nature allowed me the opportunity to meet anyone and everyone. Now, on my walks to class, I leave a few minutes early for the times I inevitably stop and talk to people I know. Now, every time I enter a classroom, a party or even a store by campus, I’m surrounded by familiar faces.
Beyond my own benefits, I have granted countless people comfort by not being afraid to reach out to them, and many people have thanked me for bringing them out of their shells. Though I still get embarrassed at moments, and my palms get sweaty and my fingertips reach for something to ground me, I no longer feel like I have to hide it. I have found people who made me feel that even as the loud girl, I don’t always have to be happy, and I don’t always have to be loud.
I had to accept that not everyone is going to love that aspect of me, and it will never be possible to please everyone.
Now when people call me loud, I don’t hear it the same as the day I did on that dark, purple slide. It doesn’t shrink me. It doesn’t make the world feel too small. If anything, it reminds me of all of the rooms that I fill, of the space that I am able to take up — space that I no longer feel I have to apologize for.
In an op-ed for The Guardian, authors Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender argue that policymakers are focusing too heavily on hypothetical "superintelligence" while overlooking the more immediate danger of deploying unreliable AI in high-stakes settings. They point to an as-yet independently unverified CNN report claiming U.S. officials nearly intercepted a Chinese vessel after an AI-assisted intelligence report incorrectly said it was carrying nuclear-weapons components. From the article: While so many of us were focused on fictional superintelligent machines that we were told could hypothetically cause human extinction, however, there was a more serious story being reported. A series of events almost got us to armageddon, not caused by "rogue, superintelligent AI," but by government reliance on error-prone systems that are marketed by their manufacturers as being close to superintelligent.
A CNN report published on September 18, which hasn't been verified by other major outlets, describes how the US "almost started a war" with China, based on an intelligence report that claimed a Chinese ship was transporting components of nuclear weapons. Military personnel made plans to intercept the Chinese vessel, complete with aircraft and soldiers ready to board the ship. A military skirmish of this kind between China and the US could quickly escalate and spiral into world war three.
It was only moments before executing on the plan that American officials further investigated the intelligence report and found that it had been generated with the use of a chatbot and contained erroneous information about the vessel's contents. Unlike the terminator, "rogue AI," scenario, this incident didn't galvanize lawmakers into announcing calls for regulation so as to avoid potential human extinction. Media outlet after media outlet didn't warn the public that we almost triggered a war against a nuclear superpower because of our military's reliance on error-prone chatbots.
This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here
Zack Polanski also insisted his authority as leader of the Green party of England and Wales does not depend on winning next week’s Holborn and St Pancras byelection, amid suggestions that the party’s popularity has peaked.
Polanski, who is trying to take Keir Starmer’s former seat from Labour, described the contest as “probably 50/50 right now” and “really on a knife edge”.
This will be our biggest and most exciting Green party conference ever, coming on the back of a year of unprecedented membership growth and extraordinary electoral success.
Greens have turned hope into electoral wins – in councils, boroughs, in mayoral elections and with our exciting breakthrough in Gorton and Denton.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent while wages continued to lag behind inflation in the government’s final jobs report before the Nov. 3 midterm election.
Thousands gather in Mumbai with heavy police presence as concerns mount that millions will be denied voting rights
India’s youth-led Cockroach movement kicked off more nationwide protests on Friday as thousands of people gathered in Mumbai, amid mounting concerns that millions of citizens are being unfairly stripped of their vote.
The movement, which calls itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) and has massive support among the country’s gen Zs, returned to the streets to demand the resignation of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.
A Joint R&D Project by NEC, Taiho Pharmaceutical, the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, AIST, and Waseda University
Under this project, the five organizations will integrate their respective technologies and expertise in quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), drug discovery, and immunology to establish a new computational and evaluation platform that enables the optimal design and immunological validation of neoantigen candidates , which are regarded as promising targets for cancer immunotherapy.
The Principal Investigator for Waseda University in this project is Professor Nozomu Togawa of the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
Background
Cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s own immune system to eliminate cancer cells, has made significant advances in recent years. Among the most widely used approaches are immune checkpoint inhibitors, which enhance the immune response against tumors. However, not all patients derive sufficient benefit from these therapies, highlighting the need for new forms of cancer immunotherapy. Cancer immunotherapy targeting neoantigens that are present exclusively in cancer cells has emerged as a promising next-generation therapeutic approach for addressing this challenge.
Neoantigens, which arise specifically in cancer cells, are presented on the cell surface by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules and can trigger antigen-specific immune responses. In particular, CD4-positive T-cell responses induced through MHC class II molecules are expected to play a pivotal role in activating other immune cells and sustaining immune responses, making them a key driver of potent and durable antitumor immunity.
However, the biological factors that govern MHC class II-mediated immune responses, including amino acid sequence characteristics, MHC class II binding, and cell surface presentation, remain highly complex and less understood. To date, no systematic methods have been established for designing and optimizing neoantigen sequences that induce CD4-positive T-cell responses via MHC class II while taking these multiple factors into account.
One of the key challenges lies in evaluating the vast number of possible amino acid sequence combinations, as well as the complex biological processes involved in antigen formation, presentation, and immune recognition. By applying quantum computing technology to this multifactorial sequence design and optimization challenge, the project aims to establish a new approach for exploring a broader design space and generating diverse neoantigen candidates with enhanced immunogenicity.
Project Overview
This project is scheduled to run from September 2026 to March 2029. It will serve as a drug discovery use case for applying quantum computing technology and AI to design and optimize neoantigen candidate sequences that induce CD4-positive T cell responses through MHC class II.
The project will utilize AI to predict and score immune responses to neoantigen candidates, and apply quantum computing technology to the design of amino acid sequences flanking the neoantigen core region. Researchers will evaluate the potential of methods for designing diverse and promising sequence candidates from a vast number of sequence combinations while taking multiple factors into account, and the immune response generated by these optimized neoantigen sequences will then be evaluated through immunological experiments. By incorporating insights gained from these immunological experiments into computational models and AI-based prediction and evaluation methods, the project aims to establish a new drug discovery pipeline that integrates feedback between computational candidate design and experimental validation.
This project will utilize the ABCI-Q computing infrastructure-which integrates quantum computing, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI) being developed by the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT), AIST. Looking ahead, the companies aim to accelerate research and development of drug discovery innovations using quantum technologies originating in Japan.
About NEC
The NEC Group leverages technology to create social value and promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. NEC Corporation was established in 1899. Today, the NEC Group’s approximately 110,000 employees utilize world-leading AI, security, and communications technologies to solve the most pressing needs of customers and society.
Photo: Governor Matt Meyer courtesy of the Governor’s Office.
Governor rejects four bills passed by General Assembly, including measures that drew overwhelming bipartisan support
DOVER, Del. — Gov. Matt Meyer vetoed four bills approved by the Delaware General Assembly, including a bipartisan measure that would have given lawmakers new authority to check a governor’s power during an extended state of emergency.
Meyer vetoed House Substitute 1 for House Bill 329, Senate Bill 231, Senate Bill 279 and House Bill 393 on Sept. 30.
The four vetoes put Meyer at odds with substantial majorities in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. Two of the measures — the emergency-powers bill and a utility consumer-protection bill — passed both chambers without a single opposing vote.
A veto is part of the governor’s constitutional role in Delaware’s legislative process. The General Assembly can override a gubernatorial veto if it secures the votes required under the Delaware Constitution.
Lawmakers seek check on prolonged emergency power
HB 329 was specifically written to establish additional checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches during a prolonged state of emergency.
Under the final version, a governor could declare and maintain an emergency for the first 180 days without legislative approval.
After that point, the governor could continue renewing the emergency, but the General Assembly would gain explicit authority to amend or terminate the order. The administration also would have been required to report to lawmakers every 30 days during a continuing emergency.
The legislation was sponsored by Rep. Rich Collins, R-Millsboro, and Sen. Kyra Hoffner, D-Dover-area, and attracted sponsors from both parties.
It passed the House 39-0 and the Senate 20-0, with absences in both chambers.
Lawmakers also amended the legislation so its restrictions would not apply to Meyer during his current term. The new provisions would have taken effect only after the governor serving when the bill became law left office.
That meant the legislation was largely establishing rules for future governors rather than restricting Meyer’s own emergency authority.
The measure grew out of Delaware’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, when then-Gov. John Carney repeatedly renewed emergency orders while lawmakers had limited formal authority over whether those orders continued.
Supporters argued that a governor needs broad authority when a crisis begins but that an emergency lasting six months raises a separate question about the role of the legislative branch. Meyer stated that the bill would have unnecessarily constrained the executive branch’s ability to respond to emergencies and could create uncertainty during future crises.
Ramone criticizes veto
Mike Ramone, the Republican nominee for state treasurer, criticized Meyer’s action during two campaign events Thursday night.
Ramone, who served in the General Assembly from 2008 to 2024, including as House minority leader, said the veto reinforced his argument for greater transparency and stronger checks on state government.
“This is yet another reason transparency is critical in state government at all levels,” Ramone said. “Too much power left in one person’s hands, and inside a state government managed by one party, is a problem.”
Ramone pointed to the unanimous legislative support for HB 329.
“Republican and Democratic legislators understood that,” he said. “And yet, a reasonable bill was vetoed, leaving one person to leverage his power to impact life in our state indefinitely.”
Ramone’s comments reflect the argument made by supporters of HB 329 that long-running emergencies should eventually involve both the executive and legislative branches.
The veto leaves Delaware’s existing emergency-power structure in place.
Consumer protection bill also vetoed
Meyer also vetoed HB 393, a bipartisan consumer-protection measure involving third-party electricity suppliers.
The legislation passed the House 40-0 and the Senate 21-0.
The bill would have imposed additional disclosure, reporting and customer-notification requirements on companies selling electricity as alternatives to standard utility service.
Among other provisions, suppliers would have been required to notify customers before contracts renewed and before certain rate changes. Regulators also would have received additional pricing information allowing them to compare third-party rates with standard-offer electricity rates.
Rep. Debra Heffernan, D-Bellefonte, the bill’s prime sponsor, criticized the veto and disputed concerns that the measure could reduce competition or strengthen the position of a dominant electricity provider.
Heffernan said the bill was developed with the Meyer administration, the Public Advocate and Public Service Commission and was intended to address constituent complaints about customers being attracted by introductory offers before later paying significantly higher prices.
The governor’s legislative advisory identifies the veto but does not provide a detailed written explanation of his objections.
Two school compensation measures rejected
Meyer also vetoed two bills affecting school employee compensation.
SB 231 would have provided an additional salary supplement to school social workers who passed the Association of Social Work Boards National Clinical Examination and held a licensed clinical social worker license.
The bill passed the Senate and House without an opposing vote.
A fiscal analysis estimated the state cost at approximately $343,000 in fiscal 2027, increasing in subsequent years.
Meyer had previously signed separate legislation expanding salary supplements for several categories of school professionals, including social workers. The governor’s published veto notice does not state whether that overlap, the additional cost or another concern was the basis for rejecting SB 231.
SB 279 addressed salary placement for school-based occupational therapists.
Supporters said employees with comparable professional education can be placed on different salary levels because occupational therapy degree programs award credits differently.
The legislation would have established a more uniform method of recognizing master’s and doctoral-level occupational therapy education within the state salary schedule.
The bill passed the Senate 20-0 and the House 40-1.
Fiscal analysts estimated the state and local cost at roughly $224,000 in fiscal 2027, increasing in later years.
The governor’s published legislative advisory does not provide a detailed explanation for the SB 279 veto.
Four vetoes, different policy disputes
The measures covered different issues, but all four had substantial support in the General Assembly.
HB 329 and HB 393 passed without an opposing vote. SB 231 also passed without opposition among lawmakers voting, while only one House member voted against SB 279.
The vetoes do not negate the General Assembly’s votes. Under Delaware’s constitutional system, legislation approved by lawmakers is presented to the governor, who may sign it or veto it. Lawmakers may then consider whether to attempt an override.
HB 329 is unusual because the legislation itself dealt directly with that division of governmental power.
It would have preserved broad gubernatorial authority during the first six months of an emergency while creating a formal legislative role once the emergency became prolonged.
Meyer’s veto means that change will not take effect unless lawmakers override him or adopt similar legislation in the future.
TO GO BOX
What happened: Gov. Matt Meyer vetoed four bills Sept. 30.
Emergency powers: HS 1 for HB 329 would have given the General Assembly authority to amend or terminate a state of emergency after 180 days and required continuing reports to lawmakers.
Vote: HB 329 passed the House 39-0 and Senate 20-0.
Utility consumers: HB 393 imposed additional requirements on third-party electric suppliers. It passed 40-0 in the House and 21-0 in the Senate.
School social workers: SB 231 would have provided additional compensation for qualifying licensed clinical social workers working in schools.
Occupational therapists: SB 279 would have changed salary placement rules for qualifying school-based occupational therapists.
Political reaction: Republican state treasurer nominee Mike Ramone said the HB 329 veto demonstrated the need for greater transparency and checks on executive authority.
What happens next: The General Assembly may consider whether to attempt veto overrides.
Learn more: Bill texts, votes, fiscal notes and legislative histories are available through the Delaware General Assembly at legis.delaware.gov.
Government struggling to deal with worst crisis in months after being taken by surprise by massive demonstrations
As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.
“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”
Final jobs report before the midterm elections also shows the US unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%
US employers added just 29,000 jobs in September, a sharp drop from last month’s gains, and unemployment rose slightly to 4.2%, a sign of a cooling labor market in the final jobs report before the midterm election.
The numbers were under half of economists’ expectations of just under 70,000 new jobs. Most job gains were concentrated in the healthcare industry, which added 17,000 new jobs, while the information, financial and professional industries saw losses, according to the latest data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Exclusive: CrowdJustice platform says US firm Stripe, its payment processor, ‘cannot support accounts or transactions’ linked to group
An online crowdfunder to raise money for the UK supreme court challenge to the ban on Palestine Action has been blocked as a result of US sanctions against the direct action group.
CrowdJustice, a UK company, has declined to host a fundraiser for legal fees to fight proscription because the platform uses the US company Stripe as its payment processor.
As part of the Campus Champions program, Miami helps researchers leverage Ohio Supercomputer Center services
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 2, 2026 — At Miami University, faculty can access a wealth of high performance computing (HPC) resources, from the Miami Redhawk Cluster housed at the Oxford, Ohio, institution’s campus to state-supported resources at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) and beyond.
Miami University Campus Champion Jens Mueller (right) and graduate student Ikponwmosa Obaseki from Miami’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (left) discuss computational workflows on OSCs Ascend and Pitzer clusters. Image courtesy of Miami University.
Miami has managed and expanded the capabilities of its own Redhawk Cluster for 20 years. During that time, the HPC team led by Jens Mueller has witnessed a steady evolution of Miami faculty embracing research computing to enhance classroom lessons and to advance their research initiatives—and not only in the traditional fields of science and engineering. Faculty in disciplines such as business, economics, and finance, as well as humanities fields such as English and history, are turning to HPC to handle massive data sets that desktop computers can’t process.
“It’s a very broad spectrum of researchers. The challenge for me is to properly communicate with everyone considering their different backgrounds,” said Mueller, director of HPC services in Miami’s Office of Research and Innovation.
Access to HPC infrastructure alone doesn’t guarantee that faculty will have a seamless experience with using advanced computing resources for teaching or research. Mueller and his colleagues work closely with faculty to ensure they are using the correct quantity of cores or nodes and the right software for a particular project. If they use too few HPC resources, faculty may not get the results they want, Mueller said. By using too many, faculty may incur extra expenses or tie up resources that others need.
“People may think, ‘Just throw a lot of resources at me and I’ll do big things,’ but a lot of thought needs to go into what type of resources are the right ones to use,” Mueller said. “You need to find the sweet spot between too few and too many resources.”
Another issue Mueller evaluates is whether faculty have HPC needs that exceed what the Miami Redhawk Cluster can accommodate. In those cases, Mueller works with faculty to acclimate them to resources at OSC, which can handle larger, more intensive computing jobs. Through his role as an OSC Campus Champion, a program that establishes and empowers an institutional liaison for faculty, Mueller trains them on how to use OSC portals such as OnDemand and may tap the expertise of OSC staff for tutorials on specialized software.
One example is Mueller’s work with Ohio Eminent Scholar and Miami Professor of Chemistry Michael Kennedy, who needed CryoSparc, a software package required for processing cryo-electron microscopy (CryoEm) data, for use in a spring 2026 special topics course. As Miami does not have the computing resources to run CryoSparc, Mueller helped Kennedy set up OSC accounts for the 13 undergraduate students and graduate student enrolled and helped them optimize their CPU usage and job queues on OSC’s computing cluster.
“In the end, all of the students and I were able to successfully use the CryoSparc software in the course,” Kennedy said. “This would not have been possible without Jens’ help and assistance. Jens came to the class three different times to help make sure that everyone had access to and could use the OSC resource. Overall, Jens provided excellent support for my course and acted as an excellent liaison for OSC resources.”
Mueller also helped Muhammad Jahan, associate professor of mechanical and manufacturing engineering, and his students transfer their computational workflows from Miami’s Redhawk Cluster to a cluster at OSC. He set up group accounts and project spaces and provided access to OSC’s Abaqus license, which the research team needs to simulate and improve various steps in the process of manufacturing composites.
“My students have benefited from using OSC,” Jahan said. “I have multiple graduate students who completed their master’s degrees using the simulation results obtained by using OSC facilities.”
OSC also has provided support to Miami for a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant application and has consulted with the Miami HPC team on local hardware purchases that would be compatible with OSC’s infrastructure, Mueller said.
In addition to his work with OSC, Mueller is part of the Campus Champions program for the NSF ACCESS program, which connects researchers to dozens of major HPC resources across the United States. (OSC is also a collaborator on the NSF ACCESS program, which has helped support the further development of OSC’s Open OnDemand web portal for global HPC users.) This role allows Mueller to support faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows who are skilled at navigating HPC infrastructure but require massive computational power to achieve their research goals.
Mueller appreciates having this trio of local, state, and national resources available to offer Miami faculty and students.
“The relationship has been mutually beneficial,” Mueller said. “Miami users get access to much bigger resources and we get to tap top state expertise and support at OSC that we can benefit from.”
About the Ohio Supercomputer Center
The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) addresses the rising computational demands of academic and industrial research communities by providing a robust shared infrastructure and proven expertise in advanced modeling, simulation, and analysis. OSC empowers scientists with the services essential to making extraordinary discoveries and innovations, partners with businesses and industry to leverage computational science as a competitive force in the global knowledge economy, and leads efforts to equip the workforce with the key technology skills required for 21st-century jobs.
Blue Hen offensive lineman Wahkeem Roman (65) gets ready to block during his first game as a Blue Hen. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder
University of Delaware sixth year offensive lineman, Wahkeem Roman, played his first game as a Blue Hen on September 3 against Merrimack, returning to play after two missed seasons due to injury.
NEWARK, DE — UD’s opening game against Merrimack drew over 17,000 fans into Delaware Stadium. The venue was filled with life, excitement, and hope for a new football season after a successful first at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level. It’s an environment that any first time Blue Hen could admire while stepping between the white lines for the first time.
Wahkeem Roman had every reason to soak in his surroundings. He experienced multiple home openers stuck on the sidelines during his first two seasons in the blue and gold. This was his first opportunity to truly experience the environment while donning the pads and standing amongst his fellow lineman in the huddle.
Yet, all his focus was trained on one thing. Playing the game he loves for the first time in over 1,000 days.
“I was just so locked in on the game like at that point, I didn’t even realize like I was coming back from an injury,” Roman said.
Roman joined the University of Delaware football program before the 2024 season. His transfer was unique.
Roman attended Notre Dame College located in South Euclid, Ohio, before the former division two school was shut down in the spring of 2024. The other unique variable to Roman’s transfer, an injury to his right knee that affected his ACL, MCL and PCL.
The school closure left Roman without many other options other than entering the transfer portal and the injury made him unsure if any program would take a chance on him, but Roman said he received offers from programs at both the FBS and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) levels.
The Blue Hens liked what they saw on the limited amount of film Roman had coming into the portal — Roman started four games for Notre Dame College during the 2023 season — said Blue Hen offensive line coach and run game coordinator, Chris Rogers. Rogers and the coaching staff felt like he fit their style of football and would be successful in their system. Off the field, coach Rogers knew that he had the character and fortitude to return from the injury.
“In this business you evaluate people as much or more than you evaluate people as players, and so on film he was a really good player, but also … I really liked the person,” Rogers said. “He said the right things. You could tell he wanted to be developed, you could tell football mattered to him, you could tell this was important, you could tell being successful in college was important, and so like a person who’s got all those traits, obviously, you know, they’re gonna battle they’re way back from an injury and be successful after that.”
Roman blocks against Virginia defensive end Evan Ward during the Blue Hens’ road game against the Cavaliers. Photo Credit: University of Delaware Football.
Roman said the program made him feel like family and accepted him from the moment he arrived. With that comfortability and access to better training resources, he began attacking the rehabilitation process alongside Delaware’s training staff. While his teammates were competing in summer workouts, Roman was in the training room working steadily to improve and strengthen his right leg.
“First we’ll be trying to get my quad to fire, and next week we’ll try to like get my extension all over there and then after all that, maybe I’ll get back walking [on] the treadmill,” Roman said. “It was just week by week, we had a plan and a progress, and it was good.”
Roman essentially had to start the rehab process from square one when he transferred in. The UD training staff discovered that while Roman thought he was ahead in his rehab, it turned out he was actually a little behind in the process.
“I had to catch all the way up and basically start from the beginning, and that was a real slow process, and it was like killer because, … you just want to get back on the field and want to be like a part of the team, you know,” Roman said.
Roman’s recovery cost him the full 2024 season — UD’s last in FCS football — and an injury to the same ACL in the spring of 2025 required him to miss the full 2025 season— UD’s first in FBS football.
“He walked in my office and, you know, I felt like I saw a tear fall down his cheek, and in 15 seconds, I watched that same tear roll back up his cheek and into his eye and it lit a fire under him,” Rogers said.
Roman started the rehab process again, this time with lessons learned from the first time around.
“That’s what I learned the second time around, to really just focus on getting my body back and not rush anything,” Roman said. “My footwork and everything always comes back, it’s just the strengthening that you gotta get back.”
Roman was cleared to play a week into the 2026 spring session. He learned to trust his body to perform at an elite level like it had before, a skill Roman credits to the work of UD’s athletic training staff and former football head athletic trainer, Annie Stock, who helped him rebuild that confidence in himself and his body.
“She would always instill confidence into me like, ‘you’ve done this before, it’s not anything you can’t do, I wouldn’t have you doing it if I didn’t believe in you to do it’ and you just sit back and think like, well, yeah, she doesn’t want me to get hurt again, so obviously I should be good enough to do this,” Roman said.
His first one on one rep in spring practice cemented his confidence in his body’s ability to return to its prior elite level.
“I anchored on a bull rush and I was like ‘oh yeah, this feels good. We’re good to go’,” Roman said.
The Elizabeth, New Jersey, native has played in two games for the Blue Hens this season. His last appearance came in the Blue Hen’s most recent game against Virginia that closed out their non-conference schedule. It was his first chance to play on a Power 4 field against Power 4 competition.
It’s a cool experience for a player whose career embarked on a whirlwind of a journey. A journey that saw him overcome adversity, achieve academic success (Wahkeem earned his bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Delaware in May) and become a leader for the younger players in the offensive line room.
Wahkeem Roman lines up on the left side of the offensive line against Merrimack. This was his first time playing for the Blue Hens since transferring into the program during the spring of 2024. Photo Credit: University of Delaware Football.
“Giving him a hug before the [Merrimack] game was a big moment and I think he deserves that. I tell him all the time I’m thankful I got in the car and drove to go see him and meet him and recruit him,” coach Rogers said. “I’m thankful to be his football coach.”
As Wahkeem completed his first drive as a Blue Hen and walked to the sideline, he said all he remembers is his teammates’ excitement for him. The reality of the moment still hadn’t settled in. There was still an opponent on the field, a game to win and a job to get done.
The Blue Hens defeated Merrimack, 42-7. The team was heading back into the locker room — celebrating — but Roman and his teammate Chandler Telfaire needed to return to the field. They forgot a pair of gloves.
It was at that moment, Wahkeem Roman looked around Delaware stadium and fully took in where his 1,076 day journey led him.
“I was just like wow, I really just came back and played in this stadium. It was a surreal feeling.”
Refugees from third countries are being sent to Equatorial Guinea, where they are often sent back to the very countries they fled
For nearly a year, the Hotel Bamy in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, has been Adam’s prison. He is confined alone to a hotel room, under constant watch by the security officers and soldiers of a notoriously oppressive regime who control his movements. Not long ago, they barged into his room, handcuffed and beat him, and warned him not to tell anyone. There is no cell to point to, no charges or formal sentence, and nothing on paper to document his plight.
Adam, 26, has chosen not to share his real name or even his country of origin out of fear for his safety. He fled indefinite, forced military conscription in his home country after enduring abuse during his military service.
Three years into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the U.S. government is still targeting pro-Palestine student activists.
Even before federal immigration agents descended on communities around the country, killing immigrants and protesters, unmarked agents were abducting students who had voiced criticisms of Israel.
Mahmoud Khalil was the first. After federal agents detained him at his alma mater, Columbia University, he spent more than 100 days in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana. It’s been over a year since he was released and returned to live with his family in New York City. The Trump administration is still trying to deport him.
“Part of why I’m doing this right now rather than waiting 10 years or 20 years is because what’s happening now in ICE detention is a stain on the U.S. conscience,” Khalil tells The Intercept Briefing. “I don’t want to look back in 20 years and reckon with what’s happening. I want to stop the killing now. I want to stop the disappearances now. I want to stop the cruelty now.”
This week on the podcast, Khalil speaks with host Akela Lacy about what he’s learned about how he became President Donald Trump’s top target, the role Columbia University played in that campaign, and his new book, “No Land to Stand On,” which chronicles Khalil’s experience in ICE detention, missing the birth of his first child, his ongoing saga to stay in the U.S. with his family, and more.
“It’s been so difficult just to have that conversation with my wife Noor about what would happen,” Khalil says. “What are we doing? Is it worth the fight? Should we just leave? But to me, this fight isn’t only about whether I get to stay in this country.”
“It’s about whether anyone — whether they are citizens or non-citizens — are able to speak out against government policies and against the support of Israel in this country. It goes down to a very basic thing: If they are able to deport someone for their views on Palestine, they would be able to deport anyone on their views, whether it is pro-Palestine or pro-Israel or anything.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
It’s been almost three years since the October 7 attacks in Israel that preceded the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In that time, Israel has destroyed an entire region, killed more than 70,000 people and injured scores more, launched attacks on surrounding countries, and drawn the U.S. into a full-blown war with Iran.
Over the last three years, at home in the U.S., something else fundamentally shattered. If anything is different now, it’s the honesty of it all. Free speech, civil rights, and equal protection under the law — of course, with all the appropriate exceptions.
What started as a bipartisan commitment to suppressing criticism of Israel led to flagrant abductions of pro-Palestine students by unmarkedimmigration agents.
Since the crackdown on students escalated in the early months of Trump’s second term, ICE’s war has spread even further.
Since Trump reentered the White House, ICE has detained more than half a million people and says it’s deported almost twice that. More people are dying in ICE custody or at the hands of federal agents, who have killed at least eight people since January 2025, including two protesters in Minneapolis.
Our guest today lives at this nexus: how the siege on Gaza fueled a reckoning at home and fused America’s anti-immigrant push with its battle over speech on Palestine.
Mahmoud Khalil was the first person taken by ICE over student activism for Palestine last year. Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, fled the country at 18. He later moved to the U.S. to attend graduate school at Columbia University, where he emerged as a leader during student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. After being released from ICE detention last year, Khalil returned to living in New York, where he continues to fight against the threat of deportation. He joins me now.
Mahmoud Khalil, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
MK: He’s a wonderful, wild 17-month-old. So he’s walking all over now, and it just feels so rewarding really to have him in our life right now, especially in a very difficult moment in our family.
I get so much inspiration from him and that pushes me to continue to work because this is not only about my family. It’s a story of so many families who this administration separated and inflicted violence upon them. It’s also a story of so many Palestinian families in Palestine whose fathers are in Israeli prisons [who] can’t meet their families, or even the ones in Gaza who are disappeared right now.
AL: I’m sure you and Noor talk about this, how you will tell Deen your story, and when. What are those conversations like?
MK: I try to push it as much as possible because usually you tell a story that already happened, but my story is still happening. Every day there’s something new.
And that’s what made writing the book difficult for me, because usually you write a memoir about a memory about something that has already happened to you. While, to me, I am now living it. So how would I write about it? That was like so difficult for me.
The same way about telling Deen about it: Would it be a happy story or a sad story? Would it be a story that, in fact, the legal system stood up for the unlawful detention of his father and the attempts to deport him — or it did not? Is it that the people in this country advocated for his father and the rights of so many other people in this country — or not? That’s still to be told, so I don’t want to really jump to conclusions at all.
Part of why I’m doing this right now, rather than waiting 10 years or 20 years, is because what’s happening now in ICE detention is a stain on the U.S. conscience. So is the Palestine exception: the fact that freedom of speech, rule of law, basic dignities are afforded to everyone except for Palestinians. I don’t want to look back in 20 years and reckon with what’s happening. I want to stop the killing now. I want to stop the disappearances now. I want to stop the cruelty now.
“I don’t want to look back in 20 years and reckon with what’s happening. I want to stop the killing now. I want to stop the disappearances now.”
AL: You were released from ICE detention last summer. What have the last 16 months in your life been like?
MK: It’s been a saga with courts but also just as a family, with a new family now, like trying to really live our life. Try to build our future in a country that at least promised me some sort of stability and safety after living in Syria and then in Lebanon. So it’s been difficult to find that stability and that permanence in our lives. It is a fight to me, like it’s been since then.
It’s been so difficult, of course, just to have that conversation with Noor, my wife Noor, about what would happen. What are we doing? Is it worth the fight? Should we just, like, leave? But to me, this fight isn’t only about whether I get to stay in this country. It’s also about whether those speaking out for Palestine have the right to do so without being punished by the administration or by the government, whether it’s the Trump administration or another. So that’s why I feel like it’s a bigger fight than just about me or about our family.
But at the end of the day, we are people. I want to go to Bryant Park and just watch the movies there, but I can’t do that easily. There’s several precautions I have to do to be able to actually do this very normal activity that any couple would do on a normal day. But it is the cost, unfortunately, that was imposed upon me by ICE and the Trump administration.
“To me, this fight isn’t only about whether I get to stay in this country. It’s also about whether those speaking out for Palestine have the right to do so without being punished.”
AL: To your point, this is something that’s happening at multiple levels. And you write in the book that you were given the option to “self-deport” — to where, we don’t know. But you say that you felt like if you did that, you wouldn’t just be succumbing to this false smear campaign, but you would be giving the federal government the blueprint for how to silence dissent. You also talk about this being a story about the horrors of the broader immigration detention system in the United States.
As of early July, more than 65,000 people are currently being held in immigration detention. You write in your book about your experience in Louisiana at LaSalle and the relationships you built with other people being held there, trading noodles. What was that like for you? You talk a lot about the psychological effects of some of the things: constant bright lights so you can’t sleep, constant freezing cold air. Can you describe the conditions of the facility that you were in?
MK: As I’ve mentioned, what’s happening behind ICE detention walls is a stain on the U.S. conscience. The fact that you have over 65,000 people at any moment detained in what’s called civil detention. That’s what they call ICE detention. And there’s nothing civil about detention. Even if it was a five-star condition, it’s still detention. You’re still separated from your family.
But I met in ICE detention so many incredible fathers and workers who came here seeking safety only to be snatched off the street, only to be told that they are criminals and they do not belong here.
“They want to make these conditions so bad you don’t fight for your case.”
I remember, and I talk in my book about, Najib, a man who was snatched off his immigration hearing — leaving behind his wife battling cancer with four little kids. Or Alexander, who came here begging for safety, begging for a place to stay, only to be told, “No, you should be safe where you’re from.” And when he was deported, he got killed.
They want to make these conditions so bad you don’t fight for your case, because you can fight your case, but that could take six months to two years, three years.
AL: Even if you win.
MK: Even if you win. That’s the fact. That’s how they weaponize the immigration system against you. Even if you win, you lose. They can appeal multiple times — not once or twice. Because it’s a kangaroo court. The system is so favorable to the administration, and the administration can change at any time.
That’s why you rarely find now anyone who would win in the immigration system, because it’s fully controlled by this administration. To me, it doesn’t make sense that you call it courts, or an impartial system, or a neutral system. It’s a very partial system to the administration.
That’s why they keep the lights on all the time. That’s why the temperature is down; it’s always cold. The food is pretty bad. You only have a thin blanket. Because they don’t want you to feel comfortable or have the basics to fight your case.
“To me, it doesn’t make sense that you call it courts, or an impartial system, or a neutral system. It’s a very partial system to the administration.”
AL: You’re very much still in limbo. It’s been almost six months since the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a final ruling in one of your cases ordering your removal. Last week, that same body denied a request to reopen your case.
I know your team is looking at bringing your case to the Supreme Court. What’s the latest there? And when will you know if you have to leave the country?
MK: So 18 months since my arrest, the Trump administration has never brought any piece of evidence that I committed any crime. They haven’t even charged me with any crime because they know they control the immigration system.
“What they’re trying to do now in immigration is the total opposite: You are guilty until you are proven innocent — but you might be deported before then.”
So now we’re appealing our case to the Supreme Court — an Article III court — to look into the matter. Because what the Trump administration’s trying until now is to prevent me from even looking into the merits of the case that they are bringing against me. What they are claiming is that this case is purely an immigration case, and only immigration judges should be able to look at it. Then if you want to go to a federal court, it should go to the 5th Circuit or the courts in Texas and Louisiana, who are pretty much favorable to the administration as well.
So they are trying to prevent a federal court from looking into this matter. We are now taking it to the Supreme Court because no government should have the power to detain someone without any independent judgment into it.
Usually, the basics in criminal law are that you are innocent until proven guilty. What they’re trying to do now in immigration is the total opposite: You are guilty until you are proven innocent — but you might be deported before then. So it is a long fight. But once again, this fight is not only about my ability to stay in this country. It’s more than this.
It goes down to a very basic thing: If they are able to deport someone for their views on Palestine, they would be able to deport anyone on their views, whether it is pro-Palestine or pro-Israel or anything.
“If they are able to deport someone for their views on Palestine, they would be able to deport anyone on their views, whether it is pro-Palestine or pro-Israel or anything.”
AL: You and your team have expressed concerns that any ruling at the Supreme Court could backfire and further curtail the rights of pro-Palestine students. I wonder if you can you talk more about that?
MK: For now, what we’re taking to the Supreme Court is only whether a federal court has jurisdiction to look into constitutional claims. For me, my constitutional claim is that the Trump administration wanted to deport me because of my activism on Palestine.
That’s what we’re bringing right now to the Supreme Court. This wouldn’t necessarily directly impact or have a larger impact on the movement as a whole. But already the government is doing everything in its power to chill the speech of whether students or citizens who are speaking out for Palestine. So what we’re trying is actually to prevent that.
But the other part is, we seek accountability also from the public themselves. You don’t get accountability only through courts. You get accountability through the people who are now voting in progressive candidates into Congress who may be able to change the law.
That’s how I get accountability. I get accountability when I see that my book is out and people are reading what this administration tried to silence — that they want to make an example out of me, but they failed. That’s how we seek accountability. It’s not only from the court itself, because at the end of the day, people who create the law actually push for the law.
Because everything we got right now, the rights that American citizens or anyone on this land have, it was a product of a fight. Whether it’s a fight during the civil rights movement or the anti-slavery movement before then. It did not happen because a judge woke up and decided to do what’s right. It’s because, actually, people pushed for that to happen, and that’s my part of the fight right now.
AL: Mahmoud, you were not a random target. We know now that ICE took names from the pro-Israel doxing group Canary Mission to create a list of targets. Far-right pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission and the USA chapter of the militant, ultra-Zionist group Betar — considered by even the Anti-Defamation League as an anti-Muslim hate group — targeted you.
Betar later claimed credit for ICE’s abduction of you and other students and said it shared “thousands” of — we know now it was about 5,000 — names of pro-Palestine students with the Trump administration for further action. In the lead-up to your abduction, Betar targeted you by name, as did actors at your alma mater, Columbia University: another group, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia, and a professor, Shai Davidai, who called specifically for the Trump administration to deport and arrest you in the days leading up to that abduction and tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
You write in the book: “What I did not anticipate was the U.S. government would one day consider the recommendation of hostile Zionist groups to target me, and then act on it.”
You sued for communications between these groups and the Trump administration. What more have you found out about how much they coordinated to target and arrest you and other students?
MK: The targeting of me and other pro-Palestine protesters was written in a document called Project Esther that was produced by the Heritage Foundation. In there, what they said [was], for this plan to work, we need a friendly administration that would listen to us and work with us to implement it.
That’s what happened after, because Stephen Miller was part of the Heritage Foundation or consulting for them, and then he became part of this administration, and actually worked on implementing this plan from A to Z.
From the discovery that the case in Massachusetts — AAUP v. Rubio—
AL: This is the American Association of University Professors lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We’re hoping to really expose these networks that pushed anti-Palestinian bigotry to be institutionalized within the U.S. government itself.”
One of the ICE agents or one of the DHS agents testified that, “I’ve never seen something like this happen in our department, that such a request would come from really senior individuals in the administration.” So now what we are suing for is to see this communication between between these private actors, whether it is Canary Mission, the Heritage Foundation, Betar, and others as well, what we call Zionist hate groups, and these administrators, whether it’s Rubio, Stephen Miller, or DOJ, and the attorney general.
Because it was all in public. Betar went out and said, “We take credit for that. We actually communicated with the administration about that.” That’s what we know publicly. So now we’re asking for these communications. This case, we filed it in July, takes some time, but we’re hoping to really expose these networks that pushed anti-Palestinian bigotry to be institutionalized within the U.S. government itself.
I got used to smear campaigns and doxing before my arrest. To me, that was part of an intimidation campaign to terrorize me not to speak out about Palestine.
To me, back then, the thought process was, usually they target your employer, they target your university, your father’s employers. I’m like, “Why would I work for anyone who doesn’t agree with my views on Palestine or who sees them as extreme? I don’t want to work for them.”
You know, I never wore a mask [at Columbia] to hide my identity because the risk to me wasn’t that high. In Syria, I wore masks, because the risk back then was getting shot by [Bashar al] Assad forces or getting disappeared by mukhabarat, or intelligence officers.
I never imagined that what I fled from would happen to me in the U.S., the land of the free.
AL: After a quick break, more from Mahmoud Khalil, who has a new book, “No Land to Stand On.” We’ll be right back.
Welcome back. We’re speaking with Mahmoud Khalil, the first pro-Palestine student taken by ICE last year.
You’ve filed three other lawsuits against the federal government and Columbia, and you are waiting for a response from the most recent suit which alleges a historical pattern of discrimination and retaliation against Palestinian students and pro-Palestinian activists, as well as a failure to address “coordinated harassment” against pro-Palestine students at your alma mater, the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
You’ve said that Columbia didn’t only ignore your concerns or documented harassment, but that the university facilitated your targeting and arrest by the Trump administration.
Of the suit, you said: “Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students.”
For listeners who might not be familiar with how Columbia handled protests against the genocide in Gaza, or its history trying to crush and later celebrate other student protest movements, against the Vietnam War or to divest from apartheid South Africa, can you tell us a little bit more about the role the school played here?
MK: When I applied to come to Columbia, I applied to come to an institution that had a long history of student activism, of standing up, at least the students of that institution standing up for human rights, whether it was during the ’60s and the civil rights movement or in the anti-apartheid South Africa, but also most recently, against private prisons, against fossil fuels. So it goes beyond that.
That’s the institution I came to. But I was surprised — even before October 7 — the level of the anti-Palestinian racism on campus. For example, when we tried to bring Human Rights Watch to our school [in 2023], the school put so many hurdles in front of us to be able to host a 70-person event. I was shocked. Why would you prevent us from hosting such a reputable human rights organization to come and talk about apartheid in South Africa? The same happened when we tried to bring BDS — the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — virtually on campus.
So on October 7, Columbia had a choice of being an example for other institutions around the country, of being a place where difficult conversations would be held, where they would stand up for human rights, where they would actually listen to their own students.
Instead, Columbia employed surveillance systems against their own students, brutalized them. They called in the police about four times or more than four times in less than two years. Provided that, the last time Columbia called the police on campus was during the ’60s — like 60, 70 years ago.
They couldn’t contain the movement; they established a Gestapo-like office called the Office of the Institutional Equity that investigated every single Palestinian advocacy on campus, going after them with investigations. They brought private investigators; I remember being called by a private investigator that Columbia hired just to intimidate us.
AL: I spoke to students who got those calls, too, and they’re like, “What is this?”
MK: Exactly. Instead of just listening to their students, to their own students. These students were, most of them, 17 to 20 years old, watching a genocide happening in real time.
So that was the climate at Columbia. At the same time, they harbored these actors who were doxing us. As a Palestinian, I pleaded so many times to get protection from the university up until the day of my arrest.
AL: Right. The day before.
MK: The day before my arrest, March 7, I emailed the president. I knew she wouldn’t answer. But I wanted to keep the record because I emailed her before then in January when the first wave of doxing happened, and they did not do anything.
A year later, when another student was kidnapped by ICE from Columbia, non-Palestinian, non-related-Palestinian student was detained by ICE — Columbia immediately issued a statement, immediately called lawyers, immediately called elected officials because that student did not have to do anything with Palestine.
But that’s again the Palestine exception in these institutions, where you have ideologues on the board of trustees of Columbia whose protection of Israel for them is much more important than protecting freedom of speech, than actually listening to their students, than the normal decency of just being board of trustees who have responsibility toward these institutions, but their loyalty was somewhere else.
AL: You’ve also mentioned future plans to sue other individuals at Columbia. In your suit against Trump, DHS, ICE and Rubio, your legal team cited reporting by me and my colleague Natasha Lennard on a network of faculty, alumni and other people at Columbia who were active in trying to target pro-Palestine students for deportation and arrest. You write in the book about coordination between Columbia students and faculty and some of these groups that smeared and doxed students. You write: “Those who fed our names to the machine continued to attend the school.”
What else have you learned about those people and those efforts?
MK: I will continue to seek accountability until everyone who actively participated in me missing the birth of my child and me losing 104 days of my life, until they are all held accountable.
I will not stop until I achieve that. I’m doing this up until now, with first suing the federal government, then the federal government and private actors. And the private actors also included some of the Columbia actors who were feeding our names to Canary Mission.
Because we have to think about this — Canary Mission and Betar, or the Heritage Foundation — they did not have people on the ground. The people on the ground were Columbia’s own students and faculty, who were not hiding that they were doxing us.
MK: Exactly. So we got records about communication between some of the students at Columbia and Leo Terrell, the chief of the antisemitism task force in the DOJ, pushing them to target us, but also providing talking points that we later saw on Terrell’s own social media.
“It was a very coordinated effort to demonize our movement.”
So that network goes beyond just random actors. It was a very coordinated effort to demonize our movement, to vilify the student movement that was rooted in human rights and equality and dignity. That’s why so many students joined this movement, not only Palestinians.
Palestinians at Columbia were barely 20, 30 students. But the movement that was built, it was built by Black students, by Asian students, by Jewish students. The coalition that was created as well, it had groups ranging from dancing groups, cultural groups, to the Young Democrats.
