The Trump administration on Monday plans to announce it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 U.S. citizens accused of immigration fraud.
If a creditor sues you in retirement, understanding the process could help you avoid some costly mistakes.
Former safeguarding minister says if ban came into force properly it could ‘basically eliminate’ problem
The government has highlighted work done by the internet safety firm SafeToNet as showing that the technology is already in place that would allow tech companies to stop children using phones to take naked pictures of themselves, or other people. The Home Office says:
Measures to protect children already exist within smartphones and tablets, but are applied inconsistently, often switched off by default and only blurring content rather than blocking it. But the government is working closely with technology companies — some of whom, like Apple, have already taken steps to implement protective features — to make this goal a reality.
Companies must introduce these measures without threatening privacy or collecting any data. The device should simply block harmful content across all apps and services. Over-18s will still be able to view adult content by providing proof of age.
The government is right to act. Children have been failed for too long. This news will be welcomed by parents across the UK and hopefully, will inspire other countries to follow the UK’s lead.
We can put an end to so much online misery with this approach. SafeToNet’s HarmBlock technology is a proven example that it is possible to make the device safe by default and not as some optional add-on.
The changes will apply to UK devices, including both existing and newly sold smartphones and tablets. Legislation could cover operating system providers and others in the supply chain, such as retailers, and will not affect the use of devices owned and used by adults who verify their age …
Apple recently introduced age checks for iPhone users, making it the first company to activate safety features by default for those who are not verified as over 18. This is a significant step forward following the government’s commitments to work with industry, and one this announcement builds on.
Continue reading...President posts screenshot on Truth Social attacking Californian election, after walking out of NBC interview after refusing to substantiate his claims of election rigging
The Kennedy Center has removed Donald Trump’s name from its website, although the front of the performing arts venue as of today still reads: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
It comes over a week after a federal judge ruled that the name change had been carried out unlawfully and ordered the take-down of all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and the elimination of any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days (which takes us up to this Friday).
Some of the 17 citizens targeted in the latest denaturalization campaign were convicted of violent or serious crimes, including sex offenses against children. Others were convicted of fraud crimes or accused of committing immigration fraud.
In federal court complaints filed across the country in recent days, justice department officials argued that the individuals concealed their criminal activity when they applied for US citizenship or were otherwise ineligible to be naturalized, including because they lacked a ‘good moral character’, one of the requirements in the naturalization process.
Continue reading...Six people were taken to the hospital after a stabbing incident at New York City's Penn Station Sunday evening.
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as South Korea’s KOSPI index slumps by 8%
Shares in European companies at the heart of the AI boom are falling sharply at the start of trading.
Chip firms such as Besi – BE Semiconductor Industries – (-4.5%) and ASML (-3.2%) which makes chipmaking machines are among the big fallers on the pan-European Stoxx 600 index, which is down almost 0.9%.
Continue reading...LONDON, June 8, 2026 — AMD today announced plans to invest up to £2bn over the next five years in the United Kingdom to accelerate AI innovation and research and expand access to the compute resources needed for long-term economic growth and scientific leadership across the country.
Credit: Shutterstock
Speaking at London Tech Week, AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su outlined a series of investments and strategic collaborations designed to help accelerate the UK’s AI ecosystem and broaden access to the advanced computing that underpins scientific discovery and public-sector innovation. The initiatives align with the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan and AI Hardware Strategy, supporting broader national priorities to build world-class AI infrastructure, develop technical talent and accelerate AI adoption.
“The United Kingdom has the talent, research excellence and ambition to help lead the next era of AI,” said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. “AMD is proud to deepen our commitment to the UK and work with partners across government, academia and industry to expand access to the compute infrastructure needed to advance sovereign AI, accelerate discovery and drive long-term economic growth.”
The announcement was welcomed by UK government leaders as a significant step toward strengthening the country’s AI infrastructure, research ecosystem and long-term economic competitiveness.
“This investment is a major vote of confidence in Britain’s place as a global AI superpower. We’ve got the talent, the world-class universities and the ambition to lead, and partnerships like this help turn that potential into real progress,” said Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer. “It will drive more cutting-edge research here in the UK, open up opportunities for people to build the skills they need for the jobs of the future, and speed up breakthroughs that can improve people’s lives and grow our economy.”
“This investment reflects the strength of Britain’s talent, research and ambition in AI – but also the infrastructure we are putting in place to match it,” said Liz Kendall, Technology Secretary. “With world-class chip designers, leading universities, and partners such as AMD choosing to invest here, we are building the compute capability needed to power innovation, drive growth, create jobs, and ensure the most advanced AI technologies are developed in the UK.”
New Strategic Collaborations to Advance AI Research and Infrastructure
Building on its recently announced work with Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) and JPMorganChase, AMD also announced a collaboration with Imperial College London to advance computational science and supporting research that relies on large-scale computing resources, including healthcare innovation and climate modeling.
AMD and Imperial also intend to explore opportunities to optimize AI models, scientific workflows and data-intensive applications on AMD compute platforms and AMD ROCm open software.
Additionally, AMD is collaborating with Oriole Networks in support of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) Scaling Inference Lab, a national initiative designed to address critical AI infrastructure bottlenecks.
The effort combines Oriole’s PRISM photonic networking architecture with AMD Instinct GPUs and AMD EPYC processors to evaluate new approaches for scaling inference workloads while improving performance and energy efficiency and reducing latency.
The initiative supports what is expected to be the world’s first large-scale AI system powered by a pure photonic network, an important step toward infrastructure technologies that can support future generations of AI systems in the UK.
Expanding National AI Supercomputing Capacity
AMD and Dell Technologies are working with the University of Cambridge on its expanding national AI infrastructure footprint, including the new Zenith AI supercomputer and the Sunrise fusion AI system developed in collaboration with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).
Zenith is a significant new UK AI-for-science platform, funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), designed and operated by the University of Cambridge, and built with AMD and Dell technology.
Sunrise is a second AI supercomputer powered by AMD and Dell being built now, funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), owned by UKAEA, and operated by the University of Cambridge. Sunrise is part of a long standing UKAEA-University of Cambridge partnership and dedicated to the fusion mission.
Together, these systems support a broad range of AI-for-science applications including healthcare research, climate modelling, materials science, engineering simulation, fusion research and scientific AI model development.
Supporting the UK’s National AI Future
By combining strategic investments with research and ecosystem partnerships, AMD is helping expand the UK’s computing capabilities and supporting the next generation of scientific and technological breakthroughs. The company will continue working with government, academia and industry to strengthen the foundations for long-term competitiveness and global leadership in AI.
About AMD
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimised CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing. Learn more at www.amd.com.
Source: AMD
The post AMD to Invest up to £2B to Accelerate AI Innovation and Research in UK appeared first on HPCwire.
US president says ‘final peace negotiations’ under way, with reports that the IDF has also halted strikes on Iran
Iranian media is reporting that there were no immediate casualties following apparent Israeli strikes on the Karun petrochemical plant in Mahshahr, a city in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province.
According to the Fars news agency, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they responded to what they described as an American-Israeli strike on the Iranian petrochemical site by launching a missile attack on a similar plant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Continue reading...Debbie Crosbie receives £3.2m in bonuses after mutual building society’s takeover of Virgin Money
Nationwide building society has nearly doubled the pay packet of its chief executive, Debbie Crosbie, a year after the board pushed through a controversial bonus scheme for its top boss.
The mutual, which is owned by its members, released its annual report on Monday, showing Crosbie was handed £3.2m in bonuses – a combination of payouts for annual and longer-term performance – up from £1.1m a year earlier.
It pushed her overall pay packet to £4.7m for the year to March 2026, marking an 88% jump on the near-£2.5m she earned for the previous year.
Continue reading...Iran's military declares a halt to operations as Trump says Israel and Tehran are seeking an "immediate ceasefire" after a major escalation in the 101-day war.
The late-night host detailed how the Florida liberal arts college became a testing ground for a rightwing agenda
John Oliver dedicated Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight to examining how Florida’s New College has been taken over by the conservative state governor, Ron DeSantis, and his allies.
New College used to promote itself with videos that emphasized its inclusive community and unique academic program – a rarity for a US state college.
Continue reading...Case argues Trump administration broke federal laws to accomodate ‘deeply corrupt’ commercial sporting event
Donald Trump is throwing himself quite the 80th birthday party at the White House on Sunday. All he needs now is for a federal judge, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and a passing thunderstorm not to ruin it.
The watchdog group Public Integrity Project filed a lawsuit on Saturday in DC federal court, seeking an emergency injunction to halt the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event before a single punch is thrown on 14 June – which so happens both Flag Day and the president’s birthday.
Continue reading...Job transitions often come with severance pay, but they can also come with unexpected financial complications.
Former investment star was banned from holding senior manager roles after collapse of popular equity fund
The UK financial regulator is taking legal action against the former investment star Neil Woodford for allegedly offering unauthorised investment advice online, months after being banned from the City.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it was seeking an injunction against Woodford and W4.0, a United Arab Emirates-registered company, to stop them carrying out “potentially unlawful activities”.
Continue reading...Apple's software event gives us an early look at new features for iOS and MacOS, plus a big overhaul for Siri. And this is Tim Cook's last WWDC as CEO.
Jeff Bezos is backing Flourish, a new "neuro AI" startup with $500 million in funding and a reported $2.5 billion valuation, that aims to reinvent AI by studying the brain's architecture and building systems that learn continuously while using far less power than today's large language models. The company's long-term bet is that neuroscientists and AI researchers working together can uncover the brain's "core algorithm" and eventually create brain-inspired AI that runs on a tiny fraction of current compute. Wired reports: Rob Williams knows how to pitch Jeff Bezos: You write a press release as if your product has already been built. Bezos reads it and gives a thumbs up or down. Williams went through this process a lot as an executive on Amazon's "S-team," in charge of software products such as Alexa, until his departure last fall. But the pitch he made a few weeks later -- in December 2025 -- was different. Now he was collaborating with Thomas Reardon, a neuroscientist and repeat startup founder, and approaching Bezos as a funder, not a boss. Here's what Bezos, sitting on his yacht somewhere, read while Williams anxiously watched on Zoom: "Flourish is a neuro AI company that is solving the two most difficult problems facing AI today: power efficiency and continuous learning. We are building Cortex AI, the first synthetic intelligence system designed to match the computational capacity, learning efficiency, and power budget of the human brain." A month later, I'm lunching with Reardon and Williams in the Flatiron neighborhood in New York City. Reardon gets right to the point. AI has dug itself into a hole, he says. Though increasingly powerful, large language models are greedy consumers of computer power and data. Though the inspiration for LLMs was rooted in biology, current frontier models have little in common with the human brain. A person uses about 20 watts of energy to process information; a single chip in an AI training cluster uses more than 30 times that amount. The hyperscalers require thousands of chips and gigawatts of energy, enough to power small cities. And those models need to suck up virtually all of what humans have written. Each new model requires more, more, more. For all of that, the models don't learn. Once you train them, they're stuck. The goal, Reardon tells me, is to build "a synthetic artificial intelligence brain that runs on 50 watts or less." It should adapt to its conditions, be as nimble as a human mind, and burn a tiny fraction of an LLM's compute power and energy. The proof of concept is thriving inside our skulls. "There's something fundamentally wrong with saying, "I need to basically read every book ever written 20 times over in order to learn English,'" Reardon says. "A human baby does it with a couple hundred thousand utterances." Reardon and Williams haven't figured out yet how to build systems that match the magic of a human brain. What they have is a belief that an expert, well-resourced team -- of AI researchers and neuroscientists working essentially side by side -- can find the answer. The neuroscientists will conduct original wet lab experiments with some of the most advanced lab equipment available, to hunt for usable intel on the brain's architecture. They plan to release the models they're currently developing as near-term products on the path to a full reinvention of AI. The fuzziness of the proposal didn't bother Jeff Bezos. After reading Williams' two-pager, he chipped in $50 million. Other funding came from Lux Capital, Google Ventures, and Catalio, among others. Bezos then almost doubled his initial stake and told Reardon he'd have given more if they'd asked. Now with a war chest of $500 million and a reported valuation of $2.5 billion, Flourish just needs to invent a new way to do AI.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Arch-enemies Israel and Iran have returned to active confrontation while Donald Trump tries to present himself as mediator
Israel and Iran have returned to active war for the first time since a ceasefire was agreed two months ago in an exchange of rocket fire that threatened efforts to end the conflict.
Donald Trump, who started the war in February alongside Israel but has since attempted to present himself as a mediator, told the two sides to stop shooting and said “final negotiations” on peace were proceeding. By late afternoon on Monday, the attacks had stopped.
Continue reading...From high-altitude training to made to measure kits, teams have resorted to all manner of things to adapt to conditions at the tournament
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The heat and the altitude worried everybody. The 1970 World Cup in Mexico would not be a normal one. So the Bulgarian authorities sent their squad south of Sofia to get used to playing several thousand feet above sea level. Which seemed a great idea until somebody noticed that the temperature in the Pirin Mountains was not in the mid-20s celsius as it is in Mexico but somewhere near freezing. How then could they replicate the effect of playing in intense heat? By restricting water intake so that the players got used to performing while dehydrated.
The plan was not a great success. Bulgaria lost their first two World Cup games in 1970 and had already been eliminated by the time they drew with Morocco. It’s safe to assume that preparations for this World Cup will be rather more sophisticated than they were 56 years ago. Most countries back then seemed to take the view that training at altitude was the logical way to prepare for games in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara. Israel went to Ethiopia and Colorado. Uruguay played in Quito and Bogotá. Mexico themselves held a five-month training camp that featured 13 friendly internationals in four months before a pair of games against the Scottish side Dundee United.
This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.
Continue reading...The FCAS fighter jet looks like it’s dead. Could that be a good thing? Expert comment jon.wallace
FCAS was already competing with the GCAP project and Swedish and Turkish fighters. Europe should combine its efforts.
European states have known since the early 2000s that they will need to develop a replacement for their existing fighter aircraft.
Concepts for a ‘next generation fighter programme’ go beyond the development of just a jet. Plans to include a combat ‘cloud’ and uncrewed systems to operate alongside fighter jets have been around for almost the same amount of time.
But difficulties around the German-French-Spanish fighter project – the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) – demonstrate that even in a strategic context transformed by the Ukraine war and US disengagement, cooperative defence development in Europe remains fraught with difficulty.
The original plans for a next generation fighter were co-developed by several European states, including the UK and Italy, in the early 2000s. In 2017-19, the FCAS grouping around France, Germany and Spain was formed, primarily driven by President Emmanuel Macron and former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The idea was, in part, to create an aircraft that could complement or compete with the US’s F35 next generation fighter.
However, the collaboration between industrial partners Airbus and Dassault has been challenging from the start. The partners have struggled to agree how to divide work packages, leading to delays and now deadlock – several deadlines to secure the fighter’s future have passed without agreement. And both Airbus and Dassault have spoken about developing the fighter separately, or moving forward only the ‘cloud’ element, leading to speculation that the fighter collaboration is going to end. Acknowledging the project has failed would be politically very difficult: neither France nor Germany wants to admit to fumbling a decade-long, expensive defence programme.
Part of the challenge has been that Germany and France are looking to develop different types of aircraft. For France, the ability to carry nuclear weapons and to land on an aircraft carrier is essential if it is to replace its existing Rafale fighter jets, which currently carry out part of France’s nuclear mission and fly from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Germany meanwhile, is primarily looking for a conventionally armed fighter jet, without the requirement for carrier operations.
Looking to develop two separate aircraft – possibly with new partners – while continuing cooperation on the joint cloud and uncrewed systems, might work. But it would presumably undo a significant part of the cost savings promised by collaboration.
Leaders in Germany and France are frustrated by the disagreements at the technical level. It seems to demonstrate the limits of their ability to set incentives for private industry where industry does not want to cooperate.
The situation is further complicated by the many other competing European projects. There are three other significant European future fighters.
Since December 2022, the UK, Japan and Italy have been working on the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). Even though this collaboration started several years after FCAS, it now seems to be on surer footing with governance structures agreed and work on some aspects of the system underway. But the UK Treasury is reportedly worried the project’s international nature will make costs hard to rein in.
Separately, Saab has also announced work on a next generation fighter that would succeed its Gripen programme. Gripen was originally developed as a non-NATO alternative for states that did not want to buy US or European equipment and has become a big export hit: Most recently, Ukraine has selected Gripen to form the backbone of its fighter wing, in part for the aircraft’s ability to operate in harsh conditions and from improvised airstrips. Saab is presumably seeking to capitalize on this and other export successes with a new project. Turkey, another NATO member, is also developing a new stealthy fighter jet.
Meanwhile the UK, Italy, Germany and many other European powers are purchasing the US F35 aircraft: only last year the UK doubled down on its F35 investment, announcing a purchase of the nuclear-capable F35A variant, in addition to its F35Bs. Germany is reportedly considering buying more F35s, as the FCAS project stalls.
With four next-generation fighter programmes underway – perhaps soon to be five – Europe risks replicating the mistakes of late 1980s and1990s, when Europe developed three competing fighter designs:
The Eurofighter Typhoon, a collaboration between the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain originally included France, but Dassault preferred to go at it alone then, too and developed Rafale separately. Gripen also competed.
At that time Europe’s strategic defence partnership with the US through NATO seemed solid. That meant European defence industrial projects had the luxury of developing fighters while pursuing goals other than defence: they could be as much about investing in local industry, keeping skills and production capabilities alive, and competing for a lucrative export market.
However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and faltering US commitments to Europe’s security, mean these incentives have changed significantly. There is a clear need for Europe to take its own defence more seriously. The wisdom of European NATO members pursuing multiple next generation fighter projects with broadly similar capabilities is questionable. Separate programmes mean countries spreading their resources thin rather than pooling them. It also means separate projects competing for the same export business. That hardly speaks to a Europe that is pulling in one direction on defence.
Part of the problem is that GCAP and FCAS still have some elements of the ‘old’ European defence procurement model, in which equal weight is given to international prestige, domestic economic growth and exportability rather than focusing on Europe’s increasingly urgent defence requirements.
With US disengagement looming and the Russian threat significant, the emphasis must shift to prioritizing the quality of kit and the speed with which it can be delivered. Equally, there is no longer an argument for a separate Swedish project to target an export market that does not want to buy NATO kit: Sweden is now also a NATO member-state.
There is an urgent reality that European countries must confront: if they are unable to produce a European alternative to the US F35 programme, they will be stuck relying on an increasingly unreliable US for a crucial part of their defence equipment – a platform they might conceivably have to rely on until well into the 2040s. That would dash the stated wishes of both President Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Were European countries to begin by focussing on NATO interoperability and strengthening European deterrence, it would make more sense to pool money and resources and produce a single next-generation fighter system. If Sweden and Turkey cannot be persuaded, the so called ‘E3’ powers of the UK, France and Germany should at least live up to their rhetoric and invest in a joint outcome.
Of course, that raises the question of the extent to which European governments can influence their defence industries – who know how politically hard to kill international prestige projects like next generation fighter jets are. If one company does not play well with others and prefers to go it alone, what tools do governments have to influence them? The lesson of FCAS is: not many.
States across the Midwest and northern Plains could see flooding as severe storms hit, forecasters say.
Valdo Calocane was protected at expense of public safety in years before June 2023 stabbings, families of victims say
The parents of a victim of the Nottingham attacks have said medical staff have a duty to breach patient confidentiality if the person they are treating is a risk to others.
The families of the victims of the June 2023 attacks spoke at a news conference in London on Monday after evidence concluded in a 14-week public inquiry into the attacks.
Continue reading...A vehicle carrying fireworks caught fire on a highway in Tennessee on Saturday, sparking a spectacular display. Footage from the scene on Interstate 75 near Ooltewah showed a huge cloud of sparks and rockets emerging from a trailer of a truck as a crowd watched from an overpass.
The local volunteer fire department said in a statement: 'The trailer was full of fireworks, all of which became involved in the fire and exploded during the incident.' It added that the devices 'were going off in different directions, endangering drivers' but that no one was injured in the incident, which was quickly brought under control by first responders
Continue reading...Sean McGovern pleaded guilty to two charges relating to a deadly feud after being extradited from the UAE
A leader of the notorious Kinahan criminal cartel has been sentenced to 24 years in prison at a Dublin court.
Sean McGovern, 40, who has been described as a senior lieutenant in the group, pleaded guilty to two charges of directing the activities of a criminal organisation relating to a deadly feud between the Kinahan and Hutch criminal gangs.
Continue reading...Norman Feske, one of the main developers behind Genode and Sculpt OS, has published a blog post detailing how he developed a two-factor authentication application for Sculpt OS.
With this little tool, which I have turned into an deploy option on Sculpt OS to swiftly bring it up whenever I need it, TOTP-based two-factor authentication has become part of my daily routine. Should you want to risk a look under the hood, let me point you to the vitotp Goa project.
↫ Norman Feske
The Genode project moved from GitHub to Codebrg recently, and needed a native TOTP impelentation for that purpose.
Keir Starmer says he will fight on as prime minister, but behind the scenes he is said to be thinking about his legacy. He’s talking this week about tech companies and the shape of a social media ban, but he is also focussed on resetting the UK’s relations with EU and defence. Pippa and Kiran discuss what his legacy might be and the role Andy Burnham has to play
Continue reading...L.A. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman surged past Spencer Pratt in the race for L.A. mayor after previously trailing by 6%. The California gubernatorial primary also remained undecided.
Apps, emails, promos, DMs and tiny red badges had hijacked my attention. Taking it back forced me to evaluate my relationship with my phone.
Chokehold on shipping route draws Houthis in Yemen back into conflict as commenters see ‘no turning back’
Iran’s reversion to large-scale military exchanges with Israel broadened the conflict that began in February not only by making the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah a direct casus belli for Iran for the first time, but also by drawing the Houthis in Yemen back into the conflict with as yet incalculable consequences.
Some in Tehran, buoyed up by past perceived military success and emboldened by the chokehold of the strait of Hormuz, would like to turn this moment into the point of no return in the conflagration with Israel. A minority would welcome the abandonment of ceasefire talks with the US, an outcome for which they have been agitating for weeks.
Continue reading...Australia leads world in residential solar per capita with 22GW installed but commercial and industrial sector has deployed only a quarter of that
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Australia’s revolution in rooftop solar has left behind commercial and industrial buildings where installations have lagged far behind homes, according to new analysis.
Australia leads the world in residential solar on per capita terms, with 22GW installed as of last December. But businesses have only installed about a quarter of that – 5.6GW – despite consuming more electricity than households, a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found.
Continue reading...Tsunami alerts ended but people told not to enter damaged buildings for fear of aftershocks from magnitude-7.8 quake
At least 32 people have died after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake shook part of the southern Philippines early on Monday, collapsing buildings and triggering tsunami alerts that were later cancelled.
The quake hit early in the morning about 20km (12.4 miles) off the coast of Sarangani province, with tremors felt strongly across Mindanao and 420km away in the city of Manado on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Continue reading...Our writer found a surprisingly effective way to cut down his smartphone use. Plus, what to eat while watching the World Cup – inspired by all 48 teams
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I recently learned through Apple’s Screen Time app that I was spending about eight hours a week on my phone browsing Reddit and Instagram. That’s 17.3 days a year spent consuming entertaining but ultimately pointless fluff. So my piece looking for solutions for phone addicts was highly personal.
The warning signs are if your phone is the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at in bed, says Prof Marcantonio Spada, emeritus professor of addictive behaviours and mental health at London South Bank University and chief clinical officer at Onebright, who I spoke to for my article.
Continue reading...Drops follow sharp sell-off of US tech stock last week while oil prices seesaw after Iran and Israel exchange strikes
Stock markets have fallen amid concern about the prospects for tech stocks, while oil prices have risen after renewed conflict in the Middle East dampened hopes that the strait of Hormuz would soon reopen.
Markets in Asia and Europe fell on Monday after a sharp sell-off in US tech stocks late last week, as investors fretted over how firms at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom would fund their “eye-watering” spending plans.
Continue reading...Will the UK’s Defence Investment Plan finally be honest about Britain’s defence? Expert comment jon.wallace
Here are the key questions that should be asked when assessing the much-delayed plan.
Britain’s defence policy has been dysfunctional for decades. The slow implementation of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review and delays in the release of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) – originally scheduled for autumn 2025 – are the continuation of a litany of failures. As Britain’s capabilities have withered, allies have become increasingly sceptical of Britain’s ability to function as a military actor and frustrated at the slow pace of reform.
A core problem of UK defence strategy, revealed in new research I have published with Dr Maeve Ryan and Dr William Reynolds of King’s College, London, is that dishonesty is endemic. It operates across a spectrum, from self-deception via optimism bias, to engaging in ‘alchemy’ over budgets, to lying for self-interest. It affects every aspect of defence planning.
The issue is: will the DIP continue this trend or break it – by confronting the choices and costs involved in providing for UK defence? When the plan finally appears, a series of key questions will determine whether it is a valuable step forward, or another badly flawed exercise.
UK policymakers see Britain as a leading military actor, despite the sharp decline in its capabilities. In recent years, they have explored various ambitious projects, including: leading a coalition to stay in Afghanistan after the US withdrew; providing a peacekeeping force to Ukraine; leading a freedom of navigation mission in the Strait of Hormuz; and providing a Corps-sized contribution to NATO.
The disconnect between these ambitions and the UK’s resources suggests a high level of self-deception about what the UK can do militarily. Each mission would stretch the armed forces to or beyond their limit.
The Strategic Defence Review (2025) is ambitious enough, calling for the UK to play a leading role within NATO and take on more responsibility for European security. This would require a rapid and significant increase in UK capabilities.
Yet the record so far is clear: rhetoric about heightened insecurity and urgency, followed by a lack of money and action in response.
The first question must therefore be: does the DIP set out a plan for defence that aligns actual resources with realistic and achievable strategic goals?
For decades, policymakers have argued that Britain could do ‘more with less’, using technology to make up for declining mass. The result is the UK now has a shadow force of the full spectrum of capabilities – but so little of any one capability that it has few military options on the table when a crisis breaks out.
This was starkly illustrated at the outbreak of the US/Israel/Iran war in 2026, when the UK had no maritime presence in the Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean and took weeks to deploy one ship to reassure allies. (The ship then had to be diverted for maintenance).
At the same time, the core assumption of all British defence planning for decades – that the US will always take the lead and the UK will be a niche provider in support of the mission – is no longer true. Yet it continues to underpin procurement decisions.
The Defence Investment Plan therefore must make some big calls about how to de-risk the UK’s defence relationships, and the costs involved. Sourcing military equipment domestically, to bespoke designs, is slower and more expensive than buying on the open market. And the evidence for the economic benefits of defence industry spending is weak.
Furthermore, the UK simply doesn’t have the military resources to do what it used to, whether that be global force projection, or continental land deterrence, at scale.
If it’s honest, the DIP will finally have to make a choice between focusing on capabilities to defend the mainland UK and the Arctic and ‘High North’ or opt for a massive effort to reconstitute its ability to project force around the world – with all the associated costs.
The next questions should therefore be: does the DIP explain how it will decide between sovereign capabilities or ‘off the shelf’ procurement options? Does it acknowledge the costs and trade-offs involved? And does it commit to investing in a force posture directed to address specific threats?
UK defence once again finds itself facing a financial black hole, this time estimated at £28 billion. In the past, these have been met with two tactics, both of which have failed.
Firstly, officials and service chiefs promised efficiency savings which never materialized. The 2025 SDR and NSS were undermined at the outset by the promise of £6 billion in savings. In our research, senior military officers talked about the ‘alchemy’ involved in pretending cuts would not affect frontline capabilities and budgets would be balanced by savings; privately acknowledging these were either wildly optimistic or put forward disingenuously for political reasons.
No one injured in incident, volunteer fire department says, and it is not known how truck caught fire
Firefighters in Tennessee had to respond to an unexpectedly early Fourth of July scene after a truck caught fire on a major highway and its load of fireworks went off, triggering a spectacular display.
Video of the scene on Interstate 75 in the community of Ooltewah showed a huge cloud of sparks and rockets emerging from a trailer that the truck was hauling, as a stunned crowd watched from an overpass.
Continue reading...June 8, 2026 — A landmark £1.1 billion plan to boost Britain’s ability to develop, deploy and scale AI technologies and chips has been unveiled today – pouring investment to back the next generation of British chip companies to support growth and jobs, strengthen national security, and boost the UK’s competitiveness.
Credit: Shutterstock
AI is already changing how economies work, public services operate and countries protect their interests. As more of the economy and public services comes to rely on AI, it matters more than ever that Britain has the ability to develop key technologies securely here at home. Ready access to compute is critical to these ambitions: giving AI innovators the digital horsepower they need, to get to work in Britain.
The new AI Hardware Plan, announced by the Technology Secretary Liz Kendall at London Tech Week today, sets out how the government will back British companies developing the chips and semiconductor technologies behind AI, while also investing in the scientists, engineers and technicians needed to turn new ideas into products and good jobs in the UK.
It comes just over a month after she announced in her speech at RUSI that the government would bring forward plans to boost Britain’s sovereign AI capabilities.
The global AI chips market is expected to reach one trillion dollars in the early 2030s. If Britain could secure just 5% of this market it would bring fifty billion dollars in revenue to the UK with tens of thousands of highly paid jobs in tech.
British companies – from Arm, whose chip designs are used in everything from smartphones to AI data centers, to startups like Fractile and Olix, which have raised more than £320 ($440) million between them – are already leading the next generation of AI hardware. This plan backs them – and the startups coming up behind them – to become the British AI titans of the future.
As the market shifts from general-purpose chips to bespoke hardware, that plays directly to the UK’s strengths, creating an opportunity for British firms to lead in the AI infrastructure of the future.
“AI is the defining currency of economic and hard power in today’s world and the countries that control the hardware behind it will hold the keys to the future,” said Technology Secretary Liz Kendall. “The UK is already a global leader in chip design, and I believe this is a race Britain can win. To do that, we must back more British AI – and that means investing in the chips, computing power and skilled people behind it. That is exactly what this plan does, backing the British firms developing the next generation of AI hardware, so we get more jobs, more growth, and more control over the technologies our future depends on. We are backing Britain because we believe in Britain.”
The AI Hardware Plan includes:
Building on the UK’s strength in cutting-edge tech, a new fund led by Silicon Valley investors Playground Global – whose partners include Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel – and backed by up to £150m from the British Business Bank, will invest in UK-based AI hardware companies, giving British innovators the long-term backing they need to grow and stay in the UK, subject to completion of due diligence and legal negotiations.
It is the single largest fund investment the British Business bank has ever made, a signal of the scale of the government’s commitment to backing British AI hardware. The fund, developed by DSIT, and announced by the Chancellor at London Tech Week, will help them crowd in more private investment, and develop the technologies the UK’s future depends on, ensuring Britain can compete with the biggest players on the world stage. Playground Global will also open its first office outside the US in the UK, underlining Britain’s position as a leading place to develop the next generation of AI hardware.
Further Details
AI developers need vast amounts of computing power to train advanced models, test ideas and run complex simulations, and a lack of access to it can be a serious bottleneck on their ability to grow. By building out the UK’s supercomputing capacity, the government is tackling that bottleneck head on, helping promising start ups to scale, innovators to develop new products, and scientists to make discoveries sooner.
The plan is about making sure the UK has the tools it needs to stay competitive, support innovation and protect its national security. It combines work with world-leading partners and support for British companies in the frontier technologies prioritised by the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, where the UK has a real edge.
On top of this, the government is doubling the compute available through the AI Research Resource to firms backed by the Sovereign AI fund, ensuring founders get the computing power they need to build, scale and compete globally.
The plan includes a new £12 million Centre for Doctoral Training in Chip Design to train the next generation of chip designers in UK universities, and working with employers to open up more routes into semiconductor and AI hardware careers. It expands the government’s existing semiconductor skills program, which is funding 300 undergraduate bursaries this year, and this will rise to 400 from next academic year and 500 the year after, with the total budget increasing to £48m.
Through TechFirst, the government has agreed a new strategic industry partnership with Arm, bringing one of the world’s leading chip designers into the UK’s skills pipeline, supporting the development of the future AI hardware workforce through industry engagement, expertise and alignment of training with real-world chip design needs.
A new £20 million expansion of the TechFirst program will support 500 more UK PhD students with funding and support throughout their training in strategically critical fields like chip design and AI hardware, helping attract and retain the British researchers the sector needs to grow.
In addition to the £1.1 billion AI Hardware Plan, the government will soon be launching the tender process for the £750 million Next National Supercomputing Service at the University of Edinburgh – a major step in building the next generation of UK compute infrastructure, giving Britain the capability it needs to power advanced research, industry and public services into the future.
Source: UK Government
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Round 1 of the CNET Big Guessing Game is complete, and your predictions are enlightening.
LONDON, June 8, 2026 — Oriole Networks today announced continued progress in its collaboration with AMD, in support of the UK’s Advanced Research & Innovation Agency (ARIA) Scaling Inference Lab. The work brings together Oriole’s photonic networking system and AMD Instinct GPUs and AMD EPYC CPUs to demonstrate how next-generation network fabrics address the growing performance, latency, and energy constraints of AI infrastructure. In the collaboration, which has been underway for more than a year, Oriole is set to deploy the world’s first pure photonic AI network at scale, built to supercharge AI performance at the system level by providing the lowest possible latency.
Oriole is contributing its PRISM photonic networking solution, which replaces electronic switches in the network core with nanosecond-scale optical circuit switching. AMD is supporting the program by providing CPU and GPU hardware, and technical collaboration to develop and run large-scale network models relevant to frontier-scale AI systems.
It also marks the first commercial deployment of Oriole’s technology, which has gone from R&D to production in just three years. Oriole’s xPU-agnostic designs are now locked and set for wider rollout across the industry in 2027 to meet growing demand from multiple accelerator platforms.
Reimagining AI Networks
At the core of the network is Oriole’s technology, PRISM: the world’s first AI networking platform that routes data as photons rather than electrical signals. For decades, data center networks have run on electrical switches that are inefficient, power-hungry, and generate enormous heat. Coupled with the rise of AI, with its need for thousands of chips exchanging data trillions of times per second, data center networks have been pushed to the breaking point.
PRISM removes the need for electronic switches entirely, replacing them with nano-second-switched optical circuits, which cuts core power consumption by 81%. With photons able to travel directly from chip to chip, GPU idle time drops from 60% today to less than 1%. With less hardware in the loop, PRISM can also reduce dependency on the complex supply chain that underpin today’s networking hardware and can minimize the need for cooling, thus slashing water usage. As the work with AMD shows, this leads to supercharged AI output with more tokens per second and more users served simultaneously from the same hardware.
Agnostic by Design
Crucially, PRISM is not built for any single chip vendor; it works across any accelerator platform, giving the wider industry a path to frontier-scale system-wide performance without the need for proprietary stacks.
Madhu Rangarajan, corporate vice president, Compute and Enterprise AI business, AMD, said: “AMD is excited to collaborate with Oriole on the ARIA Scaling Inference Lab cluster. Oriole’s AI backend networking with nanosecond optical circuit switching represents a fundamentally different way to connect accelerators at scale. We are helping to validate how photonic fabrics can work alongside AMD compute to deliver the low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity that AI Inference workloads demand.”
James Regan, CEO of Oriole, said: “A year ago, we were proving the physics; today, we’re proving the business. Our collaboration with AMD has moved from concept to deployment to a system an order of magnitude larger, and the data proves this is already driving performance increases at pace. This is what it looks like when photonic networking stops being a research curiosity and starts being the foundation of how serious AI infrastructure gets built.”
Suraj Bramhavar, Program Director at ARIA, said: “Meeting the demands for modern AI requires rapidly identifying ways to improve the performance and cost-efficiency of large-scale AI clusters. ARIA is thrilled to collaborate with Oriole and AMD to demonstrate the benefits of this new technology and it’s exactly the type of collaboration, between innovative startups and industry leaders, that the Scaling Inference Lab was designed to foster.”
About Aria
Created by an Act of Parliament from the UK government, and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, ARIA funds breakthrough R&D to catalyze new paths to prosperity for the UK and the world. The Scaling Inference Lab is a testbed backed by £50m ($68m), set up to address a key bottleneck of AI workloads.
About Oriole Networks
AI Networking, Reimagined. Oriole Networks is a photonic networking company, developing disruptive technologies for AI/ML and HPC networking that will revolutionize data centers. These technologies address AI’s biggest challenges – speed, latency, and sustainability. Our holistic approach replaces energy-hungry electrical switching with photonic switching. By using only light to move data in the network, our solution will increase the efficiency of LLM training and inference to unprecedented levels while dramatically reducing the energy consumption of data centers, currently putting a huge strain on energy grids. We can offer faster, more efficient, and more sustainable AI without sacrificing the planet.
Source: Oriole Networks
The post Oriole and AMD Deploy Photonic AI Network for ARIA Scaling Inference Lab appeared first on HPCwire.
Suspect in custody at busy rail hub adjacent to Madison Square Garden one day before game three of NBA finals
Six people were stabbed in a Sunday night attack at New York’s Penn Station, authorities said, with Amtrak police saying a person believed to be homeless was being held in custody as a result.
The stabbings at the US’s busiest railroad hub came one day before thousands of basketball fans were expected at the third game of the NBA finals at the adjacent Madison Square Garden complex, although the events are not believed to be linked.
Continue reading...Let us know what you think about your TV.
The Tabli system hits the US market this week and aims to take the plastic out of single-serve coffee.
In response to AI’s hyperrealism, artists and creatives are gravitating toward the homespun and imperfect
Earlier this year, a group of film-makers, commercial directors and AI industry influencers gathered in New York City for the Runway AI Summit – a daylong hype-fest, trumping up the potential of this new technology. During one talk, Rob Wrubel, co-founder and managing partner at San Francisco ad firm Silverside, talked up his work on the Coca-Cola company’s AI-generated 2025 Holiday Caravan ad. “What’s incredible about AI,” Wrubel said, “is that you can go from script to production is just two weeks!”
What Wrubel failed to mention was that the ad – with its computerized polar bears and fake-looking trundling delivery trucks – was widely despised by pretty much anyone who saw it. Indeed, the public distaste for the campaign became its own news story, spawning headlines like “People really don’t like Coke’s AI holiday commercial” and “Coca-Cola’s New AI Holiday Ad is a Sloppy Eyesore”. It may indeed have been quickly conceived – and it looked like it. Reached for comment about the backlash, Wrubel admits: “The conversation around the ad became almost as important as the ad itself because it surfaced questions the entire creative industry is wrestling with right now.”
Continue reading...Jonathan Rinderknecht is accused of starting the blaze that became Los Angeles’s deadliest and destructive wildfire
The trial of a 29-year-old charged with sparking a wildfire that went on to become the deadly Palisades inferno, the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history, is set to begin on Monday in a case that has gripped the city as Angelenos seek answers more than a year after the deadly fire.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, an occasional Uber driver, is accused of starting a small blaze on New Year’s Day 2025, later dubbed the Lachman fire. Although the Los Angeles fire department extinguished the fire on 2 January, it reignited five days later due to high winds and tinderbox conditions after burning undetected deep in the dry hillsides.
Continue reading...LONDON, June 8, 2026 — AMD today announced a strategic collaboration with Imperial College London to advance AI-enabled scientific discovery, sovereign AI infrastructure and next-generation high-performance computing (HPC) systems in the United Kingdom.
Credit: Shutterstock
Bringing together AMD expertise in accelerated computing and open software with Imperial’s world-class expertise in science, engineering, and healthcare research and innovation, the organizations will explore new approaches to tackling some of the world’s most complex scientific problems.
The collaboration is expected to support advanced computational research across fields including engineering design, multiphysics simulation, materials discovery, climate and earth system modeling, neuroscience and brain imaging, epidemiology, biosecurity, genomics and computational biology. AMD and Imperial also intend to explore opportunities to optimize AI models, scientific workflows and data-intensive applications on AMD compute platforms and AMD ROCm open software.
“AI and accelerated computing are transforming how researchers solve complex problems and turn discoveries into real-world impact,” said Dr. Lisa Su, CEO and chair, AMD. “By combining AMD leadership AI and HPC platforms with Imperial’s globally recognized research and innovation ecosystem, we aim to help to help researchers tackle larger challenges, develop next-generation AI talent and advance open, interoperable sovereign AI infrastructure in the U.K.”
U.K. Science Minister Lord Vallance said, “This partnership between AMD and Imperial will combine world-class computing and AI expertise with engineering and research to help tackle some of the toughest challenges we face, from healthcare to our changing climate. By backing discovery, skills and innovation here in the U.K., it has the potential to improve lives, open up new opportunities for students and researchers, and support the growth of businesses and jobs across the country.”
Beyond research, AMD and Imperial plan to work together on education, workforce development and science-based innovation initiatives spanning AI, HPC, accelerated computing, semiconductor technologies and engineering. The parties will explore opportunities to provide students, researchers, startups and innovators with access to computing resources, software environments and technical expertise through workshops, seminars, internships, pilot programs and industry engagements. These activities will take place across Imperial’s WestTech London innovation ecosystem, which encompasses its campuses at South Kensington, Paddington Life Sciences, the White City Innovation District and Old Oak Innovation Cluster.
“Imperial College London is committed to advancing world-leading research and innovation that delivers real-world impact,” said Hugh Brady, president, Imperial College London. “Working with AMD creates new opportunities to expand opportunities for researchers, students and innovators to access advanced AI and accelerated computing infrastructure working across scientific, engineering and healthcare disciplines.”
The collaboration reflects the shared commitment of AMD and Imperial to strengthen sovereign AI capabilities, support open and interoperable computing ecosystems, and contribute to the long-term growth and competitiveness of the U.K. AI and scientific innovation economy.
About AMD
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing. Learn more at www.amd.com.
About Imperial College London
Imperial is a world-leading university for science, technology, engineering, medicine and business (STEMB), where scientific imagination leads to world-changing impact. As a global top ten university in London, we use science to try to understand more of the universe and improve the lives of more people in it. Across our 10 campuses and throughout our Imperial Global network, our 22,000 students, 8,000 staff, and partners work together on scientific discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship. Their work navigates some of the world’s toughest challenges in global health, climate change, AI, business leadership and more. Founded in 1907, Imperial’s future builds on a distinguished past, having pioneered penicillin, holography and fibre optics. Today, Imperial combines exceptional teaching, world-class facilities and a habit of interdisciplinary practice to unlock scientific imagination. Learn more at www.imperial.ac.uk.
Source: AMD
The post AMD and Imperial College London Partner on AI, HPC and Scientific Discovery appeared first on HPCwire.
Addressing lawmakers, Leo XIV also highlights migration at a time when Madrid is bucking European trends
Pope Leo XIV has used an address to the Spanish parliament to warn the world is undergoing “a deep spiritual and cultural crisis” and to urge the international community to tackle the causes and consequences of what he termed “the tragic drama of migration”.
In a wide-ranging speech delivered to lawmakers in Madrid, the pontiff also touched on conflict, artificial intelligence, the climate emergency, and the issues of abortion and euthanasia.
Continue reading...Onerous and costly restrictions aimed at immigrants cause difficulties for group prioritized by Trump for admission
Among President Trump’s most vocal supporters are South Africans seeking asylum in the US.
An estimated 6,300 people have arrived in the US since the administration’s announcement in February last year of a refugee resettlement program specifically for white South Africans and other minorities.
Continue reading...President Donald Trump had urged restraint after the two countries intensified attacks, and Iran said it would halt its strikes.
The vote reflects his diminished standing at home and loss of leverage over Iran as he scrambles to exit a disastrous war
Donald Trump suffered a significant setback last week. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a measure under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. It directed the White House “to remove all US forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran”. This occurred several weeks after the US Senate voted 50-47 to advance its own version of the bill. (A final vote has yet to be scheduled.) Unlike previous failed attempts, both votes won support from some Republican lawmakers.
Trump was predictably irate. “Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote in a June 4 Truth Social post. “Who would do such an unpatriotic thing. [sic]”
Continue reading...Government urged to help speed up vital industrial project amid growing alarm over National Grid delays
Trade unions have called for the government to intervene to speed up Tata Steel’s connection to the electricity grid in south Wales, after the company said its new furnace would be delayed by up to a year.
Tata Steel last month told investors that National Grid had said it would face a six- to eight-month delay. That could stretch to 12 months amid unexpected engineering difficulties.
Continue reading...Most supply-chain attacks using Ruby's package hosting site "exploit a narrow window," according to a new blog post form Ruby core maintainer Hiroshi Shibata. So its packaging-managing Bundler tool now offers a filter that blocks new version until it's been public "for at least N days. Releases too new to have been scrutinized are passed over in favor of ones that have aged past the window." The feature was designed in the open, drawing on how other ecosystems approach the same problem. It is opt-in, and complements rather than replaces existing defenses like mandatory 2FA and trusted publishing... Cooldown is unset by default, so a project without it keeps resolving to the newest versions.... Passing 0 disables cooldown for the run... Cooldown is most useful as one part of the wider security investment happening on rubygems.org. The registry now validates gem contents at push time and checks logins against Have I Been Pwned so that compromised passwords cannot be reused, work described in Protecting rubygems.org from the outside in. A dedicated team is running AI-assisted vulnerability scanning against the most critical gems, backed by Alpha Omega and Anthropic, and the direction of all of this is tracked on a public roadmap. Trusted publishing and mandatory 2FA already raise the bar for who can push a release in the first place.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wildlife department says drought conditions and water released from dam led to ‘major fish kill’ at San Carlos Lake
Arizona officials have indefinitely closed a popular lake to visitors after its entire population of fish died recently.
The recreation and wildlife department that maintains San Carlos Lake said in a Facebook statement on Friday that drought conditions as well as water released from a dam there “resulted in a major fish kill affecting approximately 100% of the fish population”.
Continue reading...Pope Leo XIV denounced the "scourge" of sexual violence by Catholic clergy and called for a "culture of care" in the Church ahead of an expected private meeting with victims in Spain.
Direct exchange of fire between warring nations in apparent defiance of Trump was in response to an Israeli attack on Beirut, and breaks April’s ceasefire. Plus: incredible pictures of the Beatles’ final tour of the US
Good morning. Israel has again attacked Iran, in apparent defiance of the US president, Donald Trump, who had said in an recent interview that “I call all the shots”, not the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The attack was the first exchange of direct strikes between the two enemies since a ceasefire paused the US-Israel war with Iran in April. Iranian state media reported explosions in Tehran, Isfahan, Karaj and Tabriz. Iran also launched about 10 ballistic missiles at northern Israel, in response to Israel bombing a target in southern Beirut.
How has Trump responded? “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting,’” he wrote in a social media post.
How is the wider region being affected? Saudi Arabia sounded missile alert sirens in an area home to Prince Sultan airbase that hosts US forces. The Israeli army also said it was working to intercept a missile launched from Yemen. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who joined the Middle East war in March in support of Iran, have previously launched attacks on Israel.
What is the continuing economic impact? Brent crude jumped $3.50 to $96.59 a barrel on Monday, while stocks in Asia, a region heavily dependent on oil imports, fell sharply in early trading.
How did Welker respond? When the veteran reporter asked the president for any evidence, he accused her of being “crooked”. “You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
Continue reading...Kristen Welker questioned Trump’s allegations that races for California governor and 2020 president were ‘rigged’
Donald Trump walked out of an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press after he repeatedly made false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and faced questions about compensation for those charged in the January 6 insurrection.
The US president’s abrupt exit came during a tense exchange between himself and NBC’s Kristen Welker during a Friday interview in Wisconsin that aired on Sunday.
Continue reading...Israel and Iran were firing missiles at each other Monday, endangering the shaky truce that's been in place as well as talks on a deal to end the fighting.
Singer-songwriter Talay Riley worked on tracks for stars including Tinie Tempah, Britney Spears and Craig David
Stormzy and Oritsé Williams are among the artists who have paid tribute to the singer-songwriter Talay Riley, who was stabbed to death in Silvertown, east London.
The 35-year-old musician, whose real name was Mark Orabiyi, was found with stab wounds by paramedics on the morning of 5 June and pronounced dead at the scene.
Continue reading..."Schmigadoon!" — which was tied for the most nominations, with 12 — won Best Musical, and "Liberation" took home the honor of Best Play at the 2026 Tony Awards.
A series of drone incursions into countries neighboring Ukraine and Russia is fueling concern that their four-and-a-half year war could spread.
Fired journalist accuses CBS News chief of interfering with report because it did not echo Trump’s view of the shooting
The fired 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley has accused editorial management at CBS of interfering with a broadcast segment on the killing of the Minneapolis protester Renee Good by an immigration officer in January.
The veteran broadcaster, who was recently dismissed from the show, said CBS News’s editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, had sent an email to his supervisor requesting changes shortly before the airing of the segment in question.
Continue reading...Harmonie Perrone, 28, is suing Advocate Good Shepherd in Illinois, where reproductive rights are enshrined in law
Harmonie Perrone, 28, knew she was probably having an ectopic pregnancy, and she knew exactly what she needed to do: seek medical care immediately, before life-threatening complications set in.
But she was denied that care twice as she feared for her life – and, after the delay in care, she lost her fertility, she says in a new lawsuit filed Monday.
Continue reading...Though the federal government’s prosecution fell apart, the Broadview Six of Illinois say their lives have been upended
Michael Rabbitt was 4,000 miles (6,400km) away from home last October, celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary in Portugal, when a pair of messages from the FBI brought news that would upend his life. He was under federal indictment, and was ordered to surrender by the next day.
The month before, Rabbitt, 62, had been protesting at an ICE detention facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, during a period of tense daily demonstrations. Now, the federal government was accusing him and five others of felony conspiracy, saying they had illegally blocked an ICE vehicle.
Continue reading...Guardian analysis finds facilities to be built in some of the driest areas as outcry grows over water needed to power AI
A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found.
About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.
Continue reading...Kim Jong-un welcomes Chinese leader on visit to renew relations strained amid Pyongyang’s closeness with Russia
Xi Jinping has arrived in North Korea for a two-day trip, his first in nearly seven years, as China’s leader looks to revitalise ties with his junior ally.
Footage published by China’s Xinhua state news agency showed an Air China plane carrying Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, touching down at Pyongyang’s Sunan international airport.
Continue reading...A KitchenAid mixer can be used to make more than just baked goods.
India declares onset as up to 280mm of rain falls in 72 hours in Kerala, while downpours hit south-west Thailand
The monsoon season has officially begun in parts of Asia, marking the start of a period of enhanced rainfall vital to the region’s economy.
The south-west monsoon begins each year as a consequence of a growing temperature difference between the Asian land mass and the Indian Ocean. Through spring, the land heats up more rapidly than the surrounding sea, creating a pressure difference that draws moisture-laden ocean air inland. Once this contrast reaches a critical point, the humid air pushed over the continent rises, condenses into cloud and unleashes intense rainfall across the region.
Continue reading...Released just before the World Cup kicks off, this upstart football game is positioning itself as a credible alternative to EA Sports FC
This month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande which made you experience the whole match as a single onfield player.
For the past decade plus, however, the scene has been dominated EA’s Fifa series, now EA Sports FC. With the exception of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, now eFootball, there have been few competitors – and few plucky upstarts.
Continue reading...As Trump fumes over fighting that has impeded his peace talks with Iran, some Israelis recall the 18-year occupation of Lebanon that began in 1982 and cite “complete déjà vu.”
A deadly earthquake rocked the southern Philippines, killing at least 19 people and sending small tsunami waves toward at least three nations.
What is necessary to return Venezuela to stable economic growth and democracy after the US operation? 16 June 2026 — 16:00 TO 17:15 BST Anonymous (not verified) Online
How to bring credible elections, rule of law and economic recovery to Venezuela.
This webinar will bring together leading Venezuelan and international experts to discuss the ways the US, the international community and the interim government can initiate and sustain the complex processes for credible elections and for a system of rule of law to foster economic growth, prosperity and human rights.The White House touts success of its January 2026 Venezuela operation, but the path to stability, democracy and growth remains unclear. While a three-stage process has been outlined by the US, concrete plans are lacking. This meeting convenes scholars, policymakers and business leaders to discuss credible elections, rule of law and economic recovery.
The discussion builds off recently published Chatham House policy papers, one on elections and one on the rule of law, which identify and recommend the steps, priorities and benchmarks for elections and the rule of law in Venezuela under the interim government and beyond. The session intendeds to help focus those discussions for Venezuelans – in the opposition and the interim government – and the international community.
