Democrats’ new legislative supermajorities, a widening gap in statewide votes, and limited campaign resources leave Republican leaders confronting difficult questions about the party’s future.

By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE News

DOVER, Del. — Delaware Republican Party Chairman Gene Truono is calling for unity, stronger candidate support and a reassessment of party operations following Tuesday’s election, which left Republicans without a statewide elected office and reduced their representation in the General Assembly.

The Nov. 3 results underscore the challenges facing a party that has struggled for years to compete statewide, particularly in heavily Democratic New Castle County, while relying increasingly on Sussex County and portions of Kent County for its electoral base.

Democrats won all five federal and statewide contests, captured three Republican-held House seats and secured more than two-thirds of the seats in both chambers of the legislature. The result gives Democrats the votes needed to approve constitutional amendments without Republican support, provided their members remain united.

In a statement Wednesday, Truono thanked Republican candidates and their families, volunteers and supporters but acknowledged the organizational challenges confronting the party.

“Every candidate faces unique challenges, from fundraising and organizing volunteers to communicating with voters,” Truono said. “While candidates are ultimately responsible for managing and running their individual campaigns, the Delaware Republican Party recognizes those challenges and remains committed to strengthening the resources, coordination, and support available to them.”

His remarks come as election results and campaign finance reports raise questions about whether the Delaware GOP has the financial resources, organizational reach and voter support necessary to compete more effectively.

Election results reveal the size of the challenge

Republicans entered the election holding 14 of the 41 House seats. They will begin the next legislative session with 11, compared with 30 Democrats.

The GOP also will hold six of the 21 Senate seats, while Democrats control 15. That gives Democrats approximately 73% of House seats and 71% of Senate seats.

Three House races illustrate the Republican losses:

• Kent County, District 34: Democratic challenger Annie Norman defeated Republican Rep. Lyndon Yearick, 4,905 votes to 4,755 — a margin of just 150 votes.

• Sussex County, District 4: Democrat Gregg Lindner defeated Republican Dan Zitofsky, 8,039 votes to 7,658, capturing the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Jeff Hilovsky.

• New Castle County, District 9: Democrat Ayanna Khan-Flowers defeated Republican Jamar Money, 8,451 votes to 4,753, winning the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Kevin Hensley.

Republicans did retain several competitive or open seats, including House districts 33, 38 and 41 and Senate District 15. Republican Mike Smith also won reelection in his Pike Creek-area district, while Republican Emily Thompson won the open Senate seat previously held by Dave Lawson.

The results leave Republicans with fewer legislators to influence policy, negotiate legislation or prevent Democrats from acting along party lines.

Republicans can still participate in legislative debates, negotiate with Democratic lawmakers and build coalitions on individual issues. But without sufficient votes to block constitutional amendments on their own, their influence will depend increasingly on public opinion and disagreements within the Democratic caucuses.

Statewide vote totals show a persistent Republican disadvantage

The results were similarly one-sided in statewide races. Democratic candidates received between 60% and 65% of the vote in each of the five federal and statewide contests.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons won reelection with 63.6% of the vote against Republican Mike Katz, while U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride received 64.3% against Republican Joe Arminio.

In the open state treasurer’s race, Democrat Ted Lauzen defeated former Republican House Minority Leader Mike Ramone, 62.4% to 37.6%. Attorney General Kathy Jennings and Auditor Lydia York also won reelection.

Those figures suggest the GOP’s difficulties extend beyond individual candidates or particular campaigns. Republicans are attracting support beyond their registered voter base, but that support has not been sufficient to seriously challenge Democratic control of statewide offices.

Voter turnout increased, but Republicans failed to capitalize

Delaware’s statewide turnout increased to 47.5%, compared with 42.7% in the 2022 midterm election, according to unofficial results.

A total of 384,862 ballots were cast, up from 325,558 four years earlier.

Delaware midterm voter turnout

Despite the stronger participation, Republicans did not gain ground in the legislature or statewide offices.

Registration figures help explain the challenge. As of Nov. 1, Delaware had 333,488 registered Democrats, compared with 199,294 Republicans and 276,849 voters registered as unaffiliated or with other parties.

That gives Democrats a registration advantage of more than 134,000 voters. Republicans account for approximately one-quarter of the electorate, while more than one-third are not registered with either major party.

Source: Delaware Department of Elections, Nov. 1, 2026.

Republicans retain a registration advantage in Sussex County, where they outnumber Democrats 78,779 to 68,370. But in New Castle County, Democrats have more than twice as many registered voters as Republicans.

The GOP’s dependence on its Sussex County base presents a mathematical challenge. Winning strongly Republican districts is not enough to offset Democratic margins in the state’s most populous county.

Final turnout figures by party registration were not yet available Wednesday. Mid-afternoon Election Day data showed Democrats voting at a higher rate than Republicans, although those numbers did not represent final turnout.

Republicans have historically demonstrated an ability to turn out their registered voters at competitive rates. In 2022, for example, 52.1% of registered Republicans voted, compared with 42.6% of registered Democrats. That advantage in participation was not sufficient to overcome the Democratic registration lead.

Fundraising gap raises questions about party resources

Financial records indicate that the Delaware Republican Party also entered the final weeks of the election with substantially fewer resources than its Democratic counterpart.

According to Federal Election Commission filings covering Jan. 1, 2025, through Oct. 14, 2026, the Republican State Committee of Delaware reported approximately $556,572 in total receipts and $583,180 in expenditures.

The committee reported just $4,954 in cash on hand at the end of that reporting period, along with $11,000 in outstanding debt.

The Democratic State Committee reported approximately $1.52 million in receipts over the same period, nearly three times the Republican total.

The money gap was even more pronounced in the federal campaigns.

In the U.S. Senate race, Coons reported raising approximately $7.69 million through Oct. 14, compared with about $190,000 reported by Katz through the same date.

In the U.S. House race, McBride reported raising about $5.56 million through Oct. 14, while Arminio reported approximately $12,300 through Sept. 30. The latter comparison uses the candidates’ latest available reports, which cover different ending dates.

Fundraising advantages do not guarantee electoral victories, and statewide party committee filings do not capture all fundraising by candidates, county organizations and outside groups.

Nevertheless, the differences demonstrate the scale of the financial challenge. Campaigns with limited resources face difficulties maintaining paid advertising, voter outreach, data operations and professional staffing across an election cycle.

Truono’s statement recognizes fundraising as a candidate responsibility while also acknowledging the need for stronger party assistance. It does not specify new fundraising commitments, staffing changes or financial targets.

Truono acknowledges divisions and looks to Democrats for lessons

Perhaps the most revealing portion of Truono’s statement is his recognition that Delaware Democrats have managed to coordinate electoral efforts despite significant disagreements within their own party.

“There are also lessons to be learned from our political opponents,” Truono said.

“Despite significant ideological and policy disagreements within the Democratic Party, including among progressive and Working Families Party-aligned candidates, Democrats have often demonstrated an ability to set aside public divisions and come together around shared electoral objectives.”

The comments follow a Democratic primary season in which progressive candidates defeated several incumbent lawmakers, creating differences within the party over its direction and leadership.

Those disagreements have not prevented Democrats from retaining statewide control, although the next General Assembly will test their ability to remain united on legislation and constitutional amendments.

Truono also acknowledged criticism within Republican ranks.

“We also recognize that there are differing opinions and constructive criticisms concerning the direction of our Party,” he said. “Those perspectives deserve to be heard respectfully.”

He urged Republicans to turn disagreements into solutions rather than allow internal disputes to overshadow shared objectives.

The statement, however, provides few specifics about how the GOP will change its operations. It does not identify organizational decisions that may have contributed to Tuesday’s defeats or establish measurable goals for improving future campaigns.

In a separate election-night interview with Delaware Public Media, Truono expressed disappointment that the party had failed to achieve its objectives in competitive legislative races. He said Republicans had hoped to gain House and Senate seats and expected to continue concentrating on local contests rather than statewide offices.

What comes next for Delaware Republicans?

Tuesday’s results offer evidence of both the GOP’s difficulties and the limits of Democratic dominance in certain parts of the state.

Republicans won several open legislative races, retained their advantage in Sussex County voter registration and remained competitive in some districts. The 150-vote loss in House District 34 and the 381-vote defeat in District 4 show that relatively small shifts in local elections can change legislative representation.

But the broader statewide picture is less encouraging for the party.

Republicans have not held a statewide elected office since 2018. They now face even smaller legislative minorities, a substantial disadvantage in registered voters and significant gaps in campaign fundraising.

The party’s challenges cannot be attributed entirely to internal disagreements or limited financial support. The results also raise questions about the appeal of Republican candidates and policies to unaffiliated voters and moderate Democrats, particularly in New Castle County.

For Republicans, improving campaign operations alone may not be enough. A significant change in electoral performance would also require building a broader coalition of voters.

For Democrats, their expanded majorities create additional responsibility for governing. The party will have the votes to advance major policy changes, but its increasingly diverse caucuses may not agree on every issue. Democratic leaders will also face scrutiny over the decisions they make with that authority.

Truono closed his statement by congratulating those elected and expressing a willingness to work constructively across party lines.

“This election presents an opportunity to reflect, listen, and build,” he said. “We remain committed to representing Delaware voters, strengthening our organization across all three counties, and advancing responsible government, affordability, accountability, and meaningful representation.”

Whether that reflection produces meaningful organizational changes remains to be seen.

For now, the election leaves the Delaware GOP with a clear set of challenges: fewer elected officials, a smaller voter base than its principal opponent and substantially fewer financial resources.

The question confronting Republican leaders is no longer simply how to compete in individual elections, but how to rebuild a party capable of competing consistently across Delaware.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plans to launch Emut Bank in early 2027 as the first digital bank affiliated with a major Japanese financial institution to eliminate ATM cards, "instead having customers confirm identities using the bank's smartphone app for additional security amid a rising tide of cyberattacks," reports Nikkei Asia Review. The smartphone app will also be the only way to manage deposits, with no PC-based banking. From the report: Security has become a greater concern recently. As artificial intelligence advances, Japan has seen a surge in cyberattacks targeting companies, as well as a rise in phishing attacks aimed at stealing personal information, often targeting bank accounts. The technology being used by Emut was developed by Seven Bank, the consumer finance unit of Seven & i Holdings, operator of 7-Eleven convenience stores. Emut customers will be able to withdraw money from Seven Bank's roughly 28,000 ATMs. The network is expected to gradually expand to cover the 16,000 or so ATMs at FamilyMart convenience stores. Although MUFG Bank ATMs will not be accessible, MUFG will consider changing this in the future. Scrapping cash cards represents a shift in what has for decades been consumers' main method of withdrawing money. The former Sumitomo Bank -- a predecessor of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. -- is believed to have been Japan's first bank to implement cash cards, in 1969. The step away from cash cards by MUFG, Japan's largest financial institution, is likely to spur other banks to follow suit. [...] Eschewing cash cards will reduce Emut's costs, which will let it offer interest rates on deposits that are expected to be higher than MUFG Bank's usual 0.5%, depending on the terms. Interest can be paid out daily, rather than twice a year -- a first for a Japanese bank.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vice-president says ‘it’s obvious to almost everyone’ that Iran war is ‘reason we lost’; Mike Johnson won’t seek House leadership role

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Full report: Democrats win control of Congress

• Tell us: how do you feel about the midterm results?

Wall Street surged at the open, after Democrats scored historic victories in midterm elections and secured control of US Congress.

The Dow Jones rose 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the benchmark S&P 500 both gained more than 1%. That’s quite a reversal: Overnight, stock futures fell sharply as investors worried about the prospect of tougher regulation of the AI sector and the impact on economic growth.

President Trump has been asking his advisers if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should remain in his job after Tuesday's losses.

Ukraine's president says an "insane attack" by Russia on an aid distribution center may have killed 70 people, as he renews his plea for air defenses.

‘I think people want to see the world coming together and focusing on the things that matter to people,’ PM says

Louise Haigh starts by saying she is standing in for Andy Burnham.

She says this weekend the whole country will fall silent to mark Remembrance Sunday.

The cult Italian film-maker began as an assistant to Roberto Rossellini but moved into sex films, believing ‘eroticism to be a fundamental key to human expression’

Italian film director Tinto Brass, who was once hailed as the “Antonioni of the 70s” but came to be better known for bringing Italian erotic cinema to a wider audience with films such as Caligula and Salon Kitty, has died aged 93.

His wife Caterina Varzi and children Bonifacio and Beatrice Brass announced the news of the director’s death to Italian press agency Ansa on Wednesday.

Democrats were able to pick up the seats needed to gain control of the Senate, CBS News projects, and the party scored several upset victories in red states.

Plus, score more record-low prices on smart home tech like an indoor security cam and a robot vacuum.

"If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so," Vice President JD Vance said.

3ft-long reptile was looking for a meal before animal protective services safely removed it from establishment

Surveillance cameras installed in a North Carolina bagel shop caught a small alligator purposefully strolling though the back door, through the stockroom and to the front counter, startling employees and customers – one of whom armed himself with a chair against the intruder.

The 3ft-long alligator’s intrusion in Bagel Dock Express in Southport, North Carolina, last Thursday was later shared by the business.

Government bond yields fall while initial fears ease over impact of election results on world’s biggest economy

• Business live – latest updates

• US midterm elections – live updates

• After US midterms, what will lame duck Trump mean for global economy?

US stocks have surged as investors digest the Democrats’ victories in the midterm elections, lifted by hopes that Donald Trump’s turbulent policymaking would be restrained and shaking off initial fears about the impact on growth in the world’s largest economy.

The Dow Jones rose 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the benchmark S&P 500 gained more than 1% each, turning around overnight falls in US stock futures after the news that the Democratic party won control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Patient, who is ⁠in ​stable condition, is expected to arrive in Britain on Wednesday or Thursday

A British healthcare worker infected with Ebola ⁠is being medically evacuated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Britain for specialist treatment, according to an official document seen by ⁠Reuters.

The patient is ⁠in a ​stable condition and is expected to arrive in Britain on Wednesday or Thursday before being transferred to a specialist ambulance to ⁠a high-consequence infectious disease unit, the document showed.

Democrats have taken back the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms. Here’s what a majority in Congress means for them – and for Trump

• Send us your questions about the midterm election results

• Democrats win control of Senate as US voters reject Trump’s agenda

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrats have flipped the US Senate and House of Representatives in a massive rebuke of Republicans and Donald Trump’s agenda. With Democrats majorities in both chambers, the final two years of Trump’s presidency will look markedly different from the first half. But what can Democrats actually do with with congressional power?

House Speaker Mike Johnson told staffers that he will not run for minority leader in the new Congress, according to a source familiar with the matter.

European shares also power ahead as markets react to blue wave in US midterm elections

And Chris Turner, global head of markets at ING, says:

Investors will be parsing what this all means. For example, Gina Hinojosa won the Texas governor’s race on a ticket of wanting an immediate moratorium on data centre buildouts.

Given AI’s role in powering the US economy, speculation over whether a new Democrat Congress would slow AI capital expenditure plans briefly hit markets. The chip exporter-heavy stock markets of Korea and Taiwan were briefly down 3-4% overnight on news of the blue wave, but have since recouped all those losses.

For bond investors, the significance of the midterms is ultimately about what they mean for US borrowing. The result makes further significant fiscal expansion harder to deliver through Congress, potentially easing some of the pressure around government borrowing and Treasury issuance.

That could be supportive for US Treasuries, but it won’t determine the direction of yields on its own. Growth, inflation and the Federal Reserve remain crucial. If the economy slows and inflation continues to ease, there is a stronger case for Treasury yields to move lower.

Bonds are coming out ​as the clear winner as markets put the AI trade on the ​chopping block and embrace the higher possibility that further tax ​cuts are put on ice and government spending slows.

School in Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region was struck on Monday

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said that ⁠it ​hopes that the ⁠results of the US ⁠midterm ​elections ‌will not impact ‌what it ‌said were president Donald Trump’s “peacemaking efforts" on Ukraine, Reuters said.

In comments ‌broadcast by Russian state ​media, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said:

“We ⁠are sincerely ​counting on [Trump] ​continuing ​his peacemaking ​efforts.“

“Governing in the United States will be almost impossible in the coming years given the level of internal division and polarisation. As a European politician I will mainly look of course to trade policies, ⁠support to Ukraine and Nato.”

Large-scale hacks targeting grocery stores in Europe and France's blood banks are renewing concerns about the vulnerabilities of everyday "smart" devices.

The Health Literacy Council’s program “Establishing Equity Through Literacy,” centers on helping everyone gain the knowledge needed to make informed health decisions. Greg O’Neill, co-chair of the Health Literacy Council of Delaware, accepts the proclamation in June 2025. 

For Delawareans, Health Literacy is practical: clearer information, greater understanding and a stronger foundation for making health decisions.

By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE

A healthcare decision can begin with a question. But when the answer comes wrapped in unfamiliar terms, complicated instructions or confusing paperwork, understanding what to do next can become a challenge of its own.

The Health Literacy Council of Delaware wants to help change that.

Formed in 2022, the council brings together healthcare leaders, community partners and advocates with a shared goal: making health information and healthcare easier for Delawareans to understand.

Its vision, “Establishing Equity Through Literacy,” centers on helping everyone gain the knowledge needed to make informed health decisions. Its work includes advocating for education and policy changes, strengthening partnerships and encouraging clearer communication throughout the healthcare system.

For Greg O’Neill, co-chair of the Health Literacy Council of Delaware, collaboration is an important starting point.

“Delaware has strong momentum around health literacy, bringing together healthcare systems, community organizations, and public health leaders around a shared goal: making health information and healthcare easier to understand for everyone,” O’Neill said.

Turning that momentum into lasting improvements requires more than distributing information. The council’s strategies address how health information is developed, shared, taught and supported across the state.

One priority is creating policies and guidelines that provide ongoing support for health literacy programs. Another involves engaging healthcare and government leaders to encourage consistent practices throughout Delaware.

The council also promotes health literacy campaigns that reach public and private audiences, emphasizing the importance of helping people understand information that affects their health.

Clear materials are another focus. The council helps leaders identify and use health information that is accessible, accurate and easy to understand. Its education goals include incorporating health literacy into school lessons and professional training programs.

Together, those efforts aim to make understandable communication a regular part of healthcare and community education.

Still, measuring progress presents a challenge.

“We still have work to do as health literacy has yet to be built into the systems that we use to measure progress,” O’Neill said.

The council is developing proposals to build on existing data, gather testimonials and highlight community needs. Those efforts could help document experiences while providing a clearer picture of where additional support is needed.

Building the organization itself also takes time.

“Like any new organization, HLCD is still working on building our network, solidifying stakeholder commitments, and raising awareness about the size of the health literacy issue,” O’Neill said.

Much of that work depends on people contributing their time and expertise alongside other responsibilities.

“The majority of the work comes through hours of volunteer time from leaders around the state and most of the work is grant funded so in that sense HLCD is like any small non-profit enterprise working for the public good,” he said.

Competing demands in healthcare delivery, changes in health communication and evolving community needs add to the challenge, according to O’Neill. Those pressures reinforce the council’s case for investing in health literacy, even as they make securing attention and resources more difficult.

The council’s approach places responsibility on organizations and leaders as well as the people seeking information. Making healthcare easier to understand requires examining the messages people receive and the systems they must navigate.

For Delawareans, the goal is practical: clearer information, greater understanding and a stronger foundation for making health decisions.

For the council, the next steps involve expanding partnerships, strengthening support and finding better ways to demonstrate progress.

Its work begins with a straightforward idea: health information can serve people better when they can understand it. Bringing that idea into everyday practice is the mission connecting the council’s volunteers, healthcare partners and community advocates across Delaware as they work toward lasting improvements in health communication.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Canva is cutting or relocating more than 1,200 jobs, representing 22% of its global workforce, as part of a major restructure that includes laying off staff who helped build the Australian-founded design platform. The changes mirror a trend across the technology sector, where software companies are fighting to stay competitive against cheaper artificial intelligence disrupters while aggressively embedding AI tools themselves. [...] The restructure will affect 1,271 people, according to the company, as it focuses on "collapsing layers" and bringing "more teams together in person." [...] Those leaving Canva will receive at least six months of salary and retain healthcare coverage for a further 12 months in countries where workers receive that benefit. They can also keep their laptops. Those leaving can also apply for US$10,000 (A$14,000) grants to start their own ventures. Canva's chief executive, Melanie Perkins, said the restructure was "without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history." "For some people, this will mean changes to their roles or being asked to relocate to centralized hubs," she said. "Sadly, it will also mean saying goodbye to teammates and friends who have helped build Canva into what it is today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Republicans’ crushing setback will play out in stock markets, inflation, interest rates and economic growth

Donald Trump’s loss of control of the House of Representatives and the Senate has put the world economy on notice for an unpredictable final two years of his presidential term.

After Democrats swept aside his Republican party in the midterm elections, analysts said the prospect of a highly erratic lame-duck president would have significant implications for financial markets, growth, inflation, government borrowing costs and living standards.

Jason Beer KC will examine university’s handling of claims against Arday and protection offered to academics in spotlight

The lead barrister for the Post Office Horizon inquiry has been appointed to head an independent review into the death of the Cambridge academic Jason Arday.

Jason Beer KC will examine the handling of allegations of research and other misconduct made against Arday before his resignation as well as the university’s recruitment and support for him as its youngest ever black professor at the age of 37.

A shooting and firefight with officers in eastern Washington state have left three people dead, including the suspect, and two deputies critically wounded.

Deputy director general Rhodri Talfan Davies meets staff group after case of Lucie Kon prompted calls for inquiry

The BBC has attempted to reassure Jewish staff that discrimination against them will not be tolerated, after a former producer said she had faced antisemitism while employed at the corporation.

Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s deputy director general, met representatives from the broadcaster’s Jewish staff network on Tuesday after coverage of the case of Lucie Kon.

Lawyers tell supreme court decision to proscribe organisation as terrorist group is attack on freedom of speech and protest

Palestine Action was banned as a terrorist group after using tactics similar to – or less extreme than – the suffragettes, the UK’s highest court has heard.

Huda Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action, is challenging last year’s decision to proscribe the direct action organisation, placing it alongside groups such as al-Qaida and Boko Haram.

Experts expect some politicians to claim the 2026 elections are rigged, but here's why that's not the case — and why it may be a while before some races are called.

A small alligator found its way into the back room of Bagel Dock Express in North Carolina before strolling into the main restaurant area, scaring employees.

(The Center Square) – Current U.S. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday he will not seek to represent Republicans as minority leader when Democrats take control, according to multiple reports.

Pedro Sánchez and his socialist-led coalition government are racing to rebuild trust ahead of a snap election, but the task they face is immense

• Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

A week ago today, for the second time in nine months, I got in my car and drove south from Madrid to cover a deadly train crash.

At 8.53am last Wednesday, a high-speed train operated by Spain’s state-owned rail company, Renfe, smashed into the back of a stationary train run by the private rail company Iryo, on the outskirts of the small town of Urda in Castilla-La Mancha. Sixty-nine people died in the accident, more than 100 were injured, and Spain’s already depleted confidence in its treasured rail network plummeted.

Reported move from Republican speaker of House comes in light of party’s disastrous midterms defeat

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, has said he is not planning to pursue the role of minority leader once his party loses its majority in the chamber, according to multiple reports.

Coming in light of Republicans’ disastrous midterm defeat, Johnson’s decision effectively yields the position of highest-ranking Republican in the House to whichever member of his party can claim it.

The Dow surged more than 1,200 points, while other stock indexes jumped as investors digested the impact of the midterms.

Family members identified the victims as Jennifer Balcarras and her 20-year-old daughter, Selah Reed.

(The Center Square) – Republicans lost key statewide races across the board in Texas on Election Day.

The Senate race in Alaska, which has garnered widespread attention with two candidates named Dan Sullivan, remains in limbo.

A health insurance accident claim form and a calculator.

CVS Pharmacy will be separate from CVS Health, housing major insurer Aetna and benefits manager Caremark

CVS Health, the largest US healthcare conglomerate valued at $117bn, has announced its plans split off its pharmacy chain from its health insurance and benefits businesses, ending an era in which healthcare companies grew into vast conglomerates.

In their announcement on Wednesday, CVS Health said they will split off its 9,000 pharmacies, in-store clinics and mail order prescription business into a business named CVS Pharmacy.

Agreement secures IonQ compute resources for Connecticut-based universities, researchers, and enterprises advancing quantum information science and technologies

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Nov. 4, 2026 — IonQ today announced a partnership with QuantumCT, Connecticut’s statewide initiative to accelerate quantum innovation and economic development. QuantumCT will purchase access to IonQ’s trapped-ion quantum computers on behalf of Connecticut-based, quantum-focused organizations.

Under the agreement, QuantumCT will make IonQ’s cloud quantum computing resources available to its network of academic institutions, research laboratories, startups, and enterprises across the state. Participating organizations will use IonQ’s systems to extend research in quantum information science and technologies. Areas of focus will span quantum algorithms, optimization, materials science, and workforce development. The contract includes access to more than 150 hours of cloud runtime on IonQ’s quantum computers and takes Connecticut’s quantum community from exploration to application.

QuantumCT is anchored by the University of Connecticut and Yale University. It’s supported by a coalition of industry, government, and academic partners to position Connecticut as a national hub for quantum research, talent, and commercialization. Access to IonQ’s commercial systems gives the state’s researchers and businesses hands-on experience with frontier quantum hardware. That access enables the development of applications, skills, and companies that will define the quantum economy.

“Regional quantum ecosystems thrive when researchers and innovators have access to advanced quantum computers,” said Scott Millard, Chief Business Officer of IonQ. “By securing access to quantum computing resources, QuantumCT is giving Connecticut’s universities, startups, and enterprises the opportunity to build practical quantum capabilities today. We’re proud that IonQ’s systems will power that work and help strengthen Connecticut’s quantum community.”

“Expanding access to advanced quantum computing resources is an important step in helping Connecticut’s researchers, startups, and industry partners move from exploration to practical application. Our agreement with IonQ gives the QuantumCT ecosystem access to the trapped-ion platform, along with the technical support needed to put that capability to work. At the same time, QuantumCT intends to build a broader, modality-diverse computing environment, providing access to multiple quantum computing approaches so users can match the right technology to the right problem. This partnership is an important part of that strategy and of our goal to strengthen Connecticut’s position as a leading hub for quantum innovation,” said QuantumCT Interim CEO, Vivek Ramakrishnan.

M‍ore from HPCwire: Connecticut Investment in QuantumCT Supports Innovation Infrastructure

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and APAC. Our quantum computing services have been available through all major cloud providers since 2021, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before. Learn more at IonQ.com.

About QuantumCT

QuantumCT is Connecticut’s statewide initiative to accelerate quantum technology research, workforce development, and economic growth. Led by the University of Connecticut and Yale University in partnership with industry, government, and community stakeholders, QuantumCT connects the state’s quantum ecosystem to advance quantum information science and position Connecticut as a national leader in the emerging quantum economy. Learn more at QuantumCT.org.

Source: IonQ

The post IonQ Partners with QuantumCT to Expand Quantum Computing Access appeared first on HPCwire.

Donald Trump and his Republican party have been dealt a devastating blow in the midterm elections with Democrats taking control of the House and Senate

• Mauricio Pochettino names 26-man roster to face Haiti

• McKennie and Sullivan among notable inclusions

• Quarter-final matches set for Miami, Cincinnati

Mauricio Pochettino has selected his 26-man roster for the United States’ Concacaf Nations League quarter-final matches against Haiti, including recalls for Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Folarin Balogun. After 13 players earned their first caps in the previous window, only two selections could be in line for international debuts this month.

The two-leg series against Haiti marks the first competitive action for the US since they exited the World Cup with a calamitous showing against Belgium in the last 16. Pochettino’s side are heavily favored to win the Nations League outright, arriving in better form and health than chief rivals Mexico and Canada. Haiti will host their “home” leg in Miami on 14 November due to years-long security issues stemming from widespread gang violence in Port-au-Prince. The return leg will be played in Cincinnati on 17 November.

This summer, Vermont’s Clean Water Board celebrated a milestone: Over the past decade, the state has invested nearly a billion dollars to clean up its polluted streams, rivers and lakes. The vast majority of that money has gone toward Lake Champlain.

“I think that’s something to be extremely proud of,” said Douglas Farnham, the board’s chair.

Vermont was supposed to get an independent evaluation of what it has gotten for all that money. But that study was never done.

A decade ago, Vermont lawmakers mandated that the board submit an audit from an outside environmental consultant to determine whether the projects the state had invested in to improve water quality were working. The audit also was meant to examine whether the state’s agriculture and natural resource agencies are doing enough to enforce water quality regulations on farms, which are the biggest source of phosphorus in Lake Champlain.

Lake Champlain has been overloaded with phosphorus-laden runoff from farms, roads and urban sewers for decades. That pollution fuels potentially toxic blue-green algae blooms that have raised health concerns and hurt the state’s tourism industry. Under sustained pressure from citizens, environmental advocates and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Vermont’s leaders embarked on an ambitious initiative to improve the lake’s water quality, enshrined in the state’s landmark 2015 Clean Water Act. 

Now, halfway through a 20-year cleanup effort mandated by the EPA, some lawmakers worry they don’t have enough information to ensure that the state is pursuing the most cost-effective cleanup strategies. 

When lawmakers approved the clean water law, they took the major step of establishing a fund to pay for the cleanup and a board to administer it. Since 2016, Vermont has disbursed $928 million — $755 million in state funding and $173 million in local and federal dollars — on water quality projects and programs. That’s nearly as much as what Vermont has spent on paving and resurfacing state highways over the past decade.

As part of the law, the legislature also required the board’s leaders to provide it with a full program audit by January 2021.

But the board received no responses to an initial request for proposals in 2020. Lawmakers extended the deadline to 2023. Yet again, no outside firms bid on the audit. 

Farnham said the board received informal feedback from some firms that the audit’s scope was too broad and complex. He reported back to fellow board members that he and Julie Moore, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, had asked legislators what to do next but didn’t receive any clear suggestions.

The board never issued a new request or revisited the matter (until Seven Days and ProPublica recently asked about it), and Vermont’s legislature never followed up to narrow the scope.

Former state Rep. David Deen, who sponsored the clean water law and retired in 2018, said he was dismayed to learn that the audit never happened. 

“Personally, I find it amazing that they haven’t done that audit and that somebody in the legislature did not hold them to account to conduct that audit,” he said.

Rep. Amy Sheldon, the longtime chair of the House Committee on Environment, recalled hearing about the audit challenges but noted that it’s difficult for the legislature to follow up because Vermont’s lawmakers don’t have staff. In the other chamber, former state Sen. Chris Bray, who chaired the natural resources committee until 2025, said he did not recall hearing about the missing audit.

In an interview, Farnham acknowledged that an outside audit would be helpful. But he said the board already has robust tools for assessing progress through a yearly performance report compiled by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, which coordinates and tracks most of the state’s clean water spending.

“We’ve got enough eyes coming at it from different angles that I think that mutes the need for that comprehensive audit,” he said. 

The annual reporting process has improved greatly since the audit was mandated, and the DEC’s website “provides a lot of transparency,” about how the state is spending clean water money and the results, said Emily Bird, director of the department’s Water Investment Division.

But some current and former state officials say that approach isn’t a substitute for an audit to determine whether Vermont is getting adequate and cost-effective returns on its huge water quality investments.

The last independent assessment of clean water spending was a 2019 report from the state auditor. It found that a disproportionate amount of money was being spent on wastewater treatment plants, which contributed by far the smallest share of phosphorus pollution, instead of targeting bigger sources such as agriculture. 

That mismatch persists seven years later. Agriculture is the largest source of phosphorus runoff, yet agricultural water quality programs receive less than a third of the total clean water funding in the current budget.

“I’d like to think they’re getting something done,” said Doug Hoffer, state auditor since 2013, referring to state agencies and legislators. “But the only way to know that is to hire someone who is independent to study that. And it’s really concerning that hasn’t been done. It really raises questions about accountability on both sides.”

An audit would do a few key things that the department’s performance reports do not, Tee Thomas, a former water finance director for the state of Vermont who now runs her own environmental consulting firm, noted via email. The reports rely on models for how effective each type of project is at reducing phosphorus. An audit would analyze water quality monitoring data from rivers and lakes to check those estimates. It would also scrutinize how well Vermont has managed projects and whether it’s gotten results, she said. 

The Clean Water Fund gets, on average, $25 million to $30 million each year from the state’s rooms and meals tax, a surcharge applied to some property transfers and deposit money that consumers pay on cans and bottles. That money is paired with between $6 million and $12 million from the state’s annual capital bill, which finances infrastructure projects. The funds have gone to programs and projects to restore wetlands, expand natural buffers around fields, shore up rural roads against erosion, upgrade stormwater drains and improve manure storage on dairy farms.

The state treasurer in 2017 estimated that the cost of Vermont’s 20-year initiative would be $2.3 billion.

But finding that money could be difficult as state government spending outpaces tax revenue and cooling housing and tourism markets squeeze clean water funding sources.

Without the audit, the governor and legislators responsible for coming up with the next billion dollars’ worth of projects may not have a clear understanding of what Vermonters have gotten for the last billion, lawmakers said.

Read More

Vermont Has Spent Nearly a Billion Dollars to Clean Up Lake Champlain. But the Green Slime Keeps Coming Back.

Jane Kitchel, who as longtime chair of the state Senate’s Committee on Appropriations was known for her encyclopedic knowledge of the Vermont budget, noted that a billion dollars is a significant sum for the small state. Had she not retired from the body two years ago, she said, reviving the audit “would be one of the things I’d put on my to-do list.”

The next legislative session starts in January. State Sen. Anne Watson, who chairs the Committee on Natural Resources and Energy and serves on the Committee on Appropriations, told Seven Days and ProPublica that she would likely discuss whether to revive the audit with her colleagues.

“If we value having a clean lake,” she said, “then we need to put our resources toward places that are going to make a difference, and it’s unclear to me right now that what we’re doing is effective.”

The post Vermont Was Supposed to Get an Audit of Its Lake Champlain Cleanup. It Never Happened. appeared first on ProPublica.

The Senate race in deep-red Mississippi remains unresolved Wednesday morning, as Democrat Scott Colom has mounted a surprisingly competitive challenge to incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Economic issues helped propel President Trump to victory in 2024, and those same issues dragged down his party in 2026.

Titanium Court is a bizarre world of 8-bit fairies, Shakespeare and surprise songs – its magic lies in never knowing what on earth is going on

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Earlier this year, I was stuck in hospital for several days, fuzzy on pain medication and bored out of my mind, with nothing but a Steam Deck for company. In the middle of one of those long nights, unable to sleep, I played a game called Titanium Court. It’s a strange creation that looks like it was made for the ZX Spectrum and reads like a postmodern Shakespeare adaptation – a compelling mix of strategy game and match-3 where you rearrange battlefields by matching tiles, before sending tiny lo-fi fairy armies to their deaths.

At the end of this late-night run, I met a boss I’d defeated before – a comically hungry dragon – and the game asked if I would like to skip the boss fight and enjoy a musical performance instead. A game has never asked me this before. Of course, I accepted. And then, instead of the familiar tiled battlefield, I was looking at a pixellated singer-songwriter, who launched into an extremely long preamble about the mating habits of the Pacific salmon before saying, “This is a song for anyone else who ever got so horny they could die,” and launching into a soulful acoustic guitar number accompanied by crude images of leaping fish. I began to wonder if my meds were making me hallucinate.

Exclusive: letter sent to department and agency heads signals Democrats will look to investigate Trump officials

A group of Democratic lawmakers are asking leaders in the Trump administration to preserve records in accordance with federal law or risk criminal penalties after voters across the country gave Democrats control of Congress.

In a letter sent out to department and agency heads Wednesday morning, Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House committee on education and workforce who is expected to become chair next year, noted the requirements to “collect, retain and preserve records that document the ‘transaction of public business’ or contain ‘informational value’ under the Federal Records Act of 1950”.

On the last day of August, Jeff van den Noort spotted thick swirls of neon green film coating the water just steps from his home in Vermont. He waded in up to his ankles and dipped a jar to get a sample of the scum.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the slime. Since his parents bought the house on an island in Lake Champlain in 1966, van den Noort has spent part of nearly every summer in this quiet spot. Back then, the lake was clear.

But he began to witness the water’s deterioration as he grew older, especially after he moved into the home full time in 2010 to care for his ailing mother. That day in late August was the worst he’d seen all summer. 

Later that week, van den Noort grabbed a bucket, a few Mason jars and a smartphone and got into his rusty Saab. He drove past the boat launches, frozen-in-time general stores and windswept pastures of the lake’s islands in northern Vermont and stopped at four other spots along the shore. Each time, he collected some murky water, gauged how thick the muck was, took a few photos and jotted down the weather conditions. He then uploaded his report to an online database.

Van den Noort was one part of a large volunteer effort to monitor a problem that has plagued Lake Champlain, which supplies drinking water to about 200,000 people. In recent decades, blooms of potentially toxic cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae, have killed pets, forced beaches to close and hurt business and property values along the shores of this iconic Vermont feature.      

“I just don’t feel like enough is being done,” van den Noort said. “And I think the state needs to take this seriously.”

Just over a decade ago, state leaders seemed to be doing just that. In 2015, then-Gov. Peter Shumlin stood a few feet from Lake Champlain by the Burlington waterfront and signed Vermont’s Clean Water Act. It promised to tighten limits on pollution and provide funding to clean up the state’s waterways. 

The move was a response to ratcheting pressure from environmentalists and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA had been telling Vermont officials for years that they needed to take much stronger action. In 2016, the agency finalized tougher cleanup targets that the state must meet by 2036.

But after 10 years and nearly a billion dollars spent on water quality projects and programs, Vermont’s cleanup effort is faltering. In a little-noticed letter to the head of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation last year, the EPA’s regional administrator warned that the state was “not on track” to meet its cleanup goal and would need to more than double its annual pace. 

Halfway through the two-decade timetable, Vermont has achieved only 35% of the goal, according to the state’s most recent estimates. And the steps that Vermont has taken to get there, such as upgrading sewage treatment plants, represent “low-hanging fruit,” Eric Perkins, a former EPA official involved in setting the target, wrote in an email in response to questions from Seven Days and ProPublica.