More than 100 groups joined together to call for Palestinian freedom, to call for the end of Columbia’s complicity in supporting Israel.
“Palestinians at Columbia were barely 20, 30 students. But the movement that was built, it was built by Black students, by Asian students, by Jewish students.”
AL: Mahmoud, you mentioned this already, the logic of exception regarding Palestine. You write in the book about the logic of exception regarding Palestine, the idea that only certain categories of Palestinians are deserving of rights. You talk about how you’ve internalized that in some ways as well.
This comes up in what I’ve noticed as attempts, even by well-meaning people, to paint you as “one of the good ones” among university students that have been portrayed otherwise, as an unruly mass of student protesters on a rampage in protesting this genocide. There was a similar effort around your Columbia colleague Mohsen Mahdawi, who was also targeted and abducted by ICE for his pro-Palestine activism.
During the Columbia encampments, you were active in the protests, and you also worked as a negotiator between protesters and university administrators, one of whom told the New Yorker that you stood out from other protesters for your levelheadedness, which I found very interesting.
What is the effect of trying to separate you from the rest of the pack as the “right” kind of protester”? How do you overcome that?
MK: That really enraged me that you have to be a perfect victim to be worthy of people’s sympathy, to be worthy of the rule of law. Because what we protested is a genocide. That’s what we protested, and that’s the right thing to do. It shouldn’t be criminalized. Unfortunately, we internalized that.
“That really enraged me that you have to be a perfect victim to be worthy of people’s sympathy, to be worthy of the rule of law. Because what we protested is a genocide.”
I talk a little bit about how I myself would highlight the numbers of women and children just to appeal to more people that like, “Look, young women and children are being killed by Israel.” But what about the men? Because that’s the level of the dehumanization of Palestinians in this country, that it only took the Trump administration to mention my name as “Mahmoud Khalil” and Palestinian for people to paint a certain image of me.
But in reality, I’m a Palestinian who believes in a free Palestine, where everyone from the river to the sea deserves safety, dignity, and freedom.
Just like the fact that I had to be that perfect victim. Because I’m not perfect. No one is perfect. Palestinians are, you know —
AL: Human.
MK: Humans, the same as any other, any other nation. We have our aspirations. We have our culture. We have our deficiencies. We’re not out of this planet. But yet the media insists on treating Palestinians on a different standard, when they ask me about condemning or not condemning all of that, I’m like, you’re not interested in my views about Hamas.
If you’re interested about my views about Hamas, you would ask me what are my views about Hamas, or a different question. But they use that question as a litmus test: If you say yes, then maybe you are a human worthy of talking to. If not, then you are that villain that this administration is talking about. That’s why we refuse the premise of the question as a whole. It’s not about the question itself. The whole premise of the question we refuse.
I think it’s for Americans to reckon with why we are here, why we are treating Palestinian stories differently from any other story. Whether it’s the Zionist lobby that for tens of years has fed this hate, whether it’s the media itself or Hollywood or just the institutions themselves that fed that hate and fed the image of the Palestinian as violent, rather than just a human being.
Or recently just how, it’s not only the Trump administration. It’s before them, the Biden administration, before them, the Obama administration. It goes back to every administration this country had dehumanizing Palestinians. Because Trump wouldn’t have had the power to do what he did with me were it not for what Colombia portrayed or said about the movement, or the Biden administration as well.
“It’s for Americans to reckon with why we are here, why we are treating Palestinian stories differently from any other story.”
AL: And as we’ve written about a lot at The Intercept the beginning of this crackdown on campuses started under Biden.
MK: Absolutely.
AL: I want to deviate quickly just because you mentioned this question, and I had written a question that I wasn’t sure we would have time to get to about being asked about Hamas because this comes up in The New Yorker article, and I was curious what you thought of how — I don’t know if you read the latest one from last month.
MK: The profile?
AL: Yeah. Because I was curious about how it was framed, because he says that you push back on the framing of the question, right? He asked you about your views on Hamas and that you protested the premise of the question. And then it said what your explanation was. But I thought it was interesting to print your defense of why you reject the premise, but still print your answer to the question.
But when they saw that Israel is undermining any prospects of a Palestinian state, a lot of Palestinians turned to Hamas as that resistance movement that may bring something.
And as I explain in my book, Palestinians supported Hamas not because of ideological reasons as much as because they wanted a way forward. For me, I’m against all Palestinian political factions because not one of them — whether it’s Hamas, Fatah, or PFLP — rose up to the aspirations of the Palestinian people, unfortunately.
“I’m against all Palestinian political factions because not one of them — whether it’s Hamas, Fatah, or PFLP — rose up to the aspirations of the Palestinian people, unfortunately.”
That’s why I’m a strong believer in international law. I’m a strong believer in the fact that Palestinians have the right of self-determination, have the right to resist under international law, and have the right to really tell the world what they want. That’s what I want my answer about such a questions to be.
AL: That’s not what people want to hear.
MK: Yeah, exactly. They want just a yes or no, it’s a black and white.
I can’t tell people how to resist. That’s from being in the United States. For someone who’s going through bombardment, who’s going through checkpoints, whose house is being raided at night by the Israeli army, who the drones are above their heads all the time — I can’t, from here, tell them how to resist.
But for me, I’m a firm believer of international law, and that’s how I see the way forward. Again, I’m a Palestinian. I believe in a free Palestine, where everyone, from the river to the sea, have the right to live with dignity, with justice, with freedom, with equality. That’s what we’re asking for.
AL: This fight, when it comes down to it, is fundamentally over First Amendment rights for you and everyone in this country and the fight for freedom in Palestine.
A new report from Uncivil, a consortium of scholars and researchers, audited five years, going back to 2020, of publicly listed grants to 77 university centers, initiatives, and nonprofits doing “civility” work to promote pluralism and viewpoint diversity. The group found that almost all of the top funders, responsible for $82 million in grants, were groups and foundations deeply invested in conservative and/or “pro-Israel” networks.
Unsurprisingly, these funders donated more to groups that mirrored and promoted their viewpoints over progressive groups by a ratio of more than 6 to 1. Just to underscore this point, the top five grantees who have received funding for “civility discourse” work include: Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council — which does model bills for state legislatures — the Anti-Defamation League, and Project Veritas. This is essentially a list of the most right-wing groups in the country at the moment. The top groups.
While many of those groups present this civility discourse as politically neutral, Uncivil found that 70 percent of the campuses they looked at had been accused of suppressing pro-Palestine speech. This is now roughly a $200-million-a-year industry.
In the book, you talk about how this movement at Columbia backfired: in trying to suspend or shut down pro-Palestine groups, it ended up creating a 100 or more new pro-Palestine groups.
But given how strong this “civility discourse” push still is, where do you see the student Palestine solidarity movement going from here?
MK: The fact that the president of the United States felt the need to go after a random student means that this movement changed the mainstream, means that we are winning. Otherwise, they would leave it to, I would say, covert racism and discrimination because it was always happening at Columbia, as I’ve mentioned these attacks against Palestine. But it wasn’t very obvious. Because they did not need to.
I don’t think there’s an amount of money that would stop the Palestine movement for freedom, because we can see that people now feel betrayed by their institutions, feel betrayed by their representatives, feel betrayed by the establishment that hid from them the endless support to Israel.
“The fact that the president of the United States felt the need to go after a random student means that this movement changed the mainstream.”
Because now if you’re a politician who’s supporting Palestine, that means you’re also good on other things. Because a lot of people, Palestine may not be their single issue or their first. But if you’re good on Palestine, that means you are good on other things.
That means that you are not bought by corporations and by AIPAC and by the oligarchs. That’s how it came right now. That’s why in Zohran’s race —
AL: Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayor.
MK:Tens of millions were spent against him, and Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate candidate, the Democratic candidate, also over $60 million were spent against him, and still he won [the primary]. But that doesn’t mean to me that we should stop. That means that we should continue until that dome breaks. And it will break. Sooner or later, it will break.
We need change. We need to stop sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, or any arms to Israel, or anything to Israel, really. Israel should be isolated, should be the pariah state that it is. That’s why I keep pushing now. I keep working on advocating for Palestine. That this did not stop. The genocide’s still happening. Every day there is a Palestinian getting killed by Israel, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank.
But also we must acknowledge the violence that was inflicted upon students, upon this movement in this country. It’s not only universities that suspended and expelled these students, not only that the police also brutalized their students, but you have a big attack on this movement that’s happening across the country, whether from the federal government itself. But you can see across the country, whether it is in the South or even small counties also still trying to attack this movement.
My position as a Palestinian is, how can we really face this level of violence or this level of coordinated and well-funded attacks against the movement?
AL: Though the Trump administration has claimed repeatedly that your case is not about free speech or the First Amendment, they have not necessarily been arguing that your speech wasn’t constitutionally protected or that you are here illegally. Just to be clear, for anyone who’s confused, you are a green card holder, a lawful permanent resident.
We’ve been talking about this New Yorker piece, as Andrew Marantz wrote last month. The government is arguing that none of those things — the legality of your actions, or your presence here — outweigh Trump’s power to detain you on whatever grounds it sees fit. In this case, claiming that your presence is a threat to American foreign policy interests.
You’ve talked about this fundamental contradiction in the American story of democracy and liberty, that the only real rights we have are those the government sees fit to enforce. You talk about the suspension of principles, depending on the circumstance. And this is a long-standing criticism of the American government, particularly if you’re a minority, a woman, a trans person, or if you’re poor.
You’ve shared your unique perspective on this issue, having lived under a dictatorship in Syria under Bashar al-Assad. You have said at least in Syria, the government wasn’t telling you it was upholding your rights. [laughs] They were open about it. And since your abduction, we’re seeing the government be in many ways more open about its intentions here. But what happens after that?
MK: It’s fascism. It is authoritarianism. What we’re seeing within my case or other cases is authoritarian practices. The government is trying their luck. For the government now, the worst thing that could happen is a court telling them, “No, maybe you shouldn’t do this.”
“For the government now, the worst thing that could happen is a court telling them, ‘No, maybe you shouldn’t do this.’”
But for me, I lost 104 days of my life. For others, they lost their entire lives. I’m not an expert on authoritarianism or dictatorships, but I lived under dictatorship. As I said, in Syria, I hid my face because I knew the risks. It wasn’t Assad was going out and saying, “We have freedom of speech, and we have all of that.” It wasn’t like that. You knew the consequences.
Here, they would gaslight you into “No, you have rights. You have all of this.” But you have rights because it’s convenient for them. As long as you’re not damaging or impacting the structures of power, you have freedom of speech, you have rule of law, the Constitution applies to you. But the moment that your speech or your actions threaten that structure of power, you would see the opposite — which is authoritarianism at the end of the day.
Trump is not hiding it. When they arrested me, they said, “This is a blueprint to go after everyone who’s speaking out for Palestine.” It’s not like they hid their intentions at all.
Part of me, like years from now, America would look back on ICE detention, on Palestine, and say, why did we let this happen? And that’s part of my fight. That’s why I’m doing this right now, because we need to stop it now. We can’t afford to wait 20 years from now because people are being killed. People are being disappeared. 65,000 at any moment are in ICE detention separated from their families.
“You have rights because it’s convenient for them. As long as you’re not damaging or impacting the structures of power, you have freedom of speech.”
AL: Mahmoud, are there any final thoughts you would like to leave our listeners with?
MK: I wrote this book to raise the alarm that we can’t afford to stay silent. That in our backyards, there are ICE detention centers. In our backyards, there are weapon manufacturers who are shipping weapons to Israel to kill people. We must act now, and we can’t just afford to wait.
AL: Mahmoud Khalil, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.
MK: No, it’s my honor, Akela. Thank you so much.
AL: That does it for this episode.
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This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Video editing by Sean Turner. Jordan Uhl is our social media producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow. And a special thank you to our recording engineer David Herman at Good Studio. Slip Stream provided our theme music.
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Death toll of medical helicopter crash is now three people as two others continue to recover from injuries, authorities say
Police divers have found the body of a patient who went missing after a medical helicopter crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island near Los Angeles, bringing the death toll to three while two other people were recovering from their injuries, the authorities said on Friday.
Divers with the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department found the victim’s body Thursday in the wreckage of the helicopter after searching more than 156 sq miles (404 sq km) over 23 hours, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu call him “Mr. Security.” Critics said this week’s FlyDubai incident, a day after he warned of a possible attack against Israel, was another security lapse on his watch.
Why Should Delaware Care? For the past few years, Delaware has been discussing how to reform its generations-old statewide school funding to better serve a modern classroom. The key question that has yet to be answered though is how a new formula will ultimately impact each school in the state.
Within the last two years, education leaders have tried to reform Delaware’s archaic public education funding system so schools have the resources to meet all students’ needs.
Last year, those conversations led Delaware’s Public Education Funding Commission — the appointed group tasked with recommending changes to the state’s 85-year-old school funding system — to unanimously recommend that lawmakers approve a hybrid funding framework, which would shift education spending away from a strictly per-student basis to one that directs more dollars toward students with higher needs.
This past summer, two bills that lay the groundwork for that funding system reform were signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer.
The commission has also worked on its first implementation phase since the two bills were signed into law.
The first phase does not include implementation of a new formula, though.
Instead, the Delaware Department of Education is working on system updates during this phase, along with communication and training materials for those who will have a “key role” in changing the formula, said Brian Ray, the associate secretary of the finance and operations team at the Department of Education, during a public meeting this week.
Ray also said the commission’s working group will also have to consolidate existing funding appropriations such as teacher positions or different block grants into three main categories: base, opportunity, and operational funding.
The commission’s working group also established four subgroups to move forward with phase two and focus on equalization, multilanguage learners, vocational and career technical education, and students from low-income backgrounds.
Ray said each of the subgroups have met at least once, and “they’re starting to identify the variables and the processes we need to to work through to then make recommendations to [the full Public Education Funding Commission] to then review, vote, and move forward with into that next phase.”
Any given school in Delaware is likely depending on a dozen funding streams or more, while leaders are seeking to streamline that to just three streams. | PHOTOS COURTESY OF DDOE
Why was school funding being questioned?
Delaware’s current funding formula was established in 1940, with the state and federal governments providing about 70% of the funding while 30% is generated through district-level property taxes that residents vote on during referendums.
Before the bill, Sussex County had not conducted a countywide property tax reassessment since 1974, while New Castle and Kent County last reassessed property in 1983 and 1987, respectively.
The lack of assessments meant properties were extremely misvalued; some homeowners paid more than what the updated market called for and others paid too little.
Because of communities’ differences in wealth and in their willingness to support public schools, some – particularly in rural Delaware – are at a disadvantage when trying to compete for high-quality educators.
And a failure to pass or even hold referendums only furthers a gap between wealthy districts and those that are more economically modest.
Those concerns are exacerbated in areas in Sussex County that face a combined disadvantage of relatively low property wealth and high student needs.
Advocacy groups like the Delaware NAACP and Delawareans for Educational Opportunity filed a lawsuit in 2018, stating that the state’s education system did not provide an adequate education to all students. After a preliminary ruling allowed the lawsuit to proceed, the state settled the case, promising to reassess property and review statewide school funding reform.
The American Institutes for Research completed its independent assessment of education funding in Delaware as part of the 2020 settlement.
The group recommended in late 2023 that Delaware increase spending on public education by upward of $1 billion.
After both Democratic and Republican members of the State Senate’s Education Committee raised concerns in a March 2024 meeting over how the sum would affect taxpayers, the legislature chose to create the Public Education Funding Commission to examine the recommendation.
What has the PEFC done?
The committee held its first meeting in September 2024, and eight months later it unveiled an example of what the group called a new “hybrid formula,” giving a glimpse of what an overhaul of the funding system could look like.
By the end of the May 2025 meeting, the example produced as many questions as answers.
During the meeting, commission members were shown how the example formula would affect seven individual schools.
Those schools were Brandywine High School, Delcastle Technical High School, Frederick Douglass Elementary School, Lulu M. Ross Elementary School, the Charter School of Wilmington, Stanton Middle School, and Warner Elementary School.
Each of those schools, except for Ross Elementary, would gain about $1.29 million if that version of the hybrid formula example were implemented.
Ross instead would have lost more than $181,000.
Multiple members expressed concerns about Ross losing money because of its high population of students from low-income backgrounds and English-language learners.
“I doubt anyone in this room would accept a model that didn’t increase the allocations to a school like Lulu Ross that serves the population they serve,” said Commission Chair State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine Hundred), who is a retired Spanish teacher.
The commission voted unanimously to approve a recommendation to move forward with a new hybrid framework in June 2025. Details from the May model were not included in the recommendation.
The approved recommendation only pushed forward the idea of a hybrid framework, and did not provide details as to the specific funding model that will be used to calculate a school’s new state support.
Last October, commission members also unveiled three categories for the funding model: base, opportunity, and operational funding. The three categories allow Delaware to use resource-based funding, or funding based on the number of students, and combine it with flexible dollars that will flow toward students that are multilanguage learners or from low-income backgrounds, among other student groups.
The Public Education Funding Commission also held multiple community listening sessions throughout last winter, and in April voted in favor of five different recommendations that ultimately called for the state to move forward with the hybrid model and to include a hold harmless so that districts would not lose dollars during the first years of implementation, among other recommendations.
In May, Sturgeon introduced two bills that came directly from the PEFC. One bill enabled the Delaware Department of Education to begin implementing the hybrid school funding model. It also includes a provision to mandate that no school receive less money under the model than it would have under the previous funding model.
The other bill established the PEFC as a permanent body to continue studying and evaluating the state’s funding formula in the years to come.
Both bills have since been signed into law by Meyer.
Greensboro, NC — The Greensboro Police Department drew criticism after using its official social media account to joke that anyone arrested would be forced to listen to Taylor Swift’s newest songs repeatedly while being transported to jail.
The department posted Tuesday that people arrested that night “will be required to listen to Taylor Swift’s new songs on repeat,” apparently referencing tracks released with an expanded edition of Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl.
What might have passed as a routine attempt at humor quickly became a discussion about how police departments use official accounts. One commenter questioned whether an agency entrusted with arrests and criminal investigations should be joking about treatment of people in custody.
Greensboro police responded: “Relax. It’s called community outreach.”
That response generated additional criticism, with some users arguing that dismissing questions about professionalism was itself inappropriate for a law-enforcement agency. Others simply viewed the original post as harmless humor.
Police later added another tongue-in-cheek message apologizing for “stirring up the Taylor bots” and encouraging people to keep listening to Swift’s album.
Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez remains in custody after surgery to remove bullet supporters say was stuck close to his spine
The Venezuelan delivery driver who was shot and wounded by a federal immigration agent in Texas last month had surgery on Thursday to remove the bullet that had been lodged in his back for nearly two weeks.
Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, had appeared in court in a wheelchair on Wednesday, wearing a sling on his arm. He remains in custody on charges that he assaulted an officer while trying to evade arrest.
The Supreme Court has announced which cases and controversies it will consider during arguments from October to December 2026.
Two major cases to be heard in December focus on religious rights with a significant Second Amendment challenge also scheduled for argument that month. In addition, the question of voter ID laws will reach the Court this fall, along with controversies about climate change, and two Eighth Amendment challenges.
Energy giants Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil Corporation have appealed a divided ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court in favor of the City of Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado. Boulder sued over claims relating to the alleged local negative effects of greenhouse-gas emissions on their governments. Suncor Energy is arguing that federal precedents prevent Boulder from suing over damage caused by emissions from outside of the region.
Johnson v. United States Congress (25-735) will also be heard on the first Monday of October. In this dispute, the Court will consider whether the Veterans’ Judicial Review Act blocks district courts from hearing challenges about the constitutionality of acts of Congress affecting veterans’ benefits. The petitioners have asked the Supreme Court to decide whether its precedent in Johnson v. Robison (1974) allows district courts to consider such challenges.
Other cases in the first session include Beaird v. United States (25-5343), which considers whether the Court’s precedent in Stinson v. United Statesdefines the level of deference in criminal sentencing related to the Commentary of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. In this case, Beaird contested a sentence that he received for possession of a semiautomatic weapon with a large capacity magazine. Also, in Salazar v. Paramount Global (25-459), the Supreme Court will consider whether Paramount can be liable for sharing with Facebook “personally identifiable information” gathered from email campaigns promoting its own video products.
The Supreme Court has scheduled seven sets of arguments for early November 2026. The highest-profile case is St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy (25-581).
The petitioners, Catholic preschools in the Archdiocese of Denver, claim religious discrimination when they were denied state funding under a Colorado universal preschool program that pays for families to send their children to public or private preschools.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit agreed with a lower court ruling that the state could deny funding to the schools. It cited Supreme Court precedent in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), stating the Colorado program and law were generally applicable and did not target the preschools.
In accepting St. Mary Catholic Parish, the Supreme Court will not consider whether Employment Division v. Smith should be overturned. Instead, it will consider how Supreme Court precedents apply when lower courts consider if a government is explicitly excluding religious people and institutions from public benefits.
Also on the early November argument calendar is Nielsen v. Watanabe (25-417), where the respondent alleged that he suffered a fractured coccyx in a prison gang fight, causing chronic pain due to mistreatment. The question is whether the case should be considered as an Eighth Amendment claim of deliberate indifference to medical needs, as established in Carlson v. Green (1980).
Arguments running from Nov. 30, 2026, until Dec. 9, 2026, include several major cases. In Jouppi v. Alaska (25-246), the justices will consider a dispute from Alaska over the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, where state police arrested pilot Ken Jouppi and his lone passenger on Jouppi’s local air-taxi transport plane. The plane was bound for a town that had banned the consumption of alcohol. The police spotted a six-pack of Budweiser on top of the passenger’s luggage and subsequently found three cases of beer.
Alaska has tried to seize Jouppi’s Cessna aircraft under a forfeiture statute. The question presented to the Supreme Court is “whether, in determining whether a fine contravenes the Excessive Fines Clause, courts may consider the gravity of the underlying offense purely in the abstract or should consider the gravity of the specific defendant's wrongdoing.”
In Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota (25-1017) the Supreme Court will turn to the National Voter Registration Act, which allows voters to register to vote at the same time they apply for a driver's license, whether by mail or in person. Arizona passed laws requiring new voter registrants to provide physical “documentary proof of citizenship” and for county recorders to conduct citizenship audits of voter registration rolls against state and federal databases. Mi Familia Vota and others have sued to block these laws from going into effect.
In Viramontes v. Cook County (25-238) and Grant v. Higgins (25-566), the Supreme Court will consider challenges to laws that place restrictions on the possession of assault rifles. The constitutional question is whether these laws conflict with the Second Amendment and 14th Amendment of the Constitution. In Viramontes, Cutberto Viramontes and others are appealing a Seventh Circuit ruling upholding Cook County’s ban on AR-15 rifles. Viramontes sought to acquire such a rifle. Cook County criminalizes the sale, transfer, or possession of any “assault weapon” including AR-15s.
The circuit court concluded that rifles like the semiautomatic AR-15 rifle “are not ‘Arms’ under the Second Amendment,” citing Bevis v. City of Naperville, another Seventh Circuit decision from 2023. The Bevis court undertook a Bruen-style analysis to decide the case, using a frame from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022). The Bruen test requires a court to look at history and tradition when considering appeals about laws that restrict firearms ownership.
In his appeal, Viramontes said the appeals court misapplied Bruen and did not consider another key Supreme Court precedent, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).
In Grand v. City of University Heights, Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jew, invited 15 of his friends over to pray with a “minyan,” in the privacy of his home in University Heights, Ohio. Grand was then contacted by the town’s mayor and its law director before the minyan. They told Grand that praying in a residential home constituted a “synagogue” under the University Heights zoning code, which required a special-use permit. Grand also received a cease-and-desist letter.
Grand sued the city, its mayor, and its law director in federal court. The district court ruled that Grand lacked standing to sue on First Amendment grounds and dismissed his case for lack of ripeness. It cited the Supreme Court’s precedent in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City (1985), as requiring Grand to get a final zoning board decision before pursuing his claim. The Sixth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision.
The question accepted by the Supreme Court is whether “a credible government threat that deters the exercise of fundamental rights” is displaced by Williamson County’s land-use finality requirement when a plaintiff alleges that government threats both before and after a Planning Commission meeting chilled his religious exercise, worship, and assembly.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
As LeBron James and other NBA stars wholeheartedly embrace the murk of betting and prediction markets, the San Antonio Spurs’ 22-year-old cornerstone has drawn a refreshing line
If the song from LeBron James’s agonizing Polymarket ad is as stuck in your head as mine thanks to the commercial playing during every YouTube video and HBO show (all I wanted to do was rewatch The Leftovers), let Victor Wembanyama be your antidote. At the Spurs’ practice on Thursday, San Antonio Express-News columnist Mike Finger asked Wembanyama if he would ever partner with a sports betting firm. It couldn’t have been easier for the 22-year-old to say yes. The NBA displays ads for both FanDuel and DraftKings, in addition to hawking betting odds on its broadcasts. Until the streaming service met its end a few months ago, plenty of NBA games streamed exclusively on FanDuel Sports Network. Then there are Wembanyama’s legendary peers: James is the new face of Polymarket; Kevin Durant reads FanDuel odds and invests in Kalshi; Giannis Antetokounmpo is a Kalshi shareholder.
“Absolutely not,” Wembanyama said instead. “I will never do that. Honestly, I think it’s very sad to see some players promote it. Everybody does whatever they want, but without me.”
Burlington, NC — A Burlington nursing home has agreed to pay nearly $100,000 to resolve allegations that it employed an unlicensed woman as a nurse and billed Medicaid for services she provided to residents.
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced Thursday that White Oak Manor of Burlington will pay $98,474 to the state, including $49,237 in Medicaid restitution. State officials said Nieasha Jones was hired despite having no nursing license, training or experience.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, Jones worked 54 shifts over three months, interacted with nursing-home residents and provided care while lacking the required qualifications. White Oak Manor subsequently billed Medicaid for resident services that included work performed by Jones.
The investigation began after the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Health Service Regulation referred the matter to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Investigations Division.
Jackson said health-care providers must ensure employees are qualified before allowing them to treat patients and bill taxpayers for that care.
The settlement resolves civil allegations and does not constitute an admission of liability or a judicial finding of wrongdoing against the facility. State investigators say the case is part of broader efforts to prevent Medicaid fraud and protect residents receiving care in publicly funded facilities.
A former Cornell student, identified as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit against the school and seven former fraternity brothers she accuses of rape and sexual assault.
Pike is the first person to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs, the Death Penalty Information Center said. She remains in a critical condition.
The case of the Siders family illustrates major shortcomings among Ohio’s political and administrative authorities
In June 2025, Jody Walker stood in front of Ohio lawmakers at a senate finance committee meeting in Columbus. As the head of South Central Ohio Job and Family Services, he was desperate for help.
“I have been a county director since 1999, yet I have not seen such a challenging time in the child welfare system as I do today,” he said, “specifically in terms of the needs of our children.”
City on edge as police comb home of Raymond Horsch, pornographer who died last year, in grisly case involving disturbing pictures and film
A dilapidated house, burned out above the second story, may hold clues to dark tales and – potentially – the darkest of endings as the FBI and police in Philadelphia try to unpick what took place at 417 West Chew Avenue for more than three decades.
Last week, homicide investigators shifted their focus from examining an archive of a million photographs and film recovered from what is known locally as the “house of horrors” to excavating what is in or under the home of Raymond “RC” Horsch, a career criminal, local artist, author and snuff photographer who died last year aged 82, and his son Eugene, 44.
The UK arm of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants empire remained in the red last year despite sales topping £100m for the first time after a string of openings in a London tower.
The celebrity chef’s UK business, which has 34 outlets including the Savoy Grill, Pétrus and several Lucky Cat restaurants, narrowed losses to £5.8m from £9.4m the year before. Sales rose 3% to almost £101m.
These graphics explain what the Democrats would need to do to flip the Senate and House of Representatives
A turning point in Donald Trump’s second term will soon arrive. On 3 November, voters across the US will decide whether to keep the president’s Republican allies in control of Congress, or return Democrats to the majority.
Many indicators of voter sentiment suggest the Democrats are favored to take back control of the House of Representatives, and potentially the Senate. Winning either would be a significant victory for the party and give it the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration.
Zack Polanski has said his authority as leader of the Green party of England and Wales does not depend on winning next week’s Holborn and St Pancras byelection, amid suggestions the party’s popularity may have peaked.
Polanski, who is trying to take Keir Starmer’s former seat from Labour, described the contest as “probably 50/50 right now” and “really on a knife edge”.
British motorists face more pressure at the pumps after the average price of diesel climbed to a record £2 a litre.
The price of a litre at UK forecourts has risen 40.5% since late February, when the US-Israel war on Iran began disrupting supplies of crude and refined oil products from the Gulf, leading to cost increases across the economy.
Leaves can pile up faster than the yard gets cleared. These 17 soup and stew recipes keep dinner hearty with beef, chicken, sausage, pumpkin, lobster, vegetables, noodles, and plenty of broth.The post 17 warm fall soup and stew dishes worth…
Swiss glaciers lost 5.5% of their ice volume in the first eight months of 2026, bringing total losses since 2021 to 19.4%. Researchers say some glaciers are now collapsing from within as meltwater carves out large cavities. The Guardian reports: Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and lead author of the report, said many people do not realize how fast glaciers are retreating, or that just one generation ago some now-barren sites used to sit beneath hundreds of meters of ice. The scientists have not yet compiled a formal tally of lost glaciers this year but said they had witnessed the death of a number of small ones. "I visited one last week and it's so impressive to stand in this moonlike landscape where there was a big layer of ice -- an extensive glacier -- just a few years ago," said Huss. "And now it's a rock desert where there's some scattered blocks of old ice still lying around and melting on the hot rocks."
The report, a collaboration between the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation, found the mean thickness of individual glaciers fell by between 2.5 metres and 4 metres in 2026. Huss said scientists were increasingly seeing glaciers collapse from the inside -- the result of internal streams beneath the ice that excavate caverns -- rather than simply retreating from surface heat. [...] Analysis published by MeteoSwiss on Tuesday found the summer half-year from April to September was the hottest and driest it had been since records began in 1864. In that time, humanity has filled the atmosphere with 1.8tn tons of carbon dioxide and heated the planet by about 1.4C.
Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is surprising everyone, as polls have him leading his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, in the Republican-led state of Texas.
Jonathan Freedland speaks to James Henson, founder and executive director of the Texas Politics Project, about why a blue wave in the Lone Star state would be seismic
Failed attempt to execute 50-year-old prompts review of state’s execution practices. Plus the California woman who is allergic to cold
Good morning. Tennessee’s governor has suspended executions as Christa Pike’s lawyer says the state’s failed lethal injection execution attempt has left her in a critical condition. Bill Lee, the Republican state governor, has suspended all executions in the state until at least the end of the year and ordered an independent inquiry.
Leading voices on the death penalty in the US have told the Guardian that the failed execution was such a violation of the constitutional prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” that all judicial killings should be halted nationwide.
What have Pike’s lawyers said about her condition? Randy Spivey, one of her attorneys, said: “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care. She is in a critical condition.”
What did witnesses say took place during the execution attempt? Catherine Sweeney, a reporter at the Nashville Public Radio WPLN, said: “They went through two rounds, and she was still breathing at the end. She was very ragged. She lifted her head up and was looking around. At one point, she said … there was a spot that was burning and hurting, and asked if that was normal. None of it was normal.”
What was Pike convicted of? She was convicted of the brutal 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, alongside her then boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Lee said he had not yet spoken to Slemmer’s family after the failed execution.
Why has the DNC issued a lawsuit against the administration? The Trump administration broke the law when it pushed through a last-minute change to the form overseas citizens use to register and request absentee ballots, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday. “Trump and Republicans are so desperate to hang on to power that they are trying to eliminate the way some American citizens abroad register to vote and request mail ballots,” said Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC.
Which states are leading the resistance to the Trump EPA’s repeal of emissions rules? Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the federal government was showing “callous disregard” for Americans’ health and the environment, and future generations would pay the price. Power plants that burn fossil fuels are a major source of planet-warming pollution.
According to the record, a student who had been at the Chi Phi house the night of the alleged assault told a Title IX investigator she got a call the next day from one of the accused men.
The government has sought to avert panic at the pumps, insisting that the UK is not facing a diesel shortage after Donald Trump threatened to cut off US supplies of the fuel.
The transport minister Keir Mather said on Friday that the UK has a wide range of sources of the fuel and is in talks with other European countries over the potential release of emergency diesel stockpiles.
(Photo by Sebastian Willnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
What I’m Discussing Today
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: Does kindness become any less necessary simply because the person credited with praising it may never have said the words?
Deporting the Poor, Huddled Masses: The administration’s third-country deportation policy puts vulnerable people beyond the reach of justice.
What I Learned from the Cornell Rape Case: Whatever the legal outcome, a culture that cannot recognize intoxication, coercion, and human decency has failed its young people.
Quick Takes: Trump renames A.I., and a Republican senator makes a fool of himself while trying to get former counsel Jack Smith to commit perjury.
She Came to Me, directed by Rebecca Miller: Peter Dinklage leads a fantastic ensemble in a contemporary screwball comedy that offers the rare pleasure of wit, romance, and a welcome lift from the news.
Sweet Honey in the Rock, “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”: A spare, haunting performance of Woody Guthrie’s song restores humanity to people a newspaper reduced to “deportees.”
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
attributed to Mark Twain (1835–1910), American writer
The first thing to say about this quote is that Mark Twain almost certainly never said it or wrote it. The Center for Mark Twain Studies, which has a section titled, “The Apocryphal Twain,” states, “The Occam’s Razor of Twain attribution is: If the aphorism in question indicates a sentimental, nostalgic, or otherwise optimistic attitude towards humanity, it probably didn’t come from Twain.” That site, which investigated the origin of the quote, says it appears to derive from an 1857 aphorism by New York writer Christian Nestell Bovee, although its wording evolved over time. It wasn't attributed to Twain until decades after his death. Finally, a Twitter user called @BPD Dude helped popularize the modern Twain attribution beginning in 2008.
So what does it mean when a quote that we think comes from a common source of unimpeachable wisdom like Mark Twain is instead given new life by @BPD Dude, who decides to lend his interpretation added gravity by saying it came from Twain? Does it make the sentiment itself any less valuable? The cynic in me wants to dismiss it. But if I look at the words themselves, I still like what they have to say.
We all recognize kindness when we experience it, and we all feel better about ourselves when we offer it. Kindness is a universal currency that is in short supply, and if I want to complete that metaphor (without mixing it), I would say it’s a currency we can all print ourselves, in our own metaphorical basements. In other words, being kind is a choice we’re free to make at any time. So why don’t we choose it more often? There are a lot of possible reasons: anger, impatience, embarrassment, discomfort, insecurity, immaturity—the list could go on for a long time.
Here’s another quote about kindness: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” It’s often credited to Plato, Socrates, or Philo of Alexandria—sources of wisdom whose supposed attribution screams, “Take this quote seriously!” The actual source is a 19th-century Scottish minister named John Watson, pen name Ian MacLaren, whose 1897 Christmas message included an earlier version: “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.” Does the fact that Plato, Socrates, or Philo didn’t say it mean you shouldn’t be kind, or that everyone isn’t facing a hard battle? You decide.
Here’s a real one, for those in search of brand-name wisdom: “The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” Mahatma Gandhi said that. Here’s another: “This is my simple religion: there is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” That one’s from the Dalai Lama. As lessons for living a good life, I don’t think the real ones are any better than the fakes. The words are all worth taking in, their challenges all worth taking up.
There’s so much unnecessary unkindness in the world: I’m writing about some of it today, and asking you to read about it. So I wanted to begin with some thoughts about kindness, a language the deaf can hear and the blind can see; an inspiration for our hardest battles; a religion more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. And a choice every one of us can make every day.
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has disclosed another unauthorised hack on a government department in Australia.
In June, an OpenAI agent hacked into a New South Wales state government department and accessed historical non-public data on bushfires without authorisation.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions
As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images of AI agents running amok, such as hacking systems used to run our critical infrastructure, banks or even militaries. Yet one serious danger is mentioned less frequently – the threat posed by AI–empowered lethal weapons. Fully autonomous versions of these weapons are colloquially known as killer robots.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows that, in an important respect, such AI weapon systems are already here. An algorithm has been deciding who lives and who dies.
Why Should Delaware Care? In July, the state announced its first confirmed case of measles in more than a decade. The months following have proved to be relatively quiet on cases, but officials have warned residents to remain vigilant.
Delaware’s measles case count has increased to 23 since the state announced its outbreak earlier this summer, but those cases are still confined to Kent County, officials said Thursday.
State public health officials declared a measles outbreak after confirming four cases of the virus in Kent County on July 22. The announcement came just days after Delaware announced it had confirmed its first case of the virus in more than a decade.
At a Delaware Health Care Commission meeting on Thursday, officials said the state had “stabilized” at 23 cases, but that it is not “out of the woods yet.” Additionally, those cases all remain in Kent County.
For the most part, Delaware has remained isolated from some of the worst measles outbreaks across the country, like nearby Pennsylvania, which has reported multiple deaths tied to the virus.
Earlier this year, Delaware’s principal pediatric hospital, Nemours Children’s Health, reported a measles exposure, but no information about any confirmed cases was later released. The incident involved someone from out of state who sought care at the Wilmington-area hospital, officials said at the time.
Measles is highly contagious, and one person can infect multiple other people if those people are not vaccinated. Symptoms can take days, or even weeks, to show themselves, Delaware officials said.
Symptoms can include fever, cough, pink eye or a runny nose lasting for days prior to the onset of the widespread, splotchy rash associated with measles, state officials said.
If someone is exposed or begins showing symptoms, the state health department said they should call its Office of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. The state offers two phone numbers, one for business hours, as well as a 24-hour hotline:
Business hours line: 302-744-4990
24-hour hotline: 888-295-5156
The state recommends that people exposed to measles receive a dose of the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine within three days. According to a press release, these vaccines can be found at primary care clinics and pharmacies, and residents should contact their preferred providers to find out more.
Two of the nation’s top pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, both offer the MMR vaccine. Patients can schedule appointments online. Here are links to their MMR pages:
Children ages 1 through 12 are eligible for the vaccine and usually receive two doses. The first dose is usually administered after a child’s first birthday and then again after a few years.
According to the state, those who receive the vaccine are protected for life if they receive both doses, though like all vaccines, the state says there is still a nominal chance someone could contract the virus if they are vaccinated.
National outbreaks amid rise in vaccine skepticism
Delaware’s measles case count has remained relatively low during the ongoing outbreak, compared to nearby states.
Across the country, states have contended with worsening measles outbreaks. This year, there have been 3,659 confirmed cases in 47 states, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released last week.
Those figures have far surpassed 2025’s full-year count of 2,289 confirmed cases. More than 90% of cases in the past two years were confirmed among people who were not vaccinated.
One of the states with the worst outbreaks was South Carolina, which saw nearly 1,000 cases in one of its northern counties between October 2025 and April 2026. According to a state health dashboard, more than 900 of those confirmed cases occurred in individuals who were not vaccinated.
That same dashboard also said children were particularly impacted by the six-month outbreak. Close to 900 of the confirmed cases were among children under 18. Nearly 80% of those were children younger than 11.
In Texas, however, two children died during an outbreak last year. The state dealt with an eight-month outbreak from January to August in the western part of the state. A release from Texas health officials said it had confirmed 762 measles cases, and the outbreak hospitalized 99 people.
Neighboring states like Pennsylvania and Maryland have had to contend with outbreaks of their own. Maryland has confirmed 51 cases this year. In 2025, it had only three.
Pennsylvania has struggled to rein in a deepening outbreak, with one of the highest case counts in the mid-Atlantic. On Wednesday, it reported its fifth measles-associated death. Since the start of 2026, the state has confirmed 943 cases in more than half of its counties.
This summer, Delaware started its own Office of the Surgeon General in response to what it saw as a disconnect between state and federal health officials over vaccines.
In September 2025, as the federal government began revising vaccine recommendations, Delaware and other states publicly countered the new guidelines. When Delaware refuted the federal government, Gov. Matt Meyer issued a “standing order” to pharmacists to “ensure ease of access” for people seeking the vaccines in the state.
It mirrored efforts in other states like Massachusetts, whose governor ordered her state’s insurance carriers to continue to cover vaccines, even if they were not recommended by the federal government.
Delaware joined with Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island to collectively focus on “developing evidence-based recommendations on vaccinations, disease surveillance, emergency preparedness and supporting state public health labs.”
Why Should Delaware Care? Questions over what exactly transpired between the City of Dover’s mayor, police chief and police union have dominated the city’s political discourse over the past year. A partial release of findings from an outside investigation into the controversy provides some answers.
Despite Dover officials voting this week not to release the findings of a third-party investigation into the conflict between city leaders and the local police union, the city released a portion of the report on Thursday afternoon.
City council’s decisive vote at a meeting Tuesday night not to publicize the report was underpinned by concerns that sharing the findings could lead to a lawsuit.
Nonetheless, council leaders ultimately shared part of the report with Spotlight Delaware on Thursday, citing intense public interest in the investigation.
The nine pages of investigatory findings include different accounts by Mayor Robin Christiansen, Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson and leaders of the local police union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge #15, of an incident last fall in which Christiansen allegedly told FOP leadership to attack two city council members for being critical of the police department.
The report concludes that Christiansen’s requests for police union leadership to reveal details about the personal lives of Councilmen Brian Lewis and Roy Sudler may have been a “low blow and constitute nasty politics,” but his request did not violate any city or state ethical codes.
The released pages do not, however, include other findings from the investigation related to the union’s allegations about Johnson’s leadership and work behavior.
These allegations include that Johnson created a poor work environment for his officers, and had committed employment contract violations by driving a city-owned vehicle to family vacations and working a second job as an adjunct instructor at Penn State University while he was supposed to be on duty in Dover.
The new information also comes after Spotlight Delaware appealed the city’s denial of a Freedom of Information Act request for the full investigatory findings to the Delaware Department of Justice (DOJ), and after recent public division among city officials over how to proceed with the findings.
Dover City Council voted last fall to hire 21st Century Policing Solutions, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, to undertake a third-party investigation into the police union’s complaints.
The investigation cost the city $50,000 and was completed in mid-June, according to documents obtained by Spotlight Delaware.
Christiansen gave permission to release the full report during the Tuesday meeting because he said he has “nothing to hide.”
But Johnson did not consent to the city releasing the files. City council members told Spotlight Delaware they were worried that releasing the entire investigation, particularly the parts addressing Johnson’s personnel files, could open the city to a lawsuit. So, they only shared the portion of the investigation that addresses the allegations made against Christiansen.
City Council President Fred Neil said on Thursday afternoon the City Council decided it was “up to the mayor or the chief to decide whether to release it.”
Because Christiansen gave permission on Tuesday night to publish the section about him, Neil said, the council proceeded with making that section public.
While Dover City Attorney Dan Griffith has argued the portion of the report relating to Johnson is exempt because it contains law enforcement investigatory files, Spotlight Delaware still has a pending DOJ appeal for the full report. The DOJ will likely rule on the appeal by mid-October.
What was revealed?
The Dover City Council hired 21st Century Policing Solutions last year after the police union accused Mayor Christiansen of telling union members to “attack the integrity” of Lewis and Sudler, two Dover councilmen, because they had previously been critical of Johnson’s leadership of the police department.
The section of the report released on Thursday confirms that Christiansen did tell two police officers during a meeting in June 2025 to “publicly attack” Sudler and Lewis.
Various accounts of the situation, as told by Christiansen, Johnson and the two union leaders, Robert Roswell and Jordan Miller, differ in terms of how involved Johnson was in Christiansen’s request that the union target the councilmen.