Key event questions:
While we do not outright oppose the taking of AI company stock, or of a US a sovereign wealth fund, there are better ways to achieve the senator’s goals
Let no one accuse Bernie Sanders of ducking the big questions. Writing in the New York Times last week, the senator asked: “Will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?”
We agree entirely that this is one of the most potent questions facing global democracy today. Our book, Rewiring Democracy, surveys the emerging uses for and impacts of AI in democracy around the world and reaches the same conclusion: that the most urgent risk posed by AI is the concentration of power, wealth and control among tech oligarchs.
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The post What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks appeared first on ProPublica.
Flock Safety is setting up cams and drones around the country. Here's why communities are fighting back and exactly how this technology works.
We choose our favorites of Verizon's unlimited phone plans.
Doctors are jumping the gun to prescribe a medication lacking FDA approval that has gone viral on social media. "Why are we waiting?" one physician asked.
Incarcerated activist Malik Muhammad’s standing client call in March with their lawyer had been canceled without any real explanation. When Muhammad’s attorney, Lauren Regan, went to check their status on the Oregon Inmate Tracker, she found nothing. They seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Friends and family feared the worst. Muhammad, an army veteran and activist serving the longest federal sentence of any 2020 Black Lives Matter protester, had been a target inside the state prison because of their outspoken political beliefs and organizing efforts while incarcerated, several of their friends and supporters told The Intercept.
“We were calling everyone,” said Christopher Kuttruff, a close friend and supporter. “We were terrified that they were in the hospital or dead …your mind obviously goes to the worst places.”
For weeks, the activist disappeared from all tracking systems. The best Muhammad’s supporters could ascertain by early April was that they had been transferred to a “confidential location.” Late that month, Muhammad was able to get a letter out to their partner from Kirkland Correctional Institute, in South Carolina, an intake facility 3,000 thousand miles from Oregon — or, as Regan puts it, “as far away from me as possible.”
Muhammad described the conditions at Kirkland as deplorable, claiming that incarcerated people are denied access to enough water, food, and recreation, and are forced to sleep on mats on the floor, which sometimes get confiscated as punishment.
The South Carolina Department of Corrections had little to say of Muhammad. In mid-May, the state’s prison system told The Intercept they had no record of someone named Malik Muhammad anywhere in their custody; the prison system did not respond to a follow-up query in June. The activist had become a living ghost within the carceral system.
Even now, friends and family struggle to reach Muhammad, with only the occasional letter or call to the few people approved to contact them serving as proof of life.
Because she is not licensed in South Carolina, Regan said she has “not been able to speak on the phone or in person in an attorney-client privileged manner since their transfer,” seriously impeding her ability to represent her client. She had to hire a local attorney to speak with them in person and collect potential evidence.
Millions of people flow through the U.S. prison system every year. And every year, an untold number of them vanish off the map, lost in a massive system that is legally obligated to watch over them. In New Mexico, Stephen Slevin spent nearly two years in solitary confinement in county jail after county officials appear to have simply forgotten about him after charging him with driving under the influence. Slevin never saw a judge or a lawyer and had to pull his own tooth due to consistent medical neglect.
Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, said that people getting lost in the prison system is “pretty common,” even when they haven’t moved as far away as Muhammad. “There’s never any effort made by prisons to tell incarcerated people’s families, ‘Hey, we’re moving this person,’” said Bertram.
As the Trump administration ramps up its use of incarceration as a method of immigration enforcement, concerns are mounting about the already stretched system’s ability to keep track of the people within its care — and the opportunity such lapses in oversight create for authorities to target activists and dissenters adversarial to the government.
“Not only is [Malik] intelligent,” said Regan, a founder and director of litigation and advocacy at the Civil Liberties Defense Center, “but Malik is Black, Muslim, an anarchist, [and] a political activist, and they have targeted Malik as a result of all of those things.”
Muhammad, who was arrested in October 2020, received the harshest sentence out of the hundreds of protesters hit with federal charges in the wake of the 2020 summer protests for racial justice. After tens of thousands were arrested in some of the largest mass arrests in history, many were released without charges or saw their cases dropped, but some prosecutors pushed for harsh sentences and elevated state or local infractions to the federal level, arguing that rioters were masquerading as protesters.
Muhammad pleaded guilty to both state and federal charges, including two counts of “unlawful possession of a destructive device,” for throwing a Molotov cocktail during a protest in East Portland. In 2022, the then-25-year-old was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.
Their plea agreement specifically stated that they would serve their time in Oregon state prison, near their supporters and community. Regan says that Oregon’s prison system has reneged on the agreement — illegally transferring Muhammad interstate as retaliation for their activism while incarcerated — in another attempt by the criminal legal system to punish Muhammad for their organizing.
“Normally, they would have been sentenced to the federal prison system,” said Regan. However, “because their friends and family and supporters at the time were based in Oregon, they explicitly negotiated an outcome that ensured that they would remain in Oregon.”
Federal prisons tend to be “better,” said Regan, because they often have more funding, allow for more freedom of movement, and have marginally better food. Put it this way, she said, “generally speaking, if you had a choice between Oregon State Prison or Federal Prison, most people would choose [federal].” But instead of relative comfort, Muhammad chose community.
Prisons are essentially a “black box” where people can disappear into solitary confinement or be transferred without their family’s knowledge, according to Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative.
“There’s so many constant questions that you live with as the loved one of an incarcerated person, and then when that person suddenly disappears, it’s terrifying,” said Bertram.
To make matters worse, she said, “prisons have a kind of nasty habit of not telling the family when someone dies or is transferred to an outside hospital, or needs emergency care,” compounding concerns for people who cannot locate their loved ones on the inside.
In Regan’s view, there are “a number of reasons” to characterize Muhammad’s transfer as retaliatory. For starters, she said this is part of a pattern of behavior from the Oregon prison system. In 2024, The Intercept reported that Muhammad had been effectively held in solitary confinement, which in Oregon is called “special housing,” for more than 250 days — despite the fact that Oregon limits the use of this type of confinement to 90 days.
She said Muhammad had met people in prison, many who’d been through excessive solitary, and suggested that they could become potential plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit her organization is seeking to file against the state prison system. “The prison is, of course, retaliating against them for basically assisting a nonprofit legal organization in bringing a giant lawsuit about the abuses of solitary confinement in the Oregon prison system,” Regan said.
Oregon flatly denies sending Muhammad to South Carolina as retaliation.
“These decisions are not made lightly and require a thorough review process conducted by all parties. In the case of Mr. Muhammed [sic], there is extensive background for the reasons [they were] a candidate for an Interstate Compact,” Amber Campbell, communications manager at the public affairs division for the Oregon Department of Corrections, wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
Muhammad’s advocacy and community building inside have consistently put a target on their back, said Jeremy, a close friend and pen pal. Friends described Muhammad as “empathetic,” “generous,” and “passionate,” as eager to sing for their cellmates as they are to share a book on political theory.
Now, Muhammad’s friends and family have to sit and wait, and hope the prison system won’t lose them all over again.
The post They Were Serving the Longest Federal Sentence of Any 2020 BLM Protester. Then They Vanished in Prison. appeared first on The Intercept.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The popularity of artificial intelligence has sparked a boom in the construction of energy hungry data centers, including in Delaware. These bills aim to prevent an energy demand spike from raising electric bills, though critics say they may also scare off the growing industry.
Delaware legislators are scrambling to address concerns about data centers raising residents’ energy bills before the legislative session ends.
Newly-amended House Bill 233 would make data centers the first to be cut off from power in a blackout unless the project includes its own energy generation. It is sponsored by Rep. Frank Burns (D-Pike Creek) and Sen. Stephanie Hansen (D-Middletown).
The regional electric grid is struggling to produce enough energy to meet growing demand, primarily from the boom in energy-hungry data centers that power new artificial intelligence models.
“So they have to be the first in line to take the hit,” Burns said.
The bill also requires data center developers to enter into service agreements that are meant to ensure they pay the full costs of the energy they use, including potential transmission upgrades.
And House Bill 445, sponsored by Rep. Debra Heffernan (D-Bellefonte), would require data center developers to supply all of the power they use within 10 years of beginning operations, and require some of that power to be renewable.
These bills come as Delaware braces for the impact of five new data centers proposals that have a combined energy demand that could double the state’s entire electricity usage.
Some fear that scenario would lead to increased energy bills across the state — both because of a limited supply of electrons, and because of the costs of the infrastructure needed to serve the demand.
HB 445 has yet to come up for debate, but HB 233 has drawn criticism from some lawmakers, business lobbyists and union representatives, who expressed fears that the legislation could prevent the growing data center industry from even coming to the state.
“We’re putting up another sign that says Delaware is not open for business. And when we continue to do this, then we hurt everybody,” Rep. Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck/Oak Orchard) previously said about HB 233.
The legislature only has 10 days left in its session to consider these and many other bills in the pipeline.
HB 445 will likely come before the House Natural Resources & Energy committee, chaired by Heffernan, at its next meeting on Wednesday, June 10. HB 233 has already passed through that committee, and Burns said he is not sure when it will come before the House for a vote.
The original version of HB 233 requires the Public Service Commission, the state body in charge of regulating utilities, to create a “large-load tariff,” or electricity rate and service agreement.
The Public Service Commission is already creating this tariff, but the bill added specific requirements for what it would have to include.
The recent substitute for HB 233 combines this original proposal with Senate Bill 205, adding a requirement that large energy users like data centers enter into transmission and energy service agreements meant to prevent costs from being shifted to other electricity users.
These agreements give the Public Service Commission and utilities some leverage to potentially stop data center projects from moving forward.
Normally, energy utilities are required to serve any company that requests to be connected to the grid. But under this bill, if large energy users and utilities can’t come to a consensus on the service agreements — or if the Public Service Commission denies them — the utilities are not required to connect the projects.
The bill also requires data centers and other large energy users to be the first to be cut off from power in a blackout unless they generate renewable energy.
HB 445 says that data center companies must produce a quarter of the energy they use in Delaware when they begin operations, then produce all of the energy they use in the state within 10 years.
That energy production has to follow the state’s renewable energy portfolio standards, which requires that Delaware’s utilities derive 40% of their energy from renewable sources by 2035. The bill allows nuclear energy to count toward that percentage.
A representative from New Castle County’s Chamber of Commerce said in a written statement that it opposes both bills because there is not enough time in the session to deliberate them. The statement also says the chamber and trade unions “are concerned about the significantly negative impact that the legislation would have on Delaware’s economy.”
Delaware Building Trades did not respond to several requests for comment.
Public Advocate Jameson Tweedie, who is responsible for representing the public in state decisions about energy policy, said he supports both bills because they could help address the potential energy supply/demand imbalance that could drastically raise electricity prices.
“The risks to ratepayers are dramatic if we don’t have enough generation capacity for the new enormous [energy] users,” he said.
Delaware joins states across the country that are proposing data center regulations to protect ratepayers and promote clean energy.
Hansen said the electric service agreement required in her bill is based on Minnesota’s new law with a similar provision. Sponsored by a Republican representative and Democratic senator, the bill passed the House and Senate there with wide margins.
She said data center companies and other legislators were hesitant about her original proposal because it did not exist in other states. While electric services agreements are not very common in data center regulation bills, at least one state has done it before.
“We like being the first state on a number of things, but this was not going to be one of those things,” Hansen said.
The New Castle County Chamber of Commerce called a recent Pennsylvania data center regulation bill “a more balanced approach” than the Delaware proposals.
That bill does not create any new type of service agreement, but it directs the state’s public utilities commission, a similar public body to Delaware’s Public Service Commission, to review contracts for their impact on electric service reliability and affordability for residential customers.
Similar to HB 233, the proposal gives the commission the teeth to deny a contract if it negatively affects electric bills or reliability.
Similar to Heffernan’s clean energy initiative, the Pennsylvania bill also requires data centers to generate 10% of the energy they use as renewable energy by 2027, 14.5% by 2030, and 32% by 2035.
Lauren Posey, an environmental policy advocate for Pennsylvania environmental rights nonprofit Protect PT, said the feasibility of a clean energy requirement depends on a state’s renewable energy breakdown.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about 8% of Delaware’s total in-state net energy generation came from renewable resources in 2025. Pennsylvania gets about 5% from renewables.
While she believes it would be better for data centers to use renewable energy, Posey explained HB 445 could be hard to pass since Delaware is already lagging behind in renewable energy and relies heavily on natural gas like Pennsylvania.
“Delaware certainly has a much loftier goal than Pennsylvania does,” Posey said. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Shoot for the moon, maybe you’ll land among the stars.”
Democrats make up all the sponsors on Pennsylvania’s bill. Republican representatives have criticized the bill, saying it doesn’t do enough to bring more power generation to the state.
The measure passed the Pennsylvania State House on March 24 and now sits in the Senate
The post Bills would require, incentivize Delaware data centers to bring their own power appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
A Post examination reveals how Epstein cultivated a network of modeling industry associates who offered to bring women into his orbit after he was released from jail.
Pennsylvania’s Bob Brooks is one of a slew of working-class Democrats on the ballot – can he beat a Koch-backed rival?
Bob Brooks has worked a lot of jobs, sometimes several at once to make ends meet.
He was a paper boy at age 10, and then a dishwasher, prep cook, pizza deliverer, bartender and truck driver. Even after he became a firefighter in 2005, Brooks managed to start a snow-removal and lawn-care business and coach baseball.
Continue reading...All eyes on US Senate race as Platner, mired in controversy, is set to advance to take on incumbent Susan Collins
Voters in Maine head to the polls on Tuesday for one of the most closely watched primary elections in the country. The US Senate race has become a national fixation as Democrats try to unseat a longtime Republican with a political newcomer who has spent months under fire.
Graham Platner, 41, is set to advance as the Democratic nominee for the Senate, after his primary rival – the state’s two-term governor, Janet Mills – suspended her campaign in April. The primary result will probably set up a months-long contest between Platner, an oysterman and marine veteran with a groundswell of popularity and a mounting list of scandals, and Susan Collins, a 73-year-old Republican senator who has held the seat for nearly three decades.
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Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.
Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.
The Delaware General Assembly will reconvene on Tuesday, following a two week scheduled break for budget hearings. This week begins what is likely to be an eventful final push for lawmakers ahead of the end of this year’s legislative session on June 30.
Legislators have just 10 working days left to consider several substantive bills, the most important being a nearly $7 billion state budget for the 2027 fiscal year that begins July 1.
Any bills that do not pass through both the House and Senate before the legislature gavels out at the end of the month will effectively be dead in the water. They would need to be formally reintroduced next January, after the start of a new General Assembly, in order to be considered again.
Aside from the state’s budget, other key bills that will likely be considered over the next three weeks include a slate of property tax and assessment regulations, primary healthcare reforms and more.
On Tuesday afternoon, the House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill that would bolster mental health and addiction treatment by requiring insurers to improve the number of providers in their networks. If passed on Tuesday, that bill – Senate Bill 22 – would go to Gov. Matt Meyer’s desk to be signed into law.
Aside from SB 22, lawmakers are set to debate more than 130 pieces of legislation both in various committee hearings and on the House and Senate floors this week.
📍 The Delaware General Assembly is set to reconvene at 2 p.m. Tuesday inside Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, scroll through the “What’s Happening” tab here.
Sussex County Council will vote Tuesday on whether to allow higher rents and more density in the county’s affordable housing program.
The ordinance would raise limits on rent, and lower the required number of affordable units for a housing development to qualify for a county program that incentivizes developers to build affordable rental units, specifically in areas near the Delaware beaches.
The county is facing pressure from the state to address the growing affordable housing shortage around the county’s popular beaches. This vote could be the first major action the county has taken on the issue in years.
📍 The Sussex County Council is scheduled to meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday inside the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here. To submit comments about the proposal before the meeting, click here.
The plan to turn a Delaware State University dorm off U.S. Route 13 into the state’s second Hope Center has the potential to make an impact on central Delaware’s homeless population.
The project, which would sit at the front of a busy commercial plaza, has raised some questions from the public though.
During Dover’s Tuesday night Council of the Whole meeting, city leaders will hear from Matt Heckles, the director of the Delaware State Housing Authority, regarding the project.
📍 The Dover Council of the Whole is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday inside City Hall, located at 15 Loockerman Plaza. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
The post Get Involved: General Assembly reconvenes, Sussex affordable housing, more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware is currently the only state where residents do not vote on proposed constitutional amendments. A new bill could give voters the final say, while also shortening the legislative timeline.
A new bill could change how Delaware’s Constitution is amended, letting voters decide the fate of proposed constitutional changes.
Introduced last month by House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn-Harris (D-Dover), House Bill 440 would shift the power to pass constitutional amendments from lawmakers to voters via a public ballot. If passed, Delaware would join the rest of the union in having voters decide on constitutional changes.
Currently, proposed constitutional amendments must receive a two-thirds vote by the legislature in two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly — sessions that are separated by an election.
House Bill 440 calls for a single two-thirds supermajority vote in both the House and Senate, followed by a statewide referendum that would require 55% voter approval.
But Harris’ bill comes at an interesting political juncture for Delaware Democrats.
Senate Democrats currently hold a two-thirds supermajority, and their House counterparts could also soon hold that same power. Should House Democrats gain just one seat during this fall’s general election, the party would have the power to amend the state’s constitution without any bipartisan support.
So Harris’ bill, in effect, could remove a strategic political maneuver from Democrats’ potential playbook.
“Some people might say that it’s not strategic,” Harris said. “I come from a different standpoint, which is what would you want to happen if you weren’t in power?”
But the legislation, as it is currently written, would not cede Democratic political power entirely. If a proposed amendment were to fail to receive 55% of a referendum vote, it could then be reconsidered by the General Assembly, and potentially enacted without voter approval.
Harris told Spotlight Delaware she included that provision in case a referendum loses by a slim margin, or the public shows more interest in it after the fact. She described the second legislative vote as a “failsafe,” but also a chance to garner more public input.
House Bill 440, technically itself a proposed constitutional amendment, would need to be passed once before June 30, and again during the next General Assembly in order to become law.
Harris’ bill has yet to be heard in committee, but it has already drawn scrutiny from some Republican lawmakers.
Critics of the bill, like Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford), warned the current two-stage process prevents impulsive changes to the constitution by temporary legislative majorities.
While Shupe told Spotlight Delaware he would vote against the bill, he said he is “not opposed to adding the referendum process,” and thinks it would be beneficial to look at a referendum process moving forward.
Shupe’s biggest concern is shortening the timeline to pass a constitutional amendment and the threshold from a two-thirds supermajority in the General Assembly to 55% of the public, he said.
“We’re not talking about normal legislation here, we’re talking about the foundational constitutional principles that hold up all of legislation,” he said.
As for the 55% threshold, Harris said she saw it as a midway between a simple majority where a small minority could sway the vote and a 60% supermajority, which she said could be a more challenging target for voter turnout.
In a May 27 episode of “For The Record,” a podcast produced by the Delaware State Senate Republican Caucus, Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown) also said he “didn’t mind putting the question to voters.” However, he’d like to see the bar raised from 55% of voters to 60%.
Pettyjohn also described the part of the bill that sends the proposed amendment back to the General Assembly if the referendum does not pass as “a direct slap in the face to the will of the people.”
But Harris defended that provision of the bill.
“If the General Assembly overturns the will of the voters, the people in the General Assembly are going to have to have something to answer for, and that will be a big deal,” Harris said.
While Delaware stands alone as the only state in the country that does not include a referendum vote, its current system — a supermajority requirement in two consecutive General Assemblies — may make it one of the strictest states to amend its constitution, said Quinn Yeargain, a Michigan State University professor who studies law and democracy.
Neighboring states like Pennsylvania and Virginia both require a bill to pass two legislatures, but they only need a simple majority.
In New Jersey, an amendment can pass if it receives a three-fifths vote in a single legislative session, or a simple majority in both the House and Senate during two legislative sessions.
While Harris’s bill would make Delaware’s constitutional process consistent with other states by adding a referendum, Yeargain also said changing the requirement from two sessions of the General Assembly to one would bring Delaware in line with other states.
A separate bill that would change the way lawmakers notify the public about proposed constitutional amendments, House Bill 321, drew criticism from last month as a blow to government transparency.
Harris said she had been drafting HB 440 for a while, and had originally intended to release it at a later time. After the outcry over HB 321, however, she felt it was the right time to introduce the bill.
House Bill 321, which would no longer require the state to notify the public about proposed constitutional amendments in print newspapers, passed the House on April 21.
Harris said HB 321, which passed the House in April, is no longer being considered in the Senate.
She said that bill was not intended to make people uncomfortable, and was rather a modernization effort. But after the reactions to the bill and anxieties about transparency, “it felt like the right time to drop it.”
After the reactions to HB 321, Harris described HB 440 as an affirmation that the party had no intention to hide proposed constitutional amendments from the public.
Rather, she said, lawmakers want voters to participate in the process.
House Bill 440 has until Jun. 30 — just 10 working days for lawmakers — to receive a supermajority vote from the House and Senate. Still, if it passes, the bill would have to make it through the second leg of the General Assembly under Delaware’s current constitutional amendment system.
The post New bill would give Delawareans vote on constitutional changes appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Attacks raise fears of return to full-scale regional war and come after Trump says ‘I call all the shots’, not Netanyahu
The Israeli military has launched airstrikes on Iran after the Iranians fired missiles at northern Israel in the first exchange of fire between the two countries since a ceasefire was reached on 8 April, raising fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels also fired at Israel and warned they would target Israeli-affiliated ships in the Red Sea, further escalating tension.
Continue reading...Venerable but struggling UK firm backs deal with Chicago-based Ingredion putting nearly 500 jobs worldwide at risk
Tate & Lyle has agreed to a £2.7bn takeover by its US rival Ingredion, in a deal that could put hundreds of jobs at risk and represents yet another loss for London’s struggling stock market.
The FTSE 250 business, which makes artificial sweeteners such as Splenda, has agreed to a deal that values it at 615p a share, about 60% above its price before news of a possible takeover emerged.
Continue reading...As a former NBA player, I know that criticism is part of the game. But in an age when players are under attack constantly, the Knick star is an example to us all
The entire basketball world is singing the praises of Jalen Brunson and rightfully so. He has led the Knicks to the NBA finals for the first time since 1999 and has united the entire city of New York in a unique way.
On every New York street you can see people of every race, color, creed, nationality, religion, economic status and political affiliation unified in excitement as the team seek their first NBA title since 1973. While older Knicks fans break out their Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and John Starks jerseys, younger fans have the names of Brunson, Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns on their backs. Chants of “MVP!” fill the air in every New York borough every time Jalen Brunson steps up to the free-throw line. Knicks fans have staged watch parties on the sidewalks, in the parks, and on the corners. All of New York is, in the words of JadaKiss, “outside”.
Etan Thomas played in the NBA from 2000 through 2011. He is a published author, podcaster, poet, activist and motivational speaker.
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On the day 5-year-old Lens Joseph was killed by a Boston Public Schools bus last year, the driver had already struck a postal truck, ignored a stop sign and missed several stops, prosecutors said. When he got to Lens’ house, he dropped him off on the wrong side of the street and then ran over the kindergartner as he crossed in front of the bus.
Transdev, a multinational company that has been the city’s sole bus contractor since 2013, hired and trained the driver of the bus that killed Lens. Yet a federal safety database shows no sign that the company was involved in the April 2025 crash. WBUR and ProPublica found at least 60 fatal Transdev crashes in the last decade, but the federal database shows only 18 under the company’s name. That means 42 fatal crashes are not identified as Transdev’s.
This missing information is important because the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which oversees commercial motor vehicles, relies on it to pinpoint unsafe companies.
But the process the agency uses to collect information is faulty: It identifies only a fraction of a company’s fatal crashes.
As a result, the full safety record of Transdev, one of the largest private operators of public transit in the U.S., remains a secret to regulators, the public and the local government agencies that might award it a contract.
“That is a serious, serious gap in safety,” said Peter Kurdock, general counsel with Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a nonprofit that promotes transportation safety and has pushed for improvements in crash data for years. “And it’s a serious, serious shortcoming when it comes to the regulation of these carriers by FMCSA.”
If you are a current or former FMCSA employee, or someone in the industry with information about the agency or the safety of school buses, transit buses or motor coaches, our team wants to hear from you. Willoughby Mariano can be reached by phone at 617-358-0802, Signal at willoughbymariano.55 and email at wmariano@bu.edu.
The deadly crashes associated with Transdev span at least 16 states and involve pedestrians, at least two bicyclists and other vehicles. Lens’ death and at least two others have resulted in criminal charges against the bus drivers. Transdev did not provide comment on any specific crash.
The crash data feeds into FMCSA’s online Safety Measurement System, which makes safety records public for bus companies nationwide. Instead of listing Transdev, that data often lists collisions under the government agency that hired Transdev or the name of a company it acquired. Also, when crashes are listed under other names, companies that oversee the buses involved are not required to claim the collisions. The agency’s instructions for how to determine the motor carrier involved in a crash are interpreted differently by police who respond to the scene, the news organizations found.
Based in France, Transdev has vast U.S. operations. It says it holds contracts in busing, light rail and other forms of public transit in 46 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The multibillion-dollar company employs more than 30,000 people nationally. Transdev’s only school bus contract is with Boston Public Schools.
Transdev U.S. CEO Laura Hendricks declined an interview. In a written statement, Transdev said it complies with “federally mandated reporting standards.”
“Transparency and continuous improvement are central to our safety approach, and we work closely with oversight agencies and our clients to ensure our practices meet or exceed expectations,” the statement said.
The statement did not respond to questions about why Transdev did not ensure crashes the company was involved in were logged as part of its safety record. It did stress that reporting crashes is the responsibility of law enforcement.
At the publications’ request, Transdev reviewed lists of the crashes that reporters tied to the company. Transdev confirmed that most of them matched with collisions in their records but did not have records for all of them.
The FMCSA did not respond to requests to interview Derek Barrs, the head of the agency, or emails with a list of questions.
Other than the federal database, there are few ways to connect crashes to particular bus companies. A different database, run by the Federal Transit Administration, records transit crashes but doesn’t connect them to contractors. Separately, FMCSA requires all bus companies to keep an internal register of how many serious crashes take place during their operations. However, those records are not open to the public, and companies are not obligated to submit the information to regulators unless they ask for it. Transdev declined the publications’ request for its register.
So while Transdev may know about its own collisions, federal agencies and the public often don’t.
Darin Jones, a former FMCSA Midwest field administrator, spent more than 35 years in federal transportation safety and often oversaw investigations. He said investigators are supposed to consider a company’s serious crashes as part of their assessment. If many are logged inconsistently, they cannot determine whether Transdev or any other company is operating safely.
“ The knowledge of this motor carrier’s operation, any motor carrier’s operation, is critical,” said Jones. “If you don’t have the full picture of an operation, how do you truly know what’s going on?”
At least in Boston, Transdev appears to have had no serious school bus crashes over 10 years. But that’s not true. WBUR and ProPublica uncovered at least 71 serious crashes involving the company that weren’t under its name.
Kurdock says the FMCSA needs to fix its safety data, especially in Boston.
“The agency needs to be much more proactive in ensuring that the data they do have is accurate, even more so when you’re talking about a carrier that is operating a transportation service for schoolchildren,” Kurdock said. “If there is one bipartisan issue left here in Washington, D.C., it’s that schoolchildren should have a safe ride.”
Since 2016, about two-thirds of Transdev’s 60 fatal crashes have appeared in federal safety data under the names of a company it acquired or agencies that contracted with them. Click a state to see more details about the Transdev crashes we found there and how they were recorded in the federal database.
When a crash happens, local law enforcement fill out accident reports that document the location, identities of the drivers and companies involved. This information becomes part of the federal safety database and helps regulators connect a crash to a particular company.
But the news organizations found multiple examples where that system masked the company running the bus lines. For most of these crashes, the database is also unclear on whether the drivers violated traffic laws.
In Lens’ case, the motor carrier is listed as “CITY OF BOSTON MVMB,” an abbreviation for the city’s Motor Vehicle Management Bureau, which acquires and manages municipal vehicles. There is no mention of the school district or Transdev being involved.
Another crash killed registered nurse Renée Shea in southern Massachusetts in 2017. It appears under the name of the Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority, not Transdev, the agency’s contractor at the time. A bus made a left-hand turn into the path of the Jeep SUV she was driving, according to a police report. The bus company’s driver, Margaret Correia, may have been distracted because she began to take off her jacket before she made her turn, the report found. She could not be reached for comment.
Correia pleaded guilty to misdemeanor negligent operation of a motor vehicle, court records show. A GATRA spokeswoman said Shea’s family received $1 million from the area transit agency’s insurer.
Charlie Shea said his ex-wife was a generous mother who had taken custody of her granddaughter.
As a former MBTA bus driver, Charlie Shea said he continues to be shocked by the bus driver’s actions.
Driving and taking your jacket off “ain’t a bright idea for anybody,” he said.
He said his ex-wife’s death, like all crashes, needs to be part of Transdev’s safety record.
“It’d make them more accountable,” Shea said. “They would have to use their safety records to get contracts from the state or the counties or from schools.”
Outside Massachusetts, there are dozens of other fatal Transdev crashes in the database with no mention of the company.
In a November 2023 Las Vegas crash, federal records list the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada as the motor carrier of a transit bus that killed bicyclist David Ortiz in a crosswalk. Court records state driver Johnelle Johnson, a Transdev employee, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charge. A lawsuit by Ortiz’s family against Transdev and the driver was settled for an undisclosed sum.
Transdev has operated the Las Vegas-area bus system since 2023, when it acquired First Transit, which originally held the contract, the commission’s records show.
Although First Transit is now part of Transdev, at least five fatal crashes across the United States are still recorded under First Transit’s name after the acquisition.
Beyond the fatal crashes, WBUR and ProPublica also took a close look at all of Transdev’s serious, but nonfatal, crashes with Boston Public Schools. Those include crashes where any person was transported to a hospital or a vehicle was towed.
In a December 2024 crash, a bus lurched onto a sidewalk outside Curley K-8 School in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. The bus struck an 8-year-old boy with autism and his school aide before smashing into two fences, a police report states. The crash sent both victims to the hospital with long-term injuries, their civil lawsuits against Transdev allege.
A bus camera showed that Transdev driver Vitony Laguerre’s eyes were closed and his head was back before he pressed the accelerator, police stated. He pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle.
The federal record lists the city of Boston, not Transdev, as the carrier.
Attorneys for Laguerre and both crash victims did not comment for this story. Laguerre and Transdev denied they were negligent in the crash, according to records in an ongoing civil case.
Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper declined an interview request. A spokesperson did not answer a list of questions, but in a written statement said that the district follows established safety protocols and has worked with Transdev over several years to improve accountability and performance.
“We will continue to work with our transportation partner to monitor performance, address issues as they arise, and ensure every student gets to and from school safely,” the statement said.
The current system of collecting and publishing bus crash data began as part of a federal push for safer roads. In the early days of this work, in the 1970s and 1980s, rules put the burden on bus and truck companies to self-report serious crashes to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Each operator had to report its fatal bus crashes in person or by telephone “as soon as possible”; crashes that resulted in injuries or serious vehicle damage had to be reported in writing, and in triplicate.
But both companies and federal safety investigators complained the process was burdensome and inadequate. For one thing, investigators could not tell whether companies failed to report their accidents, said Jones, the former FMCSA regional administrator.
Regulators and traffic safety researchers thought they could do better. At the time, many states were already collecting crash information electronically from local police departments.
“Why burden the industry with reporting?” Jones said. “We had a more accurate record from the states.”
So in 1993, the federal Department of Transportation decided to end self-reporting by carriers. Today, local law enforcement agencies send their bus and truck crash information to state agencies, which submit it to FMCSA.
After investigating, a local officer must fill out a form that asks for the name of the bus company, or “carrier,” that is involved in the crash and the company’s U.S. Department of Transportation identifier. FMCSA training material recommends the officer determine which company should be included in the form by figuring out which entity “controls” or “directs” the bus.
For transit and school buses, this decision can be surprisingly complicated. Transdev employees may be behind the wheel, and the company may manage the daily operations of the buses, but the transit agencies or a school district may choose the routes. So who is in charge? In these cases, Transdev’s role often disappears in the data.
Transportation experts and former FMCSA officials said bus companies can voluntarily inform the agency that crashes under other names belong to them.
But Alex Scott, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville transportation expert, said companies rarely update the federal record, according to research he published in 2021. “There’s not really an incentive for them to account for all of their crashes,” Scott said. “If a company could just magically make them go away, of course they would.”
Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy, a former teacher for the district where Lens attended school, has become a vocal critic of how Transdev operates its buses. She was shocked when she learned from a reporter that the company is not required to take steps to ensure all its crashes are part of its federal safety record.
“Horrifying,” she said. “Why would they be able to not report accidents — one that was a fatal accident? There’s nothing worse than a fatal accident.”
“There’s not really an incentive for them to account for all of their crashes. … If a company could just magically make them go away, of course they would.”
Alex Scott, a transportation expert at University of Tennessee, Knoxville
After several passenger bus crashes with multiple fatalities, Congress passed legislation in 2012 that gave FMCSA powers to conduct more comprehensive inspections into the safety operations of bus companies.
When Transdev underwent one of these reviews in 2016, investigators uncovered what they described as “numerous crashes” that were not listed as part of the contractor’s safety record, according to the inspection report. There were enough crashes that the FMCSA planned to give Transdev a “conditional” safety rating, which would mean the company had insufficient safety procedures.
Because local police departments may not “be aware or equipped” to report crashes to the FMCSA, the carrier should report them, the report stated.
“This self reporting is required for accurate evaluation by FMCSA and the accurate safety record of the carrier,” it added.
The company successfully appealed the decision to lower its safety rating by arguing its drivers could not have prevented many of the crashes investigators uncovered.
FMCSA investigators urged Transdev to report to the agency when its role in a crash is not reflected in safety data, yet the company’s name continues to be absent from many of them. Transdev did not comment on this recommendation.
Lens’ death last year became a local flashpoint, shedding new light on Transdev’s safety procedures and raising questions about its ability to keep the city’s children safe.
The driver of the school bus that killed Lens should not have been behind the wheel that day, and the bus never should have been on the road, according to information from city officials and prosecutors.
Driver Jean Charles became ineligible to operate a school bus in December 2024 after a required driving credential expired, according to a statement from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office last year. But the company did not take him off the road then. In the weeks before Lens died, Charles had two minor collisions and underwent remedial training, it said, and soon returned to work.
On the day of Lens’ death, Charles began his shift without conducting a required pretrip inspection, prosecutors alleged. One of the bus’s four rear tires was flat, and a safety crossing bar was broken. Transdev is also in charge of maintenance, but it’s unclear how long the bus had these problems.
Had Charles followed procedures, the bus would have been sent for repairs, prosecutors said. And yet Charles set off on his route to UP Academy Dorchester, where Lens climbed aboard.
At 2:42 p.m., Charles dropped off Lens and his 11-year-old-cousin on the wrong side of their street. To get home, they would have to cross in front of the bus.
Neighbor Carolyn Tomlinson was inside her home cleaning windows when the cries of a child brought her outside. She followed the sound to the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Washington Street, where she saw the cousin screaming. Lens was on the ground.
“I’m looking at Lens, just lying there,” Tomlinson said. “And as a mom it broke my heart.”
Tomlinson said she dialed 911 and held the cousin in her arms to comfort her.
“I was praying with her, saying, ‘It’s going to be OK. God’s got us,’” Tomlinson said.
Lens’ father, Esaie Joseph, had parked his truck in North Carolina after a day on the road as a long-haul trucker when his brother told him about the crash in a phone call. Hours later, he got word that his boy was dead.
Lens was Joseph’s only son, and he was self-assured beyond his years, his father said in an interview with WBUR. His nickname was “smart guy.”
Every time Lens asked Joseph for a new toy, he’d begin with, “Dad, you know I’m a smart guy?” the father recalled.
Joseph has kept his son’s soccer ball and toy cars, and he smiled as he sorted through them on a recent evening: a police car, because Lens wanted to be an officer. A Spider-Man-themed car because he loved the superhero.
After he lost Lens, Joseph stopped driving trucks and moved with his relatives to a new neighborhood, away from the scene of the crash. He now is a driver for a city of Boston van service for seniors.
He and his family are suing Transdev and Charles, who resigned from Transdev soon after the crash. Joseph said he wants some good to come from Lens’ death, and for Transdev to operate safely.
“The first thing I hope is justice for him,” he said. “They have to care for safety so something like this will not happen again.”
Charles pleaded not guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter and other charges in March. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Transdev did not comment about the crash and said the company had discussed its safety measures publicly during a Boston City Council meeting last August. The company and Charles denied in civil court filings that they were negligent or reckless.
Transdev is in the third year of its five-year, $651 million contract with Boston Public Schools and transports about 19,000 of the district’s students every school day. It is currently looking to expand in Boston, where it is one of three finalists for a multibillion-dollar commuter rail contract.
To this day, the federal record does not show that Transdev was the operator of the bus that killed Lens. Neighbor Tomlinson wants it to be part of Transdev’s safety record so regulators can hold them accountable, and agencies and school systems can understand the companies they are hiring.
“It should be visible to the ones that need it, so we can see it and keep our babies safe,” Tomlinson said.
The post A School Bus Killed a 5-Year-Old. The Crash Is Among Dozens Missing From the Bus Company’s Federal Safety Record. appeared first on ProPublica.
Waymo and Wayve (in partnership with Uber) are gearing up to launch in the British capital by the end of 2026. At SXSW London, the companies showed how the prep is going.
African migrants say legal status offers little protection as rallies against illegal immigration gain momentum
African migrants in South Africa say they are living in fear after a series of marches calling for illegal immigrants to leave reignited long-held xenophobic sentiment in the country.
March & March, a campaign group at the forefront of recent protests, has given people living illegally in the country until 30 June to leave, without specifying what will happen to those who do not.
Continue reading...Companies such as Apple and Google have until September to install software or face legislation, says PM
Apple and Google have been given until September to install software that blocks explicit images on children’s mobile phones or face legislation enforcing its requirement, Keir Starmer said on Monday.
The prime minister said tech companies must activate nudity-detection algorithms or other technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to prevent users taking photos or sharing images of genitalia unless they are verified as adults.
Continue reading...It was once an article of faith that even those who speak words we disagree with deserve protection. As regards Palestine, that’s now not true
Remember the Satanic Verses controversy? Remember “Je suis Charlie”? Remember the constant invocations of Voltaire and Orwell? The great irony of our age is that many of the cadre of politicians who spent years anointing themselves as champions of free speech have become its most enthusiastic enemies when the subject turns to one issue: Palestine.
For decades, western governments lectured the world about liberal values. They declared freedom of expression the hallmark of a liberal democratic society. Protest was deemed patriotic while the right to offend was considered sacred. Then came Gaza. Suddenly, the principles that we were once told were non-negotiable became highly negotiable indeed.
Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo
The assault on freedom with Mehdi Hasan and Arwa Mahdawi
At 7.30pm BST on Monday 8 June, join Mehdi Hasan and Arwa Mahdawi at a joint Zeteo/Guardian event to discuss the current seismic changes in geopolitics, the alarming rise of populism and nationalism, and its global implications. Only livestream tickets are now available.
Book tickets here
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...A burglar took a self-driving Waymo taxi to rob a San Francisco yoga studio this past January, reports TechCrunch — "and police have still not caught them." Even the police officer assigned to the case thought it would be easier to solve, notes The San Francisco Chronicle, since Waymos are outfitted with multiple high-definition cameras and require users to make accounts with their credit card numbers: It's common for officers to seek video footage of a crime from any of the Waymos, Teslas and other high-tech vehicles that record their surroundings. That information can be crucial for identifying suspects or creating a reliable timeline of events. At times, police will go so far as to obtain search warrants to tow the vehicle "witnesses" to ensure they don't lose valuable video evidence. In the Hot 8 Yoga burglary case, San Francisco police issued a search warrant that forced Waymo to turn over information on the account that ordered the ride and video footage from the white Jaguar that served as the getaway car, police records show. Faye said that he couldn't discuss certain details of the case, but that the Waymo user's account information didn't lead police to the suspect. In general, he said, it's not unusual for a criminal to order a service with stolen information or a burner phone. The video evidence didn't help much either, Faye said. He said that the company had not retained interior footage of the car by the time the search warrant was filed in April and that it had kept the faces seen outside the car blurred for privacy reasons... Waymo does not publicly disclose how long it retains video footage. The company blurs faces and license plates in the public-facing images it uses in a database designed for research.... Last year in Los Angeles, a person allegedly robbed a grocery store before hopping in a Waymo. Officers were able to chase down the vehicle after the suspect got inside, and the car pulled itself over after police turned on the car's emergency lights, according to Los Angeles-area news outlets. "Farah Issa, studio manager of Hot 8 Yoga, showed the Chronicle a copy of the surveillance video from her phone, noting how the Waymo dropped off the suspect and waited for him to finish the burglary before taking off again."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Result strengthens PM Nikol Pashinyan’s drive for deeper integration with Europe despite warnings from Moscow
Armenia’s ruling pro-Europe party has won parliamentary elections, confirming the country’s pivot towards Europe and away from its traditional ally, Russia.
Final results in the small South Caucasus country showed the prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party securing a slim majority, while the Strong Armenia alliance, led by the Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, won 25% of the seats in parliament.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
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Is Australian music at risk of extinction? Here’s what the data tells us
The music that charts in Australia has changed considerably over the past couple of decades – rock is out, country is in and old tracks are new again.
Because of Richard’s brilliant research, advanced Melanoma went from a death sentence to a curable disease. As a result of that breakthrough, in a country with the highest melanoma rates on earth, thousands of Australians are alive today. …
After being diagnosed with brain cancer, Australians got to know Richard as a man of warmth and hope. He faced his disease with optimism, with a smile, and with a deep sense of purpose. Just a few months ago, living with stage four brain cancer, he was still riding his bike through Tasmania, raising money for a cure.
Continue reading...Iata boss Willie Walsh blames fuel suppliers, governments and aircraft makers, saying new ‘realistic timeline’ now needed
The aviation industry’s landmark pledges to be net zero by 2050 will probably not now be achieved, airline leaders have admitted.
The collective goal to eliminate net carbon emissions was declared by global airlines only five years ago in 2021, with similar pledges made by national aviation industry leaders and governments, including in the UK, in 2020.
Continue reading...Trucks with billboards depicting phrase alongside Jacinta Allan wearing a black pointed hat have been seen around Melbourne for about six weeks
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Julia Gillard and Anthony Albanese have joined a chorus of politicians criticising a truck-mounted billboard featuring the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, alongside the phrase “ditch the witch”.
The billboards, which have been seen travelling around Melbourne for about six weeks, also ran AI-generated images of Allan wearing a black pointed hat and with warts on her chin, in between advertisements for a brothel.
Continue reading...Police and hunters in Utsunomiya, 100km north of the capital, resume their search for animal that is not usually seen so close to Tokyo
A city in Japan has closed all its 94 primary and secondary schools after a bear was spotted in the municipality for the first time.
Officials in Utsunomiya, a city of half a million people about 100km (62 miles) north of Tokyo, took action after a medium-sized black bear – estimated to be about one-metre-long – was seen near a park in the city on Saturday. The bear was spotted again on CCTV running just in front of two startled young men in the city centre, in the early hours of Sunday.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed – our live coverage of the Middle East crisis continues here
Donald Trump also aggressively pushed back against claims that he broke a key campaign promise to keep the US out of new foreign conflicts.
“Well, well, first of all, I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump said during the Meet the Press interview. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
Continue reading...Insurer found 18,400 suspect claims last year with some scammers using AI to fake accident scenes and documents
Bogus insurance claims worth more than £230m were detected by the insurance firm Aviva last year as scammers tried new tricks including using artificial intelligence to fake car accident scenes, documents and to exaggerate damage.
The insurer identified more than 18,400 suspect claims across its brands in 2025, with a combined value of £233m. The fraud claims level was a record for the insurer, although this was the first year that it included the Direct Line brands it acquired last summer.
Continue reading...Reuters reports: Several large data centers and crypto facilities planning to connect to the Texas power grid ahead of peak summer demand have failed key reliability tests, raising the risk of power outages just as electricity use hits its seasonal high, according to the state grid operator... Unlike traditional industrial customers, which tend to draw electricity steadily and predictably, data centers are engineered to cut their connection to the grid at the first sign of trouble to protect their equipment and keep services running. That makes them an unpredictable and potentially destabilizing force on grids already under pressure from rising demand. Four groups of unnamed large electricity users, including data centers, abruptly disconnected from the Texas grid during a test of how they would handle routine voltage disturbances, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said in a report dated May 21. When large customers abruptly cut their power use, it can knock the grid off balance and trigger wider outages. ERCOT, which manages electricity for most of Texas, said it reviewed about 20 gigawatts of large customers seeking to connect to the system, including eight projects totaling roughly 3.9 gigawatts aiming to start up before July 1. It said it identified four groups of large power users that could each trigger more than 5,000 megawatts of demand tripping under certain fault conditions, based on simulations of transmission system disturbances. Those abrupt drops in demand were equivalent to the electricity consumption of a large city such as Boston.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Meta’s former head of global affairs says executives pivoted right in some cases for ‘rather more self-interested’ reasons
Silicon Valley companies including Meta have decided to embrace Maga politics, some for “rather more self-interested” reasons, the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said.
Clegg, who spent nearly seven years at Meta as the head of global affairs, told The Rest is Money podcast that it felt like “a very good time for me to move on” when he left the company in March 2025, three months into the second Trump administration.
Continue reading...What American military force can and cannot do.
How Americans think about U.S. military interventions.
I have a Pint X with Hardware 7314 and Hydrus 5200 firmware.
My long-term goal is to convert the board to VESC, but right now my biggest limitation is range. I enjoy longer rides with multiple stops and would like more battery capacity and less voltage sag.
I’ve looked into Chi Battery upgrades, but from what I’ve read many battery modifications are incompatible with newer hardware revisions.
Is there a recommended upgrade path for this hardware version? Are there any battery upgrades that make sense today and won’t become wasted money when I eventually move to VESC?
For those who have worked with 7314 / Hydrus 5200 boards, what would you do if your priorities were:
More range now
Better hill climbing performance
Eventual VESC conversion
Any advice is appreciated.
Donald Trump said: ‘I’m about to call Bibi right now and tell him not to respond’, as conflict risks spiralling – key US politics stories from 7 June at a glance
Donald Trump’s appeal to Benjamin Netanyahu to “not to strike back” after Iran launched missiles at Israel appears to have been unsuccessful after the Israeli military said it struck targets inside Iran.
The US president made the plea after Iran responded to Israeli strikes on southern Beirut in Lebanon earlier on Sunday, as the conflict again threatened to spiral into a broader regional war.
Continue reading...The exchange, after Tehran’s first such strike on Israel in two months, threatened to further complicate efforts to broker a peace deal aimed at ending the war.
Dancer, dog owner, bank robber. Germany’s most wanted woman, Daniela Klette, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison after decades on the run. Deborah Cole and Jason Burke report
To her friends and neighbours, there was nothing extraordinary about Claudia Ivone.
As our Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, explains, the silver-haired 67-year-old had spent years living in the same apartment in a bohemian neighbourhood of west Berlin. She led an ordinary life: she owned a dog, went shopping and pursued an unusual hobby as an active member of a local capoeira dance group.
Continue reading..."When Hugo Parra was arrested last year on felony charges, his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears," reports the Times of San Diego: San Diego police had a description of the Alfa Romeo car he was riding in [but no license plate number] and a witness who identified him during a curbside lineup as the man who brandished a handgun in Golden Hill. They had also checked the city's automatic license plate camera system, run by the private company Flock, and got a "hit," substantiating the claim. The problem, says attorney Alex Coolman, was that Parra was five miles away from Golden Hill at the time of the crime, and the so-called hit from the license plate reader was captured before any police pursuit began. "This Flock hit was obviously the wrong car, as it could not have been in both places simultaneously," said Coolman, who represents Parra and the driver, 23-year-old Ariel Beltran. Despite the signs pointing to it being a different Alfa Romeo, police arrested Beltran and Parra... [An officer had informed dispatch that one of the men "matched the victim's description, other than having a different-colored hooded sweatshirt."] Parra spent nearly one month behind bars, missing Thanksgiving and other special events with his family, before the assault with a firearm and evasion charges were dropped. Parras says he was incarcerated with actual murderers, according to the article, and Parra and Beltran are now preparing to sue the city, seeking $1.5 million each in damages for civil rights violations and negligence. Their claim notes they'd driven past several other Flock cameras which officers could've used to corroborate their story (not to mention location data on their cell phones). Meanwhile, the article also notes that last month the Institute for Justice "identified at least 17 cases in the United States of officers allegedly using Automated License Plate Reader technology to keep tabs on partners, exes, and strangers who had caught their eye..."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
American survives close putt on final hole
Korda claims $2.5m first prize for victory
England’s Hull misses out on first major title
Nelly Korda won the US Women’s Open on Sunday for her second consecutive major victory, holding off Charley Hull and Gaby Lopez by one shot when her final putt curled perilously around the cup and dropped in.
Korda’s first US Open win is the fourth major victory of her career, and she claimed it with a steady two-under 69 in the final round – but only after her second putt on the 18th green – from a little over 2ft – caught the edge and toured half the circumference of the hole before falling.
Continue reading...Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman has surpassed political newcomer Spencer Pratt in the race for L.A. mayor after trailing by nearly 6% on election night.
EMMA KARCZ
Staff Reporter
After six grueling months of back-to-back games, division rivalries and the Winter Olympics, where National Hockey League (NHL) players participated for the first time in 12 years, the 2025-26 NHL season has been nothing short of spectacular.
Out of 16 teams participating in the playoffs, six had not qualified for them last year. Specifically, the Buffalo Sabres ended their 15-year playoff drought, securing the top spot in the Atlantic Division with 109 points for the first time since the 2010-11 season.
The NHL playoffs work in four rounds of best-of-seven series, ending in the Stanley Cup, where the winners of the Western Conference and Eastern Conference face off, typically held in mid- to late June.
In the 1999-2000 season, the NHL adopted the point system used today to determine which teams make the playoffs. The system operates in a 2-0-1 format: two points for a win, no points for a regulation loss and one point for a loss in overtime or a shootout.
This has largely been a controversial system, especially this season, as many teams that had more regulation wins did not make the playoffs, while teams with fewer regulation wins did. Regardless, the 16 teams that made the playoffs this year fought long and hard for their spots. The Colorado Avalanche is one example of these.
The Avalanche won the Presidents’ Trophy this season, meaning they were the league’s top team and among the top cup contenders according to many sports analysts. Ending the season with 121 points, the 2022 Stanley Cup Champions were hungry for more. They faced off against the Los Angeles Kings, who barely squeezed into the second Western Conference wild card spot in the first round. Colorado knocked the Kings out in a clean four-game sweep, advancing early to the second round.
Another exciting matchup in the West was the Dallas Stars vs. the Minnesota Wild — two powerhouse teams out of the Central Division. Minnesota took the series with a game six win over Dallas, sending them to round two.
The Wild, who traded for defensive superstar Quinn Hughes mid-season, have been a strong contender. The Stars, also filled with generational talent, have proven themselves year after year in the playoffs, despite losing to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Finals the past two seasons.
Next is the Utah Mammoth vs. the Vegas Golden Knights. Vegas topped the Pacific Division while the Mammoth claimed the first wild card spot. Two very recent additions to the NHL, the Golden Knights joined the league at the end of the 2017 season and the Mammoth relocated from the Arizona Coyotes at the beginning of the 24-25 season. A fairly split matchup, Vegas won the series in six games to advance.
The last matchup of the Western Conference is the Edmonton Oilers vs. the Anaheim Ducks. Edmonton, which has lost to the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final the past two years, faces the Ducks, who haven’t made the playoffs since the 2017-18 season.
In a surprise to many analysts who were expecting a knockout by the Oilers, the Ducks surged forward, taking the series lead 3-1 after four games, leaving Edmonton on the cusp of elimination. With a desperate, gutsy win in game five, Edmonton kept the series alive, and returned to Anaheim for game six. The Ducks finished the series with a 5-2 win, ending the Oilers’ season.