The culprit behind these blooms is phosphorus, an element that is an essential building block of life, present in all organic matter. But too much of it has been pouring into the lake from farm fields saturated with fertilizer and manure, dirty stormwater, and raw sewage from treatment plants overwhelmed by heavy rains. That has tipped the lake’s ecosystem out of balance, spurring the growth of microorganisms that turn shallow bays and shorelines into no-go zones.

Ingesting cyanobacteria-laden water can cause vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness and liver damage, while skin contact can lead to rashes. Researchers have also detected possible links between chronic exposure to cyanobacteria and heightened risk of Parkinson’s disease and ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The algae blooms can also deprive fish and other aquatic life of oxygen. 

While some areas of Lake Champlain have seen incremental improvements in phosphorus concentrations and cyanobacteria blooms, other parts of the lake are getting worse. Seven of the lake’s 15 sampling stations have exceeded the EPA’s annual phosphorus limits every year since 2015, a Seven Days and ProPublica analysis of lake monitoring data through 2025 shows. Four stations recorded higher average phosphorus levels over the past decade than in the decade before, including in the southern part of the lake and its northeast arm.

In September, the Department of Environmental Conservation reported to the EPA that in two northeastern sections of the lake most chronically plagued by phosphorus runoff, the state is not nearly on track to meet its targets. The department specifically acknowledged that it was not making enough progress in addressing stormwater runoff and that reductions in farm pollution in the Missisquoi River watershed have slowed since 2023.

Vermont shares the 120-mile-long lake with New York and Quebec, but it’s the source of about two-thirds of the phosphorus that flows into the water body. Agriculture is the largest polluting sector, while stormwater runoff from development, like urban parking lots and rural roads, contributes the highest amount of phosphorus per acre.

State agencies have repeatedly delayed taking more difficult and politically fraught action to crack down on pollution from farms, businesses and housing developments. Policies around them have encountered resistance from the dairy industry, property owners and lawmakers sympathetic to their interests.

The challenges in cleaning up Lake Champlain raise a salient question: If a small, conservation-minded state like Vermont can’t tackle this problem, what does that mean for other areas of the United States grappling with algae blooms in the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico?

State officials counsel patience as they remind Vermonters it will take more time to solve the problem. 

“We are moving apace with the commitments we’ve made, in terms of the projects, but it isn’t manifesting itself nearly as quickly in the lake monitoring data,” said Julie Moore, Agency of Natural Resources secretary. “This is a complex ecosystem, and we need to come at this work with a whole lot of humility.”

Leaders of the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets said it will take time for investments, such as programs to reduce soil erosion and help farmers upgrade their manure storage equipment, to pay off.

“The first five years, we were really developing an enormous amount of programs,” said Laura DiPietro, the agency’s water quality program director, but implementing them “doesn’t happen overnight.” She said she expects to see greater phosphorus reductions resulting from them in the coming decade.

But for van den Noort, the blooms are increasingly hard to ignore. 

“The worst days ever are really, really bad,” he said. “Just as far as you can see, the whole bay is green.”

Pushing the Limits 

Unlike chemicals and heavy metals, which can be removed from lakes and rivers with dredging, phosphorus isn’t technically or economically feasible to extract.

So environmental regulators focus instead on limiting the amount of phosphorus that flows into the water each day. It’s like putting the lake on a diet. The EPA sets what’s known as the total maximum daily load, a target based on the agency’s determination of how much phosphorus the lake can absorb and remain healthy. To meet that goal, the state must cut pollution from agriculture, stormwater drains, roads, forests and wastewater treatment plants.  

The EPA had set previous targets for Lake Champlain in 2002, but, concerned that Vermont wasn’t taking strong enough measures, the agency set tougher ones in 2016. For the first few years after those targets were updated, Perkins, who was then the EPA’s Vermont water quality coordinator, felt that the state was generally on the right track. 

During his tenure, state agencies and lawmakers set up the Clean Water Fund to finance water quality projects and dedicated tax revenue streams to support it. They put in place stronger rules for fertilizer use and manure storage on farms. They created permit programs to limit stormwater runoff from roads and municipalities. That progress was reflected in a 2020 report card the EPA issued, acknowledging that Vermont had checked off all the milestones up to that point. 

“Overall, I was very impressed with the level of commitment demonstrated by the state,” Perkins wrote to Seven Days and ProPublica.

By the time Perkins retired in 2021, he and colleagues at the EPA had become concerned about signs of lagging commitment by Vermont’s agencies to water quality enforcement on farms.

One clear opportunity to speed up phosphorus reductions, according to Perkins, is to ensure farms comply with required agricultural practices and avoid spreading manure before anticipated rainstorms, which has caused “major phosphorus runoff events.”

If the state and farm operators were to make that a priority, “it could likely make a big difference,” Perkins wrote. And the state could encourage that practice by overhauling its permitting system to tighten water quality requirements and enforcement for farms that keep animals confined in barns for long periods of time. Those farms are called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. In recent years, many small family dairies in Vermont have closed or consolidated into larger operations that would be considered CAFOs under federal law.

Yet Vermont has delayed action on an EPA directive to strengthen its approach to regulating CAFOs. Just across the lake, New York has used such permits for decades to ensure better environmental practices on larger farms. In Vermont, a recent state task force report recommended working to develop this program for another five years.

A second, related reform the EPA has recommended is to change who leads regulation of those farms.

Vermont has two different agencies that oversee farm pollution. The Agency of Agriculture regulates how farms handle waste on site, while the Agency of Natural Resources is responsible if runoff from that waste leaves the farm. This split responsibility has caused oversight problems, including lapses in following up on reported water quality violations with inspections and enforcement actions. Environmental advocates have long maintained that the agriculture agency has a conflict because it also has a mandate to promote the state’s farm sector.

This arrangement frustrates farmers, too. In a letter to Gov. Phil Scott earlier this year, owners of one Vermont dairy farm wrote that “the lack of alignment and clear communication between these agencies” places farmers in an uncertain position. “Many in the farming community feel caught in the middle of interagency disagreements, unsure which standards will ultimately govern their operations or how enforcement will proceed,” they wrote.

In interviews, officials at the two agencies acknowledged those communication problems but said that they have taken steps to improve how they share information on potential violations and coordinate more closely on inspections.

In 2024, the EPA ordered Vermont to consolidate the regulation of agricultural pollution under the Agency of Natural Resources, Vermont’s main environmental agency, which the EPA says has sole authority to administer federal Clean Water Act rules. 

In a letter that year to Moore, the agency’s secretary, EPA Region 1 administrator David Cash noted that the EPA had monitored the situation in Vermont for well over a decade. “And despite having had ample time and opportunity to cure longstanding program deficiencies,” he wrote, “ANR has failed to do so.” Cash noted that the state has failed to give ANR “sufficient resources or operational authority” to regulate runoff from farms.

Hovering over this back-and-forth is the threat that the federal government could take over enforcement of water pollution rules from Vermont.

Following the letter to Moore, the divisions between the two agencies were on display as they discussed their regulatory approach in internal emails obtained under Vermont’s Public Records Act by Seven Days and ProPublica. In a 2025 email, Agency of Natural Resources general counsel Catherine Gjessing reminded her counterpart at the agriculture agency and legislative counsel staff that “there are a significant number of farms that are in fact discharging without a permit” in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. She added that the two agencies had been working under this split responsibility arrangement, with the agriculture agency taking the lead, “for decades now and we are still not in compliance.”

In an interview, the agriculture agency’s general counsel, Steve Collier, said there was never “a Wild West situation where farms were not being regulated” and that his agency’s rules protected the environment. “Whether or not the Clean Water Act was being administered exactly as it should be is a different issue,” he said.

Outside of agriculture, Vermont has yet to fully implement a third EPA demand as well as the directives of its own Clean Water Act. That 2015 law mandated the Department of Environmental Conservation to require properties with 3 or more acres of paved surface, such as parking lots, to install systems to slow and capture stormwater runoff.

Five years later, when the department still hadn’t finalized this “3-acre rule” permit system, the EPA warned Vermont that it would have to give the state “a failing grade” if it didn’t do so by Sept. 4, 2020. Vermont met the EPA’s deadline but in 2025 passed a law pushing the date for getting permits to 2028 for properties in the Champlain basin. 

And those property owners don’t need to make the stormwater upgrades until 2033.

Treading Water

For a quarter century, Steve Cushing has been advocating to clean up St. Albans Bay in the northeast part of Lake Champlain near the epicenter of Vermont’s dairy industry. Throughout that time, he listened as federal and state environmental officials came through town and pledged to act. “Expect a lot of progress 10 years from now in many segments of the lake,” one EPA official told him and his neighbors in 2015. 

A decade later, this summer’s cyanobacteria blooms in the shallow bay were some of the worst he’s seen in several years, he said. Since June, the public beach in the St. Albans Bay Park has mostly been closed to swimming.

“Overall, you can’t really see a big improvement in water quality in the bay,” Cushing said.

Public data supports that notion. Every three years the federally funded Lake Champlain Basin Program, which coordinates research and grantmaking across the lake’s watershed, issues a report summarizing its water quality monitoring.

Its most recent edition, from 2024, revealed “deteriorating” trends in the northeast arm of the lake for both phosphorus and cyanobacteria and no progress in Missisquoi Bay, a shallow stretch spanning the U.S.-Canada border that frequently suffers intense blooms. 

That’s troubling, scientists and advocates say, because the failure to address new pollution is exacerbated by both historical pollution and the effects of climate change. 

What scientists call “legacy phosphorus” has accumulated in soils and lake sediments after many decades of fertilizer use, manure spreading, deforestation and unregulated septic and wastewater systems. 

“We are working on a system that’s been impacted by human activities for the past 150-plus years,” said Matthew Vaughan, the chief scientist of the basin program.

Climate change poses another headwind for the lake cleanup. Since 2003, cyanobacteria blooms have appeared earlier in the spring and later in the fall as temperatures rise, and even at lower phosphorus levels. The drought that hit Vermont in 2025 led to a spike in blooms, thanks to the combination of heat and low water levels. Meanwhile, downpours are turning Vermont’s streams and rivers into fire hoses of phosphorus-laden sediment: In just one week in July 2023, record-shattering floods pumped six months worth of phosphorus into the lake.

“All of this just makes it more urgent to do our part to address these water quality challenges,” Vaughan said. 

Some state officials and researchers contend that phosphorus deposited in the lake bed and soil decades ago might play as significant a role in fueling algae blooms as today’s runoff.

But while legacy phosphorus remains a challenge, “I think it’d be wrong to just rely on that as the excuse,” said Eric Smeltzer, who worked for the Department of Environmental Conservation for 35 years, including as the state limnologist who monitors the health of Vermont’s lakes and ponds.

“The most important technical question about the Lake Champlain phosphorus cleanup is: Are these practices working? And if not, why not?” Smeltzer said. “How can it be done better? I think you can’t just explain it away based on time lags and legacy phosphorus forever.”

In reviewing the state’s data recently, one detail in particular jumped out to him, he said. Wastewater treatment still garners an outsize share of Vermont’s clean water spending, even though it has been clear for years that it’s not a major contributor of phosphorus, while agriculture and stormwater are.

Read More

Vermont Was Supposed to Get an Audit of Its Lake Champlain Cleanup. It Never Happened.

Cushing traces the algae blooms back to the dairy farms that dominate the watershed and to regulators’ failure to “put any teeth behind” restrictions on manure spreading and other water quality rules.

Cushing, a former dairy farmer, has pushed for policy changes as a volunteer with the St. Albans Area Watershed Association and has led an effort to mechanically remove vegetation that contributes to the phosphorus problem in his overburdened bay.

At 78, he is now searching for someone to take over the weed removal effort. “I’m getting a little burned out,” he admitted. 

Seven miles to the west, on the island of North Hero, van den Noort questioned this summer whether all the data he gathers is making any difference. 

“If we really wanted to solve the problem, I think we’d have to make some tough choices,” he said. “I don’t think anybody wants to do that. It’s a head-in-the-sand thing.”

Every week, van den Noort drives up the western edge of Isle La Motte on his monitoring circuit, looking out over a stretch of water that is supposed to be one of the cleanest parts of Lake Champlain. On the worst days, a pea green broth of blooms stubbornly hugs its entire shoreline.

The post Vermont Has Spent Nearly a Billion Dollars to Clean Up Lake Champlain. But the Green Slime Keeps Coming Back. appeared first on ProPublica.

Despite being an iconic part of Vermont’s landscape and a large source of the state’s drinking water, Lake Champlain has been polluted for decades. Phosphorus runoff from farm fields, rural roads, parking lots, stormwater drains and wastewater treatment plants flows into the lake, fueling algae blooms that frequently choke its bays and shorelines.

Vermont is halfway through a 20-year effort to clean up the lake. In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established new, stricter requirements for reducing phosphorus runoff that the state must meet by 2036. But more than a decade in, after spending nearly a billion dollars, the state is lagging behind. Water quality has not improved dramatically, and in some parts of the lake, it is getting worse. This past summer algae blooms shut down swimming at public beaches in St. Albans Bay in the northeast part of the lake.

Seven Days and ProPublica have teamed up to understand the reasons behind this lack of progress. We want to know how pollution in the lake is affecting Vermont’s economy and the lifestyles and livelihoods of Vermonters and visitors alike. We’re also interested in learning more about how persistently poor water quality in Lake Champlain affects Vermonters’ health, well-being and finances. 

Do you live, play or depend on Lake Champlain? We want to hear from you. Your perspective will help us understand how longstanding pollution affects a wide range of issues, from drinking water quality to tax revenue from tourism around the lake. 

We’re gathering these stories for our reporting, which can take several weeks or months. We may not be able to follow up with everyone, but we will read everything you submit and it will help guide our project.

Please fill out this form.

The post Do You Live Near Lake Champlain? Help Seven Days and ProPublica Investigate Algae Blooms. appeared first on ProPublica.

Democrats won pivotal races in Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and elsewhere. Here are the biggest victories of the 2026 midterms.

Iran says the U.S. election results reflect a rejection of war and Spain's leader says it's another sign of a right-wing populist wave falling apart.

Party expected to get less than a third of the vote amid frustration over water outages and power cuts

The African National Congress is on course for a bruising result in South Africa’s local elections on Wednesday as voters go to the polls amid deep discontent over water outages, power cuts and crumbling infrastructure.

The former liberation movement, which Nelson Mandela led to power in 1994 at the end of apartheid as South Africa’s first black president, is still likely to be the largest party. However, polls showed it getting less than a third of the vote, down from 45.6% at the last municipal elections in 2021 and 40.2% in 2024’s national elections.

Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the first Black woman to serve as governor in any state in the country.

The Democrats have taken control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. These charts and maps reveal the key trends and races behind this result

• Live results from all 50 states

• Send us your questions about the midterm results

The Republicans have lost seven Senators, 25 House districts and five governor races.

As of 9.25am Eastern Time (ET) on Wednesday, more than 1,900 of nearly 2,500 counties with Senate elections had returned more than 90% of their votes. Americans did not turn out in significant numbers for the Republicans amid high fuel prices and dissatisfaction with the president.

Democratic leaders and seat-flipping victors from Tuesday’s ‘blue tsunami’ offer post-election comments

The broad repudiation of Donald Trump, his policies and the Republican party, focused on Trump’s personal unpopularity, high costs of living and the Iran war, offer Democrats an opportunity to reset the US domestic agenda. But what will they do with it?

Here, Democratic leaders and seat-flipping victors from Tuesday’s “blue tsunami” offer their post-election comments.

"The people of Texas delivered a crystal-clear message to the world's first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale," James Talarico told "CBS Mornings."

BRUSSELS, Nov. 4, 2026 — Today at The Technology Sovereignty Package in Practice event in Brussels, Synopsys, Inc. announced an agreement with the European Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) to make its electronic design automation (EDA) software available to semiconductor startups and SMEs through the European Chips Design Platform (EuroCDP).

Synopsys’ agreement with EuroCDP will provide a new, simplified entry point for advanced chip innovation by giving semiconductor designers streamlined access to Synopsys’ leading design tools, in addition to EuroCDP’s full program offering IP, training, funding and prototyping support.

“Europe’s next generation of semiconductor innovation will come from organizations of many different sizes, not only established chip companies. EuroCDP is designed to give startups, SMEs and research teams a clearer pathway to the resources they need to develop new technologies. Expanding the platform with Synopsys’ advanced design capabilities is an important part of making Europe’s chip innovation ecosystem more accessible and dynamic.” said Jari Kinaret, Executive Director of the Chips Joint Undertaking, Chips JU.

Supporting European Innovators at Every Stage

Through its work with emerging semiconductor companies across Europe, including Axelera AI, Openchip and SiPearl, Synopsys has developed deep experience helping innovators around the world to tackle advanced SoC design. EuroCDP provides an opportunity to bring that experience to the next generation of European semiconductor companies.

Axelera AI leveraged a range of Synopsys digital design and implementation and verification technologies in the development of its Metis and Europa AI Processing Units (AIPUs). These capabilities were complemented by advanced power-integrity technology from Ansys, now part of Synopsys, helping Axelera AI optimise power delivery, performance and energy efficiency.

“Europe has the technical talent and innovation potential to build a world-leading semiconductor ecosystem, but giving emerging companies access to advanced design technologies and expertise is critical to turning that potential into successful products. Synopsys and EuroCDP can help lower those barriers, enabling more startups and research teams to develop their capabilities, accelerate innovation and expand semiconductor design expertise across Europe,” said Giuseppe Garcea, Director of Strategic Procurement & Founding Team Member, Axelera AI.

Synopsys at the European Industrial Alliance on Semiconductors

The annual event in Brussels will bring together senior representatives of the European Commission, the Chips Joint Undertaking, EuroCDP, executives from leading EDA and IP providers and European semiconductor companies, as well as a broad audience of industry representatives and experts.

During the event, Antonio Varas, Chief Strategy Officer at Synopsys will take part in a panel on “Accelerating Chip Design in Europe”, moderated by Pierre Chastanet, Head of Microelectronics & Photonics, European Commission.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow. Learn more at www.synopsys.com.

Source: Synopsys

The post Synopsys to Offer EDA Software Through European Chips Design Platform appeared first on HPCwire.

A man and woman walking three dogs on leashes through a suburban residential neighborhood.

A tired and sleepy truck driver resting on his truck's steering wheel.

To the people who built Luxor, the sun was the force that held the world in order, and they followed it across the sky, setting ... Read moreThe post The next great total eclipse is coming to Egypt, right over…

Flooding, hurricanes and convective storms are expected to drive the most housing market losses across the U.S. in the coming years, new analysis finds.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 4, 2026 — SambaNova has announced that Supermicro is entering into a strategic collaboration, initially planning for 10,000 SN50 RDU chips, to build and sell AI disaggregated inference systems that include RDUs and GPUs.

“Agentic AI is the next wave of inference, and it has to run everywhere,” said Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of SambaNova. “Supermicro builds AI infrastructure for data centers globally. Now customers can order SN50 RDUs alongside GPUs, from a world-leading partner they trust. That’s how fast, efficient inference gets to scale.”

Agents work nonstop, and how fast they act depends on how fast the model responds. Supermicro’s systems pair NVIDIA GPUs, which read the prompt, with SambaNova SN50 chips built to write the response quickly.

“Supermicro is committed to delivering flexible, high-performance AI infrastructure that supports the evolving requirements of our customers. Our collaboration with SambaNova expands our broad DCBBS portfolio by enabling heterogeneous architectures that integrate GPU computing with specialized inference acceleration, helping customers deploy efficient, scalable AI solutions,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro.

Built, Sold and Supported by Supermicro

Supermicro will integrate, test, deliver and support the systems for customers, including providing on-site service. SambaNova engineers will get models running and tuned on SN50 and help Supermicro with deployments. The companies will start with NeoClouds and sovereign clouds, then expand to enterprises that run AI in their own data centers.

About SambaNova RDU Chips

SambaNova’s SN50 is the company’s fifth-generation Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chip, purpose-built for high-performance inference. RDUs serve the largest models at high speed and high throughput without requiring extreme rack power density, which makes them much easier to deploy in existing data centers. RDUs also work alongside existing NVIDIA GPUs to drastically improve system performance and efficiency, with the GPUs running the prefill phase and the RDUs running the decode phase. Operators can therefore add inference capacity without waiting for next-generation data center build-outs, which are constrained by power and cooling, and can extend the useful life of the GPUs they already own. As a result, SambaNova and Supermicro can deliver substantially more high-performance inference capacity in 2027 than would otherwise be possible.

About SambaNova

SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, providing a full stack platform that powers high-performance inference for enterprises, NeoClouds, AI labs and service providers, and sovereign AI initiatives worldwide. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., SambaNova delivers chips, systems, and cloud services that enable customers to deploy state-of-the-art models with superior performance, lower total cost of ownership, and rapid time to value.

Source: SambaNova

The post SambaNova and Supermicro to Build AI Inference Systems Combining RDUs and GPUs appeared first on HPCwire.

Iran celebrates its claimed role in ‘regime change’ amid pressure on Trump to ‘finish the job’ with attack

• US midterms live – latest updates

Iran this week unveiled a huge billboard and banners over Enqelab Square in central Tehran. The billboard pledged in English: “We will kill Trump” – elevating the degree of personal animus with which Donald Trump is viewed in official Iranian circles.

The poster depicts the US president behind bars with his head bowed. And in a sense, given the US midterm election results on Tuesday, Iran has indeed killed Trump, or at least the second term of his presidency. Trump’s reverse is all the more piquant because it comes on the day Iran’s leadership celebrates the anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, an event that ensnared Jimmy Carter, and a reminder of how Iran has ruined the prospects of more than one US president.

Comparing Australia to other countries may not be much comfort but does offer some perspective on the economy

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

Is Australia’s inflation problem worse than the rest of the world’s?

A day after the Reserve Bank delivered its fifth interest rate hike for the year, increasingly stressed mortgage holders would be justified asking.

Guided tours can make travel easier for people with disabilities. My trip through Scotland shows how thoughtful accommodations can make a difference.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 4, 2026 — D-Wave Quantum Inc. today announced powerful performance enhancements to its Stride hybrid solver. In key benchmark testing, the enhanced solver found better solutions in 15 seconds than the previous version found in 120 seconds. In addition, the Company also launched a new, three-course Applied Quantum Optimization learning path to accelerate hybrid-quantum optimization adoption. Together, the enhanced solver and training courses further equip developers to apply quantum optimization to complex, real-world business challenges.

D-Wave has enhanced the core algorithm of its Stride hybrid solver to extend performance across the complex optimization problems it already supports. Combining quantum and classical computing resources, the updated Stride hybrid solver, now available in the Leap quantum cloud service, helps users quickly find high-quality solutions to large optimization problems that can be difficult for classical computing alone to address.

Benchmarks comparing the enhanced solver with its previous version demonstrated gains in solution quality and time to solution, showing the types of improvements D-Wave expects to see across a wide range of problems including:

• Traveling salesperson problems with up to 10,000 locations: Solutions averaged within 0.02% of the best possible result in 15 seconds and were, on average, more than 200x closer to the best possible result than the previous Stride hybrid solver using the same runtime.
• Traveling salesperson problems with more than 10,000 locations: Solutions averaged within 3.8% of the best possible result in 120 seconds and were, on average, more than 500x closer to the best possible result than the previous Stride hybrid solver using the same runtime.
• Assembly line balancing: On simple assembly line balancing problems, the enhanced solver found better solutions in 15 seconds than the previous version found in 120 seconds, demonstrating the potential to reach stronger solutions substantially sooner.

“Developers need proven technology that finds better answers, faster, so they can tackle computationally complex problems at the speed their businesses demand,” said Alex Condello, senior vice president of algorithms, performance and tools at D-Wave. “In a highly disruptive world, the ability to adapt plans, reallocate resources and act quickly is critical. We’re giving developers the technology and practical expertise to make hybrid-quantum optimization part of how their businesses respond in real time.”

D-Wave has also launched a new, three-course Applied Quantum Optimization learning path, providing hands-on instruction for identifying promising optimization use cases, formulating mathematical models and building applications using D-Wave’s Stride hybrid solver. Designed for learners with varying levels of experience, select courses also include access to D-Wave’s Leap quantum cloud service and office hours to support practical learning. The new Applied Quantum Optimization courses are available today through the Leap quantum cloud service. To learn more about D-Wave’s training offerings, visit https://training.dwavequantum.com.

About D-Wave Quantum Inc.

D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services. It is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, and the first and only to offer dual-platform quantum computing products and services, spanning both annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies. D-Wave’s mission is to help customers realize the value of quantum today through enterprise-grade systems available on-premises and via its Leap quantum cloud service, which offers 99.9% availability and uptime. More than 100 organizations across commercial, government and research sectors trust D-Wave to address complex computational challenges using quantum computing. Learn more about realizing the value of quantum computing today and how D-Wave is shaping the quantum-driven industrial and societal advancements of tomorrow: https://www.dwavequantum.com.

Source: D-Wave

The post D-Wave Updates Stride Solver and Launches Quantum Optimization Courses appeared first on HPCwire.

Temperature and defrosting thresholds raised to ‘very high levels’ at three cold stores stocking vital blood products

• Europe live – latest updates

France’s national blood service has said hackers accessed control systems and boosted temperatures at three cold stores stocking vital blood products, in an apparent escalation of recent cyber-attacks on fridges and freezers across Europe.

The French blood service (EFS) said temperature and defrosting thresholds had been raised to “very high levels” in the attack, adding that its alarm systems had allowed technicians to intervene before the products were compromised.

• Winnipeg had been on nine-game losing streak

• Comeback on Tuesday night breaks NHL record

The Winnipeg Jets had every reason to stop believing. They were down four goals in the third period, less than three minutes from a 10th straight defeat, in their fifth game in eight nights. Their coach was on the hot seat. Their season had been rocked from the start when former MVP goalie Connor Hellebuyck asked for a trade.

The Bell Centre was roaring and a Montreal Canadiens win looked certain, but Kyle Connor still had faith.

Voters watched results in near disbelief as James Talarico claimed victory in Senate race and Gina Hinojosa was elected state’s first Latina governor

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

“This is amazing,” exclaimed Tiffany Dunsmore, 44, the owner of Austin Scavenger Hunt, as the city skyline gleamed in the distance on a balmy night. “I cannot believe Texas went blue!”

For 32 long years, turning Texas blue had been an elusive prize for Democrats in the US’s second biggest state. There were false dawns, nearly men and broken dreams. But on Tuesday the party’s agony finally came to an end.

Rebecca Solnit and other leading writers on the epic changes to the political map

This is a special election edition of How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Sign up here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Democrats won control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections, CBS News projects, with victories in battleground districts across the country.

As the war Trump launched with Israel against Iran drags into month nine, he acknowledges its role in the GOP's election defeat, but says he'd have done it anyway.

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in an election that's widely viewed as a rebuke of President Trump. Follow live updates here.

joshuark shares a report from Wired: After 22 years in orbit and a failed rescue mission this summer, it is highly likely that the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will crash into Earth sometime next week. It is not known where on the planet the spacecraft -- which is roughly as big as a large elevator -- will fall. Despite its size, experts say the risk to the public is relatively low. The observatory was designed to operate for a few years in low Earth orbit, but it far exceeded its expected lifespan, helping to make many important discoveries about the evolution of the cosmos, including the study of supernovas and the destruction of stars by black holes. However, in 2024, increased solar activity heated and expanded the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, increasing the drag on the satellite and accelerating its descent. Without a propulsion system capable of correcting its orbit, its days were numbered. The U.S. Space Force now expects Swift to reenter Earth's atmosphere around November 6. Most of the spacecraft is expected to burn up, although some components could survive and reach the ground (but most likely the ocean). "The most likely survivors are its six heavy reaction wheels, the spinning flywheels it used to aim itself, along with tougher telescope parts such as lenses and mirrors," Dean Sladen, a quality manager and aerospace engineer at Accu Components, told Space.com. "Only a handful of small, scorched fragments are expected to make it down -- nothing recognizable as a telescope." "NASA's own orbital debris requirements state that the risk of human casualty from surviving debris shall not exceed one in 10,000, so it is highly likely this work has been completed but not published," Sladen said regarding the risk assessment. "Personally, I believe it should be published, as NASA has done with previous satellites. The risk is almost certainly very small, but it would give people a clear, factual picture rather than guesswork."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple’s phone takes beautiful photos, but is it as good as using a Fujifilm X-M5?

Two popular non-Apple brands still won awards for their affordability.

• Former MLB star wins for Republicans in Texas

• Turek’s Iowa victory clinches Senate for Democrats

• Tafoya loses to Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota

Former World Series champion turned Republican politician Mark Teixeira will represent ⁠Texas’s 21st congressional district in Washington after defeating Democrat Kristin Hook in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

On Wednesday morning, Teixeira was leading with 54.5% ⁠of the ​votes after 99% of the ballots had been counted.

Suspect arrested after police uncover stash of 17 improvised explosive devices in search operation

An arsenal of explosive devices discovered in Northern Ireland is believed to be linked to far-right terrorism, police have said.

The stash of 17 improvised explosive devices and other material was found during searches in the Shankill Road area of Belfast on 30 and 31 October.

Andrews ran a campaign on healthcare affordability and beat Darline Graham, sister of Lindsey Graham to win

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who campaigned on healthcare affordability, has won the race for US Senate in South Carolina, making her the first Democrat to represent the state in the Senate for over a quarter century.

Andrews had faced an uphill battle in what has been seen as a reliably Republican state against Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican powerbroker Lindsey Graham.

Donald Trump’s unrelenting focus on the ‘beautification of Washington’ and Fox News ratings did not stop the Democrats’ decisive midterm election wins

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

Standing at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on Monday afternoon, Donald Trump zeroed in on his closing message of the high-stakes midterm elections: it can take a long time to get rid of filth.

Less than 24 hours before Americans headed to the polls, the US president staged a bizarre press conference in which he touted his troubled $14m renovation of the Washington DC landmark and blamed his predecessors for the algae that once bloomed in its water.

Stuart Machin hits out at Labour but welcomes expected UK-EU food deal as retailer reveals half-year results

The chief executive of Marks & Spencer has called John Healey’s first budget as chancellor a “whole lot of nothing” and bemoaned an “onslaught of taxation and regulation” from the Labour government, despite welcoming an expected deal on EU border checks.

Stuart Machin said he was disappointed at last week’s budget statement, adding that it “didn’t really address the issues we need to focus on growth”. He said the chancellor’s “real terms” freeze on business rates, for example, would lead to an additional £10m on M&S’s existing £170m rates bill.

Fox News pundits hardly criticized the US president in midterms coverage but Trump was still quick to cast blame

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Donald Trump made clear that he would place some blame on his favorite cable channel, Fox News, if his party did poorly.

On election day, he didn’t disappoint.

Democrats flip Senate seats in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio; voters reject Trump’s agenda in ‘blue wave’

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Full report: Democrats win control of Congress in ‘blue wave’

• Tell us: how do you feel about the US midterm election results?

As we bring you the latest from around the country, Donald Trump is certainly paying attention. From the White House, the president said that he was tuning into coverage on Fox News.

“I can’t stand Jessica Tarlov’s voice,” Trump said of the Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor in a post on Truth Social. The president called Tarlov “DUMB AS A ROCK”.

(The Center Square) — Incumbent Sen. Susan Collins was edged out by Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a major upset that helped his party win control of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's midterms.

Move comes after attorney general blocks Shin Bet call to interrogate politicians from Palestinian-led parties

Israel’s election commission on Wednesday confirmed the final results of last week’s vote that stripped Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition of its governing majority, rejecting claims of mass fraud promoted by the prime minister.

The main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, said Netanyahu had launched a “pogrom against democracy” in attempting to hold on to power by discrediting valid votes and weaponising security forces against parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Planning a vacation (peopleimages/depositphotos)

Documents show Home Office developing programme to use technology for general immigration enforcement

The Home Office is preparing to deploy facial recognition technology at transport hubs and public events as part of the biggest immigration enforcement crackdown in British history.

Policy documents show the government has been developing a programme to deploy live facial recognition (LFR) cameras for “general immigration enforcement”, including non-criminal immigration offences.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrats captured both chambers of Congress Tuesday in a sweeping midterm victory that extended deep into traditionally Republican territory and sharply curtailed President Donald Trump’s power for the final two years of his presidency.

The Associated Press called Democratic control of both the House and Senate early Wednesday. Democrats won all 20 closely watched House races decided by election night while capturing Senate seats in states including Texas, Kansas, North Carolina, Michigan and South Carolina. Reuters described the result as a “sweeping midterm repudiation” of Trump.

The scale of the defeat was remarkable. Democrats won statewide races in states Trump carried comfortably in 2024, including Texas, Kansas and Iowa. AP noted that only three previous post-World War II midterms, 1946, 1994 and 2006, saw both congressional chambers flip simultaneously.

The election also produced several historic firsts. Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate, while New Hampshire Democrat Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the Senate. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of any U.S. state.

Exit polling showed broad dissatisfaction with Trump and the country’s direction, with roughly 70% saying they wanted Congress to provide stronger checks on presidential power.

Beginning in January, Democrats will control congressional investigations, legislation and Senate confirmation votes — fundamentally changing the balance of power in Washington.

Sources:

• Associated Press – MBFC Rating

The post Democrats Sweep Congress as Voters Deliver Crushing Midterm Rebuke to Trump appeared first on News Facts Network.

With many seats still to come in, the Democrats have taken control of the Senate, House and several key governorships. Find live updating results in full here

• US midterm elections – live updates

The US legislature, Congress, has two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Blocking Swedish writer’s entry for event with Palestine Action co-founder is attack on free expression, letter says

More than 900 academics have voiced their opposition to the government’s decision to block the climate academic Andreas Malm from entering the UK, warning that the move represents “a grave violation of academic freedom and freedom of expression”.

Malm, the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline and a leading climate scholar, was prevented from entering the UK last week by the Home Office after being told that his presence in the UK “may not be considered to be conducive to the public good”.

Dr. Elizabeth Hale has shared expert advice about melanoma and skin care — and now she's bringing us answers to questions about a wide range of popular anti-aging treatments.

German carmaker slashes profit margin to between -0.5% and 0.5% this year in face of competition from China

The German carmaker BMW has issued its second profit warning in a year, blaming the costs of a restructuring programme including significant job losses in the face of continuing competition from China.

The company is the latest to issue a profit downgrade in the German car sector, with Mercedes-Benz last week cutting its profit outlook. Western automakers have struggled to keep pace with lower-cost domestic rivals in China, which has led to reduced sales there and a rise in exports to Europe.

The MV Odyssey had been on an around-the-world cruise when it suspended its planned three-year voyage due to the sharp rise in fuel costs.

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump promised every American adult $5,000 if Republicans held Congress.

Ministers urged to go further than proposed cut to 110 decibels to ease acute stress on birds and others animals

Campaigners are calling on the UK government to protect the welfare of wild animals by cutting the maximum noise level of fireworks sold to the public from 120 to 90 decibels.

The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) has said lowering the limit to 90dB – which is about one-eighth of the loudness of 120dB – would help to protect millions of wild animals from acute stress by reducing the area over which a firework disturbs surrounding wildlife.

US voters elected the first black female governor and the first Muslim to the Senate on a night of history

The US midterm elections have ushered in a slew of historic wins, shattering racial and gender ceilings, among other barriers, for races at the state and national level.

Here are some of the ways winning candidates are making history:

The Democrats have had a resounding win, taking control of the Senate and the House of Representatives in a historic midterms result. Hosts Reged Ahmad and Jonathan Yerushalmy examine what went wrong for the Republicans and why voters turned out in droves to deliver the blue wave so many predicted.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Donald Trump accepting the result and vowing to work with the Democrats. So will he? Or could this make him more dangerous?

Read more:

Democrats win control of Senate as US voters reject Trump’s agenda

US voters rebuke Trump as Democrats win control of Congress in ‘blue wave’

Analysis: Resounding wins for Democrats a wholesale rebuke of Trump’s Maga movement

Both the House and Senate will be under Democratic control for the rest of Donald Trump’s term in office. Plus, the French Homer and Marge who found true love in real life

• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up here

President’s party stripped of control after he spent weeks pleading with Americans to pretend he was on ballot

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

Donald Trump has been dealt a devastating blow to his authority with a succession of crushing defeats in the midterm elections, in which his Republican party was stripped of control of the Senate and the House as his handpicked “Maga” candidates were swept away by a blue tsunami.

The president spent weeks before the election pleading with the American people to pretend he was on the ballot. He may now rue that tactic: the American people took him at his word, and delivered him a bloody nose of historic proportions, flinging his presidency into lame duck status.

Nintendo Switch 2; Nintendo
This ambitious remake transforms a landmark Zelda game into a modern masterpiece, clearer and easier to navigate, more beautiful to look at, with playful musical touches. Yet the melancholy remains

It’s always a worry, returning to a formative piece of art from your childhood. Will your jaded adult sensibilities render you unable to locate the magic that captivated your child self? Will revisiting it reveal that it was never actually that good, and that your tastes are built on a foundation of lies? With video games, there is the added complication of technological advancement: decades-old games can look so basic and feel so treacly to play that it’s hard to explain why they were mind-blowing at the time.

Light-touch remasters aim to bring such games up to modern graphical standards without fundamentally changing them; an ambitious remake attempts to transform the work into something that can stand alongside any modern masterpiece. Ocarina of Time is the latter. And I could not be more delighted to report that it is a dream come true.

The post Trump Made Midterms About Himself, Then Blamed Everyone Else for GOP Wipeout appeared first on News Facts Network.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA — Alabama voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday requiring public schools to conduct the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and to allow student-initiated, student-led prayer.

Statewide Amendment 3 passed with roughly 63% support in unofficial results. The measure requires local school boards to adopt policies implementing both provisions, while explicitly allowing students to opt out based on their beliefs.

The practical change is narrower than the ballot language may suggest. Alabama law already requires public schools to conduct the Pledge of Allegiance, and students already possess constitutional protections allowing voluntary prayer and religious expression at school. The amendment places those requirements into the state constitution, making them harder to repeal through ordinary legislation.

The prayer provision specifies that any prayer must be initiated and led by students and that no student may be forced to participate. That distinction is important because the U.S. Supreme Court has long prohibited public schools from sponsoring or requiring religious exercises. Student prayer itself remains protected when it is genuinely voluntary and not school-directed.

The Republican-sponsored amendment passed the Alabama House 94-3 and the Senate 30-0 before being sent to voters.

Supporters described the measure as protecting religious expression and patriotic traditions. Critics questioned whether detailed school policies belong in the state constitution and warned that implementation must remain within federal church-state limits.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Alabama Voters Approve School Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance Amendment appeared first on News Facts Network.