The different recollections of the situation also appear to mirror the loyalties of the people involved: Christiansen and Johnson described Johnson as not having been involved in the discussion, while the officers interviewed said their chief seemed looped in on Christiansen’s suggestion.
The report also states that Christiansen held a separate meeting with Tim Mullaney, the union president, where Christiansen told him to “go public with unsavory details about Council members Lewis’s and Sudler’s personal lives.”
Regardless of the disputed details, the investigation concludes that Christiansen did not violate local or state ethical codes. Rather, the report concludes, he was engaging in “political speech,” protected by the First Amendment.
“Everyone involved in the meetings,” the report states, “all understood the Mayor’s requests as coming from one political actor, the Mayor, to another political actor, the FOP Lodge 15.”
Despite having said at a previous meeting that he was in favor of the report being published, Christiansen told Spotlight Delaware on Thursday afternoon that he wished city council had waited to release the full investigation, including the findings about Johnson’s alleged misconduct. He added that the full report “vindicates myself and the chief.”
Johnson did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday afternoon.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
ProPublica reporters Jennifer Smith Richards, center, and Jodi S. Cohen and Arkansas Times reporter Milo Strain research founding a private school in Little Rock. Brian Chilson/Arkansas Times
We have no business running a private school.
We’re reporters, not teachers. That doesn’t matter. Inexperience has hardly been a barrier for those who want to start their own schools, as we have reported this year. And it didn’t stop us, either.
Over the last few months, to test the process, reporters from ProPublica partnered with local journalists in three states to establish private schools. None required much effort.
In Arkansas, all it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state website, $45 and an American flag to form a bona fide private school with the Arkansas Times.
We established a school with Mountain State Spotlight in West Virginia after filing our new school’s name and location with authorities on a piece of notebook paper, then exchanging a few emails.
And with The Assembly in North Carolina, we filed an online notice of intent to open a private school at Ponysaurus Brewing Co. in Durham, while perched on its metal bar stools, eyeing glasses of a crisp kolsch.
We used our names and news organization email addresses, following each state’s rules for starting private or microschools, a type of private school intended for just a few students. Experience running a school wasn’t needed. No one from any of the states asked us about our backgrounds or qualifications, though West Virginia did ask for proof of a high school diploma. No one questioned what we plan to teach or how we would measure whether students are learning.
And yet we could enroll students in two states right now, if we wanted to. Arkansas even suggested ways our school could accept public money through the state’s voucher-style program.
For the record, we are not enrolling students and have no intention of operating our new schools. We did, however, register a website for our new school ventures, ProPublicaAcademy.com, and even designed some fun pencils to show our school spirit.
This year, a team of ProPublica reporters has been documenting how the American education landscape is shifting dramatically as states use public money to help fund private schools. With few regulations, hundreds of new private and microschools have proliferated.
Our reporting has shown the relative ease with which people — some with questionable backgrounds — founded their own schools in unusual places. They’ve popped up in barns and on farms, in strip malls between an antique shop and an ax-throwing business and in churches, where lighting and sound for worship services is part of the curriculum.
All of this led to a clear reporting question: If the hurdles to open a private school are so low, could we do it? And what would we learn along the way?
Est. 2026
Arkansas: ProPublica-Arkansas Times Curiosity Academy
Inside a flag shop in Little Rock, we surveyed our options. There were handheld American flags on skinny sticks, midsize ones to display on a wall and majestic formal flags adorned with silky gold fringe.
State law in Arkansas doesn’t require much to open a private school, nothing about teacher skills or what kids learn. But it does require that all schools display an American flag, and we wanted to follow the rules. So, at the Arkansas Flag and Banner store, we decided on a smallish one that could fit in a circular base atop a newsroom cubicle. We also bought an Arkansas flag — even though only public schools are required to have those. Total cost: $49.45.
Picking the flags for our new school was the hardest part of an astoundingly easy process.
The only requirement to open a private school in Arkansas is displaying a flag and flagpole, so the team visited the local flag shop in Little Rock.Brian Chilson/Arkansas Times
Early in our reporting in Arkansas, we tried to figure out what steps we’d need to take to make a private school. We couldn’t find all the answers online, so we called the state.
“We don’t have rules for opening a private school,” Kaelin Clay, an Arkansas Department of Education spokesperson, told us earlier this year.
In fact, we didn’t even have to file anything with the Education Department. All it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state’s website, where we registered the ProPublica-Arkansas Times Curiosity Academy LLC as a business, listed ourselves as agents and officers, and paid a fee.
“We picked a name. We paid 45 bucks,” a ProPublica reporter noted after we submitted the application. With that, we had created a private school.
The secretary of state’s office approved our new business the same day. We even got a certificate.
The Arkansas Department of Education does not regulate private schools once they’re open, and no one from the state inspected the Arkansas Times newsroom, the location we chose for our school. As far as we know, nobody checked our backgrounds, either.
The official certificate acknowledging our schoolSecretary of State/State of Arkansas
Arkansas adopted a private school funding plan in 2023, and back then there were fewer than 100 private schools on record. With the state in the fourth year of its Education Freedom Accounts program, which provides vouchers that can be spent on private schools, there are now more than 220.
In addition, 143 microschools, which are a different category in Arkansas, were approved this year to accept tax dollars. That’s up from about 100 last school year.
Establishing the Curiosity Academy was so simple — and, frankly, a bit anticlimactic — that reporters then applied to become eligible to receive public funds. (Again, we applied with our names, work email addresses and a note that this was a journalistic exercise. We had no intention of actually ever taking any public money.)
We wanted to see how far our curiosity could take us.
Accessing public funds as a microschool in Arkansas is easier than it is for other types of private schools, even though there is no limit to the number of students one can enroll. Unlike private schools, we didn’t need to seek accreditation or show proof of financial solvency to accept state funding.
It took about 10 minutes to fill out the required information in early September. Other than our contact information, we had to upload just two documents — one detailing our proposed tuition and fees, and the other with our refund policy.
We said that — “should we open a school” — our tuition and fees per student would not exceed $7,208 per school year, the exact amount of Education Freedom Account money that each student in Arkansas is eligible for this year. We said tuition “would be collected only if education is delivered, and it would be the policy of the school to refund all tuition payments for educational services that are not provided.”
After much deliberation, we chose small state and national flags.Brian Chilson/Arkansas Times
When more than two weeks passed and we hadn’t heard back, we reached out to the state Education Department. An employee called back that afternoon and explained that the department had decided not to accept any more because the school year was underway.
But he didn’t reject us outright. He looked up our application and invited us to keep pursuing the public money. He said we still could apply to receive public money this school year, but as a vendor providing educational services such as tutoring. He also said we could apply as a microschool next year and even suggested a tweak to the language in our tuition policy should we decide to do that.
After we hung up, he emailed us the vendor application (which we will not pursue) and let us know the microschool application for next school year will open in the spring.
We asked the state Education Department whether it would be OK with us operating a publicly funded microschool. Clay, the spokesperson, said the agency’s role is to decide if schools meet state requirements. Microschool families, she said, “have the freedom to choose the educators and learning environments that best meet their children’s needs.”
Est. 2026
West Virginia: ProPublica-Mountain State Spotlight Curiosity Academy
Henry Culvyhouse and Smith Richards, in Mountain State Spotlight’s newsroom, write their application to found a private middle school in West Virginia.Laura Bilson for ProPublica
Hunched over a desk in the Mountain State Spotlight newsroom in Charleston, West Virginia, pen in hand, we scrawled out official notice of our new school in a spiral-bound notebook. We wrote that we would serve middle school students and listed our first day as TBD.
Leaving the crunchy, ragged edges on the paper, we stuffed our notice of intent into an envelope. We’d seen other new operators file similarly casual ones as they sought to register private schools in West Virginia.
Then we drove over to the state Education Department to deliver the request. Our group — two reporters, a photographer and a video journalist — went through security and, camera rolling, wound our way through the maze of the midcentury building. We got lost once, and our entourage received several perplexed glances from workers, but otherwise it was smooth sailing. The person we needed to deliver the letter to was out, but a friendly employee agreed to place it on his desk.
Dozens of new private and microschools have set up shop in the state in recent years, fueled by the roughly $5,400 the Hope Scholarship offers each student to pay tuition. New private schools all go through Dustin Lambert, a manager in the Office of Student Enrichment and Support at the West Virginia Department of Education.
We heard back from Lambert the next day. Our notice was received. (Hooray!) He said now we needed a letter from the fire marshal that our school building was safe for children. (Oh no.)
This was a problem. Our school would be housed in the Mountain State Spotlight newsroom, which had not been inspected as a school site. We didn’t want to usurp public resources to undergo a new inspection. It felt like the end of our Mountain State school experiment.
Smith Richards and Culvyhouse go to the Capitol to hand-deliver their application.Laura Bilson for ProPublica
But it wasn’t.
After we followed up to ask whether all schools, including virtual schools, need safety clearance to register with the state, Lambert told us that though all brick-and-mortar private schools do, we “may want to consider the microschool route.”
In that case, we later learned, the department wouldn’t be involved because state law doesn’t include any mechanism for oversight.
West Virginia defines microschools as schools that charge tuition and are started by one or more teachers. In practice, there’s no real difference between a microschool and private school — neither has a limit on enrollment. (Yes, a micro can be macro.) He forwarded us the rules for starting a microschool, which involve providing proof of a high school diploma, at least. We notified the local school district of our new microschool venture and sent a college transcript.
The Kanawha County school district, in turn, notified the state of the existence of a new microschool.
And with that — bypassing the building health and safety requirements — we established the ProPublica-Mountain State Spotlight Curiosity Academy. Officials at the Department of Education said they were aware that journalists were establishing a school. But they had to just watch us do so — they have no authority over the state’s microschools.
In an official statement, the department’s spokesperson said it “does not approve or deny the operation of microschools for any reason, including the qualifications of the owner/operator.”
By law, should we open our microschool — and we won’t — we could enroll an unlimited number of students.
Culvyhouse seals the envelope of our hand-delivered application.Laura Bilson for ProPublica
Pending
North Carolina: ProPublica-Assembly Academy
On Friday evenings, hundreds of people gather at Ponysaurus Brewing Co., a trendy spot in Durham, North Carolina, to savor its craft beers and cocktails, hardly the place you’d expect a school to open. But why not?
On a recent Tuesday morning, the brewery was quiet and closed to customers. Behind the bar, yeast busily converted sugars into alcohol inside giant stainless steel fermentation tanks. Two journalists settled onto barstools beneath signs for pilsners and cherry sours. Icy cold glasses of Tell the Truth, a light and lemony ale, sat before them on a high-top table beside a stenographer’s notebook and a laptop.
The brewery created the craft ale in partnership with The Assembly, which also is ProPublica’s journalistic partner in this private school endeavor, so it all felt very symbiotic. Ponysaurus’s owners had agreed to let us use their building and its fire and sanitation inspections, which are required to open a private school in the Tar Heel State.
ProPublica reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes and Carli Brosseau, right, a reporter for The Assembly, apply to open a private school at Ponysaurus Brewing Co. in Durham, North Carolina.Kate Medley for ProPublica
Reporters from The Assembly and ProPublica scanned a state of North Carolina website that details how to file a notice of intent to open a private school.
First, it explained the state’s statutory requirements for opening a private school, things like reporting the school’s name and address. We also would have to administer a standardized test in certain grades, if we were going to open an actual school, and maintain annual records about student attendance and immunizations.
Then, we watched a four-minute, 39-second video explaining how to file the required notice of intent.
From there it seemed simple. We created a login, then filled in the address of our school (Ponysaurus’s building), noted its owner and chief administrator (our reporters), and named it the ProPublica-Assembly Academy. We’d hoped to include the word Curiosity in the name, but the field in the form didn’t allow enough characters. In North Carolina, our curiosity would have to be implied.
We filled in a few more fields, including the grades we would serve (high schoolers), whether we would open a religious school (no) and the dates of our academic year.
Then we needed to upload fire and sanitation inspection reports. This step is what brought us here, to Ponysaurus, filling out the online notice to the tune of a hissing compressor that kept clean air moving through the brewing system.
“You will need to secure inspections for the building where the school will be housed. You will need a fire inspection from the local fire marshal and a health and sanitation inspection from the local health department,” the video said.
Just that morning, a City of Durham Fire Department inspector had visited the brewery and provided Ponysaurus with a fresh business occupancy inspection. We uploaded the new report, along with the brewery’s current food establishment inspection (on which it received a 99, an excellent score, we felt, for a school).
The screen flashed a confirmation. “Thank you. We have received your request to open a private school.” If approved, the page said, we should receive a school identification number in three to five business days.
We hoped to join the at least 169 other new private schools that have opened in North Carolina since the 2021-22 school year, which marked the start of a series of expansions to the state’s publicly funded vouchers for private school tuition.
If we wanted our school to tap the voucher money, we’d have to go through some additional steps such as getting criminal background checks. We weren’t doing that.
The proposed school has outdoor space for students.Kate Medley for ProPublica
The following day, we hit a snag. It came in a brief and garbled email. It said only: “Good morning and thank you for submitting a Notice of Intent to operate a private school. To complete the process we need to fire and sanitation inspections to” and then ended abruptly like that, no explanation or period. We emailed back, asking for clarity and noting we had already uploaded the inspection reports.
An official from the state Division of Non-Public Education then called. The school’s name needs to be on the inspection reports, she said, something we had not seen in any of our research. We also had not found any state statutes or rules that would preclude us — or anyone else — from opening a private school wherever we saw fit, be that a church or a brewery, as long as it passed “reasonable fire, health and safety inspections.”
In a follow-up call, she clarified that her division checks only to be sure the building has passed inspections specifically for a school. A spokesperson for the agency later added that state statute does not allow them to deny a private school application, but they won’t process an incomplete application — notably one without the proper inspections.
We hadn’t expected we would need a school-specific inspection at this point. The video explainer referred to inspections only generally, and the state’s written guidance indicated only that this would need to happen before occupancy.
Given we had no intention of actually opening a school, we had decided ahead of time that we wouldn’t consume any additional public resources — such as fire or health inspectors’ time — in our journalistic pursuit.
Perhaps Ponysaurus could pass the school-specific inspections. But the ethical red line would be our stop sign. Our curiosity would have to end in North Carolina.
Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options.
Feeld, a UK-based dating app aimed at non-monogamous, queer and kinky users, has reported strong sales growth and paid its largest-ever dividend as it attracts users from more “vanilla” rivals.
Revenues jumped by 32% to £64m following a surge in interest from what it called “open-minded people exploring love, desire, and alternative relationships in a safe, inclusive space”.
Why the Houthis' Red Sea power play makes Iran even strongerAudiosseth.drupal@c…
On this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts discuss what Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandab strait means for the wider region.
The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels’ capture of Yemen’s port city of Mocha means that Iran now effectively controls two crucial waterways in the region – the Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Red Sea and thus the Suez Canal, as well as the Hormuz Strait. Why has this simmering conflict exploded again? What do Iran and the Houthis want? How serious is this potential blockade for world trade and energy supply? And could the Houthis become a regional power, in economic terms even more powerful than Iran?
Bronwen Maddox is joined by director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, Dr Sanam Vakil; Horn of Africa specialist Ahmed Soliman; and Yemen and Gulf specialist, Farea Al-Muslimi, who joins us from Jordan.
Ever imagine yourself as a private school operator? It’s not such a wild idea. Hundreds of new private schools have popped up all over the country in recent years, responding to a surge of public money for students to pay tuition.
A team of ProPublica journalists has spent this year documenting how the American education landscape is shifting with an increased push for school privatization.
Our reporting has identified big differences in how states regulate who can run a school, what they must teach and where they can hold class. While some require new private school operators to prove they’re on the up-and-up, others invite anyone with a dream and a heartbeat to get into the business. ProPublica even founded a couple this year.
I could write here about how almost a fifth of women surveyed by Durex said using a sex toy was the most dependable way for them to climax. Or I could point out how Kinsey Institute research suggests regular masturbation can help relieve and prevent symptoms of menopause, such as vaginal atrophy. I could even tell you that studies demonstrate a significant correlation between intimate toy ownership and greater satisfaction – not only with sex but also with life itself.
But the potted version is that orgasms and erotic pleasure are glorious, and top-class toys can help you savour more of both. So here are the best vibrators available. Scroll to the bottom to find out how I selected these vibrators from the 67 I tested for this piece.
Henry Ford’s 1926 policy held for decades before eroding into a 24/7 mindset. Here’s what we can do about it
It was a Saturday. In fact, the Saturday.
Almost exactly a century ago, on 25 September 1926, Henry Ford instituted a policy of weekends for his workforce. Although various labor campaigns had existed for decades to try to carve out what we now call the weekend, this was the first widespread adoption.
What happened to Pike was gruesome. No one deserves what she went through, not even those who commit horrible crimes
Botched executions are nothing new in US history. In the era when hangings were common, some condemned people were decapitated. Later, when the electric chair was in vogue, every now and again, someone would catch fire during an electrocution. And nitrogen hypoxia, the US’s newest execution method, has already proven notoriously unreliable.
But, of all of the ways we have tried to execute people, lethal injection has the worst track record. More than 8% of all lethal injection executions have been botched. Most of them resulted when those charged with carrying them out could not find a usable vein.
Andrea Bell, director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, at a groundbreaking ceremony in 2025 Oregon Housing and Community Services
As head of Oregon’s housing finance agency, Andrea Bell oversees a lot of taxpayer money.
Oregon Housing and Community Services has handed developers more than $1.4 billion in state funding to build rent-restricted apartments over the last five years — and even more counting federal tax credits the agency allocates.
Bell’s husband, Joshua Crites, works as a director for the consulting firm JH Brawner, which helps local housing authorities develop subsidized apartment projects that receive a lot of money from Bell’s agency.
The company lists offices in Oregon, Washington and Arizona and says it has played a role in creating 20,000 low-income housing units that cost $3 billion to develop. JH Brawner’s Oregon work includes consulting on two housing authority projects that applied for or were awarded tens of millions of dollars collectively from Bell’s agency since her husband started working for the company. (JH Brawner gets paid by the housing authority rather than the state.)
But Bell didn’t do either until ProPublica asked her about it.
A spokesperson for Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat whose predecessor appointed Bell in 2022, told ProPublica that the governor’s office had “not been notified of any potential or actual conflict of interest.”
The closest Bell came to a disclosure was in 2025 with this vague note with a misspelling: “Spouse serves in an advisory role for a developmen.” It did not name a company but instead showed a misspelled street address, with no suite number, for JH Brawner’s office in Issaquah, Washington, a commercial building with multiple tenants.
Bell filed amended economic disclosures for the last three years on Sept. 23, the day that ProPublica asked her why she did not disclose her husband’s employer. The new forms explicitly name the consulting firm.
“I take concerns about my statement of economic interests (SEI) seriously and am committed to transparency, accountability, and compliance with state law,” Bell said in a statement.
She did not respond when asked whether she had played any role in her agency’s decisions regarding projects the company worked on. A spokesperson said housing subsidies are approved first by an internal committee that does not include Bell and then are reviewed by another group, the Housing Stability Council, which Bell does not serve on.
The spokesperson, LeiLani Barney, told ProPublica to file a formal records request to learn who’s on the internal committee. Bell advises the housing council as it sets policy and makes funding decisions, according to the agency’s website.
Neither JH Brawner nor Crites, the firm’s director of strategic initiatives, responded to messages seeking comment.
Three former officials familiar with state ethics laws told ProPublica that Bell’s lack of disclosure was a problem that merited review to see whether she influenced any government decisions that benefited her husband’s company.
Russell Lehman, a retired administrative law judge who served on Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission from 2019 to 2021, said Bell appeared to have violated the law, even if she later corrected her mistake.
Lehman said he would want to know: “Why did it take a reporter asking you about it to have you file your reports?”
“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need ProPublica for this kind of thing,” Lehman said.
Kotek’s spokesperson called for an evaluation by the state’s ethics commission.
“The Governor holds all agency leadership to consistent and high ethical standards and any question on conflict of interest should be referred to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for thorough review,” Kotek’s spokesperson said in a statement.
Bell told ProPublica in a statement that she had sought an advisory opinion from the commission at the governor’s urging and that she had updated her ethics disclosures “to provide clarity.”
Money from Bell’s department plays an essential role in helping to build apartment projects intended to be affordable, channeling state funding and federal tax credits in order to reduce developers’ costs so they can charge lower rents.
JH Brawner, where Bell’s husband works, advises public housing authorities that are putting together subsidized housing deals.
The company’s responsibilities have included negotiating acquisitions, structuring deals, ensuring project appraisals are completed and collaborating with the state agency that Bell leads.
Crites joined JH Brawner in 2023 after jobs with local housing authorities in Oregon, Washington and Ohio. He and Bell own a home together in the Portland suburbs, records show.
JH Brawner says on its website that it worked in Oregon as a development and financial consultant on Park Place, a 200-unit project being built by the housing authority in Clackamas County with $36 million in state funding. Another project in Washington County, Aloha 209th, is awaiting a $17.5 million subsidy from the state.
A spokesperson for Clackamas County said the housing authority there “did not advocate or discuss the Park Place project or application with Andrea Bell” and that the county hired JH Brawner as a consultant before Crites joined the firm.
The company was involved in two other state-backed projects for Washington County that were well into the financing process before Crites started working for JH Brawner. Work continued on both as recently as last year, according to JH Brawner’s website.
Bell’s agency adopted a new policy in 2024 that effectively reduces its discretion over which projects get funded, moving from a competitive bidding model to one that gives money to eligible projects in the order that applications were received.
But at least one developer has asked Bell’s agency to exercise its discretion. The housing authority in Washington County in suburban Portland, which is using JH Brawner as a consultant on the Aloha 209th project, is not due to get its $17.5 million from the state until at least 2028.
Molly Rogers, executive director of the county’s housing authority, said in a June public meeting that she had contacted Bell about the project and the county’s desire to get state money sooner.
“She’s open to having a discussion, which is great,” Rogers said.
Rogers did not respond when asked, via a spokesperson, to comment about her public remarks, and Bell did not respond when asked to comment on Rogers’ account.
Pat Hearn, who served as the ethics commission’s director for nearly two decades, said he advised state leaders “to stay as far away from the line as possible, not to get as close as they can without crossing it.”
In Bell’s case, he said, “It’s just too close, especially since we know that the agency has approved funding for these projects that the husband’s company has advised on.”
Bell’s situation is the second conflict-of-interest issue Oregon housing officials have faced in the last year.
In December, a state investigation revealed that an appointee to Oregon’s Housing Stability Council, the body that approves housing subsidies, had violated a state conflict-of-interest law by voting to award money to projects designed by the architecture firm where she worked.
(The appointee, who later resigned, told an investigator she believed she had followed high ethical standards and had recused herself from voting on projects she worked on. The commission gave her a warning letter.)
Beijing aims to provide artificial intelligence education in all of the country’s schools by 2030, while demand for AI-themed study tours surged this summer.
The rightwing media mogul has lost ground to the likes of Pat McAfee and Joe Rogan. He’s hoping his new venture can recapture some headway
When Maga media blowhard Clay Travis offered $2m to Colin Kaepernick last week to appear on the daily talkshow he hosts with former CIA analyst Buck Sexton, it represented the culmination of a years-long obsession on the right with the onetime NFL star. In Travis’s telling of history, Kaepernick taking a knee during the 2016 NFL season was the event that catalyzed professional sports into the era of “woke” excess from which, he claims, it has been struggling to recover ever since.
But more than simply confirming the right’s longstanding villainization of Kaepernick, Travis’s offer was also a smarmy bid for publicity for his new media venture, Sport & State. Sport & State, which launched in August, is Travis’s bid to get back to his roots as a media mogul who sold the wildly popular Outkick to Fox Sports for a rumored $100m, and reclaim some of the cultural territory lost to fellow sports bros and Magagitators like Pat McAfee, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. But if there’s one thing Sport & State won’t be doing, it’s engaging with anyone beyond the Magaverse. There has been no response from Kaepernick since Travis made his “offer” of $2m to charity in exchange for an interview, which suggests he understands that it was extended more in a spirit of trolling buffoonery than sincerity. No one associated with the left or progressive politics ever appears on Travis’s shows, for the simple reason that they are designed purely for the right to talk to itself. (Some would say the same could be said of the left, although the disregard for dissenting perspectives in the Magasphere seems way more extreme.) More than it heralds a renewal of Travis’s career or an injection of fresh energy into the Trumpist mediasphere, Sport & State is a case study in the stagnation that has taken hold on the right as Donald Trump stares down the barrel of defeat in November’s midterm elections.
Pike alive but in critical condition as experts call ordeal that unfolded in Tennessee ‘unimaginably barbaric’
Top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community are calling for a moratorium on the US death penalty after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike left the prisoner alive but in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care.
The recent spate of harrowingly botched executions across US death penalty states reached a new low late on Wednesday when Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, called off the procedure after Pike had been injected with two full syringes of pentobarbital. She is the only person to have survived being administered 5g of the sedative – a massive dose that under normal circumstances is considered fatal.
Up to 300mm of rain could fall in places, while extreme downpours bring landslides and deaths in Nepal
Torrential rain and potentially damaging flooding are forecast in eastern Spain over the coming days, as cold upper air moves over the warm, humid surface air of the Mediterranean Sea, fuelling violent, slow-moving thunderstorms near Spain’s east coast. The weather pattern, known as a Dana, occurs most often in autumn.
Models show more than 100mm of rain could fall across the region on Friday, with 200-300mm possible in some areas. Cities including Valencia and Castelló de la Plana, are most at risk. Valencia has experienced several damaging floods in recent years. Catalonia has now put three towns under lockdown and Valencia has shut schools for nearly half a million children.
Artwork created in Tahrir Squarefor Chinese president’s state visit to Egypt is painted over amid allegations it revived Afrocentric claims about pharaohs’ origins
On the eve of the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to Cairo last month, the city authorities were busy removing a 66-metre-long mural from the esteemed guest’s line of sight.
Depicting the Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti, the painting was among 40 murals commissioned to beautify the city for Xi’s arrival and was painted by a group of young volunteers, Rasmet Basma, in Tahrir Square.
Smit Machchhar says in video call with Indian PM that he realised if he did not get up ‘passengers would lose their lives’
The Indian pilot who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv said his faith and his desire to save his passengers allowed him to make a “last push” to open the cockpit door as he fought for his life.
Capt Smit Machchhar, who was recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, described to India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, how he helped save the plane and its more than 170 passengers.
People describe their return to physical media – whether to protect data, support artists, or retain control of one’s choices
For some, it is the security of knowing they have a physical copy of their favourite films and music, free from algorithms, interruptions and the vagaries of streaming. For others, it is the sound of needle on vinyl, the click of a cassette player and the ability to interact with a physical format.
We asked people if they were moving back to CDs, DVDs, vinyl and older formats to escape algorithmically curated content. Here are some of their responses.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has informed more than 100 organizations about incidents involving unauthorized activity tied to its AI agents, according to a blog post by the ChatGPT maker, as AI labs face mounting scrutiny over rogue AI agent activity. Here are some other details:
- The Sam Altman-led company has been conducting a broad review of the activities of its AI models after the accidental hacking of Hugging Face. - OpenAI is searching through roughly 50 petabytes of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity. - A string of high-profile breaches globally by rogue AI agents in recent months has sparked widespread worries within the AI industry over its ability to control the more powerful AI models now under development. - "In some cases, models used internet access in unintended ways or, in retrospect, did not have the ideal restrictions applied. Over the last several months, we have been applying new technical and operational measures to avoid similar problems, or catch them very early, and will continue this work," OpenAI said. - OpenAI previously said the review would take months to complete given the scale of the work. - The Hugging Face incident remains the most severe rogue agent activity OpenAI has identified from its AI models so far.
In today’s newsletter: When a passenger plane plunges 17,000ft amid claims of terrorism, hijacking and geopolitical intrigue, Guardian journalists have to try and separate fact from fiction in real time
Good morning. Shocking news of a cockpit stabbing. Graphic footage of bloodied crew members. Mid-air testimony from terrified passengers.
This was the tenor of the heart-in-mouth reporting as the horrifying events unfolded onboard flight FZ 1073 to Tel Aviv: the early morning budget flight that plummeted 17,000ft in under two minutes before the courageous intervention of passengers and crew averted an apparent hijacking, potentially saving the lives of not just the 170+ passengers and crew on board, but many more.
UK politics | Ministers are working up sweeping plans for welfare changes including scrapping a key disability benefit for under-25s and replacing it with a multibillion-pound package of support to get into work.
Northern Ireland | Talks aimed at resolving the Drumcree parade dispute have broken up without agreement, with Northern Ireland secretary Chris Bryant describing the situation as being between a “rock and a hard place”.
US news | Tennessee’s governor has suspended all executions in the state and ordered an independent inquiry after a botched attempt to put a condemned inmate to death on Wednesday night.
AI | When prompted, AI chat bots will edit images to remove the hijabs from Muslim women, a violation of one of the world’s most common and visible expressions of faith.
Europe news | A fast-growing protest by high-school students over long hours, teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government has warned.
A driftwood vulture looms. Faces and eyes peer from the walls and from a cauldron. Landscapes of rainbow ice surround you. Have you entered another dimension? Nay, mortal! But you have made the wise decision to visit the Newark Arts…
Szmyt hits career-long kick with 10 seconds remaining
Cleveland improve to 3-1 after surviving Pittsburgh rally
Rodgers throws three TDs but two costly interceptions
Deshaun Watson passed for 268 yards and moved the Browns into position for Andre Szmyt’s career-long 56-yard field goal with 10 seconds remaining, giving Cleveland a 27-24 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night.
Watson, who completed 24 of 33 passes with a touchdown and an interception, went 4 of 5 for 46 yards as he led a go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter for the third straight week.
CBS News has examined hundreds of pages of transcripts from the Title IX investigation conducted by Cornell University into the allegations made by a former student who claims she was drugged and gang-raped at a fraternity house.
Los Angeles, CA — The Justice Department says UCLA School of Law illegally discriminated against white and Asian applicants by continuing to consider race in admissions after the Supreme Court restricted race-conscious college admissions in 2023.
The department’s Civil Rights Division said its investigation found that UCLA Law used what officials described as a “two-tiered admissions system” for incoming classes from 2023 through 2025. DOJ said applicants with similar LSAT scores were treated differently depending on race and alleged that essays and recruitment programs were used to encourage applicants to disclose racial backgrounds.
UCLA disputes that characterization. The law school says its admissions process is comprehensive, merit-based and compliant with federal law as well as California’s longstanding prohibition on racial preferences at public universities.
The finding is part of a broader Trump administration campaign targeting university diversity and admissions policies. The Justice Department has previously made similar accusations involving UCLA’s medical school and UC Berkeley Law, while launching investigations into additional universities.
DOJ says it will first seek a voluntary agreement requiring changes to UCLA Law’s admissions practices. If negotiations fail, the department says it could file a lawsuit to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Speculation that Flávio Bolsonaro will try to strip Our Lady of Aparecida of position could become deciding factor in run-up to Sunday
A row of Biblical proportions has erupted in the run-up to Brazil’s presidential election, with the country’s patron saint, Our Lady of Aparecida, emerging as an unlikely kingmaker in the deadlocked race.
Ahead of Sunday’s vote, the two frontrunners – the leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his far-right challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro – are level in the polls.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday said that she had lost faith in the county district attorney’s ability to fairly oversee the case and had appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor.
Michael Harris II hit a three-run homer in the first inning, Ray Kerr threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings and the Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-2 on Thursday night in the decisive Game 3 of their National League wildcard series.
Ozzie Albies hit a two-run homer in the fourth and Matt Olson added a solo shot in the seventh for the Braves, who advance to a best-of-five Division Series against the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
fjo3 shares a report from The Guardian: Communities across California are rushing to prepare for the imminent arrival of the so-called "Kelvin wave," a massive underwater band of warm water threatening to inundate swaths of the vast North American shoreline. The wave is nearing southern California and expected to reach the San Francisco Bay Area by early October, as it crawls toward Alaska. Waters could rise by a foot along the California coast, according to scientists, who have warned that this could dramatically double the 8-12in rise in sea levels already caused by climate change over the last century.
The Kelvin wave doesn't climb and crash like a typical ocean wave; rather, it swells the tides from beneath the surface. It's effectively a massive slosh of warm water, driven by El Nino conditions, that moves across the Pacific before colliding with the South American coastline and surging north. It also won't transport water in the way a tsunami might, but creates conditions that enable higher sea levels to linger. On their own, Kelvin waves aren't always hazardous, according to Mike Jacox, a research oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service, though they can reduce the growth of phytoplankton that form the base of the marine food web. "But when there are very high tides or storm surges, their effects can be amplified," he said.
If the rising waters coincide with other climatic events, such as rainstorms and high tides, the phenomenon could swallow beaches, chew away bluffs and coastlines, and submerge streets, homes and businesses. "This coming Kelvin wave is just the beginning," said Dr Jonathan Warrick, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey. "The thing to look out for is what will happen in January, February and March -- that's when we get the biggest storms, we get our largest waves and we have some very large tides." If these events align, their effects will compound, setting the stage for a tumultuous winter. Together, Warrick said, the systems will pack a far bigger punch. "When it comes to these storms and the tides," he said, "we really are kind of rolling the dice."
Four astronauts pulled up at International Space Station after eight-hour express flight led by Jessica Watkins
Four astronauts pulled up at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday after launching on an eight-hour express that set a US speed record, and that created further history with the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit.
SpaceX launched commander Jessica Watkins and her crew for Nasa after a three-week delay to fix their Dragon capsule’s leaking fuel system. Thick clouds threatened all morning to halt the countdown but skies cleared enough to allow a safe liftoff from Cape Canaveral at 11.10am (1510 GMT).
Ithaca, NY — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has removed the Tompkins County district attorney from the investigation into an alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University, appointing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor after saying she had lost confidence in the local handling of the case.
The case involves a former Cornell student identified as Jane Doe, who alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. No criminal charges were initially filed, although the woman later brought a civil lawsuit detailing allegations that prompted renewed scrutiny.
District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced this week that he would reopen the investigation, but Hochul said newly released information raised serious questions about both Cornell police and his office’s earlier decision not to prosecute.
James will now oversee the investigation independently and can present evidence to a grand jury if she determines charges are warranted. She said her office would follow the facts and law and conduct a process New Yorkers can trust.
Cornell has also retained outside attorneys to review how the university handled the allegations. Attorneys representing some of the accused men have denied wrongdoing.
The appointment effectively shifts control of one of New York’s highest-profile campus sexual-assault investigations from local prosecutors to the state attorney general.
Saleem Alzaq, a 45-year-old Gaza man who prosecutors allege is a longtime Hamas member, was charged with helping operate the fundraising campaign claiming to provide humanitarian aid, according to an indictment.
The closure comes after months of reporting from CBS California Investigates on allegations that Bee & Co. employees targeted vulnerable shoppers and pressured them into purchasing expensive skin care products and devices.
The White House has, again, blocked CNN from covering Donald Trump as part of the rotating press pool.
The outlet was scheduled to be a part of the group of media traveling to Texas and Oklahoma with the president today, but was removed from list of newsrooms in place for the trip, per the White House schedule.
Sacramento, CA — California has banned child marriage without exceptions, becoming the 18th state to completely prohibit minors from marrying after years of unsuccessful attempts to close one of the nation’s most permissive legal loopholes.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1267, which establishes 18 as the minimum age for both marriage and domestic partnerships. Previously, California had no statutory minimum marriage age, allowing minors to marry with parental consent and court approval. The legislation passed with bipartisan support and no opposition in the Legislature.
Advocates have argued that minors entering marriages face increased risks of coercion, abuse and financial dependence. California officials estimate roughly 35,000 minors were married in the state between 2000 and 2021.
Newsom signed the bill alongside survivors and advocates, including Courtney Stodden, who was 16 when she married 50-year-old actor Doug Hutchison in 2011. Stodden has since described the relationship as exploitative and advocated nationally for ending child marriage.
The new law contains no parental, judicial or pregnancy exceptions. Newsom called the prohibition “long overdue,” while advocates with Unchained At Last said they intend to continue pushing for similar bans in the remaining states.
EU Copernicus report shows surface air temperatures from June to August were 2.5C above decadal average
The scorching heat that persistently baked western Europe this summer was the worst on record, a report has found, with more than half the continent seared by “very strong” heat stress that felt hotter than 38C.
Surface air temperatures in western Europe from June to August were 2.5C above the recent decadal average, according to an update from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring service on Friday, while milder but still deadly heat across the rest of the continent made the summer Europe’s third hottest on record.
Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports on this Sunday’s historic presidential elections in Brazil, as the son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro hopes to take power
You would have been forgiven for thinking that when Jair Bolsonaro was convicted in September 2025 of attempting a coup, his political career was finished and his legacy forever tainted.
But in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections this Sunday, another Bolsonaro has genuine hopes of victory – not Jair, but his son Flávio, who ialso campaigning to have his father released released.
Trustworthy AI-enabled scientific discovery depends on software, people, institutions and community action.
Oct. 1, 2026 — Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing scientific computing rapidly. AI systems can now generate and analyze code, synthesize information, assist with hypothesis generation and carry out complex reasoning tasks within scientific workflows. Alongside advances in computing architectures and data-intensive research, these capabilities are reshaping how scientific work is conducted.
Participants at the Toward Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing workshop.
But the challenge for the scientific community is not simply to make research faster. It is to build scientific computing ecosystems that can harness these capabilities while preserving rigor, transparency, accountability and human judgment — and enabling new forms of collaboration and discovery.
That was the focus of the 2026 Toward Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing workshop, held April 14–16 in Chicago. The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners from universities, national laboratories, industry and other organizations to consider how scientific computing ecosystems should evolve as AI becomes a more active participant in research.
The workshop was the second in a three-year series organized by Lois Curfman McInnes and collaborators as part of her 2024 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellowship. Building on the first workshop in 2025, this year’s discussions moved from identifying challenges toward developing strategic priorities and actions for the community.
The resulting report, “Toward Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science,” identifies four interdependent strategic themes: software ecosystems for AI-enabled scientific discovery; trust, validation and traceability; human-AI teaming and paradigm shifts; and workforce, pedagogy and governance.
Four interdependent themes, their motivating drivers, and the anticipated outcomes.
Designing Ecosystems That Can Evolve
The report uses the term ecosystem in a broad sense, encompassing the technical, social and organizational structures that shape scientific computing — from hardware, software, data and workflows to people, institutions, incentives and community practices. The goal is to create an environment that can adapt as scientific needs and technologies change.
This perspective is important as AI evolves from being a tool used by researchers toward becoming an active participant in scientific workflows. As this happens, questions about validation, provenance, accountability and the role of human expertise become more pressing.
The workshop identified four areas where this evolution will be especially important.
Building Sustainable Software Ecosystems
Essential to the development of effective software ecosystems are shared research assets. These involve far more than providing access to computing facilities. Shared research assets include reusable software, datasets, metadata, workflows, benchmarks, validation examples and documentation. These assets capture knowledge, context, assumptions and computational approaches in forms that can be reused across projects and communities.
These shared assets can help researchers understand, extend and validate complex workflows, particularly as AI, accelerator-based computing and emerging technologies become increasingly interconnected. The report also emphasizes the importance of usability: helping researchers identify appropriate methods and their limitations for addressing a scientific problem.
Making Trust and Traceability Part of the Design
The report calls for trust-related capabilities — including verification, validation, uncertainty quantification, provenance, traceability, transparency and auditability — to become core design requirements.
As AI-enabled workflows move from exploratory use of AI to scientific analysis and decision-making, traditional approaches to verification, validation and uncertainty quantification may not be sufficient. These approaches must be extended with methods tailored to hybrid workflows that combine mechanistic models, numerical methods, AI systems, surrogate models and human judgment.
Scientific software presents special challenges regarding trust requirements. Such software can run without producing an obvious technical error and still generate scientifically misleading results. Conventional tests may not detect these situations, particularly when AI is rapidly generating or modifying software code. The workshop participants stressed the need for new mathematically and statistically grounded approaches to evaluating AI-enabled scientific workflows.
Moving from Taskwork to Teamwork
The report distinguishes between taskwork — the activities needed to accomplish a particular goal — and teamwork, which concerns how people and AI systems coordinate effectively toward that goal. As AI takes on more taskwork, effective teamwork becomes increasingly important.
Adding more agents to tasks does not automatically improve a workflow. Human researchers remain essential for framing scientific questions, combining domain and computational knowledge, evaluating evidence, managing uncertainty and interpreting unexpected results. The appropriate balance between automation and human involvement will depend on the task, with higher-risk or higher-consequence activities requiring greater transparency, validation and human judgment.
The workshop report also emphasizes the importance of giving early-career researchers practical experience with human-AI teamwork through fellowships, internships, apprenticeships and cross-sector research projects.
Preparing a Workforce for Continual Change
The skills needed for scientific computing are changing alongside the technology. Training therefore needs to extend beyond programming to include critical thinking, evaluation of evidence, reasoning under uncertainty, verification, reproducibility, communication and responsible use of AI-enabled tools.
The report’s workforce roadmap emphasizes multiple pathways for students, practitioners and institutional leaders, recognizing that people enter scientific computing at different stages and in different roles.
Training roadmap for AI-enabled scientific computing workforce.
Rather than preparing people for a particular generation of tools, the goal is to develop competencies that remain valuable as technologies evolve. The workshop also identified a need to understand how AI may change scientific roles, behavior, institutions and career pathways over time.
From Workshop Themes to Community Action
The central message of the workshop report is that the longstanding ecosystem challenges intensified by AI cannot be addressed by individual projects or organizations acting alone. Building effective scientific ecosystems will require coordination among researchers, universities, national laboratories, the private sector, funders and professional societies.
Based on the opportunities and needs presented under the four themes, the report identifies eight areas for community action. Near-term efforts should strengthen shared research assets, trust infrastructure, human-AI teaming practices and incentives for scientific software stewardship. Pilot projects should explore new approaches for coordinating multiple AI agents and multiple institutions while also investigating ways to help users make better-informed choices throughout research workflows. Longitudinal studies should examine how AI affects the workplace, professional roles and team behavior and should evaluate whether AI-enabled ecosystems improve scientific and engineering practice.
Building Better Science, Not Simply Faster Science
AI can accelerate parts of scientific work, but speed alone is not progress. The relevant question is whether AI-enabled ecosystems support valid, interpretable and creative discovery. Meeting that standard requires more than technical capability: software, data, people, institutions, incentives and community practices must evolve together through feedback, adaptation and stewardship.
As the report concludes, “Done well, these ecosystems can accelerate discovery and expand scientific inquiry while preserving the rigor, transparency, accountability and collaboration on which progress and public benefit depend.”
The complete workshop report, Toward Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science, L. C. McInnes et al., is available for download: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.26519.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s 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.
Christa Pike is critically ill in a Nashville hospital after surviving two attempts by Tennessee to execute her by lethal injection, her lawyers say. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in the 1990s for a murder she committed as a teenager, with her lawyers saying she has a blood disorder that made it difficult to establish an intravenous line. Pike’s lawyer Randy Spivey says Tennessee has again demonstrated it is unable to carry out an execution with 'basic human dignity'
Officials in Wyoming had called notion to host game in Grand Teton national park ‘deeply unwelcome’
Major League Baseball (MLB) leadership is no longer considering holding a game inside a national park, according to a letter commissioner Robert Manfred sent to officials in Teton county, Wyoming, on Thursday in what could be the league’s biggest swing-and-a-miss off the diamond.
On 26 September, the Washington Post reported that MLB had reached out to the White House about staging a one-day game at Grand Teton national park in Wyoming. Teton county describes itself as a “a year-round resort community” and sits within the Jackson Hole valley. It’s also a habitat for grizzly bears, osprey, bison and more.