In the Eastern Conference, the Buffalo Sabres faced off against the Boston Bruins. After being widely predicted to be at the bottom of the standings this season, Buffalo proved everyone wrong with a strong 10-game win streak throughout December and an eight-game win streak in March, pushing them to win the Atlantic Division and finish fourth overall.
After an interesting first four games, the Sabres led the series 3-1 as they headed back to Buffalo for what would be an exciting game five on home ice. After being tied 1-1 through regulation, Boston surged forward with an overtime (OT) goal from alternate captain David Pastrnak to advance to game six, where they fell short losing the series with a 4-1 loss.
The Montreal Canadiens vs. the Tampa Bay Lightning in another Atlantic Division matchup. Two teams with a ton of hunger have had one one of the most exciting series of the first round. With numerous fights, bench brawls and insane OT wins, the series was tied 2-2 going all the way to game seven, where the Canadiens came out on top.
After losing the 2020-21 Stanley Cup Final to the Lightning, the Canadiens rebuilt and were out of playoff contention until last season, when they were beaten in five games by the Washington Capitals in the first round.
Squeezing into the wild card spot only last year, the Canadiens came third in the Atlantic this year and are ready for a massive playoff push. The Lightning, on the other hand, have been a consistent playoff team since the 2017-18 season, winning back-to-back cups in 2020 and 2021, and are looking to add to that tally.
The Carolina Hurricanes faced the Ottawa Senators in another series that was fun and energetic for fans, with fights breaking out after almost every whistle. The Canes dominated, sweeping Ottawa in four games, becoming the second team to advance to the next round.
Finally, one of the most exciting matchups for students at the university is the battle for Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers have both been held out of the postseason for the past five years.
Based on regular-season statistics, the Penguins were looking to be the clear winner and advance early, but the Flyers came out of the gate running, winning the first three games of the series. Facing elimination, the Penguins collected themselves and went on to win games four and five, keeping their playoff hopes alive for one more game until the Flyers topped them off, ending the series at six. These two huge rivals in the league have given fans the energy and excitement they’ve been waiting for after so long without a postseason.
The Stanley Cup final, after three rounds of playoff competition, includes the Vegas Golden Knights vs. the Carolina Hurricanes. Beginning the series in Raleigh each team came away with a win, leaving the series 1-1 before heading to Vegas for games three and four. Game three was won by the Golden Knights in double overtime after the Hurricanes made an impressive comeback from a 4-0 deficit, scoring four unanswered goals to force OT where they lost to a goal by Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore. As this series continues both teams will fight for what is most important.
The NHL playoffs always deliver excitement and flair to the sports scene. Between heated rivalries and underdogs fighting back, there has been no shortage of passion in this year’s games. As the fight for the Stanley Cup continues, teams will be pushed to play the best hockey of their careers, in search of the one thing all young hockey players dream of, lifting the cup.
Rose Byrne, Sarah Paulson, Daniel Radcliffe, Adrien Brody and others gather to celebrate Broadway’s biggest awards night. The 79th annual Tony awards are hosted by Pink at Radio City Music Hall in New York
Continue reading...I like the Hoosier look but sounds like enduro may be best for mostly asphalt riding , some trails and straight away speed. What do you guys think?
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 8.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for June 8, No. 623.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 8, No. 1,815.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for June 8, No. 827.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for June 8, No. 1,093.
The lawsuit calls the event "deeply corrupt" and argues that it seeks to enrich the president and his allies and lacks proper authorization.
Cockroach Janta party began as online joke but is growing into one of the most unexpected challenges to country’s rightwing government
The call out to the youth of India was simple: “Get ready to swarm the streets of Delhi with peaceful and loving dissent.” They came in their thousands.
The weekend marked the first public protest of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), a movement that began as an online joke, but which has swiftly grown into one of the most unexpected challenges to the indomitable power of the country’s rightwing Narendra Modi government – driven by millions of discontented and disillusioned young people.
Continue reading...Italian fashion house Prada "unveiled on Sunday the inner-layer garment set to be worn by NASA astronauts heading to the moon," reports Reuters. "The body-hugging suit, created in collaboration with Houston-based space infrastructure developer Axiom Space, features ventilation tubes knitted into the garment." Expertise for developing space exploration products "can come from lots of seemingly unrelated industries," said Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space... The new product follows Prada's splashy foray into space fashion in 2024 with the unveiling of a spacesuit that is expected to be used for NASA's anticipated Artemis 4 moon landing in 2028... Other fashion and apparel companies have jumped on the space bandwagon. Under Armour has partnered with spaceflight company Virgin Galactic to create space apparel, while Columbia Sportswear has worked with space exploration company Intuitive Machines on space fabric technology. The new "Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment" was displayed on a mannequin at an event at Prada's Manhattan store.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This year’s Tony awards have already seen wins for musicals Schmigadoon! and Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Christopher Gattelli, Schmigadoon!
Ellenore Scott, Ragtime
Ani Taj, The Rocky Horror Show
Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons, Cats: The Jellicle Ball – WINNER!
Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant, The Lost Boys
Without it the ‘true scale’ of former Harrods owner’s alleged network will stay hidden, says survivors’ group
Survivors of abuse perpetrated by the former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed are calling for a full trafficking investigation to be launched, arguing that without it the “true scale” of the billionaire’s alleged network would remain hidden.
Survivors at No One Above (NOA), a collective founded by victims of abuse at the hands of Fayed, are calling for the Metropolitan police to broaden their investigation into the billionaire and make trafficking the main focus.
Continue reading...The Dog Aging Project is working to help dogs live longer, healthier lives. The research results may help humans age well, too.
China rolls out over 1,000 cargo ships a year, while the U.S. – maybe three. The Trump administration has called this a crisis with both economic and national security risks.
Federal judges say criticism from President Trump can put their safety at risk. The White House says the president "understands the dangers of political violence."
The Rowe family dog Ralph was one of many canines with dementia who participated in a study of rapamycin. Scientists were able to gain new insight into the drug's potential as a treatment by studying his brain.
David Rush, who was arrested in May, stole millions from US government through ‘special access program’, officials say
A former executive intelligence agent who is accused of stealing more than $40m in gold bars from the CIA reportedly created a fake spy program to siphon money, the latest on his fraudulent activity, the Washington Post first reported.
David Rush, who was a senior-level employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for 17 years, was arrested in May after FBI agents discovered Rush had taken 303 bullion bars, each about 2.2lbs, dozens of luxury watches, and more than $2m in foreign currency from his government office.
Continue reading...Is Microsoft making a comeback?
People are disabling the "recording light" on Meta's Ray-Ban smartglasses — "by my count, thousands of people," says tech journalist Joanna Stern in a new video report: STERN: "They're hiring people on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the light for as much as $100. According to our reporting, folks are offering this service in at least 30 states — despite Meta's attempts to stop it... In most states, we found multiple listings. In the New York and New Jersey area alone there were 23 listings." Stern watched a man in New Jersey disable and then conceal the light with a drill and dental probe in a New Jersey garage (a skill he learned watching YouTube and TikTok videos). He said the same day he'd already been contacted by eight more interested customers, and Stern also found at least 10 other people willing to do the same thing, just in New Jersey. "But what we found is they're all over the country." Meta sold 7 million smartglasses in 2025, but a Meta spokesperson insisted to the videomaker that a "majority" of their smartglasses owners aren't blocking the recording light. And furthermore, they added "We aggressively target anyone advertising tampering tools, have removed thousands of violating ads and Marketplace listings for these services, and pursue legal action when appropriate." (The reporter acknowledges "many" of the Marketplace ads disappeared after they brought them to Meta's attention — and Meta also said they were working with other retailers and sellers to take down listings for smartglasses-tampering parts.) The reporter also heard from one journalist who said they'd used it so they could record the activities of federal immigration agents without being targeted. "Others told me they just don't want people asking questions when they're recording." (There's video of one young man saying "It's already difficult enough to film in public. I don't want to have a blinking light on my face.") Tampering with smartglasses isn't illegal — though it is against Meta's Terms of Service, and could void your warranty. But a lawyer in the report says recording others without consent may be illegal, depending on a wide range of "jurisdictional nuances" like whether you live in an all-party consent state or a one-party consent state. "This seems to be our new reality," the report concludes: "more cameras, more microphones everywhere, and less certainty about who and what is recording." (Tech blogger John Gruber offered this assessment. "Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.") Stern's report points out that "People are trying to fight back. Apps have popped up that use Bluetooth to scan for nearby camera glasses." (In the video one app-maker wonders why Meta isn't offering the same service themselves. "There are technical solutions to these problems.") Ironically, when I watched the report on YouTube, it was preceded by... an ad for Meta's Ray-Ban AI smartglasses.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After encountering civil rights emblem Ruby Bridges, he spent his career documenting the impact of social and political unrest, especially on the young.
These headphones were put to the test by headphone experts and sleep experts.
Keir Starmer hosts Ukrainian, French and German leaders in Downing Street after Russia fires hypersonic weapons at Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of the UK, France and Germany discussed “the urgent need to scale up” Ukraine’s air defences and deep-strike capabilities in London on Sunday night, after Russia fired hypersonic weapons at Ukraine, Downing Street said.
The meeting of Ukraine’s staunchest allies in London came hours after a Russian drone strike damaged a storage centre for spent nuclear fuel nine miles from the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.
Continue reading...Tehran official had promised ‘decisive and painful’ reply to Israeli bombing of apartment buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs
Iran launched missiles at Israel on Sunday in response to Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, shattering a fragile ceasefire and marking the most serious escalation since April, after 100 days of war.
A senior Iranian official has promised a “decisive and painful” response to Israel’s airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut and, a few hours later, sirens sounded across northern Israel.
Continue reading...Don't expect it to be cheap.
San Antonio 2-0 down in best-of-seven series
Game 3 is on Monday night at Madison Square
Victor Wembanyama’s dream run in his first NBA playoffs has taken a nightmarish turn, but the San Antonio Spurs star says he is embracing the setbacks as well as the success.
“I think the key is acceptance a lot of times, taking a step back, realizing all the journey that’s behind this and what’s ahead of this,” Wembanyama said on Sunday as the Spurs prepared for a crucial Game 3 of the NBA finals in what promises to be a hostile Madison Square Garden.
Continue reading...About 48 people rescued alive after vessel reportedly left Libya carrying about 60 passengers
Italian rescuers have recovered 10 bodies after a migrant boat capsized in waters off Malta, a coastguard statement said on Sunday.
The vessel, which had departed from Libya carrying about 60 people, overturned about 45 nautical miles east-south-east of Malta, the Italian coastguard said.
Continue reading...Call for ‘clear and truthful account’ comes amid questions about the Reform leader’s property spending
The Labour party has written to Nigel Farage urging him to stop “evading reasonable scrutiny” over the £5m personal gift he received from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
The letter coincides with approval of a planning application that reveals the Reform leader’s plans to transform a dilapidated Kent property into a luxury beachfront residence.
Continue reading...Enhanced security will be in place for game at MSG
New York City hosting first finals game since 1999
The New York Knicks are warning fans to bring as little as possible to Monday night’s Game 3 of the NBA finals at Madison Square Garden, which Donald Trump plans to attend.
The Knicks are encouraging fans to arrive at least two hours before tipoff as part of enhanced security measures due to the president’s attendance. The New York Police Department also announced it will cancel a watch party outside Madison Square Garden as part of the measures. The decision was made after discussion between the Secret Service and the NYPD. There was trouble at the watch party outside the venue on Friday when more than 20 people were arrested as people celebrated the team’s win in Game 2 of the finals.
Continue reading...  | I wanted it to look like the watermelon flavored Ghost Energy drink, and the stock black XR colors were getting boring. [link] [comments] |
Democratic congressman issues qualified defense of Maine candidate in his bid to unseat Republican Susan Collins
Progressive Democratic congressman Ro Khanna issued a qualified defense of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on Sunday, saying “his actions were misogynistic, they were shameful, they were wrong, but they didn’t come as a surprise to a lot of the folks in Maine.”
The former Marine-turned-oyster farmer, who is campaigning to unseat the state’s Republican senator Susan Collins in November, has been hit with successive waves of accusation about his past actions, including sending sexually explicit messages he sent to women while married and being stenciled with a Nazi-themed tattoo.
Continue reading..."Texas has dethroned California as the state with the most Fortune 500 companies," reports the Los Angeles Times: The Fortune 500 list ranks the largest U.S. companies by revenue. This year, 57 of the top companies are headquartered in Texas, compared with California's 56. It's a reversal from two years ago when the Golden State had the pole position... California's corporate haters say they try to avoid the state's high costs, income taxes and strict regulations, but the western state is still a top money maker. "California dominates on nearly every other measure: its Fortune 500 companies are the most profitable ($647 billion), most valuable ($20 trillion), and employ more people than any other state (2.8 million workers)," Fortune said in a news release. Indeed, despite the naysayers, Californian companies have been leading the world in developing artificial intelligence technology as well as the latest in space and defense tech. The state is home to nearly 400 "unicorns," or billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights. It also gobbled up nearly two-thirds of U.S. venture capital last year, with San Francisco Bay Area startups such as OpenAI leading the way, according to the business information platform Crunchbase. Texas and California have been in a tug-of-war for the crown. In 2024, after a decade, California bagged the top spot with 57 companies on the list, while Texas and New York tied in second with 52 companies each... The fourth spot was tied between Illinois and Ohio, with 29 companies each. Amazon was the top company on the list, ending Walmart's 13-year reign at the top of the annual Fortune 500 companies list. Amazon's 2025 revenue was $716.9 billion, compared with Walmart's $713.2 billion. Seattle-headquartered Amazon joined Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and Walmart as the only four companies to have ever held the top position since Fortune began publishing the data in 1955.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Reps. Ro Khanna and Don Bacon join Margaret Brennan.
Potential proposal would secure control of Diego Garcia base amid stalled UK plans to cede sovereignty of territory
Donald Trump is reportedly weighing a plan to buy the Chagos Islands from Mauritius amid stalled plans from the UK to cede sovereignty of the territory, the Telegraph first reported.
The White House did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on the report about the potential plan.
Continue reading..."Can a company take away something you've already paid for?" asks the BBC. "In the world of online video games, some already do." Publishers can decide to switch off a game's servers, often leaving it effectively unplayable. Stop Killing Games, a growing consumer rights campaign started by American YouTuber Ross Scott in 2024, is challenging that practice. In January, the group submitted a petition featuring nearly 1.3 million signatures to the European Commission, triggering a public hearing in the European Parliament in April. What began as an online campaign is now awaiting a decision from one of the EU's most powerful institutions... Scott's campaign began following an announcement from the major studio Ubisoft, saying it would shut down the online-only racing game The Crew in 2024... Ubisoft has already defended its position in court. Responding to a proposed class-action lawsuit brought by two The Crew players in California, the studio argued that customers had purchased a licence to use the game, not unlimited ownership rights, and that players had been warned online services would not be available forever. The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice in June 2025, after the plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew the case. The wider games industry has also pushed back against the campaign. Video Games Europe, which represents many of the industry's largest publishers, said shutting down online services "must be an option" when games are no longer commercially viable. It also warned that some of the campaign's proposals could make online-only games significantly more expensive to develop. "In no way are we asking companies to keep servers running or services going, they can end it any time they want," said Scott. Instead, he and his fellow campaigners argue that when a game is shut down it should be done "responsibly", with publishers considering "end-of-life plans" such as updating the game to work offline or releasing software that allows players to continue running it. Two key points from the article: "In March, French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir launched legal action against Ubisoft over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that players were misled about the permanence of their purchase and that some of the company's contract terms were unfair." "The European Commission must respond to the European Citizens' Initiative — the petition brought by the group — by 27 July." Thanks to Alain Williams — Slashdot reader #2,972 — for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The moderate Republican, an advocate of abortion rights, resigned in 1995 amid accusations of sexual harassment
Former US senator Bob Packwood, a moderate Oregon Republican whose reputation as a champion of abortion and women’s rights was spoiled at the end of his career by allegations of sexual harassment, has died. He was 93.
Packwood’s death on Saturday was announced in an obituary sent to media outlets by his family.
Continue reading...One in five of the 1.92m patients on list wait longer than six weeks for tests such as CT and MRI scans, analysis shows
A record number of people are waiting for a diagnostic test on the NHS, triggering fears that delays in accessing CT and MRI scans could endanger patients’ health.
A total of 1.92 million patients in England are waiting to have a test to diagnose their illness such as by an ultrasound scan, assessment of their hearing, bone scan or various tests for cancer.
The diagnostic waiting list has grown by 500,000 since 2022.
It is 83% higher than before the Covid pandemic.
On current trends the waiting list will hit 2 million in March 2027.
Continue reading...Are there any new app options for checking battery levels ?? For years, I’ve been using the apps OWCE is gone and now Float-Remote aka Nosedive, requires something ? , not sure…thanks for any help
Paul Edwards ordered the publication before the birth of his son in 2007, but experienced pregnant pause before receiving it this week
When Paul Edwards ordered a parenting magazine in 2007, he was hoping that it would provide helpful advice and offers to help him navigate the stresses and challenges of bringing up children.
However the magazine never arrived – until now. The copy of Mother & Baby was delivered on Friday – 19 years after he ordered it – with his children now studying at university.
Continue reading...An 18-year-old died last week on a hike deep in the Grand Canyon, after showing symptoms of heat-related illness, the National Park Service said.
I have a onewheel pint with only 350 miles and I’m looking to trade for maybe a gt or xr my dream is the rally xl so if anyone is interested or has any suggestions/questions please reach out
The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 7, 2026.
In his fourth major final, Alexander Zverev beat Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-1 for the French Open title on Sunday.
I’ve been using Fedora Silverblue on my desktop and laptop for the past, what, five years? Silverblue is Fedora’s main atomic variant, a spiritual counterpart to Fedora Workstation. I also make niri, a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. In other words, a core system component that you cannot properly test from inside a container or VM—you really want it directly on the host. So, why would I choose an… immutable distro? How does that even work?
↫ Ivan Molodetskikh
That’s a great question, and as immutable or immutable-like Linux distributions become more popular and widespread – and eventually the default download option for many distributions, I’m sure – articles like these are quite important. I’m sure quite a few developers discarded the idea of using something like Silverblue because they assumed it wouldn’t be fit for purpose, but if the developer of Niri makes it work, I’m fairly sure anybody can.
90s PlayStation fans, rejoice: California studio Toys for Bob is making Spyro: Realms Beyond, intended to ‘inspire love, joy and laughter’
As the gaming mascots of millennial childhood have been resuscitated one by one for a nostalgic audience, one has remained notably absent: 1990s PlayStation hero Spyro. A new game starring the purple dragon was announced at tonight’s Xbox Game Showcase – the first original title since 2008. Called Spyro: A Realm Beyond, it is being developed by studio Toys for Bob in California and will be released in spring 2027 on Xbox, PlayStation 5, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.
It features a freshly redesigned Spyro with his trademark quiff, voiced by Tom Kenny, the original star of the games. Unlike in the original Spyro titles, players will be able to take flight at any time. “[We’re] leaning into the true capabilities of being a dragon,” explains creative director Lou Studdert. “It’s really engaging … the player is making decisions how they fly. They are diving down to sustain speed. They are using fire-breath to light campfires, to create an updraft to get lift before flapping their wings.”
Continue reading...x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required.
What you’re seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS.
↫ Lyra Rebane
Hand-written CSS, no JavaScript, and effectively no HTML.
Wizardry.
"His actions were misogynistic, they were shameful, they were wrong," Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who campaigned with the Senate candidate on Friday, said.
Hey guys what's the best and fastest charger out there for the pint s ?
Yesterday 2026's International Obfuscated C Code Contest concluded, with 22 new winners announced in a special three-hour livestreamed ceremony! Started 42 years ago, it's been described as the internet's longest-running contest, with entrants concocting convoluted programs glorying in the C programming language's subtleties, all while having some fun. And "For IOCCC29, the volume and quality of submissions were at near-historic heights," explains its home page. There's a "Tetris-optimized" GameBoy emulator with source code that looks like a GameBoy, as well as a quasi-Rogue-like game voted "most likely to teleport." Awards were also given for the best imaginary emulator (a virtual machine in 366 bytes of C) and the best fractional emulator (a maze generator for the Commodore 64). But every one of the 22 winning programs seems wildly creative... Quine Pong. "Running the program produces the source code to generate the next frame, formatted to display the current frame. By repeatedly compiling and running each successive frame, you can play the game. To move, pass either "w" (up) or "e" (down) as an argument..." A winning Taiwanese programmer formatted their source code in the shape of a Tardis from Doctor Who — code that displays an intricate ASCII animation of Doctor Who's 1963 opening title sequence. One winning entry emulates an IBM 7040 mainframe, first converting a program (encoded in whitespace) into ASCII-character drawings of punchcards for a FORTRAN program — and then executing that program to calculate the light visible to an observer looking at black hole, ultimately creating an image. It's all recreating what astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet had to do in 1978 to generate the first-ever simulated photograph of a black hole (on an IBM 7040 mainframe). "The entry can also run other FORTRAN programs — but "they must be provided as a deck of punch cards... Tools have been provided to convert to/from decks and to interpret..." "We have added fun challenges to this year's winning entries competition..." the web site notes. "After you figure out what a given winning entry does, we encourage you to attempt the fun challenge!" Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader achowe for bringing the news (who has submitted winning entries in four different decades, starting in 1991 and continuing through 2025) — and who won again this year for a program simulating the Space Invaders-like game from Casio's 1980 MG-880 calculator. Follow the IOCCC on Mastodon.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I'm the original owner of an XR+ with 650 miles on it. The board is in great shape with rail guards on since day 1, mag fender, c&r gel footpad and c&r skid guards. I've kept the battery charged between 50&75% but don't ride it anymore. What's it worth in the used market?
Williams, 44, returns to tennis for first time since 2022
‘I don’t have anything to prove, everything is a gain’
Serena Williams has said her professional tennis return at the age of 44 is about “just having fun,” insisting winning is “not important” after earning 23 grand slam singles titles during a hugely successful career.
Williams will play doubles alongside the Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club in her first competitive outing since stepping away from tennis in 2022. Although she has committed to playing doubles in Berlin afterwards, her future beyond that remains uncertain. Meetings to determine the first batch of Wimbledon wildcards begin soon but when asked whether she intends to return to singles competition, Williams said: “I can’t say yeah, I can’t say no. Right now, no.”
Continue reading...The previously stoic pope is drawing huge crowds and seems to be making a star turn, enthralling the faithful with emotive assurance.
CBS California Investigates reviewed online shopping carts at three major retailers selected randomly. We found prices fluctuated significantly over a period of weeks, making it difficult to determine when the best price is.
So my mosfets fried and for some months i was looking for an option to fix it, maybe Vesc it, stock controller , even fixing it, after a lot of research I went for the stock controller, if u live out of the us (south america) getting vesc is nearly impossible ($700+ floatwheel cause of taxes) so just waiting that the controller arrives soon, got some rails protectors too, I will show updates when it arrives, thanks for the previous advisements
A 4GB file called weights.bin may have appeared on your hard drive, thanks to Chrome. Here's what it is and how to get rid of it.
Exclusive: Dr David Wilson says former British police officer approached him as part of efforts to influence his work
The author of a Home Office-sponsored report on the Chinese state and organised crime in the UK was the target of failed honey traps and a suspected attempt to compromise him by a former British police officer, it is claimed.
Dr David Wilson, whose groundbreaking analysis was declassified in February, has told of multiple attempts to influence him or discredit his work as he sought to examine the policing challenges posed by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and criminal gangs.
Continue reading...From Christian Pulisic to Weston McKennie, many of the team’s biggest stars have been open about their faith, creating a new dynamic for a home World Cup
• World Cup newsletter | Daily podcast | Get the app
In the third episode of the interminable, nine-part Pulisic docuseries, its subject, Christian Pulisic, sits down at a dining table, pink orchids blooming behind him.
“It is what time?” a friend asks him, holding a camera in Pulisic’s face.
Continue reading...Danish follicle rebels go head to head in competition for best short-in-the-front, long-in-the-back cut
Business in the front, party in the back. A packed Danish crowd has celebrated the much-maligned but enduring mullet hairstyle, defined by very short hair at the front and longer hair at the back.
Denmark’s raucous 2026 Mullet Championship, presented on an outdoor stage in central Copenhagen, attracted 12 well-coiffed competitors and more than 1,000 spectators.
Continue reading...Move comes as 137 Labour MPs sign letter demanding ‘urgent, concrete action’ to stop settler violence
The UK Foreign Office and a group of western countries are due to announce a package of sanctions against Israel this week designed to deter companies from becoming involved in a proposed West Bank settlement that would split the territory in two and render the concept of a two-state solution near impossible.
Nine countries including France, the UK and Australia have warned that settlement violence must stop and no company should be involved in what is known as the E1 development.
Continue reading...US president says ‘I’d pay the kind of money they deserve’ amid questions over his administration establishing fund
Donald Trump declined on Sunday to definitively rule out compensating individuals who were charged with assaulting police officers when his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 toward the end of his first presidency.
Trump did that in an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, where he spoke in support of what his administration calls an “anti-weaponization” fund, arguing that people who entered the Capitol while Congress was preparing to certify Joe Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 presidential election had been treated unfairly by prosecutors and should receive compensation.
Continue reading...The new James Bond-themed videogame 007 First Light had a budget of 1.3 billion Danish krone — a little more than USD $202 million, reports IGN, citing a report from Denmark's public service broadcaster. "Denmark's TV 2 said that makes 007 First Light the most expensive entertainment product in the country's history" — and the game "still has some way to go before breaking even." 007 First Light is estimated to have sold 2.2 million copies, generating $150 million in revenue... [Saturday IGM reported sales had jumped to 3 million copies.] The only official sales data we have comes from developer IO Interactive, which said that 007 First Light had become the fastest-selling game in the company's history, shifting 1.5 million copies in its first 24 hours... The impressive sales milestone was achieved without the aid of the Nintendo Switch 2 version, which is due out this summer. The James Bond adventure is also the highest rated IOI game ever, with an 87 on Metacritic... The developer has said it wants to make a trilogy of James Bond games. Game-tracking company Alinea Analytics tweeted their estimates that 55.1% of sales were on PS5, 33.1% on Steam, and 11.8% on Xbox (Xbox console, Windows, and cloud combined). And Polygon reports that new downloadable game content was announced Friday.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 7, 2026.
Attack was ‘extremely vile’ and deliberate, says Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy
A Russian Shahed drone has substantially damaged a building used to store spent nuclear fuel close to the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant, in what Ukraine’s president described as a deliberate and “extremely vile” attack.
While the structure – the reception building of the spent fuel storage facility – was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit.
Continue reading...The following is the transcript of the interview with Rye Barcott, a Marine veteran and With Honor founder, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 7, 2026.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said the timing of the appointment takes FISA Section 702 reauthorization "off the table."
The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 7, 2026.
Local man had been accused of rape in months before murder but series of delays meant police had failed to summon him for questioning
Thousands of mourners have turned out for a silent march for a 11-year-old schoolgirl whose murder prompted widespread outrage when it emerged police had failed to question the suspected killer about previous child sexual abuse allegations.
The parents of the girl, who has been named only as Lyhanna, led the cortege on Sunday in the south-western village of Fleurance behind a banner reading “Never again”. Most of those who marched, including children, wore white shirts or T-shirts, many bearing a smiling portrait of the young victim.
Continue reading...Pontiff urges followers to dedicate themselves ‘to our brothers and sisters, to the poor, to those who suffer’
More than a million people filled the streets of Madrid to join Pope Leo in an open-air mass where the American pontiff appeared to emphasise the disconnect between Christian values and far-right politics, telling worshippers: “No one can kneel before the Lord and despise their brother.”
Queues to access the mass began forming hours before the sun rose on Sunday as people scrambled to secure a spot for what was billed as the biggest gathering of the pope’s week-long visit to Spain.
Continue reading...Deputy PM says he spoke to US vice-president about post that blamed ‘mass invasion of migrants’ for teenager’s death
David Lammy has said he told the US vice-president, JD Vance, he was wrong to blame the murder of the British teenager Henry Nowak on mass migration.
The deputy prime minister said he spoke to Vance by phone on Saturday to tell him “our democratic process is working well” and that he was wrong in his commentary about the murder.
Continue reading...Science magazine reports: For decades, string theory promised a "theory of everything" that described all particles and forces as tiny vibrating strings. Physicists hoped it could also solve one of the field's deepest problems: reconciling quantum mechanics with gravity. But as string theory grew increasingly elaborate — and experimentally unreachable — many physicists lost hope. Now, some researchers are revisiting the theory from first principles. In a paper in press at Physical Review Letters, Clifford Cheung, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, and colleagues lay out a small set of assumptions about the universe and show that they inevitably give rise to string theory.... Cheung's study, along with another one posted to arXiv in January, starts with two reasonably conservative assumptions: that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of an event add up to 100%, and that the laws of physics are consistent for observers moving at different speeds. Each group then posits additional assumptions that have not been borne out by observations. Cheung's analysis invokes "ultrasoftness," the idea that the probability of certain particle interactions drops off at a particular rate at high energies. The second study, led by University of Michigan physicist Henriette Elvang, instead assumes "supersymmetry," a maximal coupling between matter and forces. Both groups conclude the only theory that can satisfy their assumptions is one that looks like string theory... Cheung and Elvang stress that their aim is not to prove the inevitability of string theory. "I don't have a dog in the fight; I just work here," Cheung says. Rather, the goal is to explore the space of possible theories under rigid constraints — regardless of whether they reflect reality... The one thing the researchers all agree on is that the field would benefit from more alternative models to string theory. Cheung sees the agnostic, bottom-up exploration as a step in that direction. "You can either give up on the problem because it's too culturally toxic, or you can ask: If you want to find an alternative, what do you need?" he says. "Now, we know exactly what to do." Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Migration is woven into the story of the small African nation of Cape Verde and its national soccer team, as advocates raise concerns about who can attend the tournament.
Russian drone strikes killed three people at a bus stop in southeastern Ukraine and damaged a nuclear storage site near Chernobyl, officials said.
The allocated payment will go to your PlayStation Network wallet after the final approval hearing.
The Socceroos playing on football’s biggest stage in my adopted country would normally have me racing to book tickets. Not this year
Is “USA! USA! USA!” a more fundamentally obnoxious chant than “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!”? As an Australian who has spent most of the last 15 years living in the United States and is now a permanent resident, the Socceroos’ World Cup group match against the USA raises some questions. Has my adopted nation dethroned my homeland as the world’s foremost exponent of being unconscionably terrible to immigrants? And on a more personal level … who do I support here?
Well, look, OK, there’s really only one answer to that second question. I’m not an especially patriotic type, but if anything does bring out my Australian-ness, it’s the World Cup – perhaps because it’s one of the few events at which we can still claim to be underdogs. And now, two decades after I rose at dawn to watch Australia’s dreams dashed by the intersection of Lucas Neill’s leg and Fabio Grosso’s general vicinity, I find myself living in a country hosting the tournament.
Continue reading...Here are the highly rated series you should stream on HBO Max, plus new additions in June.
A "growing wave" of Reddit's "promoted posts" are sending U.S. and European audiences to money-stealing scams that impersonate major news organizations including the BBC, the Financial Times, and The Guardian, according to new findings from Bitdefender Labs. "Domains are short-lived and rapidly rotated to evade detection," they write, noting that the impersonating sites apparently even use language "to falsely imply that the investment platform had been reviewed, approved, or vetted" by the legitimate site they're impersonating: The campaign promotes fake AI-powered investment platforms such as Wencoin STX, Warrior Coin AI, and Nevo Coin, using fabricated celebrity endorsements, cloned news websites, fake interviews, and invented financial success stories to lure victims into depositing money. Researchers Andrea Olariu and Emanuel Puscasu have identified multiple promoted Reddit posts masquerading as legitimate financial or breaking news stories. Some ads claimed that: — NVIDIA and OpenAI were "creating the future" — Heathrow police discovered hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash — Governments and banks were allegedly trying to "hide" a revolutionary AI investment platform — European regulators were "silencing" articles about AI trading systems Some Reddit ads delivered in video format, including what appeared to be a deepfake BBC news segment featuring a news anchor presenting fabricated financial headlines... Examples observed by researchers included: — Fake BBC pages discussing "$20 billion conversations" tied to AI investments — Fraudulent Financial Times articles about Heathrow airport cash seizures — Fake Guardian stories claiming governments were trying to suppress coverage of Wencoin STX or Nevo Coin The pages featured fabricated interviews, fake profit screenshots, manipulated banking documents, false testimonials, and even fictional journalists or business editors designed to make the scam look legitimate. In many cases, the content sought to create a sense of exclusivity or conspiracy, suggesting that banks, regulators, or governments were trying to suppress public access to the investment platform... Our researchers found that after users clicked links embedded within the fake Guardian articles, they were redirected to a registration form allegedly used to create a "Nevo Coin" investment account. The form requested personal contact information, including the victim's name, email address, and phone number. To increase pressure and encourage immediate action, the page warned that registration availability was limited, claiming that once all spots were filled, new user registrations would be suspended. And in the final stage, they're asked to deposit money...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Soaring 50 stories above Barcelona, the Sagrada Família basilica has been under construction for nearly a century and a half – the improbable dream of architect Antoni Gaudí, who died 100 years ago, leaving behind clues to complete his masterpiece.
A look at the career of one of Hollywood's most celebrated filmmakers
As a child, Steven Spielberg stared at a meteor shower and began his love affair with the sky. The director of the 1977 classic "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" returns with "Disclosure Day," which imagines closely-held secrets surrounding alien visitations.
Search enters second day after Saturday shooting that wounded 12, two reported in critical condition, police say
Organizers of a festival in the historic center of Toledo, Ohio, have cancelled planned events on Sunday as police continue the search for at least two shooters who wounded 12 people a day earlier.
The Toledo police deputy chief, Joseph Heffernan, said the shooters were “probably shooting at each other” when gunfire erupted just after 5.30pm near the Old West End festival, an annual gathering of live music and architectural home tours.
Continue reading...Five hospitals in England and Wales have switched to urine test, rather than invasive hospital procedure
NHS hospitals are using a new way of diagnosing bladder cancer that is faster, more accurate and more convenient for patients than the existing test.
Doctors said the Galeas bladder test was a major breakthrough because it involved a urine test taken at home rather than an invasive procedure done at hospital which was uncomfortable for patients.
Continue reading...Comedian is doing first tour in more than 15 years and says many issues he talked about in 1980s are still alive today
Lenny Henry has said racism is “still at large” as he does his first standup tour in more than 15 years.
Henry, best known for The Lenny Henry Show, which ran from 1984 to 2005, said the things he used to talk about in the 1980s were still relevant now.
Continue reading...New film revives story of Taylor Parker, convicted in 2022 of cutting unborn daughter from womb of friend she killed
In an America so often saturated with brutal crime stories, it takes special circumstances to truly register shock.
But the story of Taylor Parker, now sitting on a Texas death row after being convicted of murdering her pregnant friend Reagan Simmons-Hancock in 2020 and cutting her unborn daughter Braxlynn from her womb, is horrific in part because it appears almost against nature itself.
Continue reading...If a phone you didn't order arrives on your doorstep, there's a good chance someone's trying to scam you. Here's how to recognize this scam and make sure you don't get tricked.
Approved 20 years ago as a diabetes treatment, GLP-1 drugs have been found to help patients reduce weight, changing the lives of more than 30 million people in the U.S. But there also have been troubling side effects reported.
At least 12 people were wounded in a shooting near the Old West End festival in Toledo, Ohio, on Satuday. Toledo's deputy police chief, Joe Heffernan, said two people were in a critical condition. No arrests have been made and the search for the suspects is continuing
Continue reading...The Broadway revival of the musical (nominated for 11 Tony Awards) depicts drama, joy and heartbreak in the pursuit of the American Dream at the turn of the 20th century, with parallels to the contemporary world, from issues of race to the immigrant experience.
With the unemployment rate for young workers about twice as high as the national average, "Sunday Morning" talks with recent graduates from across the country about how AI is affecting both their prospects and the hiring process itself.
Gymnast says experience was one of scariest of her life
29-year-old says she will give more details at later date
Simone Biles suggested she came close to death after a medical emergency that left her in hospital.
“I’m not one to normally share things like this because I value privacy in today’s age, but almost dying wasn’t on my bingo card earlier this week,” Biles wrote in an Instagram story on Saturday. The story also showed a photo of her wrist encircled by several hospital bracelets.
Continue reading...Firings are part of a broader personnel purge under the leadership of director Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist
Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired on Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under the leadership of its director Kash Patel.
The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.
Continue reading...The number of places where people were shot initially raised concerns that there could be multiple, coordinated attackers.
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions explores a topical issue of personal cybersecurity
I’ve been struggling to get my head around the idea that a passkey, which can be a PIN on your phone, or facial recognition, can be safer than using a complicated password, and two factor authentication.
I get that having something unique to your device, not stored on a company’s server is unphishable, and less hackable by cybercrims, but what if your phone is nicked and someone guesses the password? And what if you lose your phone?
Continue reading...After decades of alienating working-class and rural voters from the Democratic party, it’s time the left bridges the divide
It was a warm morning in rural Virginia. I was cutting into a pile of downed logs – wild cherry, oak and black locust – left behind when a piece of land was cleared for a small house.
A young guy pulled up, stepped out of his truck and gave me a nod, the way people do out here. Chainsaws in hand, we quickly figured out we both knew the owner and had her permission to take the wood – me for our home and greenhouse, him for much the same. Then we got to it – work.
Continue reading...Proposed memorials have become flashpoints in a wider struggle over history and political power
Disputes provoked by public monuments, flags and symbols are intensifying as the US’s 250th birthday approaches next month, and none are so contentious as those proposed by Donald Trump.
Among the recent projects planned by the US president are a Garden of Heroes, a monumental “Freedom” arch, a massive ballroom and turning the reflecting pool at the Washington monument the color of a Bahamian luxury hotel pool.
Continue reading...After Dayton discovered its Flock cameras were sharing data with federal immigration enforcement, city workers reached for the only tool they could use: trash bags.
Enjoy the most sunlight of any day you'll get all year. At one spot in Alaska, the sun is up for a full 24 hours.
As protests flare at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, Jessica Ordaz examines the US’s complex relationship with migration and detention
For more than two weeks, at least 300 detainees at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center have been on a hunger and labor strike. They describe “horrible” conditions at the Newark, New Jersey, facility: spoiled food, inadequate medical care and poor living conditions. Others have alleged physical abuse by guards, including being beaten and pepper-sprayed by a riot squad, causing some detainees to be rushed to the hospital. They’re calling for a meeting with the New Jersey governor, Mikie Sherrill, to urge the immediate release of all detainees from the privately operated 1,000-bed center. As of now, the Department of Homeland Security has partly restored family visitation at the center and released pregnant detainees.
To raise the alarm, protests have persisted outside Delaney, and violent clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officials have escalated. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have wielded batons and used pepper spray and stun guns against protesters, journalists and a US senator. Federal authorities arrested demonstrators on allegations of assaulting law enforcement officers, and Sherrill deployed the New Jersey state police to the protests, leading to the arrests of more than 60 people in a single night. Meanwhile, ICE officers abruptly transferred Martin Soto, a detainee held in solitary confinement for being a suspected strike leader.
Soto’s story, and that of the hundreds of detainees on strike, fits into a long history of immigrant incarceration – and how detainees resisted – said Jessica Ordaz, a historian and professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity. Strikes have been reported at other facilities across the country, including in New Mexico and California, where detainees are protesting over water quality, mold and a lack of medical care.
Continue reading...The justice secretary said he spoke to the US vice president after he blamed mass immigration for Nowak’s murder
Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf said that UK police are “institutionally racist”, claiming that there is “structural anti-white prejudice”.
When asked by Laura Kuenssberg if he thinks the police are institutionally racist, he said: “I think the correct answer to that has to be yes given literally on their website it tells people not to treat people the same – to not be colour-blind.”
Continue reading...Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy
The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.
Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.
Continue reading...Committee calls for apology from government amid reports navy’s hunter-killer submarines are all docked
A parliamentary committee that scrutinises public spending has made scathing comments about the impact of delays in the publication of the government’s defence investment plan (Dip).
The plan, originally expected last autumn, has been repeatedly postponed amid warnings that the military faces a huge funding gap over the next four years. It is due to be published before a Nato summit early next month.
Continue reading...The octogenarian artist has recently seen her star rise within the art world – now the Oakland Museum of California will exhibit works from her 50-year-long career
The artist Mildred Howard keeps Junipero Serra, the Spanish missionary who brutalized Native Americans throughout California, bound and blindfolded in her garage next to her black Mercedes.
The 10ft-tall sculpture is part of her Untold Histories / Hidden Truths series (2025), in which she recreates monuments to slaveholders and colonizers and wraps them in what she refers to as “Make America Great Again red”. Serra, symbolically mummified and holding his signature cross aloft, cuts a haunting figure in the dimly lit garage surrounded by U-Haul storage boxes, cans of paint and abandoned furniture.
Continue reading...The iPhone 18 rumor mill is pointing toward Apple's foldable debut, a bigger battery, a variable-aperture camera and a split 2026-27 release schedule. Plus, there might be new dark cherry and light blue colors.
Video of figures clambering in and out of manholes sparks intrigue – and comparisons to crime-fighting turtles
It started in early May. Under cover of darkness, three people pried open a manhole cover in Queens, New York, and clambered down into the sewer.
The incident might have gone unnoticed, but the subterranean quest, which was caught on film, captured New Yorkers’ interest when it happened again, and again, in the same month, with two other groups filmed making their way in and out of the sewer system in Brooklyn. The string of events have seen those involved dubbed “mole people” by the local press.
Continue reading...Holy Family Catholic primary school says enthusiastic response from parents has been biggest surprise
Schools banning pupils from having smartphones are commonplace. But what about a school where pupils ban teachers from using their smartphones, and then get their parents to join in?
And not just phones: at Holy Family Catholic primary school in west London teachers are also barred from using laptops, monitors or tablets during the school’s screen-free Mondays, after an idea that came from the pupils themselves.
Continue reading...U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced a plan for the public to take a 50% ownership stake in AI companies, remembers the Associated Press. And then OpenAI's Sam Altman "told Sanders that he, too, wants the public to have equity in AI companies." Though the CEO said he couldn't support Sanders' threshold of 50%, he nonetheless wanted to work with him to advocate for the general idea, according to people with knowledge of the conversation. The nearly hourlong meeting in Sanders' Senate office this week, held at Altman's request, highlighted the inherent tension between AI powerhouses and policymakers as Americans are increasingly asked to accept the costs of the AI boom even as they remain unconvinced of its direct benefits. Yet it's also creating odd political bedfellows fueled by populism as politicians from Sanders to President Donald Trump embrace giving the public a stake in AI's growth. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump described a potential partnership "where the American people can benefit from the success of AI" and said executives from leading AI companies will visit the White House, "probably next week," to discuss the idea. The article points out that Altman also met with congressional leaders from both of America's political parties.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Video from the storm showed rain and wind that reached speeds of 40 mph tearing up a tent, with one person flying through the air while trying to hold it down as another person rolls uncontrollably down a hill.
Kreuzberg campaigners win court ruling against €2m fence aimed at shutting out drug dealers
The “hollow” in Görlitzer Park was heaving with revellers who had gathered in reaction to a court ruling against Berlin’s mayor who wanted to lock it up at night. “Görli is our garden,” said Monika, a retired psychiatric nurse who lives nearby and had joined the crowds on Monday night for a beer and a bop on the popular deep bowl-shaped meadow in the Kreuzberg district.
“Görli is where we socialise and where my daughter grew up,” she said, using the affectionate nickname for the centrally located green space covering 14 hectares (35 acres).
Continue reading...A $205m expansion team is the latest step in the league’s rapid growth, but conflicts over funding and facilities show the tensions of public-private unions in sports
Sports fans’ connection to their team of choice is usually strengthened by high points – wins, championships and the like. For Emily Kegg and thousands of other Columbus Crew fans, their connection was reinforced by a potential loss of their team itself. When the Crew’s then-ownership group and Major League Soccer threatened to relocate the team to Texas in 2017, Kegg and her family were eager to join the grassroots movement to Save the Crew. They made friends through the effort to keep the team in the city, bonding over a shared love of soccer.
In late 2018, when a new ownership group announced it intended to buy the team and keep it in Columbus, Kegg decided to stay involved. Now she’s the community director of the Nordecke, the supporters’ group of just under 600 members that coalesced during Save the Crew.
Continue reading...Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than white women are. This is a public health crisis
In April alone, at least half a dozen Black women were allegedly killed by their partners, including the high-profile cases of Cerina Fairfax, estranged wife of the former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, and Nancy Metayer Bowen, vice-mayor of Coral Springs, Florida. Shaneiqua Elkins survived a shooting by her husband, Shamar Elkins, that wounded her and killed seven of her children and one of their cousins in Shreveport, Louisiana.
These tragedies are shining a light on the killings of Black women and the systems that allow that violence to continue.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...As Trump officials take aim at vaccine schedule, scientists encouraged by companies’ desire to continue coverage
A group of insurers will continue covering routine vaccines through 2027 as the Trump administration once again takes aim at the shots and outbreaks of preventable illnesses such as measles and whooping cough lead to hospitalizations and deaths.
Experts told the Guardian that the move has raised questions ahead of the November midterms, but certainly indicates that insurance companies believe vaccines are “safe and effective”.
Continue reading...Aaron Spencer never denied fatally shooting Michael Fosler, 67, the sexual abuser of his daughter, aged 13
An Arkansas sheriff’s candidate who was alleged to have killed his teenaged daughter’s sexual abuser says he is focused on “family and getting back to a normal life” after the dismissal of a murder charge filed against him.
“I’m grateful this chapter is closed,” Aaron Spencer also said in a statement after the dismissal on Thursday.
Continue reading...Expenditure is growing fast and consumer take-up accelerating. But alarm bells are sounding
The race is very much on. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which makes AI models as well as space rockets, announced last week it is seeking a $1.77tn (£1.31tn) valuation on the US stock market while Anthropic, the startup behind the Claude chatbot, said it had filed for an initial public offering. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is expected to follow.
This latest peak in the AI market comes amid a multitrillion-dollar spending spree on related infrastructure such as datacentres. Meanwhile, companies are attempting to deploy the technology in a way that makes investing in it worthwhile. Here’s a look at what stage the AI boom is at and six key charts that tell us how we got here.
Continue reading...UK lagging behind rivals on tourism growth because of travel costs and lack of joined-up planning, says CEO Sean Doyle
The cost of travel to and around the UK is keeping millions of tourists away and slowing economic growth, the boss of British Airways said, as he urged a rethink of aviation taxes.
The airline’s chief executive, Sean Doyle, said the UK had some of the highest aviation taxes in the world and was falling behind countries such as Japan, France and Germany in boosting its inbound tourism.
Continue reading...The defeat hurt, but the Americans’ response to an early German goal provided perhaps the clearest evidence yet that their manager’s message is taking root
A sunshower began dousing the fans at Soldier Field as Matt Freese picked the ball out of his net. It was only the second minute of the United States’ final friendly before the World Cup, and mighty Germany had already opened the scoring with plenty of talent to turn the occasion into a rout.
On this occasion, however, “when it rains, it pours” did not befit the US performance. By the time the precipitation subsided after 10 minutes or so, Pochettino’s starters stepped into the sunlight, determined to not be embarrassed by the four-time world champions. The hosts seldom looked over-run despite trailing, setting the stage for Antonee Robinson to volley an emphatic equalizer past Hoffenheim’s Oliver Baumann in the 37th minute.
Continue reading...Netflix always delivers the sci-fi goods.
Casey Wasserman, the entertainment super-agent, has attracted his fair share of controversy as the head of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee.
In addition to passionate debates about the Olympics themselves — the geopolitics of the Games and their effect on local hosts — Wasserman has come in for criticism over his ties to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his support for Israel, and the potential that the Games might bring him profits through his role as a talent manager for entertainment stars.
The controversies, especially revelations about his relationship with a member of Epstein’s inner circle, nearly led to Wasserman’s ouster from his role atop LA28, the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee.
Now, another personal wrinkle is coming to light: Wasserman’s daughter, Stella, is training to compete for the Israeli equestrian team at the 2028 Games.
The participation of Wasserman’s daughter in the Games could create an awkward dynamic for the local Olympic chief.
Stella Wasserman, 21, is training to compete with the Israeli team in the show jumping competition, according to a recent profile in World of Show Jumping, a trade publication covering the sport. Instagram accounts for Stella Wasserman and her mother, Laura Ziffren Wasserman, posted in the wake of the article to celebrate Stella’s plans to compete with the Israeli team.
There’s a very real possibility that the man responsible for orchestrating an American Olympic games will have a child competing for another country that has become an international pariah due to its genocide in Gaza and wars with Lebanon and Iran — a team that is likely to face protests in LA. (Casey Wasserman, Stella Wasserman, LA28, and the Israeli Olympic committee did not respond to requests for comment.)
Casey Wasserman is himself an outspoken supporter of Israel. In December, he took a trip to Israel during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pledged that the safety of athletes, and particularly Israeli athletes, was his “number one concern,” according to Algemeiner, a right-wing, New York-based newspaper covering Jewish issues.
“If you’re claiming that this thing that you’re promoting so heavily is going to bring all these benefits to Los Angeles, but you’re also promoting the interests of a foreign genocidal state — and on top of that your daughter is representing that state in the Games — that’s a conflict,” said Miguel Camnitzer, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace Los Angeles. “Somebody else, without those very personal connections to Israel, might be able to make a different call, but he’s unable to.”
Wasserman, a longtime local powerbroker and grandson of Hollywood Golden Age tycoon Lew Wasserman, has been central to bringing the Games to Los Angeles, a role that has come under increased scrutiny due to his ties to Epstein and the late pedophile’s former companion, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
While his connections to the Epstein world were known to some degree for years — he rode with Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private jet for a humanitarian mission to Africa — the release of the so-called Epstein files earlier this year revealed graphic sexual emails between Wasserman and Maxwell. The revelations sparked a backlash from some of the artists represented by his eponymous talent agency, which in March changed its name to The Team; Wasserman also announced he would be selling the company.
This week, Wasserman reaffirmed that he has no plans to step down as the chair of LA28.
Despite her young age, Stella Wasserman is an accomplished show jumper and owns at least four competition horses, according to a report in the Chronicle of the Horse.
It is common for athletes from one country to compete for a country in which they hold dual citizenship; the International Olympic Committee requires that competitors be nationals of the countries on whose behalf they are competing.
Amid the genocide in Gaza, the Israel connection underscores arguments from critics of the Olympics who say that the Games whitewash human rights abuses by nations taking part — and that international approaches to the Games foster a global double standard that penalizes some nations while allowing others to compete. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian teams were barred from competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics; Israel has faced no such sanction.
The yearslong campaign by Wasserman and others — including former Mayor Eric Garcetti — to host the Olympics in Los Angeles has met with stiff opposition from local activists. Forming a coalition, dubbed NOlympics, the activists sought to call attention to the ways in which they say the Games would exacerbate issues of affordability, surveillance, and anti-immigrant policing by federal law enforcement.
“Mega-events like the Olympics or the World Cup don’t necessarily create problems from whole cloth, but they accelerate them.”
“When we started organizing against the Olympics 10 years ago, LA was already reeling from homelessness, housing shortages, brutal policing, and ICE. And 10 years later these issues are all worse,” said Jonny Coleman, an organizer with NOlympics LA. “Mega-events like the Olympics or the World Cup don’t necessarily create problems from whole cloth, but they accelerate them.”
In December, LA28 announced it had raised more than $2 billion in sponsorship revenue, according to Reuters. If the costs of the Games exceed what the Olympic committee is able to fundraise, however, Los Angeles would be on the hook for the first $270 million of over-cost expenses, with the next $270 million to be covered by the state of California.
The Games, activists said, could be a boon for Wasserman. Wasserman chaired a host committee to bring the Super Bowl to LA in 2022; his client Kendrick Lamar was featured in the halftime show — a coveted slot not least for the millions the exposure can bring.
For Coleman, Casey Wasserman’s relationship to Ghislaine Maxwell and Stella Wasserman’s potential competition on behalf of Israel only further highlights the corrupt nature of the Olympics.
“We know these mega-events are a way to legitimize awful regimes,” said Coleman. “It’s disgusting, but I don’t really care about the supposed integrity of the sports, personally. So yeah, let her play — why not?”