Many of these games are free, and you can play them as many times as you want.

It’s back, completely refreshed, and an absolute joy to experience again.

The 29-year-old democratic socialist from Colorado made history as the first woman from Generation Z to be elected to Congress.

An impeachment investigation would enhance transparency and allow Congress to reassert its authority

In Tuesday’s midterm elections, voters sent the Republican party an unmistakable message: their love affair with Trumpism is coming to an end.

The overwhelming victory for Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, was foreshadowed by a number of polls showing growing disenchantment with Donald Trump – and it was personal.

Image courtesy of the Food Bank of Delaware

Food Bank Launches Thanksgiving Food Drive as Families Face Rising Costs

NEWARK AND MILFORD, Del. – With Thanksgiving approaching and household budgets stretched by the cost of everyday necessities, the Food Bank of Delaware is asking Delawareans to help neighbors put a holiday meal on the table.

The organization’s annual Thanksgiving Food Drive invites individuals, businesses, schools, and community groups to donate food, organize collections, or contribute financially. Thanksgiving donations are requested by noon Friday, November 13, 2026.

According to Feeding America estimates cited by the Food Bank, approximately 157,000 Delawareans, including 42,000 children, face food insecurity. The cost of groceries, housing, and other essentials continues to force families to make difficult spending decisions.

The Food Bank’s pantry traffic indicates that demand for assistance remains high. Visits to its Healthy Pantry Centers in Newark and Milford increased 22% during the summer compared with the same period last year. September 2026 visits increased 15% compared with September 2025.

“For many families, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with loved ones and enjoy a special meal. But for neighbors already struggling to afford groceries and other basic necessities, putting a holiday meal on the table can feel out of reach,” said Cathy Kanefsky, President and CEO of the Food Bank of Delaware.

“No family should have to choose between paying a bill and celebrating Thanksgiving together. With the generosity of our community, we can help ease that burden and make the holiday a little brighter.”

Requested donations include holiday staples and everyday essentials:

• Canned vegetables and fruits
• Canned gravy and cranberry sauce
• Instant mashed potatoes and stuffing mix
• Canned meats and soups
• Cornbread and biscuit mix
• Frozen turkeys
• Baby diapers and formula
• Cereal
• Peanut butter and jelly

Donations may be delivered to the Food Bank’s facilities at 222 Lake Drive in Newark or 102 Delaware Veterans Blvd. in Milford. Frozen turkeys must be delivered directly to one of the warehouses.

Although the Thanksgiving announcement lists a noon deadline on November 13, regular Friday donation hours at both locations end at 11:30 a.m. Donors should plan accordingly. Donations received after the Thanksgiving deadline will be distributed throughout the remainder of the holiday season.

New this year, a virtual food drive offers another way to participate. Supporters can fill an online shopping cart with needed items and make a tax-deductible monetary donation. Participants can also create personalized fundraising pages and invite friends, relatives, and coworkers to contribute.

Community members interested in organizing a collection can contact Aaron Stone at astone@fbd.org.

For more information about donating, hosting a food drive, or participating online, visit the Food Bank of Delaware’s food drive page.

Dreyfus affair has echoes of how anti-Jewish hatred manifests itself today, say curators at Weiner Library

It was the world’s first experience of antisemitism “gone viral”, said Barbara Warnock, a co-director of the oldest Holocaust archive, the Wiener Holocaust Library in London.

It was 1894 and printing presses were faster than ever before. France’s prohibitive censorship laws had been lifted, and then along came the Dreyfus affair: a public shouting match that followed the wrongful conviction for treason of Alfred Dreyfus, a 36-year-old French army captain.

For two years, Donald Trump’s Republican Party has worked to push the United States further and further into a state of fascist rule. Trump’s regime has turned the federal government against ideological enemies, enriched and entrenched the power of billionaire allies, and done its utmost to decimate any checks and balances on the actions of the despotic leader and his loyalists.

It is, then, an extraordinary and overdue moment of relief to see the processes of democracy — however flawed in our barely representational system — offer the opportunity to take an off-ramp away from technocapital-backed fascism. Across the nation, Democrats secured historic victories. Even in Republican strongholds including Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, voters delivered a rebuke to Trump’s GOP.

Democrats in Congress now have a mandate to do two things: Stop Trump, and improve the welfare of the U.S. working class. This should be understood as no less than a moral imperative to act immediately to curb the regime’s fascism in every possible way.

Americans are above all furious at the dire economic conditions in which they’re expected to struggle. The midterm results reflect a limit of Trumpian false consciousness: People know when they are poor, and they can see when billionaires, federal armed forces, genocidal governments, and presidential family members are profiting.

Despite their newfound congressional majority, Democrats now face an uphill battle to deliver legislation that will improve people’s material conditions. But that is not an excuse for inaction, mealy-mouthed gestures, or nods to bipartisanship. Democrats must push legislation that Republicans cannot stop, as well as legislation that Trump is all but sure to veto.

For one, Democrats must immediately roll back cuts to programs like Medicaid and supplemental nutritional programs. They must go further, too, and deliver on campaign promises for robust healthcare provisions, welfare spending, and restrictions on the ruinous depredations of Big Tech.

Related

Trump Scrambles to Halt Military Aid to Israel to Deprive El-Sayed of a Talking Point

Trump bypassed Congress to prosecute his illegal war of choice on Iran, which has cost over $47 billion to date. But Congress has the power to curb military spending. Democrats must pass further resolutions to end the war, and they must pull the plug on military budget, directing funds instead to healthcare, housing, and investments in green infrastructure, to name a few urgent priorities. Though a flailing Trump finally announced that he would end military aid to Israel on Monday, it is Democrats who must pass further legislation to end all U.S. complicity in Israel’s apartheid regime and genocide.

Democrats must also propose laws to defund and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is no outlandish proposal; the impunity-drenched militia was only founded in 2003, and it is only by virtue of Congress that it now receives more funding than any other federal law enforcement agency. It is in Congress’s power to dismantle the agency and pass legislation to nullify the $170 billion-plus allocated to the border regime in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Democrats should do whatever possible to roll back and end political prosecutions and the Trump administration’s brazen efforts to criminalize dissent.

Related

The AI Doomsday Future Is Not Inevitable

The Democratic program must, in short, reject the austerity logics that have dominated the party for four decades. As sociologist Melinda Cooper has pointed out, and Trump’s Republicans have again and again proven, such austerity is not even austere: Pro-austerity governments since the Nixon administration in the 1970s have overseen lavish public spending in the shape of tax cuts and subsidies for holders of financial wealth (which does not trickle down), as well as funding for policing, border enforcement, prisons, and war machines. These are choices, and Democrats have been given a mandate to make choices that instead benefit — to revive a classic — the many, not the few.

Democrats such as Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., have stressed that their focus will be on the “affordability agenda” on which the party has run. This must include taking swift action to investigate and impeach the president and the worst offenders in his Cabinet, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In no way does insisting on accountability for Trump and his acolytes’ lawlessness distract from an economic focus. No affordability agenda can be achieved with an authoritarian executive in place. Challenging Trump’s despotism and self-dealing with every possible tool goes hand in hand with legislating to deliver on so-called kitchen-table issues.

Will Democrats in Congress, many of whom continue to reject the progressive and left-wing energies that have helped drive this blue wave, succeed in this anti-fascist political and economic agenda? No doubt, they will be thwarted at every turn by a desperate and dangerous executive and an embattled Republican minority. That is no reason to compromise, and constant pressure must be kept on Democrats who pretend otherwise. As the votes tonight make clear, in their millions, Americans know who to blame.

The post Democrats, Don’t Mess This Up appeared first on The Intercept.

Republican Bo French attracted attention when he posted a photo of students of South Asian descent cheering at a football game with a caption saying the University of Texas has a "problem" that is "far worse than anyone imagined."

Researchers have confirmed the presence of intact biomolecules and mineralized red blood cells inside the 115-million-year-old fossilized bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali from Brazil. The discovery challenges assumptions about how long blood-related biomolecules can survive and could help scientists study dinosaur metabolism, blood evolution and even how traces of ancient life might be preserved on other worlds. Popular Science reports: The evidence exists inside the fossilized limb bones of a juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali. Discovered in 2008, A. museunacionali was an Early Cretaceous theropod that lived in present-day northeastern Brazil. The fossils suggest a dinosaur measuring over 10 feet long and weighing about 75 pounds, but given its young age, A. museunacionali likely grew even larger. After carefully examining thin slices of the fossils, paleontologists located the mineralized red blood cell molecular components, along with a complex manganese oxide called hausmannite. This material helped maintain the cellular structures of heme, a ring-shaped molecule that contains iron and binds many proteins, especially hemoglobin. The hausmannite also helped preserve additional biomolecules found in the blood, such as the amino acids in collagen. The study's authors theorize this level of preservation could only occur following a rapid burial in an environment that was rich in microbes, but low in oxygen at the same time. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Vibe Check: Luigi Vitrone’s Pastabilities
Concept: Authentic Italian dishes served in a homey environment where everybody knows your name
Average entrée price: $26.40, ranging from $25 to $37
Kid’s Menu? No, but they can make small portions for kids
Alcohol? Yes
Vegetarian-Friendly: Yes
Gluten-Friendly: Yes, mention it when you make a reservation
Live music? No
Hours: Wed.-Thurs. 5:30-8:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5:15-9 p.m., Sun.-Tues. closed
Address: 415 N Lincoln St, Wilmington, DE 19805
Website: https://ljvpastabilities.com/

It doesn’t take long after entering Lugi Vitrone’s Pastabilities in Wilmington’s Little Italy to meet the chef. Diners enter through the kitchen, where Vitrone, now in his 70s, pounds veal with gusto or carefully folds herbs and ricotta into homemade ravioli. 

Diners greet Vitrone, then continue to the dining room, where they’re met by the sole server, Doris Miller, and the part-time security guard, part-time prima donna, Boogers the black cat (who recently celebrated his 6th birthday in a kitty tuxedo and party hat). 

The walls are barely visible behind all the decor: a custom-made Pastabilities clock, newspaper clippings of past glories, a painting of Vitrone at the stove and a framed immigration document from when his parents arrived in the United States as teenagers. 

There are knick-knacks abound, like a statue of a mustachioed man holding a bottle of merlot. The eclectic environment is fitting for Vitrone, who used to own an antique store.

It’s a homey restaurant, to say the least (and not only because Vitrone lives upstairs). There are only seven tables in the joint, and most regulars have known the crew for years. As Miller takes orders and mixes drinks, they’ll share photos of grandkids or gossip about exes with her.

In such an intimate environment, it’s impossible even for a newcomer to avoid joining in the conversation at some point. In fact, when one dining party gets up to leave, they’ll probably say goodbye to every person in the restaurant, not just the cat.

Fieri’s fist bump

While Pastabilities is a secret most regulars don’t want to get out, the restaurant has had its fair share of national attention. Vitrone has a photograph of himself with celebrity chef Guy Fieri to prove it. 

Fieri visited the restaurant for a 2019 episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” Regulars struggled to find a reservation as Fieri fanatics packed the restaurant for six months, Miller said.

“(Fieri) said, ‘You’re going to get a humongous amount of people from Minnesota,’” Vitrone recalled. “Sure enough, I think three or four days after it was on the TV, (a diner asked,) ‘Can you recommend a hotel?’ … And I say, ‘Well, where are you from?’ ‘Minnesota.’ I don’t know what it was. Nobody ever explained it to me.”

The restaurant still gets plenty of out-of-state diners, many of whom make a habit of trying Fieri’s favorites while traveling. 

Miller proudly added that Fieri gave Vitrone a “double fist bump” after tasting his arancini rice balls. 

It’s not hard to see why. The crispy outer shell of breading breaks to reveal a core of creamy rice, peas and provolone — a taste that’s elevated by the marinara, which has a bright, sweet flavor. 

One arancini is the size of a navel orange. That’s not the only ginormous item on the menu.

“Look at the size of that meatball!” one diner happily exclaimed during a recent visit.

Bang for your buck and authenticity were the qualities Vitrone had in mind when he opened the restaurant. 

‘A message from the big man upstairs’

Before opening Pastabilities in 1988, Vitrone owned and operated Bon Vivant, a French and Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, where he was raised. 

Vitrone described his decision to move to Delaware like he was a superhero being recruited for Marvel’s Avengers — except his recruiter was then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. They knew each other through their fathers, who were “paisanos,” Vitrone said.

“(Mario Cuomo) used to come to my restaurant in New York all the time. And he’s the one who says, ‘It’s a place called Delaware.’ I thought it was a river,” Vitrone said. “He says, ‘I think a person like you could maybe come up with some different ideas down there. … All they want to do is sell crab cakes.’”

Of course, Vitrone quickly realized that was an exaggeration, but he made the move anyway. 

Vitrone first planned on opening Pastabilities in a former butcher shop in historic New Castle. 

Vitrone grew up in his family’s butcher shop, so he’d assumed the building’s availability was “a message from the big man upstairs.” That is, until a New Castle building inspector asked to meet with him. 

There was no problem with the building. The inspector, who also grew up in New York, wanted to caution Vitrone that the town was small and “clannish,” and residents might not be entirely welcoming toward “an Italian American driving a nice car, wearing nice clothes,” Vitrone said. 

Vitrone sold the building two weeks later, setting his sights on Wilmington’s Little Italy neighborhood instead.

The building where Pastabilities is today turned out to be an even more fateful purchase than the building Vitrone had considered in New Castle. Not only was it a former butcher shop, but the butcher’s name had been Luigi.

Revitalizing Little Italy

Vitrone felt instantly at home in Little Italy. 

Some of his most supportive customers were first-generation immigrants in their 80s and 90s who, upon their arrival decades prior, used the nearby West End Neighborhood House as a safe haven. The community center was founded in 1883 with the mission of helping recent Italian, German and Irish immigrants with Americanization, literacy, housing and employment, though today, its mission is to help all Delawareans become self-sufficient.

Vitrone fell so in love with Little Italy that in 1996, he and a group of fellow business owners founded the Little Italy Neighborhood Association with the mission of improving the quality of life of its residents.

Over the years, Vitrone said the association secured federal grant funding to redo the community’s streetscaping, add light fixtures and vegetation and build the steel, green archway that welcomes visitors to Little Italy in both English and Italian. 

The association also focused its efforts on tourism. 

For example, Vitrone said he convinced the CEO of The Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company to add the Little Italy Neighborhood Association’s logo to the side of over 50 delivery trucks in the early 2000s. 

Vitrone said the publicity stunt caught the attention of then-Wilmington Mayor James Baker while he was on a trip to Philadelphia, who called him from his car, astounded. 

The neighborhood association’s efforts continued with Taste of Little Italy in 2003, a weeklong event focused on attracting hungry mouths to restaurants by offering specials.

Twenty-three years later, the nonprofit organization West Side Grows Together is building on the tradition with its “Taste of the West Side” event on Nov. 7, which Luigi Vitrone’s Pastabilities will participate in. 

“(The West Side of Wilmington)’s very diverse. You can tell by the food offerings. We have Egyptian. We have Thai. We have Latinx. We have traditional soul food, traditional American fare,” said Alethea Smith-Tucker, the nonprofit’s economic development manager. 

The event is a way to attract spending to local businesses in a historically “under-resourced” community during tough economic times, she added.

Vitrone hopes other neighborhoods on the West Side of Wilmington can tap into tourism in the same way Little Italy has. 

“Tourism is a natural resource,” he said. Then, miming mining with a pickaxe, he exclaimed, “Oh my God! We’ve found oil.”

The post One chef, one server and one cat run the most eccentric restaurant in Wilmington’s Little Italy appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Democrats’ victories across the country, including in Delaware, on Tuesday indicate that laws and policies passed in the next two years will veer to the left. And how Republicans respond to the shift could determine whether the are able to regain their losses at the next election.

Delaware Democrats swept all statewide elected offices Tuesday, extending a streak they have maintained every election cycle since 2016. 

The party’s statewide candidates did so in a largely uniform fashion, with each Democrat winning between 60% and 65% of the vote — an indication that many voters cast ballots along party lines. 

U.S. Sen. Chris Coons won his seat for a fourth time, defeating Republican Dr. Mike Katz.

U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride won her second term by beating Republican Joe Arminio. 

Attorney General Kathy Jennings and Auditor Lydia York also held their seats, while political newcomer Ted Lauzen defeated Mike Ramone, a former Republican state representative, to become Delaware’s next treasurer.

The victories were part of a national wave election that brought Democrats into power in statehouses and governor’s mansions across the United States, as well as in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

The reaction to the results was jubilance from the state’s Democratic establishment, many of whom gathered Tuesday evening at the Hyatt Place hotel along the Wilmington Riverfront to celebrate the end of the campaign. 

“I almost cannot believe how good the news is – here in Delaware and around our country,” Coons said at the election night watch party.

In the remarks to his fellow Democrats, Coons also described how party leaders coordinated various campaigns across the state to help their candidates. He recounted how the night before the election he and Lauzen had knocked on voters’ doors in Kent County with statehouse candidate Annie Norman.

On Tuesday, Norman scored the night’s most surprising victory when she narrowly defeated incumbent Rep. Lyndon Yearick (R-Dover) for his seat in the state legislature — one he’s held for a decade.

“We have an amazing statewide ticket,” Coons said.

About 15 miles from where Democrats celebrated, Republicans gathered at an office within a commercial strip in Glasgow to attend an election night party for Katz.

As results trickled in through the evening, the mood in the room shifted from anticipation to frustration, with one Republican stating that the losses stung worse than those from past years. 

The glum mood was briefly interrupted with light applause from the roughly 50 people in attendance when televisions tuned to cable news reported that Florida had elected a Republican governor, Byron Donalds.

But it was a fleeting moment as subsequent races in Delaware and across the country were called for Democrats including within traditionally red states, such as Texas and Kansas. The results highlighted a national backlash against policies of the second Trump administration.

In all, it left the members of the state GOP seeking answers. At the Glasgow event, many lamented low voter turnout among Republicans as a cause for the latest results in Delaware. Others pointed blame at state party leaders.  

In a speech to the crowd, Katz called low turnout “a warning that our civic life needs strengthening.” 

Fellow Republican Janyce Colmery, who had run a campaign for the Delaware House of Representatives, stated it more bluntly. 

Speaking to fellow conservatives, she said, “If you don’t vote. Shut up! You have no reason to complain.” 

In separate remarks, Hunter Dworsky, executive director of the Katz campaign, pointed at leaders with the state GOP committee for the failures at the polls. He claimed the Katz campaign had not heard from Republican Party Chair Gene Truono since April. He also said the state GOP did not have a “get out the vote plan until two weeks ago.” 

“These candidates deserved better,” Dworsky said.

When reached for comment, Truono said state party officials had been in regular communication with the Katz campaign, and had provided it — as well as all GOP campaigns — with valuable voter data.  

“That doesn’t go without a cost and yet we’re not just supporting one candidate,” Truono said, “We’re supporting all of the candidates.” 

Truono further said that a campaign at the level of running for U.S. Senate must take responsibility for its own success. He noted that at the district level, the GOP had to defend five legislative seats left open by Republican retirements.

“Delaware is a tough state as you know for Republicans,” Truono said.

Republicans account for less than a quarter of registered voters in Delaware.

A contentious campaign

Among the Delaware Democrats who sought statewide office, McBride won by the biggest margin, defeating Arminio with over 64% of the vote. 

McBride’s results followed a contentious campaign that hinted at growing fractures within the Republican Party, including between its two most prominent candidates – Katz and Arminio. 

During a candidate forum in September, Arminio used the terms “his” and “he” to refer to McBride, who in 2024 became the first transgender woman ever elected to Congress. 

In response, Katz, who was on stage at the time, apologized for Arminio’s conduct, saying he didn’t condone it. He later called on Arminio to be removed from the forum and then to drop out of the race, which Arminio rebuffed.

The incident exposed a rift within the Republican Party that had already sparked GOP write-in candidacies to challenge Katz and Arminio in the general election.

When speaking to reporters at the Democratic watch party on Tuesday, McBride focused her comments on what she called the progress that is needed on the federal level, rather than on the past controversies with Republicans.

She listed a string of populist policies that many within her party have endorsed recently, including a reversal of cuts made to federal health care programs, and an end to “these new forever wars that this president has started” — a reference to the war in Iran launched by President Donald Trump.  

She also called for federal regulations on the AI industry.

Finally, McBride linked such kitchen-table issues to the victories her party secured Tuesday.

“I’m really proud that we’ve not only won re-election with a supermajority of Delawareans, but for the first time since 2012, Delaware Democrats have won in all three counties,” she said.

The post Democrats sweep statewide elected seats; Republicans search for answers appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

To catch up to China, America and its allies must dig.

How far will he go to make peace—and war?

GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts won reelection in the Nebraska Senate race, CBS News projects, fending off a challenge from independent Dan Osborn.

The northwestern Ohio district was redrawn in October 2025, creating a more Republican-leaning seat.

bout footpad detection on a lighter rider is worth keeping in mind — at 30kg an 8-year-old may need some experimentation to get consistent engagement, so testing in person before buying makes sense. The comment about the rider at 88kg struggling on a PintX is also fair; if you end up wanting your own board for regular riding at that weight, a model with more power would likely suit you better than sharing the same spec as your son. Starting him on the regular Pint seems the sensible choice.

Democrat defeats Mike Rogers in race marked by Islamophobic attacks from Trump and Republican allies

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

Abdul El-Sayed, the doctor and progressive insurgent, has made history in winning the closely watched US Senate race in Michigan, defeating the Republican Mike Rogers to become the country’s first Muslim senator.

El-Sayed’s victory adds to a decisive Democratic majority in the Senate after the party wrested control of the upper chamber on Tuesday with shock victories in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina.

Midterm to long-term analysis of US election. What’s next? News release sfarrell.drupa… 4 November 2026

As voting was under way, Chatham House analysts on Tuesday looked ahead to how the US midterm elections could reshape the US political system, and the next two years of President Donald Trump’s administration.

On US midterm election day Chatham House convened a panel of experts to discuss what they were seeing, and what lies ahead for US domestic and foreign policy.

The in-person and online event – one of many convened by the Royal Institute of International Affairs – was part of its ongoing coverage of the US and its relationships with Europe, China and the rest of the world. 

You can watch the full discussion panel here: US midterm elections 2026: What happens next?

Here are some key takeaways:

A foreign policy election

Dr Andrew Payne, Research Director of Chatham House’s Europe, Russia and the Americas Programmes, and author of ‘War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War’.

‘This is actually a foreign policy election, a foreign policy election of the likes that we haven’t really seen since 2006, when you had another very unpopular war in the Middle East that led to a significant backlash against George W. Bush,’ he said.

‘The top issue is inflation and the cost of living. The Chicago Council [on Global Affairs] had a poll out that said that that was 37 per cent, by far and away the top issue.

‘And on the surface that supports this conventional wisdom that voters know little and they care even less about international affairs. These are events which are geographically and metaphorically very distant from the daily lives of voters. So when they go to the polls, they think about things like the price of gas, like the price of groceries.

‘To put it another way, James Carville, the political strategist, in 1992 famously said that elections in the US are about “the economy, stupid.”

‘So on the surface, I think that is that is all true, but the key exception, when voters really do start to sit up and pay attention to foreign policy, is when the costs of the administration’s foreign policy choices come to bite. And I think whether it’s tariffs, whether it’s the war in Iran, voters really are feeling the effects of some of the choices that this administration has made.

‘A couple of data points: that same survey I mentioned says 86 per cent of Americans say that the war – the war in Iran that is – has increased the cost of living, 81 per cent say the same about tariffs. When YouGov asked survey respondents why gas prices were going up in their area, 41 per cent said the war in Iran was to blame. That was more than twice as many as the next most popular answer, which was President Trump.

‘So I would make the case that it still is kind of “the economy, stupid”. But in this cycle, more than we have seen for 20 years, the economy really is a foreign policy issue in a very real sense.’

The lame duck era, and succession

Ludovic Hood, Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East and a former US foreign service officer for 20 years.

‘We’re very much going into lame duck era for Donald Trump. And that’s going to be painful for him. I’m sure you’ve all tracked him enough, and the kinds of things he’s sensitive to and about,’ he said.

‘I think the likely results of this election will be a clear repudiation of how Trump has governed in the past two years versus his first term. In some ways some of his economic policies – for example investing in US companies – are more, if you will, Democratic than they are Republican.

‘I think a lot of long-standing Republicans are a little bit uncomfortable or aghast at a lot of the policies of the last two years, notably tariffs and notably some of the quasi, I’ll say, the socialist investments that the Trump administration has made in US firms.

‘I think a lot of American long-standing Republicans would like to see a return to more of a free markets economic freedom approach. And then there’s just the governing style. And we can talk about that for a long time. But I think there’s been a lot of drama. And I think a lot of people are fatigued.’

He added:

‘We throw the term civil war around, but in DC parlance, both parties are going to go through some intense soul searching and public arguing about about the direction. 

‘The end of the Trump era is largely the end of the MAGA era. Trump is the magic ingredient. JD Vance will try and pick up strands of the MAGA tent, but it’s going to be a fairly small sub-tent, if you will. He just doesn’t have the appeal. And he’s also been quite ideologically flexible over the years if you go back in time.

‘He is the self-appointed standard bearer for some MAGA values. But don’t forget, Trump is in many ways, as I said, not only a realist when it comes to foreign policy and international affairs, but he’s more of a pragmatist, and he does go with his gut quite a lot. And he’s a bit of a contrarian, a disruptor. It’s very hard to pin an ideology on that. 

‘Vance is trying to sort of be a standard-bearer for an ideology that almost quite isn’t there, if you will… I personally don’t think that JD Vance will get the nod, and that someone else – Rubio, Cruz, or someone else – there’s a fairly long list of senators and governors who have publicly said they are interested, or have used the usual vague language to pretend they’re not when they clearly are. 

‘And I think you’ll see the Republican Party, for lack of a better term, become conservative again.’

Affordability

Laurel Rapp, Director of the US and North America Programme at Chatham House:

‘The polling over these past months has aligned very much with what Ludo is suggesting here. There is high levels of concern about cost of living, affordability. And that is across the Republican and Democratic voters. That is not a partisan issue. Questions about housing costs, access to health care, rising costs of food tied to inflation. So these are sort of across the partisan spectrum. That is a shared view.

‘When you start to break it down on the right and the left, you’re seeing different priorities. On the left, you see greater access to health care as something that they would like candidates to pursue. Climate change, questions about the US role in the world as it relates to the Iran war, stopping the Iran war.

‘When you look to the right and you’ll see a lot of Republican candidates in these final days reflecting some of these Republican voter attitudes focused on crime, on immigration, on social stability issues, and warnings. And that’s something we’ve seen the president also weave into his message a little bit. But to Ludo’s point, the president in these final days has not really hammered on these messages of affordability, has called that a hoax over the past couple of months.

So when you pull voters across the political spectrum, they will say affordability is really important to me. And then when asked, ‘Who do you trust? Which party do you trust to help get the economy back on track?’ a majority will say that the Democratic Party is more trusted on this. So I think we’re seeing a lot of those headwinds surging to the Democrats in these final days.’

The change in the balance of power sets up a clash with the Trump administration on oversight and other legislative priorities.

Party sees historic victories with Gina Hinojosa’s win in Texas and Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms becoming first Black female governor in US

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Voters across the US have elected Democrats to lead many of the biggest states in the nation, marking a sea change in traditional Republican strongholds such as Georgia and Texas in what could have a profound effect on Donald Trump’s remaining term and the 2028 presidential election.

From Keisha Lance Bottoms’ victory in Georgia, making the former Atlanta mayor the first Black woman to be elected governor of any state, to Amy Acton’s win in reliably red Ohio, the results represented a repudiation of Trump, rank corruption in Washington and the power of billionaires to shape American politics. Democrats aimed to win a majority of governorships in the US, something they have not done since the 2006 midterm elections.

Phone-maker Honor partners with the iconic cinema camera maker ARRI to enhance the look and color of videos recorded on its Magic 9 Pro Max.

Republicans routed as Democrats gain powerful new leverage over Trump for remainder of his presidency

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Tell us: what do you want to know about the midterm election results?

Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, routing Republicans nationwide with historic victories that will give them powerful new leverage over Donald Trump for the remainder of his presidency.

Together with their likely triumph in the House of Representatives, Democrats are expected to have full control of Congress beginning next year, for the first time since 2022.

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan, CBS News projects, after one of the most contentious contests of the midterm elections.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Legislative bodies are responsible for writing and passing all of the state laws that will impact Delawareans. Oftentimes, they are passed with some form of debate or challenge from opposing parties. But with a new supermajority, there will be little stopping Democrats from enacting their policy aims. 

The Delaware Democratic party ran away with many of their races Tuesday night, netting a coveted two-thirds supermajority in the state House of Representatives by flipping three seats previously held by Republicans.

House Democrats now join their Senate counterparts in holding two-thirds of all seats in their chamber. They will be able to amend the state Constitution without Republican support, a move that further solidifies Democrats’ monopoly on state politics and has been lamented by Republicans throughout this election cycle. 

Democrats successfully — and in some cases surprisingly — flipped three seats in Camden, Long Neck and Middletown. They also held onto a Milton-area seat that in previous years had been decided by fewer than 150 votes.

Speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives Melissa Minor-Brown (D-New Castle) called Tuesday night’s wins a decisive message from voters about what they want to see from state government leaders. 

“Winning a supermajority is a strong vote of confidence from Delawareans,” Minor-Brown said. “They’ve seen what we were able to accomplish over the last two years, and they’re ready to see more, and we’re ready to deliver.”

But Democratic ambitions to nab a seat in deep-red Sussex County fell short, as a former Republican lawmaker with a past of domestic violence convictions reclaimed his seat in the Millsboro area. Republicans also held onto a western Kent County Senate seat that saw outsized fundraising from two political newcomers.

In all, Democrats now comfortably hold a two-thirds supermajority with the state legislature. Tuesday’s election results, however, will also test intraparty dynamics, as a growing slate of progressive candidates — many of whom ousted incumbent lawmakers in this year’s primaries — now heads to Dover.

Surprising southern Delaware flips

In one of the most surprising statehouse flips for Democrats, former State Librarian Annie Norman unseated longtime incumbent Republican Rep. Lyndon Yearick to represent the Camden-Wyoming-area 34th House District. 

Norman, who edged out a victory by just 150 votes, will be the first fresh face to represent the district since Yearick’s first win in 2014. She campaigned on using her decades of civil service experience to make state government more efficient for Delawareans.

“We are small. We can be better. We could be the best in the nation because we’re small enough to really do it right,” she told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday night.

Norman launched her campaign this summer, and brought in just less than $22,000 — about $10,000 less than Yearick raised throughout his campaign.

In another Democratic surprise, Gregg Lindner beat out Republican Dan Zitofsky to represent the 4th House District, left open after Rep. Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck) chose not to seek reelection earlier this year. 

Lindner, a retired media company executive, campaigned on issues that have become common refrains among many Sussex County residents — lacking infrastructure, healthcare access and environmental concerns.

After his win on Tuesday night, Lindner said he planned to be a representative for his entire district, not just those who voted him into office, as the quality of life issues at the foundation of his campaign affect residents regardless of their political affiliation.

“Things don’t get done by themselves,” Lindner said. “You have to be able to collaborate with other legislators to move forward. Some within the same party, some that are across the aisle to make happen.”

Democrats secure third, more likely flip

Democratic candidate Ayanna Khan-Flowers, the president and CEO of the Delaware Black Chamber of Commerce, easily dispatched her opponent in the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend 9th House District that had long been held by a Republican. 

Khan-Flowers secured 64% of the vote, beating her Republican opponent and longtime educator Jamar Money. 

Khan-Flowers did not return a phone call on Tuesday night.

Her victory follows the retirement of longtime legislator Rep. Kevin Hensley (R-Middletown/Odessa), who announced in May he would not seek reelection due to health challenges. 

Hensley also pleaded guilty in April 2025 to driving drunk in a case that saw him crash his truck into a car on Route 1 near Milford.

As a result of his plea, Hensley lost his driver’s license for a year, and was mandated to take a DUI course, serve probation and pay a $500 fine. 

Democrats establish new foothold in coastal Sussex

In the Milton and Lewes-area 20th House District, incumbent Rep. Alonna Berry (D) held onto her seat, winning her first full term in the House over Republican challenger Gene Dvornick.

Berry won out with 56% percent of the vote, representing a decisive win for Democrats in a district that features the smallest Democratic voter advantage anywhere in the state.

She won a special election last year by just 117 votes following the resignation of Stell Parker Selby, but she easily won the primary election in September to gain campaign momentum heading into Election Day.

Berry said on Tuesday night that it felt good to win and thanked the voters. She said one of the goals in this election was to “increase the margin” of victory, and it was indicative of support from across the aisle. 

Going into January, she said she is excited to serve and hopes to address issues in her district like healthcare, infrastructure, housing and education.

Atkins heads back to the statehouse

A race Democrats hoped to nab in Sussex County ultimately remained in Republican control after former Rep. John Atkins reclaimed his seat on Tuesday night.

He won with more than 53% of the vote against Democratic newcomer Ryan Stuckey for the District 41 seat left vacant by the retirement of Republican Rep. Rich Collins. 

Atkins has a checkered past of domestic violence convictions, but he has said those incidents are safely in his past after he committed himself to his faith. However, Atkins’ candidacy led some Republicans to pledge to vote for his opponent, a Democrat who supports gun rights and has put solving Sussex’s infrastructure woes at the top of his platform.

As questions swirled around who would replace longtime Collins, multiple Republicans, including Atkins, expressed a willingness to run. But party leaders had at the time expressed some skepticism about Atkins’ past. 

Atkins did not return a call on Tuesday night to discuss his victory. 

GOP holds other key races

Democratic aims to flip a western Kent County Senate seat fell short, as Republicans held onto the 15th Senate District that opened up following a longtime senator’s retirement earlier this year.

Emily Thompson, a program administrator for the state’s Division of Public Health, garnered nearly 57% of the vote in the deep-red district. She easily defeated her opponent Nisha Lodhavia, a member of University of Delaware’s Board of Trustees. 

Both of the candidates were political newcomers who entered the race as longtime Sen. Dave Lawson (R-Marydel) announced his retirement earlier this year. Lawson quickly threw his weight behind Thompson’s candidacy, endorsing her to take his place.

Thompson did not return a phone call on Tuesday night. 

In another Republican victory, Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek) sailed to reelection on Tuesday night. He is now the only Republican serving in any state or county office in New Castle County.

Smith faced new scrutiny after being named the next president and CEO of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, one of the state’s largest lobbying organizations.

When the chamber made the announcement back in late September, Smith said he would not run for reelection in 2028. But Smith changed his tune on Tuesday morning, telling Spotlight Delaware he was considering another run.

Smith beat Democratic newcomer Alex Green, a land surveyor and local volunteer, with nearly 54% of the vote.

A full freshman class

In all, three new senators were elected Tuesday night: Thompson, and Democrats Shay Frisby and Rep. Mara Gorman (D-Newark).

Frisby, a progressive candidate endorsed by the Working Families Party, beat out Sen. Ray Seigfried (D-North Brandywine) in a closely watched primary race in September.

Gorman ran to succeed Senate President Pro Tempore Dave Sokola (D-Newark), who announced his retirement earlier this year.  

In the House, 11 new representatives were elected Tuesday night — more than a quarter of the entire chamber.

Those newly elected representatives include:

• Michelle Booker (D) — State House District 2
• Branden Fletcher-Dominguez (D) — State House District 3
• Gregg Lindner (D) — State House District 4
• Ayanna Khan-Flowers (D) — State House District 9
• Pamela Salaam (D) — State House District 16
• Dave Redslawsk (D) — State House District 23
• Tyeisha Grier (D) — State House District 28
• Morgan Hudson (R) — State House District 33
• Annie Norman (D) — State House District 34
• Carlie Carey (R) — State House District 38
• John Atkins (R) — State House District 41

While Democrats now hold a two-thirds supermajority in both the House and Senate, the cohesion of the party, at least within the House, will face its first test on Wednesday. 

House Democrats will convene this week to determine their leaders for the 154th General Assembly, and Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear), perhaps the most vocal progressive in the House, has already announced plans to challenge incumbent House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown.

Maggie Reynolds contributed to this report.

The post Delaware Democrats secure statehouse supermajority with upset wins  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Yothu Yindi’s Treaty, Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning and Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman are among the first songs to be honoured on new list that will grow every year

• Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images and names of Indigenous Australians who have died

Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning, Yothu Yindi’s Treaty and Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman are among the first 10 Australian songs to be inducted into the National Songbook – a new digital archive that celebrates and preserves songs that have shaped Australia’s national cultural identity.

Launched on Wednesday night at the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in Canberra, the songbook is a joint initiative between NFSA and the music rights organisation Apra Amcos. The first 10 songs were selected by a panel of 11 music experts including broadcasters Richard Kingsmill and Zan Rowe, composer Cornel Wilczek and musician Mo’Ju.

Democrat James Talarico has won the US Senate race in Texas, securing an astonishing and historic victory. Talarico, a state representative, beat the scandal-plagued attorney general Ken Paxton in the most expensive race of this midterms cycle. He is also the first Democrat to win a US Senate seat in the Lone Star state since 1988

Democrats should take the right lessons from their great night – but will they?

Trump has been a disaster for our country. His economic plans are incoherent, the Iran war is making inflation worse, and his complicity with Israel’s crimes in Gaza and other acts of lawlessness, from the extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean to the kidnapping of Maduro, have been combined with a continuing coarsening of American culture.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in An Era of Extreme Inequalities

Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist

Jill Filipovic is an American author

Tuesday, November 3, was Election Day in the United States, and the results are (mostly) in: Democrats are projected to win control of both the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms. The blue wave turned out to be more of a blue tsunami, ending Republican control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term. Democrats flipped seven Republican-held Senate seats in the 2026 midterms, including surprise victories in traditionally Republican strongholds such as Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina. Kansas elected its first Democratic U.S. senator in nearly 100 years (94 years to be exact), while Texas and South Carolina sent Democrats to the Senate for the first time in decades. Democrats also picked up seats in Ohio, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Democrat Brian Poindexter defeated the Republican incumbent, who was accused of domestic abuse toward his ex-wife and young daughter.