New York attorney general brought in by governor after recent questions raised over university’s 2024 investigation
Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, said on Thursday she is appointing Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, as special prosecutor to investigate the alleged gang-rape at Cornell University.
“The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued,” Hochul said in a statement. “This action will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias, and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands.”
Jay Clayton will likely be the White House's pick for AI czar, and the Trump administration has been discussing having him remain in his current role as director of national intelligence, according to sources briefed on the matter.
Nashville, TN — Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn is calling for Tennessee to restore the electric chair after the state failed to execute Christa Pike despite administering two doses of pentobarbital.
Pike, 50, remained alive after Wednesday’s lethal-injection attempt and was transported to a Nashville hospital in critical condition. Witnesses reported that she continued breathing, spoke about pain in her arm and at one point lifted her head after execution drugs had been administered.
Blackburn, the Republican nominee for governor, called the episode “tragic” and said it prolonged the suffering of the family of Colleen Slemmer, whom Pike murdered in 1995. Blackburn said Tennessee should conduct a full review but argued that the solution is to “bring back the electric chair.”
Gov. Bill Lee instead suspended remaining executions this year and ordered an independent investigation into what went wrong.
The failure is particularly significant because Tennessee already experienced another unsuccessful execution attempt this year. In May, officials abandoned the execution of Tony Carruthers after struggling to establish intravenous access.
Pike’s attorneys say Wednesday’s problems were predictable because they had previously warned about her medical conditions and difficult vein access. They are now seeking commutation of her death sentence.
The incident has renewed debate over whether Tennessee can reliably carry out executions under its current lethal-injection protocol.
Alongside a refreshed Kindle lineup, Amazon today introduced two accessories that bring physical buttons back to its touchscreen e-readers. The $34.99 Kindle Click is a Bluetooth remote that lets readers turn pages and adjust brightness without touching the device, while a new $79.99 magnetic cover is available for select Paperwhite and Colorsoft models. GeekWire reports: Amazon says [the Kindle Click is] meant for reading under the covers, on a treadmill, or on an airplane tray table. It's available for preorder and ships Oct. 28. It recharges over USB-C, includes side buttons for adjusting brightness, and works with Kindles released in 2024 or later. The company cited BookTok as an inspiration, Bloomberg reported, a reference to the community of readers on TikTok who post book recommendations, reviews and their reading setups. Kindle fans there have been showing off third-party clickers for years.
Amazon is also bringing back physical page-turn buttons, which disappeared when the company discontinued the Kindle Oasis in 2024. This time they come in a separate $79.99 magnetic cover, which works only with the new Signature Edition versions of the Paperwhite and Colorsoft. The new Kindles have screens that sit flush with the edges, colors that wrap around to the front, and optional aluminum housings. They also have user-replaceable batteries to comply with European Union rules, Amazon told The Verge.
The base Kindle starts at $149.99, or $189.99 in aluminum. The Paperwhite starts at $199.99 and the Colorsoft at $289.99, with Signature Editions at $249.99 and $319.99. Those prices match what Amazon has charged since August, when it raised Kindle prices by $40 to $50, citing memory and storage costs. The base Kindle is available now. The Paperwhite and Colorsoft ship Oct. 28.
As the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration draws pushback from some GOP lawmakers, White House border czar Tom Homan told CBS News critics should "educate themselves."
A New Castle County Police Department officer who shot a murder suspect during a standoff near Newark three years ago has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Attorneys for Christa Pike, who survived an attempt by the state of Tennessee to put her to death, say they warned that her execution could be botched in exactly the way it was.
New project supported by the National Science Foundation will create coast-to-coast infrastructure to address fundamental questions across the life sciences
Oct. 1, 2026 — Researchers at the University of California San Diego have received new research funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to design and build an observatory that will allow researchers to reveal some of life’s smallest structures in three dimensions, which will empower new discoveries in neuroscience and the basic biology of life.
The National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at UC San Diego School of Medicine is an international resource for microscopy expertise. A recent $19 million award from the National Science Foundation will fund a new partnership between NCMIR, University of Vermont, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center to create a national biological observatory. Credit: UC Dan Diego Health Sciences
The new initiative will establish a National Connectomics and Ultrastructure Volume Observatory (NCUVO), the goal of which is to make imaging capabilities — now concentrated in a handful of specialized laboratories — accessible to scientists across the country studying biology, medicine and the life sciences. The project will integrate advanced high-performance electron microscopy, artificial intelligence, advanced computing and powerful data networks to create a system that converts biological samples to usable scientific data, enabling researchers to study biological systems at larger scales and with greater completeness.
The five-year, $19 million facility construction project will be led and coordinated by neuroscientist Davi Bock, PhD, at the University of Vermont (UVM), with UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Neurosciences and Bioengineering Mark Ellisman, PhD, serving as co-principal investigator alongside Doug Taatjes, PhD, director of UVM’s Microscopy Imaging Center. Approximately $15.68 million of the new funding will directly support procurement of advanced tools and new staff recruitment for the project at UVM and $3.32 million will fund the utilization of shared advanced imaging and high-performance computing resources at UC San Diego.
Coordinated from UVM’s Larner College of Medicine, the effort will establish and integrate state-of-the-art high-throughput electron microscopy at UVM, expertise in sample preparation and complementary advanced microscopy techniques at UC San Diego’s National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), and data management and processing in conjunction with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing.
“The NCUVO design is about transforming the latest sample preparation, multimodal imaging and computational technologies into a shared national capability rather than a specialty only available to a few,” said Ellisman, who directs the NCMIR. “At NCMIR, we will help to provide the means to turn raw microscopy image data into something that can be interpreted to advance our understanding of biological processes. By combining these capabilities with UVM’s new imaging instruments and SDSC’s resources for advanced cyberinfrastructure, we can empower scientists around the country to complete studies that compare many samples at different levels of detail.”
In addition to establishing the infrastructure for this next generation of imaging, the project will generate millions of gigabytes of data. Ilkay Altintas, PhD, chief data science officer at the SDSC and principal investigator of the NSF-funded National Data Platform, will guide the project’s data curation efforts. Her team will bring expertise in organizing, processing and sharing large scientific datasets, connecting the observatory’s images with NSF-supported national computing resources.
“We’re excited to help shape this important research infrastructure, which will make advanced biological imaging more accessible and open new windows into how living systems process information,” said Altintas. “Drawing on the expertise of the SDSC and the capabilities of the National Data Platform, UC San Diego will help the imaging community design and validate scalable, reproducible workflows that connect imaging data with the computing power needed to turn these remarkable images into new discoveries.”
Once the observatory is established, four pilot projects will test how well it will handle research using different organisms, sample sizes and scientific needs:
One project being used to shape the construction of the new observatory will examine how connections in the mouse hippocampus, a brain region important for memory, change following learning. Working with Ellisman’s team at UC San Diego and Anton Maximov’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute, scientists will trace circuits involving neurons and their synapses marked as active in establishing a new memory.
Another pilot project will compare retinal circuitry across species to investigate how visual systems suit different environments. Bock points to sharks navigating murky versus clear water as an example of the questions such comparisons could address.
The third and fourth projects will focus on single-celled organisms, including one to study how the parasite Toxoplasma gondii crosses the blood-brain barrier to cause toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease spread through contaminated food and cat litter.
The five-year effort will culminate in a tested design, pilot datasets and an implementation plan for operation of the infrastructure as a facility for the nation – a true national observatory. Education is also a key part of the project, with undergraduate teaching materials and training opportunities planned around the pilot data to ensure that these new scientific resources are not just available, but that scientists know how to use them.
“There is so much about the natural world that we don’t fully understand, but to unlock those secrets research efforts must occur at a much greater scale,” said Bock. “That’s what the new observatory will do.”
While these pilot projects will produce more fundamental breakthroughs in biology, these discoveries also have the potential to reshape our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and, eventually, help scientists discover tomorrow’s medicines.
“You can’t predict what we’ll find. And that’s the point,” added Bock. “Our country has historically invested in basic research for this reason, the unpredicted discoveries.”
This story was adapted from a press release originally published by the University of Vermont.
Rock band will still tour the UK, Europe and US over the next year but say decision to ‘fall dormant’ feels ‘liberating’
The British rock band Enter Shikari have announced they will go on hiatus at the end of 2027, a decision that may result in the band’s “extinction”.
The St Albans band, who formed in 1999 as Hybryd, are due to tour the UK in November, Europe and the US next year, and said they hoped to play some of their favourite places “one last time”.
After five years of work, 5,750 panels of toughened glass will help keep hundred of plants safe from Scottish winters – but more work needs to be done
In the early autumn sunlight, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s extensive plant collection appears safe in their glass enclosures. But danger lurks from above for the tropical ferns, cycads and rare alpine heathers.
Soon the September sunshine will give way to the storms and gales of the Scottish winter, which can bring hundreds of glass panels crashing to the greenhouse floor on the windiest days. Nobody is allowed inside when the wind is above 30mph.
Bruce66423 shares a report from The Telegraph: British police forces, including specialist units within the Metropolitan Police, have used Oxygen Forensics software to break into the phones of suspects during live investigations, public documents show. The Virginia-based company behind the software has been accused in the US of having hidden its Russian ownership to avoid sanctions, before it was awarded government contracts. Its American chief executive and a Russian national were arrested last week after a US investigation found the company had sought to hide its ownership in an alleged attempt to avoid sanctions and scrutiny.
[...] By September 2024, the US Secret Service had awarded Oxygen a five-year contract for its software. In December 2022, and in October 2023, Oxygen's chief executive told the US government that Oxygen Forensics had "no immediate or highest-level owner." By September 2024, the US Secret Service had awarded Oxygen a five-year contract for its software. In March, Mr Reiber allegedly told the US government that there had been no Russians involved in developing the software and that no one in Russia had access to the environment in which it was built. US prosecutors say this was false. If convicted, both Mr Reiber and Mr Davydov could face a sentence of 20 years in prison.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced in July that President Trump had fired Roger Rogoff as the U.S. attorney in Seattle, less than an hour after he was sworn into the post.
New system captures fingerprints, facial images and ID information while connecting customers with remote agents for assistance
DOVER, Del. — Delawareans who need fingerprints for employment, licensing, background checks and other purposes will see a different process beginning Monday, Oct. 5, as the State Bureau of Identification moves to new SMART-E kiosks at its Dover and Georgetown offices.
The Delaware State Police said SBI will transition fingerprinting services to IDEMIA’s SMART-E Kiosk, replacing the traditional process in which an employee directly operates the fingerprint equipment.
SMART-E stands for Supervised Multi-Acquisition Remote Technology for Enrollment. The system does more than simply take fingerprints: It captures fingerprints, a facial image and identification documents and connects customers with trained remote agents who can supervise the process and provide assistance.
The “multi-acquisition” part of the name reflects the kiosk’s ability to collect several forms of identity information during a single enrollment.
Customers operate the kiosk themselves while a trained agent remotely monitors the process and can communicate through integrated audio and video technology.
What changes for customers
The kiosk guides customers through each step of enrollment, including capturing a full set of 10 fingerprints and a facial image, scanning government-issued identification and processing payment electronically.
IDEMIA says the system has demonstrated a fingerprint rejection rate below 2%, potentially reducing the need to repeat fingerprint submissions because of poor image quality.
Although the system is more automated, customers will not be left entirely on their own. A remote agent can communicate directly with the customer and provide guidance when necessary.
Potential savings in time and money
The new system also changes the economics of running a fingerprinting operation.
Under the traditional model, a trained employee typically works directly with one customer at a fingerprint station. SMART-E uses what IDEMIA describes as a “1-to-many” model, allowing a remote agent to oversee multiple kiosk enrollments rather than requiring a dedicated employee at every station.
IDEMIA says that model can lower labor costs, reduce facility and overhead expenses and make it easier to expand operating hours because remote agents do not have to be physically located at the fingerprinting site.
For customers, the potential time savings come from automating several steps at the same station — identification scanning, fingerprint and facial-image capture and electronic payment — while also checking fingerprint quality during the enrollment process.
The manufacturer describes the system as a way to provide faster and more efficient enrollment and to increase customer throughput. However, Delaware State Police has not released estimates showing how many minutes the new kiosks will save customers or how much money SBI expects to save after implementation.
That distinction matters: The technology is designed to reduce staffing and operating costs and potentially shorten waits, but the actual savings in Delaware will depend on customer volume, staffing and how the kiosks perform once they are in use.
Appointment still required
Customers should register and schedule their fingerprinting appointment through IdentoGO before going to an SBI office.
They also need to obtain the correct service code and any required paperwork from the employer, government agency, licensing organization or other entity requesting the background check.
Customers must bring an accepted form of government-issued identification and should have an electronic payment method available to complete the transaction at the kiosk.
The change is part of SBI’s continuing effort, in partnership with IDEMIA and IdentoGO, to modernize Delaware’s fingerprinting and background-check services.
To Go Box
What: SBI SMART-E fingerprinting kiosks
Begins: Monday, Oct. 5, 2026
Dover: State Bureau of Identification, 600 S. Bay Road, Suite 1, Dover
Georgetown: Thurman Adams Center, 546 S. Bedford St., Georgetown
Before you go: Schedule an appointment, obtain the correct service code and required documents, and bring an accepted government-issued ID and an electronic payment method.
Landlords can no longer refuse pit bulls, rottweilers, dobermans or other breeds considered ‘scary’
Landlords in Washington DC will no longer be able to refuse a tenant’s dog based on its breed, size or weight, nor can they impose special charges related to these factors.
At least, that’s what a new law that took effect on Thursday aims to achieve. Animal welfare organizations and animal shelters applauded the legislation, emphasizing the benefits of reducing barriers to pet ownership in the US capital.
Democratic-led coalition says gutting key protections will set US back decades and worsen climate crisis
States and cities sued the Trump administration on Thursday for repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.
Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The Democratic-led coalition also includes Pennsylvania’s governor, the District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and the city and county of Denver. They argue that “gutting one of the country’s most significant climate protections” will set the nation back decades and worsen the climate crisis.
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service released guidance on the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, giving states more details on the rules and regulations intended to protect scholarship funds from fraud and…
The man allegedly contacted Katie Miller by phone and text over 40 times in around two months and left "disturbing messages about the victim and her husband," the Justice Department said.
Multiple videos shared on TikTok about a sexual assault accusation at a Cornell University fraternity house show dramatic footage of a woman being chased down a hallway and accosted, or dragged into a room. Others show a young male suspect in handcuffs.
But they are at odds with what’s publicly known about the case, including the alleged victim’s own account of the 2024 incident described in a civil lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in New York. There had been no arrests in the case as of Oct. 1, though the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office has reopened the investigation
PolitiFact identified these videos as part of TikTok’s efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)
Videos such as these in an emotionally charged case lead to the spread of misinformation about what happened. So far, there hasn’t been any video of the assault released from officials or in credible news reports.
TikTok videos
Here’s what the TikTok videos show:
One TikTok video about the Cornell case shows a curly haired man being led down a hallway in handcuffs by two police officers. The man seen in the video is a 28-year-old man accused in 2024 of assaulting a teenage girl in San Antonio, Texas, news reports show.
Another TikTok video shows a man dragging a woman (whose face is blurred) across a front porch. That’s not from Cornell, but from a 2019 assault in California captured on a Ring doorbell surveillance video.
Several TikTok videos show a man chasing and attacking a woman in a hallway, or dragging a woman screaming and trying to escape from behind into a room. PolitiFact was unable to find the original videos in those cases, but did find that they have been used before on social media, some as early as November 2025.
The woman being chased in the hallway was used in a May TikTok video about an unrelated missing University of South Florida student. News accounts of that case do not mention videos of a woman being attacked in a hallway.
The video of the woman being dragged into a room from behind was seen in a November 2025 video about a woman killed on a cruise ship, allegedly by her brother. Newscoverage and information released by authorities in that case do not mention a video of that incident.
What the accuser has said
The woman, identified as Jane Doe in her lawsuit against seven Cornell students, said that after a night of drinking in October 2024, she went to the Chi Phi National’s Xi Chapter’s fraternity house, where she said she was led to an upstairs room and pressured into taking ketamine, before eventually being assaulted over several hours by the students.
She did not describe being physically chased down a hallway and attacked, or being dragged from behind into a room she was trying to flee.
The New York Times obtained documents from a university review of the case, and did not mention any video of the assault in the case in an Oct. 1 report.
What police have said
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a Sept. 28 news release that he had been asked by the community to review the decision not to file charges in the case.
That release also did not mention any video evidence of the assault or descriptions that match the TikTok videos.
Our ruling
Several TikTok videos about the Cornell University sexual assault case share dramatic videos of women being attacked or a suspect in handcuffs.
But the videos are from unrelated cases. They do not match descriptions of the Cornell incident by the accuser or police, and no one has been arrested in the case as of Oct. 1.
We rate them Pants on Fire!
Digital Research Program Manager Sara Swann and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
A scene photograph included in the Delaware Department of Justice’s June 28, 2023 report on the Jan. 22, 2023 officer-involved shooting in New Castle County. The DOJ concluded the officers’ use of deadly force was legally justified and declined criminal charges.
State report says three officers reasonably believed deadly force was necessary after confronting armed suspects leaving a New Castle home
NEW CASTLE, Del. — Three New Castle County police officers were legally justified when they opened fire on suspects during a 2023 home invasion response, according to a Delaware Department of Justice investigation.
The Jan. 22, 2023, shooting was not fatal. Two suspects were wounded and survived.
The DOJ’s Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust concluded that Officers Sean Sweeney-Jones, Ryan Archangelo and Alejandro Guillen reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to protect themselves, other officers and nearby residents.
The department determined their actions did not constitute a criminal offense under Delaware law.
Home invasion reported
The incident began about 1:48 a.m. when a resident of 21 West Minuit Drive called 911 and reported that armed people had broken into the home and were attacking his roommates.
When New Castle County police arrived, officers encountered several suspects leaving or attempting to leave the residence.
According to the DOJ report, Alistair DiPasquale was carrying a black HK MP-5 .22-caliber firearm as he emerged from the house.
Body-worn camera footage reviewed by investigators showed Sweeney-Jones approaching the front door and ordering the suspects to show their hands and drop the weapon.
Sweeney-Jones and Archangelo then fired their service weapons.
DiPasquale and Evan Chandler were struck and suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Chandler was treated for gunshot wounds to his arm and both thighs, while DiPasquale was treated for a wound to his upper arm.
Third officer fired during backyard encounter
Two other suspects, identified by investigators as Michael Edgerton and David Salasky III, fled toward the rear of the property.
Guillen encountered Salasky after Salasky climbed over an approximately 6-foot wooden fence.
According to the report, Guillen saw something in Salasky’s hands and ordered him to stop. Guillen told investigators that Salasky turned toward him with his hand extended in a way that caused the officer to believe he was about to be shot.
Guillen fired once but did not strike Salasky.
Investigators later determined Salasky had been carrying a handgun.
DOJ reviewed video, interviews and evidence
The Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust reviewed body-worn camera footage, dispatch records, interviews with witnesses and police officers, photographs from the scene and medical records.
The DOJ said the central legal question was whether the officers reasonably believed deadly force was necessary to protect themselves or others from death or serious physical injury.
Investigators concluded that they did.
The report found that Sweeney-Jones and Archangelo confronted suspects emerging from a reported home invasion, including one carrying what appeared to officers to be a rifle.
Investigators also concluded Guillen reasonably believed he faced an immediate threat during his encounter behind the property.
“The use of force by police was justified as a matter of law in both self-defense and in the defense of others,” the DOJ report concluded.
No criminal charges warranted
The DOJ also found the officers were not reckless or negligent in creating a danger to other people in the residential neighborhood.
No bystanders were injured.
The department determined that the circumstances — an armed home invasion, suspects carrying firearms and the officers’ perception of immediate threats — supported the officers’ decisions to use deadly force.
As a result, no criminal charges were warranted against Sweeney-Jones, Archangelo or Guillen.
The report also noted that its review was limited to determining whether the officers’ actions violated criminal law. It did not determine whether the officers complied with New Castle County Police Department policies or procedures.
TO GO BOX
What: Delaware Department of Justice final use-of-force report
Incident: Jan. 22, 2023
Location: West Minuit Drive, New Castle
Officers: Sean Sweeney-Jones, Ryan Archangelo and Alejandro Guillen
Result: Two suspects suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds; no one was killed
Finding: DOJ determined the officers’ use of deadly force was legally justified and did not constitute a criminal offense
Learn more: The full report and body-worn camera footage are available through the Delaware Department of Justice’s police use-of-force investigations page.
State police say Smyrna man targeted retailers more than 25 times after failing to return to DOC supervision
NEW CASTLE COUNTY, Del. — A Smyrna man who failed to return to Delaware Department of Correction facility after leaving on an employment pass has been charged in a monthlong retail theft spree that state police say cost New Castle County businesses more than $48,000 in stolen merchandise.
Delaware State Police arrested Steven Pozzie, 40, following an investigation into more than 25 reported thefts at stores including Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, Target, Kohl’s, Acme and Harbor Freight.
Police said Pozzie also caused more than $4,000 in damage, often using tools to defeat or damage merchandise security devices.
The charges are allegations. Pozzie is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Investigation began at Home Depot
The investigation began in late August after Home Depot employees reported multiple thefts involving the same suspect, according to state police.
Detectives with the State Police Criminal Investigations Unit later connected similar incidents at several other retailers.
Police said Pozzie sometimes worked with accomplices and used multiple vehicles during the thefts.
Investigators ultimately identified Pozzie as a convicted offender who had failed to return to the Community Corrections Treatment Center after receiving an employment pass.
Delaware’s Level IV community corrections programs are designed to provide a structured transition between incarceration and full release. DOC says participants may be permitted to work in the community while remaining under correctional supervision. The Community Corrections Treatment Center also provides residential substance-use treatment as part of DOC’s reentry and rehabilitation system.
Caught after Newark theft
Police said the investigation came to a head Sept. 23 after Pozzie allegedly stole merchandise from a Lowe’s in Newark and fled in a Lexus SUV.
Detectives found the unoccupied vehicle near Vandever Avenue and Northeast Boulevard in Wilmington and searched the surrounding neighborhood.
Pozzie was located in a nearby alley and taken into custody, police said.
Investigators said he repeatedly provided a false identity while speaking with detectives.
Police said a search of Pozzie found drug paraphernalia and about 0.01 grams of suspected crack cocaine. Investigators also searched the Lexus and said they recovered tools believed to have been used during earlier thefts.
Pozzie requested medical treatment for an unrelated, non-life-threatening injury and was taken to a hospital. He was subsequently returned to DOC custody.
Extensive list of charges
Following his discharge from the hospital, Pozzie was formally charged Sept. 28.
The charges include 17 felony counts of possession of shoplifters’ tools, 13 felony counts of organized retail theft involving more than $1,500, five felony counts of second-degree conspiracy and additional shoplifting, theft, criminal mischief, drug and criminal impersonation charges.
He was arraigned by Justice of the Peace Court and remained in Department of Correction custody on a $44,200 cash bond.
The case comes as law enforcement agencies continue to focus on organized retail theft involving repeat offenders, accomplices and the resale of stolen merchandise. In a separate New Castle County investigation earlier this year, state police charged a Wilmington man after investigators said he recruited people to steal merchandise that was later resold.
To Go Box
What happened: Delaware State Police say Steven Pozzie, 40, stole more than $48,000 in merchandise during more than 25 thefts at New Castle County retailers.
Businesses involved: Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, Target, Kohl’s, Acme, Harbor Freight and others.
Additional damage: Police estimate businesses sustained more than $4,000 in property damage.
Custody status: Pozzie remained in Department of Correction custody on a $44,200 cash bond following his Sept. 28 arraignment.
Learn more: Delaware State Police posts crime releases and case updates at dsp.delaware.gov.
(The Center Square) - A 51-year-old Department of Energy employee from Richland, Wash., was arrested Thursday and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the Houthis, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Cloudflare has launched two open-weight decision models, Clef and Clef-flash, designed for structured yes/no, multiple-choice, and ranking tasks while also supporting images, video, and up to a 64K context window. Cloudflare says its models outperform TypeSafe's Jev on several benchmarks and can run locally from Hugging Face. The Register reports: For starters, Clef has an LLM backbone. According to Cloudflare, Clef uses specially post-trained, frozen versions of Qwen3.8-27B and Qwen3.5-9B for Clef and Clef-flash, respectively, with the Qwen backbone performing a prefill-only pass during inference. Clef is still fast - faster than Jev, to be fair - and scores choices in parallel after that prefill-only pass. It's not clear what Jev's underlying architecture is, as TypeSafe has kept that a secret.
As for its speed and capability, Clef moves fast. Cloudflare ran it against Jev and some other open decision models using the Jev Decision Index available on Hugging Face, and the company's own ranking suggests Clef is slightly slower than other open models, but more accurate, with Clef-flash just as accurate as most of the others, but far faster.
To be fair to the competition, Cloudflare self-reported its own scores against the benchmark, and they have yet to be reproduced for ranking on the official Decision Index. Cloudflare also ran Clef against TypeSafe's own benchmarks, and claimed it beat Jev in three out of four areas, only losing out on agent trace observability. Even if it were a bit slower or less accurate, Clef has another major leg up on Jev: It's not limited to classifying text -- it can also handle images and video. Additionally, Clef supports a 64k context window. Jev can also handle up to 64k tokens across a request, although its state plus longest individual question is limited to 32k.
Planned rule change forms part of Burnham’s bid to crack down on the ‘little charges that add up’
Airlines will be blocked from charging parents extra to sit with their children on planes, according to government plans.
The new rule would require airlines to seat passengers aged under 14 next to their parents or an accompanying adult free of charge. Passengers will also no longer need to pay to tweak the name on their flight booking if they need to correct a mistake.
Oct. 1, 2026 — From Sept. 9-11, 2026, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), hosted the autumn hackathon of the Trillion Paramter Consortium. Organized by the EuroTPC, the hackathon gathered more than 30 researchers from leading European and US supercomputing centers and universities to turn ideas into practical solutions that make supercomputers more accessible and research projects more efficient.
Shaping AI: Participants at the TPC Autumn Hackathon at the LRZ discussed AI concepts and developed practical solutions. Image Credit: A. Schuffert/LRZ.
Participants represented Argonne National Laboratory, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), CSC – IT Center for Science in Finland, CINECA in Italy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) / Munich Centre for Machine Learning (MCML), Leipzig University, the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and LRZ. Working in four teams, they used the three days to plan projects, test approaches and share experiences directly with potential collaboration partners.
Participants organized themselves in four working groups:
WG1: Develop workflows and agentic systems, collaborate on various implementations for Pandemic Preparedness Engine (PPX), a project funded from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
WG2: Benchmark llama.cpp backends and GPU vendors for performance and energy efficiency across chat, reasoning, and vision-language models to find the most power-efficient hardware/software/model combinations.
WG3: Cost-aware LLM evolutionary algorithm design (multi-fidelity + Bayesian optimization + tiered model routing), benchmarked on GPU kernel-generation tasks on LRZ HPC infrastructure.
WG4: LLM-agent system that profiles HPC hardware, runs targeted micro-benchmarks, and suggests informed code optimizations grounded in real measurements.
Presentation by Dr. Nicolay J. Hammer, Head of LRZ Big Data & Artificial Intelligence Team
Agentic AI at the Center of the Hackathon
Agentic AI, in which large language models coordinate with other tools to process data and carry out actions, featured prominently throughout the hackathon. Contributions included:
Hypothesis generation for protein research: One team developed agentic workflows to support scientists in formulating new hypotheses.
Access to HPC systems: A working group from the Gauss Supercomputing Centre (GCS) Agentic AI Focus group created initial workflows that enable an AI agent to adapt code to various supercomputers, making a wide range of HPC systems easier to use.
Security and trust: In light of initial incidents and risky system attacks by AI agents, the risks and boundary violations associated with agent-based systems were also on the agenda. A second working group from GCS Agentic AI Focus group developed secure strategies for authentication and authorization workflows for AI agents, aiming to protect data and keep these digital assistants within defined boundaries.
Energy efficiency: Participants addressed the growing energy demand caused by inference calls in agentic systems and explored was to limit it. “The more Agentic AI is used, the more energy consumption increases due to inference calls,” notes LRZ researcher Ajay Navilarekal Rajgopal, “We need to limit that.”
Alongside the agentic AI focus, resources were dedicate to applying AI directly in research. A team from the Munich Centre for Machine Learning (MCML) investigated how researchers can use language models to formulate algorithms and develop them more quickly, while another group focused on risk prevention and pandemic preparedness.
Hackathon Outcomes
The four working groups pursued different objectives. “Some wanted to develop an initial, simple prototype that they could continue working on separately, whilst others arrived with code that they wanted to optimize and expand upon. In any case, working together has led to progress” observed Rajgopal.
The hackathon also provided inspiration beyond these individual initiatives. Prof. Charles Catlett, a Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and a member of the TPC Planning and Strategy Team, prompted participants to consider how AI agents could safeguard and enrich urban life by analyzing environmental data from cameras and sensors. In addition, the hands-on work helped build a network of contacts that AI specialists can turn to for practical advice in their day-to-day work.
LRZ leads the task of drawing up a roadmap for AI for science as part of the EuroTPC project. “To this end, we are currently gathering suggestions and topics from the EuroTPC’s advisory board and from researchers, and are using these to draft a strategy roadmap for the EU. LRZ has taken on the task of drawing up a roadmap for AI in science,” said Dr. Nicolay Hammer, head of the LRZ’s Big Data & AI (BDAI) team.
The constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment has shaped legal discourse around failed executions, but courts have not stopped states from attempting to execute the same person again.
Leaf peepers in Northeast Ohio can leave the car keys at home this fall and watch the color change from a vintage rail car. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is the only U.S. national park with a heritage railroad running through…
Shoppers and vendors in Aspen surprised by unusual customer as it stretched to sample stall offerings
Farmers’ market shoppers might not usually pay much attention to the local resident devouring fresh bread and pastries at one of the stalls with extra gusto – but some certainly did last weekend when they realized it was a hungry bear.
Onlookers on Saturday reached for their phones to take photos and videos of the bear in downtown Aspen, Colorado, after it wandered through the stalls and got up on to its hind legs to dig into the baked goods.
Florida’s governor race has a new battleground: offshore drilling.
In a new ad, GOP gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds said Democratic nominee David Jolly lobbied for more offshore drilling in Florida waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“While Florida was still cleaning up, lobbyist David Jolly was already cashing in,” the ad’s narrator says. “Just months after the spill, Jolly was in Washington, pressuring Congress to expand drilling off the Florida coast, over $5 million in billings.”
Jolly, who was a lobbyist before he was elected to public office in 2014 as a Republican, says he is against drilling off Florida’s coast and as a former congressman advocated for keeping the practice away from the state. (After his stint in Congress, Jolly became an independent, then a Democrat in 2025 to run for Florida governor.)
So did he previously lobby for drilling?
Donalds’ campaign said yes, and pointed to a 2014 PolitiFact Florida fact-check from Jolly’s successful U.S. House race. Jolly said he “never” lobbied for offshore oil drilling, which we rated Mostly False.
Jolly’s campaign pointed to a different fact-check from his unsuccessful 2016 run against former Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist said Jolly “used money and power to try to … drill off our beaches,” which we rated Mostly False.
Here’s what’s accurate: As a lobbyist, Jolly once attended a meeting where offshore drilling legislation was a topic of discussion; experts say that’s technically lobbying. What’s misleading is that Donalds’ ad misattributes his firm’s overall billings exclusively to drilling and ignores Jolly’s efforts as a congressman to keep drilling away from Florida.
In 2014, we reported that a lobbyist disclosure form contradicted Jolly’s statement about never lobbying for offshore oil drilling. He later said that he attended the 2011 meeting but didn’t advocate for the bill. Crist in 2016 gave the impression that Jolly spent significant time and money lobbying for offshore drilling in Florida, ignoring Jolly’s efforts in Congress to block the practice off Florida’s coast.
In response to Donalds’ ad, Jolly’s campaign said that, as a lawmaker, Jolly consistently opposed drilling near Florida.
Donalds’ campaign said a failed bill that Jolly’s client, Free Enterprise Nation, supported in 2011 would have “fast-tracked” the federal offshore oil and gas leasing program and that Jolly wrote a blog post supporting it.
Jolly owned a lobbying firm, Three Bridges Advisors, from 2011 to late 2013.
A lobbyist disclosure form showed that Jolly’s firm did work for Free Enterprise Nation — a pro-business, anti-regulation advocacy group — in the first quarter of 2011. (The group is now inactive.)
Free Enterprise Nation supportedH.R. 909, a bill that would have expanded offshore oil and gas leasing and exploration by lifting restrictions in federal waters, including in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico. The legislation stalled in committee.
Jolly previously told PolitiFact that he listed H.R. 909 on his lobbyist disclosure form because he was at a meeting where Free Enterprise Nation discussed it, but said he “did not lobby on its behalf.” Jolly said he “had a practice of always overcomplying,” and that he supported offshore drilling outside the 230-mile Florida moratorium area.
Drilling off Florida’s coast was largely illegal when Jolly was a lobbyist. The federal law — the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act — prohibited drilling within 230 miles of Tampa Bay and 125 miles from the Panhandle. It expired in 2022. In 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot amendment to ban offshore oil and gas drilling in state-controlled waters.
Lobbying experts said in 2014 they thought it was unlikely that Jolly would have listed the bill if he hadn’t discussed it, although there was no way to verify that.
It’s not unusual for lobbyists to overreport their activity out of an abundance of caution, said Kenneth Gross, a lawyer who advises clients on how to comply with political law, including lobbying.
In an April 2011 blog post,Jolly wrote that Free Enterprise Nation supported H.R. 909 and quoted an endorsement from founder and former CEO Jim MacDougald. In 2014, MacDougald, who was serving as Jolly’s House campaign finance co-chair, said Jolly “was never employed to advocate” for the bill on behalf of the company and represented the organization on different issues.
Federal law says lobbyists must report any issue in which they engage for their clients, including preparing information, communicating with government officials and participating in planning activities.
Donalds’ ad ignores Jolly’s efforts in Congress to block drilling in Florida
Donalds’ ad overstates Jolly’s lobbying for offshore drilling and omits that he opposed the practice near Florida.
The ad says Jolly took in over “$5 million” in billings to pressure Congress to drill off Florida’s coast. Public disclosure records show that the $5 million figure represents Three Bridges Advisors’ total billings across all clients and issues, rather than revenue tied exclusively to offshore drilling.
Jolly’s firm in 2011 reported $30,000 in income from Free Enterprise Nation. Our search of Three Bridges Advisors’ reports did not turn up additional income from Free Enterprise Nation.
As a Republican congressman in 2014, Jolly opposed expanding exploration off Florida’s Atlantic coast using sound waves, out of concern it could be used in the Gulf of Mexico and lead to another oil spill. He signed a bipartisan letter to then-President Barack Obama opposing so-called seismic testing. (The Atlantic drilling waslater called off.)
Jolly supported drilling for oil as a practice, just not in Florida. In a 2015 op-ed, he said Florida didn’t need to risk its beaches simply to increase oil production.
He told PolitiFact in 2016 that he supported drilling in the western and central Gulf, while strengthening the ban in the eastern Gulf.
Jolly’s gubernatorial campaign told us he no longer believes new drilling leaseholds are necessary amid emerging energy technologies. “We should eventually move away from offshore drilling altogether,” Jolly said in an emailed statement. “This must be done in a commercially practicable way, but should fully be our long-term national energy goal.”
Our ruling
Donalds’ ad said that months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, “Jolly was in Washington, pressuring Congress to expand drilling off the Florida coast, over $5 million in billings.”
As a lobbyist, Jolly attended a 2011 meeting with a client who supported a bill that could have expanded offshore drilling in Florida; he listed the bill on a lobbyist disclosure form. He later said he did not actively lobby for the bill during the meeting. We don’t know the specifics of what was said in the meeting, but lobbying experts said attending a meeting during which a bill is discussed still counts as lobbying.
Donalds’ ad inaccurately linked Jolly’s firm’s total billings across all clients and issues exclusively to offshore drilling. The ad also ignores Jolly’s congressional efforts to keep drilling away from Florida’s shores; today he doesn’t support offshore drilling anywhere.
Two members of the Eugene, Oregon, Police Department in a photo posted to the department’s Facebook page on Aug. 26, 2026.Screenshot: Eugene Police Department via Facebook
How much does it cost to get more information about a cop who punched someone in the face?
If you guessed anything lower than $2.5 million, you’d be wrong — at least according to the city of Eugene, Oregon.
In August, the local news outlet Double Sided Media filed a public records request for records about police officer Justin Peckels, which focused on potential misconduct between 2018 and 2026. Peckels has been the subject of community complaints, including for punching a resident in the face during a traffic stop, making the records vital for oversight and their release clearly in the public interest.
The city’s response is beyond belief. In its response to the request on Monday, the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04. (A separate request by the outlet for similar records concerning a former police officer, Eric Klinko, was met with a comparatively modest estimate of $195,869.52, for a grand total of nearly $2.7 million for both requests.)
The open invoice by the City of Eugene, Ore. dated Aug. 1, 2026, in response to Double Sided Media’s request for public records relating to a police officer accused of misconduct.Screenshot: City of Eugene
“Once the City receives payment of $2,484,599.04 staff will continue processing your request,” the letter from the department’s public records division read. “If the actual cost of processing your request exceeds the amount you have paid the City, you will be required to pay the difference before the City will provide the records you have requested.”
Peckels’s file is either the largest in the world, or city officials have intentionally maintained their databases in such a way as to ensure fulfilling public records requests is prohibitively expensive. The city’s response points, at a minimum, to the latter. It justified the multimillion-dollar price tag by claiming it couldn’t narrow the custodians whose records it would need to search, despite the targeted nature of the request, and maintained it must search all records of all city employees, past and present.
By that logic, if someone ever worked in Eugene’s parks and recreation department, their records could contain responsive information about police misconduct, and must be manually pulled and reviewed, one by one.
This goes far beyond incompetence. It’s an intentional effort to make a response artificially voluminous — and cost prohibitive — to intimidate the journalist into dropping it entirely.
Normally, agencies are required to search the specific custodians most likely to possess responsive records, not every groundskeeper or clerk on the city payroll. If the city were acting in good faith, officials would have asked Double Sided Media to help them identify the most likely record-holders, not take it upon themselves to cast a citywide dragnet as its first step.
What makes Eugene’s money-grab particularly galling is its technology double standard. While it apparently can’t invest in efficient search software, the police department recently signed a two-year $342,000 contract for nearly 60 AI-powered Flock automated license plate readers. This project was so secretive that the ACLU of Oregon had to sue the city for records about how the cameras were being used and demonstrates, among other inclinations, the city’s eagerness to employ sophisticated software to deploy against residents.
Yet that technological sophistication disappears as soon as a journalist requests public records about the department’s internal accountability process, and simple keyword searches are suddenly cumbersome.
For small newsrooms, a $2.5 million invoice is effectively a gag order that was never actually about covering costs, but bullying the requester to drop their inquiry.
Troublingly, Eugene’s $2.5 million bill is not an anomaly.
In 2015, the Department of Defense told a Freedom of Information Act requester, who was asking for records on tools used to preserve data on seized devices, that fulfilling their request would take 15 million hours and cost $660 million.
The same year, the Drug Enforcement Administration told a requester it would cost $1.46 million for records about the DEA’s role in the search and capture of the Mexican cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
In 2019, the Army tried to charge $300,000 to release military base water test results for the presence of toxic chemicals. The Army agreed to waive the exorbitant fee after facing intense backlash.
Luckily, records requesters seeking federal documents have a defense against these capricious invoices. Recent FOIA amendments aim to ensure if an agency misses its response deadlines, it can’t charge most fees.
At the local level, however, these protections disintegrate. While Oregon grants agencies the discretion to reduce fees when the disclosure would benefit the public, agencies routinely ignore these provisions.
For small newsrooms like Double Sided Media, a $2.5 million invoice is effectively a gag order that was never actually about covering costs, but bullying the requester to drop their inquiry (all while Eugene Police Department launches its own “press” initiative to document its policing). It also sets the precedent for using this chilling tactic on any journalist or watchdog as it sees fit.
Double Sided Media is rightly appealing the fee estimate, and it should prevail. But cities like Eugene will continue these efforts unless lawmakers across the country force agencies to adopt fee caps, mandate public-interest fee waivers for journalists, and require agencies to procure software that allows them to respond to records requests in an efficient and timely manner.
Until then, police departments will likely continue to issue multimillion-dollar ransoms for their records — weaponizing the public’s right to know into another avenue for police to operate with impunity.
(The Center Square) – With Americans questioning the hundreds of thousands of AI-enhanced surveillance cameras across the country, one Republican lawmaker is introducing legislation to curb the worst abuses of the technology.
Released last Christmas Day, “Marty Supreme” follows Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, who is an aspiring ping-pong player with dreams of making it big in the world of ping-pong. Following the 2026 Oscars, the film, directed by Josh Safdie, unfortunately lost all nine of its nominations.
Chalamet was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role at the Oscars for his performance in “Marty Supreme,” which I think he deserved. Although he lost to Michael B. Jordan for “Sinners,” Chalamet’s performance does not go unnoticed. I have to respect the dedication he had when making and promoting this film. From “Marty Supreme” custom jackets to making an entire rap song, Chalamet clearly cared a lot about this film and its success.
Taking place in 1950s New York City, Mauser is working to achieve his dream of winning big at the table tennis world championship tournament that takes place in Japan. He quickly learns that Japan’s representative for ping-pong will be a challenge to beat.
I saw “Marty Supreme” over winter break back in January. I am a huge cinephile and Chalamet fan, so I was excited for his new movie. My expectations for this movie were mixed — I had heard some good reviews, but I also heard people saying it did not live up to the hype that Chalamet had promised.
Since then, this film has not left my mind. I have rewatched it countless times, each time better than the next. “Marty Supreme” will still be streaming in my house during summer break.
Long story short, I loved “Marty Supreme.” Chalamet has perfect comedic timing, the delivery of his lines is flawless and the plot is so chaotic, it will keep you on your toes. Although Mauser himself is a narcissistic prick and his actions are very questionable throughout the film, he’s an entertaining character. I found myself laughing hysterically throughout the movie just at Chalamet’s line delivery alone.
Despite taking place in the 1950s, the dialogue, especially Chalamet as Mauser, is surprisingly modern. This may seem weird to some, but for me, it added to the humor of the movie. Watching Chalamet deliver his lines in a modern tone with a full 1950s look to him was really entertaining to watch.
Something that stood out to me while watching was that “Marty Supreme” features a soundtrack of primarily music from the 1980s (including one of my favorite songs, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears) in a film set in the 1950s.
I thought this was an interesting approach to take. I love 80s music and it really added to the action of the movie. To me, it signified how Mauser himself is “out of place” in the time period he lives in, with the combination of modern dialogue and music not from the film’s era.
Aside from playing ping-pong, the film also follows Mauser desperately trying to earn enough money to fly to Japan so he can compete in the table tennis world championship and represent the United States. Since it’s an expensive trip, Mauser does anything he can to get money with his friend Wally, played by Tyler the Creator.
These two get into lots of trouble by accidentally stealing (and losing) a dog, entering to win money through a table tennis competition that takes place in a local bowling alley and, in the end, gambling all of their money away. I won’t go into too much detail about the action because I do not want to spoil all of their adventures, since that was one of the most entertaining parts for me.