The post Daughter of 2028 Olympics Chair Dreams of Competing in LA — for Israel appeared first on The Intercept.
Residents talk about immigration, belonging and what it means to be a good neighbor ahead of America’s 250th — and as an antidote to some Trump policies.
Backlash against AI is taking an extremist turn, following in the footsteps of earlier techno-pessimist militants
When a 20-year-old man from Texas was arrested earlier this year for allegedly trying to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters and Sam Altman’s house, authorities found an anti-AI manifesto alongside his lighter and a jug of kerosene. It was one of a spate of attacks that has caused alarm among researchers, the tech industry and law enforcement about the rise of anti-tech extremism.
In April, an Italian “nature pilled” Instagram influencer was arrested in Rome and charged with plotting a series of anti-tech attacks that took inspiration from Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Two self-described “ecofascists” that carried out a deadly anti-Muslim attack on a mosque in San Diego last month also cited “AI slop” and JD Vance’s ties to Palantir as motivations for their violence in their manifesto. An Indianapolis city councilor woke up earlier this year to gunshots being fired into his home before finding a note that read “NO DATA CENTERS”.
Continue reading...A Post reconstruction of Amal Khalil’s final hours in Lebanon found that Israel’s military denied rescuers access to her during a key period when she was still alive.
Voters to choose between pro-Russian opposition and incumbent Nikol Pashinyan, who is more closely aligned with the west
Armenians are going to the polls in an election that could cement the country’s shift towards Europe and away from its traditional alliance with Russia.
Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party enters the vote as the favourite, ahead of three opposition candidates who advocate for closer ties with Moscow. Pashinyan’s main challenger, Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian billionaire who built much of his fortune in Russia, has been forced to campaign from house arrest at his mansion outside Yerevan.
Continue reading...Retatrutide is designed to control appetite and blood sugar but also increase body’s energy expenditure, unlike other drugs
A new triple-action weekly jab for type 2 diabetes could significantly reduce blood sugar and body weight, according to phase 3 trial results.
Patients in the trial receiving weekly retatrutide injections for 40 weeks lost more than four times as much weight as those on placebo, while the average drop in long-term blood sugar (HbA1c) was more than twice that of the placebo.
The triple hormone drug mimics three gut hormones that help control your appetite, blood sugar and metabolism: GLP-1, GIP and glucagon. Unlike other diabetes medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which primarily target the GLP-1 pathway to suppress appetite, or Mounjaro, which contains GLP-1 plus GIP to control blood-sugar levels, retatrutide also engages the glucagon receptor, which helps increase energy expenditure.
Continue reading...Private browsing mode keeps your activity out of your local browser history, but it doesn't make you invisible online.
Ahead of a national election on Sunday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been talking about joining the E.U. and boasting of an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Ars Technica shares some anecdotes from Steve Jobs in Exile, a new book released last month: [Author Geoffrey] Cain reminds us, in stunning detail, that Jobs' "exile" era at NeXT was not only critical to his evolution as a man and an entrepreneur, but that it mattered for the rest of us, too. The technological innovations that came out of NeXT — notably, the NeXTSTEP OS — continue to live on in what we now call both macOS and iOS. As Cain puts it, "NeXTSTEP was Steve's attempt to make Unix taste sweet...." [W]hile many tech nerds know that Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server on a NeXT machine while working in Switzerland in 1990, few know that NeXT employees were wary of bringing the news to Jobs. Why? They feared his wrath "and that he would dismiss [the web] as 'shit.'" (In another timeline, NeXT might itself have capitalized on this world-changing innovation....) Perhaps one of the wildest anecdotes that Cain uncovered was how one voicemail changed computer history forever. In 1996, when Apple was solidly in its mediocre Performa era — and considering buying BeOS as the basis for its new operating system — a mid-level NeXT product manager asked aloud, "Why don't we just frickin' call Apple?" (NeXT was also struggling during this period.) And so someone did. As Cain writes: Garrett left the group of managers, walked back to his office, and took a risk. He picked up his designer phone and called the head of software at Apple. He left what he described as "one of my more inspired sales pitches" on the man's voicemail, explaining why Apple should be looking at NeXT instead of Be... In any other universe, Garrett's call might have gotten him fired. But in this timeline, it worked out. And thanks to him, Steve [Jobs] was about to enter Apple's airspace once again. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After Alyssa Burkett was murdered, detectives quickly learned that the prime suspect was the father of her child, Andrew Beard. But as the investigation unfolded, they would find out that Beard wasn't the only one involved in the murder plot.
After Alyssa Burkett was murdered in broad daylight in Carrollton, Texas, Andrew Beard, the father of her child, became a suspect. Investigators would eventually discover a twisted murder plot they say was orchestrated by his fiancée, Holly Elkins.
Exclusive: deal in 2020 had sought to stimulate local battery making but industry says it still cannot meet targets
The EU and UK car industries are urging the European Commission to adjust the Brexit trade deal and suspend, for a second time, tariffs on imports of electric vehicles.
They have expressed concerns that they will not be able to meet the conditions set for 1 January 2027 for tariff-free sales. This is because of strict rules of origin over what products can qualify for tariff-free trade under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement which has applied since 2021.
Continue reading...Buyers are ripped off after assuming online stores were genuine because they are recommended by an AI tool
You want to buy a new bag and so you ask ChatGPT for help. You have always liked Russell & Bromley so you ask ChatGPT what is popular there at the moment.
The artificial intelligence (AI) assistant gives you cross body, shoulder, casual and formal options with the prices listed beside them. You click through from the sources to what looks like the official Russell & Bromley site and buy your new bag, which is conveniently on sale.
Continue reading...Legal papers, expert investigations and social media posts tell story of how a 32-year-old Iraqi appeared to run ‘proxy’ campaign
On Monday, a slightly dishevelled Iraqi man, shackled and dressed in beige prison overalls, was ushered into a Manhattan courtroom.
Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, pleaded not guilty to a series of terrorism-related offences, then gestured toward the judge and prosecutors. “I’m a prisoner of war. I’m not a threat,” he told them. “Children and women are being killed by your rockets.”
Continue reading...Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of 1990s leader Alberto, is vying with a congressman to become country’s ninth president in a decade
Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday in an election runoff that pits a perennial rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, against a leftist congressman, Roberto Sánchez. Amid rising crime, chronic political instability, corruption scandals and voter apathy, they are vying to become Peru’s ninth president in a decade.
Fujimori, who is the daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, won 17% of the vote in the first round in April. Sánchez, a former trade and tourism minister, took 12 % of the vote, edging out Rafael López Aliaga, an ultra-conservative former Lima mayor. The stage is set for a polarised left-right replay of the country’s last election in 2021.
Continue reading...The US president brags about ending wars but look at Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and Lebanon to see what his casual disregard for diplomacy and obsession with instant results have achieved
There are visionary statesmen and high-minded negotiators, pragmatic mediators and professional diplomats – and then there are meddling fools. As ceasefires implode, vast numbers of civilians die or flee, and wars Donald Trump started, fuelled or pledged to resolve rage unchecked, there’s no doubt which category he belongs to. In baseball parlance, in Ukraine, Iran-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, Trump is “0 for 3”. He boasted he alone could cut deals and bring peace. He’s delivered neither. In striking out, he mostly makes matters worse.
The heroic age of 19th-century diplomacy, typified by Prince Metternich’s great power-balancing “concert of Europe” and Benjamin Disraeli’s Balkan “peace with honour”, is history now. But it’s not that long since Nobel-winning peacemakers such as the UN chief Kofi Annan and the Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, or the US senator George Mitchell, who brokered Northern Ireland’s Good Friday agreement, were troubleshooting intractable conflicts the world over. Where are the successors to Desmond Tutu, Andrei Sakharov or Yitzhak Rabin when you need them?
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Continue reading...David Shoebridge says Australia could become embroiled in a US war with China if purchase of Virginia-class attack submarines proceeds
Anthony Albanese has reiterated that Aukus is “full-steam ahead” after the Greens renewed calls to cancel the nuclear-powered submarines deal, which the minor party warned could draw Australia into a potential US war with China.
Debate over the security pact has resurfaced after the announcement that Australia would buy secondhand Virginia-class submarines from the US, rather than a mix of old and new vessels.
Continue reading...Theodore’s 2OT winner gives Vegas 2-1 series lead
Hurricanes erase four-goal deficit before falling short
Marner records fastest hat trick in Cup final history
Shea Theodore scored at 5:38 of the second overtime, avoiding what could have been a potentially devastating loss for the Golden Knights after they blew a four-goal lead, and Vegas beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-4 on Saturday night for a 2-1 series lead.
Theodore’s goal, which went off goalie Brandon Bussi’s skate, came long after teammate Mitch Marner had the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history.
Continue reading..."A DNA-editing feat involving editing the genes of early stage embryos was announced this week," reports the Wall Street Journal. They describe the feat as "a far cry from designer babies, but nevertheless a step in that direction." Dieter Egli, an associate professor of developmental cell biology at Columbia University and his co-authors, including Nathan Treff of Nucleus Genomics, a New York-based DNA-testing startup, say the technology could help fix disease-causing mutations in embryos. "We're not throwing the final 'OK, you will have gene-edited babies tomorrow' at the public," said Egli. "That is a process that can occur through discussion matched with scientific progress...." Previous gene-editing efforts have often used Crispr, which can cut out parts of the DNA sequence, but the technology can also cause damage if the wrong DNA is targeted or cut out. In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jianku said he used Crispr to tweak DNA in human embryos and was imprisoned for the work. The technology Egli's group used, called base editing, allows them to target individual DNA letters in sequences more precisely with fewer adverse effects... Egli's group focused on altering two genes, one that can raise the risk of heart disease and one that is tied to blood disorders like sickle cell disease, and the research showed they were sometimes able to do so successfully, in the same embryo, without damage. "I am generally supportive of the concept of embryo editing to prevent genetic disease," said Dr. Paula Amato, a fertility expert at Oregon Health & Science University who wasn't involved in the research... Base editing has been used in human embryos before, according to peer-reviewed studies. The technology was used to correct a disease-causing mutation and an Alzheimer's disease-risk gene variant, said Alexis Komor, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn't involved in the work. "There really is not any unmet medical or clinical need for this, especially from an in vitro fertilization perspective," Komor said. "Usually what you'll hear is that they're doing it just so that you know we can prevent genetic diseases, but there are so many other better ways to do that." Using embryo editing to create babies is illegal in the U.S. and many other countries. Scientists have long worried that it is a slippery slope and that the technology could ultimately be used to promote eugenics. Her worry is that "they're basically building a blueprint" for more ethically problematic forms of embryo editing. "In my opinion, I think this is a huge no-no," Komor said. "There's just no ethical way to use this...." Nucleus Genomics Chief Executive Kian Sadeghi said his company plans to fund Egli's further research, building on the new findings. His company sells a polygenic embryo-screening product, which screens prospective parents' embryos and produces risk scores for their likelihood of developing disease, as well as factors like height, IQ and eye color. The company has said the IQ predictions are limited in accuracy. The research was published online Monday on a preprint server.
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Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 7.
Is there any modification that will make a stock one wheel GT not nose dive?
I just want to be clear I don’t want it to go faster. It’s plenty fast and not a speed machine.
The way it will nose dive though I just was wondering is there a way to make it never ever do that? Or is it really the safest thing for the machine to do if it’s being pushed on its limits. For reference I’m not hauling crazy fast on it but I am 200lbs.
Police in Toledo, Ohio, reported that there were believed to be at least two shooters. No suspects have been arrested.
What appeared to be an open-and-shut case for Texas investigators turned out to be a twisted murder plot involving victim Alyssa Beard's ex-boyfriend Andrew Beard and his fiancée Holly Elkins – who detectives say was the mastermind.
The University of California at Berkeley discovered the percentage of failing grades in multiple CS classes this spring "is significantly higher than past semesters," reports the campus's student newspaper. "Instructors point to students' increased reliance on AI, lack of mathematical preparedness and understaffing as potential contributing factors." According to [coursework platform] Berkeleytime, 35.3% of CS 10 students and 10.6% of CS 61A students received F's in spring 2026. In spring 2025 and spring 2024, the percentage of F's did not exceed 10% for either class. The electrical engineering and computer sciences department's grading guidelines state that 7% of students in lower division courses, including CS 10 and CS 61A, should receive D's and F's... [UC Berkeley teaching professor Dan Garcia, who taught both classes] believes the "primary driver" of these abnormally high failing rates is due to a "vast increase in academic dishonesty" due to students' usage of large language models, such as Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. "Some of the numbers that you saw from the number of students who receive failing grades were because we caught them (cheating) and prosecuted them and are sending their cases to the Center for Student Conduct," Garcia said. "But in other cases, it's students who are leaning a little too hard on LLMs to do their work for them, and then at exam time just really aren't ready." According to Garcia, nearly 30 students in CS 10 were "caught cheating on take-home exams" in spring 2026... In addition to overreliance on AI, Garcia also pointed out that many students are underprepared mathematically, a concern echoed by campus associate teaching professor Gireeja Ranade. Ranade noticed a similar lack of prerequisite mathematical skills in her spring 2026 EECS 127 class, "Optimization Models in Engineering," which she described as "differently challenging" to teach this semester. The class saw a 16.8% F rate, far higher than the 5% of D's and F's that the EECS department describes as "typical" for an upper division course... Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US and Iran exchange a series of strikes in latest threat to fragile ceasefire. Key US politics stories from 6 June at a glance
“Pessimistic” predictions that the Middle East war could push tens of millions more people into acute hunger if drawn out are being proven right, the UN says, as the US and Iran again exchanged fire, threatening the already fragile ceasefire.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned weeks ago that soaring oil prices were devastating global food security, but now, nearly three months into the conflict, “the negative scenario is unfortunately materialising”, said Jean-Martin Bauer, the director of WFP’s food and nutrition analysis service.
Continue reading...Sales have increased for Hyundai's under-$35,000 IONIQ 5, totalling 18,395 for the first five months of 2026, reports Electrek, "up 16% from the same period last year." But meanwhile BYD's overseas sales surpassed 160,000 for the first time last month, "up 80% from May 2025 and 19% from the previous record of 135,098 set in April." Through the first five months of 2026, BYD sold 616,263 vehicles overseas. In May, overseas sales accounted for over 41% of BYD's total sales. In several major markets, including the UK, BYD surpassed Tesla and Kia to become the best-selling EV brand through April. "With fuel prices remaining high, more drivers are turning to electric vehicles as a smarter and more economical choice," Bono Ge, BYD UK's Country Manager, said last month. Elsewhere Electrek notes that Toyota's bZ (starting at under $35,000) was the third-best-selling EV in the U.S. in the first three months of 2026, behind only the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y. "Last month, bZ sales doubled from May 2025, with 2,646 units sold." And meanwhile the first Volkswagen ID. Polo and Cupra Raval models "rolled off the production line at the Group's Martorell plant in Spain, the first of several new affordable, mass-market EVs." Starting at €24,995 ($29,000) and €26,000 ($30,100), the ID. Polo and Cupra Raval are the first models from the Group's Electric Urban Car Family... [T]he first customer deliveries are scheduled to begin later this summer and into the fall. Following the ID. Polo and Cupra Raval, Volkswagen will introduce new members to the Electric Urban Car Family, including the ID. Cross, an electric version of the T-Cross, later this year. According to Volkswagen, the ID. Cross will start at around €28,000 ($32,500).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wilson scores in first US appearance since 2024
Brazil answer with two goals in three minutes
Americans begin World Cup cycle with defeat
The US national team scheduled a pair of matches in Brazil in preparation of a return for the 2027 Women’s World Cup.
After quick start for the Americans, the hosts scored twice in three minutes for a 2-1 win at Sao Paulo on Saturday.
Continue reading...Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for June 7, No. 826.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for June 7, No. 1,092.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for June 7, No. 622.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 7, No. 1,814.
A search for the suspects continues as victims are taken to nearby hospitals, police say
A shooting near a community festival in Toledo, Ohio, wounded at least 12 people on Saturday, with police saying a search for the suspects was ongoing.
Two of the wounded were in a critical condition, Toledo deputy police chief Joe Heffernan said. He said it appeared there were at least two people firing weapons who were “probably shooting at each other”.
Continue reading...Golden Tempo made Cherie DeVaux the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner and the second woman to train a Belmont Stakes winner.
The Belmont Stakes hosted a New York rematch of the top two finishing horses from the Kentucky Derby to wrap up horse racing's Triple Crown for 2026.
 | Ive had my Onewheel pint S for a year and a half, but I’ve only put about 80 miles on it. I just moved to California hoping to finally get to use it, and somehow on the shipping journey it’s entirely blacked out and won’t respond to anything. ( shipped in the box I got it In with all the og padding) i messaged Onewheel, but since it’s out of warranty by half a year they want 400 or more dollars for a non guaranteed fix. I’m at a loss for next steps, any advise would be much appreciated. [link] [comments] |
In late March, his polling hovered near 3%, but in a stunning reversal Becerra has advanced to the general election
Xavier Becerra, the former Biden cabinet official whose California gubernatorial campaign survived a deeply underwhelming start, has advanced to the general election, in a stunning reverse of political fortune.
If he prevails in November, Becerra would make history as the state’s first Latino governor since 1875, when California was briefly led by Romualdo Pacheco, who was born in the territory when it was still part of Mexico.
Continue reading...Do you guys buy them used or new? I bought my other new.
I’m assuming people probably buy them it scares the shit out of them and they sell it.
Friday the Open Source Initiative welcomed the EU's new tech sovereignty package, noting that "over a third of the 29-page document is devoted to Open Source." The nonprofit OSI — maintainers of the Open Source definition — submitted their official feedback in February, and notes that "many" of their key requests were addressed, "as well as some exciting new announcements!" One of the biggest barriers to Open Source adoption has been public procurement. Too often, tenders have been designed around proprietary solutions, ignoring the benefits of Open Source and locking public institutions into closed ecosystems. The OSI called for procurement rules that prioritize interoperability, reusability, and vendor independence. The package takes a major step forward in this area. The EU pledges to make the public sector an anchor consumer for Open Source solutions. The Commission plans to reform procurement rules to remove barriers for Open Source, provide better guidance to EU countries on procurement criteria to avoid excluding Open Source, and uphold the "public money, public code" principle when procuring software development. Both proposals align with the OSI's feedback. The next critical step is the EU's public procurement law reform. The OSI will continue advocating to ensure these pledges translate into action. Beyond procurement, the OSI highlighted challenges faced by Open Source communities in Europe, particularly difficulties accessing investment and expertise to commercialize and scale projects. The Commission has responded by committing to ensure Open Source companies are considered for funding under the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF). It also plans to create "Open Source business accelerators" that will offer mentorship, training, legal and licensing consulting, and business development support, including marketing. Additionally, the Commission will work to raise industry awareness of Open Source solutions by leveraging the EU's existing business support networks. These measures directly address the OSI's concerns and could significantly boost the Open Source ecosystem in Europe... [I]n our feedback, we called for the continuation of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative that has funded many Open Source projects, and for the creation of a European Sovereign Tech Fund to fund ongoing maintenance and features development to meet the EU's needs. We also highlighted the need to mainstream Open Source in other funding opportunities (like the €100bn+ Horizon Europe programme). The Commission's strategy addresses these requests. The NGI will be scaled up under the new name "Open Internet Stack." A new Open Source Maintenance Instrument will fund the "maintenance and security upkeep of essential components." The Commission will also create a list of critical and security-relevant Open Source dependencies to inform funding decisions and promote Open Source solutions as the default approach in Horizon Europe funding. Friday's announcement from the Open Source Initiative notes that the EU is already leading by example in Open Source adoption. It applauds the EU for "deploying a Matrix-based communications system and the openDesk collaboration environment internally, trialing an alternative operating system to replace Windows, which is currently widely used in EU institutions, and expanding its presence on the Fediverse, with Commissioners and key departments already joining the EU's Mastodon server.'
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Treasury Department will use Iranian assets to help U.S. Gulf allies recover from damage caused by Tehran's regime, a source familiar with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's thinking told CBS News.
Widow of French ex-president Jacques Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator known for her charity work
Bernadette Chirac, the formidable widow of the former French president Jacques Chirac and a driving force behind his political rise, has died at the age of 93.
As France’s first lady for 12 years, Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator in support of her husband, who served twice as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and two terms as president.
Continue reading...Howdy Crew!
I know this has been asked a bunch of times but I feel like the posts I’ve seen have been with bigger or older riders. I’m 5’9 150lbs in my 20s. Mainly going to use it to commute back and forth from work about a 2 miles round trip. Maybe a little bit of gravel riding but mostly flat multipurpose trail by my house.
What are your guys opinions? I like the compact nature of the pints, is the XRC notably bigger?
This will be my first one wheel never ridden before. Was thinking about buying used but most of them in my area are only 100-200 dollars off of new prices.
Appreciate the help! Just don’t want to buy the pint and regret it.
+++Edit: are both boards equally waterproofed? I sometimes have to ride on wet roads, probably wouldn’t ride while it’s actively raining?
The Root reports: A New Mexico jury has found the Gila Regional Medical Center negligent in the death of Nichelle Nichols, who famously played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on the hit television series "Star Trek." According to KRQE News 13, Nichols' family filed a lawsuit against the hospital last year following her 2022 admission for shortness of breath. Nichols' family claimed that she should have received a full cardiac examination, but the medical personnel sent her to the observation unit, and she was discharged the next day. After being transported to her assisted living home, the 89-year-old passed away just seven hours later. In response to Nichol's tragic passing, the lawsuit alleged that Gila Medical Center "hired, credentialed, and inappropriately supervised unqualified medical providers" who treated the actress. The lawsuit also alleged that the hospital failed to secure a bed for Nichols or transfer her to a facility that had one. Furthermore, the attorney argued that the staff should have known that the assisted living center was not equipped to handle a patient with her medical needs. On Thursday (June 4), a jury found the hospital negligent and awarded Nichols' estate $13 million. KRQE got this quote from the estate's attorney about the death of the 89-year-old acctress. "At the end of the day, Nichelle Nichols had a heart attack that was missed. Thatâ(TM)s why she died." The jury deliberated for "just two hours."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Problems with processing visas had earlier led Iran to move its training base from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico.
Germany edge USA in final World Cup tune-up match
2 min: An early free kick given to Germany as Nmecha is brought down by Adams. Sané will take it.
1 min: And we’re off! The US kick off and attack from left to right in their all-blue strips. Germany are going from right to left in white shirts and blue shorts.
Continue reading...Antonee Robinson scores the Americans’ only goal
US open World Cup on 12 June against Paraguay
Ready or not, here comes the group stage.
The US men concluded their pre-World Cup preparations with a 2-1 loss against Germany on Saturday at Soldier Field, in front of a lively sellout crowd of 63,636. The fans made their way to the historic venue on a Chicago summer afternoon which alternated palpable heat with occasional drizzling rain.
Continue reading...The Ladybird browser isn't opposed to AI coding tools, but it's just brought a new change to their code-contributing policies. February 23: "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI." Our first target was LibJS , Ladybirdâ(TM)s JavaScript engine... I used Claude Code and Codex for the translation. This was human-directed, not autonomous code generation. I decided what to port, in what order, and what the Rust code should look like. It was hundreds of small prompts, steering the agents where things needed to go... The requirement from the start was byte-for-byte identical output from both pipelines. The result was about 25,000 lines of Rust, and the entire port took about two weeks. The same work would have taken me multiple months to do by hand. June 5 (Friday): We will no longer accept public pull requests... A pull request no longer tells us as much as it used to about the person submitting it. A substantial patch used to imply substantial effort, and that effort was a reasonable proxy for good faith. That assumption no longer holds.... We have already seen patient, well-resourced campaigns in open source to earn maintainer trust and abuse it. What has changed is how much faster and cheaper it has become to produce work that looks like a serious contribution... Whether code was typed by hand is beside the point. What matters is who is responsible for it once it enters the browser. Ladybird is becoming a browser for real users. The people introducing changes to it must be the people who decide those changes belong in the project, and who will answer for the consequences. As part of this change, we will close all currently open public pull requests. We are grateful for the work people put into them, but keeping the existing queue open would keep that contribution path open in practice. There is no perfect time to make this change, so we are making it now. Going forward, pull requests will only be available to project maintainers. There will not be a separate process for submitting patches by other means. We do not want to create a shadow contribution system through issues, comments, email, or forks... Outside involvement still matters: clear bug reports, reductions, website testing, standards discussion, design discussion, security reports, and technical feedback all help move the project forward. This is the right change for Ladybird now. We are preparing to ship a browser to real users, and our development process has to match that responsibility.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Donald Trump pardoned Stephen Buyer of Indiana, who served nearly two years in prison after conviction
As his administration promotes what it calls a crackdown on fraud in states run by Democrats, Donald Trump once again used the pardon power to excuse financial crimes committed by a Republican, granting a pardon this week to Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana who served nearly two years in prison for making illegal stock trades based on inside information after he left office.
Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 for trades made while working as a consultant and lobbyist. He was ordered to forfeit more than $350,000, representing the amount of the illegal gains, and pay a $10,000 fine. He was released in 2025.
Continue reading...Plan backed by Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary had footprint reduced but concerns remain over its health impacts
Utah residents have teamed up with a progressive non-profit organization to sue over an under-development AI datacenter backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, claiming the planned Stratos project facility “irrevocably” cuts off citizens’ rights by not allowing sufficient public input.
Filed by the Alliance for a Better Utah and five unnamed residents of the Box Elder county area where the center is being developed, the lawsuit comes as Shark Tank co-host O’Leary agreed to scale back the physical footprint for the project.
Continue reading...The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was in his mother’s arms when soldiers fired on family in Hebron
Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby in the occupied West Bank and injured his parents after opening fire on the family’s car, despite it having complied with an order to stop.
Soldiers opened fire on Friday on a car carrying the infant and his parents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was critically injured, evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died.
Continue reading...The so-called "Flamingo Revolution" has taken up the cause of protecting the Albanian coast from a development led by the president's son-in-law.
The 3-in-1 handheld device offers cooling and heating therapy elements.
From Android Authority: Singapore-based BMX has announced that its SolidSafe magnetic power bank lineup, first showcased at CES 2026, is now available for purchase through its website and Amazon US, with prices starting at $59. What sets these power banks apart is their use of semi-solid-state batteries. Traditional lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries rely on liquid electrolytes to move energy between electrodes. Semi-solid-state batteries significantly reduce the amount of flammable liquid inside the cell, improving thermal stability and lowering the risk of overheating, swelling, or fire... BMX says the power banks are designed to remain stable under extreme conditions and show greater resistance to physical damage and thermal stress than conventional battery packs. The company has also launched the SolidSafe Air, a 5,000mAh magnetic power bank that it claims is the world's thinnest semi-solid-state Qi2 power bank... BMX is positioning the device as a travel-friendly alternative for users who want added safety and the convenience of a magnetic battery pack without the bulk. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
These are the pros and cons I experienced during the weeks I spent testing Dyson's HushJet Mini Cool, and whether it's worth the price this summer.
Eighteen-year-old man arrested after car collides with cyclist Anthony Canty, who died in hospital four days later
A lottery winner has died after a suspected hit-and-run in Essex, police said.
Officers were called to the collision between a cyclist and a black Ford Ka in Tiptree at 6.30am on 21 May. The cyclist, a man in his 30s, was taken to hospital where he died four days later, Essex police said.
Continue reading...I just got a pint it's a lot of fun I'm just having trouble controlling it I'm not sure if it's a confidence issue or if I'm just missing something I can't seem to turn without falling off
The party may reclaim the US House and even Senate, but primary candidates are far from united on how to move forward
Across the country, in front yards and on main streets, at dairy breakfasts and inside breweries, voters are delivering a similar message to Democratic primary candidates: they’re tired of both parties, and sick of being ignored.
The Democratic party brand is bruised after its disastrous 2024 presidential loss. A botched review of the defeat by the Democratic National Committee, and a drawn-out process over releasing the so-called autopsy, created another round of handwringing over the party’s direction.
Continue reading...Just came back from a ride on a trail that I discovered recently and while carving at a slow speed in a fairly empty lane a biker coming from the other direction swerved close to me flipping me off while saying “you’re not supposed to be here!” Funny thing is that he passed by e-bikes and people on scooters while saying nothing to them. So was I in the wrong for being on a paved trail with signs saying no motor vehicles?
Democrat denies reports of physical intimidation towards women, saying his past has been ‘weaponized’
The Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Friday predicted that Maine’s voters would support him four days later in his party primary despite a string of controversies – including recent negative headlines about his treatment of women that he said had been “weaponized”.
In a 25-minute speech before supporters in Bar Harbor, the oyster farmer and US marine combat veteran addressed the controversies about his personal conduct, which escalated on Thursday with a New York Times report in which three former romantic partners described disturbing behavior, including being physically intimidated by him.
Continue reading...Ukrainian leader will attend UK meeting along with French president and German chancellor
Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war.
Continue reading...My real concerns are whether it’s really worth it for the things I want to see improved by going VESC.
First and foremost: drops and trails. I like riding, doing big drops, and the occasional trail, but I really dislike how snappy and jerky FM firmware goes about it.
Second is speed, and I want to clarify this one heavily. I’m not trying to speed max in any way, shape, or form. I simply want to be able to keep up in the areas that don’t have sidewalks and where I’m forced to ride in the street. Basically, I’d like to be able to comfortably push it to around 35 and top out around 40 or something.
I’ve ridden with a tuned-up GT VESC that went around 40, and he claimed it could push close to 50. I don’t want that, but I feel like 35 would be nice.
I’ve never VESC’d a board before, so I’m more looking for guidance on whether my expectations are unrealistic or if getting the GT-S FO kit is worth it for what I’m after.
Bluesky's chief operating officer believes teen social media bans "risk entrenching Big Tech's dominance," reports CNBC: Rose Wang, Bluesky's chief operating officer, told CNBC on the sidelines of SXSW in London on Wednesday that the smaller open-source platform isn't opposed to regulation but that smaller players in the industry should be protected. "I support the protection and the safety of youth... The question that we have then is at what cost? Because essentially what I'm scared of is in the long term, we're headed to a world where there's about three to five platforms, and extreme heavy regulation of those platforms... "Basically the whole compliance teams of these platforms are 10 times the size of our entire team," Wang said. "So, basically, we're living in a world where it's almost impossible for smaller entrants to come in and build healthier spaces." The article notes Bluesky had grown to 43 million users as of March, "which is still only around 10% of X's estimated 450 million users. Bluesky has struggled to maintain popularity, and by the end of October last year, it had reportedly seen a 40% drop in daily mobile active users over the past 12 months."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Just purchased a brand new XRC and it seems to be dead out of the box. Plug it in charger shows green. Board quickly flash red when I try to turn it on. I've plugged it now for a bit over 12 hours. Anything I should be looking for? Will the charger turn red ones the battery is balanced and actually charging?
Apple must pay iPhone owners to settle a lawsuit over delayed and missing AI features.
Musician donates to USC to help create endowed chair to recognize Dr Joseph Sugerman, who treated her for years
Legendary singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks has given $3m to the University of Southern California’s medical school to recognize the physician who has helped care for her voice throughout much of her career.
The major donation supports the creation of an endowed chair in otolaryngology at USC’s Keck School of Medicine in honor of Dr Joseph Sugerman, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Beverly Hills who has treated the singer – along with other performers and patients – for many years.
Continue reading...Hegseth's speech echoed broader Trump administration rhetoric over border security and migration in Europe.
Scientists "have made a discovery that may help prevent some people from developing lung cancer," reports the New York Times, noting that lung cancer "kills more people worldwide than any other cancer." A team of more than 80 researchers working across four continents have identified a set of proteins in the blood that accurately predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis. The scientists also found early evidence that an existing anti-inflammatory drug could significantly reduce lung cancer risk in people with elevated concentrations of these proteins, which they linked to inflammation. More research is needed before a test based on these proteins could be ready for use in patients. And scientists would still need to run a randomized trial to determine whether the drug prevents lung cancers. Still, outside experts said the findings, which were published on Thursday in the journal Cell, offer a promising starting point toward a long-held public health goal... Led by Dr. Swanton, Dr. Tej Pandya, a Ph.D. student, and other researchers took a set of 48,000 blood samples from the UK Biobank and used machine learning to identify 14 proteins associated with the development of lung cancer. When the researchers looked at the presence of those proteins and also took into account a patient's age, smoking status and history of lung disease, they were able to predict who would develop lung cancer more accurately than the best risk assessment models currently in use... Using mouse and cell models, the scientists showed that these proteins increased when a specific inflammatory pathway was activated. Smoking and air pollution can activate that pathway. This adds to the evidence that it isn't just genetic mutations caused by smoking, pollution or other factors that are driving lung cancers. Rather, Dr. Swanton said, the findings suggest that "smoke causes mutations and inflammation, which together cause cancer." They also found that the signature was increased in people who later developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pulmonary fibrosis, pointing to a common inflammatory environment upstream of all three diseases.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
my physical therapist said I need to massage my feet after 3 hours of riding. Any one do this? Any recs?
The eighth-ranked Andreeva ended the run of 114th-ranked Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska in the French Open final on Saturday.
James Higginbotham was found dead in a mountainous area outside Kyoto by a volunteer search-and-rescue group, his mother said.
Spaniards find themselves increasingly divided over issues including immigration, feminism and political corruption.
U.S. forces shot down Iranian missiles and drones launched toward the strait and neighboring countries.
Technology secretary Liz Kendall says she is ‘very concerned’ about role of social media but will not be ‘bullied off’ X
The government is considering fresh action to halt the spread of misinformation during public crises, Liz Kendall has said, insisting she will not be “bullied off” Elon Musk’s X.
The technology secretary was speaking after rioting broke out in Southampton over the police response to the fatal stabbing of Henry Nowak, a case about which Musk has repeatedly posted.
Continue reading...As detainees go on hunger strike over conditions at Delaney Hall, relatives describe concern for loved ones’ wellbeing
In mid-May, Elder Guerra was showering inside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility when he slipped and fell.
Guerra, a Guatemalan immigrant, has been locked up in the New Jersey jail for nearly five months. He was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Newark in January while helping a friend move his snowed-in car. Officers had approached and asked a few questions, according to a relative who spoke with the Guardian.
Continue reading...Pontiff to make marginalised a focus of first papal visit since 2011 including meeting with migrants in the Canaries
Pope Leo has urged political leaders to seek unity, rather than divide their populations for political gain, and said they must fight for peace, in the opening speech of his tour in Spain.
The pope has made the marginalised a focus of his visit – his first tour of an EU country, apart from Italy – including meeting homeless people in Madrid and migrants in the Canary Islands. The pope, who has clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over his immigration policies and war with Iran, said his visit was aimed at setting an example of respecting “every human being”.
Continue reading...An upcoming vote in a few weeks on America's cryptocurrency "Clarity Act" is "rattling Wall Street and consumer advocates," reports CNN, with its proposal to regulate the bulk of crypto markets through America's Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "It allows crypto companies to operate, at long last, in compliance with U.S. rules, rather than what they have been doing — essentially running their businesses within a patchwork of state and federal legal gray areas." Even for Jamie Dimon, the banking titan who's not known to mince words, it was a surprising shot across the bow when he described a fellow financier as "full of sh*t." "No one's gonna bow down to this guy or that company," Dimon told Fox Business last week. "This guy" being Brian Armstrong, and "that company" being cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The Dimon-Armstrong tension isn't new, but it is boiling over publicly as the Senate inches closer to a floor vote on the crypto industry's No. 1 legislative priority, known as the Clarity Act. Dimon, a longtime crypto skeptic, broadly supports crypto regulation but takes issue with a provision in the Clarity Act that would allow companies like Coinbase to "effectively pay interest on deposits... without the protection they should have." The spicy comment about Armstrong came after Dimon rattled off other concerns about the Clarity Act, including what he sees as its insufficient anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer safeguards that banks have had in place for decades... "If (Armstrong) takes deposits like a bank, he should have bank rules," Dimon said in the Fox Business interview... The immediate concern from banks (and many consumer advocates) is that crypto exchanges like Coinbase would, in the grand tradition of Silicon Valley innovation, lure customers in with huge rewards and then phase those benefits out over time. Deposits in a crypto exchange are also not insured by the federal government the way bank deposits are, but that's the kind of fine print that customers tend to overlook until it's too late. JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Trish Wexler underscored that the bank wants the bill to pass, with some "fixes," like prohibiting rewards on stablecoin holdings and strengthening anti-money-laundering guardrails. Coinbase's CEO responded in an interview with Politico: Armstrong pointed to restrictions on rewards paid to idle cryptocurrency balances and disclosures on stablecoins as part of a handful of policies included in the bill to appease the banking industry's requests. "I think it'd be good for the banks," Armstrong said of the bill. "It would be great for crypto companies as well ... Hopefully we can get past the absolutisms and just see if we can get this bill over the finish line." But CNN notes concerns about weaving cryptocurrency — "a historically self-contained financial system prone to stomach-churning booms and busts" — more deeply into America's traditional finance infrastructure: "It's not just a crypto story, it's a broad deregulation of our securities markets story," Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who specializes in banking and cryptocurrency, said in an interview. And that should concern everyone, Allen says, even if they have no investments at all, because "if we get a financial crisis in this space... no one comes out of that unscathed."
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Joint-chair of relegated club to tackle ‘false allegations’
‘I am not the person the media has decided to paint me as’
The former pornography baron David Sullivan has announced his resignation as a joint-chair and director of West Ham with immediate effect.
Sullivan and his legal representatives said in a statement that the 77-year-old billionaire was stepping down to apply his “full energy and attention” to fighting what he described as “false allegations” concerning his personal conduct, due to be aired as part of a joint investigation by BBC Panorama and the Times on Monday.
Continue reading...With colorful signage depicting corporate greed and pollution, AI data center protesters staked out Microsoft's annual Build conference.
Knicks edge Spurs 105-104 to take 2-0 NBA finals lead
Wembanyama made costly turnover in final seconds
No team has won finals after losing first two at home
San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama could barely remember the details of the late-game miscues that cost the Spurs in their agonizing 105-104 loss to the New York Knicks in Game 2 of the NBA finals on Friday.
The Spurs used a 14-0 scoring run to erase a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit and briefly took a one-point lead before it all fell apart.
Continue reading...The daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, running again for the presidency, is herself deeply unpopular. So is her opponent.
Dr. Peter Stafford was working with a missionary group in the Congo when he came down with the virus last month.
Sullivan hoped football would legitimise him but claims about historical conduct have led to his resignation from West Ham
• Sullivan steps down at West Ham to fight claims about private life
When David Sullivan was growing up in a council house in Cardiff, he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. Short and squat, he would never be a player, but later in life the fortune he built through the pornography industry and the property world gave him a route into the sport. The only problem, Sullivan discovered, was finding a club willing to roll out the welcome carpet for him and his business partners, David and Ralph Gold.
They were fans of West Ham United and bought a stake in the east London club in 1991, only to find entry to the boardroom closed. “We had no contact with the board,” the late David Gold wrote in his autobiography. “They simply did not want David Sullivan and the Golds at their football club.”
Continue reading...An official trailer dropped this week for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. It's "a full-blown remake of the original 1996 Tomb Raider game," reports Kotaku, "rebuilt from the ground up using Unreal Engine 5." Developed by Flying Wild Hog (with assistance/guidance from longtime Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics), "it will also make some changes to puzzles, combat, platforming..." The game's Steam page acknowledges that AI-assisted tools were used during development "to support some early exploration and temporary development content," but that any AI-assisted assets were "either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team." In a statement to Eurogamer, Crystal Dynamics clarifies that they "leverage" AI tools "to help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted." (But are they considering AI-assisted assets "refined" by humans as "human-crafted"?) Polygon reports that "The early response to the news has been mixed to negative on the Tomb Raider subreddit, ranging from vague hopes that the generative-AI craze will simply go away to grim resignation that this is the future of game development." Beyond labor concerns, art theft worries, and environmental issues, the most straightforward reason AI art has been unpopular is that many players find it hideous. We'll find out for sure whether Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis' use of AI is particularly blatant when it comes out in February 2027. Its release date is February 12, 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former figures at regulator voice disquiet after series of provocative interviews by recently departed chair
Regulators are not generally known for courting controversy. When the day job involves making delicate, legally fraught decisions, they tend to be a circumspect bunch.
However, since stepping down as chair of Ofcom, one of Britain’s most scrutinised watchdogs, the Conservative peer Michael Grade has been doing his best to buck that stereotype. “I’m free of the shackles,” he recently said.
Continue reading...State’s tortoise-like pace is byproduct of system of verifications and opportunities for voters to fix errors
California’s slow vote counting has frustrated political observers eagerly awaiting results, and handed Donald Trump and others an opportunity to claim “election rigging”. But experts say the system is working as designed: to protect against fraud and assure every vote is counted.
Within a day of the polls closing in California’s primary election this week, Trump started accusing Democrats of “trying to steal” the elections for the state’s governor and the mayor of Los Angeles. The justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe the ballot-counting process in Los Angeles this week.
Continue reading...Increase in complaints about the hazardous eye sore has prompted city to take action to curb irresponsible owners
Kumar Satya has lived in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood since 2017 and said he loves the local parks, how people talk on the street and the sound of children “screaming, playing”.
“It was a very hot day two weeks ago, and you noticed tiny children just offering lemonade to people,” said Satya, a physician who has a 13-year-old son.
Continue reading...Governor issues disaster declaration as agencies move to stop spread of parasite, including release of sterile flies
A second case of the flesh-eating screwworm fly has been confirmed in Texas by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), days after an initial case in a one-year-old calf set off an aggressive response to stop the spread of the parasite in the dominant cattle-producing state.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, said on Friday that state officials were working with the federal government to slow the spread of the fly and the infestations caused by larvae that feed on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals and humans.
Continue reading...Robin Pendery died after she fell while climbing on patrol on the mountain known locally as Denali
A ranger in Alaska died after falling into a crevasse on North America’s tallest mountain, the US National Park Service said.
Robin Pendery fell on Thursday while on climbing patrol on the mountain whose locally given name is Denali. She died despite immediate rescue efforts, the park service said.
Continue reading...Baseus' Bowie MC2 open buds are easily one of the top budget clip-on models, delivering surprisingly good sound and voice-calling performance.
Congressional Democrats say GOP majority is unraveling, but moves may in fact be aimed at retaining power
The wrath of Donald Trump has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus far. But as the November midterm elections draw closer, the president’s allies in the Senate and House of Representatives appear increasingly willing to defy a president who appears to have asked lawmakers for too much in some areas and too little in others, all while the public sours on his administration.
In both chambers, small groups of Republicans have in recent weeks joined with Democrats to advance resolutions requiring that Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing hostilities against Iran. Republican dissidents in the House helped pass another round of aid for Ukraine, as well as an effort to protect Haitians from deportation. In the Senate, a critical mass of Republican senators has given Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, a cold reception.
Continue reading...Prediction markets have become a draw for young men in search of quick cash and thrills, experts say. "I had almost $4,600 at one point but squandered that," one man said.
Utah residents and a progressive nonprofit are suing officials over Kevin O'Leary's planned Stratos Project AI data center, arguing that the special authority overseeing it gives unelected officials too much control over land use, taxation, public health, and local governance. The lawsuit comes as O'Leary has agreed to shrink the proposed 40,000-acre project by 75% amid mounting political and community pushback. NBC News reports: The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Utah's 3rd District Court by the Alliance for a Better Utah and the group of anonymous residents. The plaintiffs hope to challenge the constitutionality of the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) -- a special entity that oversees the data center's proposal -- and its approval of the project, a spokesperson for the nonprofit said. Attorney David Irvine, who is representing the plaintiffs, alleges that MIDA is exercising powers as an unelected body that "the Utah Constitution never authorized." "Under the Stratos plan, it would hold permanent, irrevocable control over public health, safety, taxation, and land use across tens of thousands of acres of Box Elder County, with no voter recourse," he said in a statement. The lawsuit alleges that allowing MIDA to oversee the data center's development "irrevocably" cuts off Box Elder County citizens' rights by not allowing sufficient public input in the project. "The Stratos Project Area Plan, and actions taken by MIDA and the Commission to enact the same, puts lawmaking power respecting questions of public health, safety, welfare, morals, taxation, zoning, land use, and the like, in relation to a significant swath of county territory in a non-elected MIDA Board," the complaint reads. In addition to MIDA and the Box Elder County Commission, the lawsuit names Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams and state Sen. Jerry Stevenson, who also serve as MIDA board members. Irvine said Adams and Stevenson's presence on the MIDA board as active legislators "appears to violate the prohibition on holding more than one office of public trust simultaneously," and claimed this should render the data center's approval "null and void."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Karmelo Anthony, who is Black, is accused of stabbing Austin Metcalf, who was white, at track meet in an affluent Dallas suburb
After a 2025 high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, ended with one student dead and another accused of murder, Karmelo Anthony, then 17, was indicted on first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf, 17. Social media posts about the death divided the case into racial lines, sparking national outrage. Anthony, who is being tried as an adult, is Black; Metcalf was white.
This week marked the beginning of Anthony’s murder trial.
Continue reading...Plus all the details on Monstropolis and the new Muppets-themed roller coaster.
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On the first papal visit to Spain in 15 years, Leo plans to address political polarization and showcase the Catholic Church as an advocate for migrants and asylum seekers.
The S26 Ultra might seem exciting but the older S25 Ultra is almost as good and costs a lot less.
Commentary: We could get our first glimpse at software features for the rumored foldable iPhone Ultra at WWDC 26, and I'm stoked.
Dr. Sara Whittingham thought she would know if something was wrong. But her minor symptoms had a surprising cause.
Bodies were buried in Happisburgh after HMS Invincible sank in 1801 on way to join Nelson at Battle of Copenhagen
A mass grave for 119 sailors who drowned more than 200 years ago could be exhumed to avoid their remains being exposed by coastal erosion.
HMS Invincible sank off the Norfolk coast in 1801 on its way to join Horatio Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of those who drowned were buried at St Mary’s church in Happisburgh, the nearest village to the shipwreck.
Continue reading...Cold storage and logistics body warns food supplies at risk from fuel shortages, cyber attacks and extreme weather
Ministers have been accused of being complacent about the risks to vital supplies of food into the UK amid concerns over fuel shortages, cyber attacks and extreme weather.
The trade body for cold storage and logistics has urged the government to make potential disruption to the UK’s food system an “immediate national priority”.
Continue reading...CNN anchor Jake Tapper joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss
Forget the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight being held on the White House lawn, if you want to tune in to a far more amusing brawl, may I suggest Hunter Biden v Jake Tapper? The CNN anchor is categorically unimpressed with Jill Biden’s new memoir, View from the East Wing, and has joined a chorus of voices accusing the former first lady of rewriting history and dodging accountability for the 2024 loss. In response, Hunter has accused Tapper of having the wrong priorities.
“So let me get this straight,” Hunter wrote on Twitter/X on Wednesday. “Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land. Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan. Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted. And I know: ‘But what about your paintings, Hunter?’ Please.”
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Kristen Gonzalez, a state senator who authored the bill, said moratorium would target ‘hyperscale’ datacenters over 20MW
New York moved closer toward becoming the first US state to enact a moratorium on large datacenters this week. On Thursday, the state legislature approved a one-year ban on the facilities powering the AI boom.
The measure now heads to Kathy Hochul, the governor, who will decide whether to sign it into law. The Guardian spoke to a state senator in the wake of the historic vote about authoring the bill and the wider US backlash against datacenters.
Continue reading...I just watched a video of a toy onewheel that had folding rails. The rails fold at the axle, picture a laptop with a tire centered at the hinge. The one in the video is a joke, a patio toy, but would folding rails be useful, say on a Pint platform, for commuters?
The 35-year-old man was spearfishing with family when he was attacked by a shark on Saturday, police said.
Iran attacks American bases in Gulf states after Washington shoots down drones and strikes Iranian radar sites
Bahrain has said Iran fired ballistic missiles and drones at it and Kuwait, hours after the US and Iran exchanged strikes over the Gulf, the latest in a series of flare-ups that threatened to break the fragile ceasefire.
Air raid sirens rang out on Saturday in Bahrain and people were told to move to a safe location and await further instructions. Kuwait’s military said it was intercepting drones and missiles launched at the country.
Continue reading...Total number charged rises to 11 after protests that broke out following sentencing of man for murder of 18-year-old
Six more people have been charged with violent disorder in Southampton after riots broke out following the sentencing of a man for the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak.
It brings the total number of people charged after disorder in the city to 11. Kevin Reeves, 31, of Portswood Road, Southampton; Andrew Riddett, 38, of Seacombe Green, Southampton; Harry Varney, 34, of Briarswood, Southampton; Taylor Grundy, 22, of Pavillion Way, Gosport; and Dillon Crawford, 29, of Wilton Avenue, Southampton, were charged with violent disorder, Hampshire constabulary said.
Continue reading...The New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, briefly stepped away from City Hall to tackle the ultimate soccer challenge: predicting the entire World Cup bracket In the Guardian's exclusive interactive game. From shocking early exits to his definitive pick for the final, see how Mamdani maps out the world’s biggest tournament
Continue reading...Sam Fahd Abu Haikal was killed Friday evening, and his parents were wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Here's what Apple is expected to introduce at WWDC 2026 for the next version of its Mac operating system.
Lepro's lamp wants you to move chatbot prompts over to your lighting. It's surprisingly fun on-demand décor.
Among the many new smartphones we’ve tested, the best cheap phones include the iPhone 17E, the Google Pixel 10A and the Motorola Razr.
After 50 years of searching, astronomers say they have finally found evidence of a long-sought "wind" blowing from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. "Unless a black hole exists in a perfect vacuum, it must blow a wind somehow. And there is no perfect vacuum in the universe," team co-leader and Northwestern University researcher Mark Gorski said in a statement. "With new observations, this is the first time we've had a clean enough view to see the wind's imprint. We looked at the data and said, 'There it is. There is the thing that everybody's been looking for for 50 years.'" Space.com reports: Scientists have been aware for some time that feeding black holes launch powerful outflows of material around them, including jets and winds. Winds are caused when matter falling to the black hole is accelerated to near light-speed, generating pressure that pushes infalling material away. That has been seen with ravenously feeding black holes before, but not the barely feeding Sgr A*. Its sparse consumption of material and the fact it is obscured by the plane of the Milky Way from our vantage point have made tracing this wind difficult. Gorski's Northwestern colleague and team co-leader Lena Murchikova pointed out that the scientists were the first to detect molecular gas very close to Sgr A* feeding the supermassive black hole. That makes Sgr A* reassuringly like other supermassive black holes. "The wind is not powerful, and its direction probably wanders with time. It shows that our black hole is not unique, and our place in the universe is not unique," Murchikova added. "To observe our own black hole, we have to look through the plane of our galaxy. That means we have to peer through gas, dust and ionized structures, and you can't really see through all of that easily." While the team's results confirm that Sgr A* is extremely quiet compared to the supermassive black holes that sit in bright, turbulent regions of other galaxies called active galactic nuclei (AGN), this black hole wind is no slouch. In fact, the scientists think that it has been raging for around 20,000 years. "The majority of other galaxies spend most of their lives in a state where they are not particularly active," Murchikova said. "But we can only see them when they are in a fireworks stage. It is very attractive to study black holes when they are in the fireworks stage, but that's not actually their dominant state. "Sgr A* finally gives us a window into the life of a black hole in this quiet state." The team's research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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I love soccer. But absurd ticket prices and odious politics are keeping me away from the stadiums
Forgive me if I’m not excited for the World Cup. After a heartbreaking loss for my beloved Arsenal in the Champions League Final, I’d love a break from soccer. A respite from the drama and misery of the beautiful game would do a lot of good for my soul right now. But Fifa, the sport’s sprawling governing body, doesn’t have time for me to lick my wounds. They demand my wallet.
With the World Cup coming to North America, I have no chance of escaping the monstrous hype, even if I can’t even imagine affording the exorbitant ticket prices. Thousands of seats remain available for the US’s opening group stage match against Paraguay in Los Angeles, which was an unthinkable result when the competition was awarded to the US, Mexico and Canada.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
This article was corrected on 6 June 2026 to reflect the fact that Bukayo Saka, unlike Marc Guéhi, is not an immigrant
Continue reading...A long trade war looms. Trump’s scattershot protectionism, chaotic tariffs and belligerence against our natural allies guarantees that US trade policy will remain a hot mess
We are in for a long trade war.