Democrat Troy Jackson defeated longtime GOP Sen. Susan Collins in the Maine Senate race, CBS News projects.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
In Delaware, the county government’s primary authority is over land use decisions, including where development projects are allowed to be placed and whether data centers are permitted in the county. The results of Tuesday’s election across the three counties, and particularly in Sussex County, will shake up the future of these land use and energy policies.  

At the county level, Tuesday night’s results were marked by a partial win for slower growth in Sussex County, as Democratic challenger Jill Hicks narrowly defeated longtime Republican Councilman John Rieley for a Georgetown-area district.

Meanwhile, current Republican Council President Doug Hudson held on to his Bethany Beach-area seat over Democratic challenger Justine Cuccia – he’s the only incumbent to hold his seat in Sussex County’s government over the past two election cycles.

County election results in New Castle County were highlighted by an overwhelming victory by progressive newcomer Kira Alejandro, and an incumbent defeat for a Kent County Recorder of Deeds race that drew outsized attention due to a last-minute candidate scandal. 

The Sussex County races, which drew significant campaign spending and attention in recent months, have the potential to change what housing development projects and land use ordinances are able to gain county approval in the state’s booming southernmost county. 

Republican incumbents Rieley and Hudson, who received large sums of campaign money from local homebuilders and realtors, have been known as the most development-friendly county leaders during each of their eight years in office. 

Meanwhile, Hicks and Cuccia, the Democratic challengers, campaigned on a platform of slowing growth to match infrastructure, and imposing more requirements on developers. 

“People are so angry and fearful of all the overdevelopment,” Hicks said when reached for comment Tuesday night. “That’s what made the difference.”

Sussex County: A closer look 

In the heavily watched county council races, Hicks prevailed over Rieley by a relatively slim 552-vote margin, or 2.6% of the total vote, while Hudson defeated Cuccia by a larger margin of 3,212 votes. 

Hicks told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday night she attributed her victory to voters’ desire to “change the decision-makers,” because of how they witnessed Rieley allowing development without the adequate infrastructure to match over the past eight years. 

Hudson did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s requests for comment about his victory Tuesday night. 

In the lead up to the election, Hicks and Cuccia both highlighted platforms of being willing to stand up to developers and create more strict county zoning codes. 

Hudson and Rieley, on the other hand, cited their existing experience balancing developers’ priorities with farmland preservation and understanding the county code as vital to the government’s success in writing the upcoming 2028 Comprehensive Plan, which will determine where developers can build over the next decade. 

Hudson and Hicks, who is known for her role as a founder of the land preservation-focused organization the Sussex Preservation Coalition (SPC), will join three council members elected in 2024, all of whom campaigned on a platform of slowing growth, in writing the Comprehensive Plan.   

It remains to be seen how exactly the voting dynamics will play out with future land use decisions, as some of the three members elected in 2024 have at times been criticized for becoming too friendly to developers since being elected. 

The result also represents just the second time in recent years that a Democrat has been elected to the County Council, following fellow preservation coalition co-founder Jane Gruenebaum’s election to represent a Lewes-area district in 2024. 

This time, though, the district Hicks won encompasses Millsboro and Georgetown, which leans more Republican than Lewes, according to voter registration numbers. 

“We’ve pushed west, and that’s good momentum,” Hicks said. 

Pervasive concerns with development fueled county residents’ interest in the race, which was matched by massive fundraising from both individual donors and third-party advertisers on the two sides. 

Hicks and Cuccia raked in $46,115 and $37,191, respectively, in individual donations, which are particularly large sums for a county-level race. 

While Hudson and Rieley’s individual donation totals were substantially lower, both candidates received substantial money in the form of third-party advertising from the Sussex County Association of Realtors. 

Rieley also received a last-minute outpouring of roughly $27,300 in third party advertising from DE Lead, a group run by leaders of the state’s builders’ union.

Kent County sees recorder upset

While the races up for election in Kent County drew markedly less attention than their southern neighbors in the months leading up to Nov. 3, an eleventh-hour video scandal may have helped lead to an upset for the county Recorder of Deeds position. 

Democrat Ramona Bracy, who works in the state treasurer’s office, defeated incumbent Republican Recorder of Deeds Eugenia Thornton by a nearly 15% margin. 

As its name suggests, the recorder of deeds manages the paperwork on property sales in the county along with mortgagees, easements, federal tax liens, and more. 

Bracy’s win came after a video was published online on Nov. 1 in which Thornton criticized Bracy for attending an Indian festival and wearing a traditional Indian outfit, saying on video, “what a fucking whore. She’s not Indian.” 

Thornton, who had held the countywide position since 2023, later apologized for her remarks on social media, writing that she was not aware she was being recorded at the time she made the comments, but she “made an offensive and disrespectful remark that I deeply regret.” 

When reached for comment on Tuesday night, Bracy told Spotlight Delaware she was “elated” by the election results. 

Bracy also said she didn’t believe the video controversy was a significant factor in the election results, because it was circulated so late in the race, when early voting was nearly over. Rather, she cited her platform of “modernizing systems and making things more efficient” as having resonated with voters. 

The sole other contested Kent County race was for the at-large Levy Court seat, in which longtime Commissioner Terry Pepper defeated challenger Frank Coleman with 61.4% of the vote. 

Pepper, a Democrat, will serve his fourth four-year term on the county government. 

Democrats take New Castle County 

The county positions up for election Tuesday night in Delaware’s northernmost county were all Democratic victories by over a 25% margin, unsurprisingly as registered Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly 2.5 to 1 in New Castle County. 

Democrat Kira Alejandro defeated Republican Melissa Brayman by 5,529 votes for the Pike Creek and Hockessin-area County Council district left open by retiring Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick, who has represented the district since 2010 was the sole Republican on the 13-member county council. Alejandro’s win against Republican Melissa Brayman, the finance director for the state chamber of commerce, means the council is now comprised entirely of Democrats. 

Alejandro, a musician and barista, largely focused her campaign on imposing a data center moratorium in the county. She also amassed a massive fundraising advantage over Brayman, raising $61,590 in individual donations to Brayman’s $7,450. 

When reached for comment Tuesday night, Alejandro attributed the win to her campaign focus on prohibiting data centers and stopping overdevelopment – issues she said voters have reached a “boiling point” on. 

“This district has never had a Democrat before, so for it not only to be won by a Democrat, but by a 30-year-old woman, I just am really honored,” she said. 

Incumbent council members David Carter, whose district includes Middletown and Townsend, and Dee Durham, whose district spans the Brandywine Hundred and Red Clay Creek areas of the county, retained their seats against Republican candidates Alison T. Gibbs and Jamie Collins, respectively. 

In a county that has seen multiple prominent data center proposals over the past eighteen months, Carter has been the council’s most outspoken data center critic, introducing multiple ordinances to regulate the facilities in New Castle County. 

The post Hicks flips Sussex Council seat, as Democrats sweep Kent, NCC races appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

@lemur

Hey
Sorry about that, it might be because i am new. I tried to message you i also got a restricted error. If you want to you can email it to leebrennnen@gmail.com

President Trump congratulated Democrats on their victories, but in a phone call with CBS News he also threatened to use his "total veto power."

The highly competitive seat was a top target for Democrats in their quest to reclaim the majority.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA — Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday removing the state’s dormant ban on same-sex marriage and replacing it with explicit protections for lawful marriages between two adults.

The measure passed with about 57% support, according to unofficial results, and will take effect Jan. 1, 2027.

Virginia voters originally approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment in 2006, defining marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. That provision became unenforceable after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision established nationwide marriage equality, but the language remained in Virginia’s constitution.

The new amendment states that Virginia may not deny a marriage license to two adults based on sex, gender or race and must recognize and treat lawful marriages equally under state law. It also reinforces protections for interracial marriage.

Supporters argued that removing the old language was important because constitutional protections could matter if the U.S. Supreme Court ever revisited Obergefell. Opponents included religious conservative groups that campaigned against the change.

The marriage amendment was one of three constitutional changes Virginia voters approved Tuesday, alongside measures protecting reproductive rights and automatically restoring voting rights after incarceration.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Virginia Voters Remove Same-Sex Marriage Ban From State Constitution appeared first on News Facts Network.

This election represents a wholesale rejection of Trump and the Republican party, by every single segment of American society

In a few years, there’s a good chance we look at Tuesday night as the death knell of Trumpism and the Maga movement. He has indelibly changed the face of American politics, and the basic structure of American institutions. And people are sick of it.

Fundamentally, nearly everyone’s lives are worse than they were a decade ago. People were willing to tolerate, or even welcome the coarseness, the attacks on American democratic norms, and the global foreign policy order.

Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff defeated GOP Rep. Mike Collins in the Georgia Senate race, CBS News projects, holding onto his seat in the upper chamber.

Democrat Denise Powell won Nebraska's 2nd District seat and will replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

The electorate voted decisively to curb the president’s power

There’s a certain freedom in low expectations. Going in to Tuesday’s midterm elections, forecasts were so grim for the Republicans that poll watchers started trading a kind of knowing joke: that the results would either mean the end of the Trump era, or the end of the polling profession.

Amid those sorts of predictions, any Republican victories would have seemed like a minor miracle. The expectation was that Democrats would have a blowout; Republicans, counting on the final tally to be a bit more mixed, would therefore almost certainly have the freedom to claim that they’d done better than anyone had thought they would.

Cracks in the GOP's dominance in the agriculture-heavy state widened in recent weeks as Mr. Trump's tariffs and the Iran war have hurt Iowans.

Peggy Flanagan's projected victory in Minnesota closes the door on one of the few pickup opportunities for Republicans in the Senate.

Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas defeated former GOP Sen. John Sununu in the New Hampshire Senate race, CBS News projects, keeping the seat in Democratic control.

Democrat Roy Cooper defeated Michael Whatley in the North Carolina Senate race, CBS News projects, marking a flip for Democrats after GOP Sen. Thom Tillis opted not to seek reelection.

Democrat Annie Andrews won a stunning upset over GOP Sen. Darline Graham, who was running for her late brother Lindsey Graham's seat.

Democrat James Talarico will defeat Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race, CBS News projects, marking a major flip for Democrats that they have long sought in the Lone Star State.

In California’s Central Valley, some surprising voters are lining up behind a progressive upstart: A law enforcement officer who calls for the abolition of ICE. A millennial who once voted for a Republican congressman. 

They found themselves among supporters of Randy Villegas, a Democrat poised to oust longtime incumbent Republican Rep. David Valadao in a district dominated for decades by conservatives in California’s Central Valley. 

With Democratic victories across the nation, California’s 22nd Congressional District is the kind of historically red stronghold where progressive policies may find new purchase.

Villegas’s path to the general election mirrors that of other progressive candidates charting a new identity within the party. Running on policies such as Medicare for All, addressing affordability, rejecting corporate donations, and halting the flow of weapons to Israel, the 31-year-old defeated a moderate Democratic state assembly member backed by the party’s establishment in the June primary. 

Villegas’s opposition to ICE in a district that is 70 percent Latino or Hispanic marked the sharpest point of contrast with Valadao, who defended the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant campaign and famously uttered “It is what it is” on the debate stage last month when pressed on the issue. Valadao claimed “a lot” of the individuals captured by ICE in the Central Valley in recent weeks have criminal records, despite research showing the majority of those detained by ICE lack criminal convictions. 

It was Valadao’s stance on immigration that most animated Central Valley voters who spoke with The Intercept.    

“I’ve never seen him stand up to something I feel is egregious,” said Raul Castro, 53, a Fresno County probation officer who is upset with Valadao’s lack of willingness to oppose Trump on the ICE raids surging through the area in recent weeks. “I just don’t respect people like that.”

Related

Trump’s National Killer Police Force

While standing on the front porch of his house in a middle-class suburb in northwest Fresno, Castro lamented ICE’s targeting of immigrants based on their appearance, language, or jobs. He spoke out against immigration agents pulling people from the street and into labyrinthine detention centers where civil rights advocates have reported a lack of access to basic necessities such as clean water and adequate healthcare. Though Castro once supported ICE, when asked whether he would support abolishing the agency altogether, he said yes. 

“If you asked me that same question, ‘Hey would you abolish ICE?’ I’d say, ‘No, ‘cause they’re doing things to make sure our country is safe. I want to live in a safe Fresno, safe county, safe city,’” Castro told The Intercept. “But now, wait a minute, maybe that’s not what I thought it was going to be.”

Villegas told The Intercept he wasn’t surprised to hear he had won the support of an anti-ICE law enforcement officer. 

“I don’t find it surprising because I think ICE has made it much more difficult for local law enforcement to carry out their jobs and their work — and everybody is seeing the indiscriminate profiling going on,” Villegas said at a Fresno park rally to support last-minute canvassing efforts.

Villegas himself does not support abolishing ICE but instead has called for wide-ranging reforms of the agency. The policy position makes Villegas somewhat an anomaly among his progressive peers, who are riding a wave of leftist energy into Congress, some of whom include “Abolish ICE” among their campaign platforms. 

Related

If Democrats Win, Thank the Left

While holding key endorsements from high-profile democratic socialists Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Villegas has also rejected the socialist label, preferring “populist,” despite attempts by the Republican national party to weaponize the term against him. Unlike many of his fellow progressives, Villegas is also one of the few who is running in a historically red district. And he’s confident voters are not caught up in the ideological nuances and hopes to instead cut through them. 

“People are fed up with an agency who is unaccountable, people are fed up with a member of Congress who is unaccountable, who doesn’t even have public town halls,” Villegas said. “We deserve better than that in the Central Valley, and I think that’s why our messaging is resonating across the political spectrum.”

Such reach across the political spectrum is also evidenced in voters like Aram Easter, 33, who was born and raised in Fresno. He doesn’t vote in every election, but cast a ballot for Valadao a decade ago when his district previously covered Fresno, largely because he bought the vision of someone with local Central Valley roots (Valadao was born and raised in the nearby Hanford). He also agrees with some aspects of Trump’s agenda, such as building the border wall. But he drew the line on immigration enforcement.   

“You got people tearing people’s families apart,” Easter said. “My family immigrated here — I have Black and Mexican family — I’m not with them overly-aggressively doing it.” 

Since early October, ICE raids have become more prevalent in the region, with more than 200 people detained by authorities throughout the surge, according to the local newsroom Fresnoland. Similar upticks in ICE have taken place recently throughout the state, including Los Angeles and San Diego. Voter rights organizations in the Central Valley have taken notice and are viewing the raids as an effort by the Trump administration to suppress the vote, especially in a key race in the 22nd District. 

“This timing of the uptick in ICE is not a coincidence,” said Marisa Moraza, political director at PowerCA Action, which is doing independent expenditure work to support Villegas’s campaign. “It’s not a coincidence that this started at the beginning of October when voters received their ballots in the mail.”

The raids have also suppressed get-out-the-vote efforts, Moraza said. Last month, the group had to pause in-person canvassing operations for several days amid the surge in ICE activity, electing to instead do phone banking. 

The ICE activity is also keeping would-be voters from dropping off their ballots, as recent arrests of U.S. citizens struck fear among voters, said Cirilo Ordaz, a canvasser with PowerCA supporting Villegas. 

“With going out to vote, I think a lot of them haven’t done it yet because of that fear,” said Ordaz, who was one of dozens of Villegas supporters who fanned out across the region on the Monday before Election Day to urge residents to vote.

Related

“Offensive Driving”: ICE’s Deadly Weaponization of Vehicles Against Civilians

Sylvia Ramirez, another Fresno native canvassing with PowerCA said she’s noticed far fewer people outside in recent weeks, including a lack of crowds at the popular annual event Big Fresno Fair. For voters, she and her group offer to drop off people’s ballots for them if the fear is keeping them inside. 

“Offering the services of dropping off a ballot for somebody really helps out with the fear that people have of leaving their houses,” she said, adding that she has told her family to stay at home as much as possible in recent days to avoid interactions with ICE.

The Central Valley, known for its significant agriculture production, has been the seat of high-profile Republican lawmakers, such as former Rep. Devin Nunes and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. 

But after a Democrat-led redistricting in the state last year in response to Texas’s partisan redistricting effort, the district now includes the northwest sections of Fresno, a city with more Democrats. 

Early voting across the state has outpaced recent midterm elections, according to a recent survey. It’s unclear how much of that is anti-Trump animus or having a candidate voters are excited to support. 

Castro, the probation officer, was among those who voted early. In recent weeks, he said he noticed residents looking at him with concern while on the job in uniform, showing up at areas where ICE had previously conducted raids. It’s a fear he acutely understood. As a child, he lived in labor camps with his mother and father, who were both undocumented immigrants working in Fresno as farm laborers. He recalled similar indiscriminate sweeps by Border Patrol in the 1970s. 

“When I was small, back then it was Border Patrol, and they used to show up in a van,” Castro recalled. “All the agents used to get out and run after these guys. And they used to round them up and take them out,” he said. 

Seeing video and hearing of recent ICE raids targeting farmworkers in the area conjured such painful memories.

“I never thought I’d see that again,” he said.  

The post In California’s Central Valley, ICE Might Swing a Red District Blue appeared first on The Intercept.

Sherrod Brown faced off against Husted, who was appointed to the seat last year to replace Vice President JD Vance.

Democratic Reverend Adam Hamilton defeated GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in the Kansas Senate race, CBS News projects, unseating the incumbent in a major upset.

Exclusive: Schools minister launches new Ukrainian GCSE and says she is sorry students were pushed to study Russian in its absence

The UK has apologised to Ukrainian child refugees who were told to study Russian in English schools, as it launched funding for a new GCSE in Ukrainian.

Ukrainian children who were forced to seek refuge in the UK after Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022 say it was “insulting” that their teachers suggested they study Russian in the absence of a GCSE in Ukrainian.

Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek defeated GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson in the Iowa Senate race, CBS News projects, in a major pickup for Democrats as they seek to take control of the upper chamber.

Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2026 elections with a raft of victories over Republicans in key races, cementing the new majority and flipping party control of the upper chamber.

Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign produced a controversial ad in October that featured Amy Acton's estranged mother.

David Crowley won the Democratic nomination after dropping out of the primary and then jumping back in.

CBS News projects Rob Sand will win the Iowa governor's office, the first Democrat to be elected to the governor's mansion since 2006 and defeating Zach Lahn.

Texas voters elected a governor to serve a four-year term overseeing the state's executive branch, implementing laws and shaping policies.

On an election night handing Republicans a beating in critical House and Senate races across the country, the GOP fell short even in once deep-red Texas after a campaign run on a go-to outrage tactic: fearmongering over the rights of transgender people.

Democrats escaped the political wilderness in the Longhorn State on Tuesday night, when Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton — despite the far-right attorney general’s relentless attacks on the trans community and his party’s claims that Democrats would enforce so-called “transgenderism” as a kind of ideology. 

Related

The Rise of the Christian Left in Texas

The massive upset was paired with a victory for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, who beat Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott shortly after the Senate race was called for Talarico. 

In Dallas, Paxton voter Rachel Fuller told The Intercept she was alarmed by what she believed was Talarico’s support for “far-fetched” ideas, like “giving children the right to decide — and making parents, calling them abusive for not letting them have transgender changes.” 

Her comments suggested some of the $78 million Republicans spent on anti-trans attack advertisements in Texas were working. But they weren’t enough to help Republicans hold onto power in Texas, which hasn’t had a Democratic senator since the 1990s.

The ads made up almost half of all ad spending in support of Paxton, according to an analysis from Puck using data from AdImpact.

By and large, the ads spread blatant misinformation about Talarico’s record. 

One infamous $29 million ad created by Texas PAC, a political action committee primarily funded by billionaire Elon Musk, claimed that Talarico supported jailing parents who did not support gender-affirming surgeries for minors. “Every mom in Texas should be worried about James Talarico putting parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children,” a woman in the ad warned ominously. 

That attack, which according to Puck received 1.9 billion views as of October, does seem to have caught the attention of Texans — even with voters who ultimately supported Talarico. 

Julius Ishola, a canvasser for Black TOP, an operation under Texas Organizing Project that targets Black voters, told The Intercept he had frequently heard Black voters raise concerns that Talarico intended to jail parents. 

“I’ve been getting a lot of bad feedback regarding James Talarico,” Ishola told The Intercept, saying many voters cited concerns of “gender sex change and possibly prosecuting parents who go against that … and allowing transgenders into female restrooms.” 

As a state legislator, Talarico fought bans on transgender athletes’ participation in youth sports, and famously said that God is “nonbinary,” earning him ridicule from Republicans, who nicknamed the Senate candidate “Talafreako.” In the face of those attacks this cycle, Talarico appeared to backtrack on the issue, telling Fox News in September that he supported bans on transgender children’s participation in sports if it risks “safety or fairness” — without clarifying what that meant. 

His wavering does not seem to have reached many voters. 

“I voted Republican all the way. And that’s my fear of Talarico going in,” said Carol Billings, a voter who cast her ballot for Paxton at the Living Waters Church in Dallas County. Like Fuller, she cited her perception of the Democratic nominee’s trans policies as a major source for concern.

Still, many voters in Black districts, which were vital to Talarico’s victory, barely mentioned Talarico. 

“At the end of the day,” said Dallas Jones, a Houston-based Democratic political strategist whose firm focuses on African American voter engagement and backed Talarico, “the results show that people care more about their everyday lives than they do about trans Americans who just want to get by.”  

Some voters told The Intercept they were far more concerned with issues of affordability. “ I just hope we can get these gas prices down,” said Darryl Moore, a Fort Worth voter.

This is a developing story and will be updated. Akela Lacy reported from Dallas, Texas.

The post Even Anti-Trans Panic Couldn’t Save Republicans in Deep-Red Texas appeared first on The Intercept.

As polls close and election results roll in, Americans across the country wait in anticipation and celebrate announced outcomes

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [S]tate-owned telecommunications company Rostelcom has raised the possibility of moving some Russian data centers underground in talks with the nickel and palladium mining company Norilsk, according to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. The industry publication Data Center Dynamics also pointed to a recent proposal by a Russian regional governor to build data centers within open-pit coal mines while planting green public parks above as camouflage. On November 2, Putin also signed a decree ordering Russian data center operators to set aside 10 percent of available space and capacity in case the Russian government requires it, according to independent Russian news publication Meduza. That may indicate growing Kremlin concerns about the vulnerability of Russian cloud computing infrastructure during its war with Ukraine. Putin's decree also allows a special Russian government commission to authorize use of foreign data centers in consultation with Russia's Federal Security Service. That marks a notable policy change because Putin and the Russian parliament previously enacted Russia's "Sovereign Internet Law," which has blocked Russian companies from using cloud computing infrastructure outside Russia's borders. Russia's push for a sovereign and increasingly closed Internet has resulted in a highly centralized system under a few Russian tech companies like Yandex. That hyper-centralized system has now proven vulnerable during wartime, as Ukrainian drone strikes on key Russian data centers created widespread disruptions for popular payment and digital banking apps, e-commerce platforms, video streaming services, and ride-hailing and food delivery apps, among others. Yandex has also been forced to relocate all three of its main supercomputers after Ukrainian drone strikes targeted the AI data centers where they were originally housed, Meduza reported.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CHICAGO, Nov. 3, 2026 — Setara Financial Corp., a developer of independent benchmark and reference infrastructure for the global compute economy, today announced the release of the Setara Index, its initial GPU price index. This represents the initial step toward the Setara Indices, a family of independently governed benchmarks designed to bring greater transparency, consistency, and institutional credibility to the rapidly expanding AI compute marketplace.

Calculated by Setara’s proprietary Benchmark Creation Engine, the Setara Index covers seven GPU models using publicly available on-demand list prices across independent providers. The Setara Index is expressed in U.S. dollars per GPU-hour and updated daily. The index is available at www.setarafinancial.com/gpu-index.

As compute becomes an increasingly important economic input, the market needs reliable, independent measures of pricing, capacity, availability and economic performance. The Setara Index is a neutral, governed reference framework designed to support price discovery, market comparisons, risk management and the development of institutional financial products. Setara expects to release additional indices across compute pricing, capacity, availability, and economic performance.

“Every successful financial market requires a trusted reference point. My experience helping develop major benchmarks and financial market structures, including the S&P 500, Russell indexes, the S&P MidCap 400 and the E-mini futures complex, has reinforced that principle,” said Jack Bouroudjian, CEO of Setara. “Compute is becoming one of the most important economic inputs in the global economy, yet it lacks the independent reference infrastructure necessary to measure its value consistently. The publication of our initial GPU price index is an important step toward building that foundation.”

Advisory Committee

Setara also announced its Industry Advisory Committee, bringing together complementary expertise in data architecture, technology infrastructure, standards and institutional markets.

The committee includes:

• Matt Nelson — Metadata leadership, global SDMX standards and software architecture for global banking.
• Tony Mackevicius — Enterprise data management, data architecture and security, including experience with Dell and EMC.
• Tom Roberts — Senior data leadership, technology and data science, with experience across healthcare and banking.

“We are extremely pleased to have Matt, Tony and Tom contributing their experience to Setara,” said Robert Alberghine, Setara’s President and Chief Operating Officer. “Each brings a distinct area of expertise that is essential to building a credible and enduring reference framework for the compute economy. Their collective experience strengthens our ability to develop benchmarks that are transparent, independently governed, compliant with international statistical standards, and relevant to the entire marketplace.”

Setara’s broader mission is to establish the independent reference layer necessary for compute to develop into a mature, financeable and institutionally accessible asset class. Its framework is intended to connect diverse market data through standardized intake, validation, eligibility, metadata governance, and reproducible benchmark calculations. Setara retains authority over its methodologies, constituent eligibility, calculations, official index releases, corrections and permitted uses.

About Setara

Setara Financial Corp. develops independent benchmark and reference infrastructure for the global compute economy. Through the Setara Indices under development and its developing governed reference framework, the company seeks to establish standardized measures of compute pricing, capacity, availability and economic performance. Setara’s mission is to provide the neutral and trusted market infrastructure required for transparency, price discovery, and institutional participation in compute markets.

Source: Setara

The post Setara Launches Daily Index of On-Demand GPU List Prices appeared first on HPCwire.

Accelsius will provide its NeuCool IR150 as shared two-phase cooling infrastructure for the NSF Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems, a university-industry research program working to improve U.S. data center energy efficiency by 20–35%

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 3, 2026 — Accelsius, a leader in two-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling for AI and high-performance computing, today announced its participation in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems (ES2), a federal data center energy efficiency research program.

Accelsius, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program, will support ES2’s system-level testing by providing the NeuCool IR150, the industry’s first fully-integrated IT rack plus CDU, to Villanova University, a founding member of ES2, an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center.

Villanova is one of three university sites participating in ES2, alongside The University of Texas at Arlington, where Accelsius continues its support in a COOLERCHIPS project led by Dr. Dereje Agonafer. The Villanova ES2 Laboratory for Advanced Thermal and Fluid Systems (LATFS) is performing extensive research in two-phase data center cooling systems, including research for the OMNICOOL Project, the NVIDIA-led project under ARPA-E’s COOLERCHIPS program, as well as research with ES2 industry consortium members. With support from fellow industry partners including Google, Microsoft and Meta, ES2’s stated objective is to improve the energy efficiency of U.S. data centers by 20–35% — by its own estimate, the equivalent of removing one to two power plants every three years.

“The largest challenges in data center energy efficiency are not going to be solved by any one group— they require sustained collaboration between research communities and the manufacturers building AI infrastructure at scale,” said Dr. Richard Bonner, Chief Technology Officer of Accelsius. “Our participation in ES2 continues a tradition at Accelsius of prioritizing and publishing research that brings facility energy consumption down.”

“We’re excited that Accelsius is joining the ES2 Center, which has become a leading research site for efficient cooling, WUE optimization, and waste heat reuse,” said Dr. Alfonso Ortega, James R. Birle Professor of Energy Technology and ES2 Site Director at Villanova University. “This donation of Accelsius technology will provide our researchers with a rack-level understanding of two-phase direct-to-chip as a scalable, sustainable option to address rising thermal demands.”

The NeuCool IR150 is expected to be installed at Villanova University in early October 2026. Visitors will be able to visit the onsite lab to see the IR150 in action. For information on touring the LATFS laboratory at Villanova, please contact: Professor Al Ortega, alfonso.ortega@villanova.edu.

About Accelsius

Founded by Innventure, Inc. (NASDAQ:INV), Accelsius empowers high performance compute and AI data centers to achieve their business, financial and sustainability goals through advanced cooling solutions. The proprietary NeuCool platform provides best-in-class thermal efficiencies through a safe, two-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling system that scales from single racks to entire data centers.

Source: Accelsius

The post Accelsius Supports NSF Data Center Efficiency Research at Villanova appeared first on HPCwire.

In September, the House censured GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards over "inappropriate conduct" toward aides.

Abdul El-Sayed defeated Mike Rogers in the U.S. Senate race in Michigan early Wednesday, outlasting months of Islamophobic vitriol and offering a bright spot to progressives looking to test their message ahead of the 2028 presidential primary.

El-Sayed will be the first-ever Muslim U.S. senator. He rose to victory with a campaign animated by his opposition to U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, making him a key figure for a left critical of entrenched foreign policy interests and a target for a political establishment intent on preserving the U.S. relationship with the Israeli government.

“To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us, we are coming for your system of politics. To AIPAC, who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice,” El-Sayed said at his victory party at a Detroit banquet hall. “They tried to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars. If you believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination — that’s not hate, it’s love.”

“Michiganders, we want our taxes spent here for schools, and healthcare, for infrastructure here — we don’t want our money sent to an apartheid or a genocidal war.”

El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official, announced his victory amid a historic blue wave that saw Democrats take both chambers of Congress and oust a 30-year incumbent in Maine and flip Texas for the first time in a generation.

While the left elevated a class of ascendant progressives in blue districts this midterms cycle, El-Sayed’s win in the key swing state of Michigan marks a potentially era-defining moment for the party’s left wing, which has who have made cost-of-living concerns and opposition to funding U.S. war in Iran and Israel’s genocide in Gaza as key tenets of their platform. 

“It’s proof that being pro-Palestine is good politics, it’s good policy, and no one should shy away,” said the prominent pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, who attended the El-Sayed party. “The American people are now waking up to the fact this country is complicit in genocide.”

Tuesday’s win will likely reverberate for years to come as Democrats clash over what kind of candidate to run for president in 2028 in an effort to turn the page on the MAGA era of U.S. politics.

In the heavily Arab and Muslim city of Dearborn, voters across party lines said they were outraged at the Islamophobic attacks ads targeting El-Sayed that became a staple of airwaves and social media feeds in the campaign’s final days.

“I am a Muslim. And I’ve seen a lot of ads, and it’s disgusting, because we are good people,” said Gus Tarraf, a Republican running for a state House seat. “I love this country.”

Although Donald Trump carried many precincts in Dearborn two years ago due to voter frustration over the Biden administration’s support of Israel, Tarraf said his community is turning on the Republican Party this year.

“Not a lot of Arab Americans are happy with the Trump administration,” he said. “So it doesn’t matter if they know you, as soon as they know you are on the Republican ticket.” 

El-Sayed’s willingness to criticize U.S. policy on Israel animated soap-opera-level drama in the final days of the race, when his former primary opponent, centrist Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, announced she would switch her endorsement to support Rogers.

After demanding an apology from El-Sayed for an outside PAC’s ad, Stevens said on social media that she came to the decision after feeling “shut out” by El-Sayed’s campaign, adding that she’s heard from “Black voters, Jewish voters, and others about how deeply these messages hurt.” Rogers, she said, gave her “the hope that he can serve in the tradition of John McCain: a senator willing to put country before party and stand up to his own side when conscience requires it.”

Stevens’s late-breaking endorsement of Rogers drew a mix of eye-rolls and outrage from voters at three precincts in Detroit and Dearborn. None of the voters interviewed by The Intercept said it had swayed them to vote for Rogers.

“People have already early voted. People have already absentee voted,” said Noora Iskander. “I don’t think many people change their minds. So I think it’s just hypocritical.”

Stevens’s decision to make the endorsement while inside a Black church in Detroit may also have generated backlash from the Black voters that Rogers was hoping to win over, according to some who spoke to The Intercept. One said the church community has been buzzing — and not positively — about the weekend’s events.

“Unfortunately, she went to a Black church to use it as a backdrop,” said Dearborn voter Dorothea Sharon. “It really was a slap in the face for the Black community that that happened.”

On election night, Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who endorsed El-Sayed and will be the senior senator from Michigan in the next Congress, asked supporters to “take a step back from all the drama we’ve had in the last couple of days,” in an allusion to Stevens. She resisted narrative portrayals of a power struggle between centrists like her and progressives like El-Sayed. 

“Let me just explain to all the media that Michigan is an independently minded state, we take orders from no one,” Slotkin said at the El-Sayed watch party in Michigan. “We don’t take guidance from anyone on how to think about our vote, we make up our minds. And it’s not progressive versus moderate, it is whether you are on team fight or team flight.”

Slotkin, who is Jewish, said voters should focus on “the idea that the state of Michigan can send one Jewish senator and one Muslim senator for the first time ever in history.”

Related

Trump Scrambles to Halt Military Aid to Israel to Deprive El-Sayed of a Talking Point

While El-Sayed has had to face intense scrutiny over accusations of conflating opposition to U.S. aid to Israel with antisemitism, little accounting has been made of the blatant Islamophobia and xenophobia from the Rogers campaign, the Republican Party, and Trump. But in Dearborn, the rhetoric had clearly hurt several voters who spoke to The Intercept.

The father of state Senate candidate Abbas Alawieh, a Democrat who played a prominent role in the 2024 Uncommitted movement, grew visibly upset when asked about the ads targeting Muslims.

“These are weak people who don’t have anything to do — they don’t have any programs for our economy, for our health, for our future,” Zouheir Alawieh said. “That’s why they are attacking us as Muslims and as human beings. It’s never been like this. This is a shame. America is a place where the Black with the white with the yellow, the Muslim with the Christian with the Jews, can live freely. Don’t try to tear up our society.”

Outside Dearborn, El-Sayed has tried to defuse the anti-Muslim smears against him by joking that he is only in favor of “shawarma law.” However, the Islamophobic attacks convinced at least one voter to cast her ballot for Rogers.

“I don’t want to live under Sharia law,” said Joann, a law firm employee who declined to give her last name after she voted in Detroit.

The fear of Islamic rule was the main issue for Joann, she said, although she also worried about El-Sayed’s campaign pledge of Medicare for All.

“I’ve worked my whole life, put all my stuff into the Medicare, but then I’ve got to let other people get it for free? It doesn’t seem fair to me when I’ve worked my whole life for it, and we’re not even sure that it’s going to be there when we really get ready to retire,” she said.

Yet it was that very messaging from El-Sayed’s campaign that excited many other residents in Michigan. Many voters who spoke to The Intercept said they were more focused on pocketbook issues.

“It’s the gas prices, the food. I mean, money is running out your pocket so fast,” Leigh James said after voting at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit.

James said she had walked to the polling place to avoid using gas. “I’m trying to save,” she said. “So thank God I live in the neighborhood.”

Other voters said they were inspired by El-Sayed’s personality, with one woman describing him as a “fighter.”

Noora Iskander, who voted for El-Sayed in Dearborn, said she approved of his stance in favor of Medicare for All, his affordability platform, and his solidarity with Palestine.

“I think he’s going to make a lot of change. He’s going to scare a lot of people — which I believe is a good thing, because you can’t really change for the better if you don’t scare a few people,” she said.

Matt Sledge reported from Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan.

The post Abdul El-Sayed Wins Senate Seat With Pro-Palestine Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

Nov. 3, 2026 — The Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) has started a new collaboration with Pi School, an international centre of excellence for AI headquartered in Rome that brings together innovators, thinkers and entrepreneurs. As a result, JSC’s Helmholtz Blablador infrastructure now hosts the EVE-Instruct model, a large language model (LLM) for Earth observation (EO) and Earth system science, where EVE stands for Earth Virtual Expert.

EVE is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) Φ-lab and developed by Pi School and other collaborators. EVE is built on an open-source foundation model and fine-tuned on curated EO and Earth science corpora. It combines structured citations and hallucination-aware evaluation, so its answers are grounded in and traceable to the underlying sources. EVE lets users query scientific literature, institutional content and technical documentation in natural language, which supports reliable Earth Intelligence applications.

Running the EVE-Instruct model on Helmholtz Blablador means the model is served from European public research infrastructure through an inference service offered by the JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF), which is part of the EuroHPC AI Factories network. Together with its open data, model weights and code, this makes the whole EVE stack open, from training to deployment. JSC’s high-performance computing resources and JAIF’s inference services also provide a foundation for scaling EVE as its user base and agentic workloads grow.

Since October 2026, EVE has been publicly available to everyone. To interact with the model, visit the EVE website and click on ‘Try EVE!’ to create a free account. Developers can connect to EVE via an OpenAI-compatible API. The models, data and code are also openly available on Hugging Face and GitHub for organizations that want to run EVE on their own infrastructure.

Dr. Gabriele Cavallaro, head of JSC’s Simulation and Data Lab (SDL) AI and ML for Remote Sensing, said: “In June 2026, our FAST-EO project, funded by ESA Φ-lab, entered its second phase to further advance the state of the art in EO foundation models. JSC is a consortium partner alongside DLR, IBM Research, KP Labs and ETH Zurich. The timing is ideal, as the EVE project also entered its second phase in August 2026. This opens up new opportunities to strengthen collaboration between the two projects as EVE evolves into a multimodal, agentic AI platform that aims to integrate scientific foundation models, including FAST-EO’s TerraMind model, with cutting-edge supercomputing resources.”

Dr. Alexandre Strube, team leader at Helmholtz Blablador, said: “Blablador has been hosting scientific LLMs for years, and the jump in quality from the first ones to EVE is palpable. The second phase of EVE promises to be even more interesting. We welcome this model into our hosting platform!”

For more information about research and work activities of the SDL AI and ML for Remote Sensing at JSC, visit the SDL’s webpage.

Source: JSC

The post Jülich Hosts EVE Language Model for Earth Observation and Earth Science appeared first on HPCwire.

GOP Sen. Ashley Moody defeated Democrat Angie Nixon in the Florida Senate race, CBS News projects, keeping the seat under Republican control.

Growing number of countries are resisting Russia’s reintegration into international hockey after a sports court lifted a ban on competition

Canada has joined a coalition of countries refusing to play ⁠ice ​hockey teams from Russia, with prime minister Mark Carney saying Russian skaters will not be able to compete in ⁠a world junior championship next month due to the war in Ukraine.