I highly suggest that everyone give “Marty Supreme” a watch. It was definitely one of my favorites of the Best Picture nominations. Although I’m a bit biased because I love Chalamet, he always gives outstanding performances in every movie he is in.
Although its worldwide theatrical run has ended, “Marty Supreme” is available to stream on HBO Max. You can also rent or purchase the film through platforms like Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV. I hope everyone enjoys the entertaining film that “Marty Supreme” is and goes into watching it with an open mind.
Ryan Roslansky is leaving Microsoft and LinkedIn after nearly 18 years, triggering another leadership shuffle across Office and Teams. "Roslansky, who until recently was the CEO of LinkedIn, was promoted to the head of Office last year and then took control of Microsoft Teams earlier this year," notes The Verge. From the report: "Ryan leaves the organization in a strong position," says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal memo. "Over the past year, Ryan's team has done critical work bringing together the product, engineering, and design foundations that have made this next phase possible."
Roslansky is leaving a week after Microsoft announced its new Copilot, which the company is positioning as "the OS for work." He's also leaving around a month after calling fully AI-generated documents "a doom loop" for workers. "If we're not careful, we'll end up with a very expensive way to avoid writing and reading in an ocean of sameness, genericness," said Roslansky in his LinkedIn post.
Microsoft is now moving the teams behind Office and Microsoft Teams over to Charles Lamanna, as part of the Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization. [...] Microsoft's chief design officer, Jon Friedman, is also moving to report to Copilot chief Jacob Andreou. Microsoft appointed Dan Shapero as its LinkedIn CEO earlier this year, and he will continue in this role and report directly to Nadella.
In the Maine Senate race, ads from a Democratic super PAC misleadingly claim Republican Sen. Susan Collins cast a vote to “cover up the Epstein files” and received “$3 million to her super PAC” from “Jeffrey Epstein’s business partner.”
Collins supported an Epstein-files disclosure bill in November that required the Department of Justice to publicly release records related to the convicted sex offender. She had voted two months earlier against an amendment that called for the release of the files and was attached to a defense spending bill. Collins said she opposed adding the amendment to an unrelated bill.
Furthermore, the ad stretches the facts in claiming that “Epstein’s business partner” gave money to Collins. A political action committee supporting Collins received millions of dollars in contributions from a man who was reportedly a “founding member” of a private New York City club along with Epstein and many other wealthy people.
A spokesperson for the man told us he had no relationship with Epstein.
This is the third time this election cycle that we havewritten about Democratic ads misleadingly citing Republican senators’ votes to block the amendment and not mentioning that the full Senate later supported releasing the Epstein files. The ads also try to connect the Republican senators who blocked the amendment to people linked in some way to Epstein.
The ads against Collins were sponsored by WinSenate, a super PAC that works to elect Democrats to the Senate. Collins is facing Democrat Troy Jackson, a former Maine state Senate president, in a close race for her seat.
WinSenate released the first attack ad on Sept. 24. In it, a woman, identified as a retired teacher, says she is “horrified” and claims: “Susan Collins voted to cover up the Epstein files. She knew 14-year-old girls were raped. Turns out that Jeffrey Epstein’s business partner funneled $3 million to her super PAC. Susan Collins took the money and protected child predators.”
The second ad, which started airing Sept. 29, features the same woman saying Collins “voted with Trump to cover up the Epstein files” — but the ad leaves out the claim about donations from an alleged Epstein business partner.
For the Epstein files claim, the ad cites Senate roll call vote 512 on Sept. 10, 2025. That’s when Collins — and nearly all Republican senators — voted to table an amendment Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer tried to include in the annual bill that sets the budget and policies for the Defense Department. Schumer’s amendment called for the U.S. attorney general to release all unclassified material pertaining to Epstein, including documents about federal investigations of Epstein and his associates, as well as information about Epstein’s 2019 death that was ruled a suicide. At the time of his death, Epstein, a wealthy financier, was in jail and facing federal charges of sex trafficking minors.
According to the New York Times, Collins said of the failed amendment: “It does not belong on the Department of Defense policy bill.” The newspaper also reported that Collins “said she opposed Mr. Schumer’s measure because a similar amendment had been adopted on a spending bill that would fund the Justice Department.”
But the amendment that Collins supported in the July 2025 markup session by the Senate Appropriations Committee did not require the same level of disclosure.It required the attorney general to “retain, preserve, and compile” Epstein-related records or evidence and submit a report to Congress. While that DOJ spending bill had not yet passed in the Senate, “Ms. Collins said it was a more appropriate vehicle for a measure on the Epstein files,” the Times wrote.
In addition, when the Epstein Files Transparency Act — a standalone bill to release the Epstein documents — came up for consideration in the Senate in November, it passed by unanimous consent, which means the bill was not opposed by Collins or any other senator.
“I support the release of the Epstein files,” Collins said in a statement about the bill passing. “This is an important step for the survivors of these heinous crimes.”
As we have explained before, President Donald Trump initially opposed Congress’ attempts to release the files, but relented days before the Senate passed the bill in November.
The ‘Business Partner’ Claim
The first WinSenate ad that aired suggested Collins voted against Schumer’s amendment because of millions of dollars in donations from an Epstein associate.
Although the ad does not mention the alleged Epstein “business partner” by name, it does cite donations to a pro-Collins super PAC on June 27, 2025, and June 26, 2026. Federal Election Commission records show on those dates, Stephen Schwarzman, the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone investment management firm, made contributions totaling $3 million to Pine Tree Results PAC, a group supporting Collins in the 2026 midterms. (Maine is known as the Pine Tree State.)
Schwarzman’s first donation, which was $2 million, was made more than two months before the vote on Schumer’s amendment. But the second donation, which was $1 million, was made more than six months after the full Senate supported disclosing the files.
The “business partner” label was based on reporting that Schwarzman and Epstein were among the very first people who paid to join Core Club, a private club in New York City that was founded by Jennie Enterprise in 2005.
“Susan Collins blocked the release of the Epstein files and then her PAC accepted millions from a business associate of Epstein’s, an individual who belonged to the same exclusive business club,” Lauren French, a spokesperson for WinSenate, said in a statement to us. “As [has] been publicly reported, they ‘were founders and members of an exclusive social club for billionaires.'”
The “founders” language does appear in a July 21 MeidasTouch News story with the headline: “More Donations from Epstein Contacts to Susan Collins Uncovered.” The story from the left-leaning outlet went on to mention Schwarzman’s donations to Pine Tree Results PAC and said, “Schwarzman and Epstein were founders and members of an exclusive social club for billionaires in New York called the Core Club.”
But to call them “business partners” is a stretch.
We reached out to the Core Club’s press office for comment, but have not received a response.
The Real Deal, a real estate news publication, reported in February that Epstein “paid $100,000 as a founding member, alongside 150 other investors, according to a spokesperson for Core.” Its story said, “Epstein’s fellow founding members included Aby Rosen of RFR, Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group.”
In 2011, the New York Times also referred to Schwarzman as among the “founding members” of the club, “who anted up an initial investment of $100,000 when the club was conceived.”
“Being founders of the same exclusive club inherently makes individuals partners in business,” French said in an earlier statement provided to PolitiFact and Quick Check, an election feature of the Bangor Daily News.
But other than paying money to join and get the club started, it’s not clear that Schwarzman and Epstein ever did business together as “partners,” which implies a close working relationship.
The men had no relationship, a spokesperson for Schwarzman told us.
“It would be categorically false and reckless to claim or imply that Steve had any relationship with this despicable individual,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court will hear significant cases on climate change, consumer protection and discrimination in its upcoming term.
Request for Clancy, 36, to be acquitted turned down nearly a month after first trial ended with deadlocked jury
The judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder case on Thursday refused to declare her not guilty, turning down a defense motion that had argued there was not enough evidence to prove she was responsible for killing her three children.
On Tuesday, Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington tried to persuade Judge William Sullivan that prosecutors had not offered any proof that Clancy had killed her three children. Prosecutors argued there was plenty of evidence, calling Reddington’s claim “laughable”.
Court will review practice of indefinite detention for undocumented immigrants living in the US
The US supreme court agreed on Thursday to take up a case challenging the Trump administration’s practice of indefinite detention for undocumented immigrants living in the US and awaiting deportation proceedings.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
A little-known effort to bring an artificial intelligence tool into Texas public schools began about a year ago, with the help of the state’s top education official, Mike Morath.
In September 2025, Morath responded to an email from associates of a private school chain called Alpha School who wanted to talk about using their AI program to educate kids in Texas classrooms.
“I’d love to schedule a follow-up discussion,” Morath replied.
The online platform wasn’t new to Morath, the state’s education commissioner. Just three months earlier, he had supported Alpha leaders’ bid to open a charter school in Texas that would use the same technology. Then the Texas State Board of Education, which has the final say on such charter decisions, voted it down 10 to 3. Board members cited concerns about the company’s use of AI to teach and students’ screen time, as well as lingering questions about the drastic student test improvements Alpha leaders presented.
But Morath and his agency leaders did not need the board’s approval to help get Alpha’s AI model into public schools.
Over the last year, Morath and his staff at the Texas Education Agency exchanged a flurry of emails with leaders of companies connected to Alpha about possible partnerships, visited their campuses several times, helped with a one-page explainer about the program to share with school districts and connected them with district leaders, according to communications obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through public information requests.
One email revealed that Morath offered to personally introduce an Alpha leader to the superintendent he appointed to lead the yearslong state takeover of Houston Independent School District, the largest in the state.
“I’d also like to set up another site visit to visit both your Austin secondary and primary with my team,” wrote Morath. “The Superintendent of H.I.S.D. would also like to do a site visit, so l’ll connect y’all separately. And hopefully we can schedule them to happen on the same day.”
The emails show that state education officials and Alpha affiliates approached at least 10 school districts about the AI program. After the coordination, at least three of those districts — Houston; Fort Davis, in West Texas; and Aldine, near Houston — launched pilot programs incorporating the AI tool.
The full extent of Morath and his agency’s involvement, as well as the number of public school districts using the AI program, remains unclear. The TEA has not responded to questions about its efforts for months, initially failed to provide some of Morath’s emails in response to public information requests and continues fighting the release of additional communications.
The TEA sent a written statement that said “there is no formal partnership between TEA and Alpha Schools.” But the agency continued that it “is always interested in promising ways to improve student outcomes in math and reading.” The statement said TEA officials connected district leaders who were interested in Alpha’s program but left the decision up to them on whether to use it.
Morath emailed MacKenzie Price, the co-founder of Alpha School, and her husband, Andy Price, last year.Obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Highlighted by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
Aldine and Fort Davis leaders told the newsrooms it was not unusual for the state agency to recommend potential partnerships and expressed excitement about the pilot. All three districts with pilot programs said they will use the AI software for supplemental learning rather than fully implementing the Alpha School model of using it to teach all students basic subjects in two hours a day while the human teachers, which Alpha calls guides, focus on motivation and emotional support.
Some education experts and State Board of Education members who voted against Alpha leaders’ attempt to open a charter school last year raised concerns with the state’s efforts to use the AI-led platform given its recent track record.
The newsrooms also found that students performed significantly worse on state-mandated exams than Alpha leaders predicted at the one charter school they got approved, in Arizona, and at an existing school in Texas where students used the AI program last year.
Morath’s agency knew about results in at least one of those charters, Texas Preparatory School in Austin. Last year, state test scores compiled by his agency showed just 21% of students passed. The TEA then gave the charter its third consecutive F rating, mostly based on those scores.
David DeMatthews, an education professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said it was “disheartening” and “painful” to learn that the TEA was promoting the product when the company has not yet publicly shown its success in public or charter schools, where there are likely to be more students who have learning barriers or struggle academically.
“That raises questions about whether TEA is serving its public interest and is being transparent and accountable to us,” DeMatthews said. “It’d be one thing if they were approved as a charter and they did have a track record and they could show evidence. We don’t have any of those sorts of things.”
The platform’s expansion into traditional public schools comes as government officials across the country, including in Texas, have taken an increasingly skeptical view of AI use in schools. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently banned generative AI for elementary and middle school students in the nation’s largest school district. Leaders in Los Angeles implemented a similar restriction. In August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proposed further limiting screen time in public schools.
Abbott, who has received over $1.5 million in political donations from Alpha co-founder MacKenzie Price, did not agree to an interview or directly answer whether he supports the AI platform in Texas schools.
“A great teacher in the classroom is the most important element of a quality education,” Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary, wrote in a statement to the newsrooms. “Any tool a district deploys must keep teachers at the center of the classroom, limit unnecessary screen time, and prove results for students.”
Abbott’s Democratic opponent in the November governor’s race, Gina Hinojosa, recently had a press conference opposing the use of Alpha’s AI program in Houston ISD. That came after she’d already made a campaign promise to fire Morath if she is elected.
Alpha leaders did not agree to interviews or answer detailed questions for this story. Price has repeatedly told her social media followers that she wants to bring the AI model into public schools to make it accessible for all families. School leaders previously defended the model in interviewsand directly in response to Texas Education Board members’ concerns about the proposed charter. They maintained that teachers’ roles remain significant despite lessons delivered by the AI platform and that screen time at the school would comply with national recommendations, and they referred to a self-published paper summarizing that Alpha students learn twice as fast as their peers while earning test scores among the top echelon nationwide.
Pam Little, a Republican serving as vice chair of the elected State Board of Education, said she hopes Abbott’s proposal to limit screen time in public schools leads to the removal of screens in classrooms altogether. That includes eliminating pilot programs like those using Alpha’s AI platform.
“I don’t want anything AI in our schools, especially at the lower grades,” said Little, who last year voted against the proposed charter, which would use Alpha’s AI platform.
Gustavo Reveles, a Democratic Education Board member who voted against Alpha leaders’ charter application last summer, said he’s worried the TEA is ignoring the board’s apprehension by helping to bring Alpha’s AI tool into public schools.
“It certainly raises a red flag that perhaps there’s ways to circumvent that concern,” Reveles said.
Pilot Program Planning
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price and Morath participated in a roundtable at an Alpha School campus in Austin in September 2025.Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune
Last fall, local television news cameras captured Morath alongside U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon as the pair visited an Alpha campus in Austin. Joining them was Price, the school’s co-founder. Morath said that day, “Our goal is to make sure that children have access to great schools,” regardless of who runs them.
He added, “There are lessons to be learned in a school like Alpha.“
That week, Morath emailed Price and her husband, Andy Price, who business filings show holds various roles at Alpha’s related companies, including chief financial officer.
Morath also connected with an employee from Studient, a company that uses Alpha’s AI technology, now often called TimeBack. Studient, which uses the tool for students struggling academically, is among the web of corporate entities connected to Alpha, according to its privacy policy and business filings with the Texas secretary of state.
In his emails, Morath said he would like to learn more about Studient’s intervention work with kids lagging academically. He also wanted to discuss 1882 partnerships, formal arrangements in which a public school contracts with an existing charter, university, nonprofit or state-approved entity to run the campus. Districts with consecutive failing ratings will sometimes use these partnerships to avoid possible state takeovers.
Morath’s staff set up a follow-up discussion with the Prices for October.
Emails show the commissioner visited Alpha’s campuses again with six other TEA leaders. His staff coordinated to go on the same day as Houston Superintendent Mike Miles. Not only had Morath chosen Miles to lead the Houston district in 2023, but the two had worked together at Dallas ISD when Morath was a school board member and Miles was the superintendent.
Morath follows up with Alpha associates to discuss how their AI learning program could be used in Texas public schools.Obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Redacted by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
As of August, the TEA said it could not find any documentation of Alpha or its other companies applying for or running an 1882 partnership. But after the school visit, emails show, other state Education Agency leaders began communicating with Alpha and Studient associates about more informal pilot programs.
Andrew Hodge, associate commissioner of system innovation at the TEA, followed up last November to figure out how the state could test out Alpha’s AI model. Hodge emailed Joe Liemandt, the tech billionaire behind the software company Trilogy, who pioneered and invested $1 billion into Alpha’s AI-learning technology.
“It was great meeting you and learning about Alpha last Monday,” wrote Hodge on Nov. 5. “I’d like to schedule a follow up discussion with you/your team to talk through possibilities for piloting a few supplemental (you called this Tier 3 in your outline) instances in the state. What’s the best way to get 30-45 minutes to discuss?”
Hodge eventually had another member of his team, Michael Strange, tour Alpha’s private school in Fort Worth. Strange oversees the TEA’s blended learning programs.
“I’d like for him to be able to visit your school as we continue to improve our supports for TX districts and better understand the landscape of tech-enabled models in K-12,” emailed Hodge.
By April, emails show, Strange was regularly in contact with Andy Price and a Studient employee about helping to launch pilot programs in public schools. At one point, Strange sent them a to-do list with next steps, which included him drafting a one-page explainer of the pilot program to share with districts.
Andy Price, MacKenzie Price, Studient, Hodge, Liemandt and Strange did not respond to the newsrooms’ requests for comment.
One of Michael Strange’s emails to Alpha associates about launching pilot programs with its AI learning platform in public schools across TexasObtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Redacted by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
In all, ProPublica and the Tribune identified at least five school districts — Ector County, Fort Bend, Irving, Pecos and Pflugerville — that confirmed they were approached about partnering with Alpha but did not pursue an agreement. Only Ector County provided a reason, stating the district “determined our school day is not currently structured to effectively implement or support the pilot.”
But Alpha and Studient officials had some successes. By mid-June, Strange applauded their progress securing pilots with Fort Davis and Aldine.
“Happy Friday!” wrote Strange ahead of a check-in. “Looking forward to seeing everyone today and excited to hear that districts are moving forward.”
Leaders at Fort Davis and Aldine told ProPublica and the Tribune they are using the AI platform this year to help students who are behind academically. Michelle Hartmann, deputy superintendent at Fort Davis, which enrolls around 800 students, said it will deploy the model in its K-8 classrooms for students who need additional help in reading and math.
“We’re excited because we see it as an opportunity to provide an extra layer of intervention,” Hartmann said. She later followed up with the newsrooms to say the district could not be happier after the first weeks of the pilot and that students are very engaged.
Aldine will deploy the online platform to roughly 300 students across four middle school campuses that require support in math. Ashley Brown, an Aldine spokesperson, said the Alpha intervention model aligned with the district’s mission “to provide a rigorous and enriching educational experience that prepares every student for success in college, career, and life.”
Kindergarten and first grade students participated in a workshop at an Alpha School in Austin last year while McMahon and Morath toured the campus.Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune
Houston ISD plans to use the Alpha technology for students with strong test scores “to evaluate whether this instructional approach can accelerate academic growth,” according to its press office.
The office said Houston ISD wasn’t paying Alpha for the pilot but did not provide more details. The district asked the Texas attorney general to withhold the contract from the newsrooms under the state’s public records act.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it's "too early to say" if Iran was involved in the thwarted attempt to crash the commercial airliner.
NetApp this week rolled out Novus, a new class of storage architecture that it says can store zettabytes worth of data and deliver 100 TB/second of aggregate bandwidth over NFS and parallel NFS, enough to keep hundreds of thousands of GPUs productive simultaneously.
“AI Factory math is unforgiving,” writes Arindam Banerjee, the chief platform and technology officer for NetApp in a blog post. “A single GPU can demand as much as 2GB/s throughput to stay busy, and sustaining this across 50,000 GPUs requires 100TB/s cumulative bandwidth. Traditional storage arrays give you 40 to 80GB/s. So reaching 100TB/s with conventional arrays means deploying more than a hundred of them, each with its own namespace, failure domain, and management overhead.”
This situation is untenable for AI factory operators, who must spend every greater amounts of time and money simply to maintain the storage fleet. In the supercomputing world, storage typically consumes around 20% of the total system cost. With disparate namespaces, siloed systems, and stressed network connections, traditional storage architectures require AI factories to spend additional resources on storage just to keep expensive GPUs and other AI accelerators from sitting idle.
“AI teams should not have to become storage engineers to decide where data lives, which cluster to mount, how to rebalance workloads, or how to coordinate checkpoints across fragmented infrastructure,” NetApp says in its Novus solution brief.
The Novus architecture breaks off metadata traffic onto its own network (Image source: NetApp)
The solution arrived at by the engineers at NetApp was to rethink a core element of their distributed storage architecture. Instead of simply adding more controllers to the existing system, NetApp decided that it needed to consolidate one of the key abstractions preventing storage from scaling into the zettabyte realm: metadata.
The key breakthrough with Novus is the decoupling of the storage metadata layer from the storage layer. Instead of routing all metadata traffic through a given number of controllers, Novus enables each GPU client to read and write data directly to the underlying storage, eliminating traffic that can gum up large storage systems.
According to Banerjee, decoupling metadata from data breaks through the limits of traditional storage systems by allowing both metadata and data elements to scale at their own pace.
“Metadata is a bottleneck even before capacity or bandwidth throttles GPU activity,” he writes. “Every open, lookup, and layout request lands on the same controllers that are trying to serve data. A workspace import is millions of small file operations. A checkpoint is a sequential write at terabyte scale, issued by every node at once, arriving directly behind a burst of metadata traffic. When you scale the cluster, the metadata operations scale with it, until inevitably the file system slows or stalls.”
The first implementation of the Novus architecture will take place on the NetApp’s high-performance AFF A90 storage and utilize pNFS/NFS version 4.2, Linux clients, and its ONTAP storage operating system. NetApp has created a piece of software called the Novus Data Director that moves metadata traffic onto an independently scalable, software-defined control layer that runs on standard x86 compute, according to Banerjee.
“A client asks the Data Director where a file lives, receives a layout, and then talks directly to the storage,” he writes. “Neither plane waits on the other, and data runs at line rate.”
One of the big benefits of having a single massive namespace is scalability. Banerjee says that having a single zettabyte-scale namespace eliminates the work of keeping datasets, checkpoints, and model artifacts continuously addressable.
“Novus is architected to allow operators to add capacity and performance without forcing application changes, disruptive remounts, or tenant interruptions,” he writes. “Instead of making the storage topology visible to every workload, Novus presents one consistent data environment built for AI factory scale.”
NeApp is targeting AI factories, those massive data centers under construction that will house hundreds-of-thousands to millions of AI accelerators consuming hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts of power. An architecture like Novus is needed to get ahead of looming storage crunch that these AI factories inevitably will run into using traditional storage architectures.
“The architectures that got us to the start of the AI era won’t be able to meet the demands we place on them as we continue to accelerate innovation,” Gary Grider, senior director for computing technologies at Los Alamos National Labs, said in Banerjee’s blog post.
“As AI Factories continue to scale, we’ll see hundreds of thousands of GPUs hitting a single namespace, creating a massive backlog of metadata operations that will slow or even stall the file system,” Grider said. “Novus is a first-of-its-kind architecture that delivers the independent scaling of both the metadata tier and the data tier so AI Factories can grow without being constrained by their ability to access data.”
NetApp made the announcement at NetApp INSIGHT 2026, its annual conference that runs through today in Las Vegas. The company made several other announcements at the show, including:
New hybrid multi-cloud capabilities in NetApp Platform that give customers better control over their hybrid storage fleets, autonomous operations, a new AI ChatOps interface, sovereignty-aware storage services, and integration with Nutanix’s virtualized environments;
New zero-copy data activation in NetApp AI Data Engine (AIDE) that enables customers to access in-place data while maintaining governance, resiliency, and openness requirements;
Expanded partnerships and new capabilities with SAP, Oracle, and Supermicro.
Does anyone know or have a 3d printer file for the charging port plug/cover on a Pint X (idk if they differentiate across models) I would appreciate it if you could share it as I lost both mine and don’t feel like buying more from OneWheel dot com. Thank you in advance!
New photonic architecture will power AI inference for models exceeding 20 trillion parameters at up to 10,000 tokens per second per user
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 1, 2026 — Volantis, a semiconductor company building a new category of AI inference system, today announced an $88 million Series A co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with participation from John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic and Susa Ventures. The round also includes angel investors Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao and Sholto Douglas.
Volantis is building a new AI inference architecture that eliminates the tradeoff between memory capacity and bandwidth. Its first system, A-1, is being designed to run models exceeding 20 trillion parameters at up to 10,000 tokens per second per user, while reducing inference cost per token.
The company’s founding team includes semiconductor and photonics veterans from NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom and Ayar Labs. Their previous work includes the first CoWoS product, the first high-volume tunable VCSELs and early silicon photonics co-packaged optics systems.
“As AI agents take on more work, how fast they complete that work will increasingly determine how fast companies can operate,” said Tapa Ghosh, CEO and co-founder of Volantis. “Today’s hardware forces a tradeoff between running the largest, most sophisticated models and running them fast. We started Volantis to eliminate that tradeoff.”
Breaking Through the AI Memory Wall
Running large AI models at high speeds requires enormous memory capacity to hold the model and enormous bandwidth to continuously feed data into the compute engine. Existing architectures force a compromise between the two.
On-chip SRAM provides high bandwidth but limited capacity, constraining model size and context windows while increasing cost and energy consumption. GPUs and other HBM-based systems provide greater capacity, but bandwidth limits how quickly they can serve increasingly large models. Even newer approaches such as 3D DRAM remain on the same tradeoff curve.
Volantis is designing A-1 to increase memory capacity and bandwidth simultaneously by nearly two orders of magnitude, allowing increasingly large models to run at much higher inference speeds.
That performance could significantly accelerate AI agent workflows. A coding agent that completes a task in two minutes instead of 30 gives developers more opportunities to test ideas, ship software and iterate. As agents take on longer and more complex work, inference speed increasingly determines how quickly they can complete it.
A New Approach to Photonic Interconnects
Volantis is building a new category of photonic interconnect designed specifically to connect compute chips to memory.
Its optical fabric connects large numbers of memory chips into a unified pool, aggregating their bandwidth as memory is added. This allows A-1 to increase memory capacity and bandwidth together while using lower-cost off-chip memory.
While photonics is already used to move data inside data centers, existing technologies have largely focused on chip-to-chip connections. Chip-to-memory connections require more than 100 times as much data to travel over much shorter distances, creating different requirements for energy and cost.
Volantis developed a photonic platform specifically for this environment. Its architecture uses custom micro-VCSELs rather than external lasers, drawing on the existing gallium arsenide VCSEL supply chain and avoiding indium phosphide supply constraints. The micro-VCSELs are small, temperature-stable and low power, enabling end-to-end links consuming less than one picojoule per bit. Volantis plans to unveil additional innovations behind the architecture as A-1 moves toward commercialization.
Investment and Commercialization
Volantis plans to deliver its first integrated inference engines to customers in 2027.
The financing will support the development and commercialization of A-1 and its photonic memory architecture, including expanding the company’s engineering team and moving the system toward customer deployments.
About Volantis
Volantis is a semiconductor company building a new architecture for AI inference. The company combines photonics and semiconductor design to increase memory capacity and bandwidth, enabling larger AI models to run at significantly higher speeds. For more information, visit https://volantissemi.ai.
Was putting my XR back together when the footpad slip and when it fell it ripped the connector right off the wire. Is this able to be salvaged or will I need a new footpad w sensor?
Three-quarters of nations have rightly abolished capital punishment in law or practice, but killing by the state has surged in the US
What is the kindest way to kill? That’s the question being asked once more following Tennessee’s failed attempts to execute Christa Pike for the brutal murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18. The 50-year-old was taken to a medical facility, her condition unknown, with witnesses describing her snoring loudly around 40 minutes after receiving two injections of pentobarbital on Wednesday. It is the second botched killing in months, prompting Tennessee’s governor to order a halt to executions.
Lethal injection was supposed to be the humane alternative to firing squads and electric chairs. They in turn were seen as an improvement on hanging, which looked much like lynching in a system disproportionately handing the death penalty to black men. The age and ill health of those executed, and the ethical refusal of most medical staff to be involved, may contribute to botched injections. But analysis of autopsy results has provided compelling evidence that suffering is inherent; injections – especially those involving paralytic drugs – have merely disguised it. What is described as safeguarding the dignity of prisoners is really about reducing the discomfort of witnesses who would otherwise see their suffering.
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Wilmington institution will celebrate a half-century of its signature fundraiser Dec. 5, honoring longtime leader Skip Pennella and raising money for community arts programs
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Grand will mark a major milestone in Wilmington’s arts and social scene this December, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its annual Grand Gala with a performance by the Stray Cats, an elaborate after-party at the Hotel DuPont and a tribute to longtime Grand leader Skip Pennella.
The 50th annual Grand Gala is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 5, with the Stray Cats taking the stage at The Grand Opera House’s Copeland Hall before guests move to the Hotel DuPont for what organizers bill as the “Ultimate After Party.”
The gala has grown into one of Wilmington’s signature annual fundraising and social events. Proceeds support The Grand’s Community Engagement and Outreach programs, which provide arts experiences for more than 20,000 students and residents. The Grand says gala support helps provide music and dance instruction, theater performances and other arts programming.
Rockabilly icons come to Wilmington
The Stray Cats — Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom — helped bring rockabilly back into mainstream popular music in the early 1980s, combining a 1950s-inspired look and sound with the energy of contemporary rock.
Formed in 1979 on Long Island, the trio initially struggled to gain traction in the United States before heading to London in 1980, where a growing rockabilly revival helped launch the band’s career.
The group ultimately found major success on both sides of the Atlantic, becoming known for songs including “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut” and “(She’s) Sexy + 17.”
Following the concert, gala guests will head a few blocks up Market Street to the Hotel DuPont, where the celebration will continue with themed rooms, live music, gourmet food and signature cocktails.
Pennella to receive Grand Medal
The evening will also recognize Francis “Skip” Pennella with the 2026 Grand Medal for Excellence in the Performing Arts.
Pennella recently retired as executive director and transitioned to a senior advisory role. His relationship with The Grand, however, stretches well beyond his tenure as its top executive. He previously spent 11 years as chairman of The Grand’s board, helping lead the organization through a period of change and an expanded emphasis on community service.
“Skip answered the call when The Grand needed him most,” Board Chair Roger Kirtley said. “Through his steady leadership, unwavering commitment and deep care for this organization, he helped guide The Grand through an important period in its history and positioned us well for the future.”
Pennella called serving as executive director “one of the greatest privileges of my career.”
“I am incredibly proud of what our Board, staff, volunteers, donors, and community partners have accomplished together,” Pennella said. “We have a unique opportunity to build upon a proud history while ensuring The Grand continues to serve and inspire our community for generations to come.”
Leadership transition underway
The gala comes as The Grand moves through a leadership transition.
The Board of Directors has appointed Mike Woodin as interim executive director while conducting a national search for Pennella’s permanent successor. Woodin has served in senior leadership at The Grand and has worked on the organization’s finances and strategic planning.
“It is an honor to serve an organization that means so much to our community,” Woodin said. “Every day, our talented staff creates experiences that inspire audiences, educate young people, and strengthen Delaware through the performing arts.”
The Grand’s 50th gala also continues a tradition of bringing prominent performers to Wilmington for the fundraiser. Recent galas have featured Kool & the Gang in 2024 and Bruce Hornsby with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra in 2025.
More than a night out
While the gala has long been part of Wilmington’s social calendar, its primary purpose is fundraising.
The Grand says proceeds help make arts programming available to thousands of Delaware children and community members who might otherwise have limited opportunities to experience live theater, dance and music. The organization has described the gala as a major source of support for its community engagement, Stage of Discovery and arts education programs.
That gives this year’s celebration two milestones: 50 years of gala nights in downtown Wilmington and a changing of the guard for one of Delaware’s best-known performing arts organizations.
TO GO
What: 50th Annual Grand Gala featuring the Stray Cats
When: Saturday, Dec. 5, 2026
Where: Concert and presentation at The Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington; Ultimate After Party at the Hotel DuPont
Tickets: $250 to $550. A $1,600 package includes two tickets, a hotel stay and additional benefits.
Benefits: The Grand’s Community Engagement and Outreach programs serving students and Wilmington residents
Fort Pierce, FL — Officials in St. Lucie County, Florida, have discovered 14 unauthorized Flock Safety license-plate readers installed along public roads, raising new questions about who placed the surveillance cameras there and who has access to the data they collected.
The cameras surfaced as the county reviewed 52 previously authorized automated license-plate readers ahead of their removal. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office subsequently claimed ownership of three of the unpermitted devices, leaving 11 without a publicly identified owner. County officials have posted removal notices requiring the cameras to come down in October.
The discovery comes amid growing scrutiny of Flock systems in the region. Former Fort Pierce police officer Josepher Crutchfield was arrested in September after investigators said he searched Flock’s database 382 times for a vehicle registered to his former girlfriend, mostly while off duty and without a legitimate law-enforcement purpose.
The case prompted Fort Pierce police to tighten access to the system, while Florida transportation officials separately ordered automated license-plate readers removed from state highways.
Flock says permitting requirements vary by jurisdiction and that it is willing to assist St. Lucie County. The unexplained cameras nevertheless highlight a basic oversight problem: powerful surveillance equipment was operating on public property without county officials initially knowing who installed it.
My funwheel X7 long range displaying low duty cycle warning for most of the ride without being pushed hard. The LED shows yellow warning while accelerating most of the ride and not pushing any harder than normal. The ride ended and the charge showed to be higher than the start for a 9 km ride. Foot pads were active the whole time. I need help diagnosing what is going on.
Ministers discuss drawing down EU countries’ reserves after Donald Trump threatens to cut off US supplies
Britain is in talks with European allies over releasing emergency diesel stockpiles after Donald Trump threatened to cut off US supplies of the fuel.
Ministers held calls with counterparts from the European Commission (EC), Germany, France, Italy and Ireland on Thursday to discuss whether to draw down reserves after the Trump administration told Germany and France to release their stockpiles to help ease soaring global energy prices or face a US export ban.
Jessica Watkins, the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit, is making her second trip to the space station
Four astronauts rocketed into orbit on Thursday on a space station mission that will stretch until spring, among them a Canadian whose wife will give birth while he is away.
SpaceX launched commander Jessica Watkins and her crew for Nasa after a three-week delay to fix the capsule’s leaking fuel system. Thick clouds threatened all morning to halt the countdown but in the end, the skies cleared enough to allow for a safe liftoff.
War has returned to Tigray. This time it may not stay in Ethiopia Expert commentLToremark
As fighting escalates in Tigray and neighbouring areas, there are fears that Ethiopia’s internal instability could spill over into the wider Horn of Africa region.
Conflict returned to Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray on 23 September, as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) forces stormed three national airports in Tigray. In what the TPLF claimed was defensive combat, ground offensives were also expanded along Tigray’s southern and eastern borders with the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions. The TPLF and its allies captured parts of Afar but lost several key areas in southern Tigray, including Alamata town.
Ethiopia’s federal government forces and the allied Tigray Peace Force (TPF) are now advancing towards Mekelle, the capital of Tigray. Meanwhile, reports of drone strikes in Addis Ababa and on government-controlled airbases alters the nature of the war.
Although Tigray has seen conflict before, this time there is a risk that hostilities could extend into Eritrea and Sudan.
The risk of renewed hostilities in Tigray had been clear for some time, given the steady decline in relations between the federal government and the TPLF. The failure to build on the Pretoria Agreement – the ceasefire deal that brought an end to the war in 2022 – was largely the result of a continued zero-sum approach by both sides, as well as weak implementation and oversight.
The agreement effectively unravelled in May, when the TPLF reinstated a pre-war legislative council, with its chairman Debretsion Gebremichael named regional president. This spelled the end of the Tigray Interim Regional Administration (TIRA) – a key outcome negotiated under Pretoria. The removal of interim president, General Tadesse Werede, formerly head of the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF), followed the ouster of his predecessor Getachew Reda in late 2024.
The TPLF views the recent escalation as a return to full-scale war. To an extent, they have been pushed towards a response. There is continued containment of Tigray; a lack of implementation of the Pretoria Agreement or any dispute resolution mechanism; the absence of incentives for its leadership to return to the federal fold; a weakening of TPLF legitimacy in the region; and recent drone attacks by the government in the region.
But unlike in the 2020–22 war, the federal government has been more cautious and calculated in its actions as well as public messaging. The government frames the TPLF as a rogue administration that is colluding with internal opposition insurgencies and external actors to threaten Ethiopia’s territorial integrity and its own survival.
The key question now is whether the government will seek to contain the conflict within Tigray and other parts of northern Ethiopia, or whether it will consider it necessary to pursue bolder options. One such option could be targeting Eritrea, which it believes to be supporting anti-government movements – something Eritrea has repeatedly denied. In a message assigning culpability to its northern neighbour, Ethiopia closed its embassy in Eritrea and expelled Eritrean diplomats.
Now, much will depend on how the conflict evolves.
Internal division in Tigray and a new opposition alliance
The TPLF’s control over Tigrayan society has weakened significantly. Since the war ended in 2022, it has faced protests over crippling economic conditions, growing competition from rival parties and defections by leading members. In recent months, Tigrayan authorities have turned to forcibly recruiting young men into the defence forces and have cracked down on freedom of speech. For the people of Tigray, an already difficult humanitarian situation now looks set to worsen.
There is deep division within TPLF too. Following the start of the military offensive, there have been reports of senior TPLF officials being arrested or defecting to Addis Ababa.
Days before the fighting resumed, the TPLF and six other regional armed opposition groups – including Amhara’s Fano movement and the Oromia region’s Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) – announced a coalition called the Alliance for Survival. Their common goal is to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his Prosperity Party from power and install a transitional government.
But it is not immediately clear that this uneasy tactical alliance – among groups with unresolved tensions and very different visions for Ethiopia – will result in functional cooperation. Senior leaders of Fano have publicly opposed the alliance; while a recently divided OLA may struggle with justification to its support base. There are also historical grievances between some of these groups. The TPLF have accused Fano and the Eritrean forces of grave human rights violations in Tigray four years ago, while Fano and OLA have been bitter and at times violent enemies.
Opposition to the Ethiopian government also comes from beyond the country’s borders. Tsimdo is a transnational alliance which reportedly links the TPLF, the Eritrean government and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The TPLF is silently allied with its former foe, Eritrea, with supply lines chiefly secured through Tigray’s northern border. But the Eritrean government’s priority is to keep war away from its own territory, and its alleged support for opposition groups increases the risk of further regional escalation – especially with Ethiopia eyeing control over Eritrea’s Red Sea port of Assab.
Meanwhile, the conflicts in Ethiopia and Sudan have also become more intertwined. The Ethiopian government has accused the SAF of backing the TPLF – which they have denied – and is increasingly unsettled by the reported presence of Tigrayan fighters alongside the SAF in eastern Sudan. It fears that the SAF, in collaboration with Eritrea, could reinforce the TPLF from across the Sudanese border – including near strategic sites like the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Sudan, in turn, has accused Ethiopia of providing support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudan People’s Liberation-North (SPLM-N), including training, supplies and use of Ethiopian territory. Ethiopia’s close ally, the UAE, is also accused of supporting the RSF – although it refutes such allegations. Ethiopia’s calculus is seemingly to create a buffer on its border with Sudan. However, direct dialogue and de-escalation with the SAF would go further than retaliatory exchanges and mutual accusations of interference.
Limited options for de-escalation
The mediation landscape is very different from 2022. Members of the international community have called out the TPLF for their escalatory actions and urged a return to African Union (AU)-led talks. The Ethiopian government has so far controlled the narrative around this conflict, briefing foreign governments about the likely escalation ahead of the UN General Assembly.
The Pretoria Agreement did not produce the broader political settlement needed for durable peace and no longer seems tenable for either side. The TPLF has repeatedly discredited the only existing mediation effort under the AU. Hardening regional rivalries and the lack of US or wider Western interest to fully support the AU with the resources and leverage needed to create a viable platform, makes a sustainable resolution to this conflict seem a long way off.
Given these conditions, the conflict is likely to continue for a while. However, the danger of diplomatic inaction is that a protracted war in Tigray is likely to spill over beyond Ethiopia, into Eritrea and further into Sudan. Policymakers must find a way to take collective action to avert such a dangerous regional escalation.
Meet Ron and Sally… They had been living in a 4,000-square-foot home, using only a fraction of the space, when they began seriously considering what the future might look like.
For many older adults, the decision to move into a senior living community is often viewed as something to consider only when a crisis occurs. But for Ron and his wife, Sally, making the move before it became necessary was one of the best decisions they ever made.
The couple, both in their late 80s, live comfortably in an Independent Living apartment in a Harmony senior living community that also offers Assisted Living and Memory Care neighborhoods. While Ron remains active and independent, his wife lives with multiple sclerosis. She is healthy and engaged, but mobility has become increasingly challenging.
Their story is one familiar to many aging couples: one spouse begins facing greater physical challenges than the other, caregiving responsibilities gradually increase, and adult children worry about their parents’ safety while trying to respect their independence.
Aging Together, but Differently
Photo provided by Harmony Senior Care
Rather than waiting until caregiving demands became overwhelming or a health emergency forced a decision, they chose to make a move while they still had options and independence.
“I think we were smart to move before we were in any kind of desperate situation,” Ron reflected. “We live independently, participate in activities, and enjoy an active social life, but we know help is here if we need it.”
That decision not only provided peace of mind for the couple but also allowed them to remain close to their daughter, who lives nearby, without relying on her to become a full-time caregiver. Ron and his wife wanted family visits to remain about spending time together, not managing daily responsibilities.
“My wife and I discussed this. We decided we would not put any kind of demands on our daughter except when we really needed to.”
Their daughter, son-on-law, and grandchildren visit frequently. They share dinners, enjoy family outings, and spend quality time together.
Protecting Family Relationships
Ron’s concern about protecting his daughter from becoming a full-time caregiver comes from his own experience. Years earlier, he faced a similar decision with his own parents.
Ron recalls helping his mother and father transition into senior living after his father was diagnosed with dementia. His mother struggled with the idea of leaving her home and giving up her independence.
“Dad was drifting into dementia, and Mom did not want to give up her independence,” Ron remembered.
Like many adult children, Ron faced the challenge of balancing his parents’ wishes with concerns for their safety and quality of life. Ultimately, the move proved beneficial, but it took time for his mother to fully embrace it.
“It took her about a year and a half to say, ‘Okay, I’m in the place where I should be.”
Ron found himself experiencing many of those same emotions.
“Even with making the choice to live in a senior living community, it took me about a year or so to adjust after spending so many years in our home” he admitted. “But I have no doubt that we’re exactly where we should be.”
The Hidden Burden on Spouses
One of the realities many families face is that spouses rarely age in exactly the same way.
One person may remain healthy and active while the other develops mobility challenges, memory concerns, or chronic health conditions. Over time, the healthier spouse often becomes a full-time caregiver.
“It’s a lot on the spouse who has to care for their partner who is aging differently than they are,” Ron said.
For many couples living at home, that burden grows steadily. The caregiver often becomes responsible for transportation, medications, household management, mobility assistance, appointments, and countless other daily needs.
Senior living offers practical support, but Ron says one of the most valuable benefits is something many people don’t anticipate.
“It’s not always direct help,” he explained. “You’re having dinner with people who have situations just like yours, and you talk about it.”
In other words, caregivers gain something just as valuable as assistance: understanding.”You get a lot of support.”
That support comes from neighbors who have walked the same path and understand the unique challenges that come with caring for a spouse.
Neighbors Who Look Out for One Another
Photo courtesy of Harmony Senior Care
When Ron describes life at Harmony, he talks less about services and more about people.
“We pay attention to the people who live near us in Independent Living,” he said. “We check on them. We run errands, pick up prescriptions, and help when needed.”
The support system extends throughout the community.
That culture of looking out for one another creates a sense of security that is difficult to replicate at home.
“You have a lot of neighbors, and they’re a few feet away,” Ron said. “They pay attention, and they pay attention in a way that’s not snooping. Everyone is looking out for each other.”
Residents notice when someone hasn’t come to dinner. They check in on neighbors. They help one another. It’s a network of support built through friendship and proximity.