In the months since “Liberation Day” last year, when Donald Trump let loose a volley of tariffs against imports from everywhere, countries have rushed to build new relationships in the hope of maybe circumventing the US to protect the global trading system.
Continue reading...Union says collective agreement is just the start of a broader fight to unionize major employers across the country
Canadian warehouse workers have signed the first-ever collective agreement with Walmart, a breakthrough labour organizers are calling a “historic and powerful step”.
But the union says the deal with a corporation long hostile to organized labour is only an opening salvo in a broader fight to unionize major employers across the country.
Continue reading...HMS Prince of Wales expected to sail ‘in the coming days’ according to British government spokesperson
A technical issue has been detected on the UK navy’s flagship as it was docked in Norway, after the warship worked with Nato and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the government has said.
Earlier this month, the HMS Prince of Wales – one of Britain’s two flagship aircraft carriers built for £6.4bn – set sail for Nordic waters from Loch Long, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, to provide security in the Atlantic and High North regions.
Continue reading...Kareem’s Daily Quote: Do you trust a reputation built by bragging, or one earned slowly enough that other people tell the story for you?
Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List: A promotion list with zero women and almost no officers of color is not merit at work, it is discrimination pure and simple.
Treasury Department preps for Trump $250 bill: So why has the Tubman $20 bill taken more than a decade?
Loan rules would gut aid for thousands of low-paying professions: We’re mistaking narrow accounting for actual human value.
What I’m Watching: The Christophers has two great actors sparring. I’m all in.
Jukebox Playlist: Springsteen brings an old labor work song to life.
“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.” Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French mathematician and philosopher
I doubt Donald Trump has ever heard of Blaise Pascal, but he certainly doesn’t subscribe to the wisdom of the above quote. Just last weekend, he referred to himself on Truth [sic] Social as “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP…” I can just imagine poor Blaise smacking his forehead with his palm and shaking his head in disgust.
Pascal was a mathematician first, and you can feel the simple mathematical logic in his brief quote, a proof so tight you could fit it in a fortune cookie. He wrote in fragments, published posthumously as the Pensées, notes full of this kind of compact common sense. The instinct Pascal is pointing at is one most of us recognize, even if we’d rather not. We all want people to think well of us, and some people just can’t resist telling them why they should. The machinery of self-promotion has never been more omnipresent, and yet a 2015 study from Carnegie Mellon confirms what Pascal knew centuries ago: self-promoters consistently overestimate how positively their self-promotion lands. As one of the study’s authors put it, “Bragging is probably just the tip of the iceberg of the self-destructive things we do in the service of self-promotion.” It’s like a lifelong conman and convicted criminal hanging a giant glowering portrait of himself on the façade of the Justice Department. You think that’s going to convince anyone you’re a good guy?
What is it about the announcement of our own worth that makes listeners respond with skepticism rather than admiration? The answer is obvious: we evaluate testimony from interested parties the same way a jury does, with suspicion built in. A reputation is built on the slow accumulation of demonstrated behavior that other people can observe, form judgments about, and share with their friends and neighbors. When Frederick Douglass was rising to national prominence in the 1840s, his reputation spread entirely through the testimony of people who watched him speak and who came away changed. The same was true of Martin Luther King Jr. and, more recently, Barack Obama. The only people who ever said anything nice about Donald Trump (besides Trump himself) were either on his payroll or hoping to be remembered in his will.
Trump may be a master when it comes to getting people’s attention, but it’s the sort of attention that used to be found mainly at carnivals. It’s cheap, loud, and built on promises that were never meant to be kept. Pascal never would have fallen for that kind of nonsense, and neither should we.
We will be changing our publishing dates going forward to Tuesdays & Fridays.
British vehicles will emit extra 17m tonnes of CO2 by 2030 due to loophole allowing sale of more PHEVs, data suggests
Campaigners have urged the government to resist calls to further water down electric car sale rules, as an analysis reveals that vehicles on UK roads will emit an extra 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030 mostly because of changes last year.
Parts of the car industry have urged ministers to review for a second time the rules that force manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric cars each year.
Continue reading...The justice department decision to launch a criminal investigation into Carroll is a troubling, dark turn
Donald Trump is accused of raping E Jean Carroll, the magazine writer, in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store sometime in the mid-1990s. Trump denies this, as he denies all the sexual abuse allegations that have been made against him by more than two dozen women, but he was found to have sexually abused Carroll by a federal jury; later, another jury found that he defamed her when he said that she had lied about it. She didn’t lie.
Trump has vowed to appeal the rulings, but he’s so far been frustrated: a federal court panel declined to hear his appeal of one verdict, and the US supreme court has so far delayed a decision on whether to hear another of his appeals in the matter no fewer than 12 times. She won two judgments from Trump: $5m for sexual abuse and defamation, and more than $83m for defamation. The president has used his office to enrich himself so blatantly that he almost certainly has the money to pay her. But Carroll hasn’t seen a dime; it’s not clear that she ever will.
Continue reading...St Anthony of Padua asks for prayers for survivors after removing Anthony Odiong’s name from list of intentions
A Louisiana Catholic church that solicited prayers for a former pastor recently sentenced to life imprisonment for criminal clerical sexual assault, then backed off having offended his victims, is asking its community to pray for survivors of clergy abuse.
The shift took place in an updated 7 June parochial bulletin published by St Anthony of Padua church in the New Orleans suburb of Luling, Louisiana, where priest Anthony Odiong was pastor from 2015 to late 2023.
Continue reading...Mark, 17, struggled to make it through senior year after his dad was deported to El Salvador. Getting his diploma was bittersweet for the Maryland teen – as his dad watched on a livestream
As Mark was getting ready for his high school graduation, he thought about how his dad would have probably insisted on adjusting his slacks – they were a bit tight – and fixed up his tie. “He would want me to look my best,” he said.
But his dad and namesake, Marco, was 2,000 miles away. He had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Maryland just before Christmas and deported to El Salvador in March.
Continue reading...So many options; so many price hikes. We break it all down to help you pick the best streamer that fits your tastes and budget.
Anthropic’s high-profile spat with the Pentagon gave it a killer marketing advantage, burnishing its public image as a principled AI company that puts values over profits — unlike more mercenary rivals such as OpenAI or Google. But Anthropic’s double standard on authoritarianism suggests the nearly trillion-dollar firm is as calculating and ethically flexible as any of its competitors.
In a recently published policy paper arguing a full-throated embrace of data center nationalism, Anthropic said that “it’s essential that the US and its allies stay ahead of authoritarian governments like the Chinese Communist Party,” lest the world fall into the grips of tech-powered tyranny. Anthropic and its peers, the company claims, will form a bulwark of democratic values, protecting societies at home and abroad from repression.
Left unmentioned in the document — and seldom publicly acknowledged — is the fact a slice of Anthropic is owned by the Emirati dictatorship of Abu Dhabi, a repressive and authoritarian monarchy.
Anthropic’s policy paper, published in May, tours the same Sinophobic territory heavily trod by its chief competitor OpenAI and a wide swath of the tech industry, who know a “race” with China — the finish line never quite defined — is a weighty cudgel against regulation.
Anthropic is aware of which way the wind blows from Washington to Silicon Valley, and it shrewdly casts the development of machine learning models not just as a matter of hardware and software, but of ideology and geopolitics. “Democracies, not authoritarian regimes, must lead in AI development and deployment,” the company says, or else an era of “authoritarian AI” will begin.
“Already, the CCP is using AI to censor speech, repress dissidents, hack governments and corporations across the world, and strengthen the People’s Liberation Army,” Anthropic writes, and to “enforce draconian policies on ethnic minorities” using machine learning-powered methods like biometric collection and facial recognition.
The policy paper isn’t a condemnation of any of these AI uses per se; the United States is already eagerly using these technologies for intelligence, military, and ethnic minority-repression purposes today. Residents of Tehran, which Anthropic has helped bomb since the start of the joint U.S.–Israeli war against Iran, might question the company’s argument that American AI supremacy is a matter of global “safety.”
Though the policy paper focuses on China, the company has long stated it opposes authoritarianism broadly: “AI-powered authoritarianism seems too terrible to contemplate, so democracies need to be able to set the terms by which powerful AI is brought into the world, both to avoid being overpowered by authoritarians and to prevent human rights abuses within authoritarian countries,” CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a 2024 blog post.
This is not merely a battle between the U.S. and China, Anthropic says in the May paper, but a war between democracy and “authoritarian governments” broadly construed.
But Anthropic’s anti-authoritarian fervor seemingly does not extend beyond China to the Middle East, where Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund invested in Anthropic twice this year. In February, Anthropic announced it had raised $30 billion in capital from a group of investors that included MGX, the AI-focused investment vehicle of a Emirati government capital controlled by Abu Dhabi’s royal family. Anthropic’s most recent May 28 $65 billion capital round, bringing its valuation to $965 billion, also included MGX.
Like China, the United Arab Emirates outlaws almost everything associated with democratic society: Political parties, a free press, freedoms to associate and assemble, open elections, due process, and free speech are nonexistent. Political dissidents face torture, and any speech, online or offline, that causes “damage to national unity” risks life imprisonment or the death penalty.
Emirati authoritarianism isn’t contested by the U.S., Anthropic’s primary governmental customer. The State Department’s 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices assessed the UAE faces “credible reports of: disappearances; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including censorship; and prohibiting independent trade unions or significant or systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association.” Freedom House, a State Department-backed think tank, gives the UAE a score of 18 out of 100 on its “Global Freedom” index.
Anthropic declined to comment. MGX did not respond to a request for comment.
“Like China, the UAE is at the forefront of AI-based authoritarian surveillance.”
Given that MGX bought into Anthropic at its Series G and H investment rounds, relatively late in the venture capital game, it’s likely that the UAE’s stake in the company is relatively small and its influence limited. But Anthropic’s willingness to sell part of itself to an authoritarian monarchy suggests at least that its mission of “ensuring democracies lead” comes with asterisks.
“Like China, the UAE is at the forefront of AI-based authoritarian surveillance,” said Matthew Tokson, a law professor at the University of Utah who focuses on the security implications of artificial intelligence.
Tokson added that while he generally agrees with Anthropic’s calls to restrict processor exports to China and other measures to bolster American AI firms, he doesn’t buy the nationalist rhetoric, which he attributes to the company’s anti-regulatory agenda rather than patriotism. The more Anthropic and its competitors can convince the public that their bottom line is a matter of national security, the more likely Washington is to take a light touch.
“The fact that Anthropic is partly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, which is similar to China in its extensive use of AI surveillance to support an authoritarian government, suggests that its anti-authoritarian arguments are more based on a cynical policy position than a sincere passion for democracy or antipathy toward authoritarian governments.”
Many of the emirate’s long record of repressive acts and rights violations are connected to MGX via its chair, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Through his position as the emirate’s national security and intelligence chief and his business portfolio, including chairmanship of the AI firm G42 (itself a founding partner in MGX), Tahnoun has been linked to a bevy of campaigns to surveil and hack into the phones of Emirati dissidents, human rights advocates, and others the monarchy deems an adversary, according to news media reports and scholarly research. A 2020 investigation by Bill Marczak, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab placed “Spy Sheikh” Tahnoun at the center of myriad hacking, espionage, and surveillance operations. A 2025 Wired profile of Tahnoun similarly described him as Abu Dhabi’s “spymaster sheikh,” noting G42’s “special areas of strength in state-sponsored hacking and surveillance tech.”
In 2019, the New York Times reported a covert Emirati government campaign to conduct surveillance through an instant messaging app called ToTok, an app itself Marczak tied to Tahnoon and through G42 in his 2020 analysis. The Wired profile described Tahnoun’s ambitions to “dominate AI” noted that “an engineer who worked at G42 at the time told me that all of the [ToTok] voice, video, and text chats were analyzed by AI for what the government considered suspicious activity.”
G42 declined to comment, and neither it nor MGX responded to interview requests for Tahnoun.
There is reason to believe G42 and MGX have already deployed Anthropic’s powerful large language models. A review of DNS data — internet records that connect website names to numerical addresses understandable by computers — show both G42 and MGX have both configured their servers to allow personnel to access Anthropic tools like Claude, the company’s flagship large language model.
Anthropic has been more candid in internal communications about its stance on authoritarianism.
“Unfortunately, I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on,” Amodei wrote in a 2025 memo on Gulf State venture capital obtained by Wired. He wrote that such investment would boost “dictators” and conceded that it would give an authoritarian government “some soft power” to wield against the company. Nonetheless, Amodei dismissed the risk of hypocrisy as a “Comms Headache” — a function of “very stupid” commentators “having a poor understanding of substantive issues.”
Principles aside, Amodei explained in plain terms why he was interested in doing business with a repressive Gulf State. “We gain a very large benefit,” he wrote, “from having access to this capital.”
The post Anthropic Says We Must Stop Authoritarian AI. But What About Its Authoritarian Investors? appeared first on The Intercept.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1,091 for Saturday, June 6.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 621 for Saturday, June 6.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 825 for Saturday, June 6.
Lawyer for British women attacks ‘extraordinary spectacle’ of Tate’s arrival in Moscow
British women who have accused Andrew Tate of rape, assault and coercive control have questioned why the self-professed misogynistic influencer has appeared in Russia as UK authorities continue to hold off on seeking his extradition.
Tate admires Vladimir Putin and amplifies Kremlin propaganda online. He arrived in the same week that Russian authorities welcomed US rightwing figures at an annual conference described as Russia’s answer to Davos.
Continue reading...Oil tankers may be stuck behind strait of Hormuz, but holding the Iata AGM in Brazil defies warnings of impending shortages
Nothing says jet fuel crisis, as one prospective attender put it, like flying everyone to Rio de Janeiro. Aviation leaders will converge in Brazil this weekend for the Iata AGM, the annual global airline summit, with the industry still, for the most part, looking resolutely skyward.
The oil tankers may still be stuck behind the strait of Hormuz as the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran flickers on, but for now, airlines continue to defy dire warnings of impending shortages which had stoked fears of a summer of chaos for European holidaymakers.
Continue reading...The Italian Carlo Ancelotti, the most decorated club coach in soccer history, is the first foreigner to lead the most successful nation.
The homicide rate is falling, but domestic killings are not. For those who track this kind of violence, the deaths are both predictable and preventable.
Sea stars almost went extinct along the West Coast a decade ago. Recently, they have been making a comeback.
Conditions that led to bloody prewar protests have been made worse, commentators say
Iran is already preparing for the perilous transition from wartime unity to a fractious peace marked by hyperinflation, a 10% contraction in the economy, power cuts and calls for a triumphalist government to end its unprecedented hunting down of dissent.
With peace not yet secured, the debates within the regime about Iran’s future are only just starting to emerge but its rulers are clearly thinking about how after surviving the war, they can survive the peace.
Continue reading...Australia midfielder takes aim at ‘rubbish’ from United States pundits
Former US defender Alexi Lalas called Socceroos an ‘average team’
Socceroos midfielder Connor Metcalfe has heard every barb coming Australia’s way from the United States – and he’s had a gutful of it. Since Australia were drawn in Group D along with the co-hosts in December, the Socceroos have proved the punching bag for pundits based in the USA.
Former striker Landon Donovan labelled Socceroos coach Tony Popovic as “smug” and tipped the Australians to finish fourth behind the US, Turkey and Paraguay and exit in the group stage. “Thanks for coming, Aussies and your smug coach – you can get back on the Qantas airplane and head back home, pal,” he quipped.
Continue reading...Relationship between Vladimir Putin and traditional ally has slowly unravelled under current PM Nikol Pashinyan
The bottling line at the Abovyan cognac factory in Armenia is running at full tilt.
Women in white coats and hairnets work the conveyor with practised speed – labelling, stacking, loading pallets – racing to fill a truck.
Continue reading...The UK’s biggest bird of prey has been compared to a flying barn door. So how can one fitted with a satellite tracker disappear in prime grouse-shooting country?
The six police officers arrived at the Snilesworth estate in two pickup trucks last week, according to one account. They asked to go up on the moors, a source said, and “so off they went”.
A vast expanse of spectacularly undulating lands on the western edge of the North York Moors, Snilesworth is globally renowned for its grouse, partridge and pheasant shooting. It is known locally for attracting “rich people from London in helicopters and blacked-out SUVs”.
Continue reading...Modelling from US CDC shows Ebola spread could be on ‘dangerous trajectory’, but experts warn outbreaks can be very hard to predict
Central Africa’s Ebola outbreak could spread to be similar in scale to the worst outbreak in history, west Africa’s 2014-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people, according to a new analysis by US health officials.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday published a range of scenarios generated by computer models, from 10,000 cases to more than 20,000. In the west Africa outbreak, more than 28,000 cases were reported.
Continue reading...The red-hot Knicks are going home, two wins away from an NBA championship that the capital of the world has been waiting to see for generations.
US embassy in Sarajevo made threat after European states refused to back its preferred High Representative candidate
A deepening US-European rift over the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina has broken open with a dispute over a top administrative post, leading to a US threat to “reconsider” its role in international peacekeeping.
The American embassy in Sarajevo issued the threat after European states refused to back the US preferred candidate to become the new High Representative for the international community. At a meeting this week in Sarajevo of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – a multinational group tasked with overseeing the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement – Washington supported an Italian diplomat, Antonio Zanardi Landi, while the UK, France, Germany and most European states backed France’s envoy to the Western Balkans, René Troccaz.
Continue reading...Roughly 2,000 SoFi Stadium workers overwhelmingly authorized a strike a week before the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Los Angeles.
Knicks lead series 2-0 as teams head to New York
Knicks 0-3 Spurs, 11:43, 1st quarter: Ball is kicked back out to Vassell for 3 on the game’s first possession.
Matthew Bentham writes: “Even though it’s only game 2, it feels like do or die for the Spurs , no?”
Continue reading...Brunson leads Knicks to second road finals win
New York take 2-0 series lead back to Garden
Spurs face uphill battle after home-court sweep
The white-hot New York Knicks moved within two wins of their first NBA championship in more than half a century on Friday night, edging the San Antonio Spurs 105-104 in a Game 2 thriller to take a commanding 2-0 lead in the NBA finals before the series shifts to Madison Square Garden.
After stealing Game 1 with a furious fourth-quarter comeback, the Knicks once again turned to Jalen Brunson when the game hung in the balance. The All-NBA guard sank the go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds remaining after a costly turnover by Spurs star Victor Wembanyama. Moments later, Wembanyama’s clean look from the elbow at the buzzer caromed off the back rim, allowing New York to become only the third team to win the first two games of an NBA finals on the road after the 1993 Chicago Bulls and 1995 Houston Rockets.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just over a year ago, the Trump Administration issued an executive order meant to accelerate the development of nuclear power in the US. While an entire startup ecosystem has developed around the use of different -- and typically smaller -- reactor designs, only one of them has been fully licensed so far, and there are no plans to actually build any instances of that design. The executive order directed the Department of Energy to have three different reactor designs reach criticality in a bit over a year. On Thursday, a startup called Antares announced that a test reactor it had placed at the Idaho National Laboratory had reached criticality, making it the first new design to cross this threshold. Criticality means that the nuclear reactions inside the hardware had become self sustaining; it does not mean the reactor had started to generate power. [...] At the moment, Antares is just testing what it calls a Mark 0 reactor, which is not connected to the power-generation portion. Instead, it's being used to validate the company's modeling of the physical conditions in its reactors and generate safety data that can be used during licensing applications. Attempts to run the entire system, including electrical generation, are expected to happen next year. While the work was done at a Department of Energy Lab, the company is working with the Department of Defense's Project Pele program for developing a mobile nuclear reactor. The company has also received support from NASA.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 6.
LA city council member pulled closer to reality TV villain in ballots counted Friday, now trailing by just 20,672 votes. This blog is now closed.
Nine out of 15 migrants deported from the US to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in April have returned to their home countries, Congo’s government, a migrant and her lawyer said on Friday.
The 15 migrants arrived in Congo on 17 April as part of a bilateral agreement with the Trump administration announced two weeks earlier to accept third-country deportees from the US. Congo’s government said in a statement on Friday that “more than half” of the migrants had since returned to their countries and that others would return “shortly“.
Continue reading...Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, will advance to the November election in the California governor's race, CBS News projects. A second candidate in the race has not yet been projected to advance.
Trump says Bill Pulte is ‘less shackled’ because he has only been appointed director of national intelligence temporarily. Key US politics stories from 5 June 2026 at a glance
Donald Trump has said that he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence, to cut the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during the president’s second term.
Trump noted that the size of the office as been “way too high for way too long,” and that “if he cut, I wouldn’t mind”.
Continue reading...Becerra advanced to the general election after emerging from California’s crowded primary field in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom
Xavier Becerra has advanced to the November general election in California’s gubernatorial race, cementing a stunning come-from-behind primary victory in one of California’s most turbulent campaign seasons in recent memory.
Election officials are continuing to count ballots to determine whether he will face fellow Democrat Tom Steyer, the environmental activist who championed progressive policies like universal healthcare and more taxes on billionaires like himself, or Republican Steve Hilton, the former UK political operative turned Fox News personality who was endorsed by Donald Trump, in the fall.
Continue reading...Cloud and Sephiroth will finally clash for the last time.
The five-day, 55-mile Appalachian Trail hike is a 53-year tradition for freshmen at St. Benedict's Preparatory School.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 6, No. 1,813.
As President Trump prepares to watch the New York Knicks take on the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden, officials are planning for a heightened security posture, sources said.
The five fired FBI analysits were involved in the creation of a withdrawn internal 2023 intelligence memo on "Radical Traditionalist Catholic" ideology, sources said.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro argues the U.S. has chosen to align against his government and back forces he identifies as complicit in the drug trade.
This week, the New York Times reported allegations of Platner's "unsettling" behavior toward women he dated, including one claim that he was physically abusive, which Platner denies.
Don't skip the Emilia Clarke-starring Ponies.
A botched tumbler promotion on the anniversary of a pro-democracy massacre unleashed a boycott, police investigation and political firestorm
It was a PR nightmare: customers smashing Starbucks branded tumblers and mugs as fans deleted loyalty apps and cashed out prepaid balances. Amid the uproar, government ministries cut ties with the coffee chain and apology notices were pasted on Starbucks stores across South Korea.
The initial shock may have passed, but the anger remains.
Continue reading...Handy, 81, died after being stabbed, allegedly by Michael Gledhill, whose mother was in relationship with Handy
A man has been charged with murder in the stabbing of Jumanji and Top Gun: Maverick actor James Handy, who was in a relationship with the suspect’s mother.
Michael Gledhill, 44, was charged after police say officers found the 81-year-old Handy stabbed in the chest and unconscious outside his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Handy was taken to the hospital and later pronounced dead.
Continue reading...Xavier Becerra, Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer emerged as the leading contenders to advance to November's general election as vote counting continues.
August and September are going to be packed with game releases.
Experts warn ballot-counting could drag on in primaries for governor, LA mayor and Congress, as Trump claims ‘rigging’
The US justice department on Friday sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, as Donald Trump continues to make baseless claims that California Democrats were “rigging” the results to win primary elections in the nation’s biggest blue state.
State officials have rejected the allegations, but the delay in results immediately fueled misinformation about the integrity of California’s elections, with the president, who has long fanned election-conspiracy theories, repeatedly accusing the state of “cheating”.
Continue reading...This week's guests include Democratic Rep. Jim Himes and Republican Rep. Don Bacon.
The new studio, made up of former Uncharted and The Last of Us developers, reveals its first project -- and all the new tech it hopes will change gaming.
Remedy's follow-up to 2019's Control switches from X-Files government spookshow to a journey of restoring humanity.
If you're not able to watch the Formula One race in person, you can explore the track and layout with Apple's detailed experience in the Maps app.
A security researcher says evidence suggests the U.S. military has been using an obscure GPS message field for nearly 20 years to broadcast encrypted key-distribution data, effectively turning GPS satellites into a global "numbers station." The hidden-looking 176-bit messages appear tied to the Pentagon's Over-the-Air Distribution system for remotely updating cryptographic keys, meaning ordinary GPS receivers may have been receiving the traffic all along without anyone outside the military noticing. The findings have been detailed by Steven Murdoch, an information security expert, in a new article in Inside GNSS. 404 Media reports: [...] From the beginning, he suspected that the subframe field contained encrypted transmissions because the data was so random. "Random data is actually very unusual to get in nature," Murdoch said. "If you see it, either it's been carefully designed to be random -- but then, why is someone sending out random data? -- or it's encrypted data. I thought encrypted data is by far the most likely explanation." He returned to the subframe on and off over the years, and solicited guesses about its content on Stack Exchange in 2023. Ahmed Kamruddin, a master's student at UCL, developed the project further in 2025. Then, this year, Murdoch put the last pieces of the puzzle together over several weeks by analyzing open archive Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) recordings collected since 2007 and kept by GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences. This dataset included more than 12 million observations of Subframe 4, Page 17, yielding 3,994 unique 176-bit messages. Within this corpus, Murdoch pinpointed key-repeating "sentinels" including a pattern that appeared in February 2010 and was broadcast on and off across dozens of satellites for more than a decade. Murdoch discovered that this particular sentinel was transmitted by all 31 operational satellites within a window of a few hours on May 26, 2011, potentially heralding the activation of a new operational system. He confirmed that this timeline coincided with the rollout of the military's Over-the-Air Distribution (OTAD) and the Over-the-Air Rekeying (OTAR) by cross-referencing declassified documents, including a 2015 presentation about the dates of the operation. "There was a perfect match between the timeline and that presentation and the change points that were automatically identified from the data," Murdoch said. "That was the smoking gun that made me think: This is what it's for." These automated systems replaced the cumbersome manual distribution of cryptographic keying material, allowing military GPS receivers around the world to be rekeyed remotely through satellite broadcasts rather than through onsite procedures. For the next 11 years, this expansive rekeying operation was overlooked in public GPS data. In 2022, the system entered a new phase, according to Murdoch's analysis. The shift was characterized by a slowing in the message rotation rate. Later, in December 2023, broadcasts carrying a distinctive "TEXT" prefix emerged then gradually spread across the constellation. Murdoch isn't sure what explains the recent transition, though it could be a possible modernization of the infrastructure or the introduction of a new protocol. But to him, the bigger takeaway is that the signals were always available for anyone willing to take a closer look, a discovery that suggests that there could be more revelations hidden for the cryptographically curious among us. "Every receiver in the world decodes Subframe 4, Page 17," Murdoch said in his new article. "Almost none of them have ever looked at it. The lesson generalizes: There is more to learn from the bytes already arriving at our antennas than from the bytes we wish were specified differently. The data are publicly available. The signal is overhead, twice a day, every day."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Just bought a new OG Pint that has 5059 f/w and 5314 h/w. Since it’s past the cutoff for installing an extended range battery like a Quart (f/w 5050 and below), is there any reason to remain on 5059 f/w? I’m a new rider so haptic buzz may be helpful.
The National Park Service said a ranger in Alaska fell into a crevasse and died on North America's tallest mountain.
Case draws nationwide attention amid debate over racial tensions, as defendant is Black and slain student was white
Testimony has been unfolding in the murder trial of a 19-year-old accused of fatally stabbing a fellow high schooler during a track meet in Texas more than a year ago.
The case has drawn nationwide attention amid debate over racial tensions, as defendant Karmelo Anthony is Black and slain 17-year-old Austin Metcalf was white. Prosecutors allege Anthony stabbed Metcalf during a Frisco independent school district track meet at Kuykendall Stadium on 2 April 2025.
Continue reading...Do you know who you're opening your door to? Lawmakers respond after a CBS California consumer investigation found food delivery drivers using rented or stolen app accounts to bypass background checks, exposing a loophole that could put customers at risk.
Emma Barnett killed her one-year-old after a court ruling he be taken away from her
A mother who poisoned her one-year-old son with a lethal cocktail of prescription medications added to milk in a baby bottle has been jailed for life for his murder.
Emma Barnett, 36, killed her son Oakley before he could be taken into care after a family court hearing ordered that he be removed from her.
Continue reading...Americans say it's tough to find a job, but employers just added a surprisingly strong 172,000 new hires in May.
The next Resident Evil remake is coming next year.
 | About 400 mi on my gt, upgraded to a 5" mte n52 with cold blocks heat sinks. First 8 miles thru the grasssy hills no problems at all. 2nd time out a week later on the mtb trails and it keeps making grinding noises and surging. Pretty sure its destroying either the Hub or the stock motor. Its pretty consistant. Once it warmed up. It'll grind for 10 seconds or so before smoothing back out. Im 2mi in the forest, got two more miles to go. Fingers crossed it gets me out. Im guessing the magnets are too strong and don't have enough clearance. Im approx 180lbs. Do I just revert to stock 6in hub and take the L? Any troubleshooting advice is appreciated. Edit to add: After posting this mid trail it did nose dive at low speed and I ate it hard, while trying to carry my daughter's gt after she got wore out after approx 3 miles Also this was with a full charge. I have had it on apex for a few years now and after the first 2 miles today changed it to highline to see if the profile was too aggressive or something [link] [comments] |
Ahead of its upcoming IPO, SpaceX announced that Google will pay the company $920 million per month for access to roughly 110,000 Nvidia GPUs and related compute infrastructure. Google says the agreement is short-term "bridge capacity" to meet stronger-than-expected demand for Gemini Enterprise, while SpaceX is using deals like this and its Anthropic contract to bolster its pitch for a historic public offering. TechCrunch reports: The deal is similar in length and scope to the one SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May. As part of that deal, Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through 2029 to rent all the available compute from its Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee that xAI -- now part of SpaceX -- originally built for its own artificial intelligence efforts. Google's deal appears to be paying for roughly half the amount of compute that Anthropic has access to at Colossus 1. SpaceX didn't say which specific data center Google would be using. CEO Elon Musk has previously suggested his company would reserve the Colossus 2 data center for xAI. Anthropic was significantly limited in its compute capacity prior to its deal with SpaceX, raising usage limits on the same day the deal was announced. Google is in a very different position, with some estimates naming it as the world's largest single owner of AI compute. [...] Also like the Anthropic deal, the agreement with Google includes a cancellation clause. Both SpaceX and Google have the option to terminate the agreement with 90 days notice after December 31, 2026. Google's access to the data center will ramp up "through September at a reduced fee," according to the filing. "If we fail to deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, then following a one-month grace period, Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided" with a reduction in the monthly fees, it reads.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 | I dunno, I kinda wish he came with. [link] [comments] |
Any shops in the Columbus OH area? Need to replace my tire on my pint X (I have said new tire already, just need someone to do the swap).
I could PROBABLY do it myself, but I don’t have ANY of my tools since I just moved to the area for work, so I’d rather not bother.
 | Happened on a very steep grade, no idea how I got my feet down and didn’t run straight into a tree. [link] [comments] |
The company that operated a bus involved in a deadly crash in Virginia last week has ties to a broader network of travel firms, including one shut down by regulators a decade ago, a CBS News investigation has found.
In a pair of legal filings Friday, the Justice Department stated in writing for what appears to be the first time that a controversial $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund" will not continue.
Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson released an ad immediately after the June 2 primary that said her Democratic opponent, state Rep. Josh Turek, supports "sex changes" for minors.
The ad makes two similar but distinct claims. Its narration says Turek "supports kids changing gender without parental consent." But the on-screen text says "sex changes for kids," while video of surgeons in an operating room plays behind an image of Turek. Hinson’s social media post sharing the ad also used the phrase "sex changes for kids."
"Sex change" is not a standard medical term. Gender-affirming care can include a range of approaches to support a person's gender identity including, for minors, using a different name or pronouns. According to medical best practices, gender-affirming treatments are available only to adolescents and can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy and in rare cases, surgeries for older teens. Medical intervention for minors requires parental consent.
The ad distorts Turek’s position. The law cited in the ad as evidence does not mention medical interventions or "sex changes." It has to do with notifying parents when a student expresses a different gender identity at school.
Although the ad showed video of surgeons operating, Hinson campaign spokesperson Addie Lavis said the ad was not referencing gender-affirming surgeries. In an email to PolitiFact, she said the ad was using gender and sex "interchangeably as is the case under Iowa law and nowhere do we mention surgery."
The ad cites Iowa's Senate File 496, a 2023 law that regulated school library books with explicit themes and prohibited instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. Turek voted against the bill. The Republican-led Legislature passed the bill and Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it into law.
The law requires school districts to inform parents if a student requests "an accommodation that is intended to affirm the student's gender identity," including requests that employees "address the student using a name or pronoun" that differs from the school’s records.
Iowa is one of several states that has enacted laws requiring schools to notify parents if students express a different gender identity at school. Supporters of the new laws say parents have a right to make decisions for their children, while many LGBTQ+ advocacy groups say sharing that information with unsupportive parents could be harmful for the children.
Hinson campaign spokesperson Lavis also pointed to Turek's vote against the state’s 2025 health and human services budget bill. One of that bill’s provisions blocked Medicaid from paying for gender-affirming hormones or surgeries. That law dealt with reimbursement, not whether minors can receive the procedures or whether parents must be notified.
Iowa lawmakers had already prohibited medical gender-affirming procedures for minors in 2023. Turek was not present for the vote on that bill, and the Iowa House Journal shows he was granted a leave of absence that day.
Citing the American Medical Association — which said in February that gender-affirming surgeries should "generally be reserved until adulthood" — Turek campaign spokesperson Hannah Goss said he does not support gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
Dustin Hornbeck, a University of Memphis professor who has written about parental rights in education policy, said it's inaccurate to say the Iowa parental notification rules relate to "sex changes."
"Characterizing a parental notification policy about names and pronouns as involving 'sex changes' conflates two legally and practically distinct categories," he said in an email. "These laws concern how schools communicate with parents about student identity, not medical procedures."
Medical treatment generally happens outside of school with health care providers and, for minors, involves parental consent, Kathryn Watson, an education researcher who wrote about the effects of the Iowa law on school practices, said.
"The only time these would ever overlap is if a student had to take a hormone pill at school," Watson said in an email. "This would require parental consent and be administered by the school nurse."
A Hinson ad said Turek supports "sex changes for kids." The ad's context includes medical treatments and surgery.
Although the ad included video of a surgery, a Hinson campaign spokesperson said the ad was not referencing gender-affirming surgeries.
The ad cites a law’s provision that requires schools to notify parents if a student wants to identify with a different gender. That law did not mention "sex changes" or medical treatment. Turek voted against that bill.
A separate bill the same year banned gender-affirming medical treatments for minors; Turek was absent from the vote. His campaign said he opposes such surgeries for minors.
We rate the claim False.
The NTSB released its preliminary report on a United Airlines plane that struck a light pole on the New Jersey Turnpike in May.
Ohio voters are witnessing a battle of campaign television ads as each Senate candidate tries to tie the other to Jeffrey Epstein — by way of donations from those with some link to the late convicted sex offender.
Democrat Sherrod Brown’s campaign charges that Republican Sen. Jon Husted “took more money from Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators than anyone else in Washington, and then voted to keep the Epstein files secret.” The donations total $116,892 over more than 20 years. Husted’s TV spot, meanwhile, calls Brown “a liar,” saying that Husted “voted to release the Epstein files” and that Brown took $100,000 “from Epstein associates.” Those contributions date back to 2005.
Whether the campaign donations are problematic is a matter of opinion that we leave to voters to decide. We’ll lay out who gave the money.
In Husted’s case, the contributions all came from Les Wexner, the founder and former CEO of the retail company L Brands, which included The Limited and Victoria’s Secret and is based in Ohio. Wexner, who knew Epstein and hired him to be his financial manager for many years, was listed in a 2019 FBI document as a “co-conspirator,” hence the description in the Brown ad. But he has never been charged with a crime. In February, after his inclusion in the document became public, Wexner said he “never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.”
This year, Husted donated about $34,000 of the more recent Wexner donations to a charity, his campaign said, noting this was “all the funds that were available.”
In Brown’s case, the Husted campaign mined the Epstein files for mentions of Brown donors. A few have a well-known connection to Epstein, such as Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary who announced in February that he would resign from Harvard University after some of his correspondence with Epstein was released. Summers also hasn’t been accused or charged with any crime related to his friendship with Epstein. Some of the others who donated to Brown have a tangential connection to Epstein, or it’s unclear if they knew him, such as being mentioned by Epstein in an email.
As for Husted’s votes on the Epstein files, neither campaign tells the whole story. Husted voted against a Democratic amendment to release them — in a largely party-line vote — and, two months later, supported releasing them — in a unanimous consent vote on standalone legislation.
Brown was a longtime Ohio senator, from 2007 to 2025. Husted was appointed in January 2025 by Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the Senate seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. The race is rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report.
Both of the TV ads we examine here started airing in late May, according to AdImpact.
We’ll start with the issue that’s easier to explain: whether Husted “voted to keep the Epstein files secret” or “voted to release the Epstein files,” as the TV ads from each campaign say. The senator essentially did both. The campaigns, though, point only to the vote that supports their position.
On Sept. 10, Husted — and all but two Republican senators — voted to block a Democratic amendment to a defense budget and policy bill. The amendment, proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, called for the attorney general to release all unclassified documents related to Epstein, including Department of Justice investigations of him and his associates, and information related to Epstein’s suicide.
In July 2019, federal authorities charged Epstein, a wealthy financier, with sex trafficking of minors, alleging that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls by enticing them to engage in sex acts with him in exchange for money” between 2002 and 2005. A month after his arrest, Epstein died in prison. His death was ruled a suicide by the DOJ and the New York City medical examiner.
The Brown campaign has linked Husted’s September vote to a $3,500 contribution from Wexner two months earlier. “Just last year Husted took a maximum donation from Epstein’s co-conspirator and weeks later voted to block the release of the Epstein files. The record is clear,” Patrick Eisenhauer, Brown’s campaign manager, said in an email to us. (That is the maximum amount an individual can give to a candidate committee per election.)
At the time of the September vote, President Donald Trump was opposed to the DOJ releasing its files on Epstein. The two Republicans who voted in favor of releasing the files were Sens. Rand Paul and Josh Hawley.
Asked in a Feb. 18 deposition before a congressional committee whether he lobbied Husted or anyone else to block the release of the Epstein files, Wexner said, “Absolutely not.”
The Husted campaign noted that the September vote wasn’t on the standalone Epstein Files Transparency Act and said that it was “inappropriate” for Schumer to try to add the act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. “The NDAA is a bipartisan piece of legislation that covers military pay and benefits, and national security policy. Given that it is completely inappropriate and irresponsible to toy with military benefits and our country’s national defense, the Senate voted to table the amendment,” Amy Natoce, the campaign’s communications director, told us in an email.
Natoce contended that there was “a single recorded vote on releasing the Epstein files” — the Nov. 19 vote on the bill on its own. In a May 29 CNN interview, Brown argued this was “no real vote.” On Nov. 19, the bill passed by unanimous consent, meaning that no senator objected. Husted, therefore, along with the rest of the Senate, supported it.
The bill was signed into law the same day by Trump, who had changed his position and backed the legislation. The House had passed it by a 427-1 vote.
The Brown ad says that Husted “took more money from Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators than anyone else in Washington,” and on screen, it says the contributions were 10 times more than what any other sitting senator got from “co-conspirators.” It doesn’t mention a specific dollar amount. The campaign sent us support for the ad, which details $116,892 in donations from 2001 to 2025 from Wexner.
That total includes $3,500 to Husted’s Senate campaign, $76,400 in donations for Husted’s state campaigns, and $36,992 that went to DeWine’s gubernatorial campaign when Husted was running on the ticket for lieutenant governor or to the DeWine-Husted transition fund.
The Brown campaign lists other “co-conspirators” or potential co-conspirators in FBI documents and then provides figures showing Husted’s total donations from Wexner are 10 times or more than what any other sitting senator received. For this article, we’re not delving into what other senators received. We’ll focus on the donations to Husted.
The Husted campaign hasn’t disputed the amount received from Wexner. And it’s not surprising that the Ohio-born billionaire would donate money to politicians in his state. Wexner is a well-known figure in the Buckeye State. His name graces three buildings on the campus of Ohio State University.
He also has made some sizeable contributions to Republicans. Wexner gave $250,000 in October to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate, according to Federal Election Commission data, and $250,000 in 2024 to a super PAC supporting Matt Dolan, who ran (and lost) in the Republican primary for Senate that year.
As for the “co-conspirator” label, it’s true that an August 2019 FBI email listed Wexner among eight Epstein “co-conspirators.” Wexner’s name was unredacted and made public in early February. The email listed him as a “secondary” co-conspirator and said that “[t]here is limited evidence regarding his involvement.” It also said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York “is currently in contact with his attorneys and a subpoena has been served.”
Wexner’s attorney has said that he cooperated with the Justice Department and was told in 2019 by a federal prosecutor that he wasn’t considered a co-conspirator. He hasn’t been charged with any crime related to his relationship with Epstein, whom he had hired as a financial adviser decades ago.
About a week after Wexner’s inclusion in the August 2019 FBI document came to light, Husted, along with other Ohio lawmakers, said he would donate Wexner’s contributions to charity. The campaign told us he had donated $34,300 to Freedom a la Cart, a nonprofit that helps survivors of sex trafficking. “Those are all the funds that were available because the remainder were received in previous campaign cycles and spent during those cycles,” Natoce said.
In his prepared statement to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Feb. 18, Wexner said: “I was naïve, foolish, and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein. He was a con man. And while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.” He said he “never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity. I was never a participant nor co-conspirator in any of Epstein’s illegal activities.”
Wexner met Epstein in “the mid-to-late 1980s,” he said, and later hired him to manage his personal finances, giving Epstein power of attorney. Wexner claims that Epstein stole “vast sums” of money from his family but later returned a “substantial amount.” Around late 2007, Wexner said, he ended his association with Epstein, who was charged in Florida in 2006 with solicitation of prostitution. He pleaded guilty two years later to that charge and to solicitation of prostitution with a minor. “In light of his eventual guilty plea and deception of our family, we completely severed our relationship with Epstein,” Wexner said in his statement.
In pushing back on the Brown campaign’s criticism of the Wexner donations, the Husted campaign has cited contributions to Brown from what it calls “Epstein associates.” The Husted TV ad claims Brown “took a hundred grand” from these associates, citing on screen a March 7 New York Post article that puts the figure at “more than $124,000.” The article says that “Brown and Husted are far from the only politicians who took money from individuals with close ties to Epstein.”
A few of the people on the list the Husted campaign provided to us do have established, close ties to Epstein. But many don’t, and it’s unclear whether some on the list knew him.
The campaign cited 14 people who gave contributions to Brown, including Abigail Wexner, Les Wexner’s wife. She donated $10,200 to Brown’s campaigns from 2011 to 2017, and additional funds to his leadership political action committee from 2017 to 2019. The Husted campaign argues that this counts as also taking money from Les Wexner. “As a married couple, Abigail and Les Wexner share assets,” Natoce told us.
In a press release about the ad, Natoce said, “Brown is literally using Epstein money to run TV ads about Epstein money!”
None of the donors the Husted campaign identified has been charged with a crime related to Epstein, nor has any been identified as a co-conspirator. As we said, many have weak links to the late sex offender. For instance, one donor is mentioned in the Epstein files because Epstein asked an assistant for her email address. Another was invited to a dinner party Epstein was having and said he couldn’t attend. Another was among a list of names Epstein emailed to himself titled “billionaire.”
The campaign also flagged $20,400 in donations from billionaire philanthropist George Soros, citing a September 2019 FBI interview with a person who said he was a victim of Epstein and claimed Soros was present on a yacht with Epstein and several others and witnessed him being sexually abused. The FBI document said the alleged victim’s conversation with the FBI, which occurred after Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, “suggested some degree of possible mental illness or emotional instability.” The document also said this person wasn’t able to provide supporting evidence or “the identities of any witnesses to support his claim of victimization.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for helping Epstein to recruit, groom and abuse minors, told the DOJ that she didn’t think Epstein knew Soros.
Some on the Husted campaign’s list either had a documented relationship with Epstein or what appear to be stronger links. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who resigned from his position at Harvard this year, had a friendship with Epstein, who hosted a 60th birthday dinner party for Summers in 2014. The released Epstein documents show Summers had dinner with Epstein in 2018, appeared to get romantic advice from Epstein that year and was corresponding with him in 2019. Epstein was arrested that July by federal law enforcement. Summers has called his relationship with Epstein a “major error in judgement.”
Summers gave $10,300 to Brown’s campaigns in 2024 and 2025.
Two others that the Husted campaign cited, including in the press release about the TV ad, are Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and attorney Brad Karp, who donated $5,400 and $2,000 to Brown’s campaigns, respectively. Wasserman exchanged emails with Maxwell in 2003 in which he said he missed her and asked, “can we book that massage now?” He told the Hollywood Reporter early this year that he regretted the correspondence, which took place “long before her horrific crimes came to light,” adding that he “never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
Karp sent an email to Epstein in 2015 thanking him for an invite to an event at Epstein’s home that Karp called “truly ‘once in a lifetime’ in every way.” Epstein responded that “there are many many nights of unique talents. you will be invited often.” The same year, Epstein asked Karp if it was possible to revoke a woman’s tourist visa, and Karp responded that he would work on it.
A 2003 email in the files said that media executive Barry Diller “would like to take a hike on the island” and indicated that Epstein had approved it. Diller — who donated $5,400 to Brown — said this year that “I am probably the only one who went to the island to see the architecture rather than the inhabitants.”
Husted’s camp also cited Reid Hoffman, who gave $7,000 to Brown’s campaign in 2025. Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a well-known Democratic donor, had meetings with Epstein as late as 2018. He said this year that he knew Epstein “because of a fundraising relationship with MIT, which I very much regret.”
In the Husted campaign press release, Husted accuses Brown of “hypocrisy,” saying, “Why won’t he donate the money he received from Epstein associates to charity?”
When asked by CNN about donating contributions from Abigail Wexner or Summers, Brown said that those donations are “not tied in any way the way the co-conspirator” donations are. He said it was “not real reporting to make those comparisons.”
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The post Ohio Senate Candidates Spar Over Donations Tied, Loosely or Not, to Epstein appeared first on FactCheck.org.
The FIFA World Cup is upon us. Find out which teams are playing, where the action is happening, which players to look out for and more.
Vice-president and state department look to push far-right idea that mass migration is causing civilisational decline
In the state department of past administrations, how to respond to an incendiary event such as the murder of the British student Henry Nowak would have required deliberations, memos and meetings. Given how it has roiled the UK and inflamed tensions over migration and race, the cautious diplomats at Foggy Bottom probably would have said nothing at all.
Now they tweet from the hip. “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline,” the department’s official account posted on Thursday. “They must be rejected across the West.”
Continue reading...Feel free to add your recommendations.
Brendan Banfield convicted of killing Christine Banfield and man lured to couple’s Virginia home as fall guy
A Virginia man who was having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was sentenced on Friday to life in prison without parole for the murder of his wife and a man who was lured to the couple’s home as a fall guy.
Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) law enforcement officer, claimed he shot Joseph Ryan after he came across Ryan attacking his wife on the morning of 24 February 2023. But prosecutors said Brendan Banfield and au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães set Ryan up in a scheme to kill Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse.
Continue reading...Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 on Friday, "extending its weekly loss to nearly 20% and threatening to fall below $59,000," reports CoinDesk. Crypto was also hit by a 40%-plus plunge in Zcash after Shielded Labs disclosed a years-old bug that could have allowed undetected counterfeit ZEC creation. From the report: Now, with stocks in plunge mode -- the Nasdaq down nearly 4% on Friday -- bitcoin finds itself perfectly correlated. "Short term, Bitcoin feels like swallowing broken glass," wrote Jeff Swanson Friday. "The chart goes up. It goes down. It makes grown men cry into their Robinhood accounts and CNBC anchors smugly declare the funeral, for the eleventh time." "Here's what uncomfortable people don't understand: the discomfort is the yield. Every paper-handed panic seller is handing their future to someone with a longer time horizon and a colder storage device." [...] Earlier, Shielded Labs, a nonprofit developer on the privacy token system, disclosed a critical vulnerability in Zcash's (ZEC) Orchard privacy pool that could have threatened the integrity of the token's supply. The vulnerability, if exploited, could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC tokens, completely undetected. "Think of it as someone secretly gaining access to the Federal Reserve's dollar printing press, except in this case, even the Fed wouldn't be able to tell these extra dollars were printed," wrote Omkar Godbole. Importantly, the vulnerability was discovered with help from Anthropic's recently released Opus 4.8 AI model, raising difficult questions for the entire crypto industry. More to come on that. ZEC is now down 42% over the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation said: "The vulnerability was caught before any known exploitation occurred. There is no evidence of unauthorized value creation. Zcash's turnstile mechanism (which tracks the total ZEC balance across all value pools) confirmed that the total supply remained intact throughout. User privacy was not affected. Sapling and transparent transactions continued operating normally throughout the incident."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The four SpaceX Crew-12 crew members and NASA astronaut Chris Williams have since returned to work.
After winning Game 1 of the NBA finals, the New York Knicks are one step closer to winning a championship that has eluded them for 53 years. New Yorkers are feeling elated, but the Knicks are going to have to get through 7ft4in Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs, who just might be the next face of the league. Kai Wright speaks with the Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence about who exactly these teams are, and why despite all the money flowing through the sport, this is a series for the people
Read Andrew Lawrence on Knicks billionaire donor James Dolan.
Hi guys, I'm very close to buying a Pint X, I'm absolutely sure that I would have fun and all BUT for a product in this price range, I'm very worried that ghosting is even a thing in some models. If it happens you could seriously injure yourself but I'm even more worried about others when I see a video in which a Onewheel goes flying backward at full speed!
Best case scenario you have to pay for car damage, worst case scenario you hit a kid in the head...
So are those types of malfunctions really happening? If so, does the manufacturer takes responsibility?
Thanks!
Government figures show unemployment rate at 4.3% amid rising inflation and economic uncertainty from Iran war
US employers added 172,000 jobs in May while the country’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, a sign of a resilient labor market despite rising inflation and economic uncertainty brought on by continued conflict in the Middle East.
Despite the positive update on the labor market, US stocks fell sharply by Friday afternoon after a big sell-off of AI chip stocks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 4% down, the largest single-day drop in over a year. The S&P 500 and and Dow were also down 2.6% and 1.3%, respectively.
Continue reading...Out of an abundance of caution, NASA briefly directed five of the seven crew members aboard the International Space Station to wait inside the docked SpaceX Crew Dragon "Freedom" spacecraft.
James "Weston" Higginbotham went missing one week ago while on a family vacation in Japan.
A procedural vote failed in the Senate early Friday, and a provision of the spy powers law is set to expire June 12.
Our gifting experts handpicked a variety of gifts at every price range to please all sorts of dads.
Apple is also expected to introduce a new Siri app across iOS, iPadOS and MacOS.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit's repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you're not aware, not very good for the public interest. Four months later and Nieman Lab now notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has soared to around 340 organizations: "Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive's ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the "vulture hedge fund" Alden Global Capital." [...] Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab: "I cover news within a larger news desert in New York's Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets," wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent petition signed by over 200 journalists. "Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do." The Internet Archive says it is listening to the concerns raised by local news outlets, while also partnering with journalism groups to train hundreds of newsrooms on archival preservation: "In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The initiative, funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive's services by the end of 2027."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ned Jarrett was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011 after 50 career wins on the sport's top circuit.
Even though Meta's feature hasn't been enabled, facial recognition on wearables sparks major surveillance concerns.
AI will help you understand your complex biometric data and what to do with it.
Shared high performance computing resources enable work across disciplines and create new opportunities for students and faculty
COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 5, 2026 — At Wright State University, a public university in Dayton, Ohio, faculty and students are using the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) to support hands-on coursework and data-driven research across campus.
Hands-on research and collaboration helps prepare Wright State students for work in modern research computing environments. Image Credit: Wright State University
For Mike VanHorn, Wright State’s Campus Champion for OSC, connecting users with these resources is a central part of his role. As senior computer systems administrator at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, VanHorn works closely with faculty and students while also helping expand awareness of OSC across campus.
“As a Campus Champion, it’s my duty to serve as a local proponent for access and utilization of OSC resources on Wright State’s campuses,” VanHorn said. “In practice, that means I try to direct Wright State’s faculty and students toward OSC whenever I see an opportunity for their work to be done more efficiently.”