“While Russia and Belarus are supporting this illegal, unjustified, horrific ‌war in Ukraine, as long as that’s going on, there will be none of ​those athletes competing for their countries in Canada,” Carney told reporters on Tuesday.

Here's a national look at what's on voters' minds in the 2026 midterm elections as they cast their ballots.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA — Minnesota voters transformed their Election Day stickers into memorials Tuesday, placing “I Voted” decals at sites honoring Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents during the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge.

Photos from Minneapolis showed dozens of stickers covering signs, poles and other objects at the memorial sites. The gesture tied Election Day directly to an immigration crackdown that became one of Minnesota’s most contentious political issues this year.

Good, a 37-year-old writer and mother, and Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, were killed in January during federal immigration operations. Their deaths triggered protests and continuing demands from their families for greater transparency and accountability.

Some voters explicitly connected their ballots to the shootings. A retired physician who had worked with Pretti left his sticker at the memorial, while another voter said visiting Good’s memorial made his vote feel connected to what Minneapolis experienced during the federal operation.

Immigration enforcement remained a major issue for Minnesota voters throughout the campaign. The Star Tribune reported that several voters cited Operation Metro Surge and ICE activity as important reasons for supporting Democratic candidates.

The memorials ultimately became more than places of mourning on Election Day, serving as visible expressions of how deeply the federal immigration crackdown shaped political engagement across Minneapolis.

Sources:

• The Hill – MBFC Rating

The post Minnesota Voters Leave ‘I Voted’ Stickers at Memorials for ICE Shooting Victims appeared first on News Facts Network.

The 30-year Senate career of Maine Republican Susan Collins is coming to an end.

The powerful incumbent chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee conceded early Wednesday to Troy Jackson, a progressive challenger who was virtually unknown on the national stage until his rushed elevation as the Democratic replacement candidate just over three months ago.

“A little more than 100 days ago, I stood in front of you at our convention and asked you to put your faith in a logger from Allagash,” Jackson told supporters in Portland, referring to a rapid nominating process he went through after former nominee Graham Platner dropped out. Like Platner, Jackson came from the left flank of the Democratic Party and ran a campaign focused on the concerns of working-class people in the face of a system he presented as stacked in favor of the wealthy and corporate interests.

Collins, who has represented the state since 1997, ran as an independent force in Washington able to secure critical federal funds for Mainers. But she was brought down with the baggage of the Republican brand on a night when Democrats overperformed in critical swing states and handily seized control of both chambers of Congress.

Related

Even Anti-Trans Panic Couldn’t Save Republicans in Deep-Red Texas

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Maine in the United States Senate,” Collins said in a statement released early Wednesday. “I’m proud of all I have been able to accomplish for our state and for our country in the past 30 years.”

While Collins often presented herself as the rare Republican who breaks ranks with President Donald Trump, an analysis by Congressional Quarterly Roll Call found that her votes aligned with Trump 90 percent of the time in both the president’s first and second terms.

“We now see her failing to stand up to a brutal, irresponsible, greedy and corrupt regime,” Maine Democratic Party Chair Charlie Dingman told The Intercept. “She has not used her seniority or her power to aggressively stand in the way of that destructive presidency, and that is a serious and fundamental difference between 2020 and 2026.”

Dingman argued that Collins faced a fundamentally different political environment than she did in 2020, pointing to her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Still, Collins’s split support among some Democratic voters was evident Tuesday in Lewiston, where several residents told The Intercept they were supporting the Republican senator despite filling their ballots out to Democrats otherwise.

“I am Susan Collins all the way,” said Anne Marie Hastings, a voter who also expressed strong support for Matt Dunlap, a progressive running against former Republican Gov. Paul LePage in a closely watched race in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

“I’m a registered Democrat, but when it comes to things like this, I go with what I feel is right, not the party that they belong to,” Hastings said. She also praised Collins for advocating for shipbuilding contracts at Bath Iron Works, where she said her brothers had worked.

But John Cabral III, a shipbuilder at the same shipyard, disputed Collins’s record.

“She didn’t bring any extra work,” Cabral told The Intercept. “So that’s all propaganda.”

Cabral said he supports Jackson because of his commitment to organized labor.

“I think they are going to wake up and smell the coffee,” Cabral said of Maine voters. “[Mainers] have never seen a senator fight as hard as Troy, especially for labor.”

Another Lewiston voter, Ouellette Bertram, said he voted blue across the board, with the exception of “the Republican lady,” who he said he just plain likes.

“She’s been doing a good job, I think,” Bertram said.

But other Maine residents didn’t share the sentiment toward the Republican incumbent — and the loyalty ultimately failed to secure her reelection.

Related

Susan Collins’s Committee Bought Trucks the Army Didn’t Want. Then Campaign Donations Poured In.

Democrat-supporting voter Bryan Golay said he wished the party would move to the left but voted against what he described as the GOP’s “enshittification” of America, much of which, he said, has come during Collins’s time in Washington.

“If you can’t get shit done in 30 years, why are we gonna give you another term?” Golay said.

Mags Krantz, a master’s student of social work who works with children with disabilities, said she voted for all Democrats, including Dunlap and Jackson, citing GOP-backed cuts to social services.

“They just cut funding for my job, and for my career,” Krantz told The Intercept outside a polling site in Lewiston on Tuesday. “I really voted for my future, but I also voted for every vulnerable child that I work with every single day that really wishes adults would vote for them over money.”

Speaking to a crowd of supporters on the eve of the election, Jackson toasted the grassroots organizing that has powered his rapidly assembled campaign into the most serious challenge yet to Collins’s hold on her seat.

“This government is fundamentally broken, and it only works for the wealthiest people in this country — that’s what we’re up against right now,” Jackson said. “They are going to outspend the hell out of us. There’s no doubt about it. But they don’t have people like you in rooms like this across this state and across the country.”

Jackson, who spent nearly 20 years in the state legislature, ran on a platform focused on lowering costs for working-class families, expanding healthcare access, and combating the influence of wealthy donors and corporate PACs in Washington. He entered the race somewhat hastily in late July, after former Democratic nominee Graham Platner withdrew from the Senate race following a rape allegation, which Platner denied. 

The Collins–Jackson race was one of the top targets for national attention this cycle — most of it on purpose. In October, The Intercept reported that Defending Main Street, a Republican-aligned super PAC associated with Collins spent between $20,000 and $25,000 attacking Jackson on topics such as cost-of-living and taxes. The ads mistakenly were targeted to audiences in Portland, Oregon, rather than the intended Portland, Maine.

In the right Portland, the senator-elect promised supporters at his election night party that he’d represent the interests of working-class voters when he gets to Washington.

“If you’re watching this after getting home from a shift or sitting at the table wondering how you’re gonna pay the next bill, I want you to hear something very clearly: You are sending somebody to Washington who knows exactly what that feels like,” Jackson told the crowd. “But more importantly, I am going to remember who sent me there.”

This developing story has been updated. Noah Hurowitz reported from Lewiston and Portland, Maine.

The post Troy Jackson Ousts Susan Collins in Maine, Replacing 30-Year Republican Senator With a Progressive appeared first on The Intercept.

Rising Democratic star made his re-election campaign a referendum on the Trump administration’s misdeeds

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Jon Ossoff has been re-elected to the Senate in Georgia, defeating Mike Collins, his Republican challenger.

Ossoff made his re-election campaign a referendum on the Trump administration’s misdeeds, highlighting self-serving stock trades and business deals by the president and those in the president’s orbit, as well as the consequences of the war in Iran and Trump’s trade policies on the pocketbooks of Georgia’s voters.

Voter turnout has surged as Americans cast their ballots in the critical US midterm elections. Although mostly smooth, there have been some voting snags across the country. In Westchester county in New York, voting machines have been unable to scan as many as 250,000 ballots, and manual counting could delay the announcement of results there by several days. Meanwhile, a lack of paper ballots saw voters turned away from some polling stations in Illinois, while heavy rain and flooding forced election officials to relocate some polling places in Florida

• US midterm elections – live updates

•  Track live results from all 50 states

Experts weigh in on the promises and pitfalls of Google’s new policy, which leaves schools unable to use Search unless they opt into its AI tools.

Victory for the party comes despite unusual and aggressive efforts by Republicans to redraw congressional districts

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrats are poised to take control of the US House of Representatives after two tumultuous years of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A change in House control would give Democrats a perch to conduct robust oversight of the administration for its final two years.

Republicans currently hold 218 seats in the House and Democrats have 214. (There is one vacancy in a Republican seat and one vacancy in a Democratic seat, and one Republican member switched his party affiliation to independent.) Democrats need to flip just three seats to gain control of the House, something they are expected to do easily.

As part of the company’s post-midterms marketing campaign, data centers could be called “AI compute campuses.”

Party hopes disapproval with Trump’s presidency gives them advantage as Republicans defend slim majority

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Republicans are defending their majority in the US Senate against resurgent Democrats, who believe voters’ dissatisfaction with Donald Trump will put them back in control of Congress’ upper chamber.

The president’s opponents notched an early win, with the Associated Press calling Georgia’s Senate race for Jon Ossoff, the incumbent who appears to have easily won a second term in a state that voted for Trump in 2024. His easy victory underscored the degree to which Republicans’ political fortunes appear to have shifted since Trump returned to the White House, but many contested races remain uncalled.

Fans of the Roku aquarium will need to find a new way to just keep swimming.

Voting machine issues affect Westchester county, New York, but emergency ballots are provided to voters

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Voting in US midterm elections took place relatively smoothly nationwide on Tuesday, with only a handful of reported issues as tens of millions of voters cast their ballots.

With control of the US Congress in the balance, glitches at polling locations were minimal as Americans lined up to vote.

Report says cost of maintenance could soon reach £2m a week, including 24-hour patrols to avert fire risk

The Palace of Westminster will be at risk of a Notre Dame-style fire or a similar catastrophic event if MPs do not tackle the issue of funding refurbishments, a parliamentary committee has said.

Decisions about how and when to begin a full restoration of the building, which is Grade I-listed and a Unesco world heritage site, have been repeatedly delayed amid disagreement over how it should be done and spiralling costs.

(The Center Square) – Control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance Tuesday as voters across the country cast ballots in midterm elections that could reshape the balance of power in Washington.

Apple is adding vertical tabs and an Adaptive Dark Mode to Safari with iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3 and macOS Golden Gate 27.3. The December updates will also expand Siri's browser controls, including organizing tabs and clearing site-specific history, with a later feature allowing Siri to understand and answer questions about content across multiple open webpages. MacRumors reports: Vertical Tabs are located on the left side of the display and use icons by default to save space, but there is an option to make the tab bar wider to show website titles as well. Vertical Tabs work with both Topics and Tab Groups to keep things organized. Topics are created when automatic Apple Intelligence tab sorting is turned on in iOS 27. Pinning tabs by dragging, quickly swapping between Tab Groups, and other features also continue to work. [...] Apple is adding Adaptive Dark Mode for websites that don't have a dark mode design option by default. If you use Dark Mode and then browse to a website with a bright background color, Safari will offer an option to "Try" Adaptive Dark Mode. After tapping Try, Safari renders a Dark Mode version of the page that makes the background darker, changes text contrast, inverts logos and graphics, recolors vector artwork, lifts raised surfaces, and rebalances layered shadows. Each website will be adapted based on what's needed to make it readable, so not every tweak is applied to every site. You can opt to turn Adaptive Dark Mode on for all sites or on a site-by-site basis after using it. If a site has a native dark mode or has a dark design already, Adaptive Dark Mode won't activate. Developers can also add a tag that causes Safari to ignore Adaptive Dark Mode and show the website as the developer intended.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the first set of polls close, the economy and the state of democracy appear to be top issues for US voters

• You can catch all the latest Guardian coverage in our live blog and peruse our coverage here

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

Donald Trump has called it “most important in our lifetime” while senator Bernie Sanders says it’s the most important “in modern American history”. Barack Obama called it a “circuit-breaker” and the “last, best chance” to rein in the president.

In any case, all eyes will be on the United States on Wednesday Australian time for the 2026 midterm elections. Will Americans use the day as a referendum on Trump’s second term? Will Democrats see a clean sweep of Congress?

The AI boom may be showing signs of slowing on Wall Street, where stock market jitters caused Google to lose half-a-trillion dollars in market cap last week. But sales of large systems needed to run scientific and AI workloads are still going up.

That’s the news out of Hyperion Research, which today issued a new report finding that sales of on-prem servers for HPC and AI for science use cases increased by nearly 20% in the first six months of 2026 compared to 2025.

HPC and AI for science on-prem sales 1H26 (Source Hyperion)

Compared to the first half of 2025, when Hyperion recorded $13.8 billion in revenue for HPC and AI for science (AI4S), HPC and AI4S system spending in the first half of 2026 came in at $16.5 billion, representing a 19.9% increase in spending. However, unit deliveries were only up 4.4%, which points to component- and system-price hikes. Server node volume grew at 14.1%, indicating that, while the average system had more nodes, each node was more expensive than before.

“Organizations and institutions are continuing to invest in their advanced computing infrastructure due to both replacing aging machines and the desire to adopt AI into their workflows to support their businesses and missions,” stated Hyperion CEO Earl Joseph in a press release.

HPC sales in 2025 also started out hot, growing at a 22% rate, Joseph said nearly a year ago at the SC25 conference in St. Louis, Missouri. That was carryover from a scorching 2024, when on-prem HPC and AI servers grew by 23.5% over the previous year and the hottest year in HPC in three decades, according to Joseph. However, sales of on-prem HPC and AI systems cooled down a bit in the second half of 2025, finishing the year with a 16.9% increase over the previous year. That is still quite good, considering the long-term average growth was around six to eight percent, per Joseph.

HPC and AI for science on-prem market share 1H26 (Source Hyperion)

Hyperion keeps a close eye the HPC market, which today is bifurcated into on-prem and cloud categories. Hyperion groups sales of traditional HPC systems used for modeling and simulation workloads into the same category as large HPC clusters used to train and run AI models for science, referred to as AI for science, or AI4S. The company bases its reports on multiple surveys of buyers and sellers that it conducts throughout the year.

Hyperion also noted that Dell has taken over the number one spot in on-prem HPC and AI4S sales with a 24% share of the market on total sales of $4.2 billion. Dell displaces HPE, which recorded a 21% share of the market over the first half of 2026.

HPE had held the number one seat in on-prem HPC sales continually for 25 years, Joseph points out. HPE had very big year in 2025 with sales of multiple exascale-class leadership supercomputers, so perhaps it’s not surprising to see a slightly slower pace of sales this year. However, there must be an emphasis on “slightly,” as HPE still recorded a 21% market share for the first half of 2026, down just one percentage point from where it finished 2025, according to Hyperion’s figures.

A bigger factor may be Dell’s execution, which Hyperion labeled “impressive” and fueled by “a rapidly growing segment of customers acquiring mid-range AI-focused machines to integrate AI capabilities with the traditional scientific and engineering workflows and applications.”

“The growth reflects both a nominal increase in units being purchased and significant increases in system prices, and Dell has taken full advantage of user demand for AI infrastructure,” Joseph stated.

Hyperion is expected to provide a more detailed inspection of the HPC and AI4S server market during the SC26 conference taking place in Chicago, Illinois, in two weeks.

The post Sales of HPC and AI4S Servers Accelerated This Year, Hyperion Says appeared first on HPCwire.

President Trump remained optimistic about GOP chances ahead of polls closing: "We have a good chance. But we're not going to be embarrassed."

(The Center Square)—U.S. voters and poll workers confronted defective scanners, false bomb threats, and flooding during a contentious Election Day 2026 in which control of Congress and the state houses were at stake.

Nine people were killed when a Learjet 60 that departed Austin for the Bahamas crashed in Palm Beach County on Sunday.

President Trump said on the eve of U.S. elections that a deal with Iran "could happen," but after new U.S. strikes, Tehran called America's response to the latest proposal "not convincing."

Dating and AI companion apps have new age gate restrictions, while apps that share your location will have to disclose it.

(The Center Square) - Polls are closed in several eastern states as vote counting begins and control of Congress hangs in the balance.

An adviser to the EU's highest court says Google's Gemini may violate publishers' copyright when it reproduces recognizable portions of their articles or circumvents paywalls and other technical protections to generate answers. Reuters reports: The case before the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union pitted Hungarian website operator Like Company against US-based Google's artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. A ruling against Google, which could force the tech giant to pay fees for the use of such content, could throw a lifeline to online media such as Like Company. They have seen traffic dwindle as news summaries written by AI chatbots like Gemini increasingly replace traditional search engines' results, which include hyperlinks to the media websites. "When an LLM (large language model)-driven chatbot retrieves a publication from a press publisher's website, reuses that publication to generate an answer, and provides that answer to the user, the press publisher's right may be infringed in certain circumstances," Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said. Gemini's answers fall under the publishers' right of reproduction when chatbots access publications by unlawfully "circumventing paywalls or other technical barriers, or when they reuse "the form of expression of that publication in a recognizable manner," he said. Copyright rules do not protect the "mere facts" reported by press publications, but "only the specific form of expression," he added. On the other hand, he said, the use of material protected by copyright to train LLMs -- AI systems that use vast amounts of text to generate human-like responses and summarize information -- is "freely permitted under the text and data mining exception." Szpunar said there was no evidence that Google had used the Hungarian publisher's articles to train Gemini. The court, which follows the majority of its advisers' non-binding opinions, will rule in the coming months. "Google's powerful gatekeeping role in search makes this particularly important. Publishers depend on Google to reach readers, while Google increasingly delivers AI-generated answers directly to users," said Angela Mills Wade, the council's executive director. "Publishers should not have to choose between search visibility and protecting their rights. Nor should Google's control over access to audiences become leverage to secure publishers' content for AI services," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This live blog is now closed. You can follow election night live here.

• Election night – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

• Rolling House results

• Rolling Senate results

It has just gone past 06:30 in North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia where polls have now opened.

Here are some of the key voter issues shaping the US midterm elections:

The economy: Despite Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge to tackle affordability issues, the economy consistently ranks as voters’ top concern.

Iran: Trump’s decision to go to war with the Tehran regime has exacerbated economic worries. Iran’s retaliatory decision to close the strait of Hormuz has driven up gasoline prices for US motorists. It also represents a breach of his pledge to end the US’s supposed addiction to “forever wars”.

Immigration: Enforcement and closing the border remains a signature issue for Trump. He repeatedly boasts of the impact of his closure of the southern border as one of his biggest achievements, making comparisons with the performance of Joe Biden.

AI and datacenters: AI has emerged as a key campaign issue, with surveys showing a majority of voters holding negative views on it, even as Trump champions its development and attempts to rename it “super intelligence”.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other critics are accusing Google of trying to pressure U.S. schools to use AI.

If you are in line to cast your ballot before a polling site closes, you have the right to remain in line and vote.

‘It’s the disregard for the rule of law. It just seems like they’re thumbing their nose at it’

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

In the battleground state of Maine, Todd Cox, 63, has supported the state’s incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins not once, but twice, in previous elections. Not this time.

On Tuesday, Cox, a technology professional, cast his vote for Collins’s Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson – driven not by pressing local issues, but broader concern “for the direction the country is going in”, he said.

Some of the biggest names in travel are turning to “practical AI” to simplify trip booking and planning.

Anil Menon has voted in the US midterm elections by casting an electronic ballot from the International Space Station. He said he filled out the ballot on his station computer and sent it to election officials in Harris county, Texas. In a social media post, he said all three US crew members onboard also had the chance to vote.

• US midterm elections 2026 live

Midterms didn’t appear to have huge impact, though predicted wins for Democrats could mean more regulation

US tech stocks made a recovery on Tuesday afternoon after a selloff spooked investors over AI spending.

Tuesday’s midterm elections didn’t appear to have a huge impact on Wall Street, though investors are predicting Democrats get at least a majority in the House and potentially gain seats in the Senate, which could lead to more AI regulation.

Speaking in Antigua, the king did not give explicit support for reparations but said he wanted to ‘address past wrongs’

King Charles has said that deepening his understanding of the horrors of slavery has made him more determined to address the wrongs of the past, as Caribbean leaders and campaigners intensified demands for an apology and reparations from Britain.

“We cannot change the actions of those who came before us,” Charles told leaders at the opening of the Commonwealth summit in Antigua and Barbuda on Tuesday. “We can, however, learn from the past.

(The Center Square) — Federal officials sent letters on Tuesday to people suspected of recruiting an alleged spoiler candidate in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, in a move to possibly bring federal charges in the consequential case.

Top election lawyer and lawmakers received notes over alleged scheme to confuse voters with two Dan Sullivans

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

The justice department has sent letters to a top Democratic election lawyer and other Democrats informing them they could be targets in a federal investigation into efforts to get an Alaska man with the same name as Republican senator Daniel Sullivan on to the ballot.

The decision to send the letters is very unusual. The justice department has long avoided taking actions that could affect an election close to election day. It is also not common to send out target letters so early in an investigation; receiving a target letter does not mean that a person will be charged with a crime.

The incident took place in the same province where a grizzly attacked a group of schoolchildren last November

A mother is dead and her daughter is missing in western Canada after a suspected grizzly bear attack in the same community where a bear attacked a group of schoolchildren earlier in the year.

On Tuesday, the British Columbia conservation officer service said in a social media post that it had launched a search for the two missing people on the weekend, and that during the search on Sunday an officer found the mother’s body. The search for her 19-year-old daughter is ongoing.

Airlines have raised baggage fees and ticket prices to help offset the surging cost of jet fuel this year.

George Madgwick, party leader on Hampshire county council, faces charges related to four teenagers between 2008 and 2021

Reform UK’s leader on Hampshire county council has been charged with 12 counts of rape and one of distributing indecent images of a child.

George Madgwick, 37, who is a councillor in Portsmouth and leads the Reform group on the council, was a prominent voice linked to recent protests in the city connected to the arrival of asylum seekers on small boats.

During a video celebrating Bethesda's 40th anniversary, the studio officially confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI will be titled The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. "Thank you for 40 years of shared memories," wrote Bethesda in a separate tweet. "We can't wait to make even more together with The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. Development continues, and while it'll be some time before we're ready to share more, it feels great to finally reveal the name and location with you." Video Games Chronicle reports: "You know, as we're here in the 40th anniversary, we think about all of the games we've made," Bethesda's executive producer Todd Howard said in the video, walking past a display case. "And you know, every day when I walk by this case, obviously I look at the games and think about them, but more so I think about the teams that made them, and the time and the passion that everybody put into the games. And then what they meant to all of you, and hearing from you, and the time that you spent in them, how meaningful that was to you, and to let you know when we hear that, how meaningful that is to us. And so even though yes, we're looking back, we're also looking forward to all we're doing, particularly with the Fallout franchise and obviously The Elder Scrolls. You know, everybody's always asking about Elder Scrolls 6. And we thought, hey, given the the moment, what a perfect time to tell you what The Elder Scrolls 6 is actually called." The video then showed the logo for the game.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 36% of registered voters had cast ballots by 2:53 p.m., with Election Day voting continuing until polls close at 8 p.m.

BREAKING NEWS:  From 2:53 p.m. to roughly 4:04 p.m., Delaware added 22,309 ballots, pushing the statewide total from 292,484 to 314,793 — or 38.9% of registered voters. Nearly all of the increase came from Election Day polling places, which rose by 22,216 votes to 164,818. Absentee ballots ticked up by just 93, while early voting remained unchanged at 129,584. Democrats accounted for the largest share of the new votes (+10,387), bringing their total to 158,101 and their turnout rate to 47% of registered Democrats. Republicans added 6,386 ballots (now 89,186, or 45% of registered Republicans), and unaffiliated and other voters added 5,536 (now 67,506, or 24%). The afternoon pace shows steady in-person turnout continuing with several hours left before polls close at 8 p.m.

DOVER, Del. — More than 292,000 Delawareans had cast ballots by mid-afternoon Tuesday, pushing statewide turnout to about 36% with several hours of Election Day voting remaining.

The state’s Election Voted List showed 292,484 ballots cast as of 2:53 p.m. Nov. 3, including early, absentee and Election Day voting.

The party figures reflect voters’ registration, not which candidates they supported.

Registered Democrats accounted for 147,714 ballots, or about 44.4% of registered Democrats statewide. Republicans had cast 82,800 ballots, representing about 41.5% of registered Republicans.

Another 61,970 ballots came from unaffiliated voters and those registered with other parties, representing about 22.3% of that group.

Democrats make up roughly 41% of Delaware’s registered voters but accounted for slightly more than half of ballots cast through mid-afternoon. Republicans were turning out at a rate relatively close to Democrats, while turnout among unaffiliated and minor-party voters remained substantially lower.

How Delawareans have voted

Absentee voting accounted for 20,298 ballots: 12,915 Democrats, 3,899 Republicans and 3,484 voters registered as unaffiliated or with other parties.

Early voting, which ended Sunday, produced 129,584 ballots: 66,540 Democrats, 37,456 Republicans and 25,588 other voters.

Election Day polling places had recorded 142,602 ballots by mid-afternoon, including 68,259 Democrats, 41,445 Republicans and 32,898 other voters.

That brought the statewide totals to:

• Democrats: 147,714
• Republicans: 82,800
• Unaffiliated and other parties: 61,970

Total: 292,484

Election Day voting accelerates

Polling-place voting had grown rapidly Tuesday, rising from roughly 55,000 ballots earlier in the day to more than 142,000 by 2:53 p.m.

Early in-person voting closed Sunday with 129,584 ballots cast.

Absentee ballots were also continuing to be received Tuesday.

County totals

New Castle County led the state with 145,875 ballots cast through mid-afternoon.

Sussex County had recorded 98,771 ballots, while Kent County had recorded 47,838.

Sussex County has generated particularly strong early and absentee participation relative to its population, while New Castle County was accounting for much of the Election Day voting volume.

Turnout approaching 2022 levels

Delaware’s 2022 midterm general election finished with turnout of about 42.7% of registered voters.

With turnout already near 36% by mid-afternoon Tuesday, Delaware was approaching that level with several hours of voting remaining.

The final turnout percentage will depend on the remainder of Election Day participation and the final absentee count.

The figures should not be interpreted as an indication of how Democratic, Republican or unaffiliated voters cast their ballots. Candidate preferences will only become clear as election results are reported.

To Go Box

• What: Delaware general election
• When: Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026
• Current turnout: 292,484 ballots as of 2:53 p.m., about 36% of registered voters
• Early voting: 129,584 ballots
• Absentee voting: 20,298 ballots
• Election Day voting: 142,602 ballots
• Source: Delaware Department of Elections Election Voted List and Oct. 1, 2026, voter registration totals

Awards connect private fusion companies with DOE National Laboratories and U.S. universities to accelerate commercial fusion energy

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science has announced $8.5 million in fiscal year 2026 funding for 28 awards through the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. These awards partner U.S. private fusion companies with DOE National Laboratories and universities to address critical scientific and technological challenges on the path toward commercial fusion energy.

Prior to today’s announcement, the INFUSE program management team opened the FY 2027 Request for Assistance (RFA), introducing expanded eligibility for consortia and a new review topic for fusion pilot plant preconceptual designs.

“The race to commercial fusion will not be won in isolation. It demands a seamless partnership between the pioneering intellect of our National Labs and universities and the speed and daring of private capital,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “Every challenge we solve through INFUSE brings us one step closer to an era of energy abundance that will transform our economy, revitalize manufacturing, and secure American leadership for generations.”

INFUSE accelerates commercial fusion energy development through public-private collaborations that support foundational research and innovative technologies, helping unlock fusion’s potential to provide abundant, reliable, domestic energy. These efforts align with the Fusion Science & Technology (S&T) roadmap, which outlines a clear path for addressing critical S&T challenges through public-private partnerships.

The 28 selected projects include 17 led by National Laboratories and 11 led by universities, with partnerships involving 22 distinct commercial enterprises. These projects will advance research in modeling and simulation, materials science, plasma diagnostic development, and enabling technologies to bring the United States closer to achieving economically viable fusion energy.

The INFUSE program solicited proposals from the fusion industry and selected projects for one- or two-year awards, with total funding of $8.5 million and individual project budgets ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. Projects were selected through a competitive peer review process managed by the INFUSE leadership team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Find the full list of projects on www.science.osti.gov.

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy

The post DOE Announces $8.5M for Fusion Energy Public-Private Partnerships appeared first on HPCwire.

Triumphal arch continues to face legal challenges as government says DC area project will take up to 39 months

The US justice department said on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s proposed 250ft (76 meter) triumphal arch in Washington would not be completed until after the end of his second term.

If it is given ⁠the go-ahead, the ⁠justice department said it ​expected an initial six to eight months of construction focused on excavation and foundation work that could begin as soon as Thursday, with above-ground construction ⁠beginning in May 2027 at the earliest. Total construction is anticipated to take 33 to 39 months, the government said.

Control of the Senate and House of Representatives, both currently held by the Republicans, is at stake

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Americans are heading to the polls today in US midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump’s second presidency and a chance for opponents to rein in his untrammeled power.

At stake is control of the US Senate and House of Representatives, both currently held by Republicans, and in recent days, the two parties have scrambled to deliver their final pitches to voters. Additionally, there are elections for governor in 36 states, as well for state legislatures, sheriff’s offices, and on the approval of ballot initiatives nationwide.

Óscar Puente also announces his withdrawal from upcoming election following disaster that killed 69 people

Spain’s transport minister handed in his resignation on Tuesday after the train crash that killed 69 people last week, one of the worst railway disasters in Europe this century.

Óscar Puente, who had earlier pledged to work “tirelessly” to restore confidence in the world’s second-largest high-speed rail network, also said he was withdrawing from the country’s upcoming general election.

Nobel winner warns the tech could be near to triggering major incident such as power or banking shutdown

One of the “godfathers of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton, has said it could turn out that humans would have been better off never developing the technology as he warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems.

The Nobel prize-winning computer scientist told the Guardian he is not a “doomer” about the technology that is underpinned by his groundbreaking research into artificial neural networks and believes AI has the potential to lead to a “wonderful future” but he said “it might be that we would have been better off never developing it”.

Residents are sending a clear message about the violent deportations taking place across the US this midterm cycle

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Minnesota voters left “I Voted” stickers on memorial sites for Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, the two US citizens killed by federal immigration officials earlier this year.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Good, a writer and mother of three, were killed during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the Minneapolis region in January.

An AI chatbot was consulted about military action, raising questions about security risks, sycophancy and hallucination.

Akande joining the international court of justice comes a decade after previous British judge failed to get re-elected

A British judge has been elected on to the UN’s international court of justice, in a big British diplomatic victory that comes almost 10 years after a previous British judge failed to get re-elected.

Dapo Akande will now serve as one of the ICJ’s 15 judges for a minimum nine-year term.

Mozilla is testing a new Firefox Nightly feature called Mini Window that lets users pop an entire webpage into a small, always-on-top window stripped of most browser controls. "The idea behind the Firefox Mini Window feature is simple: allow users to move a currently open tab (or a section of a tab) into a separate mini window," writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen. "Think of it as moving a tab from one window to what appears like a web app." From the report: At first blush, there's no address bar, controls, scroll bar, or anything else that would normally be associated with Firefox. The Mini Window appears to be a web app, without having to actually create it. However, when I hover my cursor inside the Mini Window, I do see the address bar, the back/forward/reload buttons, and the window close button -- and that's it. The browser gets out of your way, so the only thing I see is the content. On top of that (pun intended), the Mini Window stays on top of other Firefox windows, so I can have that popped-out content always in focus while I work on other things. This feature comes in handy when I'm working with limited display space (say, on a laptop) and need to reference a page while working on another. For multitasking, it comes in very handy. [...] Let's say I'm writing a paper on Linux and need to read a particular article for background information. I could have my document open in the main window, and then open the article in question in a Mini Window. I could then reference the article without having to click back and forth between them -- even when working on a smaller display. Here's another use case I've found: When using MacOS's Stage Manager feature, I only have one window available at a time. The Mini Window bypasses that limitation, so I can have my main browser window focused as well as the page open in the Mini Window. Another handy way I like to use Mini Window is to open a favorite search engine, move it to a Mini Window, and then I have an always-ready search tool at my fingertips. I could also open my favorite AI service and use it in the same way.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An Oklahoma man faces federal charges after allegedly sending hundreds of letters containing white powder to public officials and media outlets ahead of the 2024 and 2026 elections.

Jacob Morley was serving a life sentence at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tennessee when he escaped by slipping through a fence on the property.

The armed father who was hailed for his heroic actions​ during a deadly shooting​ at his daughters' elementary school in Oregon frantically called authorities before he went after the shooter.

(The Center Square) – In a multiagency action in Texas border counties, federal agents seized more than 1,600 pounds of narcotics, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and arrested 89 people.

Control of the House and Senate are at stake as Republicans and Democrats focus on battleground races in key states.

US voters vote today in the midterm elections, which will decide whether Republicans retain control of the House and Senate. A Democratic victory in either chamber would significantly constrain Trump’s ability to advance his domestic agenda. Even if Republicans retain one or both chambers, a reduced majority could make passing legislation more difficult, and could pave the way for Democrats to launch investigations into the administration

• US midterm elections 2026 live: Americans go to the polls to decide control of Congress

• What are the races to watch in the US midterm elections and why do they matter?

In announcement geared to schools, tech giant shows how entwined AI is with the world’s most popular website

Google just acknowledged that you can’t use Google Search without using artificial intelligence.

The search giant announced a slate of new AI products for classrooms and schools on Tuesday as well as more ways for teachers and schools to limit or restrict use of those AI tools. The company said the schools should have control over whether students use AI in the classroom. There’s one catch, though: if a school or teacher blocks the use of Google’s AI features, students won’t be able to use Google Search.

Lumai uses light to perform AI inference to lower data center power consumption by 90% and unlock 50x higher processing speeds

OXFORD, England, Nov. 3, 2026 — The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a UK public R&D funding agency, will deploy 3D optical inference technology from Lumai, an optical compute company building next-generation AI infrastructure.

With concerns about data center energy usage high on political and industrial agendas, ARIA will onboard Lumai Iris inference servers as the first optical inference platform in its Scaling Inference Lab – run by CommonAI CIC, a non-profit organization focused on collaborative AI development. The deployment will enable researchers to evaluate the value of optical compute in a commercial data center environment, as well as its potential to lower data center power consumption by 90%. Lumai Iris servers could also cut total cost of ownership to around one-tenth of conventional GPU architectures.

Lumai’s Iris technology runs production-scale large language models (LLMs), and works by carrying out AI computation within beams of light operating in three-dimensional space, rather than just using transistors in a silicon chip. Because numbers are encoded as light intensity and passive optical components, such as lenses, are used for mathematical operations, the computation itself uses a negligible amount of energy, which barely rises as performance scales.

“Power, not demand, now limits how fast AI can be deployed.” said Dr. Xianxin Guo, co-founder and CEO of Lumai. “Running a multi-node system in a commercial data center is where new compute architectures prove whether they are ready for real deployment. This collaboration at ARIA’s Scaling Inference Lab validates our roadmap with a real system operating in a commercial environment.”

ARIA is an independent, UK government-backed funding organization supporting advanced AI and other transformative technologies. Created by an Act of Parliament, and sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, it champions scientists and engineers pursuing ambitious ideas that could lead to major scientific and technological breakthroughs. Particularly those that benefit wider society. Its Scaling Inference Lab exists to stress-test next-generation compute architectures on real workloads in a live commercial setting – using standard power, cooling, and rack integration.

“Lumai’s technology is the most mature optical compute platform we evaluated, and has the potential to make AI inference more energy-efficient and less dependent on constrained global hardware supply chains,” said David Lewis, ARIA’s Chief Science and Technology Officer. “The Scaling Inference Lab provides the means to test that potential openly and independently at rack scale.”

A Route to More Efficient Inference

Creating data center efficiencies will be essential as the demand for AI inference accelerates. Traditional AI inference runs electronically in silicon, which is power-hungry at scale. If relying only on these conventional accelerators to meet the computation ambition of even just one leading AI lab, it is estimated that the infrastructure bill would reach $100 trillion within the next five years. Added to this, the additional energy requirement to be in excess of 1,000 GW. These energy and cost requirements would make it impossible to meet this ambition without a change in the physics of AI computation.

‍Sovereign AI Needs Smarter Compute

For the UK, the challenge is also one of sovereignty. Building the domestic AI compute capacity the country needs will depend on getting more from limited power and grid capacity, and on bringing UK-developed technologies into real data centers.

“As the UK builds out its sovereign AI compute requirements, it has to do so within the power it has. We need to find and then prove new, innovative approaches to AI compute,” said Gavin Ferris, CEO of CommonAI. “The Scaling Inference Lab was set up for exactly that – to test innovative technology, such as Lumai’s optical compute, on real workloads alongside today’s systems.”

Tackling Compute-Heavy Prefill Workloads

Large-model inference happens in two phases: prefill, which is compute-bound, and decode, which is memory-bandwidth-bound. While specialized inference hardware has increasingly focused on decode, Lumai’s approach is different. It targets the compute and matrix-heavy prefill stage before the first token is generated. Lumai Iris performs millions of matrix operations in a single optical cycle.

Rather than a replacement for silicon, Iris servers are particularly effective for prefill when paired with silicon for decode – delivering at least 16x better energy efficiency per inference than silicon-only systems, addressing the power and cost ceilings now constraining AI deployment.

The ARIA deployment builds on the April 2026 launch of Iris Nova, Lumai’s first product available for evaluation and the first optical AI accelerator engineered for data center-scale inference. ‍

More from HPCwire

• Lumai’s Photonic Chip Harnesses Light for Big AI Compute Speedup
• Lumai Debuts Iris Optical Compute System for Real-Time LLM Inference

‍About Lumai

Lumai is the optical compute company advancing energy-efficient AI inference with the unique power of light. Its 3D optical computing architecture accelerates compute-intensive inference workloads beyond the energy constraints of conventional compute, helping data centers increase AI capacity within power budgets. Iris Nova, the first server in the family, is available for evaluation today. Spun out of world-leading optics research at the University of Oxford in 2021, Lumai’s mission is to unlock sustainable intelligence at global scale. Lumai’s work has been recognized with the Falling Walls Award for Science Breakthrough of the Year 2025 and Best Overall Technology at the OCP Future Technologies Symposium, and the company is part of Intel Ignite’s first London cohort. Visit Lumai at www.lumai.ai. ‍‍

About ARIA

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is a UK R&D funding agency built to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. By empowering scientists to reach for the edge of the possible, ARIA pursues ambitious programmes that catalyse progress and create new communities and industries. Through bringing together scientists and engineers with diverse expertise, the agency breaks down traditional silos to chart new pathways for technological advancement.