“You get a lot more of that kind of help than you do at home.”
A Great Place to Be Before You Need More Care
Ron is also quick to point out that senior living is not only beneficial for couples dealing with different health needs.
Many residents in Independent Living remain largely self-sufficient but may be beginning to experience challenges that make living completely alone more difficult.
For someone living alone, that support system can provide peace of mind while helping preserve independence longer.
“If you’re a single person who is getting toward assisted living but not there yet, this is a great place to be because you’ve got people who are going to pay attention to you.”
A Richer Social Life
One of the biggest surprises for Ron was how dramatically his social life improved after moving.After losing four close friends within just a few months, he found himself increasingly isolated.
Today, life looks very different. “At Harmony, we have more activities than I have time and energy to do,” he laughed. The couple now enjoys a fuller social calendar than they had at home.
At first, Ron assumed the social opportunities would be more important for his wife. Instead, he discovered they were equally important for him.
“I really like the social interaction and the social life.”
For adults in their 80s and beyond, meaningful social connections can become increasingly difficult to maintain. At Harmony, friendship is built into daily life.
The Best Time Is Before You Have To
After watching his own parents navigate aging, serving as a caregiver to his wife, and ultimately making the transition himself, Ron has come to a simple conclusion.
Reluctance is normal.
Most people don’t want to leave a home filled with memories. Most worry about losing independence. Most wonder if they’re making the decision too soon.
But Ron believes waiting for a crisis often means waiting too long.
For couples where one spouse is experiencing health challenges, for caregivers carrying growing responsibilities, and for older adults who want to maintain control over their future, making the move proactively can make all the difference.
Today, Ron and his wife have support when they need it, a vibrant social life, neighbors who genuinely care about them, and a daughter who can focus on being family rather than a full-time caregiver.
“We’re exactly where we should be,” Ron said.
For more information…
To learn more about Independent Living and caregiving support at Harmony, reach out to one of our Delaware locations in Dover, Glasgow, or Hockessin. Each location offers Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care apartments long with beautiful amenities, on-site physical, occupational, and speech therapy, dining options, and a full calendar of social events.
Minneapolis, MN — The family of Renee Good has filed two lawsuits against the U.S. government and several current and former immigration officials over her fatal shooting by an ICE officer during a federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Good, 37, was shot Jan. 7 while sitting in her vehicle during protests against Operation Metro Surge. Video reviewed by news organizations showed her briefly reversing and then turning away as ICE officer Jonathan Ross fired three shots into the vehicle. Federal officials said Ross acted in self-defense.
One lawsuit alleges wrongful death under Minnesota law, including claims of assault, battery, negligence and false imprisonment. A second alleges a conspiracy to violate civil rights and names Ross, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials.
Good’s death became a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign. Another U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti, was fatally shot by immigration agents weeks later. AP reports that at least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration officers during Trump’s second term.
Hennepin County prosecutors continue investigating Good’s killing, while DHS maintains that federal agents acted lawfully.
The AI giant Anthropic has urged the Albanese government to consider giving “conditional approval” for big tech to train its models on Australian copyrighted works under an opt-out model, after conceding it won’t secure a blanket copyright exemption.
But Australia’s public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, have strongly criticised AI firms, calling on the government to enact strict new rules to compensate media organisations and protect public interest journalism.
Photo: Brianna Busch is representing Delaware Park Casino at the 2026 G2E Dealer Championship at The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
New Castle native Brianna Busch is representing Delaware Park Casino this week against 49 other dealers from across North America
WILMINGTON, Del. — A New Castle native who learned to deal cards at Delaware Park Casino just four years ago is putting those skills to the test this week on one of the gaming industry’s biggest stages.
Brianna Busch is representing Delaware Park Casino at the 2026 G2E Dealer Championship at The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
The three-day competition, which began Tuesday and concludes Thursday, brings together 50 dealers representing casinos from across North America. For the first time, the championship includes dealers from Canada and Mexico as well as the United States.
Busch is the first dealer from Delaware Park to compete in the national event.
“It’s very exciting and shocking,” Busch said when she learned she had been selected. “I feel honored that Delaware Park is involved and that I get to represent them.”
From dealer school to Las Vegas
Photo: the Team in Delaware Park Casino sending Brianna off to Las Vegas for the G2E Dealer Competition.
Busch’s path to the competition began with a setback.
She first enrolled in dealer training in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the classes to be canceled. She returned in 2022, completed Delaware Park’s dealer school and joined the casino’s table games staff that June.
Since then, Busch has learned every table game offered at Delaware Park and recently was promoted to supervisor.
Her chance to represent the casino came after an internal competition July 15. Busch advanced to a final group of five employees who demonstrated their dealing skills while working with actual guests on the casino floor.
Rather than treating it as a special performance, Busch said she relied on what she does every day.
“This is what I do, so it didn’t feel like a competition,” Busch said. “I just focused on being who I am and doing my job.”
Blackjack, roulette — and people skills
At G2E, Busch and the other competitors must demonstrate more than an ability to shuffle cards, calculate payouts or spin a roulette wheel.
Each contestant deals blackjack and traditional roulette for 15 minutes and is evaluated on technical skills, hospitality and game control. The tournament uses elimination rounds, culminating Thursday with the championship.
Busch’s favorite game is roulette.
Her preparation for blackjack, however, sometimes follows her home to Delaware.
While driving, Busch said she looks at numbers on Delaware license plates and uses them to practice the mental arithmetic required at a blackjack table, adding and calculating numbers toward 21.
“I like to work under pressure,” Busch said. “It’s controlled chaos, but I know what I’m doing.”
The gaming industry also runs in the family. Busch’s mother began working in the industry in the 1990s, including a stint at Delaware Park, and encouraged her daughter to consider becoming a dealer.
Busch previously attended culinary school and said she sees similarities between a busy restaurant kitchen and a crowded casino table: Both require employees to remain calm, accurate and personable while working quickly under pressure.
Delaware Park sends one of its own
Delaware Park officials said Busch’s advancement from dealer school graduate to supervisor and now national competitor illustrates the career opportunities available within casino operations.
“We, as a department, are very excited to be able to have Brianna represent us in Las Vegas,” said Kevin Gargin, director of table games. “Brianna shows the qualities we strive to make a standard. She takes pride in her work and focuses on making sure guests have a positive, memorable experience.”
Terry Glebocki, president and general manager of Delaware Park Casino, said Busch’s progress has been remarkable.
“In just four years, Brianna has grown tremendously — from a graduate of our dealer’s school to a floor supervisor,” Glebocki said. “She exemplifies the very best of Delaware Park through skill, confidence, an engaging personality and an undeniable rapport with our guests.”
The championship is part of the Global Gaming Expo, presented by the American Gaming Association and organized by RX. The competition debuted in 2025 with 34 U.S. dealers. This year’s expanded field includes 50 competitors from across North America.
For Busch, the trip also marks another milestone: her first visit to Las Vegas.
And despite competing against some of the continent’s top casino dealers, her strategy remains much the same as it was during Delaware Park’s internal competition.
Trust her training, engage the people at the table and do the job she already knows how to do.
TO GO BOX
What: 2026 G2E Dealer Championship
Who: Delaware Park Casino representative Brianna Busch and 49 other dealers from casinos across North America
When: Sept. 29-Oct. 1
Where: The Venetian Expo, Las Vegas
Competition: Dealers compete in blackjack and traditional roulette and are judged on technical skills, hospitality and game control.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump says he would consider issuing preemptive pardons to members of his administration before leaving office if they faced possible investigations under a future Democratic government.
Asked in a Time interview whether he would pardon officials who might later become targets of Democratic-led investigations, Trump replied, “Yeah, sure I’d do that.” He then pointed repeatedly to former President Joe Biden’s use of preemptive pardons before leaving office in January 2025.
Biden granted clemency to figures including Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members and staff of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. He said the pardons were intended to protect public servants from potential politically motivated prosecutions and were not acknowledgments of wrongdoing.
Biden also pardoned several family members before leaving office, a decision that drew criticism from Republicans and some Democrats.
Trump has made expansive use of presidential clemency himself. Shortly after returning to office, he pardoned roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted in connection with Jan. 6 and commuted several additional sentences.
Trump did not identify which current officials might receive pardons or say that any final decisions had been made. His comments nevertheless raise the possibility of another broad use of presidential clemency before his second term ends.
Washington, DC — The Trump administration has expanded its controversial taxpayer-funded advertising campaign with a new television spot celebrating President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war against Iran, just weeks before the midterm elections.
The one-minute advertisement aired Wednesday on Fox News and carries the disclosure “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” It features Trump’s February announcement of military operations, battlefield imagery, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praising the president’s willingness to use force against threats to Americans. The ad concludes with Trump urging Iranians to take control of their government.
The spot is part of a broader series of government-funded advertisements centered heavily on Trump’s leadership and political themes. Previous ads have highlighted his tax policies, attacked political enemies, and reused language and footage resembling his campaign material. The White House calls them patriotic public-service announcements rather than political advertising.
That explanation has drawn criticism from both parties. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether taxpayer funds should fund campaign-style messaging immediately before an election, while legal experts have raised concerns about potential violations of federal restrictions on government-funded propaganda.
The Iran ad arrives as the conflict enters its seventh month and remains politically contentious at home.
Most of my life as a songwriter has been about saying things that cannot be said in conversation. Sometimes it’s about wishing you’d been given things you know you’ll never have.
Yesterday I held him in my arms as though he had come back to life, like I had one chance to hold him before he disappeared from this earth.
Why Should Delaware Care? Dover’s city government has become increasingly acrimonious and litigious over the past 18 months. Some of those disagreements among city leaders were borne from a controversy last summer over the conduct of police department leaders and elected officials. The City Council is now discussing how to respond to an investigation into the controversy — and how to balance transparency with possible legal repercussions.
More than a year since controversy erupted between Dover officials and the local police union over Police Chief Thomas Johnson’s leadership, city leaders are divided over how to proceed with the findings of a third-party investigation into the situation.
But the investigatory findings at the heart of that debate remain unclear, as the city of Dover has not released the contents of the third-party inquiry, citing exemptions to the state’s open records laws.
Spotlight Delaware has appealed Dover’s denial to release the records, but the debate has simultaneously spilled over into public discussions among leaders at a recent city council meeting.
The Dover City Council voted last fall to hire 21st Century Policing Solutions, a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm, to launch a third-party investigation into police union complaints about alleged conduct violations by Johnson, including driving his work vehicle to family vacations, as well as Mayor Robin Christiansen’s subsequent handling of the situation.
Council members received a final report about the investigation’s findings on June 18, but a City Council Legislative and Finance Committee meeting this week marked the first time city leaders publicly discussed what should come next.
The committee, which includes all nine city council members and two additional appointed residents, was divided over whether it should release the full investigation or implement a series of policy changes based on the findings without actually sharing them publicly.
Despite the lack of consensus about how to move forward, the discussion marked a public rise in tension among elected officials over the police union allegations, which the council has not discussed in open session since they initiated the investigation last fall.
The revamped debate over the investigation also comes one week after Spotlight Delaware submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition to the Delaware Department of Justice for the full investigation report. City officials denied Spotlight Delaware’s initial request for the file in late May, arguing it is not a public record because it constitutes a personnel file and contains law enforcement investigatory files.
Despite the city’s initial denial, Christiansen said during the meeting he supports the public release of the investigation because he has “nothing to hide.”
Johnson, however, did not weigh in during the meeting, though city council members said he has an attorney, and they are concerned he might sue the city if the report is released.
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware on Wednesday, Johnson said the City Council has recognized there is “more preparatory work to accomplish” before making a decision about how to proceed with the findings.
In turn, he said it would be “premature” for him to comment on the investigation before elected officials decide how they want to move forward.
To release, or not to release
City leaders did not begin discussing the investigation until nearly 11 p.m. Tuesday night, at the tail end of a marathon six-hour meeting.
Councilman Brian Lewis brought up the possibility of releasing the full report, and both Christiansen and Councilman Gerald Rocha said they agreed.
Christiansen said he had gotten “the advice of my attorney,” and believes publishing the report would prove he did not do anything wrong.
But other council members said they were hesitant to circulate the report because Dan Griffith, the city’s attorney, told them in a private meeting not to. They also said Johnson has not given them his permission to disseminate the findings.
Griffith, who was not present at Tuesday night’s meeting, declined to comment about the discussion.
In a written response to Spotlight Delaware’s FOIA, Griffith argued that it constitutes an “internal affairs investigation” about specific complaints levied against Johnson. He said the state has upheld in the past that internal affairs investigations are not public records.
Griffith also wrote that the original contract between the city and 21st Century Policing established that investigators would provide the city with a “confidential detailed report,” only to be discussed in a private council session, not publicly.
A handful of residents have also called for the city to distribute the report publicly, both in online articles and at city council meetings.
“We paid for an independent investigation, and now we’re being handed roughly one and three-quarter pages of proposed resolutions,” community activist Vonda Smack said Tuesday night. “We should not have to read between the lines to understand an investigation we funded.”
The investigation cost the city $50,000, according to documents obtained by Spotlight Delaware.
The committee ultimately voted 6-2 against releasing the report, but said they would consider reintroducing the possibility after further considering the legal ramifications.
Considering policy recommendations
While the debate over whether to release the full report became the focal point of Tuesday’s discussion, the committee also considered approving a set of changes to the city employee handbook based on the investigation’s findings.
Councilman David Anderson introduced the idea, which he said is the council’s “right and duty” since they now know the findings.
The recommendations he proposed include creating more “rigid parameters” around when an officer is allowed to use a city police vehicle, adopting a written policy for when city employees can work at a second job and prohibiting “meetings about political matters” between city officials and members of the Dover Police Department while the officers are on duty.
These suggestions seem to respond directly to the allegations made by the police union against Johnson last summer, including that he drove a city-owned vehicle to family vacations and to a second job as an adjunct instructor at Penn State University, and that he was doing work for Penn State during standard work hours in Dover.
The union also accused Johnson and Christiansen of telling members to attack city councilmen Roy Sudler and Brian Lewis for their comments criticizing policing in Dover, seemingly referenced in the recommendation prohibiting political meetings with on duty officers.
The Dover Fraternal Order of Police, in a show of mutiny against the chief, commissioned a mobile billboard to drive around the city and park at different government buildings last summer. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
It is not clear whether the third-party investigation substantiated the union’s claims about Johnson and Christiansen’s behavior.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware after Tuesday’s meeting, Christiansen said neither he nor the chief did anything “unethical,” but he thinks the proposed recommendations are “punitive” and not the appropriate response to the situation.
In an interview in May, Johnson said he and Christiansen have thoroughly discussed all terms of his employment throughout his tenure with the city, and that he has always acted “with permission, not forgiveness.”
Like the proposal to release the investigatory report, the committee also voted to table consideration of the policy recommendations until a future meeting. The City Council is next scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 12.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
Weekend Spotlight is a round-up of the five best events to check out in Delaware over the coming weekend, curated by Arts + Culture Editor Cannon Taylor. This edition covers Oct. 2-4, 2026. What should be on our radar for future editions? Let us know!
House Shows
Porchfest celebrates local music
Saturday, Oct. 3. Cool Spring and Trolley Square neighborhoods. Wilmington. Noon to 8 p.m. Free.
Who needs a music venue when you can host a musician at your home? The Original Music Association of Delaware is hosting its second annual Wilmington Porchfest, highlighting our local scene with a full day of free concerts in front yards.
Beyond the music, Porchfest is an excellent way to get outside and make some friends. Who knew porches were the ultimate antidote to social isolation?
The party begins in the Cool Spring neighborhood, noon to 4 p.m., and continues in Trolley Square, 4-8 p.m.
St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church opens its doors for the Egyptian Festival Oct. 3-4. | PHOTO COURTESY OF ST. MARY COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH
Saturday, Oct. 3 and Sunday, Oct. 4. St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church of Delaware. 1644 Otts Chapel Road, Newark. 11 a.m.to 6 p.m. Free.
The Coptic Orthodox Church dates back to 1st century Egypt. Delaware’s congregation is a bit more recent. The St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church of Delaware was founded by seven immigrant families in 1979 and within a decade had grown its numbers enough to build its own church building.
This weekend, the church is opening its doors to the hungry public for its bi-annual Egyptian Festival, featuring a wide array of Egyptian and Mediterranean cuisine for sale: shawarma, moussaka, kofta and more. You may even see someone dressed as a pharaoh.
Roger Daltrey comes to the Freeman Arts Pavilion on Oct. 3. | PHOTO COURTESY OF FREEMAN ARTS PAVILION
Saturday, Oct. 3, Freeman Arts Pavilion, 31806 Lake View Drive, Selbyville. 7 p.m. General Admission: $92.
Last year, English rock band The Who wrapped up their final North American tour. “The Song Is Over” was the tour’s name and the band’s promise — but vocalist Roger Daltrey just keeps on singing. The iconic voice of ‘60s and ‘70s rock continues to tour as a solo act and, this weekend, will come from across the pond to The First State.
Daltrey’s powerful, raspy cadence will be backed by his acoustic strumming rather than a rock band as he performs solo material, covers and The Who hits in an intimate performance at the Freeman Arts Pavilion.
Delaware City Day honors the town’s bicentennial on Oct. 3. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DELAWARE CITY DAY
Saturday, Oct. 3. Battery Park. Clinton Street, Delaware City. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Free.
Delaware City has celebrated its annual Delaware City Day since 1980 but is aiming to make this one particularly special in honor of its bicentennial. Volunteers are hard at work readying the fireworks, constructing parade floats and practicing their regal waves.
The day also features boat rides, live music, children’s activities and fireworks at dusk, but the true appeal of the event can be found by wandering into local shops and restaurants and experiencing the small town hospitality that makes this port town of less than 2,000 people so special.
Cannibis, music and art festival Weedstock returns to Delaware Oct. 2-4. | PHOTO COURTESY OF WEEDSTOCK
Friday, Oct. 2 through Sunday, Oct. 4. G & R Campground. 4075 Gun and Rod Club Road, Houston. Hours vary. Tickets: $53 per day, $105 weekend pass. 21+.
While Weedstock brands itself as a “Music & Arts Festival,” it’d be hard to walk away without getting high. That’s in no small part because of the industrial-grade “Kush Cannon” the organizers fire off at 4:20 p.m.
The festival began in 2017 to advocate for marijuana destigmatization and legalization. Now that recreational use is legal in Delaware, Weedstock has become more like a three-day party.
Whether that’s your vibe or a nasal nightmare is up to individual discretion. Either way, the characters who come to Weedstock are bound to be amusing to watch.
My brother accidentally bought a Onewheel + thinking it was an xr. It seems to be in fine working order and he’s getting around 7 miles of riding with the original battery. Thinking it was an XR I told him not to use the fm app in case we wanted to do any mods to the board. Now that we know it’s a plus there any significant downside to just using the fm app? I know there are alternatives but they’re a pita to use and can’t change ride modes etc…
As he celebrated Boulden Brothers' 80th anniversary Tuesday, surrounded by his family members, Tim Boulden recounted advice he received from his father.
The candidates running to replace Gavin Newsom sparred over taxes, immigration and regulating AI
Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, the candidates running to be California’s next governor, clashed on Wednesday over taxes, immigration and regulating artificial intelligence in a testy debate held days before voters begin receiving their ballots in the heavily Democratic state.
Hilton, the former Fox News host endorsed by Donald Trump, used the hourlong matchup, hosted by CNN in its studio in Burbank, California, to argue that Becerra, a former congressman who served as the US health and human services secretary during the Biden administration, was not actively campaigning and instead taking voters for granted.
Austin, TX — Texas authorities say they disrupted a planned violent attack on the state Capitol after receiving a credible tip and arresting the alleged main suspect within hours.
The Texas Department of Public Safety identified the suspect as 40-year-old Benny Caldera Jr. of Converse, near San Antonio. DPS said investigators learned Tuesday evening of a planned attack scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 1, and worked with the FBI and local law enforcement to locate Caldera.
DPS SWAT officers arrested him at his home around 3 a.m. Wednesday. He was initially booked into the Bexar County Jail on a felony charge of making a terroristic threat against a public servant. Authorities later said he was transferred to federal custody as the investigation continued.
A memo sent to Texas senators described Caldera as the “main suspect” and referenced suspected co-conspirators, although state authorities have not announced additional arrests. Officials also have not publicly identified a motive.
The Capitol remained open during regular hours Wednesday, with an enhanced DPS presence around the building. Gov. Greg Abbott praised state and federal authorities for acting quickly against the alleged threat.
Was riding my xr in the rain last night and was fine and dandy. Stopped at a light and got every warning in the book ( low battery, overcharged cell, start in starting position, etc). Weired, so got home and it wouldnt turn off. Was thinking i blew it but popping off the rear and back covers very minor damage. Some intrusion but nothing that would lead me to think the bms fired, so i went for the next best thing...the unprotected owie chip. Connected and oh boy the voltages are all over the place. Removed it and dryed everything up (made sure around the 5v and neutral heads was not shorted on the bms that feeds the owie) and now as soon as the bms is plugged into the harness it powers up and refuses to turn off. Tried plugging it in after all was dry and nothing, stays green and stays on. Replacing the button as a precaution but has anyone seen this problem? The bms is sending volts out the controller side and no visible damage, in fact the controller side is pristiene for being over 7 years old (not a spec of dust, was really impressive). Battery and samples all showing good ranges, only thing it can be if not the button is the bms. I have so many donors but dont know where to begin with this issue. Stm chip is clean, coating came in handy. Will update when the button is in. But throught i would get some imput since this is my first big issue with the xr and most posts here lean towrds a bad bms and that scares me😂.
Dry winters and a warming climate are taking a toll on centuries-old ice in the Alps, researchers say, with about 20 percent of Swiss glacial ice melting since 2021.
Why Should Delaware Care? The state chamber of commerce is the most influential business advocacy organization in Delaware and, as its next leader, Rep. Mike Smith will shape its future work and impact. His departure from the General Assembly will be a blow to the future prospects of the state Republican Party, which has struggled for a decade to make advancements in the state.
State Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek), who was announced Wednesday morning as the next president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, told Spotlight Delaware he would not run for reelection in 2028.
While the 41-year-old Smith has long been seen as a rising future leader in the Delaware Republican Party, the lawmaker said he also will not seek any office come 2028.
Smith is one of the youngest members of the state’s Republican caucus and the last incumbent Republican lawmaker from New Castle County. He represents the Pike Creek and Hockessin area in House District 22, where he has defied a Democratic voter registration advantage since taking office in 2018 by fewer than 200 votes.
Despite running against the odds, Smith has easily won re-election twice, in part by building a personal brand grounded on constituent conversations, small business and entrepreneurial support, and raising a young family.
He called the decision to transition to the private sector after a decade as a state representative, should he win his reelection bid next month, “a commitment” he made to both himself and his family.
Smith said the 10-year number has long been on his mind. It is indicative of his broader political ideology. He has served his constituents well and been able to accomplish an agenda in that time, he said.
“It’s going to be hard to walk away from that,” Smith said. “But I think that’s something that’s important in the political process. These elected positions were not built for people to stay in the same position for years upon years upon years.”
The General Assembly also has changed a lot since he was first elected, Smith said. Changes that have not necessarily been for the better.
“I’m not someone who believes in the party apparatus or the party fiefdoms, and I guess what comes with that,” Smith said. “I also don’t think the General Assembly has that makeup anymore. I think the General Assembly has generally been made up of advocacy organizations and really been kind of pillaged by the rise in outside [political action committee] spending.”
Leading the state chamber
Shortly before he spoke with Spotlight Delaware on Wednesday afternoon, Smith was announced as the next president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, the state’s most influential business advocacy organization.
A press release announcing Smith’s new role said he was chosen after a national search “based on his experience in public policy, higher education, economic development, and community engagement.”
He succeeds Michael Quaranta, a former chief of staff to the late Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Castle who has led the state chamber since 2018. Quaranta has overseen a growth in membership of the chamber while leading it through a period in which complete Democratic control of state government has sometimes led to a particularly adversarial relationship, such as around the minimum wage increase and the passage of paid leave.
Smith said the role represents a natural progression for his career; he currently serves as strategic initiatives director for the University of Delaware’s College of Health Sciences. He hopes to work at the intersection of business innovation and government to build a Delaware economy that can thrive for future generations.
John Gooden, chair of the state chamber’s board of directors, said Smith’s background made him a natural fit for the role.
“He’s got a history, actually a passion, for being able to reach across the aisle, understanding public policy and how it ties into business, how it affects the business community,” Gooden said.
A brewing conflict of interest?
But the appointment also raises questions about a potential conflict of interest, should Smith win his reelection bid this November, as he would sit at the helm of an organization that often lobbies lawmakers in favor of business-friendly legislation.
John Flaherty, a spokesman for the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, an advocacy group focused on increasing government transparency and accountability, said Smith’s new role “is clearly a conflict.”
“You can’t serve two masters,” Flaherty said. “You can’t be a legislator and pretend that the chamber’s lobbyist who is testifying on a bill or bills doesn’t impact you.”
Flaherty said Smith should, at a minimum, ask the House Ethics Committee to issue an advisory opinion on his new role, since the General Assembly is not beholden to any outside public integrity group. Asking for an advisory opinion, Flaherty said, would “dispel any appearance of impropriety this might have.”
Smith, in a text message to Spotlight Delaware, said he would welcome an advisory opinion, saying he is in favor of “as much transparency as possible.”
The General Assembly does have a legislative conflict of interest policy, which requires members to disclose a potential conflict and refrain from voting on a measure that where one has “a personal or private interest.”
That is defined as “an interest which tends to impair a legislator’s independence of judgment in the performance of the legislator’s legislative duties with respect to that measure or bill.” Whether his chamber leadership would impair his independence or simply reflect a well-known support for business measures may be difficult to prove.
Similarly, a one-year prohibition between public service and lobbying the legislature may also not apply to Smith, since it only refers to former legislators. Quaranta is currently a registered lobbyist in the state, but the chamber also employs other lobbyists as well, which could give Smith a degree of legal separation.
And while Smith said questions about a potential conflict of interest are fair, he also rebuffed the idea that one would exist.
The role of the chamber president is much bigger than government lobbying, Smith said. He pointed to other facets of the role including membership, education and fundraising as areas where his attention will be focused.
He also said that being a lawmaker is part-time by design. Most legislators have outside jobs, and hat outside employment — regardless of where — will always create the potential for a conflict of interest, Smith said.
Gooden, the state chamber’s board chair, also dismissed the idea of a conflict. He said the topic was discussed by the chamber’s search committee during their process of evaluating candidates, but he does not anticipate it being a problem.
Smith also noted candidates in other legislative races who have ties to advocacy organizations have already been supported by voters, as well as current lawmakers who are presidents or CEOs of organizations that also do direct lobbying to the legislature.
Boston, MA — A sweeping Massachusetts investigation has found that more than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000 children across the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester over several decades, while church leaders repeatedly failed to stop the abuse.
The attorney general’s office said the investigation, launched in 2019, reviewed more than 300,000 pages of records and interviewed more than 100 people. Most of the documented abuse occurred before 2002, when reporting by The Boston Globe exposed widespread clergy abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston and triggered investigations worldwide.
Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said church officials in all three dioceses knew for years that children were being abused but often failed to take effective action or confront institutional failures that allowed misconduct to continue.
The investigation did not produce broad new criminal charges. Prosecutors said some conduct was not criminal under Massachusetts law when it occurred, while statutes of limitations barred other cases. Three matters were referred to local district attorneys, with one resulting in charges.
The report calls for stronger child-protection policies, improved responses to survivors and greater institutional transparency. The Worcester Diocese said it would review the findings for additional reforms and pointed to an earlier apology from Bishop Robert McManus.
Campbell said legal barriers do not lessen the seriousness of the abuse or the state’s responsibility to document what happened.
Quantico, VA — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has launched Project Meridian, a 120-day Pentagon initiative tasked with identifying the weapons, technologies and battlefields likely to define future conflicts.
Elon Musk, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will co-lead the effort under Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael. Hegseth said the project is intended to look beyond traditional military planning and determine what capabilities the United States will need to maintain technological superiority.
The group is expected to examine artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, robotics and other emerging technologies, then submit recommendations within 120 days. A public report is expected, along with a classified annex covering sensitive findings.
The initiative also places executives with major Pentagon business interests directly inside a process examining future military technology. Musk’s SpaceX and Luckey’s Anduril already hold substantial U.S. defense contracts.
Project Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth announced during his “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico. Others include a new four-star Autonomous Warfare Command designed to accelerate deployment of drones and robotic systems.
Does anyone have suggestions for a convenient way to carry my GT around on campus? I got the official backpack from FM, but it sucks. Plus I also need to carry my school books with me and having 2 backpacks is inconvenient. I need a set up that doesn't inhibit my ability to ride to campus, and isn't overly rediculous to walk around with once there.
One idea that I haven't tried out yet is a kind of rolling cart set up (think custom hand truck for the GT). I'm capable of building one but I'm concerned about stowage while I'm riding.
EDIT
Thank you all for the replies and suggestions. I think what I'm going to try and do is crack open the old CAD software and try to design a sleek rolling caddy that kind of shoots the gap between the mounted wheels from makerworld some of you suggested and the mini hand truck shared in the comments. My goal is for it to be semi collapsible and lightweight such that it can be strapped to my backpack.
Meanwhile, does anyone have a 3d model of the GT or know where I might be able to find one?
The first signs that an aging parent is struggling can be easy to miss. Knowing what to watch for can help families find support before a crisis forces the decision.
By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE News
HOCKESSIN Del. – For many adult children, there isn’t a single moment when they realize Mom may need more help.
Instead, it happens slowly.
She asks the same question again. The refrigerator seems a little emptier. A bill gets paid late. She stops going to an activity she once enjoyed. Maybe she hesitates on the stairs or seems less comfortable driving at night.
Individually, those changes may not seem alarming. Together, however, they can signal that an aging parent is beginning to have difficulty managing life independently.
Recognizing those changes early can give families something particularly valuable: time and choices.
That is the focus of the first installment of Delaware LIVE’s series for adult caregivers — helping families recognize when a parent may need additional support and understand where to turn before an emergency makes the decision for them.
Why the person closest to Mom may miss it
One of the challenges is that aging usually happens gradually.
An adult child who sees a parent every day or every week naturally adjusts to small changes. A little more forgetfulness becomes familiar. Someone begins bringing Mom dinner more often. Another family member quietly starts paying a bill, driving her to appointments or handling something on the computer.
Without realizing it, the family may gradually be doing more and more.
Meanwhile, a sibling, grandchild or friend who has not seen Mom for several months may walk through the door and immediately notice something different.
“She seems slower.”
“She repeated that story three times.”
“The house doesn’t look like it used to.”
“That’s just not like Mom.”
Those observations shouldn’t automatically be treated as proof that something is wrong. Someone visiting for a few hours may see only a snapshot.
But they shouldn’t be dismissed either.
A useful question is: “What specifically did you notice?”
Specific observations — rather than general impressions — can help families determine whether a pattern is developing.
Watch for changes in everyday life
Memory loss is one possible warning sign, but it isn’t the only one.
Caregivers should pay attention to whether Mom is still managing the everyday activities she handled six months or a year ago.
Possible signs include:
Repeating questions or stories frequently.
Missing appointments or forgetting medications.
Unopened mail or unpaid bills piling up.
Difficulty preparing meals or forgetting to eat.
Expired food accumulating in the refrigerator.
Wearing the same clothes repeatedly or declining personal hygiene.
Increased clutter or an unusually messy home.
Trouble using appliances that were once familiar.
More falls, near-falls or difficulty getting out of a chair.
Unexplained weight loss or increased fatigue.
Withdrawing from friends, church, hobbies or social activities.
Becoming unusually anxious, irritable or suspicious.
Getting confused while driving or walking familiar routes.
Financial changes can be particularly important.
Late bills, duplicate payments, confusion about accounts or falling for scams may indicate that Mom is having more difficulty with judgment or organization even when casual conversation and memory still seem relatively normal.
The central question may be less about whether Mom occasionally forgets something and more about this:
Can she still function independently the way she did a year ago?
Listen to the people around her
Caregiving works best when one person doesn’t have to make every judgment alone.
Brothers and sisters, grandchildren, longtime friends, neighbors and others who know Mom well may notice changes the primary caregiver has gradually become accustomed to.
Families can periodically ask:
“Have you noticed anything different about Mom during the past six months?”
Then listen for examples.
If several people independently notice similar changes — problems with memory, mobility, organization, judgment or social engagement — it may be worth taking a closer look.
Writing down specific examples and approximate dates can also be useful when talking with Mom’s physician.
Why waiting can make things harder
Avoiding the conversation can feel easier, particularly when Mom values her independence and family members don’t want her to feel that decisions are being made for her.
But waiting until something happens can dramatically reduce the family’s choices.
Small problems can become larger ones: missed medications, poor nutrition, unpaid bills, falls, scams, driving problems or worsening health conditions.
And instead of making decisions gradually, the family may suddenly be making them in a hospital room after a fall or medical emergency.
Addressing concerns early doesn’t necessarily mean moving Mom into assisted living.
In fact, modest support may help her remain at home longer.
That support could include meal delivery, transportation, medication reminders, homemaker services, companion visits, an adult day program or a few hours of in-home care each week.
The better question may not be, “Does Mom need assisted living?”
It may be:
“What support would help Mom remain safe and independent?”
Start with a medical conversation
When noticeable changes begin occurring, Mom’s primary care physician or a geriatric specialist can be an important first stop.
Changes in memory, mood, balance or behavior can have many potential causes, including medications, hearing or vision problems, depression, illness, cognitive impairment or other medical conditions.
A medical evaluation can help families better understand what may be occurring and establish a baseline to compare against future changes.
Going into the appointment with specific examples is more useful than simply saying, “Mom seems different.”
Delaware caregivers don’t have to figure it out alone
Families also have Delaware organizations that can help them understand what assistance may be available.
Delaware Aging and Disability Resource Center: The state’s Aging and Disability Resource Center can help families learn about in-home care, transportation, meal programs, respite care, adult day programs, benefits and long-term care options. Phone: 800-223-9074
Easterseals Delaware Caregiver Resource Center: Easterseals provides caregiver education, support and guidance for families trying to understand aging and caregiving options. Its resources can also help caregivers develop plans and address the stress that often accompanies caring for a parent.
Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Valley Chapter: When memory or cognitive changes are part of the concern, the Alzheimer’s Association offers education, support groups, care consultations and guidance about evaluation and safety. Its 24-hour helpline is 800-272-3900.
Pay attention before the crisis
There is an important middle ground between doing nothing and moving a parent into assisted living.
For some families, the answer may simply be additional help around the house. For others, it may eventually involve home care, an adult day program, assisted living or another level of support.
The advantage of noticing changes early is that Mom can be part of those decisions.
Families have time to ask what she wants, understand the options, review finances and determine what level of assistance makes sense.
Sometimes the first indication is nothing more specific than a feeling shared by adult children everywhere:
Mom just doesn’t seem quite like herself anymore.
That feeling shouldn’t automatically lead to a conclusion.
But it may be a good reason to start paying closer attention.
CAREGIVER CHECK: THREE QUESTIONS TO ASK
Is Mom safe?
Look at falls, driving, medications, cooking and whether she can respond appropriately in an emergency.
Is Mom managing?
Look at bills, meals, housekeeping, appointments and other everyday responsibilities.
Is Mom different than she was a year ago?
Consider memory, judgment, personality, mobility, and social engagement.
If the answer to one of those questions is “I’m not sure,” it may be time to gather more information rather than wait for a crisis.
TO GO BOX
Easterseals Delaware Caregiver Resource Center New Castle: 302-221-2076 Milford: 302-253-1129 Website:Easterseals Caregiver Support
Provides caregiver education, support groups, planning assistance, respite resources and help connecting families with local services. Easterseals DE & MD Eastern Shore
Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline Phone: 800-272-3900 Website:Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Valley Chapter
Help for families concerned about memory loss, cognitive changes, dementia, safety and getting a loved one evaluated.
Delaware Aging and Disability Resource Center Phone: 800-223-9074 Website:DelawareADRC.com
A statewide starting point for information about in-home care, transportation, meals, respite programs, benefits and long-term care options. Delaware Health and Social Services
Editor’s Note: This is part of Delaware LIVE’s series for Adult Caregivers. The series is made possible by support from Easter Seals of Delaware and Eastern Maryland and Harmony Senior Living. To see all stories Delaware LIVE has developed as part of the special series, visit our Health & Wellness Page;
Republican lawmaker will succeed Michael Quaranta in December, bringing experience in business policy, education and economic development to Delaware’s largest business organization
WILMINGTON, Del. — State Rep. Michael F. Smith, a Republican lawmaker whose legislative work has included economic development, taxes, education and state capital spending, has been selected as the next president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce.
Smith will succeed Michael J. Quaranta, who plans to retire in mid-December after eight years leading the organization.
The State Chamber’s board selected Smith following a national search, according to an announcement Wednesday.
“Michael Smith brings strong advocacy experience, a deep understanding of Delaware, and a proven ability to build relationships across sectors,” John Gooden, chairman of the State Chamber’s board of directors, said in announcing the appointment.
The move will put a sitting state legislator at the helm of one of Delaware’s most influential business advocacy organizations at a time when employers and lawmakers are debating taxes, state spending, workforce development, health care, energy costs and Delaware’s overall competitiveness.
From Legislative Hall to business advocacy
Smith was first elected to the Delaware House in 2018 and represents the 22nd District, covering Pike Creek Valley and portions of Hockessin and Newark. The Delaware General Assembly currently lists Smith as a Republican representing the district.
His committee assignments have given him a role in several issues directly affecting Delaware employers. Smith serves on the House Revenue and Finance Committee and the Economic Development, Banking, Insurance and Commerce Committee, as well as the Education and Health and Human Development committees.
He also serves on the Joint Capital Improvement Committee, commonly known as the Bond Committee, which develops Delaware’s annual capital spending bill.
Outside Legislative Hall, Smith has worked at the University of Delaware since 2014 and currently serves as director of strategic initiatives and partnerships in the College of Health Sciences. His work there has involved partnerships connecting higher education, health, workforce development and outside organizations.
“I am grateful for the confidence the Board has placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce,” Smith said. “The State Chamber has a proud history of advocating for Delaware employers and ensuring the business community has a voice on the issues that affect them.”
Smith said he also sees the Chamber as an organization capable of bringing different groups together to address shared challenges.
“I look forward to building on that work on behalf of employers and employees across Delaware,” he said.
A potentially significant voice in Dover
The appointment could give Smith an unusually direct perspective on the intersection of government and business policy.
The State Chamber, founded in 1837 as the Wilmington Board of Trade, advocates for employers on public policy and economic issues and regularly participates in debates in Dover involving taxation, regulation, workforce policy, economic development and the cost of doing business.
Smith’s legislative background means he arrives with firsthand knowledge of the General Assembly and its budget and committee processes.
The Chamber did not address in Wednesday’s announcement how Smith’s new position will affect his service in the Delaware House. Any change in his legislative status would be a separate matter from his appointment to the Chamber.
Quaranta leaves after eight years
Smith will take over an organization that changed significantly during Quaranta’s eight-year tenure.
According to the Chamber, Quaranta expanded member participation in policy committees, updated conferences and other programming and oversaw development of the organization’s 2025-27 strategic plan.
The Chamber also created the Delaware Employers and Employees Education Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization focused on voter education, and rebranded its charitable organization as the Delaware State Chamber Foundation.
It introduced additional policy and advocacy resources, including its “How They Voted” legislative scorecard and “Delaware Competitiveness Bluebook.”
The Chamber said its annual budget nearly doubled during Quaranta’s tenure despite more than two years of disruption associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Mike Quaranta has led the State Chamber through a period of meaningful change and growth,” Gooden said. “He has helped modernize the organization, strengthen its connection with members, and expand the ways the State Chamber serves Delaware’s business community.”
Smith and Quaranta are expected to work together during a transition period before Quaranta’s departure in December.
To Go Box
What: Delaware State Chamber of Commerce leadership transition
Incoming president: Michael F. Smith, state representative for Delaware’s 22nd District and director of strategic initiatives and partnerships at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences
Outgoing president: Michael J. Quaranta
Transition: Smith and Quaranta will work together before Quaranta retires in mid-December.
Learn more: Visit the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce for information about the organization, its advocacy work and programs.
Washington, DC — A White House agreement promoting “super intelligence” drew unexpected attention Wednesday after official images published by President Donald Trump and the White House misspelled the name of the country beneath the president’s signature.
The “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” produced following Trump’s meeting with leading artificial intelligence executives, identified him as “President of the Unites States.” The erroneous image appeared in posts on both X and Trump’s Truth Social account, quickly generating ridicule online.
The mistake was particularly conspicuous because the agreement focuses on managing increasingly sophisticated technology. Trump has also pushed companies and federal officials to replace the term “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence,” arguing the new description better reflects the technology’s capabilities.
Beyond the typo, the accord establishes four voluntary safety principles for companies developing advanced AI. They include stronger internal cybersecurity controls, dedicated monitoring teams, independent outside audits and committees responsible for reviewing safety findings.
Executives associated with Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia signed the agreement. Trump has generally favored industry self-regulation rather than extensive federal restrictions, even as several participating technology leaders have publicly warned about risks from increasingly powerful AI systems.
The White House had not publicly explained how the spelling error made it into the released document.
Washington, DC — The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged in federal court that its program for identifying alleged noncitizen voters can mistakenly flag American citizens, adding to concerns over the Trump administration’s expanded voter-fraud enforcement effort.
The admission came in litigation challenging DHS’s Unlawful Voter Initiative. According to court filings cited by Reason, officials identified “potential inaccuracies” in the system and acknowledged that, in rare circumstances, U.S. citizens could be incorrectly classified as noncitizens.
The problem is not theoretical. DHS initially told Nevada that 15,903 possible noncitizens appeared on the state’s voter rolls. That number was later reduced to 185 names, and subsequent review found all 185 were U.S. citizens.
The initiative compares voter records against immigration databases and can generate investigative leads entered into TECS, a federal law-enforcement system used by Customs and Border Protection and other agencies. DHS documents describe TECS as a platform used to share law-enforcement and inspection information among federal, state, local, tribal and international partners.
DHS says safeguards exist to prevent agents from mistakenly contacting citizens, but the filings leave unanswered what happens to Americans already entered into TECS because of erroneous matches.
The case adds to broader questions about an administration effort aimed at a form of illegal voting that research and past election audits have repeatedly found to be rare.
Photo: Images provided by the Delaware Historical & Cultural Affaires office. Graphic created with AI on 9/30.
New permanent exhibit expands the Plantation’s story to include enslaved people, Indigenous communities and others who lived on the property
DOVER, Del. — Delaware is preparing to open a new permanent exhibit at the John Dickinson Plantation that broadens the story traditionally associated with one of the state’s most important Founding Fathers.
The exhibit, “One Land Many Voices,” will debut Oct. 10 inside the plantation’s new 14,000-square-foot visitor center, part of a $14.5 million state capital project.
Gov. Matt Meyer has proclaimed Oct. 10 “One Land Many Voices Day,” saying the exhibit reflects an effort to tell the stories of all of the people who shaped the historic property.
“Delaware’s history belongs to all of us, and telling it honestly means telling the stories of everyone who shaped it,” Meyer said. “The only way we can learn from our past is by refusing to hide from it, including the chapters that are difficult to confront.”
A broader interpretation of Dickinson
John Dickinson remains central to the site.