In the classroom, OSC gives students access to computing resources at a scale beyond what is available locally. In computer science and engineering courses, students write and submit parallel programs, test their code, and debug their work. Through this, they gain hands-on experience using tools commonly used in research and industry.
While Wright State maintains its own computing resources for instruction, those systems are designed for smaller-scale use. OSC provides access to significantly larger computing power, allowing students to run more complex jobs and work with datasets that would be difficult to handle locally, all within an environment that mirrors real-world research computing.
“Exposing our students to large-scale and leading-edge resources really gives them the perspective they need going forward,” VanHorn said. “It helps them understand the kinds of problems they’ll be able to solve using high performance computing.”
The same resources that support classroom learning are also being used for research across campus. Faculty are using OSC for projects ranging from machine learning and natural language processing to engineering simulations and quantum-based nanomaterials modeling.
In one project, psychology researchers are using machine learning techniques to analyze team communication in training environments, transforming large volumes of text into structured data that can be used to evaluate performance. In another, mechanical and materials engineering researchers are developing deep learning models to simulate complex manufacturing processes, helping reduce the computational demands of modeling multiphysics interactions.
“Performing Finite Element Method (FEM) and machine learning is not even possible without accessing OSC resources due to the sheer size of the simulation domain, the number of coupled differential equations, and the overall size of the required data for deep learning approaches,” said Hamed Attariani, faculty member in mechanical and materials engineering.
Across disciplines, VanHorn sees both the range of users and the variety of workloads as key strengths.
“The two things that jump out at me are the varied groups from Wright State that are using OSC, and the different types of workloads,” he said. “The wide range of applications that OSC can support is amazing.”
VanHorn is also working to build a stronger campus-wide community as more faculty and students begin using OSC. He created an internal user group to connect Wright State’s OSC users and is exploring ways to introduce the technology to a broader audience.
One idea under development is an “OSC Day,” which would bring introductory presentations and hands-on workshops directly to campus.
As Wright State continues to expand its research activity, VanHorn sees increasing awareness of OSC as a key step.
“I think a lot of students and faculty feel that there’s a learning curve with using HPC or are intimidated by the idea of learning a new way of doing things,” VanHorn said. “If we can show how accessible this technology is, it should increase the university’s research footprint and support continued growth in our R2 research activities.”
About OSC
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.
Source: Lexi Biasi, OSC
The post Wright State Expands Research and Teaching Capabilities with Ohio Supercomputer Center appeared first on HPCwire.
June 5, 2026 — Boston University has joined a major National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded effort that’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock new discoveries in physics—potentially bringing fresh insights to research topics that span nature’s smallest particles to the universe’s largest-scale cosmic phenomena.
The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) also aims to use physics principles to, in turn, develop new approaches to AI. BU will be a core IAIFI member, teaming up with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University. The NSF recently gave IAIFI a funding boost, which will support its work for the next five years.
BU’s participation in the institute, which was founded in 2020, will be led by Siddharth Mishra-Sharma, a BU Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences assistant professor of computing and data sciences. Before joining BU last fall, he was a fellow at the institute and a member of the technical staff at AI company Anthropic, where he remains part-time.
“For BU, joining IAIFI means being embedded in a rich interdisciplinary network that spans physics theory, experiment, observation, and foundational AI,” says Mishra-Sharma. “Conversely, IAIFI stands to benefit substantially from BU’s strengths across data science, cosmology, astronomy, condensed matter physics, and biophysics.”
Mishra-Sharma’s research is focused on how AI will reshape scientific practice, and he’s excited by the potential for IAIFI to accelerate projects drawing experts from across BU, including existing efforts to build the next generation of cosmological surveys and to use statistical physics to improve understanding of machine learning. He says being an IAIFI fellow was a key part of his career trajectory and hopes being involved in the institute can have an equally positive effect on his colleagues and their work.
“AI for science is a shining example of convergence, and CDS is increasingly seen as a leader in that space,” says Azer Bestavros, BU’s Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and associate provost for computing and data sciences. “The promise I see in Siddharth’s research is the transition from AI as a tool to AI as a collaborator. He is exploring the limits of automated scientific reasoning, asking how an AI can participate in the entire scientific process, from simulation and modeling to the generation of entirely new physical models.”
According to an IAIFI press release announcing its funding renewal ($4.98 million annually), it’s ready to broaden its ambitions, pushing “deeper into what the institute calls the ‘physics of AI’—using physical reasoning, physical challenges, and physical tools not just to apply AI, but to understand and improve it.”
The institute’s director, Jesse Thaler, an MIT professor of physics, says Mishra-Sharma and BU are exciting partners to help in that mission. “Siddharth has been an important part of IAIFI from the very beginning, not only through his research, but through the energy, generosity, and community spirit he brings to everything he does,” says Thaler. “With Siddharth now at BU, we’re excited to see Boston University play an important role in IAIFI, adding real intellectual strength and reinforcing the collaborative model that has been central to the institute from the start.”
A key pillar of the institute’s mission is to build a community of researchers and to educate the public about physics and AI. In addition to hosting summer workshops, colloquia, and hackathons for scientists, it runs activities targeted at K–12 students. Mishra-Sharma says there will be opportunities for BU students to get involved too.
“A huge part of IAIFI is training the next generation of talent,” he says. “BU students and postdocs will be able to participate fully in the institute’s research, training, and community activities.”
More from HPCwire: NSF Renews IAIFI Funding to Advance AI-Driven Physics Research
Source: Andrew Thurston, BU
The post Boston University Joins NSF-Funded IAIFI to Advance AI and Physics Research appeared first on HPCwire.
Prime minister’s office responds after JD Vance blames British teenager’s death on mass migration
Keir Starmer has suggested the US is trying to interfere in British democracy after JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the murder of the British teenager Henry Nowak on mass migration.
The prime minister’s office responded after the senior Republican politician claimed in a post on X that Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it”.
Continue reading...U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy had lambasted Justice Department lawyers in a decision last month and accused them of misrepresenting and withholding information.
President said he’d like to see intelligence agencies shrink as Senate blocks Fisa extension amid disquiet over nomination of Bill Pulte
Donald Trump has urged a controversial loyalist he installed as the country’s top intelligence official to fire “a lot of people” overseeing intelligence for the US federal government.
The US president said Bill Pulte, who has no previous experience in the intelligence sphere, is “less shackled” because he has only been appointed director of national intelligence temporarily.
Continue reading...
Timmy G. Robinson Jr., founder and owner of what was once Kentucky’s largest drug addiction treatment company, was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering.
The indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky, charges Robinson with fraudulently selling millions of dollars of the same IRS tax credit to two companies. Robinson “devised a scheme” to “unlawfully enrich himself” by selling those tax credits to two parties, the indictment says. Robinson is also charged with two counts of money laundering for spending the proceeds of the fraudulent sale.
Robinson has resigned as CEO of ARC, company spokesperson Vanessa Keeton said Thursday. Robinson, 50, founded the company in 2012 after becoming sober and telling people he felt called by God to help people in the state with addiction.
ARC, which at one point operated more than 40 drug treatment centers around the state, has been under FBI investigation for Medicaid fraud since July 2024. That investigation is ongoing, the FBI confirmed on Friday. The Lexington Herald-Leader, in partnership with ProPublica, reported in April firsthand accounts from former ARC employees and clients who said they were told by ARC to falsely bill Medicaid, or witnessed others billing for services that were not actually provided. The company said at the time that it “has never knowingly or fraudulently billed Medicaid for services, and there is no evidence that the organization encouraged employees to falsify group notes for billing purposes.”
Robinson’s attorney, Kent Wicker, said he and his client were surprised to learn an indictment had been placed over a “dispute with some investors that is now pending in a civil courtroom.”
That dispute escalated earlier this year, when ARC was sued by two companies to which Robinson had sold IRS credits, including the Bahamas-based Angelica Capital Trust. But both companies allege that when ARC received the IRS credits, it illegally kept more than $8 million the companies were owed. They allege ARC was refusing to repay the money in part so it could pay a preliminary $28 million settlement with the Department of Justice over alleged Medicaid fraud. Robinson has said he would make payments to creditors upon the sale of the company, which he described in January as imminent.
“To be clear, Mr. Robinson did not defraud anyone, did not gain anything from the transaction at issue, and he has done nothing but deliver high quality care for over a decade to thousands of Kentuckians,” Wicker said in an emailed statement to the Herald-Leader and ProPublica. “We look forward to defending this case in court.”
Starting in 2023, ARC applied for two COVID-19-related tax credits, totalling nearly $7 million.
In July 2025, Robinson sold the rights to the first tax credit to a loan company, the indictment says. Under the agreement, the purchaser would pay ARC $2.7 million in exchange for a future repayment of the tax credit once the IRS funds arrived. Robinson signed that agreement, and later that month the buyer wired ARC the agreed amount.
Soon after, the indictment says, Robinson “devised a scheme” to sell that same credit amount to a second company and in doing so “falsely represented” that the $2.7 million in initial tax credit was available to purchase. “Robinson concealed the prior transactions” to the new buyer, according to the indictment.
In November, Robinson signed an agreement with the second buyer, who sent a wire transfer that included $2.7 million for the twice-sold tax credit.
In December, when the IRS paid ARC the COVID-19 tax refunds, “at Robinson’s direction, ARC spent the ERC [Employee Retention Credit] funds on other operational costs and debt obligations,” the indictment reads.
Keeton declined to comment further on the case, citing pending litigation. However, she said ARC continues to operate normally.
“All facilities, programs, and services remain open and fully operational,” Keeton said in an emailed statement. “Our leadership team, employees, and clinical staff remain committed to delivering high-quality care and support to the individuals and families we serve.”
Robinson faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss, for the wire fraud count. Each money laundering count carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
We’re taking a closer look at how ARC treated the people who came to the organization seeking help with their sobriety. If you’re a current or former client or employee, we want to hear from you.
The post Founder of Kentucky Drug Rehab Center Indicted on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges appeared first on ProPublica.
The UK's Government Digital Service is replacing Stripe with Dutch payments provider Adyen for many GOV.UK Pay transactions, including local authorities, police forces, and armed forces units. The three-year deal covers about 1,000 services and is meant to make payments more flexible while keeping the user experience largely unchanged. The Register reports: According to the tender notice published in February 2025, the contract covers around 17 percent of payments made through GOV.UK Pay but more than 70 percent of its organizations and includes the only option allowing users to start taking payments within one working day. At that point the contract had an estimated maximum value of £49 million, although with no guarantees over volume. In a blogpost about the contract award on 2 June, GDS said it will migrate around 1,000 services to the new supplier. "We will make migration as straightforward as possible while complying with Know Your Customer legislation that protects everyone from fraud," wrote Alan Maddrell, senior content designer for the service. "Most importantly, there will be no discernible difference for paying users and no loss in functionality." He added that the change of supplier will help introduce new options including pay by bank, which transfers money directly between bank accounts using open banking services and avoids the need to type in card details. GDS will continue to use WorldPay to process payments for central government, linked organizations and NHS bodies.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Acting director David Venturella rescinds Biden-era policy that required agency to report and investigate such deaths
A memo issued by the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, David Venturella, has ordered the federal agency to cease reporting the deaths of newly released detainees, in a change that could obscure the full human cost of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration mass detention policies.
The move, first reported by the Washington Post, rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release.
Continue reading...Attacks on police in Southampton, Russian strikes in Kyiv, the Ebola outbreak and PSG win the Champions League – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing
Continue reading...President Zelenskyy chided Putin in his first public message to the Russian leader, who called it "boorish" on Friday.
Exclusive: Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate advocates public ownership of water companies as he prepares for potential leadership bid
Thames Water should be nationalised, Andy Burnham has said, revealing public ownership of water companies would “absolutely be an option” under his potential leadership of the Labour party.
Burnham, Labour’s candidate in the Makerfield byelection, has previously called for “greater public control” over the companies. In an interview with the Guardian, he has confirmed this could mean nationalisation.
Continue reading...President Trump told the Wall Street Journal he may even want to terminate the Office of the Director of National Intelligence altogether.
Want to boost your savings with a high-rate account right now? Here are three ways you can do that this month.
Trump administration has asked DC circuit court of appeals to reverse lower court decision which blocked construction of $400m ballroom
No court has the authority to halt construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and a secure underground facility, a Department of Justice lawyer has argued, suggesting only US Congress had the power to stop the project.
The Trump administration has asked the Washington DC circuit court of appeals to reverse a lower court decision which blocked construction of a $400m ballroom on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing. Construction of a secure bunker for staff underground at the site was allowed to proceed while the dispute between Washington DC preservationists and the White House continues.
Continue reading...Federal judge rules policies unlawfully barred applicants from receiving decisions on asylum, green cards and more
The Trump administration unlawfully barred applicants from 39 travel-ban countries from receiving decisions on asylum, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications, a US federal judge ruled on Friday.
The decision came on the same day that the US Senate voted to pass legislation to fund Donald Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown.
Continue reading...Pouria Zeraati of Iran International TV was stabbed three times outside his London home in attempt to ‘silence’ him
Two men have been found guilty of involvement in a targeted knife attack on an Iranian journalist in London said to have been carried out on behalf of the regime in Tehran.
Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin, was working for Iran International, a Farsi-language dissident broadcaster, when he was stabbed in the leg outside his west London home in 2024.
Continue reading...Former CIA official David Rush was arrested in May after FBI agents found gold bars worth about $40 million at his home while probing whether he had lied about his educational and military background, according to court records.
Mortgage interest rates may not be ideal, but there are still advantages to buying a home this June. Here are three.
Longtime Slashdot reader Elektroschock writes: The American Business Software Alliance (BSA) does not consider mandatory open-source licensing to be an appropriate indicator of sovereignty. This is among the "pointed messages" they sent to the French government consultation (closed) today. "What protects Europe is the ability to govern, audit, and mitigate risk, not where a company files its corporate papers," said Thomas Boue of BSA. "Criteria of this kind raise costs, reduce access to best-in-class security solutions, and risk conflicting with the EU's international trade commitments."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Russian president describes Ukrainian counterpart’s letter as rude and says he sees no point in face-to-face talks
Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold a face-to-face meeting, insisting instead that Russia will achieve its war goals in Ukraine, including seizing all of the eastern Donbas region.
Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president described the open letter from his Ukrainian counterpart containing the offer as rude. He refused to use Zelenskyy’s name, referring to him only as its author. Asked if they could meet to discuss an end to the conflict, Putin replied: “So far I see no point.”
Continue reading...
Legislative efforts to make daylight saving time permanent year round got a boost with support from President Donald Trump, who criticized the twice-yearly clock switching as cost-prohibitive.
But there is no strong evidence that Trump’s solution — switching permanently to daylight saving time — would provide the economic boost Trump suggests it would.
The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent year round unless states opt out, was folded into a motor vehicle safety bill that passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21 with a 48-1 vote.
Shortly after, Trump posted his support on Truth Social.
“This is so important in that Hundreds of Millions of Dollars are spent every year by people, Cities, and States, being forced to change their Clocks. Many of these Clocks are located in Towers, and the cost of renting, or using, Heavy Equipment to do this twice a year is prohibitive!” Trump wrote.
“I am going to work very hard to see The Sunshine Protection Act signed into Law,” Trump added. “It’s time that people can stop worrying about the ‘Clock,’ not to mention all of the work and money that is spent on this ridiculous, twice yearly production. It will also be a very nice WIN for the Republican Party. Take it! We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day — And who can be against that — This is an easy one!”
We should note that while Trump framed the legislation as a potential “WIN for the Republican Party,” the bill has bipartisan support (and bipartisan opposition, as well). But it would still need support from the House and then the Senate, plus the president’s signature, in order to pass. Similar past efforts in Congress have stalled.
We could find no credible analysis of the cost of using heavy equipment to physically change municipal clocks located in towers, as the president mentioned. In fact, David Prerau, author of the 2005 book “Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time,” told us that in the decades he has spent researching and speaking publicly about daylight saving time, “no one has mentioned that particular point.” While there may be a cost to changing such municipal clocks, he said, it’s also “very rare” and the cost is negligible in the larger scheme of the topic.
A “back-of-the-envelope” calculation by an economist with the Independent Institute updated in 2013 by the American Enterprise Institute estimated the “opportunity cost” of daylight saving time at about $2 billion per year. The estimate assumed people spent 10 minutes twice a year changing their clocks, and it assigned a lost wages figure to that time. (We would note that many digital clocks nowadays automatically make the time shift, so the lost-time argument has dissipated over time.)
More commonly, though, economists have attempted to estimate the cost of switching back and forth between standard and daylight saving time related to impacts on health, driving and work. (Most of the country moves the clock forward by an hour on the second Sunday in March, and back an hour the first Sunday in November.)
For example, an analysis by Chmura Economics & Analytics, a labor market research firm, updated in 2024, looked at evidence of economic loss from peer-reviewed journals — increased heart attacks, strokes, workplace accidents and traffic accidents attributed to switching times — and concluded daylight saving time costs about $672 million annually in all U.S. metropolitan statistical areas.
Although extending daylight saving time is often touted as an energy-saver, a Department of Energy analysis in 2008 concluded, “The electricity savings are small compared to the national total for the year, representing about 0.03 percent of the total national electricity consumption.” Some other studies have also found a small electricity savings.
But still other studies have found the opposite. Research published in 2011 looked into the effect of daylight saving time in Indiana and concluded that “if anything, the policy seems to have the opposite of its intended effect” and that electricity demand increased about 1%.
Nevertheless, the authors wrote, “there are other arguments made in favor of DST. These range from increased opportunities for leisure, enhanced public health and safety, and economic growth.”
There’s another facet to the daylight saving debate: If you do away with switching back and forth, do you go with standard time or daylight saving time?
Trump himself appears to have been conflicted on which route is best.
On Dec. 13, 2024, he posted to Truth Social, “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”
But shortly after taking office for a second term, Trump was asked on March 6, 2025, when he’d be getting rid of daylight saving time.
“This should be the easiest one of all, but it’s a 50/50 issue,” Trump said. “And if something’s a 50/50 issue, it’s hard to get excited about it. I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark. … But a lot of people like it one way, a lot of people like it the other way. It’s very even. And usually I find when that’s the case, what else do we have to do?”
By the following month, though, Trump seemed to have picked a side.
“The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day,” Trump posted on Truth Social on April 11, 2025. “Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!!”
Trump is correct that switching permanently to daylight saving time is the “more popular alternative.” In a 2022 poll by CBS News, 46% of Americans said they’d like daylight saving time all year around, while 33% preferred standard time all year around. Just 21% said they would like to keep switching back and forth. A Monmouth University poll that same year similarly found 44% of Americans favored year-round daylight saving time, while 13% favored year-round standard time and 35% said they’d like to keep changing the clocks twice a year.
Currently, 19 states have enacted legislation to switch to year-round daylight saving time, if Congress votes to allow it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Two states — Hawaii and most of Arizona — and several U.S. territories already observe permanent standard time.
Dr. Beth Malow, a professor of neurology and pediatrics in the Vanderbilt Sleep Division who testified before the House in 2022 in favor of a permanent switch to standard time, told us via email, “Moving permanently to DST would not be a cost savings and in fact, is associated with decreased productivity” due to disruption of sleep cycles. It also “increases healthcare costs,” she said. And, she noted, energy cost analyses are less relevant now that “energy use with computers etc is 24/7” than “when we were focused on electrical lighting, as we were in the 1900s.”
Groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine also prefer switching permanently to standard time.
“Although the chronic effects of remaining year-round in daylight saving time (which shifts daylight hours later in the evening) have not been well studied, sleep experts say that standard time (which shifts daylight hours earlier in the morning) aligns best with human circadian biology,” the AMA wrote in 2022. “Data show that the sudden change from standard time to daylight saving time in March is associated with significant public health and safety risks, including increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events, mood disorders, and motor vehicle crashes. Some studies suggest that the body clock does not adjust to daylight saving time even after a few months.”
“Eliminating the time changes in March and November would be a welcome change. But research shows permanent daylight saving time overlooks potential health risks that can be avoided by establishing permanent standard time instead,” AMA Trustee Alexander Ding said at the time. “Sleep experts are alarmed. Issues other than patient health are driving this debate. It’s time that we wake up to the health implications of clock setting.”
In a 2024 position statement, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine wrote: “[T]he United States should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of permanent standard time (ST), which aligns best with human circadian biology. Evidence supports the distinct benefits of ST for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight saving time (DST).”
There is far from a consensus in Congress.
At a House Energy and Commerce Committee markup on May 21, Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida lobbied for a permanent switch to daylight saving time.
“Like clockwork twice a year, I hear from my constituents — I know you do too — on their dread of having to change the clocks,” Bilirakis said. “For decades, Americans have long criticized this switch as disruptive to families, businesses, schools, and public health. Studies have also shown that the economic productivity increases with more evening daylight, while reducing traffic accidents and improving overall quality of life.”
Democratic Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán of California provided the counterpoint.
“Like many Americans, I too am tired of changing our clocks twice a year,” Barragán said. “Parents hate it, workers hate it, our bodies hate it. But making daylight saving time permanent poses health and safety issues. Doctors, neurologists, sleep scientists, and major medical organizations have warned Congress that permanent daylight saving time would hurt public health and public safety. … Why? Because our bodies are built to wake up with morning light. When sunrise gets pushed later into the morning, especially in winter, it turns off our sleep, our mood, our concentration, and even our health, our heart health. Sleep experts have linked the shift to daylight saving time with higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, depression, and car crashes, and for millions of Americans, permanent daylight saving would mean going to school and work in darkness for months. It would put sunrise in many states past 8am for over three months.”
The country tried year-round daylight saving time in the early 1970s, and it didn’t go well.
In 1973, Congress passed — and then President Richard Nixon signed — the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act — which made daylight saving time year-round as a response to the ongoing fuel crisis at the time. It was supposed to last for two years. But just a few months into it, widespread public support for the switch collapsed, and Congress pulled the plug.
“The experiment … ran afoul of public opinion—parents became concerned about traffic accidents involving their children, who were going to school in the predawn darkness on winter mornings,” the New York Times reported at the time.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton cited that history lesson in an Oct. 28, 2025, speech from the Senate floor, opposing a plan to switch permanently to daylight saving time.
“In January of 1974, millions of Americans traveled to work and school in darkness. Commuter trains were delayed. Schoolchildren carried flashlights. Tragically, some of these kids were struck by cars and killed while walking to school in the dark,” Cotton said. (Indeed, Time reported in February 1974 that eight children died in pre-dawn traffic accidents that winter in Florida alone.)
“It’s said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Cotton said. “If permanent daylight savings time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans.”
In a June 1 article, economist William Shughart, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, argued for year-round standard time, writing: “Few, if any, general benefits of DST have been identified. But physiologists, sleep medicine specialists, and other experts have emphasized the human costs of springing time forward by an hour in March, only to set it back again eight months later. Misaligning body clocks (circadian rhythms) with sunlight has been associated with brain fog, strokes, heart attacks, and more workplace and road accidents. The adverse effects are especially troublesome for older people, who take longer than their younger compatriots to adjust to the time shocks. … Permanent daylight saving time holds a false promise of energy savings, bustling stores, and enhanced social welfare.”
There is, of course, a third camp in this debate — those who argue to just leave things as they are.
Prerau, the daylight saving time expert, told us that while there are undeniable social benefits to daylight saving time in the spring, summer and fall, the effects are intolerable in the winter. During the summer, sunrise gets pushed an hour from, say, 4:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., and so most people don’t even notice it. But in the winter, it can push sunrise until after 8:30 a.m or even 9 a.m. “Everyone gets up in the dark,” he said. “Adults drive to work in the dark. Kids go to school in the dark.” Switching the clocks may be disruptive, Prerau said, but it’s worth that price to enjoy daylight saving for eight months.
“In my opinion, stick with the way it is now,” he said. “Once a year you lose an hour of sleep. But that’s worth the benefit of having daylight saving for eight months out of the year.”
As for Trump’s statement that switching permanently to daylight saving time “gives you a longer, brighter Day — And who can be against that,” that is, of course, not accurate. The president has more clearly said on other occasions that the switch would mean “more Daylight at the end of a day.”
“Clocks merely advance an hour, shifting sunlight from the morning to the evening,” Shughart wrote. “The length of the day doesn’t change a single nanosecond.”
The term “daylight saving time” is “a misnomer if there ever was one, given that daylight isn’t saved, it’s just moved from morning to evening,” Jon Nese, a teaching professor of meteorology at Penn State University, explained in 2022.
“The length of day (ie, the length of daylight) doesn’t change whether you’re on Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time – it’s just that an hour of daylight is moved from the beginning to end of the day,” Nese told us this week via 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 post Trump’s Push to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent appeared first on FactCheck.org.
Long-serving presenter talks about diagnosis in investigative documentary to be broadcast on 20 June
The former Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, the Alzheimer’s Society has said.
Snow, who presented his last news bulletin in December 2021, will take part in a documentary that will be broadcast on Channel 4 and in which he talks about his diagnosis.
Continue reading...Delegation of Chagos refugees visiting Britain says issue has been ‘hijacked within the halls’ of politics
A Chagossian delegation visiting the UK has urged parliamentarians to complete stalled legislation to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which they say has been “hijacked within the halls” of UK politics.
The six-person contingent from the Chagos Refugees Group expressed their full support for the UK to conclude an agreement after the government was forced to shelve legislation when the US dropped support for the agreement.
Continue reading...A federal judge blocked a series of measures that have prevented officials from granting asylum, green cards and other legal immigration benefits to many immigrants.
Stahl and Whitaker had been wild cards after new CBS News management fired multiple people in recent weeks
Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim announced on Friday their decision to remain at CBS’s 60 Minutes after the tumultuous firings of several of the show’s senior correspondents and top producers.
The three correspondents issued a joint statement, saying: “We have had a hard time deciding whether to stay … We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die. We have been grieving because this whole mess has wounded and damaged the broadcast.
Continue reading...Interest returns with all three account types will be similar, but they won't be identical. Here's what to know now.
Pixar remains an "artist-driven studio," said the movie's VFX Supervisor Thomas Jordan at SXSW London. AI doesn't yet produce anything that meets its standards, he added.
Anger and distress at the treatment of the stabbed teenager is widely shared. But the online amplification of myths and grievances must be tackled
To learn of the last minutes of Henry Nowak’s life would be shocking and distressing under any circumstances. The stabbed teenager begged officers for help, as they handcuffed him before realising their mistake. To watch those final moments, on the police body-cam footage released this week, is all the more immediate, and unbearable. The outrage is widely shared. But the way it has been weaponised is alarming. His family’s wish is for his legacy to be a renewed effort to reduce knife crime, not increased antagonism along racial and religious lines. Instead, the unscrupulous are using the power of the footage and the speed of social media to spread myths about “two-tier policing” and turn trauma into political mobilisation.
Rightly, Hampshire’s chief constable has apologised. Three of the officers involved are being investigated, while a fourth has left the force. Policies are being reviewed. Vickrum Digwa will serve at least 20 years for murder before being eligible for parole. Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have met with the victim’s family.
Continue reading...Anthony Head played librarian and mentor Rupert Giles in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and recently appeared in "Ted Lasso."
Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, claimed he shot Joseph Ryan after he came across Ryan attacking his wife.
Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina introduced a trio of constitutional amendments this week aimed at protecting traditional powers of the state’s governor and reforming oversight of its court system.
The effort was prompted in part by ProPublica’s reporting, including an investigation that found that over nearly a decade, Republican lawmakers had pushed through law after law shrinking the powers of North Carolina’s governor, always a Democrat during that time.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the bills’ sponsors readily acknowledged that the initiatives are unlikely to pass, at least in the current legislative session: Republicans hold majorities in North Carolina’s House and Senate.
But in proposing the measures as changes to the state constitution, the group of eight Democrats said their goal was to make them less vulnerable to the persistent partisan warfare that has engulfed the narrowly divided swing state.
Republicans “won’t always be in the majority,” said Rep. Phil Rubin, the primary sponsor of one bill. “And when they’re not, they’re going to suddenly think these are great rules. So let’s do them now.”
Republican leaders in the House, Senate and court system did not respond to requests for comment on the bills.
Experts have long maintained that Republican power grabs have thwarted the will of North Carolina voters, removing the Democratic governor’s control or partial control over numerous boards, entities and executive prerogatives and leaving him the nation’s weakest. (Republican officials have defended the shifts, pointing out that voters also elected a GOP legislative majority.)
Rubin’s measure would bar the legislature from stripping away additional gubernatorial powers, as well as block majority leaders from what he called “government by ambush” — springing major legislation on the minority and public without notice.
“ProPublica’s reporting shows the perils of not having this law,” Rubin said. Voters should have “the opportunity to secure their constitution, demand absolute transparency in lawmaking and ensure that people, not backroom deals, have the final say.”
The two other constitutional amendments unveiled this week target aspects of the judicial system.
The first, authored by House Rep. Marcia Morey, would make disciplinary hearings and sanctions by the courts’ internal watchdog, the Judicial Standards Commission, public.
GOP rules currently cloak the commission’s work in secrecy. Behind closed doors, ProPublica revealed, the majority-Republican state Supreme Court quashed the commission’s recommendations that two Republican judges who’d admitted to committing egregious conduct violations be publicly reprimanded. (Spokespeople for the North Carolina Supreme Court and the Judicial Standards Commission declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions about the matter.)
Morey’s bill would also change who appoints the commission’s members, a step she called critical to preventing the “weaponization” of its work.
Currently, Republican legislative leaders and Paul Newby, the state’s conservative chief justice, appoint a majority of the commission’s members. As ProPublica has reported, in 2023 Newby encouraged the commission to investigate a Black Democratic justice who’d criticized his decision to effectively shut down a racial equity commission. (Newby, as well as spokespeople for the court and the Judicial Standards Commission, declined to comment for the story.)
Morey’s measure would divide commission appointments equally among the chief justice, the governor and the North Carolina State Bar. “Who makes decisions about discipline and who appoints the decision-makers,” she said, are critical to making the system “fair and effective.”
The second bill, sponsored by Rep. Deb Butler, would disqualify state Supreme Court justices from hearing cases in which family members are parties. Justice Phil Berger Jr. has caused controversy by ruling in multiple cases in which his father, the leader of the state Senate, is a defendant in his legislative capacity. (Berger referred recusal requests on these cases to the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, which ruled he could participate.)
Butler’s measure would also compel justices to disclose more information about large stock transactions, outside sources of income and sponsored travel. A ProPublica investigation found Newby didn’t disclose a trip to a luxurious Hawaiian resort, paid for by a conservative judicial education program. Newby and court spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment about his decision not to disclose the trip.
Butler described her bill as an effort to restore public trust. “People deserve complete confidence in the integrity of their court,” she said.
In the unlikely event that the bills pass, the public would then have the chance to vote on them in November. If not, the sponsors said, they’d revive them in the next session, by which time even some Republican strategists think that a blue wave may have flipped the North Carolina House.
“We’re committed to following through on these bills to ensure fairness and impartiality in our courts and legislature,” Morey said. “This should be the norm, not the partisan bias we have now.”
The post North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy appeared first on ProPublica.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: There's been a lot of pushback in recent months around the impact of AI data centers on local communities, with the use of water being a key issue for many. Google, in an expansion of its "water stewardship" programs, is making commitments that include replenishing more water than it uses at its data center sites. AI data centers go through a lot of water use in cooling the hardware used to power models, and Google is no exception. While Google stands by saying that the impact of AI data centers on U.S. water consumption is "small," it also says it is focusing on "protecting local water resources in all aspects of our data center operations." In a post, Google explains five new commitments regarding water use at its data centers in the U.S. These include replenishing more water than is consumed at data centers, helping local utilities to modernize water infrastructure, using air-cooled solutions in areas where watersheds are at risk, "transparently" reporting water use at data centers, and focusing on "alternative and reclaimed" water solutions. [...] In a linked paper (PDF), Google says it will replenish 120% of the water it uses at data center sites by 2030. Google is also committing $17 million to new water stewardship projects in Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas in addition to 165 other projects already in place throughout the U.S.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Technology secretary promises to support people whose jobs are swept away by automation
Liz Kendall has insisted Labour will make artificial intelligence “work for workers”, and not abandon people whose jobs are swept away by its rapid advance.
With public fears mounting about the impact of AI on employment, particularly for young people, the technology secretary claimed that the government could shape the way it is adopted.
Continue reading...Evergoods' Civic Access Pouch is invaluable for keeping all my cables, chargers and batteries organized on the go (and at home).
So I just bought a Onewheel+ XR with the older firmware that allows for some options that one might not have if updated. Now I'm considering if I should update it or not to get haptic buzz and that jazz. Feels like it would be a safer ride if I update it, but I'm not quite sure what would be lost doing so. What are your takes on this?
June 5, 2026 — Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have developed a practical, comprehensive noise-modeling framework for a popular class of superconducting quantum processors. Their work, published in the journal PRX Quantum, offers a sevenfold improvement in predictive accuracy over existing approaches.
Quantum bits, or qubits, are intrinsically prone to noise — interference arising from environmental factors such as electrical and magnetic fields or temperature fluctuations — as a result of the extreme sensitivity that makes them so valuable for computing. Developing accurate noise models is key to creating the robust quantum algorithms and resilient error-correction protocols required to build truly fault-tolerant quantum computers.
“To really advance the field, we need models that can predict a wide range of behavior while utilizing a small number of parameters, rather than theoretical models that try to account for all of the fundamental physics at play in quantum interactions,” said project lead Gregory Quiroz, a senior physicist at APL and an associate research professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “The novelty of our approach lies in a unified and experimentally validated framework that connects multiple noise mechanisms and yields a coherent predictive methodology.”
Characterizing Noise in Cloud-Based Quantum Processors
To study quantum noise in real, multi-qubit systems, the team made use of cloud access to 39 qubits across seven superconducting devices. Specifically, they studied transmons, a type of superconducting qubit prized for its reduced sensitivity to noise from electric charge and therefore popular in mainstream quantum computing architectures. Relying on cloud access presented an opportunity but also a challenge, because the team had to work out how to study and characterize noise on the quantum computers without low-level access to the hardware. That lack of access also reflects increasingly common real-world scenarios involving proprietary systems, Quiroz noted.
“Actual quantum computer users won’t have low-level hardware access either — they’ll just be running applications, and they’ll need to be confident that they’re running correctly,” he said. “Our experiments reflect those conditions.”
Yasuo Oda, the paper’s first author and a postdoctoral researcher who was Quiroz’s student at JHU while contributing to the study, said that working around that limitation required a creative approach.
“Fundamentally, we’re trying to drive a transition in a system of qubits from one state to another — in other words, to perform a quantum computation — and study how noise affects the success of that operation,” Oda said. “That sounds simple, but the specific way you actually drive that transition varies widely from platform to platform. Without low-level access, we had limited insight into the characteristics of the hardware.”
Instead of studying a single operation in detail, the team ran repeated computations on the quantum processors in order to drive an accumulation of errors. By studying how often those accumulated errors occurred and how widely they deviated from the expected result, they were able to glean insights into what was happening in the underlying physical system.
A Simple Yet Comprehensive Model
Significantly, the team’s approach enabled them to characterize two fundamentally different types of errors — often referred to as “incoherent” and “coherent” errors — in a single model. Incoherent errors occur when information is irretrievably lost; coherent errors can, for example, represent flaws in control hardware calibration, and are fixable.
“If you have access to data about coherent errors, you have the option of engineering a system to prevent them or fixing them afterward,” Oda said.
While there is extensive literature about both types of errors, they are typically studied in isolation. To the team’s knowledge, no one has created a single predictive framework that brings both types of errors together for superconducting qubit hardware.
“We were able to put a wide variety of errors together into one model, which is simple in terms of parameters but also comprehensive in the types of phenomena it can describe — even predicting the performance of small quantum algorithms,” he said. “That’s our biggest contribution.”
From Characterization to Correction
Now that the team has created this model, the next step will be to apply it to improving hardware performance, Quiroz said.
“Now that we have this low-weight noise model, we have the opportunity to apply it across all levels of the quantum computing stack, from hardware design to algorithm design to error correction,” he said. “The information we can get from the model can inform every level of the quantum computing stack.”
This work is a part of SMART Stack, an APL-led project focused on designing quantum software stack components and principles that make error characterization and management more scalable, modular, adaptive across platforms, reconfigurable, and targeted (hence, SMART) in current and near-future quantum processors. APL’s partners in this endeavor include researchers at the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, Unitary Foundation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Infleqtion. Funded by a competitive quantum computing award from the Department of Energy, the effort builds on previous successes in quantum error management and is part of APL’s larger quantum computer science portfolio.
“APL is committed to characterizing and mitigating quantum noise and errors at every level of the quantum computing stack, including hardware, software, and hybrid computing systems combining quantum and classical computers,” said Kevin Schultz, assistant program manager for Alternative Computing Paradigms in APL’s Research and Exploratory Development Mission Area and a co-author on the paper. “This noise model represents a significant step toward achieving those goals.”
Source: Ajai Raj, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
The post Johns Hopkins Team Models Quantum Noise on Superconducting Processors appeared first on HPCwire.
Pochettino ‘not happy’ with Palace’s injury assessment
Richards missed Conference League final
Chris Richards will not take part in the United States’ final World Cup tune-up friendly against Germany, head coach Mauricio Pochettino said in Friday’s pre-match press conference.
While Pochettino awaits further assessments, the defender’s status for the World Cup is decidedly in doubt.
Continue reading...Settlement over alleged child molestation by school janitors is latest in troubling string of allegations spanning decades
One of the most prominent Catholic high schools in New Orleans has agreed to pay a seven-figure monetary sum to settle a lawsuit claiming child molestation by janitors at the institution decades earlier.
The plaintiff struck the agreement with Jesuit high school ahead of a trial scheduled to start in the Louisiana city’s civil district courthouse on 15 June, roughly six years after he sued under a pseudonym.
Continue reading...Commentary: It's a rough time for game consoles, but Nintendo's Switch sequel now seems like a better proposition than it did in 2025.
Social media protection service offered by Fifa
English FA yet to confirm whether it will use service
Fifa will expand the use of AI at the World Cup to reduce the amount of abusive messages that teams and players are exposed to on social media.
World football’s governing body introduced a social media protection service after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and has offered its moderation element for free to all football associations at the 2026 tournament, which starts next Thursday. The Football Association has not confirmed whether it is taking up the offer.
Continue reading...Valve says its long-awaited Steam Machine and Steam Frame are both "shipping this summer." The company is also expanding its Verified program beyond Steam Deck to cover the new hardware. "Steam Verified is a developer-focused program where game makers ensure that their titles are capable of running on the Deck (meaning they'll run fine under Linux), that the UI elements and text are readable at standard resolutions, and that sensible default graphics settings are used," notes Tom's Hardware. From the report: The news should ease the worries of many an expecting gamer, given today's constant worries about AI servers slurping every RAM and NAND chip on the face of the earth, as well as Valve's own statements about component scarcity delaying the release. Plus, the company always works on its own schedule, so much so that Valve Time is a term. The release of the Machine has been taking flak, given that while Valve was initially hoping for an estimated $600 to $800 price -- in the ballpark of the higher-end consoles -- the rumored pricing is climbing around or over $1000. This fact is somewhat corroborated by a February statement from a Valve executive who, like most anyone in the world, stated the price revision was due to the AI-driven component shortage.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thousands flee including from village hosting at least 2,500 displaced people, one day after Hezbollah rejects ceasefire
Thousands fled their homes after Israel issued forced evacuation orders for nine villages in southern Lebanon before strikes that killed six people on Friday, a day after the Hezbollah militant group rejected a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon.
Hundreds of families left Anqoun, a village hosting at least 2,500 displaced people, after the Israeli military said it would soon operate against what it said were Hezbollah targets there, ordering residents to leave. The roads leading to Sidon, the closest large city, were choked with cars as families sought shelter.
Continue reading...Prospect of first NBA title since 1999 fuels wave of righteous outrage against Big Apple-based Sesame Street character
The NBA basketball finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs has already drawn commentary after Spurs fans earlier this week continued a habit of wearing distracting, candy-colored T-shirts to honor the Texas city’s annual Fiesta festival.
But now the Knicks’ first opportunity to win the title since 1999 – the last time they were in the finals, also against the Spurs, when they lost – has thrown fans in the Big Apple into such a partisan frenzy that some have come for one of their most beloved own.
Continue reading...US firm says it will convene policymakers for discussion of dangers, in post detailing progress of its Claude model
Anthropic has floated the idea of a worldwide “temporary pause” on AI development – and said it was going to convene “policymakers” to discuss the dangers of advanced AI – in its latest release touting the capabilities of its products.
In a long post on Thursday, Anthropic detailed the progress of its AI model, Claude, towards “recursive self-improvement” – that is, being able to make better and more powerful versions of itself. Recursive self-improvement is a bugbear of AI safety researchers, viewed as the key step for AI to become superintelligent and therefore unleash widespread consequences on humanity.
Continue reading...PARIS, June 5, 2026 — Quantum computing company Alice & Bob has released a new five-criteria framework to define and benchmark logical qubits and establish a fair and comprehensive performance evaluation across hardware modalities. Logical qubits are a key milestone on the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing, but there is no industry-wide standard for defining, measuring or comparing them.
Investors, analysts, enterprise decision-makers and researchers can use this new framework to objectively compare achievements from hardware with different levels of performance, maturity, and capability.
The paper, Defining the Logical Qubit: Five Criteria to Benchmark Logical Qubit Claims, builds on a growing body of industry research to argue that a logical qubit should be defined strictly as a fundamental building block of a fault-tolerant quantum computer. It sets out five qualities a true logical qubit must demonstrate to be a credible candidate for scaling the technology.
“Logical qubits are rapidly becoming the industry’s primary benchmark for progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, yet the term is used to describe achievements with vastly different levels of performance and capability,” said Jérémie Guillaud, VP Quantum Software, Alice & Bob. “Without a common benchmark, it’s difficult for the industry to compare approaches and evaluate genuine progress. At Alice & Bob, we believe a logical qubit should be more than an experimental demonstration – it should represent a fundamental building block of a fault-tolerant quantum computer. By proposing a clear definition and common set of criteria, we hope to make logical qubit claims more transparent, comparable, and easier to evaluate.”
Alice & Bob’s five essential criteria to “score” logical qubit claims are:
The whitepaper can be downloaded here.
“This is a strong, timely, and useful framework for cleaning up logical-qubit claims,” said Russ Fein, Managing Director, Corporate Fuel Partners. “It is especially valuable for investors and non-expert decision-makers because it provides a simple checklist for separating FTQC-relevant progress from weaker demonstrations.”
About Alice & Bob
Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company based in Paris and Boston whose goal is to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer. Advised by Nobel Prize winning researchers, Alice & Bob specializes in cat qubits, a technology developed by the company’s founders. Demonstrating the power of its cat architecture, Alice & Bob recently showed that it could reduce the hardware requirements for building a useful large-scale quantum computer up to 200 times compared with competing approaches.
Source: Alice & Bob
The post Alice & Bob Proposes Five-Criteria Framework for Evaluating Logical Qubits appeared first on HPCwire.
From Values to Action: Where do LGBTIQ+ rights sit in UK foreign policy? 30 June 2026 — 17:30 TO 19:30 BST Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House and Online
In an increasingly contested world order and global threats to LGBTIQ+ rights, experts discuss a path forward for LGBTIQ+ rights and the rule of law in UK foreign policy.
In an increasingly contested world order and global threats to LGBTIQ+ rights, experts discuss a path forward for LGBTIQ+ rights and the rule of law in UK foreign policy.LGBTIQ+ rights are a meaningful but increasingly complicated pillar of UK foreign policy. The UK has positioned LGBTIQ+ rights as an integral aspect of its foreign policy, from diplomacy to development and international advocacy.
But UK foreign policy on LGBTIQ+ issues has been shaped by challenges of aid cuts, changing political priorities at home and the wider world order. LGBTIQ+ people in the UK continue to face significant systemic issues, including hate crimes, discrimination, healthcare disparities and transphobia. UK foreign policy also operates in an increasingly contested normative world order, with rising global backlash against LGBTIQ+ rights.
To commemorate Pride Month, Chatham House’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Working Group has the privilege of convening a panel bringing together leading voices to examine what lies ahead for the UK’s foreign policy approach towards LGBTIQ+ rights.
This panel is followed by a drinks reception.
Collaboration expands quantum computing in LATAM, supporting quantum machine learning for digital pathology
SANTIAGO, Chile, and BOSTON, June 5, 2026 — Classiq and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC Chile) have announced a joint research project to develop hybrid quantum algorithms for biomedical image analysis, assisted by classical machine learning and the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for quantum-classical computing.
The 12-month engagement, titled “Enhancing Pathology through Quantum Computing,” is funded through Avanza UC 2025, the Internal Research and Creation Competition of UC Chile. To the collaborators’ knowledge, it is the first announced consortium in Latin America to combine quantum computing, machine learning and computational pathology.
The engagement marks quantum computing’s and Classiq’s growing presence in Latin America and reflects the company’s expanding work with academic, research and public-sector institutions, including in health innovation. It also reinforces Chile’s emerging role in quantum computing, AI and advanced technology development.
Quantum machine learning applies quantum computing methods to machine learning problems, including classification, pattern recognition and complex data analysis. The initial project focus is on renal pathology, an area of growing public health importance in Chile and across Latin America. This includes applying quantum machine learning to computational pathology, with an initial emphasis on kidney lesion classification, automated glomerular segmentation and semantic pattern search across full histological slides.
The work will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Luciano Rebouças and Dr. Washington Conrado, researchers at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) and professors/researchers at Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Brazil, combining expertise in digital pathology, computer vision and biomedical data analysis using curated histopathology datasets, provided by the Brazilian institutions. The research will leverage the Classiq quantum computing software platform and the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform to leverage a seamless workflow from algorithm development through to simulation and execution.
“Latin America has the scientific talent, institutional momentum and public health needs to support this next stage of quantum computing applications,” said Nir Minerbi, CEO and co-founder of Classiq. “This collaboration brings together quantum software engineering, machine learning and biomedical data expertise in a workflow and project that can help strengthen the regional quantum ecosystem while exploring a practical research path for health.”
The project will be led by Dr. Dardo Goyeneche of the Faculty of Physics at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Dr. Goyeneche is the founder and director of QuDIT, the Quantum Development of Information Theory group at UC, which brings together more than 20 students working on quantum information theory and quantum computing. He also directs Project QuAntü, Chile’s first universal quantum computer initiative, currently under construction since December 2025 at the UC Faculty of Physics. The team also includes Dr. Daniel Uzcátegui from Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC), Chile, whose research at the interface between machine learning and quantum information theory provides a key bridge between the two core domains of this collaboration.
“This project connects fundamental quantum research with an important biomedical challenge,” said Dr. Goyeneche. “By working with Classiq and collaborators in Chile and Brazil, we are creating a regional platform for quantum machine learning in health, while giving researchers experience with modern quantum software engineering workflows used internationally in research and industry.”
The research team will use Classiq’s quantum software platform to model, synthesize and optimize quantum convolutional neural networks, variational quantum classifiers and quantum kernel methods. Selected algorithms will be simulated on NVIDIA AI infrastructure, executed on IonQ quantum hardware, and benchmarked against classical machine learning approaches using standard computer vision metrics.
The collaboration aligns with Chile’s National Strategy for Quantum Technologies 2025–2035, a recently launched government initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s quantum ecosystem and expanding national capabilities in advanced computing, secure communications and scientific innovation. The project also supports UC’s efforts to expand quantum computing research and education as part of the Faculty of Physics’ 2025–2029 strategic plan.
About Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC Chile) is one of Latin America’s leading research universities, dedicated to the creation and transfer of knowledge and to providing a values-based education rooted in its Catholic tradition. With rigorous academic standards and international best practices adopted from top universities worldwide, UC Chile maintains a permanent commitment to excellence in service to the Church and society.
Ranked 116th globally and first in Chile by the QS World University Rankings 2026, UC Chile also leads the country in invention patent applications filed by academic institutions, reflecting a strong focus on research, innovation, and technology transfer. The University is made up of 18 faculties, which include 26 schools and institutes, 7 interdisciplinary institutes, the UC College program, and the Villarrica Campus, together covering all areas of knowledge.
About Classiq
Classiq is the leading quantum computing software company, providing the technology that makes it practical for enterprises and researchers to access and harness quantum computing. Classiq’s quantum software engineering platform transforms high-level functional models into optimized, hardware-ready quantum circuits automatically. This enables teams to develop algorithms faster, optimize them for cost and performance, and make quantum applications usable sooner, without deep hardware expertise.
Through partnerships with global leaders in quantum cloud computing, including major hyperscalers and hardware providers, Classiq ensures that customers including Rolls Royce, Comcast, The BMW Group, Intesa Sanpaolo and many others, can design once and deploy anywhere. Its synthesis technology workflow enables organizations to produce scalable, efficient quantum code that accelerates research and reduces execution cost.
Source: Classiq
The post Classiq and UC Chile Launch Quantum-AI Project for Biomedical Imaging appeared first on HPCwire.
IAIFI enters its second phase with increased funding, broader ambitions, and a growing community at the frontier of AI and fundamental physics.
June 5, 2026 — The MIT-led Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) has received renewed support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for an additional five years, increasing annual funding from $4 million to $4.98 million. The renewal marks a new phase for IAIFI, which has spent its first five years building a research model and an interdisciplinary community around a central premise: that AI can open new ways of doing physics, while physics can help mold better AI systems.
Launched in 2020 as part of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program, IAIFI brings together researchers from MIT, along with Harvard, Northeastern, Tufts, and Boston universities. Its work has shown that machine learning can accelerate discovery in physics, while insights from physics can make AI systems more principled and interpretable.
“From the beginning, IAIFI has been built around a two-way street: AI enabling better physics, and physics enabling better AI,” says Jesse Thaler, IAIFI’s director and a professor of physics at MIT. “We have seen this virtuous cycle play out across multiple areas of physics and AI over the past five years. The exchange is producing not just new results, but genuinely new ways of doing science.”
Research Across Physics and AI
IAIFI’s research spans particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, and foundational AI, with many advances emerging from collaborations across those areas.
In particle physics, IAIFI researchers have developed AI techniques to handle the immense data rates from the Large Hadron Collider in real-time, helping turn a firehose of collision data into actionable physics. In nuclear physics, IAIFI researchers are using AI-based generative methods to model the interactions of quarks and gluons in lattice quantum chromodynamics, creating new ways to study the structure of matter from first principles. In astrophysics, machine learning is being used to uncover new cosmic phenomena and improve the sensitivity of the MIT-led LIGO gravitational-wave experiment.
At the same time, ideas from physics are informing the development of new AI methods. IAIFI researchers are developing learning algorithms and new model architectures that embed physics knowledge and best practices — including symmetries, geometric structures, exactness guarantees, and statistical methodologies — directly into neural networks, producing systems that are more reliable, interpretable, and data-efficient.
“AI has begun to transform how physicists tackle some of the field’s most challenging problems,” says Mike Williams, interim director of IAIFI and a professor of physics at MIT. “More importantly, it is starting to expand the frontier of what problems we can realistically address, making it possible to pursue questions that were once completely beyond our reach.”
Training the Next Generation
A defining feature of IAIFI is its investment in people. The IAIFI Postdoctoral Fellows program supports early-career scientists pursuing research at the intersection of physics and AI, pairing each fellow with mentors in both domains and fostering collaboration across institutions.
Eight fellows have completed the program to date. Three have secured faculty positions; others have taken research roles at leading AI companies or joined startups, reflecting how broadly the skills cultivated at IAIFI translate.
“The IAIFI Fellowship shows what can happen when early-career scientists are given the freedom and support to work across traditional boundaries,” says Phiala Shanahan, IAIFI’s interim deputy director and a professor of physics at MIT. “Our fellows aren’t just contributing to physics or to AI separately — they are helping shape a growing field at the intersection.”
IAIFI’s annual PhD Summer School has become a focal point for the growing community of “centaur scientists” with expertise in both physics and AI. For the 2026 edition, the program received nearly 600 applications for roughly 100 in-person spots, with about 300 additional participants expected to join virtually. Previous participants have strongly recommended the school to their peers for its combination of lectures, hands-on tutorials, coding sprints, and networking events.