‍About the Scaling Inference Lab ‍

Backed by £50m from ARIA and delivered by CommonAI CIC, the Scaling Inference Lab is set up to address a key bottleneck for startups and research groups developing innovative AI hardware: the lack of an open platform to showcase their technologies due to the dominance of large, closed systems in today’s AI hardware market.

Source: Lumai

The post ARIA’s Scaling Inference Lab Deploys Lumai’s Optical Compute Tech appeared first on HPCwire.

Legal body handling identification says three latest victims include two Australians and a Japanese citizen

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

Two Australians are among 69 people who died in last week’s high-speed train collision after Spanish authorities confirmed the identities of three more victims.

A legal body set up to handle the identification work, made up of police and forensics experts, announced in a statement late on Monday the three latest confirmed victims – two Australians and a Japanese citizen. They have not been named.

We’re using our custom-made robot to open and close the iPhone Duo hundreds of thousands of times. Watch along and get your questions answered by CNET editors live.

(The Center Square) — New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill is putting the state's independent port operators on notice they would be subject to criminal sanctions for offloading shipments of Russian diesel under President Donald Trump's new directive aimed at lowering…

It’s Election Day, but a self-described “pro-Trump Administration” content creator is casting aspersions on the democratic process instead, falsely claiming on social media that Democrats in Texas are rigging the midterm election.

Without evidence, posts on Facebook and X said more than 20,000 “fraudulent ballots” cast for Democrats were uncovered in an FBI raid of a warehouse in Houston “last night.”

Local election officials and the FBI said his claims were untrue.

“The information circulating on social media is false,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth.

The FBI’s national office confirmed in a statement that the posts were false.

“No election-related operation occurred,” the statement said.

The posts’ images didn’t support the claim, either.

The first photo is old, and was taken in another state. It shows when the FBI searched the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia, back in January.

The second photo shows a Houston Public Storage facility. We searched for news reports and on the Nexis news database and found no evidence of an FBI raid there, or at any other Public Storage facilities in Houston on either Nov. 2 or early morning Nov. 3.

The third photo shows ballots collected in October from an official drop box in San Francisco, California. In the top left corner the ballots say, “City and County of San Francisco Department of Elections.”

We reached out to the content creator behind these baseless posts on Instagram and did not receive a response.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

RELATED: 2026 Election Day: Live midterm fact-checks of voting misinformation, candidates 

Agriculture, youth visas and emissions agreements nearly tied up under PM’s plan for a much closer relationship with Brussels

• The UK-EU food produce deal: what was agreed and will it affect shoppers?

Andy Burnham is preparing to announce billions of pounds of trade deals with the EU covering everything from youth visas to pet passports under his vision of a much closer relationship with the bloc.

With the prime minister scheduled to meet his European counterparts in Brussels on 20 November, officials have all but agreed three deals that would allow farmers to sell freely to the continent and travellers to take their animals abroad more easily.

Binance says hackers spent months infiltrating its systems through fake job interviews, a tampered developer tool and compromised internal AI tools before stealing $6.34 billion in crypto in the Oct. 29 attack. Co-CEO Richard Teng said Binance has replenished 98% of the affected assets, and that it is still in the process of purchasing outstanding, more illiquid assets. CNBC reports: Preparations for the attack began in June, when a Binance Wallet DevOps engineer downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation "to install a popular AI coding tool after searching for it on a search engine," according to a security report published by Binance Tuesday. It said it detected the suspicious activity, replaced the engineer's device and rotated credentials as a precaution, but that by then the employee's "role and his related colleagues on our wallet infrastructure team was exposed to the hacker." [...] As of Tuesday Binance has rebuilt the affected wallet system and internal AI tool, replaced compromised devices, decommissioned credentials and tokens associated with the affected engineers and expanded security scans across employee devices, Teng told "Squawk on the Street." "We're also getting an independent expert to review everything that we have done, and we'll keep strengthening our defenses as the investigation continues," Teng said. "We're working around the clock with law enforcement agencies and with industry partners to trace and freeze the stolen funds for that front."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Marc Elias, a longtime Democratic attorney and vocal opponent of the Trump administration, received one of about 20 target letters sent by the DOJ in its Alaska ballot investigation.

JOE CURRY
Staff Reporter

The Delaware Debates, general-election debates held biennially at the university, began in 2010 in collaboration between the university’s Center for Political Communication (CPC) and Delaware Public Media. They allowed voters, particularly students, to raise questions and hear from candidates prior to elections.  For the first time since they began, they will not be held.

“The University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication (UD CPC) made the decision to sunset Delaware Debates in 2025. The CPC changed leadership in 2024 and shifted its focus to a research mission dedicated to graduate and undergraduate education in political communication and away from hosting large events such as candidate debates,” Rick Deadwyler, vice president of public affairs at the university, said in a statement to The Review.

The cancellation of the Delaware Debates marks the end of a critical event for local Delawarean voters. Although there were in-person events, the candidates had not participated in a traditional debate. This prompted Dr. Mike Katz, the republican nominee for Senate who is challenging incumbent Sen. Chris Coons, and multiple news outlets to call for a debate between the two candidates.

“Delaware voters deserve better,” Katz said in a press release issued by his campaign on Oct. 14. “They deserve to see us on the same stage, answering the same difficult questions and defending our records, policies and solutions.”

Following the cancellation, members of the university’s chapters of the College Republicans and the College Democrats attempted to have both candidates on campus. Coons and Katz were invited to debate.

In the same press release, the Katz campaign announced that they accepted an invitation to a proposed debate from the College Democrats and College Republicans while Coons had denied the offer.

“When College Democrats and College Republicans unite to organize a debate and the incumbent Senator declines, that is news,” Katz said.

Sophie Douglas, a junior at the university and president of the College Democrats, was one of the students attempting to organize the event. 

“We always think it’s a really good idea to have students have the ability to meet elected officials,” Douglas said.

The groups started planning the event, reaching out to candidates and figuring out logistics when trouble started to emerge. 

“I would say it was a miscommunication about some of the planning logistics of it, and whether or not it would be feasible or not,” Douglas said. 

According to College Democrats, the proposed debate did not happen for reasons involving scheduling, miscommunication and student interest in the event. They made a particular note that there was not an official proposal between the two groups. The College Republicans did not cite the same issues, releasing a press statement on social media on Oct. 14.

This press release criticized the Coons campaign for declining the invite to the proposed debate while applauding Katz for accepting the opportunity. It also claimed that the Coons campaign was disrespectful to students who reached out. The press release closed by announcing an event with Katz, set for Oct. 19.

“Dr. Katz accepted a debate at any time, in any place and with any format on campus,”  the College Republicans said in the statement posted to Instagram. “The Coons campaign scolded individuals for simply reaching out to gauge interest in this debate.”

This accusation was refuted by the College Democrats, who responded with their own press release posted to Instagram on Oct. 15.

“There was no official joint proposal presented by both organizations. The Coons’ campaign did not decline a debate,” the press release said. “It is disappointing that a miscommunication between college students has been misconstrued and brought to social media.”

Coons has been on the university’s campus on multiple occasions, as opposed to Katz, who has not been featured at any official events. This pushed the College Republicans to still try and host Katz on campus prior to the election.

“We decided just to focus on having Dr. Katz at more of a town hall forum,” Kaitlin Houck, the vice president and treasurer of the College Republicans, said. “Since they’ve had the opportunity to ask the current senator, Chris Coons, questions before.”

Pivoting from the debate, the College Republicans hosted Katz in an open-forum style event, in which students and Delawareans were invited to ask the candidate questions before the Nov. 3 election. For over an hour, Katz responded to questions focused on his personal political views along with policies he wishes to enact if elected. 

Questions about issues in higher education were brought up frequently by the students in the audience. Katz said he wanted to invest more in research and education, as they give the United States an advantage over other countries.

Political polarization was also discussed at great length. Katz criticized the current media landscape and the Trump administration, using them as examples of the increase in editorialization of politics and media. He also called for people to challenge the systems that are in place.

The event, despite not matching the size of the Delaware Debates, gave students the opportunity to talk to a candidate whom most had not heard from. 

“Delaware, which is such a small state, I feel like they have more of those opportunities in general,” Douglas said. “So whenever we can find ways to bring them to campus or even bring students together to do that, I think it is really wonderful.” 

Two controversial new features arriving in beta this week will let the Apple Watch rewind and recap conversations.

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday, burning up in the process

Nasa’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which has spent two decades studying the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, is expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, burning up in the process.

The satellite, which was designed to operate with its three telescopes for just two years, is no longer able to steer or observe, and its re-entry is uncontrolled.

Anonymity of individual, whose lawyers had sought injunction citing suicide risk, remains in place subject to any appeal

A “well-known individual” has failed in his attempt to stop two media organisations from publishing allegations of inappropriate sexual activities towards young women, the high court has ruled.

The legal team for the anonymous individual, known in court only as PPT, had claimed he was “highly likely” to attempt suicide if the Guardian and ITN published the allegations, which he denies.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota, Nov. 3, 2026 – With its most recent update of on-premises HPC and AI-for-Science server revenues, Hyperion Research announced today that the market is growing at close to 20% year/year and that Dell has become the market share leader, with server revenues of $4.2 billion for the first half of 2026. HPE has previously been the market leader for over 25 years.

Revenue from HPC and AI-for-science infrastructure is inherently cyclical. HPE recognized significant revenue in 2025 with sales of multiple exascale-class leadership machines, but it’s unrealistic to expect that scale of procurement on an annual basis. Still, Dell’s emergence is impressive. Their growth reflects several large procurements, and more importantly, a rapidly growing segment of customers acquiring mid-range AI-focused machines to integrate AI capabilities with the traditional scientific and engineering workflows and applications.

The overall on-premises HPC and AI-for-Server market also exhibited significant year-over-year growth. 1H26 revenues grew to $16.5B USD from $13.8B USD in 2H25, a significant 19.9% growth rate. Interestingly, unit sales growth over the same period was only 4.4%. This is an indication of rapidly rising system costs due to growing GPU components in systems and higher memory costs.

According to Earl Joseph, CEO at Hyperion Research: “Organizations and institutions are continuing to invest in their advanced computing infrastructure due to both replacing aging machines and the desire to adopt AI into their workflows to support their businesses and missions. The growth reflects both a nominal increase in units being purchased and significant increases in system prices, and Dell has taken full advantage of user demand for AI infrastructure.”

The tracking of the HPC market is based on multiple surveys conducted of both buyers and suppliers. The new market results show a major change in the overall HPC market growth, heavily driven by a combination of the use of AI, Large Language Models, and the purchases of large GPU/accelerator-based systems. HPC systems are considered the backbone for many AI and AI-related applications, which has driven the overall HPC market to a new growth level.

For more information about the Hyperion Research Worldwide High Performance Technical Server tracking, contact Hyperion Research at info@hyperionres.com.

About Hyperion Research

Hyperion Research is the premier industry analysis and market intelligence firm for high performance computing (HPC) and associated emerging markets. Hyperion Research analysts provide timely, in-depth mission-critical insight across a broad portfolio of advanced computing market segments, including High Performance Computing (HPC), Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), High-Performance Data Analysis (HPDA), Quantum Computing (QC), Cloud, and advanced technologies.

The industry analysts at Hyperion Research have been at the forefront of helping private and public organizations and government agencies make intelligent, fact-based decisions related to business impact and technology direction in the complex and competitive landscape of advanced computing and emerging technologies for over 39 years.

Source: Hyperion Research

The post Hyperion Research: Nearly 20% Growth in HPC and AI-for-Science Server Market, Dell Takes Lead from HPE appeared first on HPCwire.

Jacob Morley, serving a life sentence for killing a co-worker, slipped through a prison fence last week

A man convicted of murder who escaped from a Tennessee prison was recaptured on Tuesday in Missouri after more than a week on the run, authorities said.

Jacob Morley, who was serving a life sentence for killing a co-worker four years ago, was apprehended outside Kansas City, Missouri, before midday by the state highway patrol.

iFixit disassembled an iPhone Duo and found some surprises, including the fact that it’s “the most repairable foldable” it’s ever pulled apart.

500-plus-day search for Kylie Arellano ends as FBI warns of ‘gore groups’ targeting and exploiting children

A 17-year-old girl who disappeared last year from Garden City, Utah, has been found in Oregon, and a 39-year-old man has been taken into custody.

The recovery of the teenager took place last Sunday, following a 500-plus day search involving Oregon law enforcement, the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office and the Rich county sheriff’s office in Utah.

(The Center Square) – A $359.1 million Colorado preschool program, paid for mostly by tobacco and nicotine taxes, reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday over a single condition: providers must agree not to turn families away.

Rhabdomyolysis is a rare condition that can occur after very intense exercise or be triggered by drugs.

The nest belonging to narrow-headed ants was removed without permission from its Chudleigh Knighton Heath nature reserve in the UK.

Scientists say pregnancy and nursing are “physically demanding” tasks, so female mammals must allocate their resources.

The Supreme Court is weighing a case involving Catholic preschools' efforts to participate in Colorado's universal preschool program.

Scene of the theft at Chudleigh Knighton Heath nature reserve where a nest of Narrow-headed Ants was removed without permission. (Devon Wildlife Trust via SWNS)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In an announcement released Thursday, Fujifilm said it will invest roughly 10 billion yen (about $63 million) to increase its production capacity fivefold for an unlikely beneficiary of the AI era: magnetic tape. Fujifilm attributes the surge in archiving demand to the spread of generative AI, which the company remarked is producing "exponential growth" in data needs worldwide. The 5x increase in production capacity will be measured against fiscal year 2025 production levels. The investment in Fujifilm's Kanagawa Factory, Odawara site will make it "the largest investment Fujifilm has made to date in dedicated LTO tape facilities." The project will run from fiscal years 2026 through 2028 to fund manufacturing expansion and additional personnel, primarily to produce the latest-generation "FUJIFILM LTO Ultrium10" tape. [...] According to Fujifilm, "major cloud service and data center operators" have been expanding their use of magnetic tape because it can store large data volumes at relatively low cost. Tape backups can be easily disconnected and stored in a drawer, a vault, or a separate facility. Fujifilm highlights the ability to air-gap tape cartridges as a last defense for user data: "Given the sophistication of cyberattacks, magnetic tape is attracting increasing attention as a means of protecting data from threats such as ransomware."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Firm reveals details about how its cryptocurrency exchange was compromised, saying operation began in June

The hackers behind the $6.3bn (£4.7bn) Binance heist used bogus job interviews, malicious software and an internal AI tool, the company has revealed.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was compromised in an operation that began with an inadvertent download of malware in June, led to a recruitment scam in September and then a raid last week of “hot wallets” where billions of dollars worth of crypto-assets were taken.

In a heartwarming twist, the brave feline became a lifesaver herself by donating blood to a dying kitten.

Pearl after recovery. (Blue Cross via SWNS)

The United States will stop providing $4 billion in annual aid to Israel starting next year, President Donald Trump claimed in an Election Day interview. While the U.S. will continue to sell arms to its closest Middle East ally, Trump’s announcement — should it actually hold true — could represent a seismic shift in American foreign policy.

Still questions remain and experts are dubious that the claim is what it seems.

Trump told Fox News during a phone call on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approached him with the idea years ago. He did not state specifically why he waited to announce the decision in the midst of a midterm vote in which his party is expected to lose its lock on Congress, but noted that U.S. aid to Israel has become a Democratic talking point, singling out Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. “The left uses the $4 billion payment — that everybody knows about, it’s no secret — as a signal of unfairness,” said Trump.

An August 2026 Fox News poll found 55 percent of Michigan voters oppose continued military assistance to Israel, including 70 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents, and 35 percent of Republicans. 

U.S. public support for Israel has fallen since the Gaza war began in 2023, particularly among ​Democrats, as Netanyahu’s government has slaughtered civilians with impunity. Almost 75,000 Gazans have been killed and nearly 176,000 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. A recent U.N. report said, “Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Amid the slaughter, sympathy for Israel among all Americans fell from roughly 50 percent to 36, while sympathy for Palestinians rose to 41 percent, according to a February Gallup poll. Among Democrats, support for Israel plummeted from more than 50 percent in 2001 to roughly 17 percent this year. October 2026 polling from the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s D.C.-based IMEU Policy Project and YouGov found a majority of voters in six key swing states — Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — support halting the transfer of bombs to Israel.

“You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash,” Trump said. “Look, we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it. And I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money.”

Experts cautioned not to take Trump at his word, especially as his administration pushes a pending $1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act that would embed Israeli technology within the Pentagon’s programs and supply chain.

Related

Congress Is Trying to Permanently Integrate U.S. and Israeli Defense Tech

“President Trump is a serial liar who has announced over $20 billion in weapons giveaways to Israel since taking office and launched a war at Israel’s request that has already cost every U.S. household over $2,000 — the equivalent of $262 billion,” said Hamid Bendaas, IMEU Policy Project’s communications director. “He and other politicians realize our taxpayer funding for Israel is a liability. That’s why he and his allies in Congress are at this very moment trying to advance legislation to conceal support for Israel by integrating Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon. This is a bait and switch that would result in Americans funding Israeli weapons makers in record amounts.”

Others expressed skepticism about Trump‘s claim of an immediate end of annual aid in 2027. “It’s not plausible there will be a total cut-off starting January 1,” said Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over U.S. military assistance to Israel, noting that funding is baked into existing and pending legislation. “My guess is that he was speaking off the cuff with the next 10-year memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel in mind, but did so in a way that is at best inaccurate or imprecise.”

A decade ago, President Barack Obama signed an unprecedented MOU with Israel to give its military $38 billion between 2019 and 2028, amounting to almost $4 billion a year.                                              

Paul was hopeful, however that Trump’s statement would allow Republicans license to join Democratic colleagues in paring down future funding. He said it was a recognition of the bipartisan demand by the American people for an end to that military aid.

Trump’s announcement did not address the proposal in the National Defense Authorization Act, which would inextricably link the U.S. armed forces and the Israeli military, giving Israel leverage over the Pentagon.

Related

Democrats Are Split Over What It Means to Block Israel Weapons Deals

“Initial reporting on Trump’s statement omits a crucial fact: that the National Defense Authorization Act contains a provision intended to protect U.S. tax dollars flowing to Israel from the massive shift in U.S. public opinion against funding Israeli aggression,” Annelle Sheline, who served as a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, told The Intercept. “The provision would move U.S. funding out of security assistance under the purview of the State Department — which carries legal provisions like the Leahy Laws, transparency requirements, and an annual congressional vote — into the Pentagon procurement process, which has none of these.”

Sheline added, “Insulated from public opinion and away from public visibility, U.S. funding to Israel is likely to grow exponentially.”

With his popularity in free fall in the U.S., Trump teased the possibility of decamping for Israel and taking Netanyahu’s job as the Israeli prime minister battles for his political life after an inconclusive election last week. “In fact, if people ever got tired of me in the U.S., I’ll move to Israel, become prime minister,” Trump declared during his Fox appearance.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for further details.

The post Trump Scrambles to Halt Military Aid to Israel to Deprive El-Sayed of a Talking Point appeared first on The Intercept.

A Court of Splintered Harmony also records biggest single week of sales since Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman in 2015

Sarah J Maas’s long-awaited return to her bestselling romantasy series has smashed UK sales records, with A Court of Splintered Harmony becoming the fastest-selling adult fantasy novel since accurate records began in 1998.

The novel, the sixth in Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (Acotar) series and her first return to it in more than five years, sold 188,914 copies in the UK between publication day on 27 October and 31 October, according to NielsenIQ BookData. That also makes it the fastest-selling hardback novel since Dan Brown’s Inferno, which sold 229,000 copies in its first week in 2013.

The Blaugrana host Unai Emery’s improving Villains.

During its fourth-quarter 2026 earnings call, Apple execs covered supply chain struggles, high memory costs and the role AI will play in future financials.

Despite the political drama surrounding U.S. elections, stocks have historically risen following midterms, market data shows.

Bomb threats were made on routes involving a number of airlines, including Ryanair and WizzAir

Back to Poland, Warsaw Modlin airport says it has resumed operations after an earlier bomb threat – but a part of the airport where the London flight was parked remain closed and is being checked by security forces.

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy has said his talks with Merz and Germany’s president Steinmeier will focus on “diplomatic coordination” on air defence and energy sector.

“These will be the priorities of today’s talks. We all have an interest in security, stability, and protecting the rules-based international order. And we must work together to turn these principles into concrete decisions and actions.”

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said ports and terminal operators receiving shipments of Russian diesel could face criminal penalties.

It will take decades to rebuild trust in a country that removed a tyrant once – and then reinstated him four years later

When Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021 it was possible to believe that Donald Trump’s reign had been an aberration. “America is back. The transatlantic alliance is back,” the new president declared to relieved European leaders shortly after winning the 2020 race. It was true, but not for long.

Trump’s defeat proved that US democracy was mechanically operational, not culturally robust. His supporters tried violent subversion to prevent the inauguration of a successor. A second term should have been unthinkable. Republicans who failed to denounce the 6 January insurrection should have been unelectable. Instead, within four years, US voters reinstated the champion of a failed coup against their cherished constitution as commander-in-chief.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — A North Carolina man pardoned by President Donald Trump for offenses connected to Jan. 6 is facing new federal charges after prosecutors say he threatened to execute judges who handled Capitol riot cases.

Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. was arrested Monday over an April Facebook post allegedly declaring that “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!” Prosecutors say he later posted additional messages warning that “firing squads will commence 11/04/26” following the midterm elections.

Meredith previously traveled to Washington around Jan. 6, 2021, but arrived after the Capitol attack because of vehicle problems. He was later arrested after threatening to shoot then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. FBI agents found firearms, high-capacity magazines and roughly 2,500 rounds of ammunition in his trailer.

He pleaded guilty and received a 28-month sentence. Trump included Meredith in his sweeping January 2025 clemency order covering offenses connected to Jan. 6.

Prosecutors now argue Meredith’s recent posts constitute genuine threats rather than political rhetoric, citing what they describe as a continuing pattern of violent online statements.

The new charges underscore that Trump’s pardon erased federal consequences for Meredith’s earlier offenses but provides no protection for alleged crimes committed afterward. Meredith is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Sources:

• The Guardian – MBFC Rating

The post Trump-Pardoned Jan. 6 Defendant Charged With Threatening Federal Judges appeared first on News Facts Network.

Party leader Ed Davey ‘disappointed and upset’ at decision by independent panel after claims original investigation was flawed

The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard has been told there will be no further investigation into sexual harassment allegations made against him, after an independent panel concluded it could not reopen the claim.

The party leader, Ed Davey, said he was “disappointed and upset” by the conclusion, having suspended Rennard from the party after an investigation was reopened earlier this year amid claims a previous inquiry was flawed.

The streaming service is testing an interactive AI feature for personalized recommendations.

Google will disable AI tools by default for K-12 students early next year unless school administrators explicitly enable them, but schools that choose to block AI entirely will also lose student access to Google Search. The New York Times reports: Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with A.I. But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict A.I. entirely will also lose access to Google search. A.I. features are now a standard part of Google's commercially available search engine. "Search and A.I. are deeply integrated," said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students "will not have access to search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available." [...] The company's new strategy underscores Google's powerful role in American education. If school leaders want continued student access to search within the company's ecosystem, they will be forced to embrace Google's A.I.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oklahoma man accused of sending letters with white nonhazardous powder before 2024 and 2026 elections

Federal authorities have charged an Oklahoma man with sending hundreds of letters containing nonhazardous white powder to public officials before the 2024 and 2026 elections.

The powders turned out to be yeast or flour, though not all letters had been fully tested, the FBI said in a court filing made public on Tuesday.

Nations in the group fare worse than others, with funding for nature projects especially hard hit even as climate crisis intensifies global need

The UK government has slashed overseas aid to Commonwealth countries, the Guardian can reveal, in contrast to the warm words for the group from King Charles and the prime minister, Andy Burnham, this week.

Amid sharp cuts in the UK’s aid budget overall, the Commonwealth has fared poorly, an analysis of the most recent and projected aid figures, seen by the Guardian, has shown.

• US set to host Summer and Winter Olympics

• USOPC CEO says business model in early stages

The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) is in the advanced stages of setting up an entity to sell a stake ⁠in the commercial rights for Team USA in return for capital, according to multiple reports.

Any deal would mark a significant shift for the USOPC, a non-profit organization that, unlike many national Olympic committees, relies heavily on sponsorships, licensing ⁠and other commercial revenue streams rather than government funding.

Cleveland Meredith arrested after allegedly posting a call to execute all judges involved in 2021 US Capitol attack trials

A man pardoned by Donald Trump for participating in January 6 attack on the US Capitol and threatening to kill the then house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is facing new charges for threatening to kill federal judges that presided over his and other cases arising from the violent anti-government clash.

Cleveland Meredith, from North Carolina, was arrested on Monday over a Facebook post in April that allegedly read: “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!”

Unclear if series of incidents affecting two UK departures and several Ryanair services, among others, were connected

Seven planes across Europe have been searched or diverted after a series of bomb threats were made to passenger flights, prompting questions as to whether there was any coordination behind the warnings.

Two UK departures – one from Heathrow and one from Manchester – were among those threatened in what Downing Street called “malicious hoaxes”, though all planes landed safely and no explosives were found.

Server farms for AI have become a uniting issue for voters and a bipartisan headache for candidates.

Poland's prime minister says a rapid, major deployment of extra security forces to the border with Russia may have prevented "attempted acts of provocation."

Cybersecurity experts say national impact ‘minimal’ but incidents may represent the ‘foothills’ of a wider threat

Food suppliers in the UK have been hit by cyber-attacks after hackers raised the temperatures of supermarket freezers across Europe.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NSCS) said it was working with the affected companies but the national impact was minimal.

US president makes surprise election day announcement, saying country does not ‘need’ $4bn annual payment

Donald Trump has said that the US will end military aid to Israel at the end of this year in a surprise election day announcement that appeared to be targeted at voters sceptical of US support for Israel and the war in Gaza.

In a phone interview with Fox News as voting began on Tuesday morning, the US president said the US would cut nearly $4bn (£2.96bn) in military aid to Israel because “they don’t need it”.

MSC Cruises canceled the voyage for its MSC Poesia cruise ship after it was detained by the Coast Guard at the Port of Miami, the cruise line confirmed to CBS News.

With control of Congress on the line in House and Senate races around the country, here's how to watch the 2026 midterm election results on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Person arrested after fire at police department where officer who shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley had worked

In the early hours of 31 October, a fire broke out at the Senatobia police department in Mississippi, which has been embroiled in controversy recently after one of its officers shot and killed Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old. Though the cause of the fire has not been reported, it is being investigated as arson by agents with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In June, then Senatobia police sergeant Hunter Foster shot Kohen as he sat in his mother’s arms in a Walmart parking lot. Foster, who is white, was responding to a report of an alleged shoplifting; Kohen, his mother and the driver of the vehicle, are Black.

Scattered showers continue Tuesday, with the steadiest rain west and north of the Twin Cities. Highs are expected in the 60s, and more showers move through Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Spooky season doesn’t have to end yet thanks to these PlayStation Plus games.

Subscribers can also play this Final Fantasy 7 remake.

SUSE plans to cut roughly 10% of its 1,900-person workforce, with CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen saying "automation and AI" are reducing the need for some roles and allowing the open source software company to operate with less overhead and flatter management structures. "We are announcing a reduction of SUSE's global workforce of approximately 10 percent," said Van Leeuwen in an email. "These decisions are painful for our people, our culture, and our open source community, but they are necessary for us to adapt and build a sustainable, resilient SUSE for the long term." The Register reports: Van Leeuwen says the business, bought by Swedish private equity provider EQT, decided to cut jobs after scrutinizing its "future strategy, required capabilities, and team structures." The rest of the organization will get a look at the fiscal year 2027 strategy on November 16. He said in the message to staff: "What is clear is that automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate. AI capabilities are advancing exponentially, forcing us to radically reimagine our work. We have seen this trend already both inside our sector and in the wider economy. This means that the organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully. "We are adapting. Across SUSE, modern tooling is already changing our daily workflows, enabling teams to move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines. The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished. Other roles will evolve over the next few years. This means we are accelerating investments in high priority areas, and deprioritizing others. These are hard, painful decisions to make, but necessary for our future." [...] The specific roles at risk of redundancy were not outlined but SUSE claims it has considered where the people in those positions are "able to evolve, what they can stop doing, what they need to do more of - and decisions have been made on that basis." Staff caught up in the redundancies will be informed by November 4, employee representatives nominated the following day, and one to one meetings will begin at the start of next week. Van Leeuwen says in the internal memo that the job cuts are a "reflection of shifting organizational needs, not your talent or commitment. You have tackled hard infrastructure and open source challenges that power critical enterprise systems around the world. "Any organization will be fortunate to have your expertise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Endorsing his opponent while the US risks plummeting into fascism, she reveals the one issue that triggers her to take destructive action

“Did you talk to anyone? Did you have a long night of the soul? Were you up all night? ... Did you have a dream?”

Interviewing the Michigan US representative Haley Stevens on CNN on Sunday, Anderson Cooper was casting about for explanations. What caused the Democrat’s radical change of heart between a Saturday night promise to her House colleague Debbie Dingell that she would stand with the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and a public endorsement on Sunday morning of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers?

These resource-guzzling centres drive up utility bills and are hated across the political spectrum. Cue a clunky, but potentially influential, new name for them

Jesus may have turned water into wine, but Donald Trump has done one better: he turned Lake Ontario into Lake America and the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America. And then, for his next trick, he insisted we all stop talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and call it superintelligence (SI) instead.

Those, of course, are only a few of the name changes the president has ushered in. When he’s not golfing or commenting on senators’ buttocks, president Trump loves a rebranding project. Which makes sense: coming up with a new name is far easier than making meaningful improvements to people’s lives.

As fact-checkers, we watch a lot of ads in the lead-up to elections, and we only write about a fraction of them. Some of them are downright bizarre. As we first started doing 20 years ago — just for fun — on Election Day, we’re giving out pretend awards to some of the notable ads we came across this campaign cycle.

Our primary focus is national politics, but a number of this year’s winners are from the state and local level. You may notice that one winner has something in common with director Martin Scorsese, and another honoree is featured holding something just as furry. There’s also an award recognizing the contributions of AI because we want to get on its good side.

Read our awards story and go to the polls and vote. The order in which you do them is less important.

Toughest on China

Winner: Sen. Marsha Blackburn, candidate for Tennessee governor

This ad shows Blackburn, a Republican, has a strategy for cracking down on China that other politicians probably have not considered. It involves going to a Chinese restaurant and smashing all of its fortune cookies. (In 2024, she broke a lot of china, as in plates.)

“Here in Tennessee, we’re going to stop communist China and protect Tennessee land,” she says, appearing satisfied with her display of destruction. If only negotiating with Chinese President Xi Jinping were that simple. 

It was considerate of Blackburn not to harm the restaurant’s maneki-neko figurine in the making of the ad. That must be because of its Japanese origin.

Cutest Pasta

Winner: Wisconsin state Rep. Steve Doyle

Doyle’s recipe for an effective ad was a dash of humor and a sprinkle of manipulation. The Democratic assemblyman running for reelection in Wisconsin did the same kind of emotional appeal that he warned voters about in the ad.

“Have you noticed how politicians prey on emotions to influence voters?” he asks, adding that they’ll use “pictures of babies” or “scare tactics” just to get votes. Don’t fall for it, he says, all while holding a baby of his own – an adorable alpaca named Pasta. 

Because of that distraction, we’d understand if viewers missed everything Doyle later said about wanting to lower taxes, make healthcare affordable and reign in big tech.

And get this: Pasta has an alpaca sister named Noodle. Put those two in an ad together and Doyle really won’t be fighting fair.

The John Stockton Award for Assists

Winner: AI

Ever had a guest who just won’t leave? Yeah…Ohio knows the feeling. 🎂 https://t.co/bWbnwQX7Hr

— Ohio Flyer PAC (@OhioFlyerPAC) April 20, 2026

A number of analysts have dubbed the 2026 midterms the first “AI election.” That’s because so many ads this cycle have been made with the help of artificial intelligence.

The Wesleyan Media Project said $137 million was spent on 220 ads featuring AI-generated or enhanced content through Oct. 11. That’s up from virtually nothing in 2024, and still likely an “undercount,” it has said. Republicans, more so than Democrats, have used the technology when producing ads, the project’s analysis has found.

In the Republican ad above, an AI version of Democrat Sherrod Brown overstays his welcome at a birthday party. Other notable AI-assisted ads showed Democrat James Talarico writing his own version of the Bible (we fact-checked it), and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in a “throuple” with Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. And some AI ads have prompted cease-and-desist letters from the targeted candidates, such as one in North Carolina that put Jessica Bichler, a state Senate candidate, in crazy yoga positions.

Wesleyan said most of the ads don’t even mention being made with AI, leaving viewers to figure it out. We’re sure that’s because AI is a great teammate and didn’t want credit.

The Best Worst Facial Hair

Winner: Charly Ray, candidate for state Senate in Wisconsin

Typically, at least some political candidates sport unusual beards or mustaches. But this year — at least in Wisconsin — it’s all about the eyebrows.

Democrat Charly Ray, who’s running for state Senate, put out an ad embracing voter reaction to his large, unruly brows, while taking the opportunity to use them as policy metaphors and to gently rib another politician in the state.

“Like data centers, they’ve had very little oversight,” Ray says of his brows in an impressive deadpan. “Like our schools, maintenance has been underfunded.”

He boasts that his eyebrows are “all-natural,” unlike those of “some politicians,” as the ad flashes a photo of Republican U.S. House candidate Michael Alfonso, who is the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Alfonso’s well-coiffed brows have drawn comparisons to Bert the Muppet, so he’s received some teasing as well.

Ray, who says there will be no trimming on his part, is not the only politician to capitalize on their brows this year. In the Canadian city of Burlington, Ontario, a female mayoral candidate voluntarily drew on a unibrow (as well as a mustache) à la sign graffiti to cheekily poke fun at herself in an ad to get out the vote. (Alas, she lost her race.)

Worst Romance Plotline

Winner: Steve Hilton, candidate for California governor

Steve Hilton, the Republican running for governor in California, caused a stir with this ad. It shows two young women sitting on a bed in a darkened room, music playing, a large Pride flag on the wall behind them. 

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” one says.

“Don’t be nervous,” the other says, stroking her hair. “It’s not that bad.”

“I’ve just never done anything like this before. Like what if my dad finds out?” 

Eventually, the camera pans down and we see what they’re talking about: filling out a ballot for a Republican, namely Hilton.

“I think I like it?” the first woman says, giggling.  

“Now lick it,” the other says — and holds out an envelope for a mail-in ballot. 

The ad’s final frame tells voters: “Just try it! Steve Hilton for Governor.” 

The suggestive ad prompted pushback from many in Hilton’s own party, including a state superintendent candidate who called it “Weird, creepy, disturbing garbage.” Hilton defended the ad but asked “for some grace,” saying the thought that he had upset anyone saddened him.

Barn Dancing with the Stars

Winner: Jamie Ager, candidate for U.S. House in North Carolina

Campaign ads often show candidates pledging to bring change to Washington. Jamie Ager’s prescription for change in this ad is a bit different.

“Do you know what we need more of in Washington, D.C.?” Ager, a Democrat running for Congress in western North Carolina, tells a crowd as music starts up. “Barn Dances!”

The next shots show people young and old dancing to a live band, in an airy barn with lights strung from the rafters. Ager is seen mixing it up with the other dancers.

“Amy and I host these every month,” Ager continues. “Politicians just dance with the lobbyists. But I’ll take a good mountain hoedown any day.” 

Then he dances around to his talking points: investing in western North Carolina, taking on corporate greed and securing funds for the ongoing recovery from 2024’s Hurricane Helene.

Worst Sense of Direction

Winner: Defending Main Street PAC

This super PAC ad is pretty straightforward yet still went in the completely wrong direction. It attacks Democrat Troy Jackson, who would represent Portland and other parts of Maine if he defeats Republican Sen. Susan Collins. But the ad ended up briefly airing in Portland, Oregon, which is on the other side of the country.

The geographic mix-up actually wasn’t Defending Main Street PAC’s fault. It blamed the error on its advertising vendor, Cross Screen Media, which took responsibility.

“During a recent independent expenditure, our media vendor mistakenly placed approximately $25,000 in digital advertising in the Portland, Oregon media market instead of Portland, Maine,” a representative for the super PAC said in a statement emailed to us. Nevermind that they ignored our questions about the misleading claims in the ad, as we wrote.

The super PAC ultimately got a refund, but this could have been an even costlier mistake. There are multiple Portlands in the U.S., including in Texas, Connecticut and Tennessee.

The Eye Spy Award

Winner: BJ Wyrick, candidate for mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas

What the Flock? This ad from the mayoral race in Arkansas wasn’t on our radar until we went searching for award-worthy ads we may have missed. Maybe we shouldn’t have.

As far as we know, the ad was only posted to Facebook. It warns Little Rock residents – in a Rockwell-inspired song – that the city is “watching you” and “everything you do” with thousands of cameras. After a controversy involving local police officers, Wyrick, the nonpartisan vice mayor who wants the city’s head job, spoke out against law enforcement using Flock camera systems, which capture vehicle activity and can be helpful in police investigations. We assume that’s the point of the ad’s lyrics, but it isn’t exactly clear.

What’s really creepy is the illustration for the ad, which features a lot of glossy eyeballs of different sizes. Who wouldn’t fear being watched after seeing something like that?

The True Blood Award for Glamouring

Winner: President Donald Trump

The U.S. Government is up on TV with this spot —

It aired nationally on FOX yesterday during Illinois at #7 Ohio State and also during Fox News Sunday this morning https://t.co/8PP9FPzUZk

— Medium Buying (@MediumBuying) September 27, 2026

The vampires on the TV series “True Blood” used direct eye contact, or glamouring, to hypnotize people and influence their thoughts. Here, Trump appeared to try the same technique.

In the video, which is in black and white for maximum effect, Trump does a model walk down a hallway while staring intensely into the camera for nearly 30 seconds. As he does that, a voiceover plays with Trump saying “we will demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers from our government,” “drive out the globalists,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists.” We’ll have to wait to see if Trump’s method worked.