Known as the “Penman of the Revolution,” Dickinson was one of Delaware’s most influential political figures of the founding era. His Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania made him nationally prominent in the years before the Revolution, and he later played important roles in the Continental Congress, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitutional Convention.
The new exhibit intentionally places that political legacy alongside the stories of Indigenous people, tenant farmers, indentured servants, free Black residents and enslaved men, women and children who lived and worked on the property.
Dickinson enslaved people for much of his adult life. According to the state, he ultimately unconditionally freed all 59 people enslaved on the property in 1786.
The result is an exhibit designed to put Dickinson’s life within the larger social and economic world surrounding the plantation.
Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez said the goal is to acknowledge that complexity.
“Delaware’s colonial history is a complex one,” she said. “By honoring all who once lived here, we give voice to those whose work and sacrifice contributed to the legacy of this historic site.”
What the announcement leaves largely unexplored
While the state’s announcement emphasizes slavery and the broader communities connected to the plantation, it gives less attention to several parts of Dickinson’s political and constitutional legacy.
Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania were among the most influential colonial arguments against British taxation. The National Archives also identifies Dickinson as the principal writer of the first draft of the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first governing framework.
His record during the Revolution was complicated.
Dickinson opposed declaring independence in 1776 because he believed the colonies were not yet sufficiently unified or prepared for separation from Britain. After independence was approved, however, he served in the Delaware militia and later returned to national public life.
He later served as president of Delaware and Pennsylvania, chaired the 1786 Annapolis Convention that helped lead to the Constitutional Convention and represented Delaware at the 1787 convention. Dickinson left Philadelphia because of illness before the Constitution was formally signed and authorized fellow Delaware delegate George Read to sign his name.
Dickinson also argued at the Constitutional Convention for ending the slave trade. His own relationship with slavery changed over time, creating one of the contradictions that continues to shape interpretations of his life.
Those facts do not diminish the significance of slavery at the plantation or the experiences of the people enslaved there. They do illustrate why Dickinson remains a difficult figure to summarize neatly: He argued for colonial liberty while enslaving people himself, opposed independence before later serving the new nation and eventually freed the people he held in bondage.
The press release does not indicate how much of the permanent exhibit is devoted to Dickinson’s political writings, constitutional ideas and role in establishing the new American government compared with its treatment of slavery and other communities associated with the property.
That does not necessarily mean those subjects are absent from the exhibit. Visitors will be able to judge that balance once One Land Many Voices opens.
Broader approach predates Meyer administration
The broader interpretation of the plantation is not solely an initiative of the current administration.
The project and its emphasis on presenting the lives of people beyond the Dickinson family were developed before Meyer became governor.
That distinction is important because the exhibit arrives during a continuing national debate about how museums, schools and public institutions should interpret the founding era.
Supporters of broader historical interpretation argue that understanding the period requires examining not only prominent political leaders but also slavery, labor and the experiences of people who historically received less attention.
Others have argued that an increased focus on slavery and social history can sometimes come at the expense of explaining the political philosophy, institutions and achievements of the founding generation.
The state describes One Land Many Voices as an effort to provide a more comprehensive account of the property through artifacts, historical documents, photographs, narrative text and visual media.
$14.5 million investment
Beyond the historical interpretation, the visitor center represents a significant state investment in the plantation as an educational and cultural destination.
The new 14,000-square-foot building includes exhibition, educational and meeting space, along with a 1,400-square-foot screened pavilion designed for school groups, community meetings and other programs.
HCA Director Suzanne Savery said the expanded facility provides an opportunity to offer greater context to visitors.
“This expanded Visitor Center represents an important step forward in how we share Delaware’s history, allowing us to provide deeper context and a more meaningful experience for every visitor,” Savery said.
Visitors will continue to be able to tour the historic 18th-century mansion and reproduction structures elsewhere on the 450-acre property.
Admission, exhibits and programming will remain free. Fees will apply for some private uses of the multipurpose room and pavilion.
Opening Oct. 10
The permanent exhibit will be unveiled during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, at the John Dickinson Plantation, 250 Kitts Hummock Road near Dover.
TO GO
What: Opening of One Land Many Voices permanent exhibit
Where: John Dickinson Plantation, 250 Kitts Hummock Road, Dover
When: Saturday, Oct. 10; ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m.
Cost: Free
About: The new visitor center is part of a $14.5 million state investment and expands exhibition, educational and meeting space at the historic property.
Photo: A biomass power plant surrounded by piles of low-quality wood used to efficiently generate electricity without CO2.
Caesar Rodney Institute says biomass could provide a local energy source while supporting Delaware forests and forestry businesses, but regulatory and environmental questions remain
DOVER, Del. — As Delaware looks for ways to produce more of its own electricity and reduce dependence on energy imported from outside the state, the Caesar Rodney Institute is urging policymakers to consider a resource already growing across roughly a quarter of Delaware: wood.
The free-market policy organization says sustainably harvested wood and other forms of biomass should be considered alongside solar, offshore wind, nuclear power and battery storage as Delaware develops what Gov. Matt Meyer has described as an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy.
Michelle Parsons, a physician and chair of the Caesar Rodney Institute board, made the case in a recent article arguing that wood energy could create a market for lower-value timber, support Delaware’s declining forest-products industry and provide another source of locally produced energy.
The idea is not entirely new to state policymakers.
Delaware’s own Statewide Forest Strategy calls for developing markets for low-quality wood for biofuels and specifically recommends examining restrictions imposed by Delaware’s incinerator law. The strategy also suggests exploring wood-energy systems at schools or other state-owned buildings.
Delaware looks for more homegrown energy
Meyer has made increasing electricity generation inside Delaware a significant part of his energy policy.
In his State of the State address, Meyer called for Delaware to generate more power “of multiple types,” and he has since described his broader strategy as “all of the above,” including solar, offshore wind, nuclear energy, battery storage and other technologies.
Delaware currently produces substantially less electricity than its residents and businesses consume, with natural gas serving as the state’s primary fuel for electricity generation.
CRI argues wood could provide another locally available resource.
“There is another energy resource Delaware already has in abundance,” Parsons wrote. “Wood.”
Forests cover about a quarter of Delaware
The Delaware Forest Service estimates forests cover roughly 352,000 acres, or about one-fourth of Delaware, with approximately 78% of that forestland privately owned.
State forestry documents describe those forests as renewable resources that can produce wood products while continuing to grow another generation of trees when managed sustainably.
Delaware forestry officials also have identified an opportunity involving lower-value hardwood trees.
The state’s forest strategy notes that Delmarva has significantly fewer sawmills than it did several decades ago, reducing the number of markets available for locally harvested timber. It identifies bioenergy as one potential market for lower-value wood.
A 2012 U.S. Forest Service analysis estimated that approximately 125,000 green tons of woody biomass could be available annually in the greater Delaware area without depleting the resource, including about 50,000 tons from Sussex County, 47,000 from Kent County and 28,000 from New Castle County.
Could schools be an option?
Other states have used wood for institutional heating. Vermont has used wood heating in public schools for decades, with modern systems designed to operate more efficiently and with greater emissions controls than traditional wood-burning systems.
Delaware’s own forest strategy includes a recommendation to explore a “Fuels for Schools” concept and consider converting a school or other state-owned facility to wood-based heating or cooling.
PJM also recognizes biomass, including wood, as a fuel that can be used to generate electricity within the regional grid.
State law presents a complication
One of the more significant questions involves Delaware law.
The state’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards Act recognizes sustainably harvested biomass as a renewable energy source.
But Delaware’s incinerator law imposes strict siting restrictions on facilities classified as incinerators, including requirements that generally keep them at least three miles from residences, residential communities, churches, schools, parks and hospitals.
CRI argues those restrictions could unintentionally block modern wood-energy projects, particularly smaller institutional systems that burn clean wood rather than municipal solid waste.
The organization is calling on lawmakers to determine whether clean wood-energy systems fall under those restrictions and, if so, amend or repeal the provisions that prevent them from being developed.
Delaware’s own forest strategy has previously called for examining those legal barriers.
Environmental questions remain
Using wood as an energy source also raises broader questions involving emissions, forest management and carbon impacts.
Modern biomass equipment can use advanced combustion systems and pollution controls that are substantially different from older wood-burning systems.
Still, the environmental impact of biomass depends on several factors, including what type of wood is burned, how forests are managed, how quickly harvested trees are replaced and what fuel source the wood displaces.
Delaware forestry officials have previously supported exploring the concept. The Delaware Forest Service’s 2020 forest strategy said the state has ample low-value wood available for bioenergy projects and said such projects could improve forest health. At the same time, PJM executive Michael Bryson recently cautioned that constructing a new biomass power plant can be costly and may make the most economic sense where wood waste is already generated as part of another business.
Air-quality concerns would also be part of any debate over expanded wood energy. DNREC has previously identified wood and biomass burning as sources of fine-particle pollution in Delaware. In regional haze planning documents, the agency said residential wood combustion represented about 23% of Delaware’s PM2.5 emissions in the 2011 emissions inventory used for that analysis. Modern commercial biomass systems can use substantially different combustion technology and emissions controls than residential wood stoves, but any Delaware proposal would still be subject to air-quality permitting and emissions standards.
Those questions would likely become part of any future Delaware regulatory or legislative debate.
Could markets help preserve forests?
CRI also connects the energy issue to Delaware’s continuing loss of forestland.
State environmental officials estimate Delaware is losing more than 1,000 acres of forest each year, largely because of development.
CRI argues that creating additional markets for sustainably harvested wood could give private landowners another financial reason to retain working forests rather than sell the property for development.
That argument also appears in state forestry policy, which calls for developing stronger markets for lower-quality timber while maintaining sustainable forest management.
No specific Delaware wood-energy facility has been proposed as part of CRI’s initiative.
Instead, the organization is asking lawmakers and state officials to include biomass in the broader discussion over how Delaware generates more electricity and thermal energy within its borders.
“If Delaware really means ‘all of the above,’ wood belongs in the conversation,” Parsons wrote.
Whether wood ultimately becomes a larger part of Delaware’s energy portfolio would depend on economics, emissions standards, sustainable forestry requirements and whether state law allows modern wood-energy projects to move forward.
To Go Box
What: Caesar Rodney Institute is urging Delaware policymakers to include sustainably harvested wood and biomass in the state’s “all-of-the-above” energy discussion.
Why it matters: Delaware’s Statewide Forest Strategy already identifies bioenergy as a potential market for lower-value timber and calls for examining legal restrictions on wood-energy facilities.
Learn more: Delaware residents can review the Delaware Forest Service’s Forest Action Plan and Statewide Forest Strategy through the Delaware Department of Agriculture.
A Familiar Voice, a Helping Hand: Delaware Hospice’s Care Goes Beyond the Bedside
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
A favorite story read aloud. A quiet conversation. Someone willing to sit beside a patient and simply be present.
At Delaware Hospice, those gestures are part of a broader effort to support people facing serious illness and the families walking through that experience with them. Medical care is central to the organization’s work, but its services also address the emotional, spiritual and practical needs that can accompany a difficult diagnosis.
Founded in 1982, the nonprofit, community-based healthcare organization serves people throughout Delaware and in southern Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania. According to its website, more than 175,000 patients and families have turned to Delaware Hospice over the years.
Its mission reflects a commitment to caring for people as well as treating illness.
“Our mission is to support every individual, family, and community with compassionate and expert care for serious illness,” the Delaware Hospice website states.
For families, serious illness can bring questions that extend well beyond medical treatment. Daily responsibilities continue, caregivers need support, and children may need help understanding what is happening to someone they love.
Delaware Hospice’s services include grief support, community education, and assistance for children and caregivers. The organization describes its approach as one that recognizes the needs of the whole family, including help coping with loss and navigating everyday challenges.
Financial circumstances are also part of that picture. Delaware Hospice says it provides care and support regardless of the person’s ability to pay. Donor contributions help sustain services when insurance does not cover all costs.
The organization also outlines several measures intended to maintain and improve the quality of its care. These include a dedicated quality and compliance team, patient and family satisfaction surveys, and an in-house Education and Learning department.
Feedback from patients and relatives helps inform that work, while staff education supports continued learning about care practices. Delaware Hospice also identifies a partnership with Healthcentric Advisors as a source of outside oversight.
According to its website, the organization is licensed in Delaware and southern Pennsylvania, approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and accredited by the Joint Commission.
Its recognition as a We Honor Veterans Level 4 Partner reflects attention to the needs of veterans at the end of life. Delaware Hospice also reports receiving Four Rings in the National Alliance for Care at Home’s Quality Connections Program for four consecutive years across its four locations.
Alongside its professional care team, volunteers contribute time, companionship and practical assistance.
“Your time and talents also fuel vital behind-the-scenes roles in administrative support and community outreach,” the organization’s website states.
For someone interested in volunteering, there are several ways to participate. Direct patient support can include providing companionship, reading aloud or helping with daily activities. These roles offer opportunities to bring personal attention and human connection to patients and their families.
Other volunteers assist with administrative work, community outreach and special events. Those assignments allow people to contribute different skills while supporting the organization’s services.
The range of opportunities means participation can take different forms. A volunteer who enjoys conversation might provide companionship. Someone drawn to organizational tasks might find a role helping behind the scenes.
Together, those contributions support an organization whose work has reached Delaware families for more than four decades.
For residents seeking assistance or considering volunteering, Delaware Hospice’s website provides information about its services and opportunities to get involved. Whether through professional care, caregiver support or a volunteer’s visit, the organization’s approach emphasizes the people experiencing serious illness and the loved ones beside them. Sometimes, that support begins with a helping hand. Sometimes, it begins with someone willing to listen and stay awhile.
Washington, DC — Public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen to its lowest level in Gallup’s decades-long tracking as the justices prepare to begin a new term filled with politically consequential cases.
Gallup’s September survey found that 54% of Americans have little or no trust in the federal judicial branch, while Supreme Court disapproval stands at 61%, tying the record high reached in July. Fewer than 35% approve of the court’s job performance.
The decline has accelerated since 2022, when the court overturned Roe v. Wade. Democratic confidence has fallen especially sharply, while independents have also become significantly less trusting. A plurality of Americans now describes the court as too conservative.
The court’s 6-3 conservative majority has also played a major role in determining how far President Donald Trump can push executive authority. Justices have recently allowed several administration policies to proceed while rejecting others, producing criticism from both the left and Trump himself.
The new term begins October 5, with cases involving climate litigation and other major federal disputes already scheduled. The court enters those arguments facing an unusually skeptical public after years of declining institutional confidence.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump launched America.gov on Tuesday, an artificial intelligence-powered portal intended to give Americans a single place to find federal information and eventually complete government transactions.
The site allows users to ask questions in conversational language and receive answers drawn from official government sources. Each response is designed to direct users back to the underlying federal information rather than forcing them to search through thousands of agency pages and forms.
Trump described the project as a way to make government simpler and more responsive, saying America.gov would serve as a single “front door” for interacting with federal agencies. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who leads the National Design Studio and serves as U.S. chief design officer, helped oversee its development.
The administration says conversations are not permanently stored and personal information is not collected through basic searches. Beginning in 2027, the government plans to expand the platform so users can complete applications and renewals, including passport and Medicare-related services.
Trump also signed an executive order directing federal agencies to integrate eligible public-facing services with America.gov and Login.gov. Certain services, including IRS tax filing and Defense Department systems, are excluded from the order.
Tallahassee, FL — Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet have approved designating more than 100 organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist organizations under a new state law that gives Florida officials broad authority to impose penalties on designated groups and their supporters.
The list includes antifa, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR-Florida and the Muslim Brotherhood. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass said the organizations met the statutory criteria, and DeSantis said he approved the recommendations without objection from Cabinet members.
The designations stem from HB 1471, which took effect July 1. The law authorizes Florida’s chief of domestic security to make terrorism designations, subject to approval by the governor and Cabinet. It also creates penalties involving material support, organizational membership, state funding and participation in public education.
CAIR and CAIR-Florida have challenged the law in federal court, arguing that it violates First Amendment protections and provides inadequate safeguards before an organization can receive a designation carrying serious legal consequences.
The ACLU said CAIR was denied a meaningful opportunity to address the Cabinet before Tuesday’s vote. Florida officials argue that the law includes notice and an appeals process. The designations are scheduled to take effect Nov. 5 unless a court intervenes.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump says he will spend the final 32 days before the November midterms campaigning across the country as Republicans fight to retain control of both chambers of Congress.
Trump said Tuesday that candidates across multiple states are asking him to appear with them and named Texas and Ohio among his upcoming stops. His campaign push arrives later than some advisers initially expected, after the White House spent much of the summer focused on foreign policy and the continuing conflict with Iran.
The political environment has become increasingly difficult for Republicans. Democrats are competitive in a growing number of House districts, while several Senate races that once appeared safer for the GOP have tightened. High gasoline prices, inflation and public dissatisfaction with the Iran war are among the issues shaping the campaign.
Trump remains a powerful turnout driver among Republican voters, but his involvement presents different calculations depending on the district. Some GOP candidates are embracing him directly, while others have emphasized local issues or distanced themselves from parts of his agenda.
The stakes extend beyond individual races. Control of Congress will determine which party sets the legislative agenda during Trump’s final two years in office and whether Democrats gain committee and investigative powers if they capture either chamber.
Des Moines, IA — President Donald Trump dismissed unfavorable Iowa polling as “fake” while farmers and other business owners across the state confront sharply higher costs, including several pressures tied directly to his administration’s policies.
Speaking during an Oval Office announcement for a planned $15 billion Iowa steel plant, Trump blamed Democrats for economic difficulties and insisted he remains more popular than during the 2024 election. Republicans, however, are pouring money and campaign resources into Iowa as traditionally safe races have become unexpectedly competitive.
Farmers face problems that predate Trump, including consolidation, high borrowing costs and volatile commodity markets. But his tariffs have increased prices for equipment and agricultural inputs, while the U.S.-Iran conflict has disrupted energy markets and driven diesel prices to record levels. Nationwide diesel recently reached roughly $6.50 per gallon, with agriculture and trucking among the industries feeling the greatest impact.
One Iowa farmer described farmers and trucking companies as “bleeding money,” reflecting broader concerns across the state’s agricultural sector.
The political challenge is particularly notable because Iowa’s rural communities strongly supported Trump in 2024. Republican candidates are now confronting the possibility that economic frustration may reduce turnout among voters who helped return him to the White House.
The White House has defended three taxpayer-funded advertisements featuring President Donald Trump by comparing them to ads that were paid for by past presidential administrations. But some legal experts have said the Trump White House commercials are political messages intended to influence the 2026 midterms and may violate U.S. laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds for propaganda.
The White House described its ads as “public service announcements” in a Sept. 25 press release pushing back on criticism. It said, “The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”
The release went on to say that “[a]dministrations of both parties have used public service announcements to explain policy and make the case for the nation’s direction,” citing examples of ads from the George W. Bush, Obama and Biden administrations, among others.
A legal expert we consulted did not see a correlation.
“I just think you’re not going to find any comparison at all,” Richard Painter, a corporate law professor and former White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, told us in an interview. Painter said the Trump White House ads are “so clearly propaganda,” which generally refers to government communications intended to manipulate or influence public opinion.
John G. Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and author of “In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns,” also told us, “I just think that the ads are different enough so that I personally don’t buy the argument” that the ads from the Trump administration and recent presidents are all the same. He said his perception is that the Trump White House ads are more political. “We’ll see what the courts say,” he said — if a lawsuit brings the matter to the judiciary.
Later, we’ll go over the cited examples of federally funded ads that were run under Presidents Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
The first Trump White House message to air includes images of Trump as he says, “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America. America will never be a communist country.” Viewers repeatedly hear the words “love me,” which are lyrics from a JMSN song of the same name. Near the end of that 30-second spot, Dana White, the UFC CEO, compliments Trump and talks about him “fighting so hard for the country he loves.”
A screen capture from the 2026 black-and-white White House ad that is almost exactly the same as an ad released by Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The third ad, in black and white, shows Trump walking and staring into the camera as he says in a voiceover, “we will demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers from our government,” “drive out the globalists,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists.” The ad ends with: “We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.” The video is almost identical to an ad from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
The second ad, a minute long, features video and audio from Trump’s July 3 speech from a site near Mount Rushmore, as the president says, “We are the freest people on Earth, and by the grace of God, the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history.” The ad ends with him saying, “This is only the beginning of the golden age of America.”
All three ads were released on or after Sept. 23 and include a “Paid for by the U.S. Government” disclaimer. The ads have aired on broadcast and/or streaming platforms, including during Sunday political talk shows and college and NFL football games.
“Our tax dollars are hard at work. And, we believe, probably illegally so,” Painter and three other ethics experts wrote in a Sept. 28 piece in the online publication the Contrarian. For the post, Painter was joined in criticizing the Trump White House ads by Norman L. Eisen, former White House special counsel to Obama; Virginia R. Canter, former White House associate counsel to Obama and President Bill Clinton; and Christopher J. Swartz, who worked for the Office of Government Ethics across multiple administrations and was briefly acting chief of the Ethics Law and Policy Branch in 2025, during Trump’s second term.
“These videos are not ‘public service announcements’ as the White House claims,” the authors wrote. “They are clear attempts to boost Republicans’ chances in the impending midterm elections given their sagging poll numbers. The timing, content, and format of the videos all suggest they are covert attempts directed at the success of the Republican party.”
The White House said “Trump is not on the ballot” this November, but the president has told wavering Republican voters to pretend he is. The legal experts also noted in their piece that two of the White House ads highlighting Trump include references to defeating communism or communists, which is what Trump regularlycalls democratic socialists running for Congress. (We’ve written that democratic socialists and communists do not have the same political or economic ideology, and democratic socialists make up a small minority of congressional candidates.)
“Even during the height of the McCarthy era and the Cold War, the United States government never came anywhere close to making an ad like this,” the experts said, adding that under the Hatch Act, a federal employee other than the president or vice president “may not use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” The statute would apply to other federal employees who participated in making or disseminating the ads, the experts said.
Also, annual appropriations bills passed by Congress have long included language prohibiting taxpayer funds from being used for “publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States.”
A few Republicans have spoken out against the Trump White House ads as well. “I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters about the ads on Sept. 28. The day prior, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said, “I don’t think any public official, including President Trump … should spend public money on private ads for themselves.”
A federal worker who violates the Hatch Act could face penalties such as “removal from federal service, reduction in grade, debarment from federal employment for a period not to exceed 5 years, suspension, reprimand, or a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000,” according to the U.S. Office of General Counsel.
Painter told us that Congress could also ask to be reimbursed for an improper use of taxpayer funds. The ads combined have cost at least $2.5 million, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
Obama Administration Ads/Outreach
One of the examples the White House cited under Obama sparked controversy, and the Government Accountability Office determined the public outreach campaign had violated federal laws. The other example is similar to ads run under Trump, promoting the open enrollment period for Affordable Care Act insurance plans.
Under Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2014 and 2015 used a public outreach campaign through social media to encourage support for its proposed rule on clean drinking water. The New York Times called it “a campaign that tests the limits of federal lobbying law.” The effort was aimed at ginning up support during a public comment period on the proposed rule, which concerned EPA regulation of water sources.
The EPA argued that it wasn’t violating the Anti-Lobbying Law because its outreach didn’t tell the public to contact or lobby Congress.
But in December 2015, the GAO concluded that the EPA had violated federal laws prohibiting the agency from spending federal dollars for “publicity or propaganda purposes” and prohibiting the use of federal appropriations for “indirect or grassroots lobbying in support of or opposition to pending legislation.”
In particular, the GAO faulted the EPA for using a social media tool that resulted in some messages not identifying the EPA as the source of the information. Instead, to some members of the public, “it appeared that their friend independently shared a message of his or her support for EPA and clean water,” GAO said, calling this “covert propaganda.” (The messages shared through people’s social media accounts said, “Clean water is important to me. I support EPA’s efforts to protect it for my health, my family and my community.”)
GAO said that the violation of grassroots lobbying occurred when the EPA’s blog posts linked to outside groups, whose pages included prompts to contact Congress in support of EPA’s proposed rule.
The Trump White House also pointed to the Obama administration running TV ads about HealthCare.gov, the website people use to sign up for Affordable Care Act health plans, during the open enrollment periods in 2015 and 2016. The ads didn’t feature the president, but rather everyday people talking about how they had signed up for low-cost insurance.
In one spot, run in November 2015, a woman who’s going for a run says that her premium was $22 a month and that signing up was “very easy.” A guy who appears to be going to a university says he got “exactly the kind of coverage I wanted at the price I wanted,” with the words “$57/month” on screen. A woman and her child are shown with the words “$405/month family of 4.” The ad then says that “most people who sign up on HealthCare.gov qualify for financial help to make coverage more affordable.” It ends by encouraging people to “sign up by Dec. 15.” The ad says at the bottom that it is “sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.”
Another example from 2015 similarly says that most people can get financial help with their premiums.
The Obama administration also ran ads in the run up to the 2016 open enrollment period, which began Nov. 1 — meaning that those ads ran shortly before and after that year’s presidential election. One example from November 2016 is similar to the 2015 ads, showing various people and saying that most people signing up “can find plans for $50-$100/mo. with financial help.”
One could argue that Obama, who signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, had a vested political interest in getting people to sign up and having the program succeed. But the Trump administration also has run ads to inform the public about the open enrollment periods. Like the Obama-era ads, thesethreeexamples from late 2025 featured people talking about how they easily enrolled in an insurance plan, and the ads said that “4 out of 5 customers can find a health plan for $21 or less per month with financial help.”
Biden Administration Ads
As the Trump administration pointed out, the Biden administration also used taxpayer dollars for an ad campaign using television, digital, radio and print spots to encourage people in early 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic to get vaccinated.
The Trump press release said the Biden administration “poured hundreds of millions of dollars” into an ad campaign “to drive a nationwide public health message.”
But as the Washington Post story the press release links to explains, the campaign used a $250 million contract that the Trump administration signed with consultancy Fors Marsh the previous year. According to the article, “Officials have said they held the campaign until vaccines were widely available to maximize its impact.”
Ironically, numerousDemocrats expressed concern in September 2020 after the Trump administration hired Fors Marsh for a campaign from HHS that sought to “defeat despair, inspire hope and achieve national recovery” amid the pandemic.
In a Sept. 11, 2020, letter to HHS, Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, then chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote, “Among other things, the Committee is concerned that HHS may use more than a quarter-billion dollars in taxpayer funds on private communications consultants charged with distorting the facts and misleading the public about the Trump Administration’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
A letter from three other Democratic leaders in the Senate similarly stated, “We have grave concerns that, rather than focus on planning and executing a national strategy to contain the coronavirus, the Trump Administration is using a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money to fund what appears to be a political propaganda campaign just two months before a presidential election.”
Under Biden, the “We Can Do This” campaign directed by Fors Marsh sought to appeal to “a group known as the ‘movable middle’ — people who were hesitant but not necessarily opposed to getting vaccinated — with highly customized, science-based communications and messages of empowerment,” according to the consultancy.
The ads featured images of Americans and encouraged people to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website or vaccines.gov for more information.
At the time, Trump was also encouraging people to get vaccinated. At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 28, 2021, Trump boasted that his administration had helped deliver the vaccine in “record time” and later said, “So, everybody go get your shot.”
“I encourage them to take it,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in April 2021.
The TV ad and flyers claimed the law, which passed largely along partisan lines, provided the same Medicare with “more benefits.”
At the time, Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg criticized the ad as “a propaganda effort with taxpayer dollars.”
At least one network, CBS, pulled the ad while the General Accounting Office (later renamed the Government Accountability Office) — at the request of Lautenberg and other Democrats — investigated whether it violated prohibitions on federal funds being used for “publicity or propaganda” purposes. Democrats argued the ad was inaccurate and was intended to promote the reelection of Bush that year.
The GAO concluded that while the TV ad and accompanying flyers contained “notable omissions and other weaknesses,” they were “not so partisan as to be unlawful.”
By way of omissions, Anthony H. Gamboa, general counsel of the GAO, said that the ad failed to note that people might be charged $30 for the new drug discount cards “and that savings may vary across covered drugs.” He further criticized the flyer’s indication that beneficiaries would pay a premium of “about $35 a month” for the prescription drug benefit, when in fact that was an estimated average.
“The omissions notwithstanding, we do not find the content of the flyer and its cover letter or the advertisements to be purely partisan in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition,” Gamboa wrote.
“This is not to say that the content is totally free of political tone,” he added. “Without a doubt, the future of the Medicare program is the subject of ongoing and highly spirited discussion and debate at the national level. In this context, the references in the flyer and print and television advertisements to ‘Same Medicare. More Benefits’ and ‘preserve and strengthen’ may appear to some as an attempt to persuade the public to the Administration’s point of view regarding the newly enacted benefit.”
Nonetheless, he wrote, the “publicity or propaganda prohibition, however, does not bar materials that may have some political content or express support for a particular view. … The content of these publications does not constitute a purely partisan message.”
Two months later, however, GAO said during the course of its investigation, “we learned that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services … had prepared as part of this campaign video news releases or VNRs, including a news story for television broadcast, to provide information to the television medium.” Because the prepackaged stories did not note they had been prepared by CMS, the GAO concluded their use ”violated the restriction on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes.”
The White House further noted that in 2002, the Bush administration paid more than $3 million for two Super Bowl ads that said buying illegal drugs could help support terrorists; it also created anti-drug YouTube ads in 2006.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
Six months after activating Newark’s first speed enforcement camera, city officials say the camera has been successful in reducing speed and, now, a second camera may be coming to the city’s roads.
Washington, DC — Former special counsel Jack Smith defended his investigations of President Donald Trump before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, saying the evidence supported both federal prosecutions and that he would make the same charging decisions again.
Smith told senators that his team acted without regard to Trump’s political affiliation or 2024 candidacy. He said investigators had developed evidence they believed proved serious crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and Trump’s handling of classified documents. Both cases were later dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election, consistent with Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Republicans focused heavily on Smith’s collection of phone records and other communications involving GOP lawmakers. Sen. Chuck Grassley called the investigation a partisan abuse of power, while Rep. Jim Jordan has referred Smith to the Justice Department over allegations that he misled Congress about subpoenas.
Smith said obtaining call logs was necessary because investigators had evidence Trump and allies contacted senators during the Jan. 6 attack while seeking to delay certification of the election. Democrats, including Sen. Dick Durbin, defended Smith and accused Republicans of using the hearing to distract from Trump’s conduct.
Smith also said he would not be silenced by threats of prosecution from Trump or administration allies.
Alvarado, TX — The Intercept is suing the city of Alvarado and its police department, accusing officials of withholding public records connected to the violent 2025 confrontation outside the Prairieland immigration detention facility.
The dispute centers on police communications surrounding a July 4, 2025 protest that escalated into an armed confrontation in which an Alvarado police officer suffered non-life-threatening injuries. More than a dozen protesters were subsequently arrested, leading to a closely watched federal prosecution.
Freelance journalist C. Frances requested police emails from the period surrounding the incident under the Texas Public Information Act. After negotiations narrowed the request, Alvarado officials estimated that producing and redacting the records would cost $854.17.
According to The Intercept’s lawsuit, the outlet agreed to pay the full amount, but city officials have neither provided the records nor completed the payment process. Attorney Terry Mutchler, representing The Intercept, characterized the situation as extraordinary obstruction of public access.
The records could provide additional insight into police communications before and after the confrontation. Defendant Benjamin Song was ultimately sentenced to 100 years for attempted murder and other offenses, while he and other defendants are preparing appeals.
Alvarado officials had not responded publicly to The Intercept’s latest allegations.
Des Moines, IA — Iowa farmers are confronting mounting financial pressure as tariffs, higher fuel costs and rising borrowing expenses threaten an agricultural economy already struggling with consolidation, foreign competition and years of elevated production costs.
Axios reports that two of the sharpest new pressures are directly connected to President Donald Trump’s policies. His tariffs have increased costs for fertilizer, pesticides and farm machinery while creating instability with major export partners. Meanwhile, the Iran war has helped drive Iowa diesel prices sharply higher, adding another major expense for farms dependent on heavy equipment.
The political irony is difficult to miss. Trump carried Iowa by more than 13 percentage points in 2024, with rural communities providing crucial support. Mark Mueller, president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association and a Republican voter, told Axios his farm is now “scraping by” and warned that more farmers could face bankruptcy or retirement.
The strain appears particularly severe for younger and smaller operators, who often rely heavily on borrowed money and have less financial cushion against volatile crop prices and rising interest rates.
Republicans are increasingly concerned the economic damage could suppress turnout among voters who normally support the party. Trump announced a proposed $15 billion Iowa steel plant Monday, but production is not expected until 2030, offering little immediate relief to farmers facing losses today.
What are financial markets telling us?
7
October 2026 — 18:00 TO 19:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Learn how geopolitics, inflation, AI and fiscal policy are converging to reshape borrowing costs.
Learn how geopolitics, inflation, AI and fiscal policy are converging to reshape borrowing costs.
Global bond yields have risen sharply this year thanks to a variety of forces, including war-fuelled inflation, AI-driven growth, loose fiscal policy and geopolitical risk. Recent interventions have struggled to contain market pressure, sharpening questions about where we may be headed. Is a new financial crisis possible?
This event discusses:
What are rising yields signalling about inflation, global growth and government debt burdens?
Why have recent interventions struggled to contain pressure in bond markets?
How is conflict in the Middle East affecting inflation expectations and borrowing costs?
What does AI-driven economic activity mean for interest rates and asset prices?
How are loose fiscal policies changing sovereign debt risks?
Could weaker demand for AI compute trigger a wider market correction?
Lansing, MI — A coalition of Michigan Jewish leaders is increasing pressure on Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to endorse five commitments concerning Jewish safety, identity and participation in political life as the state’s closely watched Senate race enters its final weeks.
Nonnegotiable Michigan said 17 Democratic political leaders have joined its campaign, including University of Michigan Regent Mark Bernstein, state Rep. Noah Arbit and Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus Vice Chair David Kramer. The organization says its effort is separate from debates over Israeli military policy or U.S. foreign aid and is intended to ensure that Jewish Democrats, including Zionists, remain welcome within the party.
Its five requested commitments include protecting Jewish safety, recognizing Jews’ right to define their own identity, supporting Jewish sovereignty in Israel, and ensuring Zionist Jews can participate fully in American politics.
Rabbi Josh Whinston, a progressive Reform rabbi involved with the group, accused El-Sayed of using antisemitic language and “dog whistles.” El-Sayed’s campaign had not publicly accepted the commitments or responded to The Center Square’s requests for comment.
Jewish opinion surrounding El-Sayed is not uniform. Separately, more than 600 Michigan Jews signed a letter supporting his Senate campaign, while other prominent Jewish Democrats have endorsed him despite disagreements over Israel.
El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim U.S. senator, faces Republican Mike Rogers in November.
Washington, DC — The U.S. Department of Education formally rescinded the Biden administration’s Title IX interpretation protecting students from sex discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, returning schools to regulations adopted during President Donald Trump’s first term.
The department said Monday that the move restores the 2020 Title IX rule and brings federal regulations into line with court decisions that struck down the Biden administration’s 2024 expansion. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the change would reduce confusion for schools while protecting women’s athletic opportunities and privacy.
The Biden-era rule had interpreted Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Republican-led states challenged that interpretation, and federal courts ultimately blocked the regulation before Trump returned to office.
Since taking office again, the administration has pursued a narrower definition of sex under federal education law and has pressured schools to restrict transgender athletes from women’s sports programs. The department has also rescinded earlier civil-rights agreements involving gender identity.
LGBTQ and women’s-rights advocates argue the rollback could leave transgender students more vulnerable to discrimination and weaken protections for some survivors of sexual harassment or assault. The administration maintains that existing Title IX protections remain intact for discrimination based on biological sex.
A developer’s plan to build more townhouses on Benny Street is on hold, at least temporarily, after city council members expressed concerns about the project’s design and inconsistencies in the architectural renderings presented.
The Senate on Thursday approved a sweeping college sports bill to establish a federal framework for college athletics aimed at protecting student athletes — despite some pushback from some Democrats who argue that it could do the opposite.
Washington, DC — The second annual Make America Healthy Again Summit is bringing senior federal health officials together with celebrities and wellness influencers whose records include serious criminal cases and repeatedly challenged health claims.
Russell Brand is scheduled to moderate a discussion with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz. Brand is awaiting trial in Britain after pleading not guilty to three counts of rape, three sexual-assault charges and one indecent-assault charge involving six women. He has denied committing non-consensual sexual acts.
Later in the program, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson will appear on a “MAHA Athlete” panel. Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992 and served three years in prison.
The summit also gives prominent roles to wellness personalities whose scientific claims have been challenged by independent fact-checkers. Chiropractor Eric Berg is participating in a cancer-prevention discussion. Science Feedback has rated multiple Berg claims unsupported or based on flawed reasoning. Gary Brecka, moderating the Tyson panel, has likewise been fact-checked for inaccurate or misleading claims involving depression, fluoridation and thyroid disease.
The lineup places federal health policymakers alongside celebrity personalities and alternative-health influencers, creating an unusual mixture for a conference presented as helping shape the future of American health.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s administration has made noncitizen voting a major election-integrity issue ahead of the midterms, but available evidence continues to show that illegal voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. The administration has expanded use of the federal SAVE database and pressed states to search voter rolls for potentially ineligible registrations.
The effort has produced some legitimate cases, but not evidence of widespread noncitizen voting. Reuters reported that federal prosecutors recently intensified enforcement, while investigations across multiple states have generally identified small numbers of cases compared with tens of millions of registered voters. Separate reporting found many registration problems resulted from clerical or automated system errors rather than intentional fraud.
The administration has nevertheless repeatedly presented noncitizen voting as a significant threat to election integrity. Election officials and voting experts dispute that characterization, pointing to studies and state reviews showing confirmed cases are uncommon. AP has similarly reported that Trump and allies have amplified the issue despite limited evidence of widespread illegal voting.
Courts have also constrained some administration efforts, while federal law limits systematic voter-roll removals close to Election Day. The Supreme Court recently allowed continued use of the expanded SAVE system while broader legal challenges proceed.
Vatican City — Pope Leo XIV pushed back against President Donald Trump’s dismissal of artificial intelligence safety concerns, saying warnings from experts should be taken seriously rather than waved away as “fake news.” The comments came Monday as governments and technology companies continue debating how aggressively AI should be regulated.
Speaking with reporters while returning from France, Leo said he was not in “panic mode” about catastrophic AI scenarios but argued that ignoring potential risks would be irresponsible. He called for continued dialogue among scientists, political leaders, technology companies and civil society over safeguards for increasingly powerful systems.
Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last week that fears surrounding dangerous AI were a “hoax,” while arguing that excessive regulation could weaken the United States against China in the global technology race. His administration has generally favored faster development and fewer federal restrictions.
The debate extends well beyond politics. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that rapidly advancing AI agents could soon operate with extraordinary autonomy, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that many safety problems can be addressed through engineering rather than extensive government regulation.
Leo acknowledged Nvidia’s recent work on technical guardrails but questioned the consistency of developing safeguards while opposing government oversight. He urged policymakers and industry leaders to keep examining potential dangers rather than assuming technological development will remain manageable on its own.
Smyrna sophomore, Terrell Ingram, runs the ball against Red Lion in the Eagles first game of the season. Photo credit: Dave Reeder
The first month of the Delaware high school football season concluded with last weekend’s slate of games. Multiple programs finished the month undefeated across all three classifications.
The first month of Delaware high school football is in the books and many programs across the state have started their 2026 season on a good note. 11 teams are undefeated through the first four weeks of play and many programs have wins against out-of-state competition showing off the talent within Delaware.
Here’s a quick look at a few teams from each of the DIAA’s three football classifications that you should keep an eye on as the season continues:
Class 3A:
Smyrna Eagles
The Eagles have scored 35 or more points in each of their first three games this season, improving to 3-0 with an overtime win over Cardinal Ohara High School (from Pennsylvania) on September 26. Smyrna’s offense is led by senior quarterback Drew Marks, sophomore runners Terrell Ingram and Norman Berry and junior receiver Mikiah Jackson. Marks has thrown for multiple touchdowns in two of Smyrna’s three games this season with Jackson on the receiving end of five of those scores. Ingram and Berry combined for seven touchdowns this season.
Smyrna will compete in its first Class 3A matchup of the season this Friday, October 2, against Middletown High School. Middletown is 1-2 this season with a couple of out-of-state losses to Cardinal Hayes High School (NY) and Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (MD). Middletown beat Smyrna last season, 33-28.
Appoquinimink Jaguars
Appoquinimink is 3-0 this season with a Class 3A win already under its belt with a victory over Dover on September 18. The Jaguars started their 2026 campaign with a win against George Washington High School (PA) and won a 3-2 matchup against Howard last Thursday to remain undefeated on the season. Appoquinimink’s defense is the backbone of its undefeated start, holding all three of their opponents this season under 10 points. The Jaguars defense has given up only 15 points through three games.
The Jaguars will play St. Georges this Friday at 7:00 p.m. at home in Middletown, Delaware. The Jaguars defeated St. Georges, 35-0, on the road last season. The win sparked a three-game winning streak that helped Appoquinimink finish the regular season with a 7-3 record and trip to the semifinal round of the 2025 DIAA Class 3A Football State Championship tournament.
Class 2A:
Archmere football lines up on offense at the start of its game against the St. Mark’s Spartans, September 18. Photo Credit: Ryan Colasanti
Archmere Auks
The Auks stand atop the District 1 standings in Class 2A with a 3-0 record and wins against two fellow 2A competitors, St. Mark’s and Delaware Military Academy. Archmere recorded shutouts in each of their first two wins and held DMA without a point until the fourth quarter in their most recent win. The Auks defense has recorded a sack or turnover in every game this season.
Archmere faces a tough road matchup in its next game traveling to Felton, Delaware, to take on the Lake Forest Spartans. The Spartans are 2-1 this season with a win against Class 3A Dover in their most recent game. Last season, Lake Forest defeated Archmere, 35-13, in the regular season and 38-35 in the quarterfinal round of the DIAA Class 2A Football State Championship tournament.
Milford Buccaneers
The Buccaneers are 3-0 for the first time since 2016 starting their 2026 season with wins over Conrad, Indian River and Woodbridge in the season’s first month. Milford’s offense is averaging over 30 points per game this season led by senior Andrew Sivels. Sivels is having an incredible start to the season scoring four touchdowns in each of Milford’s first three games. Sivels has accounted for eight of the Buccaneers’ last nine touchdowns. The Buccaneers’ three wins tie their season total from a year ago.
The Buccaneers will play their third of four straight home games in a matchup against the 1-2 Delmar Wildcats. Milford defeated Delmar, 22-8, last season and Sivels was a big reason why, scoring two Buccaneer touchdowns. The rematch will be played at 7:00 p.m., Friday night.
Sussex Tech Ravens
The Ravens are the lone undefeated team amongst the District 3 standings in Class 2A. Sussex Tech started the season with a win over Glasgow High School and followed it up with two 2A wins against Tatnall and Mt. Pleasant. The Ravens have outscored their opponents 136-12 this season shutting out two of their first three opponents. Junior Eric Wright-McGlotten leads the team with seven rushing touchdowns through the first three games.
The Ravens next game will be a road contest against Bohemia Manor High School from Maryland. That game will be played in Maryland on October 2, at 7:00 p.m. Following that game, the Ravens will begin district play with a matchup against Lake Forest. Sussex Tech finished last season with a 7-3 overall record and 2-3 district record, which included a loss to Lake Forest.
Class 1A:
Concord Raiders
The Raiders started their 2026 season in a similar fashion to last season with three straight wins against Mt. Pleasant, Early College High School and Delcastle. Concord’s defense has started the year strong allowing 20 points through their first two games and earning their first shutout of the season against Delcastle last weekend. The Raider offense is led by senior Declan McNulty who has thrown or ran for a touchdown in every game this season. McNulty had a defensive touchdown as well in the Raiders win over the Hornets.