At MIT, IAIFI has helped shape new educational pathways, including an interdisciplinary PhD program in physics, statistics, and data science — a collaboration between the Department of Physics and the Statistics and Data Science Center — which has awarded 20 doctoral degrees since 2021. IAIFI members Phil Harris and Isaac Chuang have also developed a course on computational data science in physics, offered both on campus (Course 8.16) and as a free online course through MITx.
A Growing Community
Beyond its core research and training programs, IAIFI convenes researchers through its annual summer workshop, which will be held this year at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing building. The institute also engages the broader public through collaborations with the MIT Museum, the Museum of Science in Boston, hackathons, and widely viewed online content exploring AI and physics.
“IAIFI shows what becomes possible when researchers in physics, computation, statistics, and data science organize around shared scientific questions,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “That kind of sustained, cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential to the future of scientific discovery.”
IAIFI is hosted in the Laboratory of Nuclear Science at MIT, led by Director Jesse Thaler (currently on sabbatical), Interim Director Mike Williams, Interim Deputy Director Phiala Shanahan, and Managing Director Marisa LaFleur, along with steering committee members Lisa Barsotti, Isaac Chuang, Will Detmold, Bill Freeman, Phil Harris, Lina Necib, Tess Smidt, and Marin Soljacic (and steering committee members from other IAIFI universities).
Looking Ahead
As a member of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program, IAIFI is part of a nationwide effort to advance AI-driven discovery and innovation.
“The connections among the NSF AI Institutes have been as valuable as the work within them and continue to grow,” says Marisa LaFleur, IAIFI’s managing director. “We’re sharing management strategies and resources for training, community building, and collaboration that make the whole network stronger.”
For IAIFI, the renewed funding is an opportunity to push deeper into what the institute calls the “physics of AI” — using physical reasoning, physical challenges, and physical tools not just to apply AI, but to understand and improve it. That agenda, along with a growing community of researchers trained to work across disciplines, is what drives the institute’s next phase.
“The first phase of IAIFI established the model: interdisciplinary research, early-career talent, and a dynamic community, organized around the idea that AI and physics make each other stronger,” Thaler says. “Now we have the foundation — and the entrepreneurial spirit of our centaur scientists — to push that model into new territory and raise our ambitions.”
Source: MIT News
The post NSF Renews IAIFI Funding to Advance AI-Driven Physics Research appeared first on HPCwire.
Chemists have a scale problem. It is estimated that chemical space contains as many as 10^60 small organic molecules, however, only a tiny fraction of that have ever been studied in detail. Finding useful new molecules for batteries, materials and other applications remains a slow and labor-intensive process that often relies on a combination of lab experiments and computational screening. Even using modern computing resources, exploring more than a small portion of that space is difficult.
At TPC26, University of Michigan PhD student Anoushka Bhutani discussed one possible way to speed up that search and overcome the scale problem.
Her talk focused on MIST – a family of large molecular models trained on billions of chemical structures and designed to predict a wide range of molecular properties. The goal with MIST is to help researchers point out the promising candidates before committing significant simulation or experimental resources. The real-world applications include everything from battery electrolytes to fragrance design.
Bhutani’s presentation highlighted how advances in large-scale computing and data availability are beginning to change how researchers explore the chemical space. This is making it possible to evaluate far larger numbers of candidate molecules than was previously practical.
The largest version of MIST was trained on roughly 2 billion molecules and contains about 1.8 billion parameters. With that scale in the context, Bhutani also talked about the cost of building the models.
“Training a foundation model is an extremely computationally quite expensive,” said Bhutani. “And we wanted to make sure that we were using the compute we had been given as optimally as possible. So we turned to neural scaling laws. However, neural scaling laws only account for the amount of data you’re training on and the number of parameters your model has.”
Bhutani explained, “Model performance is also sensitive to many other hyperparameters, such as learning rate or the depth of the model. So we added penalty terms to account for these. And this reduced the need for full factorial sweep over all possible hyperparameters which was done in prior scaling studies. In addition to this, we used Bayesian parameterization to fit the models, which gave us robust uncertainty estimates.”
To avoid wasting compute on extensive tuning runs, Bhutani and her team modified existing scaling law approaches to account for factors beyond model and dataset size, such as the effects of hyperparameters. The team also used Bayesian parameterization to guide the process.
Those changes reduced model development costs by roughly 10x. For academic groups trying to build large scientific models on tight budgets, that sort of impact may be just as important as the applications themselves.
The first application Bhutani highlighted was battery research. Her team focused on lithium-air batteries: a technology that has long attracted interest because of its potential for extremely high energy density.
The challenge with them is finding electrolyte materials that can survive inside the battery. Both the oxygen-related reaction products and the lithium metal anode are highly reactive, making the search for stable molecules difficult.
“These are attractive because they have extremely high energy density, because they use oxygen from the air as a cathodic reaction, so they don’t need to store the extra mass of the cathode,” emphasized Bhutani. “However, it’s also very hard to find electrolytes for which can be used in these batteries because both the oxygen intermediates formed during the reaction and the lithium metal anode are highly reactive.”
The team used MIST to fine-tune models to predict a range of properties relevant to electrolyte design. This included stability, safety and phase behavior. Candidate molecules were screened against multiple requirements at the same time. This was more efficient compared to evaluating one property at a time.
Bhutani shared that the workflow identified 139 potential electrolyte candidates after running on eight H100 GPUs for around eight hours. The results show how large molecular models can help narrow enormous chemical search spaces before researchers move to more expensive simulations.
The most unexpected results from the research came from olfaction – the sense of smell. This was a problem that Bhutani described as difficult because datasets are sparse and subjective. They are also often disconnected from molecular structure. Two molecules can look nearly identical but smell completely different – and structurally unrelated molecules can produce similar scents.
Even with those challenges, MIST performed well when it was optimized. More specifically, when it was fine-tuned for scent prediction, it was able to identify meaningful relationships between different scent categories. It was able to group similar smells together even though the task is notoriously difficult. The findings also pointed to deeper structural patterns that resemble those seen in neuroscience research on how humans perceive odors.
Bhutani’s presentation at this year’s TPC revealed how large-scale molecular models are beginning to move beyond prediction and toward discovery. This could go a long way in helping researchers navigate vast and challenging regions of chemical space that are impractical to explore through simulation or experimentation alone.
The post Foundation Models Offer a New Way to Explore Chemical Space appeared first on HPCwire.
TOKYO and SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 5, 2026 — Hitachi, Ltd. and Intel Corporation today announced a strategic collaboration to explore opportunities that advance physical AI, advanced computing, and next-generation digital infrastructure across manufacturing, energy, mobility and other critical industries. Through the collaboration, the companies plan to combine Hitachi’s information technology (IT) expertise, deep operational technology (OT) and product manufacturing knowledge with Intel’s advanced computing capabilities and silicon-based platforms to develop next-generation compute capabilities and industry solutions that help organizations modernize operations, improve efficiency, and build more intelligent, resilient infrastructure systems.
The companies plan to work together across five strategic pillars—foundry tools, quantum computing, energy optimization, custom silicon and edge-AI applications, and factory automation—to create new solutions and optimize existing processes.
In the area of foundry tools, Hitachi gathers high-precision data generated from its market-leading metrology systems, dimension scanning electron microscopes (CD-SEMs), as well as etching systems, on the integrated platform “ExTOPE.” Leveraging physical AI, Hitachi uses that data to enable predictive diagnostics and maintenance optimization, contributing to improved yield, shorter time to market, and enhanced quality in semiconductor manufacturing processes.
For quantum computing, the collaboration will strengthen co-development efforts between R&D teams of Hitachi and Intel, accelerating the advancement of quantum technologies and creating new value. The partnership also aims to focus on energy optimization. Hitachi’s HMAX Energy will be deployed within Intel’s fabs to provide managed services for core power equipment, while Intel plans to supply high-voltage silicon chips to further improve Hitachi’s power systems. In addition, the two companies are exploring opportunities for collaboration in custom silicon, edge-AI applications and factory automation, leveraging their respective cutting-edge technologies.
“Building on more than 40 years of trust with Intel, we are delighted to launch a comprehensive strategic collaboration,” said Toshiaki Tokunaga, President & CEO, Hitachi, Ltd. “As the emergence of Physical AI brings a significant impact on our society, this collaboration will accelerate AI transformation across a wide range of industries that support social infrastructure. By combining Hitachi’s IT, OT, and products with Intel’s advanced computing capabilities, we are well positioned to advance the deployment of AI in mission-critical social infrastructure worldwide. We will also create new value in frontier fields such as quantum computing.”
“The coming wave of physical AI will transform the industrial edge of our economy through new advances in robotics, autonomous machines, and other AI edge devices,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO, Intel Corporation. “By combining Intel’s advanced computing and AI capabilities with Hitachi’s deep OT expertise and world class IT capabilities, we are uniquely positioned to help industries capture the enormous opportunity represented by physical AI at industrial scale. Together, we will accelerate the deployment of intelligent, real-world systems and bring the benefits of AI to more businesses and industries around the world.”
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Through its Social Innovation Business (SIB) that brings together IT, OT (Operational Technology) and products, Hitachi aims to be a global leader in continuously transforming social infrastructure through digital, contributing to a harmonized society where the environment, wellbeing, and economic growth are in balance. Hitachi operates worldwide across four sectors – Digital Systems & Services, Energy, Mobility, and Connective Industries – as well as a Strategic SIB Business Unit focused on new growth areas. With Lumada at its core, Hitachi creates value by combining data, technology and domain knowledge to solve customer and social challenges. Revenues for FY2025 (ended March 31, 2026) totaled 10,586.7 billion yen, with 606 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 290,000 employees worldwide. Visit us at www.hitachi.com.
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) designs and manufactures advanced semiconductors that connect and power the modern world. Every day, our engineers create new technologies that enhance and shape the future of computing to enable new possibilities for every customer we serve. Learn more at intel.com.
Source: Hitachi
The post Hitachi and Intel Expand Partnership Across Physical AI, Quantum Computing and Energy Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
Royal Court, London
Teenage girls discuss the horrors they have seen via their phones as Georgie Dettmer’s reckoning with internet culture is brutally realised by director Jess Edwards
Georgie Dettmer’s gaze is unflinching. Nothing is held back in Are You Watching?, her fury-filled interrogation of our twisted relationship with sex and violence, and the emotional distance we hide behind when we watch them both through a screen. This bluntness can feel unsubtle, but it’s also admirably unafraid.
Two teenage girls (Kosar Ali and Abby McCann) perch on a bunk bed, talking about the worst things they’ve ever seen. Across the rest of the traverse stage, those stories are smashed into sharp, rapid-fire scenes, flicked between as if scrolled through on a phone. Under Jess Edwards’ direction, the depths of the internet are hurled across the stage (by an excellent multi-rolling cast including Lucy McCormick and Maimuna Memon), while the two girls watch from the safety of their duvets.
Continue reading...Hundreds of detained people launched a hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, over Memorial Day weekend to protest inhumane conditions at the immigration detention facility run by the for-profit company GEO Group. Protesters flocked to the scene to echo detainees’ pleas for release and better conditions — and were met with brutal tactics from federal, local, and state law enforcement officials, who beat, tear-gassed, and arrested protesters.
“Detainees are raising that they have no access to quality medical care, that they’re not getting needed medications,” Andrea Sáenz, a former federal appellate immigration judge who was fired by the Trump administration last year, tells The Intercept Briefing. “They don’t have enough food to eat. The food that they are getting is spoiled. They’re facing hostility and harassment and violence from the guards.”
This week on the podcast, host Jessica Washington speaks to Sáenz and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior policy fellow at the American Immigration Council, about the conditions at the 1,000-bed jail and other detention centers across the country. The Trump administration has restricted members of Congress and state officials from oversight of federal immigration detention centers. “ICE doesn’t want people to see the way that they’re treating human beings in these facilities,” says Sáenz.
Intercept reporter Noah Hurowitz, who covers federal law enforcement and immigration, was on the scene at Delaney Hall on Monday. He describes the violence that erupted outside of the facility between protesters and law enforcement officers.
“The ICE agents on the scene were quite willing to use violence at times against protesters,” says Hurowitz. “But from everything I saw, the Newark and New Jersey police were much more indiscriminate with their violence and much more willing to attack outright and fire tear gas and really put people in danger.”
Reichlin-Melnick says that the Trump administration’s war on immigrants should concern everyone. “We’re seeing every government database being turned into a tool of the mass deportation state, and that is something that impacts all Americans,” he adds, “because you cannot carry out a mass deportation of 4 percent of the U.S. population without fundamentally transforming the United States into more of a police state.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
Noah Hurowitz: And I’m Noah Hurowitz. I cover federal law enforcement and immigration at The Intercept.
JW: Noah, you were outside Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, on Monday afternoon after dozens of protesters were arrested the night before after clashing with state and local police. Noah, what can you tell us about what went down and why protesters were out there in the first place?
NH: The current wave of protests outside Delaney Hall started around May 28, and it was called in solidarity with detainees inside the facility who were withholding labor and hunger striking, some of them, to protest really bad conditions inside the jail, including bad food, maggots in the food, inadequate medical care. There’s all sorts of complaints that we’re hearing from people inside. A wife of one of the hunger strikers called on local organizations to rally in solidarity.
Now, the way that it began was, for several days, there were protesters standing directly outside one of the entrances to Delaney Hall. And the way it would go for several nights was that basically after dark, the protesters would be standing along the entrance. And every time a car had to go in or out, the ICE agents who were standing outside — full kit, masks — would push out and try to clear the way for cars to come in or out.
That is usually when some of the more spectacular clashes that you may have seen took place. So they’d be swinging batons, they’d be hitting people with pepper sprays. It was pretty ugly, but it was this weird choreography of static, static, static — and then conflict when the ICE agents would attack, and then back to a sort of status quo.
But when state and local police arrived on the scene and tried to secure the area around Delaney Hall, that’s when things got really ugly. So on the night of Friday, May 29, and really on the evening of Saturday, May 30, there were these widespread scenes of disorder as police came in with riot shields and gas masks and started firing tear gas.
A number of people were injured, including a freelance photographer for The Associated Press who suffered a pretty severe injury to her leg. Everyone that I spoke to said that as rough as ICE could be — and as daunting as the image of these masked guys just taking swings at protesters was — it really got so much more chaotic when state and local police got involved.
Now, Mayor Ras Baraka declared a curfew, which is ironic because Mayor Baraka was previously arrested protesting conditions at ICE, and he’s, from the beginning, taken a stance of what’s happening at Delaney Hall is unacceptable but protesters need to be peaceful. The way that was enforced was very not peaceful.
On Sunday night, there was a curfew imposed for 9 p.m., and they had also set up a frozen zone on the industrial corridor that Delaney sits. So they had set up police checkpoints about a half mile in either direction so that protesters couldn’t even get in front of the detention facility anymore.
On Sunday night, according to a number of my colleagues who were covering it that night and other reporting that I’ve seen, after 9 p.m., when the curfew was imposed, police began to kettle protesters. They began to surround them and prevent them from leaving, saying that they were now in violation of the curfew.
They let media leave for the most part if they were able to show credentials, but a handful of more citizen journalists were arrested that night. They held dozens of protesters and a handful of reporters in jail. After a certain point, they needed to be released on Monday afternoon.
So when I arrived on the scene, late on Monday afternoon, people were just starting to get released. It was a pretty tame scene. No one was able to get close to the facility. The police had set up these free-speech zones with several dozen protesters there with signs and megaphones. There were many dozens of police and a lot of media.
When 9 o’clock rolled around, most of the protesters started to filter out, with the exception of a handful of protesters who played this brief game of cat and mouse with the police. As police were advancing, they were backing up to the supposed “free-speech zone” about 500 yards away.
There were no arrests that night that I saw. There was a number of Newark community leaders on the scene who were also trying to bring down the temperature, which protesters were not happy about because they felt like this was just an effort to diffuse things.
From what I saw, the ICE agents on the scene were quite willing to use violence at times against protesters in order to maintain that entrance. But from everything I saw, the Newark and New Jersey police were much more indiscriminate with their violence and much more willing to attack outright and fire tear gas and really put people in danger.
JW: You and I have both covered the aggressive and deadly tactics used by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Noah, how is what we’re seeing different in New Jersey than what we saw in Minneapolis or even Chicago last year? Or is this just a continuation of more of the same?
NH: I think it’s a continuation of what we saw in those other places with some notable differences. Minnesota and in Chicago, the police and the state and local officials there got a lot of flak from the Trump administration for speaking out against the ICE raids that were happening and for taking a step back.
“Law and order were their first priority, rather than the lawless and lack of order behavior of ICE agents and of this privately operated detention facility.”
Here, the rhetoric was there from the state and local officials. Both the mayor and the governor were speaking quite stridently against the alleged abuses at Delaney Hall and against the violence being used against protesters. But they also seemed a lot more willing to use their authority to diffuse the protests, which has led to a lot of criticism from protesters who were saying that they basically were trying to co-opt this protest, they were trying to prevent any problems for their own political calculations — that law and order were their first priority, rather than the lawless and lack of order behavior of ICE agents and of this privately operated detention facility.
JW: We’re going to get into all of that and much more in our next conversation. I speak with Andrea Sáenz, a senior counsel at Co-Counsel NYC, a nonprofit providing immigration legal services and training. She previously served as an appellate immigration judge with the Board of Immigration Appeals in the U.S. Department of Justice from 2021 to 2025.
Also joining us is Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior policy fellow at the American Immigration Council, where he works to break down the complex reality of immigration law and policy to the media, policymakers, and the general public.
NH: Hell yeah, let’s get into it.
JW: Andrea and Aaron, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Thank you for having us.
Andrea Sáenz: Thank you.
JW: Andrea, we just heard from my colleague Noah Hurowitz, who’s been reporting from Delaney Hall. Detainees have been holding hunger and labor strikes at the New Jersey detention center. What more can you tell us about the conditions at Delaney that sparked these strikes?
AS: What’s going on at Delaney is really a microcosm of what’s happening all over the country in terms of incredibly harsh and inhumane conditions in ICE detention, that don’t have any accountability.
At Delaney in particular, detainees are raising that they have no access to quality medical care, that they’re not getting needed medications. They don’t have enough food to eat. The food that they are getting is spoiled. They’re facing hostility and harassment and violence from the guards.
I’ve been really gratified to see elected officials and press and others paying attention to this. But unfortunately, it’s something that we’re seeing all over the country, from Adelanto to Dilley to Camp East Montana in Texas.
JW: So Aaron, your organization, the American Immigration Council published a report earlier this year about the Trump administration’s immigration detention expansion efforts this term. A section of the report reads, “A system of detention, which did not fully take off until the mid-1990s, is now on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system by the end of President Trump’s second term in office. This expansion is fueled by an unprecedented increase in funding provided by Congress in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Combined with ICE’s annual appropriations, ICE has nearly $15 billion per year to use on immigration detention through the end of fiscal year 2029.”
Aaron, what can you tell us about the scale of the Trump administration’s efforts to expand detention centers?
ARM: Since taking office, Trump expanded the scale of the detention system by 75 percent, rising from about 40,000 people in detention when he took office in 2025 to over 73,000 people in detention in January 2026. While that number has fallen somewhat in the months since “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, the Trump administration is sitting on an unprecedented pot of cash that they can use to keep expanding the system even bigger.
“The Trump administration is sitting on an unprecedented pot of cash that they can use to keep expanding the system even bigger.”
JW: Andrea, I want to bring you in. We’ve been hearing about these efforts from the Trump administration to convert warehouses to detention centers. What do we know about those plans, and what can we surmise about what those conditions could look like?
AS: What we know is that the government has spent a whole lot of money to buy large facilities without really having any plan of how they’re going to humanely keep human beings there. We know this because they haven’t even had the plans to figure out how they’re going to handle water and trash and things like that at these facilities, and that’s been the source of some lawsuits.
But I think we have reason to be incredibly worried that the government is in no position to hold a large number of human beings. Delaney is a good example because it’s the largest facility on the East Coast. It can hold up to 1,000 people. We’ve got a human rights situation going on inside, pepper-spraying a U.S. senator on the outside.
“These are preventable deaths.”
So I can only imagine if you were to try to expand the capacity of these facilities, the government just doesn’t have the infrastructure, the accountability, the oversight to care for people. As we’re seeing the numbers of deaths in ICE detention rise — I believe it’s 18 deaths just in this calendar year, which is unprecedented. What really worries me is that these are preventable deaths, and that we’re going to see more of them if the government’s permitted to keep expanding, literally warehousing human beings in this way.
JW: Aaron, obviously there’s a lot of attention on Delaney Hall, on these new makeshift warehouse detention facilities, but what do we know about what conditions are like in facilities around the country right now outside of Delaney?
ARM: ICE detention has never been great and that’s to really underplay it. At the American Immigration Council, we have filed countless complaints over the years about inadequate medical care, verbal physical abuse against people in detention, pressure on people to give up their rights rather than accept time in detention, while they’re fighting their cases. This is endemic to the system and has been something that advocates have raised attention to for decades.
The key difference now is the speed at which the Trump administration is expanding the system and the ways in which accountability has been dismantled. When Trump took office, there was the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties inside the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman as internal watchdogs. Within the first month, the Trump administration slashed their staff to the bones and has since dismantled the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman entirely, shutting it down despite a congressional mandate that the office remain in existence. With no internal accountability, that’s left only external accountability, and there they are trying to prevent members of Congress from going into detention centers.
The end result of this is that conditions are worsening, deaths are rising, and the need for reform is growing every day.
JW: That lack of transparency that you’ve mentioned is something that’s come up a lot in our reporting — the inability to monitor what’s happening inside of these facilities is incredibly concerning.
Andrea, I want to ask, from your perspective, what does access look like even for immigration attorneys that are trying to reach their clients?
AS: It’s a good question because there are lots of ways that we should be able to know what’s happening in the detention center. It’s not intended to be a secret.
I’ve been representing detained people for 18 years, and it’s always been part of the practice to drive out and physically see your client, have them sign papers, that their family members are allowed to visit them. And that when they have a court hearing, they’re either produced in person or they’re there on video, and observers can come and watch because it’s a public court hearing.
Right now, what we’re seeing is that all of those things are being obstructed. It’s incredibly hard to even find out where your client is anymore because they’re being transferred from state to state. They disappear off the public detainee locator. ICE is not responsive.
As Aaron mentioned, there aren’t oversight agencies to complain to, and the immigration court system is increasingly keeping out observers and press from even watching these hearings to know what’s happening.
And then, of course, on the oversight side, as we’ve been talking about, part of what’s happening at Delaney, the reason why this escalated with elected officials, is because they wanted to get inside the facilities and exercise their right to oversight. They’ve been denied that right and in New Jersey, you have state health officials who weren’t allowed to go inside and inspect. And so ICE doesn’t want people to see the way that they’re treating human beings in these facilities.
But at least I’m gratified that people from lawyers to family members to elected officials keep trying.
JW: Do we have a sense of whether or not conditions are deteriorating? Obviously, these are horrific conditions that we’re describing, but maggots in the food, lack of access to medical care, these are not necessarily new issues inside of detention facilities.
Aaron, are we seeing a much worsening of conditions, or is there just a lot more attention on this issue right now?
ARM: It’s a little bit of both. There are some issues that you’re seeing raised in the media and brought to people’s attention now that aren’t new. As you said, maggots in food, bad medical care. This is not a new problem.
When you look at spoiled food, there are DHS Office of Inspector General reports going back many years which document violations of standards at Essex County Jail outside of New York City, a jail that is no longer working with ICE. Inspectors went there in 2018 and found spoiled food, covered in mold in the fridge that was being served to people. So that’s not a new issue.
But what is new is the way in which the Trump administration has made getting out of detention more difficult so that more people are being detained there. Before last year, the Trump administration adopted the legal position saying that essentially any person who ever entered the United States across the southern border is permanently barred from seeking release on bond, even if they’ve been here for 20 years with no criminal record.
That means more people in detention, more overcrowding, and as they open up these new facilities or repurpose old facilities, like Delaney Hall, it’s clear that there isn’t enough staffing to keep these places operating at the capacity that they are operating. This is not a problem that’s also unique to immigration detention.
There is a shortage of corrections officers in jails and prisons nationwide and a shortage of prison healthcare providers. One of the biggest ones, Corizon, actually went bankrupt two years ago. Given that, it’s not a surprise that the administration is failing to meet the standards that it is legally required to meet.
“What is new is the way in which the Trump administration has made getting out of detention more difficult so that more people are being detained there.”
AS: I do think that conditions are deteriorating. And I think another factor is the increased enforcement itself is causing severe overcrowding, including in these facilities that were intended to be holding facilities. So one of the places that conditions have been the source of lawsuits is in places like the Baltimore Hold Room, 26 Federal Plaza in New York City.
These are facilities where people are supposed to be taken for an hour or two after they’re arrested by ICE, and instead people have been packed in like sardines, sleeping on the floor next to toilets, and judges have had to order that you can’t hold people overnight there. So that’s part of the problem.
A second aspect to the problem is because ICE enforcement is so indiscriminate at the moment, and, that’s gone back and forth with time, but I do think it is worse than I have ever seen it, that ICE is not holding back from arresting very young people, very sick people, very old people’s moms and dads. So you have medically vulnerable and sick people in ICE detention with these conditions, and you’re setting up a recipe for disaster.
JW: To your point, at The Intercept, we’ve covered the detention of pregnant women and postpartum women who previously have been exempted, generally speaking, from detention, who are now in these facilities, who are lacking access to medical care, water, all of these necessities you need to thrive in pregnancy.
“ICE enforcement is so indiscriminate at the moment … ICE is not holding back from arresting very young people, very sick people, very old people’s moms and dads.”
[Break]
JW: The Trump administration recently made some pretty significant changes to the green card process. Aaron, can you walk us through what they did and how it’s going to impact people applying to become permanent residents?
ARM: A couple weeks ago, the Trump administration put out a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, America’s legal immigration benefits agency. That memo said that for the first time ever, adjustment of status where someone applies for a green card from inside the United States, would no longer be treated as a normal part of the legal immigration process, but would instead be treated as an extraordinary benefit and only given in an act of administrative grace.
This was particularly strange because adjustment of status is the norm by which about half of all people get their green cards. These are people who are in the United States already, living here either on a visa or seeking to change their status. So it could be anything from a foreign student who comes here, falls in love with an American at college, and applies for a green card, to someone present on an H-1B visa for 10 years who is seeking to finally get their green card and become a lawful permanent resident.
Almost immediately, this set off a lot of backlash, and the administration has had to walk this back a little bit because their initial suggestion in this memo was that potentially as many as half a million people a year would have to leave the United States and seek an immigrant visa in their home country if they wanted to get a green card that they were legally entitled to.
Silicon Valley was not happy. A lot of people were very clear that this seemed like an unnecessary process because the vetting that someone gets inside the United States is identical to the vetting that they get if they’re outside the United States seeking a visa, which means the only difference is where the bureaucrat is deciding this.
Is it a bureaucrat at a consulate abroad deciding if you get a green card, or a bureaucrat at an office in the United States? From the government’s perspective, that should make no difference, but for the immigrant themselves, this means time away from their family and home in the United States, time away from their job, and the possibility that if there’s some error or red tape, they might not be able to come back for maybe weeks, months, or longer, which just threw a wrench in a lot of people’s plans for staying in this country and being on a path to citizenship.
However, crucially, the administration, ever since they put out that vaguely worded memo, has been trying to walk it back somewhat, and is now suggesting it may apply to a much more narrow group of people, potentially people who overstayed visas years ago and are trying to get a green card through a spouse, which would be a lot narrower a group, but still impact potentially tens of thousands of people.
JW: I’m not going to lie, this does seem like quite a mess.
“There is this level of contempt and dismissiveness even for people who have forms of status.”
Andrea, are we seeing other ways that the Trump administration is targeting people with legal status?
AS: Yes. What really the big picture here is that’s alarming to me with both the green card memo and some of the decisions coming out of the Board of Immigration Appeals that I used to sit on, is that there is this level of contempt and dismissiveness even for people who have forms of status.
So it really, I think, gives lie to that idea that the administration or Republicans are only interested in illegal immigration, they’re only interested in people who are out of status. Because you’re also seeing increased targeting and detention of Dreamers, people with DACA, young people with special immigrant juvenile status who have an approved application to stay in the U.S. and are in a line to get their green cards, people who have visas for being victims of violent crimes or trafficking.
These are all kinds of status that already exist in law that Congress has created, and you’re seeing these people additionally detained and put into proceedings. And the Board of Immigration Appeals is putting out case law day after day saying, “These classes of people are not special. They’re not worthy of particular protection. They can all be denied bond. They can all be put in removal proceedings and detained.”
JW: And we’ve also obviously seen a targeting of U.S. citizens who’ve stood up for immigrants as well. Since Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino “retired” after violent raids in Minnesota killed two American citizens, it appears the Trump administration has at least toned down publicizing these aggressive raids.
But has there actually been a shift in tactics under the new DHS secretary? Aaron, I want to start with you, and then Andrea, I want to get you in as well.
ARM: The short answer is it does appear that yes, they have pulled back from the aggressive raids that were really characteristic of the Noem term, in particular under the leadership of Gregory Bovino, a mid-level Border Patrol official who was unexpectedly elevated to the position of “commander-at-large” of DHS operations in the interior.
What we are seeing now is a return in some ways to the more traditional targeted so-called enforcement tactics, where ICE officers have lists of people that they are specifically intending to arrest, go out into the communities to arrest those specific people.
But we are seeing a major increase in so-called collateral arrests. If they arrest that one person, they also might arrest everyone else in the building who’s nearby or anyone who looks like an immigrant near there. The end result of this is that the administration is now arresting slightly fewer people than during Operation Metro Surge. Detention numbers have come down, about 10 to 20 percent from the height of that operation.
But they are building out a more robust enforcement capacity, and especially relying on state and local police who are cooperating with them through so-called 287(g) agreements, agreements that allow local law enforcement to act as ICE officers. So the Trump administration’s new plan is to gradually build up the capacity rather than rushing out to make splashy headlines, and they believe that is more sustainable in the long term, both from an enforcement perspective and also importantly from a political perspective.
AS: We are seeing not only a decrease in maybe these large-scale campaigns that have a cute nickname. We’re also seeing a decrease in courthouse arrests, partly because they were stopped by litigation. But I am continuing to see waves of street enforcement and street arrests that are often racially motivated, and I think we have to keep our eye on that.
Early on during the Los Angeles ICE surge, we saw a lot of those stories of ICE stopping people, regular people, Latino people walking down the street, going to school and work, including U.S. citizens, and that got a lot of press. I think those arrests are still happening; they’re just happening one at a time in less obvious ways.
I do a lot of habeas corpus litigation, and so I get a lot of emails and calls about who has been arrested. And, Aaron mentioned this idea of targeted arrests, which is what ICE says that they’re doing, that they’re looking for a particular person who has a criminal arrest or who has a prior deportation order.
But there are a lot of arrests in which ICE says that they’re looking for a target, and really what they have done is drive up next to a Latino person and ask them for their ID and then arrest them — when they were very obviously not the target that they were looking for. So I think we can’t let the idea of targeted enforcement cover the actual reality that people, especially people of color walking down the street, have something to fear from ICE.
I think it’s a terrible state of affairs, but I think we have to continue to be vigilant and push back on it.
JW: In that vein, how would you characterize this phase of Trump’s immigration agenda? Where is Trump in this? What is the end goal here that we can visualize at this stage?
AS: This is part of the question is, like, how much does Trump himself have to do with this as opposed to other people in the administration?
“People in the administration … are intending to decrease the amount of immigrants in the United States, both legal and undocumented.”
We’re in a transitional phase as we have new DOJ and DHS leadership. Certainly, the people in the administration like Stephen Miller, who have had an agenda all along, are intending to decrease the amount of immigrants in the United States, both legal and undocumented. And that it’s intentional to have people be scared of the kind of enforcement that I’m talking about that the administration hopes that a lot of people will get scared and frustrated and leave the United States, including through things like the green card memo, that it’s just so confusing and overwhelming and expensive to stay here that people will pick up and leave, even at incredible cost to our economy and to our fabric as a community.
What’s exactly coming next I can’t say, but I’m guessing that there is more to come. Trying to advise clients in this atmosphere, trying to advise immigrant communities is really hard. People are scared, and it’s hard to tell them not to be.
ARM: To add on to that, the administration is very clearly trying to create a climate of fear for immigrants. While they claim that they are aiming that at undocumented immigrants, fear has a splash zone. You can’t target fear on an individual level like that, and communities are frightened. But as Andrea said, this is a transition moment right now.
What we are seeing them do is attempt to take a system that was always imperfect but strived towards due process and basic principles of fairness, and turning it into an assembly line for deportations — one in which basic legal rights are tossed aside and procedures are followed potentially to the letter, but in clear violation of the spirit.
“What we are seeing them do is attempt to take a system that was always imperfect but strived towards due process and basic principles of fairness, and turning it into an assembly line for deportations.”
You see this with new policies like “mega master” calendar hearings, 100 people scheduled for a hearing with maybe 72 hours of notice, maybe sent by mail or email that they might not even know about the hearing ahead of time because they were scheduled for a hearing in 2027, and all of a sudden they’re told, “Show up two days from now in New York City. Oh, and by the way, you might not have a lawyer.”
You have no idea what’s going to happen to you. When you show up at that hearing, you’re told, “You have 20 days to get everything on file. We don’t care that you don’t have a lawyer. We’re moving forward.” If you miss that hearing, you’re ordered deported immediately.
They’re doing this even for children, and they’re firing the judges that were seen to be too liberal or too willing to grant cases, even if those cases were legally meritorious. The asylum grant rate has dropped to less than 10 percent of cases, when before it was 30 to 40 percent of cases were granted. All of this is a system that is being systematically turned against the immigrant and against the idea of a fair day in court.
However, given the scale of immigration court backlogs, there are still over 3.2 million cases pending in the system. It’s not clear whether they will actually be able to clear these backlogs by the time Trump leaves office. Crucially, all of this funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the funding that Congress has been debating, the additional $70 billion for CBP and ICE that’s being debated in the most recent reconciliation bill — that is all set to expire at the end of Trump’s term, by the end of fiscal year 2029.
So we are in a situation where they may get all of this infrastructure in place, and then who controls Congress in 2029 will determine whether that infrastructure has to be slashed back and whether we can get some handle on the system and help right the ship.
JW: I want to get into control of Congress in just a moment.
But Andrea, first I wanted to ask you, because you have personal experience with being pushed out because of the perception of your views on immigration. So I’m curious, how are you viewing this effort by the Trump administration to push anyone out who could have any sympathy for immigrants in the system?
AS: So I was an appellate immigration judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the second level of the immigration court system. I was on the BIA for three and a half years during the Biden administration. Starting last year, the administration started to fire both trial-level immigration judges, and they also fired all of the remaining Biden appointees off of the BIA, which is the body that sets case law.
It’s been honestly devastating to see this happen to an administrative court system that obviously needed improvement, but was functioning and had a lot of excellent public servants that were trying to give people due process day in and day out. The Biden administration had really tried hard to put people with a variety of professional experience on the bench, both the federal bench and the immigration bench, in terms of not only having all prosecutors on the bench there because they can be good judges too, but also putting people who had been defense attorneys and civil rights attorneys, like myself. I think that had made the court system stronger and better.
One thing I can say is that when I was a judge, I didn’t have any pressure coming from the top telling me how to rule. We had training, we had expectations, we had normal job evaluations, but I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder and saying, “Why did you do that?” Or “You’re not allowed to do that.”
What’s coming out now is that’s exactly what’s happened to the immigration court system such that it’s no longer independent. You have leadership of the system watching which judges grant asylum too much, which judges grant bond too much. It destroys any idea that judges are being allowed to apply the law independently as opposed to enacting a political agenda.
It’s also just exhausting and confusing for the immigrants actually appearing before the court, not knowing if they’re going to get a fair day or they’re just going to be immediately deported without a chance to present their evidence. It’s a crazy time to be an immigration lawyer and have to do hundreds of hours of work not knowing if you’re going to get a judge who’s going to give you 10 minutes to present your case.
So certainly a lot of us are gearing up to do more federal court and appeals work, but the bigger issue is that the immigration court system has ceased to function in a way that lets judges make decisions independently.
JW: Aaron, I want to get back to your point about Congress and the midterms.
So we’re obviously in the middle of an election year. What are you hoping to see from candidates on immigration, and what do you hope legislators change if they actually make it to Congress?
ARM: What we need to see is a fundamental rethinking of what interior enforcement looks like inside the United States.
Polling consistently shows that the American public believes ICE has gone too far. As much as 2 out of every 3 Americans think that the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has gone beyond what they want. But at the same time, people still do want some form of immigration enforcement.
“Our interior enforcement system has not been updated in 30 years. We are using laws that were crafted by Congress in the height of the tough-on-crime era of the 1990s.”
So I would love to see legislators look at revamping the system towards one that embraces principles of compliance and proportionality, accountability and safety, really focusing on actual public safety threats, not people who’ve been here for 20, 30 years who’ve never had any interaction with the criminal justice system.
At the same time, help restore a system that allows judges to decide that deportation doesn’t make sense in every case. Right now, our interior enforcement system has not been updated in 30 years. We are using laws that were crafted by Congress in the height of the tough-on-crime era of the 1990s.
We live in a very different time today. Most Americans believe there should be some form of path to legal status for people who have been living here for years without getting in trouble, working hard, raising a family, and being productive members of their community. But the law just doesn’t reflect that, and so Congress really needs to sit down and think through what kind of compromise will produce a better system that helps Americans and doesn’t take us further down this path of mass deportations, which just tear communities apart.
AS: I agree with Aaron’s frame, but I also want to say that I think we have a bigger issue that we’ve spent years now hearing this administration dehumanize immigrants and talk about people who are in our neighborhoods and communities like they are less than, that they don’t care about their families the way we do, and that asylum is a fraud on the system, that people don’t deserve asylum.
Both administrations recently, frankly, have done that. So I think going forward, it’s time for us to not be afraid to say that immigrants are an incredibly important part of our communities, and also that there is a place for the United States to welcome bona fide refugees and asylum-seekers. Both the refugee program and the asylum adjudication program have been totally decimated in recent years. And of course, we need regulations on that program. We need ways to handle the backlog.
But at its core, we have to decide that the United States is a place where people who are fleeing persecution and torture can, at least in some instances, find safety here. I think that’s part of our historical heritage that we shouldn’t turn away from. I don’t think candidates should be afraid to say that, at risk of seeing “soft on immigration.”
It’s time to stand up for people who are an incredibly important part of our communities, and acknowledge their contributions, and then figure out what’s a system going forward that allows people to work and live in safety together.
JW: Just thinking about everything we’ve discussed today, there is so much happening in the immigration space, so much horror, frankly. What should people be paying attention to right now? Aaron, I want to start with you.
ARM: I think with everything else going on in the world right now, with the war in Iran, rising gas prices, and the deconstruction of the American state by the Trump administration, it’s easy to let the immigration issue fall by the wayside now that they are trying to be a little bit more quiet.
But every single day, the administration is arresting around 1,000 people, or slightly more than 1,000 people, and many of those have been members of our communities for decades. They have family members here. The climate of fear and surveillance that is being imposed on immigrants is growing.
That is something that impacts all of us. We saw this week the Trump administration say that they wanted to try to restrict undocumented immigrants from even having bank accounts. We’re seeing every government database being turned into a tool of the mass deportation state, and that is something that impacts all Americans because you cannot carry out a mass deportation of 4 percent of the U.S. population without fundamentally transforming the United States into more of a police state.
That should concern everybody, even if it’s not something that they’re seeing on the headlines because of splashy raids in American cities.
AS: A lot of this news is really sad and hard to keep reading. I feel that myself as someone who has to for my job, continue to read immigration news. I would encourage people to continue to pay attention to stories of courage and people who are bringing the conditions of detention centers and what’s happening to their families to light.
I just spoke yesterday to a client of ours who was released from Delaney Hall on Monday because of a habeas corpus petition that we won. I was asking her what people need to know, and while she was telling me about the poor medical care and the lack of food, I was just really struck by her care for the other people who were still detained there and her spirit and the way that when she was released from that facility, the protesters outside cheered and chanted her name.
There are folks inside Delaney and hunger strikers in Adelanto, people in Camp East Montana have brought a lawsuit to complain about their own conditions. And so there are a lot of examples, from Minnesota to detention of people being courageous and having hope in these times.
So that’s what I hope people can keep watching for and participating in.
JW: That’s a really beautiful message. And we’re going to leave it there, but Aaron, Andrea, thank you both so much for joining us on the Intercept Briefing.
ARM: Thank you for having me.
AS: Thank you.
JW: That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor in chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow. Slipstream provided our theme music. This show and your reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you.
Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or review. It helps other listeners to find us. Let us know what you think of this episode, or if you want to send us a general message, email us at podcast@theintercept.com.
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Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.
The post “Warehousing Human Beings” appeared first on The Intercept.
If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he already knows one reason why.
Last year, the North Dakota state representative, a Republican, tried to expand the window of pregnancy in which women could access abortion. The state legislature had banned it for almost everyone from the moment of conception.
Tied up in court, the ban hadn’t yet gone into effect. But Murphy wanted to lock in a less restrictive law, making abortion accessible up to 15 weeks and even later for women whose doctors deemed it a medical necessity.
To convince his fellow legislators, he read out loud from two ProPublica stories about women in Texas who died without lifesaving care. “Physicians felt compelled to follow the law,” he said in a hearing, “and both women died so that an inane law could be followed.”
A conservative colleague had warned him not to file the bill, Murphy told ProPublica, recalling the man’s words: “I can no longer protect you from who’s going to come after you.”
There was some truth to that sentiment.
At least four Republican state lawmakers who challenged severe abortion restrictions lost support from anti-abortion groups and key party allies and went on to lose primary elections, ProPublica found.
The blueprint in those races was remarkably similar. Opponents either embraced stricter abortion policies or avoided the issue altogether. Anti-abortion organizations campaigned against the incumbents, party endorsements shifted to their opponents and activists worked to turn out voters in low-participation primary elections.
In some of the races ProPublica examined, lawmakers who replaced abortion-ban reformers went on to support even stricter abortion legislation. In South Carolina, for instance, two new senators supported a bill to eliminate almost all exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. One provision of the bill would send women convicted of illegally terminating their pregnancies to jail.
Murphy is one of at least two Republican state lawmakers now facing a contested primary after trying to modify their states’ abortion restrictions. Richard Briggs, a state senator from Tennessee, is also fighting to keep his seat. In 2019, Briggs voted for the state’s so-called trigger law — a ban that would snap into place if the federal right to abortion was ever overturned.
But he had second thoughts after that actually happened. A cardiothoracic surgeon, Briggs realized the newly activated law didn’t provide adequate protections for patients having medical complications. “As a medical doctor, I drew the line,” he said in an interview. He introduced bills for a clearer medical exception and protection for doctors who intervened in cases where a fatal fetal anomaly risked the mother’s health.
The latter bill failed and now serves as ammunition for the challenger vying for his seat in the state’s Aug. 6 primary. “My opponent consistently works to weaken Tennessee’s pro life laws,” Kent Morrell says on his campaign website, noting that Tennessee Right to Life had revoked its endorsement of Briggs.
Murphy, who teaches biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota’s medical school, ultimately did not succeed at reforming the state’s ban. His bill failed 87-6, and the state Supreme Court later reinstated the original ban, which forbids abortion from conception, with exceptions for rape and incest up to six weeks and to save the life of the mother.
The first time Murphy ran for election, his county’s Republican Party had endorsed him. Not this time. Instead, the party endorsed his two challengers, including Jill Chandler, the executive director of a “crisis pregnancy center” who believes abortion should be banned from conception.
She told ProPublica she happened to be present in the committee room when Murphy made the case for his bill. “To know that he was an endorsed Republican candidate from my district and one that I had voted for because of that endorsement was eye-opening,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘This can never happen again.’”
It was not the first time either Briggs or Murphy had taken positions that aggravated members of their parties in legislatures that have taken sharp turns to the right. Murphy voted against book bans and private school vouchers. Briggs had urged the public to get COVID-19 shots and has said that medical expertise should trump politics in decisions that involve public health.
Briggs expressed confidence in his election chances; he feels that voters agree with the decisions he’s made and noted that his Republican colleague, Sen. Becky Duncan Massey, survived a primary challenge over her support for abortion-ban exceptions.
Murphy believes the “silent majority” supports the intent of his abortion bill, but primary races historically have low turnout. It could come down to a handful of votes, he said.
“I might lose an election over this,” Murphy said, “but would I rather win an election by not doing the right thing?”
Mary DuBuisson, a former state Republican representative in a suburb outside of New Orleans, considers herself passionately “pro-life.” Like Briggs, she voted for her state’s near-total abortion ban in 2019. Three years later, just before Louisiana’s trigger law was implemented, it came before the legislature again.
Recognizing that women would now have to live under the restriction, DuBuisson wanted to make sure victims of rape and incest could terminate their pregnancies. When her colleagues refused to include those exceptions, she became the only Republican to vote against the ban.
A year later, she caused a stir when she sponsored a bill that would have allowed women whose pregnancies were not viable to end them. “To force a woman to carry to term with zero chance of survival is heartless and cruel,” she said at the time.
She didn’t feel it would be controversial. Other Republican women in the House told her she was doing the right thing. But when it was time to vote, another female Republican state lawmaker made a motion that ultimately succeeded at killing the bill in committee. “I mean, I just couldn’t understand,” she said of all her colleagues. “What if this was you, your daughter or granddaughter?”
When she came up for reelection, her primary opponent latched onto her record. Brian Glorioso was an attorney she had handily defeated in 2018. He called her proposed legislation a leftist attempt to circumvent the state’s abortion ban and said any “pro-abortion” doctor would falsely deem a pregnancy nonviable in records just to perform the procedure.
She beat him in the Oct. 14, 2023, primary by 384 votes — not enough to avoid a runoff.
Then, he got some extra support.
On Oct. 16, Louisiana Right to Life told its followers this runoff was key. Glorioso was expected to have a 100% “pro-life” voting record, while DuBuisson’s was 77%.
On Oct. 27, the state’s new governor-elect, Republican Jeff Landry, endorsed him, citing issues other than abortion; he wouldn’t tell ProPublica whether DuBuisson’s record on it played a role. But Landry, who had defended the state’s ban as attorney general, made clear during his campaign that he was “an unwavering defender of life, especially in the face of adversity,” citing his 100% rating from a national anti-abortion group.
“I think it partially cost me my election,” DuBuisson said of her attempts to reform the ban.
History repeated itself the following year, this time in South Carolina.
Three state senators — all Republicans who consider themselves “pro-life” — worked across party lines to defeat an abortion bill that essentially banned the procedure from conception and eliminated rape and incest exceptions. At the time, the state allowed abortion up to 20 weeks.
Sens. Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson spoke out against limitations on abortion access for victims of rape and incest. Sen. Katrina Shealy, who had the longest tenure for a woman in the state legislature, pushed for making abortion accessible up to 12 weeks and later for exceptions in cases involving rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies. Ultimately, a six-week window with rape, incest and fatal fetal exceptions became law.
Amid the Statehouse showdown, they were nicknamed the “Sister Senators.” All lost their county GOP’s endorsement to their male opponents.
But the bigger repercussions came from anti-abortion groups that mobilized a multifront grassroots campaign against them. Students for Life Action announced that it generated “37,000 pieces of mail, almost 130,000 personal text messages, more than 51,000 phone calls and thousands of doors knocked” to unseat the trio.
“All three of them got voted out — every single one of them lost because of that decision,” said Dr. Matthew Clark, the executive director of Personhood South Carolina, which believes abortion shouldn’t exist at all and that women who have them should be prosecuted for murder.
Clark, an allergist and Presbyterian pastor, said his group’s desired legislation has a better chance to advance now that the Sister Senators have been replaced.
Matt Leber, who beat Senn, previously co-sponsored a bill as a member of the state House that would make abortion a crime equivalent to homicide. It failed to advance, and Leber withdrew his name as a co-sponsor amid a controversy surrounding it in 2023.
This legislative session, Leber and Carlisle Kennedy, who beat Shealy, supported a bill that carries misdemeanor criminal penalties for women seeking abortions, with jail time up to two years. Senate Bill 1095 passed with supermajority support out of a committee Leber sits on.
The bill died before the session, but watchers of abortion restrictions noticed it got further than any other similarly repressive legislation ever has.
The outcomes do not neatly match public polling. Surveys in states such as South Carolina and Louisiana have found that many Republican voters support at least some exceptions to abortion bans, including in cases of rape or threats to a woman’s health.
But primary elections often draw only a small share of eligible voters, giving outsized influence to highly engaged activists and organized interest groups.
DuBuisson’s runoff drew about one-third of registered voters. Participation in the South Carolina primaries was lower still. Some races were decided on tiny margins; Senn lost hers by 33 votes.
The North Dakota GOP has moved further to the right on abortion in recent years, even as polling suggested the state’s restrictions were losing support from Republican voters. At its 2026 convention, the party passed a resolution rejecting any policies that “normalize” abortion.
North Dakota is one of the few states with a multimember system, where two representatives and one senator govern together in the same district. District 43, which Murphy currently represents, is one of the only purple districts in an otherwise deeply red state. It includes part of Grand Forks, a growing college town home to the University of North Dakota.
Murphy’s fellow representative, Democrat Zac Ista, told ProPublica he hadn’t been able to make a dent in this legislature. He announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, opening up an opportunity for a Republican takeover of the district.
Ista said the lack of support rallying around Murphy is due to his position on abortion, as well as culture-war legislation he refused to support. “I think it’s illustrative of that schism, where at this district level, Republicans are really trying to sort of press the most extreme conservative opinions,” Ista said.
Richard Glynn, the GOP county chair in Murphy’s district, had previously supported Murphy’s abortion bill. In written testimony, Glynn shared his experience hearing about young women performing illegal abortions when he was a freshman at the University of South Dakota in 1966. Four young women who were in sororities died from using metal hangers to terminate their pregnancies, he wrote.
“These deaths were viewed as preventable if these girls could have received competent care. Unfortunately, North Dakota is going down the same path with limited access to obstetric care that negatively impacts the health of the woman,” his letter said.
When reached by phone, Glynn said delegates in the county voted and Murphy had the least amount of votes, which is why he did not receive the county’s endorsement.
Glynn declined to answer more questions before hanging up on a reporter.
One of Murphy’s opponents, Mike Holmes, has drawn a lot of excitement — and an endorsement from Gov. Kelly Armstrong — for his expertise in energy technology and industrial development. The governor said Holmes understands “what it takes to keep North Dakota’s economy strong.” Holmes has been silent on abortion and didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for an interview.
Chandler, who touted her “respect for life” in a campaign mailer, is favored among anti-abortion groups. “It’s a pretty stark contrast,” said Bridget Turbide, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life, who called Murphy’s proposal “the most extreme pro-choice bill we’ve ever seen.”
Citizens Alliance of North Dakota, a conservative group that opposes abortion among other causes, paid for a mailer calling Chandler a “champion of family values.” The same group marked Murphy in “bad standing” in an online roster of legislators, questioning his alignment with North Dakota values.
Murphy’s third colleague who also represents District 43, Republican State Sen. Jeff Barta, campaigned alongside him in 2022 as part of a unified Republican ticket when the primary election was uncontested.
Asked about the upcoming race and the candidates, Barta pointed to Murphy’s proposal that would have expanded abortion access in North Dakota.
“Last session, he introduced House Bill 1488, which created a little divide there,” Barta said.
Barta said Murphy has also broken with the party on other issues.
“That probably opened the door for the third candidate to run,” Barta added. Had that not happened, Murphy would have made it to the general election without having to defend his spot on the ballot.
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, lawmakers taking such nuanced stands on abortion bans may not have risked a career death sentence, said abortion historian and law professor Mary Ziegler.
“The kind of incrementalism that Eric Murphy seems to be doing is something from a bygone era, where people were more pragmatic in the movement and not punished for it,” she said.
The post These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash. appeared first on ProPublica.
Why Should Delaware Care?
In an increasingly technology-dominated world, access to high speed internet is a priority for many Delawareans. While the state continues to roll out initiatives to expand broadband internet access in remote areas, some rural Delawareans are forced to turn to libraries and other short-term solutions for connectivity.
Despite government pushes in recent years for high-speed internet to reach more residents, some rural Delawareans feel left behind by the broadband expansions and question the state’s approach to improving connectivity.