The White House experimented with some mental tricks, too, when it tried to convince critics of the taxpayer-funded message that it’s a public service announcement rather than a campaign ad. That was tough to do since Trump kept telling voters to pretend he is on the ballot, and released an almost identical ad during his 2024 run for president.

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 The 2026 FactCheck Awards appeared first on FactCheck.org.

A new study is the first to systematically investigate boredom in museums.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Rep. Mike Smith’s (R-Pike Creek) departure from the General Assembly would be a blow to the future prospects of the state Republican Party, which has struggled for a decade to make advancements in the state. Should he ultimately decide to continue seeking office after this year’s election, his continued electoral presence could make it harder for Democrats to potentially pick up Smith’s seat, which already sees a Democratic voter registration advantage. 

The only incumbent statehouse Republican in New Castle County is reevaluating whether to run for a fifth term in 2028 after previously ruling out the possibility. 

Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek) was recently named the next president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce and said he would not run for reelection in 2028 should he win this current bid. 

The 41-year-old is up for reelection in House District 22 after easily winning the last two elections. He told Spotlight Delaware he has defied a Democratic voter registration advantage in the district by building a personal brand grounded on constituent conversations, small business and entrepreneurial support, and raising a young family. 

In a Tuesday interview at a polling site at North Star Elementary School, Smith said he is “reconsidering” a 2028 campaign because many people have reached out to him and asked him to run again.

“They’re saying, ‘You’re an actual public servant that helps us,’” he said. 

Smith said he will make a final decision in the new year, if he wins today.

In September, Smith had told Spotlight Delaware that he would not run after 2026 after fielding questions about a potential conflict of interest pertaining to his new role leading the state’s Chamber of Commerce. The organization frequently lobbies lawmakers in favor of business-friendly legislation. 

The state chamber is among the most influential lobbying organizations in the state, representing nearly 1,000 employers of various sizes.

Smith said on Tuesday that he “[does] not intend to lobby” and that he spoke with lawyers in both the Democratic and Republican caucus before accepting the position to make sure it was legal. 

He also said that the state Public Integrity Commission gave him a letter stating that his bid for reelection, while intending to serve as the president of the state Chamber of Commerce, is not violating any ethics rules.

The commission has not publicly posted that letter, Smith said, but he has requested that it write a public letter if he wins his reelection bid that outlines how he should conduct himself in both roles. 

If victorious Tuesday, Smith may not be the only Delaware lawmaker to lead a business advocacy group. 

 Ayanna Khan Flowers, president and CEO of the Delaware Black Chamber of Commerce, is running for House District 9 — which encompasses much of eastern New Castle County below the C&D Canal — against Republican Jamar Money. 

Tim Carlin contributed to this report.

The post Rep. Mike Smith ‘reconsidering’ seeking reelection in 2028 after saying he wouldn’t appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Retailer acquires robot-assisted warehouse and intends to have UK service up and running before end of 2027

Primark is to begin making home deliveries by the end of next year as it aims to win new shoppers after a slide in profits.

George Weston, the boss of the cut-price fashion chain’s owner Associated British Foods (ABF), said it had brought forward the launch of Primark’s home delivery plans by about two years.

Speech by Charles marks formal opening of Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Antigua

Q: Do you think the UK should reconsider Commonwealth membership, given other countries just keep asking us for slavery reparations?

Badenoch said she did not agree with that “because most Commonwealth countries aren’t doing this”.

China did all sorts of things. It’s not out there apologising.

The purpose of the apology is to make us look weak. It is to make this country look weak. And once we start looking weak, then we have every man and his dog making demands and sending us an invoice, which the British taxpayer has to pay.

Tennessee prosecutors released video of National Guard troops pointing their handguns at a man as he lay dying on a Memphis sidewalk last summer after a guard member shot him in the back.

By Filipa Gaspar ArtificiaI intelligence could enslave humanity and force it to generate power for machines — like “The Matrix,” an expert has warned. Tim Coulson believes artificial intelligent could make people create its energy — on treadmills, rowing machines…

Kellogg’s substitutes ingredient with rice flour, as climate crisis affects availability of some grains

They will snap and they will crackle, but they may no longer pop, as Kellogg’s has removed rice from its Rice Krispies and Coco Pops cereals due to “changing weather conditions”.

Rice Krispies has been reformulated to use rice flour instead of rice, while Coco Pops now contain a blend of rice flour and corn flour instead of rice in order to maintain consistent quality. Kelloggs’ said the shift reflected how the climate crisis had affected the quality and availability of some rice and grains used in its most popular cereals.

Judge tells jurors he will be able to accept only a unanimous decision on seven charges against the comedian

The jury in Russell Brand’s rape and sexual assault trial has retired to consider its verdicts.

Brand, 51, has been described as a ruthless, calculated and manipulative sexual predator during the three-week trial at Southwark crown court. The comedian is accused of seven offences, including rape and sexual assault, against six women in allegations spanning 10 years from 1999. He denies all the charges.

Jon Tyson

Technology demonstrations, customer deployments, and technical presentations highlight advances in AI infrastructure and memory technologies designed to accelerate deployment, optimize performance, and improve token economics

FREMONT, Calif., Nov. 3, 2026 — Penguin Solutions, Inc. today announced its participation at SC26, the international conference for high-performance computing (HPC), networking, storage, and analysis, taking place Nov. 15–20, 2026, in Chicago.

At booth #1723, Penguin Solutions will demonstrate innovations across its Full-Stack AI Factory Platform, including infrastructure software, accelerated compute systems, advanced memory technologies, and operational services. The company will also share insights from customer deployments and participate in technical presentations addressing emerging challenges in AI.

• What: Penguin Solutions at SC26, booth #1723
  
• When: Sunday, Nov. 15 – Friday, Nov. 20, 2026
  
• Where: McCormick Place, 2301 S. Martin Luther King Dr., Chicago, IL 60616

Technology Demonstrations

Penguin Solutions will feature demonstrations of the following technologies and solutions:

• OriginAI | Validated AI Factory Reference Designs
• ClusterWareAI | Intelligent Cluster Management at Scale
• Integrated Memory | Advanced CXL Memory Solutions
• MemoryAI | KV Cache Server: Redefining AI Inference Speed and Scalability
• ComputeAI | Advanced Computing Systems for Faster, More Predictable AI Deployment
• AI Platform Operations Services | Maximize Capacity While Supporting AI Operations at Scale

Click here to view all Penguin Solutions’ activities at SC26.

To schedule a media briefing, email pr@penguinsolutions.com. To request a product demonstration during SC26, visit the Penguin Solutions contact page.

Featured SC26 Presentations

• Building Sovereign AI: Infrastructure for Trusted AI Environments
  • Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 11:00 a.m. CST in room W194b
• Photonics for AI & HPC: Breaking the Bandwidth and Power Barrier
  • Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 12:15 p.m. CST in room W184bcd
• Unleashing Performance: How CXL and Disaggregated Memory are Revolutionizing HPC & AI
  • Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 1:30 p.m. CST in room W185abc

Sponsorships and Partner Activities

• Beowulf Bash | Sponsor
• Student Cluster Competition | Sponsor of Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of New Mexico student teams
• Dell Technologies Booth #2223 | Penguin presentation Wednesday, Nov. 18 at 4:00 p.m. CST

About Penguin Solutions

Penguin Solutions (Nasdaq: PENG) is the AI Factory Platform Company. We design, build, and manage next-generation data centers for enterprises, sovereign AI initiatives, and neocloud providers.

With deep design expertise at the intersection of data center AI infrastructure and memory solutions, our Full-Stack AI Factory Platform combines differentiated infrastructure software, advanced memory, compute systems, end-to-end services, and industry-leading partner technologies to help customers accelerate deployment, optimize token economics, and maximize the return on their AI investments.

Source: Penguin Solutions

The post Penguin Solutions to Showcase Full-Stack AI Factory Platform Innovations at SC26 appeared first on HPCwire.

The US has seen plenty of terrible speeches over the centuries. But Trump’s midterm rallies are a new low

In a sense, history has already been made. We do not know the result of the election yet, but over the last two months, Americans have endured the worst speeches ever given by a president of the United States.

It is far from a simple matter to adjudicate – there have been so many bad speeches over the years, going back the founders, some of whom dreaded speaking in public. George Washington’s inaugural address did not begin promisingly, with a halting first sentence: “Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month.”

Firefox’s built-in VPN masks your IP address while you browse, gives you 50GB a month, and only requires a free Mozilla account.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) reported today that they used OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra language model to raise a small, open source Qwen model's math score roughly sixfold by directly editing its weights -- the numerical parameters that govern its behavior. Rikiya Takehi, Jayden Teoh, Alex Zhang and Omar Khattab described their work in a research blog post published November 2. They call the approach "weight-space programming" and tested Astra's ability to interpret and alter networks without using conventional training procedures to generate the edits. In the strongest language-model example, Astra's intervention raised Qwen3.5-0.8B's MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1% while touching approximately 0.016% of its weights. The improvement came primarily from correcting repetitive reasoning—a distinction that shaped both the technical findings and the debate over their implications. Their experiments explored a broader possibility: AI systems that inspect, repair and construct other neural networks by working directly on their internal machinery. "This is cool as heck!" wrote Yuchen Jin, a technical staffer at Databricks and former co-founder and CTO of Hyperbolic Labs who was unaffiliated with the research, on X. "Imagine using a large LLM to directly edit a smaller model's weights and dramatically improve its capabilities. It's like gene editing for neural networks. Even cooler than distillation!" Voyage AI staff researcher Chandan Singh, formerly of Microsoft AI, also reacted to the findings: "For anyone questioning whether this post is overhyped, I think they are actually *underselling* the approach."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Christians in the south of the state seek to vote their values – but a common faith does not mean a common politics

A few days before the Fourth of July, Ron Peterson, the 38-year-old pastor of Longview United Pentecostal church, stood beneath a large white tent in a parking lot in Longview, Washington.

Surrounded by church members selling fireworks for a fundraiser, Peterson remembered watching area residents rally after an industrial accident at the local paper mill killed 11 people in May. “We can all come together,” he said. “There’s not going to be sections in heaven.”

RUTHIE SHIGON
Staff Reporter

Election season is upon us and today Delawareans will vote in critical races up and down the ballot. Notably, the Delaware state Senate seat for District 8 and state House seats for Districts 23, 24, 26 and 27 will be on the ballot on Nov. 3.

The Delaware state Senate seat for District 8 is up for grabs as Sen. Dave Sokola (D) is retiring after a 36-year run. Sokola has represented District 8 since he was first elected in 1990. Democrat Mara Gorman and Republican Shane Cavanaugh will compete for this spot.

Gorman currently represents Delaware’s 23rd District in the state House of Representatives. After only one term, she is now running for a state Senate seat with a platform emphasizing issues such as immigration protection, racial equity, combating homelessness and healthcare as a human right. Prior to taking office, Gorman was a volunteer advocate supporting safer gun laws and a public affairs manager for Planned Parenthood of Delaware.

Cavanaugh is a small business owner running on a campaign against political division and urging for more respect among parties. As a working class individual and father, he strives to take action to ensure the importance of safe neighborhoods, strong schools and education and supporting local businesses.

With Gorman seeking a seat in the state Senate, the state House seat for District 23 is also opening up. Dave Redlawsk is running unopposed as a Democrat prioritizing affordability, public education, healthcare and the removal of data centers and Flock cameras. Redlawsk has been involved in local politics most of his life, during his time living in Iowa, New Jersey and now Delaware, where he is also the James R. Soles Professor at the university in the political science department.

Rep. Ed Osienski (D), who has been the incumbent of District 24 since 2010, is running for reelection against Republican newcomer Stephen Ondich.

Osienski has worked on legislation that supports raising the minimum wage, gun safety and protecting women’s reproductive healthcare. However, Ondich believes that Delaware needs a big change and has openly discussed being in favor of reopening power plants, the protection of the Second Amendment and his beliefs against welfare programs.  

Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D) is running unopposed for the 26th House district seat. She has been an incumbent since she took office in 2020 and is the first practicing Muslim elected to the Delaware General Assembly. Some of her most recent legislation supports education and schools, protection of homeowners living in manufactured home communities and making the cost of living more accessible.

For District 27, incumbent Rep. Eric Morrison (D) is going up against Republican Mary “Penny” Kubin. Morrison has been in office since he was elected in 2020 and has recently passed legislation that supports mental health support, protection of hate crime victims and sexual assault survivors and updating current estate laws. 

Kubin, who previously worked as a correctional officer and drug and alcohol counselor, says the top priority of her campaign is the school system. She is urging for more transparency regarding school funding and is also focused on lowering property taxes, energy costs and everyday expenses. 

A lot has changed since the last time these seats were on the ballot in 2024; in Delaware and across the country. All the mixed perspectives this election season raises the question: Will there be a drastic change in Delaware’s political atmosphere too?

Effective Nov. 4th, The U.S. Department of Agriculture rule requires affected SNAP retailers to carry at least seven varieties of food in each of four staple-food categories: fruits and vegetables; meat, poultry or fish; bread and cereals; and dairy products. Image created using AI on 11/3/26

Federal standards require more staple-food choices at participating stores as Delaware has 734 SNAP-authorized locations statewide

WILMINGTON, Del. — New federal food-stocking requirements take effect Wednesday for many retailers that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, with convenience stores, corner markets and other small-format retailers expected to face a bigger adjustment than traditional supermarkets.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture rule, published May 8, requires affected SNAP retailers to carry at least seven varieties of food in each of four staple-food categories: fruits and vegetables; meat, poultry or fish; bread and cereals; and dairy products.

Stores qualifying under the stocking standard must carry at least three units of each qualifying variety. That amounts to at least 28 different staple-food varieties and 84 individual stocking units. At least one perishable variety also must be available in three of the four staple-food categories. The requirements must be implemented by Nov. 4.

The new standards do not apply in the same way to every business authorized to accept SNAP. Specialty food stores and some retailers qualifying under other federal criteria may be treated differently.

Delaware has 734 SNAP-authorized retail locations, according to a recent compilation of USDA retailer-locator data. The dataset includes 280 convenience stores, 77 supermarkets, 74 grocery stores, 46 superstores, 25 specialty stores and 23 farmers markets or similar outlets. New Castle County accounts for 416 locations, Sussex County for 189 and Kent County for 129.

Why small stores feel it most

Large supermarkets generally already stock far more than the federal minimum. For small neighborhood stores, however, the rules may require changes in inventory, refrigeration, suppliers and shelf space.

USDA itself identified convenience stores, small grocery stores and combination stores as the businesses most likely to be affected.

The department estimated that complying with the rule will cost currently authorized retailers nationwide about $77 million during the first year, followed by roughly $1 million to $2 million annually over the next four years.

During the federal rulemaking process, retailers and trade associations raised concerns that small stores could have particular difficulty meeting dairy and grain requirements because of limited refrigeration, shelf space, product demand and the potential for spoilage.

USDA acknowledged that some currently authorized stores could become ineligible for SNAP participation because of the higher standards. The agency nevertheless said the changes were intended to improve the range of nutritious foods available to SNAP households and strengthen program integrity.

That could make the impact particularly noticeable in neighborhoods and rural communities where a convenience store or small grocery may be one of the closest places accepting SNAP.

For shoppers, the change could mean more staple foods available at those stores. For owners, it could mean carrying products that previously were not part of their regular inventory.

What stores must carry

The four staple-food categories are fruits and vegetables; meat, poultry and fish; breads and cereals; and dairy.

Under the new federal standard, qualifying stores must have:

• Seven distinct varieties in each category.
• Three stocking units of each variety.
• At least 28 qualifying varieties overall.
• At least 84 qualifying stocking units overall.
• At least one perishable variety in three different staple-food categories.

The USDA also revised how it decides whether foods count as separate varieties. Whole-grain bread and non-whole-grain bread, for example, can qualify as separate varieties, as can whole-grain and non-whole-grain pasta. Shredded cheese and non-shredded cheese also may count separately.

Butter, jerky and many snack or dessert foods do not count toward the staple-food stocking minimum.

Enforcement will not necessarily mean every existing store receives an inspection Wednesday.

USDA said newly applying retailers and stores seeking authorization for new locations will be evaluated under the new standards after the implementation date. Existing stores generally will be assessed when they go through SNAP reauthorization, although federal regulations allow USDA to review a retailer’s continued eligibility at other times.

Shopping options increasingly include online orders

The stocking change comes as SNAP participants increasingly have options beyond traditional in-store shopping.

Delaware Health and Social Services says SNAP benefits may be used to buy eligible groceries online from authorized retailers. SNAP benefits cannot be used to pay delivery, shipping, service or membership fees.

An older DHSS online-purchasing guide lists Aldi, Amazon, Food Lion, Giant, Sam’s Club, ShopRite, Walmart and Weis Markets, but that document is dated February 2022 and should not be considered a complete current list without confirmation from the state or USDA.

The expansion of online EBT purchasing gives some SNAP households additional options, particularly where transportation or nearby grocery choices are limited. But independent neighborhood stores continue to compete largely on convenience and proximity.

What happens next

USDA said it plans to notify authorized retailers about the requirements and provide information intended to help businesses comply.

Stores found short of required inventory during an inspection also may be able to demonstrate that qualifying products were ordered or received during the previous 21 days by producing invoices, receipts or similar records.

A retailer denied authorization or reauthorization because it fails to meet the stocking requirement generally must wait six months before applying again.

For Delaware shoppers, the practical effect will depend on how many small stores already meet the standards and how many need to change their inventories.

USDA has not published a Delaware-specific estimate showing how many of the state’s retailers will have to add products or how many might ultimately decide not to continue accepting SNAP.

TO GO BOX

• What: New USDA SNAP retailer stocking standards
• When: Nov. 4, 2026
• Minimum stocking standard: Seven varieties in each of four staple-food categories, with at least three units of each variety
• For shoppers: Use the USDA SNAP Retailer Locator to find authorized stores.
• For retailers: The USDA SNAP Retailer Service Center can answer questions about authorization and compliance at 1-877-823-4369, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday.
• More information: USDA Food and Nutrition Service and Delaware Division of Social Services SNAP program pages.

ERLANGEN, Germany, Nov. 3, 2026 — Quint Computing, a German quantum computing startup developing a novel architecture for fault-tolerant quantum computers, has raised €9.1 million in an initial funding round. Separately, Quint has been awarded a €2.2 million Pathfinder grant by the European Innovation Council (EIC). The round was led by Vsquared with participation from Quantonation, Nucleus Capital, Faber, Vanagon Ventures and ZOHO.VC, alongside established industry experts including Prof. Mikko Möttönen, founder of IQM and QMill. The funding will support the expansion of Quint’s team, accelerate its technology development and advance its first industrial deployment projects.

Credit: Quint Computing

Founded in October 2025 by leading quantum physicists Prof. Michael Hartmann and Prof. Christopher Eichler and economist Dr. Jona Stinner, Quint emerged from research at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and is part of the Munich Quantum Valley (MQV) ecosystem. Its advisory board brings together leading scientific and industrial expertise, including Prof. Florian Marquardt, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Dr. Reinhard Ploss, former CEO of semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies, and Dr. Markus Hoffmann, former partnerships lead at Google Quantum AI.

Quantum computing has the potential to solve problems that even the most powerful supercomputers cannot handle, from simulating complex molecules to optimizing industrial processes. Yet one fundamental challenge continues to hold the industry back: no quantum computer today operates with sufficiently low error rates to enable broad industrial applications. Quantum computers are extremely sensitive to disturbances, making it difficult to perform the billions of operations required for commercially useful applications. Correcting these errors is essential, but existing approaches require vast amounts of additional hardware, slow down the computations or require not yet developed technology, making quantum computers increasingly complex, expensive and difficult to scale.

To overcome this, Quint’s patented technology offers a novel superconducting quantum chip architecture that eliminates a significant fraction of errors directly within the individual circuit elements. Instead of relying on complex algorithms, this approach prevents most errors at the hardware level.

Once fully implemented it is expected to reduce complexity, hardware overhead, and energy consumption by a factor 100 while maintaining high computational speed, bringing quantum computing within reach for industrial application.

“The race to build commercially viable quantum computers is gaining momentum,” said Christopher Eichler, Co-Founder and CEO of Quint Computing. “Quint has a clear roadmap to accelerate the development of the required technology. Our unique processor architecture reduces complexity while maintaining high clock speed. The result is more computing power, lower operational costs and a shorter path to commercialization.”

Michael Hartmann, Co-Founder and CTO of Quint Computing, added: “Beyond improving error correction efficiency, we maintain high computational speed to enable fault-tolerant quantum solutions for a broad range of applications, from chemicals and pharmaceuticals to logistics and manufacturing.”

“While major industry players including Google, AWS, Microsoft and IBM are investing heavily and the industry has made significant progress in developing quantum computers, achieving fault tolerance at scale remains the decisive challenge,” said Dr. Michael Jobst, Investment Partner at Vsquared. “Quint is tackling exactly this central bottleneck and therefore enabling commercial scalability. The team behind this is what makes this breakthrough possible. Seeing two of Europe’s leading quantum scientists turn academic excellence into industrial innovation to create economic impact is exactly the ambition Europe needs.”

Once fault-tolerant quantum computers become available at scale, they could transform industries where conventional computing reaches its limits. In pharmaceutical research, quantum computers could simulate complex molecular interactions that are currently impossible to model accurately, helping accelerate drug development and reduce costly experimental trials, such as the simulation of liver enzymes responsible for metabolizing the majority of medicines.

A better understanding of these processes could help researchers develop more effective drugs with fewer side effects. These are exactly the kind of use cases Quint’s founders have already investigated in partnerships with Bosch, BASF and Boehringer Ingelheim, who are gearing up to be ready to utilize the new technologies when they become available. The commercial opportunity is substantial. Leading industry studies estimate that quantum computing could generate up to USD 2.7 trillion in economic value by 2035, provided fault-tolerant systems can be developed and scaled successfully.

With the new funding, Quint will expand its research and engineering team, advance its quantum processor roadmap and pursue initial industrial deployment projects. The company is actively recruiting engineers and researchers across quantum chip design, fabrication, quantum error correction and applications, looking to grow the team to around 40 people by 2028.

About Quint

Quint Computing, a German quantum computing start-up based in Erlangen, develops superconducting quantum computers with a radically efficient approach for error correction. Its novel architecture suppresses errors right at the source, reducing the overhead required for fault-tolerance by orders of magnitude while keeping computation fast. With this key step, Quint aims to advance scalable quantum computing systems and bring the technology closer to broad industrial applications. As a spin-off from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the company builds on world-class research in quantum technologies and is backed by leading European venture capital funds.

Source: Quint Computing

The post Quint Computing Raises €9.1M to Advance Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.

A previously unseen family archive offers a glimpse into the Indian Nobel prize winner’s artistic process and personal relationships in his final years

• Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

It’s easy to run out of words to describe Rabindranath Tagore. The first non-European to win the Nobel prize in literature, Tagore was a Bengali poet, musician, novelist, philosopher, songwriter, painter, humanist and educator.

Born in 1861, Tagore left an indelible mark on the subcontinent’s literature, music, education and art. Among his enduring legacies are the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.

The U.S. Coast Guard in Guam confirmed that the skiff with nine people aboard had been reported missing in July.

Federal court says group likely to win its free speech claim and tells officials to approve application within seven days

A federal judge ordered state officials in Iowa on Monday to permit a local Satanic Temple organization to hold a holiday event in the rotunda of the state capitol after years of denying the group’s application.

The religious organization and Iowa Republican state officials have been in a legal battle over the group’s applications to hold a holiday event at the state capitol in recent years.

Americans are voting in midterm elections with control of the House and the Senate at stake for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term in office. Voters are also electing governors and other state and local officials

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States will stop providing roughly $4 billion in annual aid to Israel beginning in 2027, while continuing to sell military equipment to the longtime U.S. ally.

Trump told Fox News that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approached him about ending the assistance and that the two had discussed the idea for several years. Trump said Israel no longer needs the money and argued that continued aid had become a political issue in the United States.

The current U.S.-Israel security agreement provides about $3.8 billion annually in military aid through 2028. Because Congress appropriates the money each year, ending the assistance would still require changes to that funding process.

Trump said the policy shift would not end the defense relationship. Israel would instead be expected to purchase more U.S.-made weapons directly rather than receiving them through American military assistance.

The announcement comes amid growing political debate over U.S. support for Israel. Trump specifically cited criticism from Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, while public polling has shown declining support for unrestricted U.S. aid among Democrats and some Republicans.

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately comment. Israel has received tens of billions of dollars in additional U.S. military assistance since the Gaza war began in 2023.

Sources:

• PBS NewsHour – MBFC Rating

The post Trump Says U.S. Will End $4 Billion in Annual Aid to Israel appeared first on News Facts Network.

Experts say ‘very dangerous’ move diverts attention from violence driven by far-right extremist ideologies

The US Department of Justice is funding research aimed at exploring whether there is a link between gender dysphoria and violent crime.

Last month, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research arm of the justice department, said it would grant up to $1m for studies into the frequency and type of violence committed by people who have been diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria.

We benchmarked the battery life on nearly three dozen smartphones from companies like Apple, Samsung, Motorola and Google.

World’s largest crypto exchange faces fallout from angry customers, and Lula wins with WhatsApp

• This was originally published in TechScape, a newsletter about how technology shapes our lives. Sign up to receive it here

This week in tech, we’re discussing the fallout from the multibillion-dollar hack of Binance and the significance of Lula’s political mobilization on WhatsApp.

And if you’ll be at Web Summit in Lisbon next week, drop me a line! I’ll be there moderating panels on open-source AI and human agency in the age of AI agents.

Tell us: have you been affected by the Binance hack?

Polymarket temporarily suspends trading on international platform due to security incident

How crypto hacking funds isolated North Korea’s nuclear programme

Ghost in the machine: how AI is haunting the search for the supernatural

Computerized clairvoyance: psychics push back against AI-generated readings

The staggering $446m Elon Musk has spent on the US midterms – visualized

Billionaire tax: how a union leader’s ‘crazy’ idea became the defining issue of California’s midterms

How tech became the villain of the US midterms

The ultra-rich are spending one million dollars a day fighting California’s proposed billionaire tax

The co-pilot, 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras, can be heard saying in the audio recordings that the jet was rapidly descending.

The person in charge of digital strategy for the Senate campaign of Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson helps run a company that received nearly $10 million to influence Americans with pro-Israel propaganda.

In September 2025, Hinson — who is battling Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek in a tight race that could decide control of the Senate — tapped Abe Adams to lead her campaign’s digital efforts. 

Adams is a co-founder and managing partner of Targeted Victory, a digital consulting firm that has been used by high-profile Republican candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Targeted Victory shares an address and much of its staff with Targeted Communications Global — a related company with no discernible online presence. Both are subsidiaries of marketing company Stagwell Global.

Israel awarded Targeted Communications a $9.9 million contract in March 2025 focused on social media and paid advertising, documents show. By October 2025, the firm was at work pitching news content and guests on Fox News and CNN, and creating YouTube ads suggesting young Iranians have been educated to believe the “most sacred thing they do is stab a Christian in the heart.”

Hinson is endorsed by both President Donald Trump and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and has been supportive of Trump’s war in Iran. 

A June 2026 Department of Justice FARA filing from Targeted Communications details much of the firm’s work for Israel. The document lists 10 registered foreign agents working on the Targeted Communications contract for Israel. Six of them are identified as Targeted Victory employees on the company’s website or their LinkedIn accounts. Adams is not named in the filing.

Hinson, Adams, and Targeted Victory did not immediately respond to  requests for comment.

Adams is not the only Hinson campaign adviser with ties to Targeted Victory and the Israel lobby. Hinson’s current deputy campaign manager, Addison Lavis, worked at Targeted Victory before serving as Hinson’s campaign manager in her 2023 congressional run. Lavis was previously an intern at AIPAC. Lavis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Related

AIPAC Isn’t Retreating. Here’s How It’s Already Shaping the Next Congress.

Hinson has received more than $100,000 from AIPAC and related pro-Israel PACs in 2026, and as an Iowa state representative supported legislation that prohibited the state from working with any companies that boycott Israel. 

Hinson’s political action committee has paid Targeted Victory more than $1.6 million this election cycle for digital consulting and ads — 27 percent of its total expenditures, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Israel’s deal with Targeted Communications is part of a major public relations push that has pumped more than $100 million into swaying public opinion, particularly among young conservatives, back toward Israel.

The post Ashley Hinson’s Digital Chief Oversees Firm Paid Millions to Push Israeli Propaganda appeared first on The Intercept.

Philippe Jaenada wins Prix Goncourt with novel that seeks to solve 77-year-old case and rehabilitates reputation of its victim

A literary true-crime investigation that tries to solve a 77-year-old cold case and ends up rehabilitating the reputation of its life model victim has won France’s most prestigious literary prize.

The author Philippe Jaenada was announced on Tuesday afternoon as the winner of the Prix Goncourt, for his book L’Inconnue du quai de Javel (The Unknown Woman of the Quai de Javel), a recreation of the murder of a 29-year-old Breton woman named Louise Cansot.

A decision could reshape the relationship between religious freedom and nondiscrimination laws in the US

The US supreme court will hear arguments on Tuesday over a challenge brought by two Catholic preschools in Colorado, arguing that they should be admitted to the state’s free education system despite their rejection of children with LGBTQ+ parents.

A decision in the case, St Mary Catholic Parish v Roy, could reshape the relationship between religious freedom and nondiscrimination laws in the US.

PARIS and BERLIN, Nov. 3, 2026 — Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, and Schwarz Digits, the IT and digital division of Schwarz Group, today announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build an independent, secure European AI and cloud infrastructure ecosystem, from the servers to the software platform and appliance environment.

The cooperation aims to enable European organizations, particularly those in regulated and strategic sectors to develop, deploy and scale AI and enterprise computing while keeping sensitive data, infrastructure and operations under European jurisdiction and control.

Building the Physical Foundation of European Sovereignty

The partners plan to develop a powerful sovereign AI architecture, bringing together their respective strengths to build secure, large-scale AI infrastructure in Europe. Schwarz Digits will contribute its secure cloud infrastructure through STACKIT, providing a sovereign European digital ecosystem, while Bull will bring its expertise in AI and high-performance computing experience in large-scale projects.

The servers would draw on Bull’s European manufacturing capabilities for rack scale AI production with its Angers factory. They would also benefit from the group’s expertise in direct liquid cooling (DLC) technology and large-scale AI deployments. Together, these capabilities will provide the foundations to deploy and operate advanced AI workloads at scale, while combining best-in-class energy efficiency* and greater digital sovereignty.

Bringing European AI to Businesses

Bringing the BullSequana AI platform to the STACKIT Marketplace will accelerate its availability to enterprise and public-sector customers, providing access to AI software platforms and solutions under European jurisdiction through an open and modular environment. Beyond infrastructure, European-designed and developed software capabilities are a critical part of the AI stack, helping organizations accelerate AI adoption while maintaining control over their data and technology choices. Demand for sovereign cloud solutions is growing rapidly, driven by geopolitical developments, regulatory requirements, and the desire of businesses and public authorities for greater digital sovereignty.

Co-Innovating for Europe’s Digital Future

Beyond these first initiatives, Bull and Schwarz Digits intend to co-design server solutions based on Open Compute Project (OCP) standards, combining their respective infrastructure and engineering expertise. The collaboration will also advance key milestones including SAP RISE integration, large-scale HPC projects, and explore collaboration on Quantum Computing integration. This initial collaboration aims to create opportunities to further expand in new areas of joint innovation over time.

Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull, commented: “Building on our experience in AI and high-performance computing, and on STACKIT’s cloud infrastructure, we aim to give European organizations capabilities they can deploy and control, whether to accelerate AI adoption or scale enterprise computing. This collaboration reaffirms Bull’s commitment to developing European AI infrastructure, alongside other initiatives and ecosystems we are actively involved in across the continent. This partnership, which contributes to building a sovereign digital infrastructure in Europe, reflects our commitment to a resilient and competitive European ecosystem.”

Bernie Wagner, CRO of Schwarz Digits, stated: “European organizations, especially across strategic and regulated industries, cannot afford to choose between cutting-edge computing performance and data sovereignty. Our alliance with Bull establishes a robust Franco-German foundation for enterprise AI. Through STACKIT, we deliver an open, independent cloud environment that keeps sensitive infrastructure and operational workflows firmly under European governance. Together, we demonstrate that Europe can deliver high-performance innovation entirely on its own terms.”

About Bull

Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with c.720m€ in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data and to drive progress for the benefit of the planet.

About Schwarz Digits

Schwarz Digits is the IT and digital division of Schwarz Group and offers impressive digital products and services that meet the high German data protection standards. With the aim of achieving the greatest possible digital sovereignty, Schwarz Digits provides the IT infrastructure and solutions for the extensive ecosystem of Schwarz Group’s companies and develops it for the future. Schwarz Digits’ sovereign core services include Cloud, Cyber Security, Data and AI, Communication and Workspace. In addition, Schwarz Digits creates optimal conditions for the development of trend-setting innovations for end customers, companies and public sector organizations.

Source: Bull

The post Bull and Schwarz Digits Sign MOU to Develop European AI Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

Binance said the net outflow from the cryptocurrency exchange represents just 3% of its total holdings.

These graphics explain what the Democrats would need to do to flip the Senate and House of Representatives

A turning point in Donald Trump’s second term has arrived. Voters across the US are deciding whether to keep the president’s Republican allies in control of Congress, or return Democrats to the majority.

Many indicators of voter sentiment suggest the Democrats are favored to take back control of the House of Representatives, and potentially the Senate. Winning either would be a significant victory for the party and give it the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration.

From Hamilton to the ‘Epstein class’, we have long been fascinated by a charismatic yet shadowy set of power brokers. American aristocracy is alive and well

Americans remain awed by the extravagance of the super-rich, oddly enticed and generally accepting of the fact that the moneyed elite have privileges that they use to their own advantage.

After the Hollywood celebrity and the professional athlete, the figure who invites the most curiosity is what is colloquially termed “powerbroker”. We’re talking about the dealmaker, the inside player – or in the words of Sade’s song, a “smooth operator”.

The Bambu Lab H3C is a large-format 3D printer with nine printheads, and it’s available now.

Nov. 3, 2026 — Every year, the Workforce in Networking at SC (WINS) program funds up to six participants to join the SCinet community, affording an opportunity to work alongside experienced volunteers and contribute to the SC Conference and its high-performance network. For the 2026 WINS cohort, that experience already is well underway.

WINS 2026 Participants (l to r): Alaa Hamadeh, Stephanie Hanson, Shereen Ismail and Jamie Price (not pictured Esen Gokpinar-Shelton)

Starting in March, WINS participants joined their SCinet teams, which include Routing, NetSec, DevOps, Automation, INDIS, and Communications. They have participated in virtual team meetings, traveled to SCinet Sprints, taken on new projects, learned unfamiliar technologies, and started experiencing just how much planning, coordination, and collaboration happens long before everyone arrives at SC26 in Chicago.

At the program’s midpoint, SCinet Communications caught up with this year’s WINS participants to hear how the experience is going so far. They were asked about learning, what has challenged or surprised them, and what they are looking forward to as SC26 gets closer.

Their backgrounds and roles could not differ more. But across their conversations, some remarkably similar themes emerged: stepping outside your comfort zone, learning from others, building confidence, and discovering there are many different ways to contribute.

Here are a few highlights from their WINS journeys thus far.

What Has the Experience Taught You?

ALAA HAMADEH
CENIC | Routing

For Alaa, WINS has meant growing technically while also finding her footing in a new professional environment. As an Operations Network Engineer at CENIC, she came into the program with networking experience, but SCinet has given her opportunities to work at a different scale, from building the network in the GNS lab to preparing an MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) training for her team.

Along the way, she has learned something about herself, too.

“I learned to trust my abilities, adapt to a new professional environment, and become more confident,” she said.

For Alaa, stepping outside her comfort zone has become part of the experience and part of her growth.

JAMIE PRICE
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus | DevOps

Jamie has spent years working in network engineering and Wi-Fi, but WINS quickly dropped her into unfamiliar territory that included Django, GitLab workflows, collaborative software development, and AI-assisted coding.

Instead of walking away thinking, “This isn’t my area,” she came away with a different realization.

“It gave me a confidence boost I didn’t know I needed,” Jaime said. “It proved to me that I can be flexible, jump into something completely unfamiliar, and still figure it out.”

That may be one of the best descriptions of what learning inside SCinet can look like: you may not always know exactly where you will fit when you arrive, but you will find a calling.

SHEREEN ISMAIL
Merit Network | NetSec

Shereen came to WINS from a research background in cybersecurity and network measurement. Working with NetSec has given her the opportunity to experience the operational side of large-scale research networking and learn more about firewall deployment, monitoring, and the infrastructure behind SCinet.

One of her biggest takeaways, though, is not purely technical.

“Technical expertise is important, but successful projects also depend on effective teamwork and knowledge sharing,” she explained.

Shereen also has been surprised by just how much planning and coordination happens months before the conference begins.

STEPHANIE HANSON
MOREnet | Automation

Stephanie’s path into technology and to SCinet has not been traditional. She started with a degree in Art Education before eventually building a career in IT. Even after building years of experience as a system administrator, she spent several more hesitating before she applied to WINS because she was not sure she knew “enough.”

Her experience with WINS and SCinet has helped change that perspective.

“The knowledge and perspective I have is worth sharing,” Stephanie said. “I can learn what I don’t know. I can teach people.”

When asked what lessons she has learned about herself, her answer was simple: “How to believe that I can push myself and be successful,” she added.

ESEN GOKPINAR-SHELTON
Indiana University | INDIS and Communications

Esen came to WINS from a different corner of the cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. Her work at Indiana University spans research cyberinfrastructure, program leadership, UI/UX and systems design, and community building. Through WINS, she wanted to better understand the advanced networking layer connecting much of that ecosystem.

Working across both INDIS and Communications has put her in conversations with network researchers and engineers while also giving her the opportunity to tell the stories of the people behind SCinet.

One of the biggest challenges, she says, has been intentionally positioning herself in a technical space where she may not be the deepest expert in the room. Still, that experience has reinforced something she believes about working across complex technical environments.

“You don’t necessarily need to be the deepest expert in every domain, but you need to understand enough to recognize dependencies, bring the right expertise together, and see how individual decisions affect the larger system,” Esen noted.