The Raiders will be on the road for their next game against Christiana High School. That game will be played on Saturday, October 3, at 11:00 a.m. The Raiders defeated Christiana, 20-8, last season.
Newark Yellowjackets
The Yellowjackets are tied atop the District 2 standings in Class 1A with a 2-1 record this season — the first under new head coach Angel Guerrero. Newark opened the season with back-to-back wins against fellow 1A competition in AI duPont and Brandywine, before falling to Newark Charter last weekend. The Yellowjackets scored a combined 61 points in their first two wins with key contributions from seniors Jahsir Bryant and William Teel.
The Yellowjackets will play Tatnall on the road next Saturday before playing their first district game against Delcastle at home. Newark’s game against Tatnall will be at 11:00 a.m. on October 3.
Patriot senior Maxwell Laznik finds a small window of running room against the Odessa defense. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder
Newark Charter Patriots
The 2025 DIAA Class 1A Football State Championship runner-ups have started their season with a 4-0 record and multiple wins against Class 2A competition. The Patriots lead all of Class 1A with 118 points this season and their defense is amongst the top allowing only 4.5 points per game. The Patriots defense has two shutout wins this season, both against Class 2A opponents.
Newark Charter will face Conrad in its next game on Friday, October 2. That game will start at 7:00 p.m. and be played at Robert W. Gore Stadium on Newark Charter’s campus. The Patriots beat Conrad, 20-16, last season.
Dayesla Ixtli brings Mexican folklore, wearable sculpture and body painting together in a new Mezzanine Gallery exhibition opening Oct. 2 in Wilmington
WILMINGTON, Del. — For Delaware artist Dayesla Ixtli, a canvas doesn’t necessarily hang on a wall.
It can breathe, move and ultimately become part of the artwork.
Ixtli transforms the human body using elaborate handcrafted headpieces, sculpted armor, textured prosthetics, special-effects body paint, costumes and makeup. She then preserves the completed transformation through photography.
That process is at the center of “Diosas & Guerreras: The Living Canvas,” Ixtli’s solo exhibition opening Friday, Oct. 2, at the Delaware Division of the Arts’ Mezzanine Gallery in Wilmington.
The exhibition, whose title translates to “Goddesses & Warriors,” will remain on view through Oct. 30. Admission to the gallery and the opening reception are free.
Women portrayed as goddesses and warriors
Photo courtesy of the Delaware Division of the Arts.
Drawing from ancestral mythology, Mexican folklore and Indigenous and Latin American spiritual traditions, Ixtli creates women who appear as divine protectors, nature deities and warriors.
The imagery intentionally challenges traditional portrayals of women as primarily decorative or fragile.
“My practice as a visual artist is rooted in the transformative use of the human form as a living canvas,” Ixtli said.
The figures she creates are intended to convey what she describes as “raw power, divinity, and autonomy rather than fragile ornamentation.”
Among the featured works is “Mictecacíhuatl: Lady of the Dead,” named for the Aztec goddess associated with the dead. The work combines a sculpted mixed-media headdress, textiles, special-effects body painting and photography.
“Nymph” features a handcrafted floral headpiece, while “Yemayá: Queen of the Waters” centers on an elaborate handcrafted crown and trident.
The timing gives the exhibition additional cultural context. It opens during Hispanic Heritage Month and concludes just before Día de los Muertos, observed Nov. 1 and 2.
Building a character from head to toe
What viewers see in the finished photographs represents only the final stage of Ixtli’s work.
Each character is a complete artistic production.
Ixtli creates or coordinates the headpieces, accessories, props, wardrobe, hair and makeup before bringing the elements together on the model. Special-effects techniques can add texture and dimension to the body itself.
That makes the final assembly particularly demanding.
Ixtli calls it the “anxious final moment,” when all the individual pieces must come together “perfectly as one final product.”
The payoff comes when the transformation works and viewers respond.
She describes that reaction as “a moment of shared wonder that nurtures my inner child.”
An artistic career born during the pandemic
Ixtli’s path to becoming an interdisciplinary artist did not begin in an art school or traditional studio.
She is largely self-taught.
Her work developed as a form of self-care after the birth of her youngest daughter during the COVID-19 pandemic. She began experimenting with artistic makeup and discovered that completing the transformations provided a sense of accomplishment during a difficult period.
“It wasn’t until those difficult times that I was truly able to immerse myself and dedicate myself to this discipline,” Ixtli said.
After developing her artistic practice independently, she pursued formal beauty makeup training to complement the skills she had taught herself.
The Newark-based artist was born in Tenancingo, Estado de México, and incorporates cultural memory, mythology and Indigenous and Latin American spiritual traditions into her work.
Her artist name also reflects that connection. “Ixtli” is the Nahuatl word for “face.”
Delaware fellowship recognizes her work
The exhibition follows Ixtli’s selection as a 2026 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow in the emerging artist category for interdisciplinary visual arts.
The state fellowship provides both recognition and an opportunity for Ixtli to expand her practice.
She plans to explore body-safe pigments and natural adornments that could make her work more sustainable while maintaining the elaborate visual effects that characterize it.
For Ixtli, the fellowship also represents validation of an artistic career that grew from personal experimentation into public exhibitions and performances.
“Art is always saving lives, whether it is for the artist or the spectator,” she said.
She described the fellowship as an “essential push” to continue developing her work.
From festivals to film
During the past five years, Ixtli’s work has taken her to regional festivals, cultural celebrations, fashion shows and performance-art events.
She has appeared as The Magic Marigold Catrina at the Penn Museum’s Day of the Dead celebration and worked as one of the makeup artists on Alba Martínez’s 2022 short film “La Guagua 47.”
She was featured on the cover of Del Hispano Magazine in October 2025 and also operates a business as a freelance face painter and makeup artist.
The Mezzanine Gallery exhibition gives visitors an opportunity to see the finished photographs and wearable artwork together — revealing how sculpture, makeup, costume, cultural tradition and the human body combine to create a single character.
For Ixtli, however, the body remains at the center of it all: not simply the subject of the artwork, but the canvas itself.
To Go
What: “Diosas & Guerreras: The Living Canvas,” a solo exhibition by Dayesla Ixtli
Where: Mezzanine Gallery, Carvel State Office Building, 820 N. French St., Wilmington
Opening reception: Friday, Oct. 2, 5-7 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Oct. 2-30
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Admission: Free and open to the public
Learn more: Delaware Division of the Arts’ Mezzanine Gallery
Nandi Gamble tells Jane Brady that constitutional amendments, parental rights and education will remain priorities as Delaware heads toward a new General Assembly
DOVER, Del. — With Delaware’s 2026 legislative session over and voters preparing to elect a new General Assembly, Nandi Gamble of the Delaware Family Policy Council says some of the state’s most contentious debates over abortion, parental rights and education are likely to return when lawmakers reconvene in January.
Gamble, who tracks legislation for the conservative family-policy organization, outlined those priorities during an interview with former Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady on “A Better Discussion,” the weekly webcast produced by A Better Delaware.
Brady introduced Gamble as someone whose job is to follow legislation affecting families and make that information available to the organization’s members and the public. Gamble said hundreds of bills are introduced during Delaware’s two-year legislative sessions, requiring the organization to track measures it believes could affect family policy.
The conversation offered a preview of the issues Gamble expects the organization to focus on after the November election.
Constitutional amendments could return
At the top of Gamble’s list are proposed constitutional amendments dealing with reproductive freedom and individual privacy.
“There’s actually two that I’m really expecting to come back,” Gamble told Brady.
Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 5 proposes adding a fundamental right to reproductive freedom relating to an individual’s pregnancy to the Delaware Constitution. The measure remained pending after advancing from committee during the current General Assembly.
Supporters describe the proposal as a way to protect reproductive rights under Delaware’s Constitution. Gamble and the Family Policy Council oppose it and highlighted language addressing decisions related to pregnancy, including abortion, contraception, sterilization and fertility care.
House Bill 14 would separately add a right of individual privacy to the Delaware Constitution, stating that the right “may not be infringed without a showing of a compelling state interest.” The bill was released from committee in March 2025 and placed on the Ready List.
Its sponsors say the proposal is intended to protect privacy rights that courts have previously recognized in areas including marriage, contraception, family relationships and child-rearing.
Gamble told Brady her organization views the privacy proposal in part through the lens of abortion policy because privacy rights played a role in earlier U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving contraception and abortion. That is the Family Policy Council’s interpretation of the measure; HB 14 itself is written broadly as a privacy amendment.
Parental consent remains a dividing line
Gamble also highlighted House Bill 46, legislation that would have required parental or legal-guardian consent before an abortion could be performed on someone younger than 16.
A substitute for the bill provides exceptions for medical emergencies and allows Family Court to authorize the procedure if a judge determines the minor is mature and well-informed enough to decide independently or that parental consent would not be in the minor’s best interest because of circumstances such as abuse, neglect or coercion. The substitute remained in the House Health & Human Development Committee.
Gamble told Brady the Family Policy Council sees the proposal as part of a larger debate over the role parents should have in major decisions involving their children.
Brady brought a personal perspective to that discussion, recalling a case she prosecuted roughly two decades ago involving a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant after being sexually abused by an adult teacher.
Brady said the teenager obtained an abortion without her parents knowing and under the influence of the adult who was abusing her. The man was later prosecuted and imprisoned, Brady said.
Gamble said the case illustrated why her organization supports parental-consent legislation.
Supporters of abortion rights have argued that consent requirements can create barriers for minors whose home environments are abusive, unsafe or otherwise unsuitable, while supporters of parental-consent laws argue that parents should ordinarily be involved in major medical decisions involving their children.
End-of-life law remains part of the debate
Gamble also pointed to Delaware’s medical aid-in-dying law as an example of how a small number of legislative votes can determine the outcome of major social-policy questions.
The Family Policy Council opposed the measure for years.
Gamble told Brady the debate demonstrated how individual lawmakers can become pivotal when margins in Legislative Hall are narrow.
“Those one or two votes make a very big difference,” she said.
Supporters of medical aid in dying describe it as an additional option for terminally ill adults who meet specific medical and legal requirements. Opponents have raised moral, religious and medical concerns about allowing physicians to participate in the process.
Turning legislative fights into a voter guide
The November election also gives Gamble’s organization another avenue to advance its priorities.
The Delaware Family Policy Action PAC produces an online voter guide that Gamble said includes candidate questionnaires, legislative voting records and research into candidates who do not respond directly.
Candidates received 10 issue statements this year and were asked whether they supported or opposed them, Gamble said. She told Brady that, for the first time, several Democratic candidates also participated.
When candidates do not answer, Gamble said the organization reviews campaign websites, social media and public forums in an attempt to determine their positions. The guide also tracks endorsements from organizations whose policy positions differ from those of the Family Policy Council.
Because the guide is produced through the group’s political-action arm and reflects its policy priorities, voters can compare it with candidate statements, other voter guides and independent reporting when evaluating candidates.
Brady emphasized the broader value of voters understanding candidates beyond their party labels and encouraged viewers to ask candidates directly where they stand on issues important to them.
Schools and parental involvement
Education is another area Gamble expects to remain prominent.
She said the organization supported legislation intended to give parents greater visibility into school curriculum and other classroom material and provides parents with information about opting children out of certain instruction.
Gamble also raised concerns during the webcast about sex-education materials in schools. Her comments reflected the Family Policy Council’s advocacy position and were not accompanied during the program by examples from specific Delaware school districts or curricula.
More broadly, Gamble said parental involvement in schools remains one of the organization’s central issues. She pointed to previous parental-rights proposals that failed to advance and said similar efforts are likely to remain part of the debate.
From teacher to legislative advocate
Gamble’s path to Delaware politics did not begin in Legislative Hall.
She told Brady she originally entered college intending to become a doctor before changing direction and becoming a teacher.
She taught honors and Advanced Placement biology as well as physics in Florida and said her experience with education policy, particularly the implementation of Common Core, helped lead her into public-policy work.
Gamble became involved with the Florida Family Policy Council in 2015 before eventually moving to Delaware, where she has lived for about seven years.
Today, much of her work revolves around monitoring legislation, communicating with parents and churches, and preparing supporters to participate in public-policy debates.
The organization also operates a Church Ambassador Network that Gamble said connects pastors with legislators and community needs. It recently held its annual summit for pastors and other leaders. Gamble said the event typically attracts about 450 to 600 attendees, with a previous gathering drawing roughly 860.
For Gamble, the November election does not represent the end of those debates. It will determine who is sitting in Legislative Hall when they resume.
And judging from the issues she identified in her conversation with Brady — reproductive rights, privacy, parental authority, education and end-of-life policy — several of Delaware’s most divisive legislative questions are likely to remain part of the debate when a new General Assembly takes office in January.
TO GO
What: “A Better Discussion” with Nandi Gamble of the Delaware Family Policy Council
Host: Jane Brady, chair of A Better Delaware and former Delaware attorney general
Key issues: Reproductive-rights and privacy constitutional amendments, parental consent for minors seeking abortions, medical aid in dying, parental rights in education and the 2026 voter guide
Delaware Family Policy Council: delawarefamilies.org
Legislative updates: delawarefamilies.org/updates
Voter guide: devoterguide.com
Why it matters: Gamble says several of the family-policy and social issues debated during the current General Assembly are likely to return after the November election when newly elected lawmakers convene in January.
Austin, TX — Republican Texas Railroad Commission candidate Bo French is facing renewed scrutiny after an investigation uncovered years of social media posts in which he called for the execution of political opponents and government officials.
CNN’s KFile reported that accounts linked to French repeatedly advocated executions, including in 2020 posts targeting former President Barack Obama and other Obama administration officials over claims surrounding the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. One post said the death penalty for what French called the “Obama conspirators” was necessary, while another referenced execution as the historical punishment for treason.
The investigation also found that French wrote in February 2025 that he wanted “public executions” of government officials identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort. In another deleted post, he called for the public execution of Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.
French was already under criticism after posting an image of South Asian students at the University of Texas and describing their presence as a “problem.” Republican Sen. John Cornyn subsequently said he would not vote for French, while other Texas Republicans publicly condemned the post.
French is running for the Railroad Commission, which despite its name regulates Texas’ oil and gas industry. His social media history has now become a significant issue in the statewide campaign.
New York, NY — Questions over police access to privately operated surveillance networks are growing after records showed the New York Police Department searched Flock Safety’s license-plate database 1,710 times between March 2023 and December 2025, despite saying it has no contract with the company.
The records, obtained and analyzed by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and LatinoJustice PRLDEF, came from Have I Been Flocked, which compiles audit logs released through public-records requests. Nearly 1,000 NYPD searches reportedly included no meaningful explanation or only vague entries such as “investigation,” “wanted person,” or “inquiry.” At least 131 searches listed the Queens district attorney’s office as the requesting agency.
The NYPD has previously acknowledged that a limited number of authorized personnel can access a national commercial license-plate-reader repository. The newly disclosed logs, however, prompted the two advocacy groups to seek records showing whether officers used Flock through another agency’s contract, along with training materials, policies, audit logs and any payments to the company.
Flock says participating agencies control whether their camera data is shared and that every law-enforcement search is logged for review. The company says it does not sell customer data and has begun adding tighter documentation requirements, including standardized offense categories and planned case-number requirements for searches.
Ithaca, NY — A criminal investigation into an alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University has been reopened after a former student filed a civil lawsuit accusing seven Chi Phi fraternity members of sexually assaulting her over several hours. Prosecutors say the new allegations differ substantially from what was initially reported to police.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said his office intends to present the case to a grand jury with the cooperation of the woman, identified in court filings as Jane Doe. He said investigators will examine whether new evidence exists that could change the earlier decision not to pursue criminal charges.
The lawsuit alleges the woman was drugged and repeatedly assaulted at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024. It also claims two fraternity members were expelled while others received lesser university sanctions. No one was arrested or criminally charged following the original investigation.
Van Houten said the woman’s 2024 statement to police described circumstances differently, including her use of alcohol and drugs and the nature of the sexual activity. Her attorney has argued that authorities failed to properly follow up with a traumatized sexual-assault survivor.
Cornell has said the allegations are deeply disturbing and that its Title IX process resulted in sanctions including expulsions and suspensions. The university also said the Chi Phi chapter remains barred from campus.
US midterms polls: Are Democrats winning or is Trump losing?Expert commentthilton.drupal
Polls suggest Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives as American voters are dissatisfied with President Trump and his policies.
Americans go to the polls on 3 November to elect a third of the US Senate and all the House of Representatives.
The Republicans currently have majorities in both chambers of Congress. But their prospects of retaining this control look increasingly dire.
The Republicans’ chances have been dragged down by President Donald Trump’s near-record low public approval rating and voter dissatisfaction with his handling of the Iran war and the economy, among other things. Democrats appear poised to take advantage, with most pundits suggesting they will retake control of at least the House of Representatives.
But the race is not over yet. In the end, the key factor will likely be turnout, which is historically lower in midterms than presidential elections. Whichever party better mobilizes their voters to turn up on election day will ultimately determine the outcome.
Democrats are strong favourites
At this point, this election is the Democratic Party’s to lose.
Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives. To control the House, which gives a party the ability to name chairmen of committees and set the legislative agenda, the Democrats will need to win at least 218 seats. They currently have 212 seats.
Due to polarization and redistricting, most seats are highly unlikely to change party. Election analysts estimate that only around 21 House seats are close contests or ‘toss-ups’. Still, most pundits forecast Democrats winning between 220 and 230 seats overall – a relatively comfortable majority.
Senate more challenging
The Democrats face a more difficult challenge recapturing the Senate. Republicans now hold 53 of the 100 seats. Given that the vice-president can cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, the Democrats will need to win four seats (and not lose any they currently hold) to gain control of the Senate.
They are likely to pick up a Senate seat in North Carolina, where the state’s former two-term Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, has a significant lead in the polls. Then things get harder for the Democrats.
They need to win contests in three other states currently represented by Republicans. Current polling suggests their best chances are in Alaska, Maine, Ohio, Texas and Iowa.
Public opinion surveys show all five races to be toss-ups. But the Democrats also need to defend a Michigan seat that is considered a toss-up, where the incumbent Democratic senator is retiring in a state Trump won in 2024.
If the national tide swings heavily in the Democrats’ favour, they could gain control of the Senate. But that is less likely than their chances of winning the House.
Public dissatisfaction
Public opinion has been generally downcast ahead of the election. Two-thirds of those surveyed in May think the country is headed in the wrong direction. A July survey found only about a quarter of the public think the economy is doing well, with concerns over the cost of healthcare, food, housing and gasoline. Most recently, a majority said going to war with Iran was the wrong decision.
More registered voters think the Democrats would do better than the Republicans in dealing with gas prices, the economy, and foreign policy.
Democrats also have a 6 to 14 point advantage in nationwide polls of voter intentions known as the ‘generic ballot.’ This question measures party popularity by asking a selection of registered voters nationwide which party’s candidate they intend to vote for, without naming specific candidates. Historically, the generic ballot is a key indicator; the Democrat lead suggests a majority on election day.
Moreover, in the last five midterm elections, there has been a change in control of at least one chamber of Congress. And only four times in the last 164 years has the president’s party gained seats in a House of Representatives midterm election.
Voter turnout in midterm elections is usually relatively low compared with presidential elections: averaging less than 50 per cent compared to roughly 60 per cent. Voter enthusiasm will therefore be a big factor in maximizing turnout. Polls suggest Democrats are more motivated to vote: 79 per cent of Democrats said they are extremely motivated to vote, compared with 69 per cent of Republicans.
The Trump factor
Looming over all of this is voter opinion about President Trump, the ever-present force in current American politics.
The most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump’s approval rating at 32 per cent, a new low for him, with a disapproval rate of 66 per cent.
Other recent polls have shown Trump’s approval rating ranging from the mid-30s to low-40s; a recent YouGov poll put it at 37 per cent.But a recent poll by the American Research Group, conducted 16–20 September, showed the president with just a 29 per cent approval rating – the first time it has dropped below 30 per cent.
Historically, presidential approval matters in congressional elections. For context, Trump’s ratings are significantly lower than either President Bill Clinton’s in 1994, when the Democrats lost 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats, or President Barack Obama’s in 2010, when Democrats lost 63 House seats and 7 Senate seats.
Majorities disapprove of how Trump is handling all major issues. And a plurality of registered voters, including a majority of independents who make up about a third of the electorate, say their vote in the congressional election is ‘mostly against Trump’.
The potential impact of Trump’s low approval on the November outcome has led Charlie Cook, a leading political analyst, to observe not a ‘blue wave’ but the effects of a ‘red undertow.’ Either way, Democrats appear well-positioned to take advantage of disapproval with Trump to make congressional gains.
Caveats
But as with any forecast, there are caveats. While Democrats may be more motivated to vote overall, polling shows that 83 per cent of Republicans who strongly support President Trump claim they are absolutely certain to vote in November. Moreover, Republicans have the advantage of much larger finances as they try to mobilize their voters.
The electorate is also more polarized between Republicans and Democrats than at any time in recent history. And congressional gerrymandering means that there is a relatively small margin of error for Democrats.
So, despite the various factors that point to a Democratic victory in November, the election could still tighten.
Not over yet
Ultimately, voters decide elections, not pollsters. And recent election polling has repeatedly underestimated Republican support, as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris learned to their dismay.
Historically, American voter intentions are unlikely to change this close to election day. But US elections are also notorious for October surprises: the deepening financial crisis in 2008 and developments in the Hillary Clinton email probe in 2016 are just two examples.
It is also possible that 4 November will dawn without a clear victor. The president’s previous challenging of election results and processes, for example with regards to postal votes, could mean potential disputed outcomes and court challenges. This could delay final results for days or weeks, further undermining the reputation of American democracy.
Polls suggest the Democrats are poised to win the US House and possibly the Senate. But, as the American baseball player Yogi Berra once said: ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pollster Frank Luntz warned Monday that President Donald Trump is pursuing a “very dangerous strategy” by making himself a central figure in the 2026 midterms as Republicans try to motivate voters who backed him in presidential elections.
Luntz told CNN that Trump’s challenge is recreating his presidential-year turnout coalition without simultaneously energizing voters who strongly oppose him. “There are more people who oppose Donald Trump who are planning to vote than those who support him,” he said.
That concern is reflected in CNN’s latest national polling. Trump’s approval rating stands at 33%, his lowest level in CNN polling across either term. Forty-four percent of voters said their midterm vote would be intended to oppose Trump, compared with 19% who said it would express support for him. Democrats led Republicans 49% to 41% on the generic congressional ballot.
Luntz emphasized that the political environment differs from 2024, citing voter frustration with affordability, the Iran war and Trump’s confrontational style. He described Hispanic voters, younger voters and male union members as particularly important parts of the Republican coalition.
Still, Luntz said stronger turnout among Trump supporters could improve Republican prospects, underscoring that midterm participation—not presidential-election history—will ultimately determine results.
RAHWAY, New Jersey — Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. used his only televised debate against Democrat Rebecca Bennett to distance himself from President Donald Trump on several issues important to New Jersey voters, including immigration enforcement and the Gateway rail tunnel.
Kean said he opposes a proposed ICE detention facility in Roxbury Township, declaring, “My focus is to make sure we don’t have an ICE facility in Roxbury.” The position puts him at odds with the Trump administration, which revived plans for the facility after previously abandoning them. Bennett said she had opposed the project earlier, while noting that Kean had not previously taken a public position.
Kean also defended the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and New York, which Trump has criticized and tried to block from receiving federal funding. “I will challenge anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” Kean said.
The debate also covered Iran, taxes, Israel and artificial intelligence. Kean defended U.S. military operations against Iran, while Bennett argued the conflict has increased costs and made the country less secure.
The 7th District is among New Jersey’s most competitive House races. Trump carried it by about one point in 2024, while Democrat Mikie Sherrill carried it in the 2025 gubernatorial election.
Israel’s election: What will it mean for neighbours and allies?
8
October 2026 — 17:00 TO 18:15 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear from experts on the foreign policy choices facing Israel’s next government.
Hear from experts on the foreign policy choices facing Israel’s next government.
Israel’s upcoming election follows three years of war and a marked decline in international support. Leading candidates to be prime minister offer little in terms of rethinking Israeli foreign policy and all reject Palestinian statehood. The election outcome could have profound consequences for the Palestinians and Israel’s relations with neighbouring states and international partners.
This event discusses:
What is at stake for Palestinians and regional states in Israel’s election?
Would a change of government alter relations with the UK, US and Europe?
How do leading candidates view relations with Lebanon, Syria and Turkey?
How might Israel’s next government approach Iran?
Could a new government change Israel’s approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict?
Can Israel’s next government rebuild international public support?
CARSON CITY, Nevada — Republican Jim Marchant, one of the country’s most prominent election deniers, is again running to become Nevada’s secretary of state, four years after narrowly losing the same office to Democrat Cisco Aguilar.
Marchant has repeatedly promoted unsupported claims of widespread election fraud and has said being labeled an “election denier” is a “badge of honor.” He continues to argue that Nevada elections have been fraudulent since 2008 despite Republican and Democratic candidates winning statewide contests during that period. WIRED identifies Marchant among 197 election-denying candidates seeking congressional or statewide offices nationwide this November.
If elected, Marchant has proposed sweeping changes, including canceling existing voter registrations and requiring residents to re-register, eliminating universal mail voting, moving toward paper ballots and expanding hand counting. He also supported efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election and stood alongside Nevada Republicans as they signed false electoral certificates claiming Donald Trump won the state.
Aguilar, who defeated Marchant by about two percentage points in 2022, has made election security and protection of election workers central to his tenure.
The financial gap between the candidates is substantial. Aguilar reported more than $1 million cash on hand this summer, while Marchant reported just $13.86 after raising $1,000 during the second quarter.
Marchant won the Republican primary in June and will again face Aguilar in November.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House’s official app surged to the top of Apple’s news category after launching its 24/7 Trump TV channel, but cybersecurity researchers say the app collects extensive user data while providing limited clarity about where that information ultimately goes.
The White House says the app has surpassed 2 million downloads and offers direct access to administration news, livestreams and presidential messaging. It promoted the recent rankings as evidence Americans were bypassing traditional media for information directly from the presidency.
A Washington Sun investigation found the app communicates with multiple third-party services and includes software capable of monitoring location and user activity. Researchers also identified a dormant keylogger script, though they said it was unlikely to function as traditional surveillance software on mobile devices.
The White House privacy policy acknowledges that app information can be handled by third-party services and says collected data may be used for tailored content, statistical profiles, policy decisions and lawful information-sharing with government agencies.
Questions have also been raised about federal security requirements. Government records show 45Press received a White House technology-services contract currently valued at about $1.72 million.
The White House did not answer the Washington Sun’s specific questions about security certifications or the researchers’ findings, instead pointing to its announcement celebrating the app’s popularity.
DANVILLE, Pennsylvania — Immigration enforcement near hospitals and medical facilities in Pennsylvania is raising concerns that immigrants may delay or avoid healthcare because they fear arrest, according to advocates and medical professionals.
Earlier this month, ICE and local police arrested construction workers near Geisinger Medical Center in Danville after they left work. Officials emphasized that no arrests occurred on hospital property, but witnesses reported seeing unmarked vehicles around the medical complex before the Sept. 2 operation. ICE says it arrested 10 people that day, while advocates and witnesses say the broader operation may have resulted in more than 40 arrests.
The concern extends beyond Pennsylvania. Doctors interviewed by Stateline said increased immigration enforcement has caused some families to skip appointments, delay treatment and avoid hospitals altogether, with some children developing more serious medical problems as a result.
The Trump administration eliminated a longstanding policy in January 2025 that generally restricted immigration enforcement in or near hospitals, schools and houses of worship. ICE says immigration status, not location, determines who is subject to enforcement.
Immigrant advocates argue that even when arrests occur off hospital grounds, visible enforcement nearby can create a chilling effect. Mirna Miranda of CASA said some immigrants now weigh the risk of detention against seeking medical treatment.
The Geisinger operation follows another Pennsylvania case in which ICE arrested 24 construction workers traveling to a worksite at Mount Nittany Medical Center.
K.K. Bautista, left, and her adoptive mother hold their respective children outside a camper at the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park, where homes previously washed away. Bautista moved there because it was the only place she could afford after Helene destroyed her previous home. Jesse Barber for ProPublica and The Assembly
This past weekend marked the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene, which claimed more than 250 lives — 108 in North Carolina — and left hundreds of thousands of people without power for days to weeks. In Asheville, the largest city in the western part of the state, the storm left residents without drinking water for 53 days.
Part of what made the storm so devastating to the region when it hit, 400 miles inland from where it made landfall, is that the Appalachian Mountains’ typically porous soils were already saturated by recent rainfall. The rainwater hit bedrock and raced down steep mountain slopes like water on a slide. It overran the banks of normally shallow creeks and rivers, carrying the earth above it. One in 4 of those who died from the storm in North Carolina did so because of mud and landslides.
I’m a reporter with the North Carolina online magazine The Assembly, and my stories have also covered natural disasters in California, Arizona and Texas, where I was a data reporter on ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s investigative team. In my recent story for The Assemblyand ProPublica, I wrote about how a gap in federal flood policy is putting mobile home residents in harm’s way again and again, allowing people in North Carolina to move onto the same lots where homes previously washed away.
Joe Rogers moved into a riverfront mobile home park in Haywood County in 2006, his front door less than 100 feet from the river’s banks. At the time, the flood maps showed that the land the park sat on was at risk but didn’t have his home in the 100-year floodplain, which would have required expensive elevation. The lot was empty, and at $200 a month, the rent was affordable. Rogers reckoned he had at least 40 years until another storm came around.
In 2021, the park was hit by a tropical storm, and the river rose a couple of inches into the home of Rogers and his wife, Sandra. When firefighters knocked on their door in the middle of the night in 2024, the couple figured Helene would play out like the last storm. Instead, the frigid, muddy river water rose from ankle deep to chest high in under an hour. Neighbors helped Joe escape, but before he could get Sandra out, the river lifted the home off its foundation and drove it downstream. Sandra’s body was found five days later, about 15 miles down river.
It wasn’t the first time that floodwaters destroyed homes at that park. In 2004, Hurricane Frances brought torrential rainfall to Western North Carolina. From his home on the park’s hillside, Dave Masters could see his father’s mobile home surrounded by water. Masters forced his then 63-year-old dad to leave, and the two watched as the river pried the home loose and drove it down the street like a car, where it crashed into a telephone pole before getting stuck under a bridge.
When the county sought properties to buy out to reduce the future risk to life and property after the 2004 floods, it bought out a home across the river but not the mobile home park. New residents moved into harm’s way.
Asked why residents are again allowed to live by the river, Haywood County’s current recovery officer told us he “did not know it was even possible” to buy out a mobile home park. Small counties like Haywood often look to the state for direction. North Carolina Emergency Management, which reviews buyout applications, said buying out a park is no different from commercial or residential properties, and put the onus on the property owners to participate in the program and work with the local government. The park’s current owners did not respond to our questions.
Joe Rogers at his new home in Candler, North Carolina. Hurricane Helene destroyed his former home at Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park and killed his wife, Sandra.Jesse Barber for ProPublica and The AssemblyRogers’ dogs, who survived HeleneJesse Barber for ProPublica and The Assembly
Allowing people to continue to live in locations with severe and repeated flooding is one of several weaknesses reporters at ProPublica have identified while investigating deadly floods.
When it comes to updating floodplain maps, government agencies have prioritized coastal areas, as they often have large populations that can experience complex storm surges and sea level rise, said John Dorman, the retired director of North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
Many inland areas are still operating with their original flood maps from the 1970s or ’80s. In rural places that have experienced population growth and development since then, the maps don’t account for the way these places have changed. New homes, for example, take up valuable areas where floodwater is supposed to run, displacing water not unlike what happens when adding an ice cube to a glass of water.
In North Carolina, my reporting shows what can happen when cash-strapped local governments adopt the minimum federal floodplain regulations, which allow campers to reside in floodplains and enable recreational vehicles to park in locations where they would never approve homes at ground level.
At the park where the Rogerses lived, five campers now sit on riverfront lots where mobile homes were anchored into the soil until Helene hit.
Weaknesses in flood policy revealed themselves in the Texas Hill Country, too, when floods claimed more than 130 lives over the July 4 weekend in 2025. The majority of the people who died in the 2025 Central Texas floods were in places identified as flood-prone by the federal government, our analysis showed.
The Hill Country floods highlighted issues about missed evacuation orders and the need for robust emergency action plans. In the months that followed, the Association of State Floodplain Managers developed model ordinances that require annual permits for campgrounds in floodplains, updated emergency plans and restrictions on building floodways.
Chad Berginnis, the director of the ASFM, likened the minimum federal requirements to a standard recipe and said states can do more. He told me how the state of Wisconsin requires anyone who seeks to even move dirt in the floodway to have an engineer certify that it won’t raise the flood level.
If you are a part of the network of disaster response and recovery partners, we need your help to build a comprehensive picture of the real conditions across the country.
Texas has more structures in flood-prone areas than any state besides Florida, according to a nationwide structure analysis by ProPublica and the Tribune. The Texas Legislature has repeatedly failed to pass bills that would allow local leaders to curb potentially unsafe development, the two newsrooms found. Without major changes, that means the same federal, state and local rules that allowed residents to live near the Guadalupe River are allowing many of them to rebuild there after the floods.
As the Tribune’s Emily Foxhall reported, Joan Connor and David Stearns were one couple who were determined to get back in their home after surviving the 2025 floods by clinging to their pergola. With help from volunteers who repaired the storm damage and donated furniture, they were home by Christmas. It took less than a year for their home to fill with water again. They still plan to repair the house.
Likewise, in Western North Carolina’s Haywood and Buncombe counties, residents are going back to the same locations that were destroyed by storms, including the lot where Rogers lost everything during Helene. Rogers wonders how the local and federal government can keep allowing people to live in harm’s way.
“Ain’t that the definition of insanity: keep doing the same thing, hoping for a different result?” Rogers said. “They’re going to — I hope none of them does, you know — lose a spouse and everything that they own.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping whether China would be interested in buying American weapons, according to U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue, an unusual proposal given Washington’s longstanding security competition with Beijing.
“President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” Perdue said Sunday on Fox News Sunday. “He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some, at one point,” according to The Hill.
Perdue did not specify what weapons Trump had in mind, whether Xi expressed interest or whether any formal proposal followed. The White House also has not announced plans to loosen U.S. restrictions on military technology exports to China.
The remarks come amid persistent tensions over Taiwan. The United States is obligated under the Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan maintain its defensive capabilities and has approved billions of dollars in weapons sales to Taipei. Beijing considers Taiwan part of China and strongly opposes those sales. Reuters reported ahead of Xi’s Washington visit that Beijing wanted Trump to reduce or halt them.
Trump and Xi concluded a three-day Washington summit Friday that produced limited public agreements beyond trade measures and continued diplomatic engagement. Reuters described the meetings as emphasizing personal diplomacy while leaving major disagreements unresolved.
Trump said afterward that he expects to meet Xi twice more before the end of 2026.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Ro Khanna said Sunday that Democrats should consider impeaching President Donald Trump for a third time if they regain control of the House, arguing that doing so would establish standards for presidential conduct rather than simply punish Trump.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the California Democrat cited several potential grounds, including Trump’s initiation of war with Iran without congressional authorization, firings of federal employees and allegations involving foreign governments and the Trump family. “It’s about setting a standard,” Khanna said.
Khanna also urged the administration to accept Iran’s proposed seven-day ceasefire framework aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Trump publicly rejected that proposal Saturday, while Iranian officials said Sunday that diplomacy remained the only viable solution.
Democratic leaders have not committed to impeachment if they win the House. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said relevant committees would determine what oversight or accountability measures are warranted.
Republicans argue another impeachment would be politically motivated. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan said Sunday that Democrats would use control of the chamber to investigate Trump, his family and senior administration officials rather than conduct “legitimate oversight.”
Trump was impeached twice during his first presidency and acquitted by the Senate both times.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new television advertisement featuring President Donald Trump and rhetoric closely resembling his 2024 campaign messaging aired Sunday on Fox News Sunday with an unusual disclosure: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
The 30-second spot shows Trump walking through a hallway while audio plays from a campaign-era speech describing a “final battle” against the “deep state,” globalists, communists, Marxists, fascists and the “fake news media.” Mediaite reported that the wording is nearly identical to a Trump campaign video released in 2024.
The ad is part of a broader government-funded campaign that has appeared on Fox News, Newsmax and other networks. The White House says the spots are public service announcements intended to promote patriotism and educate Americans, not campaign advertisements.
However, federal appropriations law prohibits taxpayer money from being used for “publicity or propaganda,” and the Government Accountability Office has previously said that restriction applies to communications that are purely partisan or designed to aid candidates or parties. No court has ruled that the Trump ads violate that prohibition.
The campaign has drawn criticism from lawmakers and political figures across party lines, particularly because it is airing weeks before the midterm elections. AP reported that government spending on the ads had already reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook said Sunday that Democrats retaking the House has looked like a “done deal” for some time and that winning control of the Senate has become “very realistic,” though his comments represent an election analyst’s assessment rather than a guaranteed outcome.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Cook said he expects Democrats could gain roughly 20 House seats and four or five Senate seats. He pointed to competitive Senate races in Michigan, North Carolina, Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire and Minnesota, with Kansas potentially joining that group.
Cook attributed the changing environment to a familiar midterm pattern: supporters of the president’s party becoming less motivated while opposition voters turn out more heavily and independents move away from the governing party. He described the current environment as a “red undertow” rather than a uniform Democratic wave.
Recent polling provides context for that assessment. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted Sept. 17-20 found President Donald Trump’s approval at 32%, while Democrats held an eight-point advantage over Republicans when respondents were asked which party they would support for Congress.
Decision Desk HQ’s separate forecasting model has also recently treated control of both chambers as competitive, with its Senate model describing the contest as essentially even.
Cook emphasized that individual races remain uneven and that candidate quality, turnout and local issues can still alter results before Election Day.
HOUSTON, Texas — A University of Houston student whose parked car was riddled with police gunfire during a July shootout was initially told the city owed her nothing, even though authorities do not accuse her of any wrongdoing.
Abigail Trujillo, 20, was working at Highland Village on July 6 when Houston police confronted Jamarcus Spates, who was driving a reportedly stolen vehicle. Nine officers opened fire, and dozens of bullets struck Trujillo’s Nissan Altima, totaling it. She still owed money on the vehicle and depended on it for school and work.
When Trujillo sought compensation, city attorneys denied her claim and wrote that they “regret your inconvenience.” The dispute highlights a broader legal fight over whether governments must compensate innocent property owners when police destroy property while pursuing suspects.
A similar Texas case involved Vicki Baker, whose McKinney home was heavily damaged by a SWAT team pursuing a fugitive. In May, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling requiring McKinney to pay Baker nearly $60,000 under the Texas Constitution.
After publicity surrounding Trujillo’s case, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said the city had “totally mishandled” it. He said officials would help replace her car and review other previously denied property-damage claims.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he rejected an Iranian proposal that could have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and paused regional fighting within seven days, prolonging uncertainty over one of the world’s most important shipping routes.
Iran raised the initiative during the United Nations General Assembly and transmitted it through Qatari mediators. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran was prepared to begin a seven-day countdown toward reopening the strait if Washington agreed to the framework, with broader negotiations potentially following.
“I reject their proposal,” Trump told reporters at the White House, arguing that Iran wanted the strait reopened because its economy was suffering. The United States has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports in an effort to pressure Tehran to reopen Hormuz.
The conflict has sharply reduced shipping through the strait and disrupted global oil flows. Iran has said any broader settlement would require reduced U.S. military pressure and relief from the blockade, while maintaining that it will not surrender its uranium-enrichment rights.
The Wall Street Journal, cited by Reuters, reported that Trump has privately told aides he considers renewed U.S. bombing after the November midterms likely, though officials cautioned that his position could change.
Iranian officials continue to say negotiations remain possible despite the rejection.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump is dismissing reports that Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds reduced references to Trump on his campaign website, even though archived versions show that several prominent mentions were removed.
Trump called the coverage “Another Fake Story” Saturday and argued that Donalds remains firmly aligned with him. Donalds also said he was “proud to have” Trump’s endorsement.
But the underlying website changes are real. An archived version featured a top banner urging visitors to “chip in to support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds,” along with repeated “Trump-endorsed” branding. The current homepage instead emphasizes the slogan “Fighting to defend the Florida dream,” while Trump’s endorsement remains in a rotating list with other supporters.
The Washington Post reported that at least eight references to Trump’s endorsement disappeared, along with a photo of Donalds and his wife with Trump and a policy section titled “Enact the Trump Agenda.”
Donalds’ campaign says the redesign reflects a greater focus on affordability, insurance costs and government transparency, not a break with Trump. CBS News likewise reported that Donalds denied distancing himself from the president despite the reduced prominence.
Trump’s criticism therefore disputes the interpretation that Donalds is politically separating himself from the president, rather than the documented fact that multiple Trump references were removed.
practice focused on HPC data center trends, AI, cloud, big data, and hyperscale. He is the former editor of AIwire. 
Two major cases to be heard in December focus on religious rights with a significant Second Amendment challenge also scheduled for argument that month. In addition, the question of voter ID laws will reach the Court this fall, along with controversies about climate change, and two Eighth Amendment challenges.
![Screenshot of an email sent at 5:22 p.m. Sept. 12, 2025, from Mike Morath that reads: “Andy: great to meet you. Would love to set something up to talk about how this could be done. I’ve cc’d Nicole Rivera who can get something scheduled for us. MacKenzie: I’d also like to set up another site visit to visit both your Austin secondary and primary with my team. [Highlighting starts.] The Superintendent of H.I.S.D. would also like to do a site visit, so I’ll connect y’all separately. [Highlighting ends.] And hopefully we can schedule them to happen on the same day. Mike.”](img/347f97b32bb6bdaa4b197607ea982cf022cae7db.jpg)
![An email from Mike Morath sent on Sept. 14, 2025, to a redacted studient.com email address and cc’d to a redacted studient.com email address, Nicole Rivera and MacKenzie Price.
The text of the email says: “[Redacted], I’d love to schedule a follow-up discussion. I’ve followed up w/ MacKenzie and separately started to schedule a follow-up re: 1882 partnerships. But I’d also like to talk more about your Tier 3/MTSS/academic intervention work, which is what I believe you’re doing with a bunch of schools around the country. I’d like to learn more about that, to see how it dovetails with the systemic approach taken in Houston and in a few other places in TX. I’ve cc’d Nicole Rivera who can set something up for us. Thanks, Mike.”](https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/redactedFw-met-at-event-1_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg)
![An email sent by Michael.Strange@tea.texas.gov on April 17, 2026. The email reads: “Hi all, Here’s what I have for next steps, let me know if I missed anything: Next Steps. Mike: Follow up with Teague and Ector County, Draft a ‘district commitment’ one-pager and share with this team for review. [Redacted]: Reach out to Fort Bend + Pflugerville + other potential small-rural districts. Andy: Provide a summer timeline/milestones for onboarding districts by the start of the 26/27 SY (approx. week of August 17th). Thanks, Have a great weekend!”](img/e4f415d387fcf6fbe6e4cefad57f8d27e683731b.jpg)
One of the biggest surprises for Ron was how dramatically his social life improved after moving.After losing four close friends within just a few months, he found himself increasingly isolated.
![[link]](https://i.redd.it/5jxopqepowsh1.jpeg){kind=link}