After initially being sidelined by the Trump administration, the state announced this spring that the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program would invest roughly $100 million toward creating 4,700 new internet connections across Delaware.
The program will use a combination of federal funds and private company dollars to provide connectivity to some of the forgotten – or “last mile” – homes in Delaware, eventually aiming to reach complete high-speed internet coverage in the state by 2030.
But some experts and residents are skeptical.
Researchers who study broadband internet access say the BEAD program’s approach – prioritizing the quicker deployment of copper cables over more long-lasting fiber optic ones – is ineffective for long-term sustainability.
At the same time, some residents and lawmakers have given up hope that high-speed internet will reach rural corners of the state. Instead, they have turned to Starlink – a satellite internet service created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX – or WiFi hot spots to get connectivity.
And even when rural residents have gotten the option of broadband internet access in recent years, some say they cannot afford the cost of an internet bill. This has forced already stretched-thin independent libraries to meet community members’ needs for computers and internet hot spots, library directors said.
“I don’t think it’s gonna happen,” said Chris Sylvester, who has been asking state leaders when his western Kent County property will be connected by cabling for years. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re forgotten in rural Delaware for high-speed internet.”
Rural high-speed internet access has quadrupled nationally over the past decade, and 86% of rural households now have some form of broadband subscription, said Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, an organization that studies technology access in rural America.
In Delaware, by virtue of a small compact geography, the state already boasts roughly 98% connectivity.
But experts also say these numbers don’t tell the whole story. Some areas may be considered to have broadband access, but the cabling could already be outdated or rusting, and connection could be unaffordable to residents in an area.
“Not all broadband is created equal,” said Christopher Ali, a Penn State University professor who studies telecommunications.
Delaware initially began laying the groundwork for rural connectivity in 2015, when then-Gov. Jack Markell awarded a $1 million grant for the company Fibertech Networks to begin laying miles of fiber optic cables — widely considered the broadband option with the most longevity — in Sussex County.
In recent years, the state has mostly relied on the influx of federal funds to expand connectivity since the onset of the pandemic, said Connor Perry, executive director of the Delaware Broadband Office.
These federal funding sources together allowed the state to set up “middle mile infrastructure” closer to town centers and along roads like Routes 1 and 113 over the past decade, Perry said.
Now the state can focus on the “last mile” of harder-to-reach buildings, he added.
The initial plan for the BEAD program included only fiber optic technology. The Trump administration, however, changed the program to a combination of traditional copper cabling and fiber.
The program is planned to connect 425 new homes and businesses in New Castle County, 1,513 in Kent County and 2,790 in Sussex County by 2029, Perry said.
IQ Fiber, a Florida-based company funded largely by private equity, also announced this spring a $150 million project to lay more fiber connections down the length of the state, largely following the Route 1 corridor.
Perry said the state also received BEAD funding to create a census-block level map of high-speed internet rates across the state, in collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
A look at the most current version of the map, updated in December, indicates that virtually all of New Castle County has complete internet connectivity. The connection rate tends to decrease moving south, particularly toward Delaware’s western and southern borders with Maryland.
Areas where internet access is less than 25%, according to the map, include western Kent County near Felton and Harrington, the southwestern corner of the state between Laurel and Delmar, and the Georgetown-Millsboro region of central Sussex County.
In rural pockets of the state, some residents say they were connected to broadband through one of the recent expansion pushes. Others, however, have resigned to never getting wiring, instead turning to newer cable-less options like Starlink.
Rachel Culver used to live in a house just a couple of minutes west of Georgetown town limits, on what she described as “the rural side of town.”
Culver, who is also the director of the Georgetown Public Library, said she relied on the library’s resources, like the building’s WiFi and checking out one of the highly sought-after hot spots, in order to complete computer tasks.
“It kind of really felt like we were camping,” she said.
The area by her house was just starting the process of getting cable infrastructure when she moved out in 2022, Culver said.
Chris Sylvester lives and operates a flower farm in the Sandtown area of western Kent County, near the Maryland border. He has not had such luck with progress toward connectivity.
When Sylvester and his wife first launched their business in 2022, the lack of high-speed internet on their property forced him to drive to a coffee shop or public library to upload a single photo onto their website.
The problem? The nearest public place with internet connection was a 30-minute drive away.
“When you’re a business and trying to be as efficient as possible, it becomes challenging and frustrating,” he said.
As his family was trying to scale their business and his daughter was beginning elementary school, Sylvester began contacting state lawmakers, asking when broadband internet might reach his area.
Four years later, Sylvester said he still has not gotten an answer as to whether his area is part of planned future broadband expansions.
“I think I’ll be 60 or 70 years old, and I’ll still be that little spot out in western Kent County that doesn’t have internet,” he said. “I just don’t see how it’s going to work.”
Sylvester said his family was able to set up a Starlink satellite last year, which has given them at least a short-term connectivity solution.
Community leaders working at libraries and coffee shops say they try to be the space residents need to get reliable connectivity.
The challenge, though, is that Delawareans in sparsely populated areas where internet cables do not reach also tend to be further away from these community spaces, compounding the accessibility challenges.
Culver, the Georgetown Library director, said all the libraries were given hot spots and Chromebook computers from a 2022 state grant program.
Then, when she and her staff saw “such a need” for the hot spots, they applied for a grant to get more. Since then, however, the grant has run out, and the library’s tight financial position means residents are back to having to wait multiple weeks to check out a hot spot.
Directors at other rural libraries similarly said they have a constant daily stream of visitors using their WiFi and computers. Sometimes people sit in the parking lot after hours to connect to the building’s internet, they said.
Owners of coffee shops and coworking spaces say they also strive to serve as broadband resources.
Amity Coffee Roasters, a coffee shop in Greenwood, is bustling on many days with mothers doing homeschool work with their children, pastors without internet at their churches planning upcoming sermons and Delaware Technical Community College or Salisbury University students completing assignments.
Melody Slaubaugh, Amity’s co-owner, said she and her husband made a conscious choice to “pay a lot for very powerful internet.”
She added that some of the design choices they made with the café, such as providing an outlet connector next to each table, were specifically to make it conducive to internet users.
The Mill in Seaford, a co-working space slated to open this year, is another place where developer Rob Herrera said he aims to focus on the community’s need for connectivity.
Herrera said in the process of creating the coworking space, he has heard from many Seaford-area residents who do not have high speed internet options, or their only option is “old copper and cabling lines,” so having a coworking space with fiber connectivity is appealing.
Some state lawmakers say they have been frustrated by the speed at which broadband internet access has expanded to their rural districts. Some view the emergence of Starlink satellites as a more cost-effective and accessible option.
Rep. Rich Collins (R-Millsboro) said the number of calls he has been getting from constituents about lack of internet access has steeply declined since the advent of Starlink a few years ago.
“If you really want broadband, it’s a way to have that,” Collins said.
Experts, though, say the efficacy of broadband options is a spectrum. While Starlink and the BEAD program’s cabling infrastructure are effective in the short-term, experts say they will not be a permanent solution, like a fiber optic network would be.
“Fiber to the home is the most future-proof,” said Dunne, the Center for Rural Innovation director. “As broadband speeds can be increased and the demand for them to be increased goes up, they’re able to scale with it.”
The problem, Dunne said, is that each installation of fiber is more expensive than traditional cabling. It is difficult to incentivize companies to invest in a fiber network in more rural areas, where they will reach fewer potential customers.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
The post State continues broadband expansion program, sustainability in rural areas unclear appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
As demand for cobalt, gold and other minerals grows, mining is accelerating deforestation in the Congo basin – and increasing the risk of deadly Ebola outbreaks
For decades after the discovery of Ebolavirus in 1976, outbreaks of the disease were relatively small and contained, affecting a few hundred people at most.
Not any more. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola have been much larger, affecting thousands and even tens of thousands of people across multiple countries. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in west Africa infected more than 28,000 people in 10 countries on three continents. The current eruption, which began in early May and shows no signs of abating, has caused 363 confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has crossed into Uganda.
Sonia Shah is the author of five books including Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, and writes the newsletter Cross Pollinations on Substack
Continue reading...We could get our first glimpse at software features for the upcoming foldable iPhone Ultra at WWDC 26, and I'm stoked.
As an Ebola outbreak continues to rage in Central Africa, the Trump administration keeps trying to blame the World Health Organization — revealing what experts say is a deep misunderstanding about global disease response.
In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local health workers have been battling the devastating virus without adequate supplies, testing materials, or international support. The outbreak is further complicated by the rare strain of the disease, known as Bundibugyo, that standard field tests often miss and for which there are no vaccines or therapeutics. At least 62 people in Congo and one in Uganda have died according to WHO, but experts say this is likely a significant undercount due to the outbreak emerging in a remote, war-torn region.
“The outbreak had a big head start, and we’re still behind, but under the leadership of the Government of DRC, we are catching up,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told journalists on Wednesday, after a visit to the epicenter of the outbreak. African health officials say that it might take nine months or more to get a handle on the outbreak.
Experts say Trump administration policies — like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and withdrawing from WHO — have undermined global health security and negatively impacted the response to the outbreak. The U.S. had been the largest provider of humanitarian assistance and health sector support to the Democratic Republic of Congo, funding more than 70 percent of humanitarian work there, according to a 2025 report from Physicians for Human Rights which noted the aid cuts have “severely harmed” public health and humanitarian efforts, including infectious disease control. The Trump administration has reportedly even barred some U.S. health officials from communicating with counterparts at WHO.
In the face of criticism of a U.S. failure to quickly respond to the Ebola outbreak, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott lashed out at WHO and heaped praise on his boss. “The security concerns in the area – which President Trump has taken unprecedented steps to address – and the WHO’s delay in informing the world of concerns until May 15 has had an impact,” he told The Intercept.
Public health experts say Piggot’s response exposes a fundamental confusion about how authorities combat infectious disease. “It reveals a lack of understanding about how international health regulations work and what a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ actually is,” Margaret Harris, a former senior WHO official and a medical doctor who responded to Ebola outbreaks in West Africa in the mid-2010s and Congo in the late 2010s, told The Intercept.
On May 5, WHO issued an alert of a high-mortality outbreak in Congo’s Ituri Province, which included deaths among healthcare workers. On May 14, blood samples were finally analyzed across the country, in the capital, Kinshasa. A day later, the analysis confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease, a strain of Ebola.
“We also need to remember that Ebola is only one health threat among many that these communities face.”
Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, explained that affected nations are the lead actors. “WHO does not declare. It’s the member states who declare,” he told The Intercept on Thursday. “On the 15th, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda declared. On the 16th, we declared the presence of Ebola, and on the 17th, Director-General Tedros declared this as a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’”
Dr. Marie Roseline Belizaire, WHO Africa’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, further explained that under the well-defined protocols, states have the obligation to declare an outbreak after which the WHO informs the rest of the world and begins providing support. “There is a clear, well-defined methodology and it is clearly outlined in the international health regulations,” she told The Intercept.
The response is markedly quicker than in some previous outbreaks. During the 2014–16 Ebola crisis in West Africa — when more than 28,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died in the largest ever outbreak of the disease — WHO became aware that Ebola was spreading in Guinea in March 2014 but did not declare a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” until almost five months later.
Blame for any lag in response is not the fault of WHO, argued Harris, noting that USAID previously supported NGOs and healthcare workers in rural communities on the front lines of such outbreaks. “Dr. Tedros declared it without even calling the emergency committee together, so he wasted no time once they had information about the extent of the outbreak and the fact that clearly it had been running silently for a long time,” said Harris. “But the silence of the outbreak is not something you could lay at the feet of WHO. You lay that at the feet of a very fragile health system in the middle of a conflict that the rest of the world should be doing something to stop.”
The number of suspected Ebola cases in Congo has been reduced from over 1,000 last week to 116 as teams work through a backlog of tests. Experts say many suspected cases turned out to be malaria. This large number of people with untreated malaria demonstrates, they note, the chronic healthcare deficiencies in the region and a need for a comprehensive focus on public health there.
“We also need to remember that Ebola is only one health threat among many that these communities face,” said Tedros. “One of the things I heard from the community leaders is that they worry that the response to Ebola may take resources away from the health and humanitarian services they rely on for their many other needs.”
The Trump administration has faced scrutiny for pouring money into an Ebola quarantine and treatment center for infected Americans being built in Kenya, as a group of distinguished physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and humanitarian workers, including former top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called for Americans exposed to Ebola to be brought home for treatment. “We are deeply concerned by reports that the United States government is pursuing a policy under which American citizens with Ebola exposures requiring quarantine, isolation, or medical care would be transferred to a facility in Kenya,” they wrote in a letter to Congress, noting the “profound legal, ethical, and human rights concerns associated with preventing American citizens from returning home for care or diverting them to third-country facilities.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down on plans to bar Americans with Ebola from being treated in the U.S. “We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States,” he said.
“It really sends the wrong message — that it’s a terrifying thing that you can’t possibly allow to arrive at your borders,” said Harris. Kenya has never experienced an Ebola outbreak, making it a perplexing choice of location for a treatment facility.
The U.S. could have set up a facility in Congo, Harris said, which has the most experience and expertise, having stopped 16 previous outbreaks. Or it could bring its citizens home for treatment and quarantine.
“If you’re going to not treat U.S. citizens on-site in DRC, bring them back to the U.S.” said Harris. “You’ve got one of the best health systems in the world, and you’ve got some of the brightest and best in the world in your country. So why aren’t you mobilizing them and showing that America is truly great?”
The post Trump Administration Tries to Shift Blame for Ebola Response appeared first on The Intercept.
ALIYAH JACKSON
Contributing Reporter
On March 20, 2026, I got to see one of my favorite artists of all time and have been chasing that high ever since. Before I get into describing my amazing night filled with fun, high energy and great music, I have to introduce the man who made it all happen — Jordan Ward.
Jordan Ward is an alternative R&B and Hip Hop artist from St. Louis, Mo. He is known for his combination of intricate vocal performances and upbeat rapping, creating a widely-appealing and refreshing sound. At just 31 years old, he has worked very hard to make a name for himself and is steadily climbing the ranks of the music industry.
Interestingly, making music was not Ward’s initial focus. He actually began his career as a background dancer for some of the biggest names in the industry, including Justin Bieber, Usher, Janet Jackson, Prince and Beyoncé.
It wasn’t until years after I fell in love with his music that I watched Beyoncé’s “Homecoming” Coachella performance on Netflix and saw a younger Ward, with significantly shorter hair, dancing alongside her.
Despite his busy schedule as a touring dancer, Ward began to set time aside to focus on his own music career between dancing gigs. He released both his first single, “Tapas” and his first EP, “A Peak at the Summit,” in 2017. Although I still appreciate his earlier work, the songs that skyrocketed his career did not come out until the early 2020s.
His 2021 single, “Lil Baby Crush,” quickly became one of his most popular songs and launched him into the public eye. It was only up from there and Ward has been on a generational run ever since.
Between his 2023 release of what I would consider his most popular song, “WHITE CROCS (with Ryan Trey)” — which earned him a special shoutout from Tyler, The Creator — and the success of his debut album “FORWARD,” Ward quickly became a popular underdog in the music scene.
Now, we are in the midst of a new Jordan Ward era following the release of his latest album, “BACKWARD.” In my opinion, it’s the perfect continuation of the momentum he built with “FORWARD,” featuring tracks that range from upbeat hits perfect for dancing to ballads that’ll leave you teary-eyed.
While “FORWARD” broke down Ward’s roots and where he came from, “BACKWARD” allowed fans a glimpse into who he is at his core, including his insecurities, regrets and mistakes.
This brings me to his current tour — “THE APARTMENT TOUR.” The name comes from Ward aiming to make the show feel like he was inviting all of us into his apartment — a promise he definitely delivered on.
The stage was set up like a living room while Ward sang and danced around it all night like a little kid putting on a show for his family. From the minute he touched the stage to when the lights went up at the end, it truly felt like we were one big family.
The Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia provided the perfect intimate and cozy atmosphere to complement the homey feel of the show. Although I love my more well-known artists, I adore the closeness that comes with attending concerts held in theaters rather than arenas or stadiums.
The show was sold out and packed to the brim with attendees. The venue only offered standing and balcony options, so for less than $100 for two tickets, I got to spend my time in the pit, mere feet away from Ward with dozens of other fans.
I would say I enjoyed myself, but that would be an extreme understatement — I had one of the best nights I have had in a long time. He sounded amazing and his live vocals proved to be equally as good, if not better than his recorded ones.
His energy kept the crowd wrapped around his finger as we returned the same love we felt him pouring out to us throughout the night. Not to mention, he is probably the cutest 31-year-old man I’ve ever seen and is absolutely stunning, especially when he finally let his long dreadlocks fall out of the oversized striped beanie he wore for most of the show.
He even brought a few guests with him: his opener, Nali, whom I knew a few songs from and really enjoyed, along with surprise guest Destin Conrad, who performed his popular song, “KISSING IN PUBLIC,” as the crowd went absolutely wild.
My favorite songs of the night were “HIGH FUNCTIONING,” “Lil Baby Crush,” “TAKE-OUT,” “CHERIMOYA,” “WHITE CROCS,” “THEMSELVES,” “FAMJAM4000,” “CHAMPION SOUND” and “Y.”
Overall, Jordan Ward is an outstanding performer and puts on an amazing show. I had honestly forgotten just how much I love him and his music until he was standing right in front of me. My only regret was not getting meet-and-greet tickets when I had the chance, so that I could tell him just how much his music has helped me get through these four years of college. However, it’s definitely on my radar for next time.
I’m tempted to gatekeep so that I can keep him in my little bubble of niche artists forever, but as a huge music-lover, I can’t with a good conscience continue to let y’all miss out on such a wonderful artist. If you’re looking for a charismatic, handsome and versatile R&B artist to add to your playlist, Jordan Ward is your guy.
In a May 16 Truth Social post, President Donald Trump cited updated climate change scenarios to misleadingly claim that experts had “admitted” prior climate change projections “were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” The regularly scheduled revision reflects in part the progress the world has made on moving away from fossil fuels.
Trump was reacting to a new set of seven scenarios of emissions by the end of the century, proposed in an April 7 paper by an international group of scientists. Over time, the range of plausible scenarios has narrowed. The most pessimistic scenario now shows lower emissions than 15 years ago, when the prior scenarios were developed, and the most optimistic one now shows more.
Trump, however, used the update to cast doubt on the reality and seriousness of global warming. “GOOD RIDDANCE!” he wrote. “After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that ‘Climate Change’ is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”
RCP8.5 was the most pessimistic of four scenarios that were selected in 2007 and described in 2011. The scenarios looked at how much the climate might change by 2100, relative to the industrial revolution.
“RCP8.5 was always this low-probability, high-impact case,” Detlef van Vuuren, a climate researcher at Utrecht University and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, told us. He helped lead the effort to develop both the new and earlier climate scenarios. As 15 years have passed and the end of the century has gotten closer, it has become clearer what emissions paths are most plausible.
It’s “useful to consider possible outcomes that are less attractive, and it doesn’t mean that you were wrong by considering those if they didn’t come true,” van Vuuren said. “Unfortunately, the overall outcome of all of this is that we are in a situation that is actually leading to quite strong climate impact still.”
Van Vuuren also clarified that Trump is incorrect to call the international group of researchers behind the scenarios “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee.” A U.N. group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarizes the existing research on climate change. The scenarios are anticipated to have a “major role” in the group’s next climate assessments, he said, but it did not come up with the new scenarios.
“The paper belongs to the broader body of scientific literature produced by the international research community, under the coordination of the World Climate Research Program, not the IPCC,” the IPCC wrote in a May 20 statement.
We asked the White House if Trump was referring to the IPCC in his post and if he was suggesting that climate change is not a serious problem. In an emailed reply, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said that “Dumocrats” and others had for years made “bogus ‘climate change’ claims that we would destroy the planet,” leading countries that pursued energy transition policies to be “destroyed” with “blackouts and sky-high prices.”
“The rogue climate activists continue to be ‘Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!’ and President Trump continues to be ‘Right! Right! Right!’” Rogers said.
Experts said that Trump’s comments on climate scenarios misrepresented their purpose.
“Scenarios are not predictions: they are ‘what-if’ pictures of the future,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University, told us via email.
“The highest-emission scenario serves as a basis for exploring the potential consequences of climate change if everything goes wrong,” a post on the new climate scenarios from the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a Dutch government research institute, explained. “After all, it is important to ensure that we are also prepared for undesirable developments.”
Termed “representative climate pathways,” the older scenarios by design covered a broad range of climate trajectories, with RCP8.5 representing the 90th percentile of baseline scenarios in the literature at the time. (A baseline scenario illustrates a case where people do not take action to mitigate climate change, but there can be a range of baseline scenarios depending on other factors, such as how much fossil fuel use increases.) The most optimistic scenario, by contrast, represented below the 10th percentile of mitigation scenarios in the literature.
Van Vuuren likened the scenarios to a range of possible times a person might arrive at a destination on a drive. Initially, a person might want to consider the possibility of a traffic jam or other misadventures. But as the trip progresses, a traffic jam will or will not emerge, and the range of plausible arrival times will become narrower. In the case of the climate scenarios, the destination is the year 2100, and we are now 15 years closer to it than we were when the previous scenarios were laid out.
In recent years, the world has not followed the trajectory outlined in RCP8.5, van Vuuren said. There are lower emissions and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere than were laid out in that scenario. This means that a new low-probability, high-impact case will “automatically” be lower than the previous one, he said.
On top of this, renewable energy became more economically competitive, he said. RCP8.5 assumed high use of fossil fuels, especially coal. When RCP8.5 was developed, “emissions had been growing relatively fast in Asia, and based on coal,” van Vuuren said. In the years since, the outlook has improved for the growth of renewables and gotten far worse for coal.
Between 2000 and 2015, “global emissions and temperature change had been reliably tracking” the RCP8.5 scenario, Hayhoe said.
But since 2015, reality diverged from the RCP8.5 scenario, due to “massive advances” in clean energy, she said, as well as climate policies that were enacted following the 2015 Paris Agreement, a major climate treaty that the U.S. has left during each of the two Trump administrations. “And that, in a nutshell, is why the higher of the new scenarios is lower than RCP8.5,” she said.
As time passed, some climate scientists began to critique the plausibility of RCP8.5, van Vuuren and his colleagues acknowledged in the new paper. Some also argued that it never was all that plausible. And some have said that researchers, policymakers and communicators have at times misused RCP8.5 by treating it as a likely outcome of the business-as-usual approach to climate change.
But Trump and his allies have overgeneralized these criticisms. We wrote in 2018, for example, that Trump administration officials had criticized the National Climate Assessment for being based on the “worst” or “most extreme” scenario, when it had used multiple scenarios.
And last year, a Department of Energy report released to justify rescinding the endangerment finding — the underpinning for greenhouse gas regulation in the U.S. — similarly used RCP8.5 in an attempt to discredit climate science. The DOE report “selectively focuses on high-end emissions scenarios, like RCP8.5, portraying them as failed predictions, to argue that the risks of climate change are exaggerated,” a comment submitted to the DOE on behalf of more than 85 scientists said. (The DOE report was written by five researchers who have long propagated contrarian views on climate change. In its final February rule rescinding the endangerment finding, the EPA stated that the agency is no longer relying on the DOE report “in light of concerns raised by some commenters.”)
“A tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100,” as envisioned in RCP8.5, “may never have been particularly plausible even back in 2011 when RCP8.5 was originally published,” a trio of climate scientists wrote for the Climate Brink blog on May 18 on the retirement of the high-end scenario. “But a 21st century of increasing fossil fuel use leading to a doubling of emissions was within the realm of the possible.” It’s a “sign of progress” that the world is not heading toward a doubling of emissions, the researchers wrote, saying that the retirement of RCP8.5 doesn’t undermine “the edifice of all of climate science as both President Trump and some overly excited internet pundits claim.”
Trump’s post also incorrectly suggested that climate change is not a serious problem.
“For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs,” he wrote. “Unlike the Dumocrats, who use Climate Alarmism nonsense to push their GREEN NEW SCAM, my Administration will always be based on TRUTH, SCIENCE, and FACT!”
Hayhoe said that Trump’s claims follow a familiar pattern of climate denial: claiming that climate change isn’t bad or its impacts aren’t serious. But the retirement of RCP8.5 does not change the fact that consequential global warming is occurring and will continue to occur.
Van Vuuren said that “by far the most important news” from the new climate scenarios publication is that the lowest plausible emissions scenario is now higher than before, hitting 1.7 degrees Celsius “or slightly higher” — the equivalent of more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit — before falling to around 1.5 C by 2100. This would mean the world would substantially overshoot the longstanding goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. The scenario, notably, also relies on a high degree of carbon removal, which as a technology has yet to be deployed at large scale.
“The main message is that because emissions have been increasing instead of decreasing, we have increasingly lost our sight on the climate goals, which were formulated to prevent dangerous climate change,” he said.
Currently, the world is approximately following the medium scenario, van Vuuren said, which would lead to around 2.5 C to 3 C (4.5 F to 5.4 F), of warming by the end of the century. “That will bring quite substantial climate damage,” he said. “It will mean a substantial increase in extreme [weather and climate] events, it will mean sea level rise, it will mean impacts on agricultural yields, and also substantial increase in the risk of tipping points,” or levels of climate change that significantly and often irreversibly alter systems.
The RCP8.5 scenario translated to around 4.5 C of warming by 2100, or around 8 F. The new highest scenario includes expected warming of nearly 3.5 C, or around 6 F, and temperatures would continue to rise after 2100.
The Climate Brink post also explained that for a given level of warming, certain risks have increased. “So, even if the high-end emissions in RCP8.5 won’t materialize, the damages projected in these earlier climate simulations remain very much in play,” the researchers said.
Van Vuuren added that the temperature increases in the new paper are based on a “very simple” climate model but that further climate modeling will be done to understand how conditions will affect the climate system. In the past few years, he said that “we actually saw temperature increase going up much faster than in our scenarios.” The meaning of this is not yet known, but some research has suggested that this indicates the climate system is more sensitive to greenhouse gases, he said, which could mean much higher temperatures from those gases than previously thought. If that’s the case, “the temperature rise could still easily exceed 4°C,” or more than 7 F, the PBL post said.
The positive news, Hayhoe said, is that the scenarios show people can affect the trajectory of climate change. “The most important thing that these scenarios — both the older RCP ones and this newer set — show, without a shadow of a doubt, is that WE are the biggest uncertainty in terms of future impacts.”
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The post Trump Misrepresents Climate Change Scenarios appeared first on FactCheck.org.
Beluga whales, which Marineland threatened to euthanize in 2025, will be moved to aquariums in Spain or across US
Canada and an embattled marine park have reached a tentative deal on the future of 30 beluga whales, ending a saga that has captivated the public and angered animal rights groups.
The federal fisheries ministry announced this week that all of Marineland’s belugas would be shipped to either Spain or one of four locations in the US, ending whale captivity in Canada.
Continue reading...As Iran war reshapes the Middle East, Turkey’s regional role looks set to expand Expert comment LToremark
Ankara’s deepening relations with Gulf countries and a potential rerouting of trade are among the factors likely to benefit Turkey.
The Iran war is fundamentally redefining politics in the Middle East and upending the regional status quo. It is also redefining Turkey’s role within the region, which presents both challenges and opportunities for Ankara.
For Turkey, the worst-case scenario was and is that Israel would seek to engineer state collapse in Iran, the fallout of which would consume both Iran and its neighbours for many years to come. It would pave the way for proxy conflicts, a refugee crisis and state fragmentation – and bring the Kurdish dimension of the war to the fore. This outcome would also further embolden Israel – with US backing – to continue its efforts to reshape the region on its own terms. But so far, Iran’s endurance has prevented Turkey’s worst fears from materializing.
At this stage, Turkey has two interrelated concerns. One, Turkey wants to prevent a return to war, but it is also worried about what it sees as Iran’s attempt to rewrite the rules of the game in the Gulf. For example, Iran’s new transit rules for the Strait of Hormuz could effectively give Iran significant influence over Gulf states’ security as well as their economy. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has called for a return to the pre-war status quo in Hormuz, warning the new regulation could become a ‘new source’ of conflict. Plus, Turkey believes that Iran’s actions here will push Gulf states closer to the US and Israel.
However, the war also presents Ankara with opportunities in the shape of an expanded regional role: in defence industry and security partnerships; in regional connectivity and trade route redesign; and through regional alignments.
This war has brought the question of security to the forefront of policy conversations and considerations in the Gulf and the wider region. Although there is not yet an alternative to the US security umbrella, it has failed to provide the security that Gulf states wanted. For many countries in the Middle East – not least those of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – the US is indispensable, but also unreliable and coercive at the same time. However, despite their mixed feelings and discontent, Gulf countries will have no choice but to double down on their relations with the US. This will only be reinforced by Iran’s actions and attempts to rewrite the rules of the game in the Gulf.
At the same time, Gulf states will also gradually seek to diversify their security partnerships and defence industry cooperation, as a hedging strategy against over-dependence on the US in this area. However, they will be cautious about engaging in such partnerships with US adversaries to avoid incurring the wrath of Washington. This is probably good news for Turkey, a country with a growing defence industry – and on good terms with the US and President Donald Trump – to further expand its security and defence industry cooperation with Gulf states. This cooperation is unlikely to be confined to purchases of Turkish weapons or drone systems; it will likely also include joint production agreements, joint investments, and technology and knowledge transfers.
The Hormuz crisis has brought the question of rerouting trade corridors and redesigning connectivity to the top of regional and international agendas. Turkey is well-positioned to benefit from such shifts. The wider Middle East and beyond have seen an increasing number of connectivity projects aimed at rerouting trade and redesigning supply chains, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) – whose prospects are dimming following the Gaza and Iran wars – and the now-defunct Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline project. Turkey already plays a central role in two such projects: the Iraq Development Road project and the Middle Corridor. These strategic connectivity projects are not only redesigning supply-chains and rerouting trade, but they also redefine the geopolitics of the concerned regions.
Turkey and its partners should consider ways to further boost the prospects of Ankara-supported connectivity projects. For example, bringing Syria on board with the Iraq Development Road project would provide an even shorter route to the Mediterranean, while bringing Armenia on board with the Middle Corridor would strengthen the ongoing normalization process between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia. In the post-Iran war era, Turkey and regional states are likely to engage in even more dialogue on trade corridors and transport connectivity. For example, the Hejaz Railway project – a prospective land corridor between the Gulf and Europe, which will connect Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, – is already attracting interest.
The Iran war is also triggering or accelerating the formation of new regional alignments and groupings. The quartet comprising Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is a case in point, although it is more of a platform than a pact. Ankara wants it to remain open to including more countries to avoid counter-alignment groups from forming, which can lead to more regional rivalries and fragmentation. Although individual members of this group, such as Pakistan and Turkey, have assumed active roles to find a diplomatic settlement to end the war, the quartet itself is primarily designed to address post-war regional geopolitics and security.
They were pillars of their church, congregants in a little-known denomination that sets itself apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be wiped away — not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again.
So it went in a rural Wyoming church, where a man was accused of sexually abusing young girls hundreds of times in the pews during Sunday services. Though the preacher knew of the abuse, he never reported it to police, local prosecutors said. Instead, he told the man to seek therapy.
In Minnesota, a man from the same faith admitted that he began entering the bedrooms of his daughter and son at night around the time each of them turned 12. He and his siblings grew up in the church and were sexually abused themselves, and then he repeated the abuse with his own children.
And in Washington state, preachers knew a member of their congregation had sexually abused several young boys. Instead of reporting him to police, they allowed him to ask for forgiveness, according to a family member, and he continued to sexually abuse children. He was later found guilty of raping the 9-year-old son of a church member and sentenced to life in prison.
The abusers and victims all belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or the OALC, a Scandinavian-rooted revivalist church that teaches its followers that heaven is reserved just for them. To get there, according to current and former members, they must follow a strict doctrine, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness for their sins and says that being forgiven by a fellow church member washes away those sins.
What’s more, the church teaches that once a perpetrator is forgiven, anyone who speaks about the wrongdoing — including the victim — can be accused of harboring an unforgiving heart. Those who have left the church, as well as some who are still with it, say this means the burden of sin shifts from the person who committed the act to the person who refuses to let the matter rest.
Sexual abuse survivors say these rituals have created a culture where allegations of abuse are resolved outside of the criminal justice system and the victims must bear their pain alone or risk going to hell. In some families, sexual abuse stretches across generations, ensnaring a parent, child and grandchild.
“This is what I would call institutionalism of abuse of young women and children,” said DaNece Day, the prosecuting attorney for Crook County in Wyoming, whose office has charged two OALC members in the past two years.
Day and other prosecutors said one of the biggest obstacles to breaking the cycle is the way church members move among congregations spread across the U.S. and Canada, often hundreds of miles apart but tightly bound by large, multigenerational family networks.
Last fall, ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that preachers in Minnesota had known for years about allegations that one of its members, a man named Clint Massie, had sexually abused young girls in the congregation. But instead of reporting it to police, church leaders urged some of the victims to take part in sessions where they were brought face-to-face with Massie and encouraged to forgive the abuse.
Now, new reporting by the two news organizations shows how the sexual abuse of children in the OALC, as well as the failure by church leaders to report it to authorities, is a persistent and national problem.
Some current and former OALC members are calling on elders from what the church regards as its mother congregation in Sweden — where the church originated — to intervene. In fact, those elders, who don’t have authority over the American church but wield considerable influence, are coming to the U.S. and Canada this summer to meet with congregations. What they’ll find are a growing number of criminal cases against church members and increasing legal scrutiny of leaders for failing to report allegations of sexual abuse to police.
In a statement, representatives from the Swedish church said the cases are isolated incidents and they didn’t “observe any pattern” among the tens of thousands of members in 34 OALC congregations in the U.S. and Canada. They said sexual abuse should be reported to authorities and that it was possible “some matters have been handled improperly or without sufficient knowledge.” And they acknowledged that church guidelines “are being reviewed with the American missionary pastors in order to ensure compliance.”
Representatives of the OALC in the U.S. and Canada said in an email that they also “do not perceive there to be a general pattern of behavior,” describing sexual abuse as a serious and persistent problem across society. They acknowledged that bringing a victim to face their abuser, as a pastor for the OALC church did with Massie, can be traumatic. But they defended the church’s doctrine of forgiveness, saying it was not a means to conceal wrongdoing or to shield offenders from legal consequences, and no one is coerced to forgive or to ask for forgiveness. If those teachings had been misapplied or misunderstood in some cases, they said, it “does not reflect an error in our doctrine.”
ProPublica and the Star Tribune interviewed 20 people who said they were sexually abused, almost all as children, in OALC communities, along with parents of victims as young as 3. Reporters also traveled to OALC churches around the country and reviewed court and police documents from at least eight cases, along with victims’ statements to local authorities.
Their abusers were family members, other children or men who were trusted to be alone with children because they are part of the same insular faith community. Some victims spoke anonymously for fear of retribution from the church or their own families. Others identified themselves as well as their abusers publicly, unafraid of the repercussions.
Many of those victims said church leaders pressured them to keep quiet. In Minnesota, police records describe a woman telling a young girl that her abuse, which began when she was around 5 or 6 years old, was not a big deal and she “needed to get over it.” In Washington state, a police report notes a woman told law enforcement that her preacher had, for “spiritual reasons,” discouraged her from contacting authorities after her daughter told her she’d been raped by three men from church.
“We’re always told that what the preachers tell us, that’s coming from God,” explained one woman, who said she, too, was told not to speak of her abuse. “Who’s going to argue with that?”
Sexual abuse in the OALC has sometimes been a legacy passed from one generation to the next — hidden, quietly endured, repeated. Lorie Peldo was sexually abused for eight years by her older brother, starting when she was only 2, she said in an interview. A quarter century later, after the memories began to resurface during therapy, Peldo’s mother told her that she’d known about the abuse. But on the advice of her preacher in Battle Ground, Washington, her parents didn’t report the crimes to the police. Instead, they took her brother to a doctor, she said.
Peldo said she eventually confronted her brother, who said that it had haunted him his entire life. She tried to forgive him, she said, but the weight of what he’d done did not lift. She fell into such deep despair that she tried to commit suicide. She said she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Her brother later died; her parents are also deceased.
It didn’t stop there. On a church road trip, Clint Massie — who was sentenced for child abuse in Duluth, Minnesota, last year — sexually abused Peldo’s daughter, Tonya, when she was 11 and he was a teenager, according to Tonya Peldo’s statements to law enforcement. Peldo’s case was included in the police file involving Massie, but it wasn’t charged criminally, according to a prosecutor, because the statute of limitations had run out. Massie has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Tonya Peldo told investigators from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth that she didn’t see Massie again until some two decades later, after she moved to the city and recognized him passing out candy to kids at the church.
She said she told the pastors about what he’d done to her, yet one of the preachers told her to ask Massie for forgiveness, as if she had wronged him. “I was like, ‘No. No!’” she said in an interview. It would be more than a decade before Massie was charged with sexual abuse crimes.
In 2019, Tonya’s daughter was also sexually abused, making her the third generation of Peldo girls to be victims. The daughter was 14 when a 25-year-old relative, Blake Nelson, bought her a pack of cigarettes and then invited her into his trailer in Clark County, Washington, so that he could teach her how to give a massage, according to court records.
Nelson pleaded guilty to charges of communication with a minor for immoral purposes and fourth-degree assault in the case involving Tonya Peldo’s daughter. At his sentencing, Tonya told the judge how church leaders had tried to keep her daughter from reporting the abuse to police. Nelson’s own lawyer, Michele Michalek, said the pastors repeatedly called her law office to insist the case should be handled internally.
“They think that law enforcement shouldn’t be involved,” Michalek said.
A judge in Minnesota commented on the cyclical nature of abuse in 2023, when a man from an OALC family turned himself in to police after repeatedly abusing his son and daughter. At his sentencing, the judge took into account that the man and his siblings, who grew up in the church, had also been victims of child sexual abuse. She said she found it “almost incomprehensible” that the adults in his life didn’t know about the abuse he and his siblings had suffered as children.
“All I can see are the ripples of consequences for you and all of your siblings, who were abused or abusers, and then for your children,” the judge said.
The OALC church is a branch of a broader faith called Laestadianism, a conservative Christian revival movement that began in the mid-1800s in northern Scandinavia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as millions of Scandinavians migrated to the U.S., some followers of the Laestadian movement brought with them more than language, traditions and religious devotion.
Alongside the faith came a deeply insular church culture shaped by strict obedience and a doctrine of forgiveness that critics and former members say enabled the concealment of wrongdoing.
One of them was Eija Marttinen. A photo in a newspaper in 1951 shows Marttinen as a little girl wearing a Finnish sailor suit and braids, standing alongside 14 family members and several large suitcases. Her family had just arrived in Nova Scotia from Finland, and they would soon launch Canada’s first Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. In the photo, Marttinen is smiling brightly toward the horizon, as if spellbound by the endless possibilities of a new world.
But even then, at age 9, Marttinen harbored a secret that would be the source of a lifetime of emotional pain. Now 84 and living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, she said in an interview that her older brother sexually assaulted her starting when she was 5. Another brother soon started abusing her, too, she said. Both brothers are now dead.
Years later, Marttinen said she came to learn that there were other predators in the church. She kept silent about her abuse for most of her life, fearing she would be forced to forgive and still live with the stigma if she came forward. She only told her own daughter about the extent of the abuse in recent months, after reading the ProPublica and Star Tribune stories.
“They can do whatever they want and you have to forgive them. That’s not right. But you go along because you were brought up in it.
“I wish I wasn’t,” she added.
The Laestadian churches in Scandinavia have faced their own reckonings. From 2009 to 2011, a Finnish child welfare scholar, Johanna Hurtig, documented widespread sexual abuse cases among Finnish church members and found that the concept of forgiveness of sins had been warped into a tool to silence victims.
At first, church leaders were defensive, according to news reports. But they later acknowledged “serious mistakes” in how the church handled sexual abuse, including pressuring victims to forgive offenders instead of reporting them. They urged members to report abuse to police and child welfare authorities.
Several men were convicted in Finnish courts and sentenced to long prison terms.
In 2017, Norwegian police documented 151 cases of rape and abuse, many with child victims, in a remote northern village of some 2,000 people. Following a newspaper investigation, the police said they tied many of the cases to members of Laestadianism, with some incidents dating to 1953. The police found the practice of forgiving and forgetting often led to abuse being considered “settled” internally, effectively silencing victims and protecting perpetrators.
The church’s emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Minnesota, Wyoming and southern Washington. Families rely heavily on one another socially, financially and spiritually while keeping their distance from what members often call “the world” — outsiders and secular influences viewed as dangerous or corrupting. Even ordinary activities like watching TV and dancing are treated as transgressions that must be confessed. One abuse victim said she felt anxious every time she turned on her car radio, fearing that if she listened to a pop song and died in a crash before asking forgiveness, she could go to hell.
Some church members hope the Swedish elders address sexual abuse during their visit, including the mother of a 15-year-old girl who revealed in May 2025 that her father had been abusing her for years. It happened both in Minnesota and after they moved to Washington, according to court records. The mother, according to child protection services reports, said she told her preacher about the abuse.
Authorities did not learn of the allegations until August, when her daughter saw a therapist after weeks of her mother trying to get help through church channels, according to the reports. That visit triggered an investigation by child protection authorities in Washington, who substantiated the complaint. Prosecutors in Minnesota charged the father with criminal sexual conduct, but he hasn’t been charged in Washington. The father has asked the court for a public defender and has not yet entered a plea. He did not respond to voice and text messages seeking comment.
Asked why church officials did not immediately contact law enforcement, a spokesperson for the church declined to answer, saying the case was “complex” and in authorities’ hands. However, he said that, in general, spiritual advisers need to use counselors and other professionals “to determine if there is a reasonable cause to report as dictated by law.”
But the mother said it was she — not the church — who set up the therapy session.
“Their job is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hi, I’ve got some confusing, conflicting information but I’m concerned for the safety of this person,’” she said. “They don’t have to be investigators, all they need to do is tell somebody.”
The mother said she plans to raise the church’s failure to notify police with elders when they visit this summer. Nonetheless, she plans to remain in the church. Asked why, she said, “Because I want to go to heaven.”
Last summer, in the rural expanse of eastern Wyoming, Moorcroft police drove up the long dirt road leading to the OALC church, a large brick building on the edge of town with a white cross emblazoned under the eaves.
The investigators were looking for records that could verify the membership of a man who several children said had abused them during services. His name was Charles Massie — the brother of Clint Massie, who had pleaded guilty to similar crimes in Minnesota months earlier.
Over 10 years, authorities alleged, Charles Massie had sexually abused at least seven girls. Some of the abuse occurred at his house and some at his businesses, where young girls worked part time. But the vast majority of the abuse occurred at church, according to court documents. Investigators tallied 832 incidents where Massie sat near the girls’ parents, allegedly fondling the girls’ genitals and breasts. One victim, who told the police she was 5 or 6 years old when she was abused by Massie, said that he “raped me with his fingers.”
Wyoming has charged Charles Massie with nine counts of sexual abuse and sexual battery. He is being held in jail in Nebraska, where prosecutors also have charged him in connection with sexual assaults. He has pleaded not guilty in both states. He could not be reached for comment.
When investigators in Moorcroft contacted families of the victims, they learned that the families already knew about the abuse. One had learned of it three years earlier, according to charges. But according to court records, none of them had told the police. Instead, the charges say, the father of some of the victims had told their preacher, David Lindberg, about the abuse in 2024. Charles Massie would later turn himself in, but not for another year.
Day, the top prosecutor in Crook County, Wyoming, said there was “no support” for victims and the church did nothing to punish Charles Massie. “There are no consequences for him,” she said. “He’s allowed to sit in church with them every Sunday, even after they’ve come forward and said, ‘This man has been hurting us.’” She said Charles Massie turned himself in to the Moorcroft police after he admitted to a mental health provider that he had abused children; the provider told him that they would report Massie if he didn’t go to police.
Lindberg disputed the characterization that he did not act when Charles Massie confessed to him. “All I can say is, when I first heard about it, he came to me and he had a problem, so I told him he needs to go get therapy and turn himself in to the police,” Lindberg said. “And he did.”
He referred additional questions to a church spokesperson, Troy Massie, who is a relative of Charles and Clint Massie. In written responses, Troy Massie said the church told Charles to stop attending services after he confessed to Lindberg, though he could listen to services on the phone.
“We continue to improve our efforts as needed to protect all children,” he wrote.
The Wyoming church isn’t the only one to face accusations that it failed to report abusers. In southwestern Washington in 2017, a jury convicted church member Carsie Tikka of raping a 9-year-old boy. But one woman, who was a member of the church at the time, said that years before he was charged, Tikka had assaulted her stepchildren and the leaders had done nothing to stop him. Instead, Tikka asked her family for forgiveness.
After Tikka was convicted at trial, a court-ordered psychiatrist wrote in a report that Tikka had “a history of offending 29 males,” an allegation that Tikka denied in court. At his sentencing, Tikka said his conscience was clean. He said he had already “received the testimony of sins forgiven” by one of God’s disciples.
“You clearly by your statement here are not remorseful,” the judge remarked before sentencing him to life in prison without parole. “You put the blame on everyone else.”
Then Tikka illustrated the central problem facing prosecutors and victims alike — a powerful religious culture that prioritizes spiritual absolution over secular justice — with his final, defiant words:
“My sins have been forgiven,” Tikka told the judge. “Have yours?”
The post In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations appeared first on ProPublica.
No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the Texas Education Agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District.
And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerful education commissioner.
Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had no F-rated campuses and fewer D-rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings compared with previous years. But Miles has also sparked widespread protests in response to the district’s rigid adherence to scripted lessons and repetitive testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and the conversion of schools into charters.
Miles did not respond to requests for comment from the Texas Observer. Houston ISD officials, in a statement to the Observer, said the district did not achieve better ratings by maintaining the status quo but “made difficult decisions” to improve academic performance, noting the majority of its campuses are now rated A or B.
These school districts whose new leaders have connections to Miles should prepare for “upheaval and chaos,” warned an elected Houston school board member.
“If anything doesn’t align with improving test scores, it will be taken away,” said Maria Benzon, who was elected in November to the Houston ISD board but is not permitted to serve under the ongoing state takeover. Under Miles, for example, Houston ISD eliminated librarian positions and turned some libraries into what Benzon called “detention centers,” because they are being used, in part, for students with behavioral issues. Morath, the TEA commissioner, has said the centers are used for more than just punishment.
Texas law allows the TEA to take control of districts with multiple failing school ratings or governance issues and to replace their superintendent and elected boards.
The recent takeovers include Beaumont, Lake Worth and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent in Dallas ISD; two of them also worked for him in Houston. In Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent chose Daniel Soliz as his second-in-command, another person who worked under Miles in Houston ISD. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
At least two of the state’s new superintendent appointees — Sandi Massey, who now helms Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Meyers, TEA’s appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth — also worked for the controversial Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which Miles led prior to becoming superintendent in Houston. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000 annual consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that likely violated a new statewide ban on public school administrators’ moonlighting. After questions from the news organization, Miles canceled the contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.”
Third Future’s charter network is expanding around the state as districts turn campuses over to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, often as a means to delay possible state takeover. The nonprofit did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
School district takeovers often involve layoffs, school closures and an increase in charter schools, as has happened in Houston, said Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, who found Texas has had more district takeovers than any other state since 1989.
What’s unique to Texas, Morel said, is that the low bar required to take control has led to more takeovers. Since 2015, five consecutive failing state ratings at just one school can trigger a takeover, as occurred in Houston, which has 273 campuses.
Texas has also made it harder for districts to appeal these seizures. The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that barred districts from using public funds to challenge the education commissioner’s “final and unappealable” decision to take them over. The threshold that defines a failing school was also lowered. Then, in 2025, the state passed another law restricting districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging its accountability ratings.
The state “is the player, the referee, the coach, the scorekeeper,” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to seize control, said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who’s been studying school takeovers for more than a decade. He said he suspects the TEA-appointed leaders connected to Miles will also focus on standardized testing, which will result in “a narrow curriculum when all is said and done.”
The acceleration of takeovers, and the state’s increasingly stringent rating system, comes just as Texas rolls out a school voucher program that will, in most cases, award parents $10,000 in state funds to send their children to private schools. State accountability standards do not apply to private schools, where students don’t have to take the standardized tests required in Texas public schools.
TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the agency does not expect the four school districts that have recently been taken over to adopt the same reforms that Miles implemented in Houston. “During an intervention, state law requires the agency to appoint a new superintendent and a board of managers. All other staffing and operational decisions are made locally by the district,” Kobersky said.
But last August, Morath told lawmakers other districts “should be copying the changes that we see in Houston.”
Massey, the new superintendent in Beaumont, has also cited the changes in Houston ISD as a blueprint.
“The model that we are implementing here is a very similar model to Houston. And why? Because of the success that Houston has had,” Massey said at a May 21 board meeting, referring to her time working with Miles at Houston ISD, where he selected her to be chief of schools.
Under Massey, the newly appointed board of managers voted at their first meeting to temporarily suspend a number of policies related to governance and hiring practices, including employees’ rights to present grievances to the board and principals’ ability to approve new hires without district permission. Board of managers member Jeff Wheeler said at the meeting, “We are requesting that they be suspended until the board can move, can more fully evaluate our local policies.”
The board has taken other steps that mirror what happened in Houston after the takeover there: On May 14, the district announced it was cutting 34 positions that support student mental health, and on May 21, it announced a high school would close.
Massey did not respond to the Observer’s requests for comment about whether she’s following the Houston playbook. Jackie Simien, a spokesperson for Beaumont ISD said, “Massey has worked alongside successful educational leaders with demonstrated results in improving systems, instruction, and student performance.”
Benzon, the elected Houston ISD board member, said Miles is sidelining parent and teacher voices in her district, and they are leaving in droves as a result. “They are trying to escape the New Education System and Miles’ bad policies,” Benzon added, referring to a program Miles transplanted from his former charter school network that is characterized by scripted lessons and repetitive testing. The Houston Chronicle reported the district “is losing students at an accelerated pace” under the takeover, spurring the district to shutter 12 schools ahead of the next school year.
In its statement to the Observer, Houston ISD cited a survey of families reporting a “favorable perception” of the district and said it retained many exemplary teachers.
Nelson and Morel said they believe the ultimate objective of any takeover is to disenfranchise local communities. Black and Hispanic students make up the majority of the population at all four of the districts now headed by Miles’ associates.
“It all begins at the school board level to then completely disempower the community,” Morel said.
On April 23, Houston ISD moved to fire a veteran teacher and president of the Houston Education Association teachers union after she protested requirements to comply with Miles’ New Education System.
Meyers, the new Lake Worth superintendent who at the time was Houston ISD’s deputy chief of strategic initiatives, testified in favor of the teacher’s termination.
“We do not allow our staff to make decisions about curriculum in a New Education System school or in Houston ISD,” Meyers said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “If they are not following expectations, we would not allow them to stay in HISD as an employee.”
Since taking over in Lake Worth, Meyers and the board of managers have temporarily suspended board policies related to governance procedures, hiring and employee assignments and schedules, similar to what Massey and her board did in Beaumont.
In response to the Observer’s inquiries about replicating Houston ISD’s reforms in her new role, Meyers wrote in an email that “Lake Worth ISD is very different from Houston ISD. We are a district of five schools serving a much smaller community, so our approach must reflect the unique needs of our students, staff, and families.”
Her email continued, “I believe educators should learn from successful practices wherever they exist.”
As in Beaumont and Lake Worth, the takeover in Fort Worth ISD has been characterized by swift changes. After less than a month under the new leadership, the 68,000-student district has suspended local board governance and hiring policies and has cut dozens of staff positions, including those supporting English-language learners.
Parent organizer Zach Leonard said a new instructional model Fort Worth ISD is rolling out in 19 schools, called “Elevate,” is essentially the same as what Miles has done in Houston, an assertion district spokesperson Tierney Tinnin refuted.
Leonard, along with other parents with his organization, notes the similarities between the programs: “scripted slide-by-slide lessons, rigid timed instruction, and ‘demonstrations of learning’ reduced to data points.”
“This isn’t education reform,” Leonard said, referring to Miles’ model of learning being transported to Fort Worth. “It’s a franchise being handed to our children without a vote.”
The post Texas State Takeover of Local School Districts Expands, Raising Concerns appeared first on ProPublica.
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