For Esen, WINS has been an opportunity to get more comfortable crossing those boundaries to better understand how the different pieces of cyberinfrastructure, as well as the people behind them, fit together.

What’s the Most Rewarding Part?

This was where the answers started sounding remarkably similar: the people. Jamie talked about how willing people are to help one another: “Everyone genuinely wants each other to succeed.” Meanwhile, Stephanie’s answer was even more succinct: “Meeting people. My team is everything.” For Shereen, the opportunity to connect with experienced professionals from different institutions and learn directly from them has been the most valuable part of her WINS experience so far. Similarly, Alaa pointed to working alongside talented engineers and learning from their knowledge and experiences. For Esen, conversations across both of her teams have offered two sides of the same story, which spans learning about the technologies, research, and ideas behind advanced cyberinfrastructure while also seeing how the expertise provided by the community behind that infrastructure are developed and sustained.

Different teams, varied institutions, and very distinct paths into SCinet, yet they all share an appreciation for the people willing to teach, collaborate, answer questions, and make room for others to contribute.

Looking Toward SC26— Still So Much Ahead

Alaa is looking forward to network staging and expanding her work with the Routing Team, while Jamie is excited to experience a major conference from behind the scenes for the first time. Shereen wants to see the full deployment of SCinet and put what she has learned into practice. Stephanie is still looking for what she calls the exact “piece of the puzzle” she will put into place, and Esen is eager to see months of meetings, planning, research, and conversations turn into a functioning network to better understand both the technical and human architecture that makes it all possible.

Their goals may be different, but one message comes through clearly from these midpoint conversations: You do not have to walk into SCinet knowing everything. Bring what you know. Be curious. Be willing to learn from the people around you and find where you can contribute. There is still plenty of the WINS 2026 journey ahead, and SCinet will be following along as this year’s participants make their way to SC26.

Source: SC26

The post SC26 WINS Cohort Prepares for Network Deployment in Chicago appeared first on HPCwire.

Strikes on eve of US midterms reportedly target surface-to-air missiles being used against US assets

The ⁠US launched limited strikes on ​Iran’s Qeshm Island late on Monday, hours after the vice-president, JD Vance, said he was optimistic that diplomatic efforts to end the war were moving in the right direction.

The strikes, disclosed by Iranians on social media and confirmed by US Central Command (Centcom), came on the eve of crucial midterm elections in which Donald Trump’s Republican party is expected to be punished by voters. Diplomatic mediators believe it will be clear within two days whether the basis for continued indirect talks between the US and Iran exists.

Compared to infants in the state’s low-pollution areas, the odds were 4.3 times higher for babies from toxic hotspots

A study looking at babies hospitalized in New Orleans found that babies born to mothers from neighborhoods in south-east Louisiana with high levels of industrial pollution were four times more likely to suffer from severe congenital heart defects.

Published last week, the study in the Environmental Health journal looked at medical records for 454 infants hospitalized at the two major Louisiana hospitals that can provide surgery for heart defects in babies. Researchers traced back where the mothers of these infants lived, examining the levels of industrial toxic pollution in their communities using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s risk-screening database. Compared to infants from low-pollution areas in the region, the odds of congenital heart defects were 4.3 times higher for infants from toxic hotspots, and 3.1 times higher for infants from places with intermediate levels of pollution.

submitted by /u/Correct-Loss-5139
[link] [comments]

Beijing launches diplomatic salvo to woo Gulf leaders and bolster its influence in the region

China has held a flurry of meetings with Gulf leaders in a sign that Beijing is stepping up its diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.

The diplomatic salvo comes before a highly anticipated meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping when the US president is expected to attend the Apec conference in Shenzhen, China, on 18 and 19 November.

• Slovenian star is averaging 38.3 points per game

• Antetokounmpo offers high praise to fellow All-Star

Giannis Antetokounmpo has offered high praise to his fellow All-Star Luka Dončić after the Los Angeles Lakers star went on another scoring tear on Monday night.

Dončić scored 42 points in the Lakers’ 138-117 win over Antetokounmpo’s Heat to bring the Slovene’s scoring average this season to 38.3 points per game, the best in the NBA.

The U.S. launched limited strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran fired at a U.S. aircraft, a senior U.S. official told CBS News.

China and its trading partners are moving towards an economic peace. But it is a fragile one Expert comment thilton.drupal 3 November 2026

Beijing appears to have embraced economic stability in its relations with the US and the EU. But serious challenges over its currency and export model remain.

In a world full of geopolitical tension and war, it is worth pausing to consider the few signs of hope that have emerged these last few months in China’s relations with the US and the EU. 

Last month’s deal between Beijing and the EU to limit Europe’s imports of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) is the most recent notable example. It represents an easing of trade tension and could help to defuse the threat of some very hostile trade tools that the French and German governments are now willing to deploy. 

This EU-China agreement also comes in the context of President Xi and President Trump agreeing to a period of ‘constructive strategic stability’ during Trump’s visit to China in May. While this apparent embrace of stability is welcome, China’s economic relations with its global trading partners remain contentious.

Self-serving stabilization

China has some very good reasons of its own to seek a period of stabilization. Just about the one thing that the US, the EU and many parts of the Global South can all agree on, these days, is their shared view that China should import more and export less. Beijing is immensely lucky that its trading partners can’t turn that common view into a common policy, and so they remain entirely uncoordinated in their response to China’s rapidly increasing share of the global market for manufactured goods. Beijing should worry that this luck may run out, and so it makes sense for the authorities there to offer some help. 

Related work

‘China shock 2.0’ and Europe’s industrial future

China’s reaction to the Hormuz crisis is another example of the ‘strategic reasonableness’ that Beijing seems to have adopted. China reduced its oil imports very sharply after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in March and threatened the world with the loss of some 12 million barrels per day of oil that couldn’t find alternative routes out of the region. In June this year, China’s oil imports were down by about 5 million barrels a day. This reduced stress in the world’s oil market, which both supported economic activity and helped minimize global inflationary pressures.

It should go without saying that self-interest was at work here. China’s intensely export-oriented growth model requires Beijing to make sure that the chokepoint leverage that it is amassing through its manufacturing dominance doesn’t lead to a catastrophic loss of trust on the part of its trading partners. And at a more basic level, China’s economic model requires its customers to stay afloat. Whatever Beijing can do to stabilize global demand conditions, it should do. And that’s not to mention the chance that rising populism in the West might take on a more explicitly anti-China hue in the future.

Fragility

It has to be said, though, that this stabilization is very fragile. For example, China’s agreement to limit its exports of PHEVs to Europe, albeit through a WTO-compliant ‘safeguard measure,’ runs several risks. One is that China’s other trading partners might wonder why Beijing offered export restraint to the EU but not them, potentially leading them to push for their own arrangements.

And within the EU, there seems to be a strong sense that now Beijing has agreed to restrain vehicles exports, the same kind of pressure could be applied to sectors like pharmaceuticals, chemicals and machinery. China’s tolerance for this might be very limited.

Moreover, Europe and China’s other trading partners have ‘whack-a-mole’ problem when it comes to Chinese manufactured exports. The main reason that a rise in PHEV exports became so visible is thanks to the tariffs that the EU imposed on battery electric vehicles two years ago: China simply boosted its exports of PHEVs which weren’t subject to the tariffs. Now that these will be constrained, it probably won’t be long before another kind of manufactured exports surge next.

Currency concerns

Another reason to curb one’s enthusiasm is the way in which the debate about global trade imbalances is likely to evolve.  

Beijing’s commitment to its manufacturing-led growth model seems, for the time being, unshakeable. What’s more likely is that China will agree to let its currency strengthen. 

Last month, France and Germany made it clear in their unofficial ‘non-paper’ on trade that an appreciation of the renminbi would be a tolerable substitute in the short term for a more meaningful economic rebalancing of the economy that would boost China’s spending on imports. More pressure on China might grow when the US Treasury publishes its next report on potential ‘currency manipulators’ early next year. 

It is difficult to argue against the idea that the renminbi remains highly undervalued. CF40, a distinguished Chinese economics think-tank, recently suggested that the underlying equilibrium exchange rate of the renminbi against the US dollar – adjusting for the fact that the cost of living in China is much lower – is around 2.5 CNY per USD. The current market exchange rate is just below 6.7.

In this respect, though, China’s trading partners should be careful what they wish for. A more expensive renminbi will inevitably boost inflationary pressures among China’s trading partners. The European Central Bank has shown how cheap imports from China have kept goods inflation more moderate than it would otherwise be. At a time when anxiety about inflation is especially acute, given the surge in prices seen since the Iran war started in February, a renminbi-induced inflation shock in Europe and the US may not be very welcome.

‘Safe’ FDI

Economic relations between China and its trading partners in the EU and the US suffer from a familiar security dilemma: my pursuit of security leaves you feeling less secure, and vice versa. 

The most hopeful way out of this might be for everyone to agree that China should increase its flow of ‘safe’ foreign direct investment (FDI) to the rest of the world. 

Want to hear more on the future of global trade?

Join us at our Global Trade Conference for expert analysis on the shifting rules of the global economy.

This issue is now at the centre of talks in Europe about the European Commission’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act. Bigger FDI flows would help to lower China’s trade surplus by generating production in host countries, along with all the benefits of local job creation, technology transfer and tax revenues. 

China has a long-term incentive to park industrial assets offshore, not least because they will generate a flow of cross-border investment income in the future.  

Finding a way to increase China’s FDI flow to Europe without causing conniptions about national security risks is a worthy task. Set against the $350 billion trade deficit the EU will run with China this year, China’s FDI annual inflows of around $10 billion are tiny. 

But boosting Chinese FDI will require tolerance of some minimal level of insecurity on Europe’s part. Otherwise, the pursuit of absolute security will come at an economic price that is just too high, and will, in the end, be self-defeating. FDI may well be the best way to build on the economic peace that is trying to break out.

Stopgap measure does not solve fundamental problem that millions can’t afford the healthcare they need, experts say

Some of the millions of Americans who collectively owe billions of dollars for medical expenses have seen their debt forgiven in recent years, and there has been a dramatic uptick in aid this year.

But the relief still only covers a small fraction of the outstanding balance and is just a stopgap measure that does not solve the fundamental problem: people in the US get into serious financial trouble because they can’t afford the healthcare they need, experts say.

Cop30 host sets out steps to break link with coal, oil and gas as it aims to move focus from negotiating to implementing

All countries can start to break their dependence on fossil fuels now without needing to wait for new technologies or economic changes, Brazil’s government has said ahead of a global climate summit.

Brazil, the host of last year’s UN climate conference, set out the world’s first global “roadmap” for phasing out fossil fuels on Tuesday, showing that countries could boost their economies and pull people out of poverty while breaking the link with coal, oil and gas.

Elsinore is in contention for 12 Bifas, including for Scott’s highly praised performance, while Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, Ashley Walters’ Animol and Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care are also recognised

Elsinore, the drama in which Andrew Scott plays the actor Ian Charleson as he takes on Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the last months of his life, before he died of Aids in 1990, has emerged as the leading contender for the British independent film awards (Bifas).

The film, which is directed by Simon Stone and co-stars Olivia Colman, Billie Piper and Johnny Flynn, received 12 nominations, including best British independent film, best director for Stone and best lead performance for Scott. Elsinore has collected rave reviews since its premiere at the Telluride film festival in September, with the Guardian’s Benjamin Lee describing it as “a devastating movie [that] is a reminder of Charleson’s strength and the many men like him and it implores us to remember them too”. Scott is also already being tipped as the favourite for the best actor Oscar – and he would be the first out gay actor to win.

• Father says Rachel Apa died from rhabdomyolysis

• Runner was former college athlete in ‘perfect shape’

A 24-year-old woman died after collapsing during the final stages of Sunday’s New York City Marathon, her father has said.

Rachel Apa’s father, Steve Apa, told the New York Times his daughter was in Central Park, two miles from the end of the race, when she collapsed. It was Rachel’s first marathon and she was running as part of the Parkinson’s Champions team in honor of her late grandfather, who suffered from the disease.

Up to 25% of 16,000 workforce could go as telecoms group says it will increase use of AI in areas including customer service

• Business live – latest updates

Virgin Media O2 is to cut thousands of jobs in an £800m cost-cutting drive as the telecommunications company aims to tackle its £22bn debt pile.

VMO2, which is jointly owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, said £300m of the savings target will come from job cuts that will reduce the company’s employee wage bill by 30% over the next two years.

One motion considers reining in political spending while another proposes to municipalize the grid in sign of anger with datacenters and high bills

Two citizen-led ballot initiatives seek to rein in Michigan’s powerful electric utilities as residents say politicians have failed to address pressing issues around controversial datacenters, high energy rates and poor electric reliability.

On Tuesday, voters statewide will consider a nation-leading ban on political donations by the state’s deeply unpopular regulated utilities. At the same time, organizers in Ann Arbor, one the state’s largest cities, are proposing to banish utility giant DTE Energy by municipalizing the grid. It would establish a public power company to deliver energy.

Other overnight strikes targeted power plants across Ukraine, damaged hospitals and wounded scores of people

Russia has bombed a humanitarian hub in southern Ukraine, killing at least 31 people and leaving dozens missing, as part of a wave of strikes across the country.

Other overnight Russian strikes targeted power plants across Ukraine, damaged hospitals and wounded scores of people, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned that the US was distracted by its midterm elections.

Test 17 Thanksgiving sides on a quiet weeknight before the holiday, from casseroles and potatoes to salads, biscuits, rice, glazed carrots, and roasted squash soup. Use the trial to check flavors and plan oven space.The post 17 Thanksgiving side dishes…

Democrats are hoping to seize control in the Capitol and rein in the president’s power. Plus, a peacock that loves admiring itself in the mirror a little too much

• Don’t already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up here

Good morning. Americans are heading to the polls today in US midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Donald Trump’s second presidency and a chance for opponents to rein in his power. The party holding the White House typically loses congressional seats at midterm elections and Democrats are hoping the president’s nose-diving popularity can be exploited.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice in California has charged six more people with alleged voter fraud crimes, an escalation of the administration’s campaign against election integrity. However, in a blow to Trump, the supreme court has ruled against attempts to force California election officials to segregate and not count ballots from people the justice department claims are non-citizens.

Where have our reporters been covering the crucial midterm races? We have a dispatch from Shrai Popat in New Hampshire, where Republicans were hoping to flip a Senate seat but now worry Trump may be dragging them down, and David Smith has been in Austin, where James Talarico is making an extraordinary bid to break the Texas Democrats’ losing streak. Lauren Gambino has been in Los Angeles, casting her eye over Xavier Becerra’s California shoo-in to be governer, while Joseph Gedeon offers this analysis from Detroit of how Israel is at the heart of Haley Stevens’s extraordinary reversal to back Abdul El-Sayed’s Republican opponent in Michigan.

Where can you find the Guardian’s election coverage? This explainer has everything you need to know about how winners are called, how states count ballots and Trump’s election denialism. We also have an hour-by-hour rundown of when polls close around the US, and this valuable guide to the candidates and races that will decide the elections.

We will be live blogging the election and results round-the-clock. You can join my colleagues on the live blog here.

The case of the stolen Audemars Piguet timepiece took a twist when the store received a package containing the watch -- and a note saying sorry.

The post Election Day Live Blog: Democrats secure supermajority appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

It is polling day in the US, so Jonathan Freedland is chatting to the humour writer Alexandra Petri of the Atlantic to run through this election cycle’s most effective ad campaigns, surprising alliances and embarrassing gaffes

Casseroles can bring everyone back for another helping. These 13 recipes cover cheesy pasta, chicken, rice, potatoes, meatballs, and a tater tot breakfast bake, with easy options for family dinners and potlucks.The post 13 casserole recipes that made my Mother-in-law…

The gaming phone’s 8,400-mAh battery is easily one of the largest we’ve seen in a phone that you can buy in the US.

My Amazon smart display has been filling with AI garbage. Here’s how to clear it out if you’re struggling.

The envoy will also meet with European and NATO allies to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.

Drax’s FTSE 250 owner strikes £20bn deal to build infrastructure in what it says is site’s ‘next chapter’

Britain’s most polluting power plant could soon power the country’s largest datacentre under a £20bn deal to build AI infrastructure on the site of the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire.

The power plant’s FTSE 250 owner has struck a deal with the infrastructure investor Brookfield and ⁠and the AI infrastructure platform Radiant to develop a datacentre with an eventual capacity of more than 1 gigawatt that could begin operations by early 2028.

President Trump held an event Monday at the Washington, D.C., Reflecting Pool, while Michigan Democrats assess the fallout from a cross-party endorsement.

What I’m Discussing Today

• “My Ignorance Is as Good as Your Knowledge”: Democracy gives us equal rights, which somehow keeps getting mistaken for a guarantee that every opinion deserves equal respect.

• Michigan’s Senate Race Turns Even Uglier: Haley Stevens endorses the Republican she had warned would rubber-stamp Trump’s agenda.

• Quick Takes: Trump’s arch uses security as an excuse for a makeover, while he can’t even be bothered to get a general’s gender right before calling him a traitor.

• The Man, directed by Joseph Sargent: James Earl Jones gives this 1972 story of a Black president the dignity its TV-sized production cannot quite supply.

• Jake Clemons, “Democracy”: This cover of Leonard Cohen’s song reminds me that democracy remains a promise we have every responsibility to fulfill.

  ---

Kareem’s Quote of the Day

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

― Isaac Asimov

I have been thinking about democracy, as I am prone to do in the days before elections. There are many great quotes about democracy. Two of my favorites are attributed to Winston Churchill, though only the second is verifiable as his. The first is that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter,” and the second that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” The former makes me think of those segments on CNN or MSNBC where some clever reporter goes to the heart of Trump country and lets a voter in a red baseball cap twist himself into knots explaining why he’s voting for candidates who would condemn his family to poverty. The latter makes me think of January 6, when our president tried to gin up a revolution rather than concede an election he clearly lost.

And here we are again.

The Asimov quote above, about anti-intellectualism infecting democracy, comes from an essay called “A Cult of Ignorance,” which appeared in Newsweek in January 1980. Asimov was born in the Soviet Union in 1920, and his family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia University, was a professor at Boston University, and was one of the best-selling science fiction writers of all time. He wrote or edited more than 500 books, including many that sought to explain complex scientific ideas to mainstream audiences. Intellectualism was his way of life.

If his quote seemed fitting at the time he wrote it, it seems positively prescient today. Our leaders have never been more ignorant, and never more sure of themselves in their ignorance. Political scientist Matthew Motta describes anti-intellectualism as an emotional dislike and distrust of scientists, college professors, and other experts. That is exactly the feeling our current leader and his minions have learned to channel. On the 2016 campaign trail Trump declared that “the experts are terrible.” Lines like that flattered his audience, not to mention him. He was telling them his gut instincts were as good as any credentialed analysis. If you believe that, I’ve got a supply of hydroxychloroquine and a war in Iran I’d like to sell you.

As you know, if you read this Substack or any other reasonably reliable source, respect for experience, knowledge, and science is at an all-time low in our government—and even more sadly, among our electorate. How else to explain electing to the position of the most powerful person in the world a failed real estate tycoon, game show host, and huckster whose only contribution to education in this country was starting an online university widely accused of fraud? The American people actually elected a president who ended up paying a $25 million settlement to reimburse victims of what New York’s attorney general referred to as his “sham university.”

The idea that “all men are created equal” is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, but it goes without saying that it was never meant to imply that we are all equal in all ways. A religious zealot’s ideas about creationism are not equal to a biology professor’s ideas about evolution. A Fox News commentator’s thoughts on military leadership are not equal to those of a general who has served for forty years and learned, step by step, in war and peace, how to lead the world’s mightiest military institution. An untrained political scion’s fantasies about vaccines are not equal to a medical researcher’s data-driven analysis. JD Vance, no matter how hard he tries, is not as funny as Wanda Sykes.

Now, some people might say those are all matters of opinion. Granted, but it’s informed opinion, based on experience and empirical evidence. In sports, of course, we judge quality by results. People can argue ’til the cows come home about who was a better president, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, but no one’s going to argue Teoscar Hernández is a better baseball player than Shohei Ohtani. Day in and day out, the box scores establish the incontrovertible facts.

What “all men are created equal” means is that all men have been created not with the same gifts, but with the same rights. (Though the founders seemed to have a blind spot where Black, Native American, and other non-white Americans were concerned. Not to mention women.) But what they were getting at was that everyone should be born with an equal opportunity to succeed. In sports terms, we aren’t all born with equal skills, but we all have to play by the same rules. In that sense, the role of government is to be the referee—to make sure the rules are being applied equally to everyone. Over time, that work came about in fits and starts. Black people were freed from slavery and given the right to vote. That was a start. Then some people had a fit. Another start was when women were given the right to control their bodies. Another fit, and that right was taken away.

The true gift of democracy is that every so often we get to decide it’s time for a new start. We get to choose our leaders, and we can choose the wise, the educated, the experienced, the ethical, and the kind to lead us, or we can choose the other sort—the ignorant, the anti-intellectual, the greedy, the unethical, the unkind. It doesn’t seem like a very difficult choice. So why do we so often get it wrong?

Subscribe now

Read more

The president has spewed vulgar and hateful rhetoric even as he reveals his disdain for his followers

Far from veering off his track, Trump in his ceaselessly vile midterm campaign statements has attained an optimal level of Trumpism. He has distilled the raw elements of misogyny, racism and nativism to the purified essence of his political philosophy.

The Republican candidates and his vice-president have followed him down the trail of “defining deviancy down”, as explained by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his essay in The American Scholar in 1993, about lowering the bar to make abnormal criminal behavior seem normal, coping through denial of its obvious presence, and through that process trivializing “the manifest decline of American civic life”.

Apple said faster battery drain after an update isn’t unusual, so it’s nothing to worry about.

A coalition of security firms working with Japan's National Police Agency has disrupted a botnet of more than 1.3 million Android devices across 200+ countries. "We assess with high confidence that the backdoor and botnet were intentionally developed, deployed, and operated for financial gain by Videostrong Technology," the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said in a blog post. The Register reports: Videostrong Technology is a hardware manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China. It builds Android devices, including home TV boxes and projectors. According to Google, Videostrong deliberately embedded the XCPE backdoor in device firmware and sold access to criminal affiliates, allowing them to install additional malware modules on devices shipped to unsuspecting customers. When buyers connected these devices to their home networks, the preinstalled backdoor allowed operators to create proxy networks and hide malicious traffic using the customers' internet connections without their knowledge. The firmware's pre-installed management agent purported to be a standard remote-management client, according to TrendAI. It pulled updates from a GitHub page, and connected to a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) server that gave the operator full remote control of each box, allowing them to install and remove apps, change settings, and push updates to the infected devices. Between June 3 and October 1, TrendAI documented more than 3.8 million distinct home and mobile IP addresses connected to the operation. The coalition also disrupted the command-and-control domains used to manage the affiliate modules. "Because these affiliates each have diversified distribution channels for their modules beyond XCPE, we assess that taking down their C2 domains will sever access to at least 10 million additional compromised devices," according to GTIG. Google said it had since cut ties with Videostrong, and banned the OEM from making devices with preloaded Google apps.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Affordability and small businesses’ economic woes feature heavily in the House race for Wisconsin’s third district

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

After 18 years in business, Erin Klaus is closing her storefront, a handmade artisan market in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin, at the end of the year.

She opened Tangled Up in Hue amid a recession, during a time when downtown was “kind of a ghost town”, weathering construction and the pandemic. But the current economic crisis proved too much. She’s seen a downward trend in sales for two years, and was dipping into her own pocket from her other job, as the executive director of business non-profit Downtown Eau Claire Inc, to pay staff.

This has been a midterm election cycle unlike any other. Wealthy donors spent staggering sums. Both parties moved to redraw congressional district lines. President Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly questioned whether the results could be trusted even before a single ballot was counted. At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that said the federal government would contest any outcome in which Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent in Alaska, was not victorious.

Newsrooms, including ours, have tried to plan how we will cover an election in which the losing side refuses to accept the will of the voters. Was the Alaska lawsuit a single data point or a harbinger?

As we prepare to write about Nov. 3 and beyond, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to game out what might happen in the future — not our strong suit. The record shows that journalists are pretty good at telling readers what happened, particularly if we have some time and some data to sift through, and much less good at forecasting the future.

And yet we have to plan. Over the past few weeks we have prepared our reporters and editors to cover every scenario we can imagine. None of us have forgotten the chaos of 2020 when Trump was urged by advisers to send the military to seize voting machines in states he had lost. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as lawmakers gathered to certify Joe Biden’s victory underscored the sense that literally anything was possible in the aftermath of elections.

We will have reporters on the ground in 11 key states covering voting, with even more in Washington, D.C., and others on standby. Our reporters have detailed what experts will be watching. But elections are no longer confined to Election Day (early voting and voting by mail constitute a huge share of the electorate). And our plans for covering voting stretch back many months.

Over the past year, we’ve tried to use the techniques of accountability journalism to add new facts to this pivotal moment in American history.

We have focused considerable attention on the mechanics of elections, a once-arcane issue that has become a central aspect of the MAGA movement’s argument that Trump’s 2020 loss was “rigged” by his opponents. We examined how the Trump administration depleted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the arm of the federal government charged with safeguarding election systems. We discovered that Department of Homeland Security officials had asked CISA to obtain a voting machine and hack it without informing the manufacturer of any vulnerabilities found. The plan wasn’t acted on, but its existence made CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference. CISA and DHS didn’t respond to our questions, but a White House spokesperson said Trump “has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections.”

Another story looked at how delays resulting from the U.S. Postal Service’s cost-cutting measures endangered the validity of mail-in ballots in rural counties, typically Republican strongholds, during this year’s primaries. The Postal Service said such delays are less likely in the general election.

One of our most detailed election stories traced the career of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who spearheaded the legal attacks on the 2020 results. Mitchell leads a coalition of what she calls “election believers” — people who scour the voting results for errors that they believe point to larger conspiracies. Changes she’d hoped Trump could push through before the midterms, such as compelling states to turn over confidential voter information to the Justice Department, have been blocked by the courts. But she has nonetheless become the voice of a well-funded national movement, one which has the president’s ear. When Trump is weighing what to do in the aftermath of this week’s vote, our reporting strongly suggests that Mitchell will be among the people he listens to.

We asked to speak with Mitchell multiple times. She declined but told us in an email: “​​​​What we focus on is making sure the election process is accurate, transparent, and honest. The ONLY steps I’ve urged the Administration to take are those that will give the voters — ALL voters — confidence that the outcomes are correct.” A White House spokesperson said she has no official role in election policy but is an effective private advocate.

We have also spent time doing the traditional work of investigative reporting, looking closely at candidates’ records in public office. A newsroom like ours can’t cover every race, so we focus our resources on areas where we have particular expertise.

Our team in Texas has covered state Attorney General Ken Paxton for years, and we kept our focus once he announced he would run for the U.S. Senate. One story looked at his travels, revealing that only 1 in 6 of his nearly 1,000 out-of-state trips were linked to his official duties. Texas taxpayers paid $3.3 million for Paxton’s security detail to accompany him. (Paxton didn’t answer our questions, but his office said he “faced numerous security threats.”) That has become an issue in the Senate campaign.

Another opportunity arose from an investigation that was seemingly not related to the midterms: our examination of the Trump administration’s handling of the Justice Department. We began many months ago to look for promising cases that had been dropped and found out the FBI had been looking into pay-to-play allegations involving prominent Democratic and Republican members of Congress. The case included a bipartisan list of political figures such as Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine running in a closely contested race this year, and James Clyburn, a leading Democratic representative from South Carolina who’s also on the ballot this year.

Our first story revealed that Collins helped a little-known defense contractor win millions in federal contracts while the company’s CEO helped bankroll her 2020 reelection effort through a donation made via a shell company. Our second story revealed that the FBI was looking into interactions that Clyburn and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died in July, had with the same contractor. Collins has denied all wrongdoing. “A donation would never cause Congressman Clyburn to increase his support for the donor’s request,” Clyburn’s office said. Graham’s communications director wrote that “any allegations of quid-pro-quo behavior … are simply false.” The FBI stopped examining the allegations after Trump purged the bureau. Our coverage likewise has become an issue in the Maine race.

We stand at a moment of uncertainty in our history as a democracy. Trump has made his willingness to smear news organizations an essential aspect of his appeal. He routinely insults reporters to their face and has attempted to ban some outlets from the White House and Air Force One because he didn’t like the stories they wrote about him. He has diverted hundreds of federal agents from their jobs fighting drug cartels and organized crime to search for evidence that noncitizens have illegally voted in federal elections. Hardly any were found.

I’m deeply reluctant to make any predictions about how all this will end. ProPublica prepared for an array of dire scenarios in November of 2024 that might arise from a close election. None of them came to pass as Trump decisively prevailed. A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the Alaska Senate race results over the weekend, and the Trump administration’s plans to appeal stand on shaky legal ground.

The one thing I know for certain is that we will keep digging into the story of what really happened in this election, whoever wins.

The post How We’re Covering the Midterms — and the Aftermath appeared first on ProPublica.

Democrats are on the verge of reversing their political fortunes. The party is heading into the midterm elections Tuesday under the kind of conditions campaign consultants dream of, after two years wielding hardly more power than a strongly worded letter.

Donald Trump has spent the erratic waning years of his presidency leading his party into a political wilderness by waging a deeply unpopular war on Iran and driving the cost of living ever higher. Republicans who enjoy a governing trifecta have tried to distance themselves from the party’s decision-making and its leader, a once-animating force who has turned himself into a liability. Poll after poll says the same: Democrats are poised to take control of one or both houses of Congress — and spend the next two years thwarting Trump’s agenda.

Related

The Democratic Party Gets Its Populist Takeover

But after a primary season dominated by an ascendant left wing and a broader rejection of centrist politics, the question isn’t just whether Democrats win on Tuesday. It’s what kind of Democratic Party emerges on Wednesday morning. 

“I really like the socialism aspects,” said Gibrel Said, a supporter of Abdul El-Sayed at his closing rally in Detroit Monday night. In the marquee contest serving as a referendum on the Democratic Party’s future, the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee espouses progressive politics and has often been associated with the the left’s agenda-setting socialists, though he doesn’t identify as one. His race has been rocked by the kind of left-versus-right identity crisis that presents a perennial challenge for Democrats. 

“One, Medicare for All; two, how do we fund things that help us as constituents,” Said told The Intercept, ticking off things he appreciates about the candidate. Said, who lives in the Arab enclave of Dearborn, Michigan, especially praised El-Sayed’s willingness to buck party leadership and speak out on U.S.–Israel policy. “Instead of tiptoeing around the subject, he very adamantly says, hey there’s a genocide happening here, we shouldn’t send our money.”

Cycle after cycle, in state after state, an insurgent band of Democrats critical of the political establishment’s ties to corporate interests and its unflinching commitment to Israel has had to overcome the barriers erected by its own party’s centrist leadership. Both sides present themselves as the true representatives of working people: the centrists by arguing that more transformative ideas will scare off lower-information voters, the left by saying they represent the masses.

How much of this trickles down to actual voters? On Monday, The Intercept followed canvassers and spoke to voters in Michigan, Maine, and Texas, asking about which issues had permeated and taking the temperature of voter enthusiasm. Some rolled their eyes at the spats that have dominated the headlines, dismissing the idea that eleventh-hour backstabbing would make a difference. Others regurgitated right-wing misinformation. Many complained of too many campaign mailers.

“They’re wicked mean,” said Sharon McDonnell, a supporter of Troy Jackson, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. Speaking to The Intercept in the town of Yarmouth, she described one mailer that included a photo of Jackson chomping a cigar and describing him as “evil.” “It’s just nasty.”

In Maine, the party’s left flank seized power in the nominating process for the Democratic Senate candidate — then fought to hang onto it after onetime rising star Graham Platner flamed out after a sexual assault allegation (which he denies). With Jackson, a former state Senate leader, Maine now offers progressives one of two opportunities to test their message at the Senate level, where a candidate has to secure appeal statewide, not just in deep-blue House districts.

Related

Radical Centrists Like Haley Stevens Are the Real Extremists in the Democratic Party

The other is Michigan, where the intraparty battle is still raging. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., demolished her past attempts at fence-mending when she endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on Sunday and abandoned El-Sayed, who beat Stevens in a Michigan primary that saw $30 million in outside spending from the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

The dustup has had Democrats biting their nails and moderate party leaders making the cable news circuit to demand party discipline — this time, to scold a centrist. The party leads in the polls for 218 of the 435 seats up for grabs in the House of Representatives, but they need to perform well in seven key states — Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas, in addition to Maine and Michigan — if they want to win the Senate. 

“I think she’s counterintuitively, perhaps, given people a reason to rally some more,” said Kathleen Britton, an El-Sayed supporter at the Detroit rally on Monday, of Stevens. “I really don’t think it’s gonna help Mike Rogers.”

Earlier that day, in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Detroit, a prominent Black supporter of El-Sayed preparing to knock on voters’ doors described Stevens’s endorsement as an “ego-driven statement.”

Mike Bland, the executive director of the Black Men Vote PAC, highlighted that Stevens made her public endorsement of Rogers in a Black church in Detroit. He doubted that Stevens, whose criticism of El-Sayed centers primarily on his skepticism of the U.S. relationship with the state of Israel, would be able to pull Black voters to Rogers, a conservative former House representative whose campaign has repeatedly peddled anti-Muslim tropes against El-Sayed.

“How can I say this without cursing? She used a Black church as a prop, and we have seen that time and time again,” Bland said. “Black folks aren’t stupid.”

Over the past month, El-Sayed has rallied with Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, the two most prominent Black politicians in America — and hardly radicals estranged from the establishment power center. At the same time that Stevens was making her endorsement of Rogers public, El-Sayed was attending a get-out-the-vote event at another church in Detroit. The two primary foes were supposed to appear together that day with Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

One of the Democrats’ most coveted Senate pickups didn’t present much of an opportunity for the left in the primary, but it has still been characterized by intraparty animosity.

In Texas, where both Democratic Senate primary contenders espoused relatively moderate politics, outgoing Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, has declined to campaign with state Rep. James Talarico, though she endorsed him after he beat her in the state’s March Democratic primary.

Talarico has been performing well with Latino voters, a massive voting bloc that helped fuel his primary victory. But Crockett — who, unlike Stevens, is Black — has suggested that Talarico has not done enough to excite Black voters, a demographic she carried in the primary. On a canvassing operation targeting Black voters in the Dallas–Fort Worth area on Monday, few Black Texans who spoke to The Intercept expressed excitement for Talarico. But most had already voted for him, saying they were motivated to do their civic duty. 

Related

The Rise of the Christian Left in Texas

Black voters frequently discussed concerns over affordability, gas prices, and homelessness. Canvassers told The Intercept they had heard some of those voters express concerns over their perception of Talarico’s policies toward transgender children, at times espousing blatant misinformation, such as the idea that Talarico supported arresting parents who refused to give their children gender-affirming surgeries. 

“ I don’t stand for that,” said voter Jermiah Robinson, referring to her belief that Talarico pushed “sex-change” surgery for minors. Like many voters, she cited the cost of living as her most pressing issue. Robinson said she would “want to vote for him if he stands by his words, and he’s actually like ‘Yeah, I’ll help out as far as prices and everything.’” 

Talarico appears to have improved his margins with Black voters in the final stretch. According to the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Talarico is leading with 79 percent of the Black vote, signaling a significant increase in support from Black voters from just last month. The conventional wisdom suggests that he could barely ask for a better opponent than the scandal-plagued Republican candidate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. 

In 2015, Paxton was indicted on felony securities fraud charges in Texas, in a case that dragged on for roughly nine years, and ended with Paxton being required to do community service and pay restitution. And in 2023, the Texas House of Representatives voted across party lines to impeach him as attorney general for alleged corruption and retaliation against whistleblowers.

Scandal kept rocking the race for Senate in Maine, where longtime Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins faces her toughest reelection challenge yet from Jackson. Before Jackson, who lost a race this cycle for the state’s Democratic nomination for governor, there was Platner, hailed early as a working-class champion who faced a series of personal scandals in his successful primary campaign. There was the revelation of a Nazi tattoo that he claimed not to understand until last October. There were crudely worded Reddit posts and stories of cruelty from women he’d dated. One former girlfriend’s allegations of sexual assault ultimately ended his campaign — and set off a scramble to find a replacement that progressives ultimately won by elevating Jackson. 

By Monday, Mainers who spoke to The Intercept appeared exhausted by the lengthy, contentious, and expensive Senate race that has dominated the state.

Related

Susan Collins-Aligned Super PAC Buys Attack Ads in Portland… Oregon

“There’s a lot of fatigue. People are tired of it,“ said Charlie Dingman, who chairs the state Democratic Party. “I have had some conversations at doors with people that have led me to think that the extremely negative and extremely untruthful ads may be backfiring.”

Tyler Echard, in Norway, said he’d already cast an absentee ballot for Democrats down the ticket. He was disgusted with a deluge of political mailers and eager to stop seeing them pile up on his doorstep.

“The amount of mailers we get — just mailers, not just handed at the door but in the mail — especially from the Republican side, the amount of money is probably more than I will make in my lifetime, spent in this election,” Echard said. “At some point, we gotta get legislation because money’s just gonna run everything into the ground. I ain’t got it, so I can’t influence it.”

Frustration with the status quo in Congress could spell the end for Collins’s 30-year career in the Senate. On Monday, a University of New Hampshire poll found Jackson leading Collins by 4 percentage points. And in September, Collins found herself thrust into a scandal of her own, when ProPublica revealed that the FBI anti-corruption squad was investigating an alleged pay-to-play scheme between Collins and a donor eager to secure government contracts.

Related

Susan Collins’s Committee Bought Trucks the Army Didn’t Want. Then Campaign Donations Poured In.

The Intercept later exposed that, alongside a series of campaign donations, defense contractors cozy with Collins had received lucrative carveouts in defense spending. (Collins has denied wrongdoing in all cases.)

But the incumbent senator has faced controversy and come out victorious before. And some Mainers doubt they’ll see change either way.

“I can’t vote for either side,” said a man, who declined to share his name with The Intercept, walking down a rural road in Norway with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. “You can’t trust neither of them.”

Noah Hurowitz reported from Yarmouth and Norway, Maine; Akela Lacy reported from Fort Worth, Texas; Matt Sledge reported from Detroit, Michigan.

The post If Democrats Win, Thank the Left appeared first on The Intercept.